The Finkler Question Page 14

  ‘Profoundly self-important you mean,’ Tyler said when she heard the programme. ‘How could you?’

  ‘How couldn’t I?’

  ‘Because that wasn’t what the programme was about, that’s how you couldn’t. Because no one was asking.’

  ‘Tyler . . .’

  ‘I know – your conscience made you. A convenient entity your conscience. There when you need it, not when you don’t. Well, I’m ashamed of your public display of shame and I’m not even Jewish.’

  ‘That’s precisely why,’ Finkler said.

  Finkler was disappointed that none of his wittily glossed selections made Pick of the Week but was flattered to receive a letter, a fortnight after transmission, from a number of well-known theatrical and academic Jews inviting him to join a group which had been no more than an idea without direction so far but which they now intended to reform and name in honour of his courage in speaking out – Ashamed Jews.

  Finkler was moved. Praise from his peers affected him almost as deeply as the prayers he had never said for his grandfather. He scanned the list. Most of the professors he knew already and didn’t care about, but the actors represented a new scaling of the heights of fame. Though he had never been much of a theatregoer and turned his nose up at most of Tyler’s let’s-go-and-see-a-play suggestions, he viewed being written to by actors – even actors he didn’t think very highly of qua actors – in a different light. There was a celebrity chef on the list too, and a couple of stellar stand-up comedians. ‘Jesus!’ Finkler said when he got the letter.

  Tyler was in the garden, lounging this time. A coffee cup in her hand, the papers open. She had been sleeping though it was only late morning. Finkler had not noticed that she tired more quickly than she used to.

  ‘Jesus!’ he repeated, so that she should hear him.

  She didn’t stir. ‘Someone suing you for breach of promise, dearest?’

  ‘Not everyone, it seems, was ashamed of me,’ he said, naming the most eminent signatories to the letter. Slowly. One by one.

  ‘And?’

  She took as long over the one word as her husband had taken over the dozen names.

  He flared his nostrils at her. ‘What do you mean “and”?’

  She sat up and looked at him. ‘Samuel, there is not a person whose name you have just read out for whom you have the slightest regard. You abominate academics. You don’t like actors – you particularly don’t like those actors – you have no time for celebrity chefs and you can’t abide stand-up comedians, especially those stand-up comedians. Not funny, you say about them. Seriously not funny. Why would I – no, why would you care what any of them think?’

  ‘My judgement of them as performers is hardly pertinent in this instance, Tyler.’

  ‘So what is? Your judgement of them as political analysts? Historians? Theologians? Moral philosophers? I don’t recall your ever saying to me that though they were shit as comedians you thought them profound as thinkers. Every time you’ve worked with actors you’ve pronounced them to be cretins, incapable of putting a single sentence together or expressing half a thought. And certainly unable to understand yours. What’s changed, Samuel?’

  ‘It’s pleasing to receive support.’

  ‘From anywhere? From anyone?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call these people anyone.’

  ‘No, in your own words less than anyone. Except they’re someone now they’re praising you.’

  He knew he could not read her the whole letter, could not tell her that his ‘courage’ had inspired or at least revitalised a movement – small now, but capable of growing to who could say what size – could not say that it was nice to be appreciated, Tyler, so fuck you.

  Yet still he could not leave her presence.

  So he kept it brief. ‘Praise is different when it’s your own who are praising you.’

  She closed her eyes. She could read his mind without having to keep them open.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ, Shmuelly,’ she said. ‘Your own! Have you forgotten that you don’t like Jews? You shun the company of Jews. You have publicly proclaimed yourself disgusted by Jews because they throw their weight around and then tell you they believe in a compassionate God. And now because a few mediocre half-household-name Jews have decided to come out and agree with you, you’re mad for them. Was that all it ever needed? Would you have been the goodest of all good Jewish boys if only the other Jewish boys had loved you earlier? I don’t get it. It makes no sense. Becoming an enthusiastic Jew again in order to turn on Judaism.’

  ‘It’s not Judaism I’m turning on.’

