The Finkler Question Page 8

  He wished no such terrible experience on his own sons. There was nowhere to go after it for Treslove and his father. They were fused from that moment and either had to go through what was left of their lives together melded in that fashion, like two drowning swimmers holding each other down in molten grief, or they had to look away and try not to share a moment of intimacy ever again. Without its ever being discussed, they chose the latter route.

  But between weeping like a broken god into your children’s necks and roughly shaking them by their hands as a stranger might, there must, Treslove thought, be intermediate territory. He hadn’t found it. Rodolfo and Alfredo were his sons, they even sometimes remembered to call him Father, but any suggestion of intimacy terrified all three of them. There was some taboo on it, as on incest. Well, it was explicable and probably right. You can’t not bring your children up and then expect them to give you their shoulders to cry on.

  He wasn’t sure, either, that he wanted to confide a moment of shame and weakness, let alone wild supposition and superstition, to them. Could it be that they admired him – their remote, handsome father who could be mistaken for Brad Pitt and brought home money for the privilege? He didn’t know. But on the off chance that they did, he wasn’t prepared to jeopardise that admiration by telling them he’d been rolled by a woman in the middle of town in what was, effectively, broad daylight. He didn’t have much of a grasp of family life but he guessed that a son doesn’t want to hear that about his father.

  The good thing was that he only rarely spoke to them at the best of times, so they wouldn’t be attaching any significance to his silence. Whatever they knew about family life they knew that a father was someone from whom one rarely hears.

  Instead, after giving himself time to mull it over – Treslove was not a precipitate man when it came to doing anything other than proposing marriage – he resolved to invite Finkler out for afternoon tea, a tradition that went back to their schooldays. Scones and jam on Haverstock Hill. Finkler owed him a show after failing to turn up the last time they’d arranged a meeting. Busy man, Finkler. Sam the man. And he owed Finkler a warning if somebody really was out to get him, preposterous as that sounded when he rehearsed saying it.

  And besides, Finkler was a Finkler and Treslove was on Finkler business.

  6

  ‘It’s possible somebody’s out to get you,’ he said, deciding to come right out with it, while pouring the tea.

  For some reason he always poured when he was with Finkler. In over thirty years of taking tea together he could not remember a single occasion on which Finkler had either poured the tea or paid for it.

  He didn’t mention this to Finkler. Couldn’t. Not without being accused of stereotyping him.

  They were at Fortnum & Mason, which Treslove liked because it served old-fashioned rarebits and relishes, and Finkler liked because he could rely on being recognised there.

  ‘Out to get me? Out to get me critically? There’s nothing new in that. They’ve always all been out to get me.’

  This was Finkler’s fantasy – that they’d all always been out to get him critically. In fact no one had been out to get him critically, except Treslove who didn’t count, and maybe the mugger who’d got Treslove instead. Though her motives were surely not of the artistic or philosophic sort.

  ‘I don’t mean out to get you in that way,’ Treslove said.

  ‘So in what way do you mean?’

  ‘Out to get you in the out to get you sense.’ He pointed an imaginary pistol at Finkler’s gingery temples. ‘You know –’

  ‘Out to kill me?’

  ‘No, not kill. Out to rough you up a bit. Out to steal your wallet and your watch. And I only said it’s possible.’

  ‘Oh, well, as long as you think it’s only possible. Anything’s possible, for God’s sake. What makes you think that this is?’

  Treslove told him what had happened. Not the ignominious details. Just the bare bones. Strolling along in dark. Oblivious. Crack! Head into pane of Guivier’s. Wallet, watch and credit cards gone. All over before you could say –

  ‘Christ!’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And where do I come in?’

  Self, self, self, Treslove thought. ‘And it’s possible she had followed me from Libor’s.’

  ‘Hang on. She? What makes you so sure it was a she?’

  ‘I think I know the difference between a she and a he.’

  ‘In the dark? With your nose up against a windowpane?’