  ‘Well, it’s sure as hell not Christianity. Ashamed Jews? It would be more honourable of you to kick around with David Irving or join the BNP. Remember what it is you really want, Samuel . . . Sam! And what you really want isn’t the attention of Jews. There aren’t enough of them.’

  He didn’t listen to her. He went upstairs to his desk, his ears ringing, and wrote a letter of appreciation to Ashamed Jews – a letter in appreciation of their appreciation. He was honoured to join them.

  But might he make a suggestion? In the age of sound bites, which, like it or not, this assuredly was, one simple, easy to remember acronym could do the work of a thousand manifestos. Well, an acronym – or something much like an acronym – lay concealed in the very name the group had already given itself. Instead of ‘Ashamed Jews’, what about ‘ASHamed Jews’, which might or might not, depending on how others felt, be shortened now or in the future to ASH, the peculiar felicity of which, in the circumstances, he was sure it wasn’t necessary for him to point out?

  Within a week he received an enthusiastic response on notepaper headed ‘ASHamed Jews’.

  He felt a deep sense of pride, mitigated, of course, by sadness on behalf of those whose suffering had made ASHamed Jews necessary.

  Tyler was cruelly wrong about him. He didn’t want what she accused him of wanting. His hunger for acclaim – or even for approval – was not that voracious. As God was his witness, he felt approved of enough. This wasn’t about acceptance. It was about the truth. Someone had to speak it. And now others were ready to speak it with him. And in his name.

  Had Ronit Kravitz not been the daughter of an Israyeli general he’d have rung her to propose a weekend of making ASHamed Jew whoopee in Eastbourne.

  3

  Tyler did, as it turned out, watch a second of her husband’s television programmes in Treslove’s Hampstead apartment that wasn’t in Hampstead. And, at decent intervals, further series after that. She saw it as a consolation for her husband doing so much television. The thing she and Julian had going never blossomed into an affair. Neither was looking for an affair – or at least Tyler wasn’t and Treslove had grown wary of looking for anything – but they found a way of showing kindnesses to each other over and above the conventions of an afternoon adultery fuelled by anger and envy.

  Her growing tired was not lost on Treslove.

  ‘You look pale,’ he told her once, smothering her face with kisses.

  She submitted to them, laughing. Her quiet, not her raucous laugh.

  ‘And you are subdued somehow,’ he said, kissing her again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t come round to depress you.’

  ‘You don’t depress me. Your pallor becomes you. I like a woman to look tragic.’

  ‘God – tragic now. Is it as bad as that?’

  It was as bad as that, yes.

  Treslove would have said Come and die at my place but he knew he couldn’t. A woman must die in her own home and in her own husband’s arms, no matter that her lover would mop her brow with more consideration than the husband ever could.

  ‘I do love you, you know,’ he told her on what they both in their hearts suspected would be their last tryst. He had told her he loved her the first time they slept together, watching Sam on the box. But this time he meant it. Not that he didn’t mean it then. But this time he meant it differently. This time he meant it for her.r />
  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she told him.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘I truly do.’

  ‘You truly don’t, but I am touched by your wanting to. You have been lovely to me. I am under no illusions, Julian. I get men. I know the bizarre way masculine friendship works. I have never fooled myself that I am any different to other wives in this position – a means for you two to work out your rivalry. I told you that at the beginning. But I’ve been happy to take advantage of that for my own purposes. And I thank you for having made me feel it was me you wanted.’

  ‘It was you I wanted.’

  ‘I believe it was. But not as much as you wanted Samuel.’

  Treslove was horrified. ‘I, want Sam?’

  ‘Oh, not in the wanting to fuck him sense. I’ve never loved him in the wanting to fuck him sense. I doubt anybody has. He’s not a fuckable man. Not that that’s ever stopped him . . . or them. But he has something, my husband, not a glow exactly, but some air of secrecy that you want to penetrate, a kind of fast-track competence or know-how that you would like to have rub off on you. He is one of those Jews to whom, in an another age, even the most avidly Jew-hating emperor or sultan would have given high office. He appears connected, he knows how to get on, and you feel that if you are close to him he will get on for the both of you. But I don’t have to tell you. You feel it. I know you feel it.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know I felt it.’