  ‘Sam, you know when a woman’s assaulting you.’

  ‘Why? How many times has a woman assaulted you?’

  ‘That’s not the point. Never. But you know it when it’s happening.’

  ‘You felt her up?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t feel her up. There wasn’t time to feel her up.’

  ‘Otherwise you would have?’

  ‘I have to tell you it didn’t cross my mind. It was too shocking for desire.’

  ‘So she didn’t feel you up?’

  ‘Sam, she mugged me. She emptied my pockets.’

  ‘Was she armed?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Know of or knew of?’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘You could know now that she wasn’t though you thought then that she was.’

  ‘I don’t think that I thought then that she was. But I might have.’

  ‘You let an unarmed woman empty your pockets?’

  ‘I had no choice. I was afraid.’

  ‘Of a woman?’

  ‘Of the dark. Of the suddenness –’

  ‘Of a woman.’

  ‘OK, of a woman. But I didn’t know she was a woman at first.’

  ‘Did she speak?’

  A waitress, bringing Finkler more hot water, interrupted Treslove’s answer. Finkler always asked for more hot water no matter how much hot water had already been brought. It was his way of asserting power, Treslove thought. No doubt Nietzsche, too, ordered more hot water than he needed.

  ‘That’s sweet of you,’ Finkler told the waitress, smiling up at her.

  Did he want her to love him or be afraid of him? Treslove wondered. Finkler’s lazy imperiousness fascinated him. He had only ever wanted a woman to love him. Which might have been where he’d gone wrong.

  ‘So let me see if I’ve got this right,’ Finkler said, waiting for Treslove to pour the hot water into the teapot. ‘This woman, this unarmed woman, attacks you, and you think it was me she thought she was attacking, because it’s possible she followed you from Libor’s – who, incidentally, isn’t looking well, I thought.’

  ‘I thought he looked fine, all things considered. I had a sandwich with him the other day, as you were meant to. He looked fine then too. You worry me more. Are you getting out?’

  ‘I’ve seen him myself and he didn’t look fine to me. But what’s this “out” concept? What’s the virtue in out? Isn’t out where there are women waiting to attack me?’

  ‘You can’t live in your head.’

  ‘That’s good coming from you. I don’t live in my head. I play poker on the internet. That’s nowhere near my head.’

  ‘I suppose you win money.’

  ‘Of course. Last week I won three thousand pounds.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Yeah, Jesus. So you needn’t worry about me. But Libor is rubbing at the pain. He is holding on to Malkie so tight she’ll take him with her.’

  ‘That’s what he wants.’

  ‘Well, I know you find it touching but it’s sickly. He should get rid of that piano.’

  ‘And play poker on the Internet?’

  ‘Why not? A big win would cheer him up.’

  ‘What about a big loss? No one wins for ever – someone you’ve written a book about must have said that. Isn’t there a famous philosophic wager? Hume, was it?’

  Finkler looked at him steadily. Don’t presume, the look
seemed to say. Don’t presume on my apparent grieflessness. Just because I haven’t gone the Libor route of turning my life into a shrine doesn’t mean I’m callous. You don’t know what I feel.

  Or Treslove may just have invented it.

  ‘I suspect you’re thinking of Pascal,’ Finkler said, finally. ‘Only he said the opposite. He said you might as well wager on God because that way, even if He doesn’t exist, you’ve nothing to lose. Whereas if you wager against God and He does exist . . .’

  ‘You’re in the shit.’

  ‘I wish I’d said that.’

  ‘You will, Finkler.’

  Finkler smiled at the room. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘so there you are coming out of Libor’s place ever so slightly the worse for wear when this muggerette, mistaking you for me, follows you several hundred yards to where it’s actually lighter – which makes no sense – and duffs you up. What exactly about the incident links her to me? Or me to you? We don’t exactly look alike, Julian. You’re half my size, you’ve got twice as much hair –’

  ‘Three times as much hair.’

  ‘I’m in a car, you’re on foot . . . what would have led her to make that mistake?’

  ‘Search me . . . Because she had never seen either of us before?’

  ‘And saw you and thought he looks as though he’s got a fat wallet, and what happened happened. I still don’t know why you think she was after me.’

  ‘Maybe she knew you’d won three thousand pounds playing poker. Or maybe she was a fan. Maybe a Pascal reader. You know what fans are like.’

  ‘And maybe she wasn’t.’ Finkler called for more hot water.

  ‘Look,’ Treslove said, shifting in his chair, as though not wanting the whole of Fortnum & Mason to hear, ‘it was what she said.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Or at least what I think she said.’

  Finkler opened wide his arms Finklerishly. Infinite patience beginning to run out, the gesture denoted. Finkler reminded Treslove of God when he did that. God despairing of His people from a mountain top. Treslove was envious. It was what God gave the Finklers as the mark of His covenant with them – the ability to shrug like Him. Something on which, as a non-Finkler, Treslove had missed out.

  ‘What she said or what you think she said – spit it out, Julian.’

  So he spat it out. ‘You Jew. She said You Jew.’

  ‘You’ve made that up.’

  ‘Why would I make it up?’

  ‘Because you’re a bitter twisted man. I don’t know why you’d make it up. Because you were hearing your own thoughts. You’d just left me and Libor. You Jews, you were probably thinking. You fucking Jews. The sentence was in your mouth so you transferred it to hers.’

  ‘She didn’t say You fucking Jews. She said You Jew.’

  ‘You Jew?’

  Now he heard it on someone else’s lips, Treslove couldn’t be sure he was sure. ‘I think.’

  ‘You think? What could she have said that sounded like You Jew?’

  ‘I’ve already been through that. You Jules, but then how would she know my name?’

  ‘It was on the credit cards she’d stolen from you – doh!’

  ‘Don’t doh me. You know I hate being dohed.’

  Finkler patted his arm. ‘It was on the credit cards she’d stolen from you – no doh.’

  ‘My cards have my initials. J. J. Treslove. No reference to any Julian and certainly not to any Jules. Let’s call a spade a spade, Sam – she called me a Jew.’

  ‘And you think the only Jew in London she could have confused you for is me?’

  ‘We’d just been together.’

  ‘Coincidence. The woman is probably a serial anti-Semite. No doubt she calls everyone she robs a Jew. It’s a generic word among you Gentiles for anyone you don’t much care for. At school they called it Jewing (you probably called it Jewing yourself) – taking what’s not yours. It’s what you see when you see a Jew – a thief or a skinflint. Could be she was Jewing you back. I Jew You – could she have said that? I Jew You, in the spirit of tit for tat.’

  ‘She said You Jew.’

  ‘So she got it wrong. It was dark.’

  ‘It was light.’

  ‘You told me it was dark.’

  ‘I was setting the scene.’

  ‘Misleadingly.’

  ‘Poetically. It was dark in the sense of being late, and light in the sense of being lit by street lamps.’

  ‘Light enough for you patently not to be a Jew?’

  ‘As light as it is here. Do I look a Jew?’

  Finkler laughed one of his big television laughs. Treslove knew for a fact that Finkler never laughed in reality – it had been one of Tyler’s complaints when she was alive that she had married a man who had no laughter in him – but on television, when he wanted to denote responsiveness, he roared. Treslove marvelled that a single one of Finkler’s however many hundreds of thousand viewers swallowed it.

  ‘Let’s ask the room,’ Finkler said. And for a terrible moment Treslove thought he just might. Hands up which of you think this man is, or could be mistaken for, a Jew. It would be a way of getting everyone who hadn’t already registered Finkler to notice he was there.

  Treslove coloured and put his head down, thinking as he did so that it was precisely this diffidence that put the seal of non-Jewishness on him. Who had ever met a shy Jew?