  ‘Trust me, you feel it. And that’s where I come in. I’m the bit that rubs off on you. Through me you connect to him.’

  ‘Tyler –’

  ‘It’s all right. I don’t mind being the stolen stardust that sprinkles you with second-hand importance. I get my revenge on him and at the same time get to feel more cared for by you.’

  She kissed him. A thank-you kiss.

  The kiss, Treslove thought, that a woman gives a man who doesn’t shake her to her soul. For that was what his ‘caring’ for her denoted – that he was kind but not challenging, not a man of influence, not someone who gave her access to the fast track. Yes, she came round to his house, slid with angular infidelity into his bed and fucked him, but without ever truly noticing he was there. Even this kiss somehow glanced by him, as though she were really kissing a man standing in the room behind.

  Was it true, what she had said? That sleeping with Sam’s wife gave him temporary honorary entry to Sam’s success? If it was true, why then didn’t he feel more successful? He liked the idea of Sam being an unfuckable man, but what was that information worth if he was an unfuckable man himself. Poor Tyler, fucking two unfuckable men. No wonder she looked ill.

  But poor me as well, Treslove thought.

  A means to work out their rivalry, she had called herself. Their rivalry – implying that there was something in this for Sam too. Did that mean he knew? Was it possible that when she got home Tyler would tell her husband what an unfuckable man his friend was? And would Sam get off on that? Would they get off on it together?

  Did Finklers do that?

  For the first time, Treslove broke the rule all adulterers must obey or perish, and pictured them in bed together. Tyler, fresh from Treslove, turning to her husband smiling, facing him as she had never once faced Treslove, holding his penis in front of her like a bridal bouquet, not a problem to be solved behind her back like Treslove’s. Looking at it even, perhaps giving it name, confronting it head-on, admiring it, as she had never once confronted and admired his.

  ‘In the meantime,’ she said, looking at her watch, though she didn’t mean ‘this minute’, ‘he’s got himself a new craze.’

  Did Treslove care? ‘What?’ he wondered.

  She waved the subject away as though, now he asked, she wished she hadn’t brought it up, or as though she felt he would never understand the ins and outs of it.

  ‘Oh, this Israel business. Sorry, Palestine, as he insists on calling it.’

  ‘I know. I’ve heard him.’

  ‘You heard him on Desert Island Discs?’

  ‘Missed it,’ Treslove lied. He hadn’t missed it. He had gone to great lengths not to hear it or to be in contact with anyone who had. Watching Finkler on television while sleeping with his wife was one thing, but Desert Island Discs to which the whole country tuned in . . .

  ‘Wise move. I wish I’d missed it. In fact I’d have come round here in order to miss it but he wanted me to listen to it with him. Which should have made me suspicious. How come no Ronit . . . ?’

  Again Treslove found himself thinking of Tyler and Sam in bed together, face to face, listening to Desert Island Discs, Tyler admiring Sam’s penis, crooning over it while on the radio the man himself did his Palestine thing.

  He said nothing.

  ‘Anyway, that was where he came out with it.’

  ‘Came out with what?’

  ‘His confession of shame.’

  ‘Shame about Ronit?’

  ‘Shame about Israel, you fool.’

  ‘Oh, that. I’ve heard him on the subject with Libor. It’s nothing new.’

  ‘It’s new to announce it to the country. Do you know how many people listen to that programme?’

  Treslove had a fair idea but didn’t want to get into a discussion about numbers. Mention of millions hurt Treslove’s ear. ‘So does he regret it now?’

  ‘Regret it! He’s like the cat that got the cream. He has a whole new bunch of friends. The ASHamed Jews. They’re a bit like the Lost Boys. It’s all down to careless mothering if you ask me.’

  Treslove laughed. Partly in appreciation of Tyler’s joke, partly to dispel the idea of Finkler having new friends. ‘Does he know you call them that?’