  ‘So there you have it,’ he said when he at last found the courage to raise his head. ‘You tell me. What would Wittgenstein advise?’

  ‘That you get your head out of your arse. And out of mine and Libor’s. Look – you got mugged. It isn’t nice. And you were already in an emotional state. It’s probably not healthy, the three of us meeting the way we do. Not for you anyway. We have reason. We are in mourning. You aren’t. And if you are, you shouldn’t be. It’s fucking morbid, Julian. You can’t be us. You shouldn’t want to be us.’

  ‘I don’t want to be you.’

  ‘Somewhere you do. I don’t mean to be cruel but there has always been some part of us you have wanted.’

  ‘Us? Since when were you and Libor us?’

  ‘That’s an insensitive question. You know very well since when.Now that’s not enough for you. Now you want another part of us. Now you want to be a Jew.’

  Treslove almost choked on his tea. ‘Who said I want to be a Jew?’

  ‘You did. What is all this about otherwise? Look, you’re not the only one. Lots of people want to be Jews.’

  ‘Well, you don’t.’

  ‘Don’t start that. You sound like Libor.’

  ‘Sam – Samuel – read my lips. I. Do. Not. Want. To. Be. A. Jew. OK? Nothing against them but I like being what I am.’

  ‘Do you remember saying how much you wished my father had been your father?’

  ‘I was fourteen at the time. And I liked the fact that he invited me to punch him in the stomach. I was frightened to touch my own father on the shoulder. But this had nothing to do with being Jewish.’

  ‘So what are you?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You said you like being what you are, so what are you?’

  ‘What am I?’ Treslove stared at the ceiling. It felt like a trick question.

  ‘Exactly. You don’t know what you are so you want to be a Jew. Next you’ll be wearing fringes and telling me you’ve volunteered to fly Israeli jets against Hamas. This, Julian, I repeat, is not healthy. Take a break. You should be on the town. “Out” as you call it. Get yourself a bird. Take her on holiday. Forget about the other stuff. Buy a new wallet and get on with your life. I promise you it wasn’t a woman who stole your old one, however much you wish it had been. And whoever it was still more certainly didn’t confuse you with me or call you a Jew.’

  Treslove seemed almost crestfallen in the face of so much philosophic certainty.

  THREE

  1

  ‘Hi, Brad.’

  The speaker was a strong-jawed woman in a waterfall of b
londe curls and a limp Regency dress that showed her breasts off to impressive effect. This was the third time that evening that Treslove – on his first night back working as a lookalike – had been taken for Brad Pitt. In fact, he’d been hired to look like Colin Firth in the part of Mr Darcy. It was a lavish birthday party in a loft in Covent Garden for a fifty-year-old lady of means whose name really was Jane Austen, so who else could he have been hired to look like? Everyone was in costume. Treslove, in tight breeches, a white hero shirt and silk cravat, affected a sulky manner. How then he could be taken for Brad Pitt he didn’t know. Unless Brad Pitt had been in a Pride and Prejudice production he’d missed.

  But then everyone was drunk and vague. And the woman who had accosted him was drunk, vague and American. Even before she opened her mouth Treslove had deduced all that from her demeanour. She looked too amazed by life to be English. Her curls were too curly. Her lips were too big. Her teeth too white and even, like one big arc of tooth with regular vertical markings. And her breasts had too much elevation and attack in them to be English. Had Jane Austen’s heroines had breasts like these they would not have worried about ending up without a husband.

  ‘Guess again,’ Treslove said, flushed from the encounter. She was not his kind of woman. She would too obviously outlive him to be his kind of woman, but he found her forwardness arousing. And he too was growing vague.

  ‘Dustin Hoffman,’ she said, inspecting his face. ‘No, I guess you’re too young for Dustin Hoffman. Adam Sandler? No, you’re too old. Oh, I know, Billy Crystal.’

  He didn’t say Why would Billy Crystal be at a Jane Austen party?