  ‘The Lost Boys?’

  ‘No, the ASHamed Jews.’

  ‘Oh, they’re not my invention. They call themselves that. They’re a movement, inspired, would you believe, by my hubby. They write letters to the papers.’

  ‘As ASHamed Jews?’

  ‘As ASHamed Jews.’

  ‘That’s a bit disempowering, isn’t it?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, to make your shame your platform. Reminds me of the Ellen Jamesians.’

  ‘Haven’t heard of them. Are they anti-Zionists too? Don’t tell Sam. If they’re anti-Zionist and women he’ll join in a shot.’

  ‘They’re the deranged feminists in The World According to Garp. John Irving – no? Garrulous American novelist. Wrestler. Writes a bit like one. I made one of my first radio programmes about the Ellen Jamesians. They cut out their tongues in solidarity with a young woman who was raped and mutilated. Something of a self-defeating action, since they couldn’t thereafter effectively voice their anger. A good anti-feminist joke, I always thought, not that I’m, you know –’

  ‘Well. I doubt there’ll be any tongue cutting with this lot. They’re a gobby bunch, used to the limelight and the sound of their own voices. Sam’s on the phone to them every minute God sends. And then there are the meetings.’

  ‘They have meetings?’

  ‘Not public ones, as far as I know. Not yet, anyway. But they meet at one another’s houses. Sounds disgusting to me. Like group confessionals. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Sam’s their father confessor. “I forgive you, my child. Say three I am ashameds and don’t go to Eilat for your holidays.” I won’t allow them in my house.’

  ‘And is that all they stand for – being ashamed of being Jewish?’

  ‘Whoa!’ She laid a hand on his arm. ‘You’re not allowed to say that. It’s not Jews they’re ashamed of being. It’s Israel. Palestine. Whatever.’

  ‘So are they Israelis?’

  ‘You know Sam is not an Israeli. He won’t even go there.’

  ‘I meant the others.’

  ‘I don’t know about all of them, but they’re actors and comedians and those I’ve heard of certainly aren’t Israelis.’

  ‘So how can they be ashamed? How can you be ashamed of a country that’s not y
ours?’ Treslove truly was puzzled.

  ‘It’s because they’re Jewish.’

  ‘But you said they’re not ashamed of being Jewish.’

  ‘Exactly. But they’re ashamed as Jews.’

  ‘Ashamed as Jews of a country of which they are not citizens . . . ?’

  Tyler laid a hand on his arm again. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘what do we know? I think you’ve got to be one to get it.’

  ‘Be one what? One of the ASHamed?’

  ‘A Jew. You’ve got to be a Jew to get why you’re ashamed of being a Jew.’

  ‘I always forget that you’re not.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. Except by adoption and hard work.’

  ‘But at least that way you’re not ashamed.’

  ‘Indeed I’m not. If anything I’m rather proud. Though not of my husband. Of him I’m ashamed.’

  ‘So you’re both ashamed.’

  ‘Yes, but of different things. He’s ashamed because he’s a Jew, I’m ashamed because he’s not.’

  ‘And the kids?’

  Tyler became abrupt. ‘They’re at university, Julian, remember. Which means they’re old enough to make up their own minds . . . but I haven’t brought them up Jewish only to be ashamed.’ She laughed at her own words. ‘Listen to me – brought them up Jewish.’

  Treslove wanted to tell her he loved her again.

  ‘And?’ he asked.

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And what are they?’

  ‘One is, one isn’t, one’s not sure.’

  ‘You have three?’

  She pretended to hit him, but with little force. ‘You’re the one who should be ashamed,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I am, don’t worry. I am ashamed of most things though none of them have anything to do with Jews. Unless I should be ashamed of us.’

  She exchanged a long look with him, a look that spoke of the past, not the future. ‘Don’t you get sick of us?’ she said, as though wanting to change the subject. ‘I don’t mean us us, I mean Jews. Don’t you get sick of our, their, self-preoccupation?’