The Mighty Walzer (21 page)

And that was what he did. He taught himself to play all over again.

In the meantime, without Twink and Aishky our ping-pong team was looking pretty oisgeriben itself. When you’re all playing well you can get away with going into a few matches a man short. But Selwyn and Louis Marks were abusing each other out of any form, Sheeny Waxman was turning up exhausted (oisgemartet, since we’re on ois words) as a consequence of his own late nights and the daily detours to transport cafés he was having to make as my father’s sidekick, and although I was impregnable, I couldn’t win for everybody. So when Gershom Finkel astonished us all by offering to play while Aishky changed hands we were in no position to refuse.

‘Only one thing,’ he said. ‘I play at number one.’

Number one was my spot this season. I couldn’t conceal my unhappiness. ‘Just humour him,’ Aishky said. ‘The man used to play for England. What’s it to you? Anyway, don’t I hear he’s going to be your uncle soon?’

As yet that was only a moderately offensive thing to say. Gershom had not so far double-dealt my aunties. Not openly. The only charges one could level against him at this stage were all to do with his demeanour — his general slothfulness, his habit of turning up at our house expecting to be fed, yawning when other people were talking, cheating at canasta and jeering at the idea of me as a table tennis player. Whenever he came round he would pick up one of the cups I’d just won, turn it upside down as though to discover the name of the shop from which I’d bought it, and give a little laugh.

So it didn’t please me, although from the point of view of our team’s salvation it should have, that his game was several
classes above any I’d yet seen with my own eyes. He didn’t jump around like the rest of us, he didn’t bother to exaggerate a feint or overdo his follow-through, he didn’t spend the first five minutes of a game feeling out his opponent, he simply shot out a hand and the point was over. He played as he spoke — rapid sub-machine-gun fire, then the sudden cut-out. Ugly to watch, as it was ugly to listen to, but effective. He was so quick you couldn’t always be certain what stroke he’d played. If that was a forehand drive how had he been able to hit it so flat? If that was a flick on the backhand — and the ball reared as though he’d flicked it — how come we hadn’t seen him turn his wrist over?

Racket-head speed, if you want an answer. Never mind the before and after — at the moment of impact he was able to generate the most extraordinary speed, the pisher he was.

I understood now why he never took his raincoat off. He didn’t need to take his raincoat off. But Aishky, who was still Club Secretary and non-playing captain, insisted he at least strip down to his jacket, by way of showing politeness to the opposing team.

Louis Marks came alive now that Gershom was playing for us. He felt that something of the greatness of the past had returned.

‘You can sniff Barna and Szabados on him,’ he said. ‘Who else plays like that today? You know he was nearly World Champion?’

‘Yeah I know, Louis,’ I said.

‘You know it was only Schiff –’

‘Yeah I know, Louis,’ I said.

Louis shook his head and rubbed his face. ‘It was a terrible thing,’ he said. ‘What a tragedy.’

‘I don’t see how it’s a tragedy,’ I said. ‘Everybody gets beaten. If he’d had any bottle he’d have fought back. A lot of people who were beaten by Schiff went on to become World or European champions.’

‘Who’s talking about being beaten by Schiff? He’d have
recovered from that. He
did
recover from that. He played for England, didn’t he? That’s the tragedy.’

‘What’s
the tragedy?’

‘That they stopped him.’

‘What do you mean
they stopped him?
If he was good enough, why would they have stopped him? They don’t stop you playing for your country just because you’re human drek.’

Louis dismissed my rudeness with a click of his tongue, looked around the room, lowered his voice and made a money-counting gesture with his fingers. ‘Gelt,’ he whispered.

‘What are you saying, Louis? That Gershom wasn’t rich enough to play for England?’

‘Neh! Gelt, gelt!’

‘He was too Jewish? Don’t give me that. You’re beginning to sound like your kid.’

‘Who said anything about Jewish? Gelt, gelt. You know Gershom’s weakness.’

I didn’t. That’s to say I knew so many of his weaknesses I wasn’t able to single out any one of them for special consideration.

Louis had now become so circumspect he was almost inaudible. He spelt it out, so that no impressionable child within a foot of us would be able to make head or tail of what we were discussing. ‘G—a—m—b—l—i—n—g.’

‘Since when does being a g—a—m—b—l—e—r disqualify you for playing for your country?’

‘Ssh! Saichel, saichel! You’re not supposed to gamble on your own results, shmulkie.’

It didn’t seem such a crime to me. If Gershom was that confident of himself …

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Louis said. He’d begun to look as wild-eyed as the Ancient Mariner. He even clutched me by the sleeve. ‘Gershom bet
against
himself’

Ah!

With his crossbow, he
shot
the albatross.

‘Gershom bet
against
himself?’

‘Chochem! Now he understands!’

‘You’re telling me that Gershom bet on himself to lose when he was playing for England!’

‘How many more times?’

‘And they found out?’

‘Someone squealed. One of the Swedes. That’s who we were playing — Sweden. 1946. He lost every match. Not by much, but by enough. You’d have thought the Swedes would have been grateful. But no. Swedes for you! They were good to us in the War, mind you. Anyway, one squealed and Gershom was finished. Never selected again.
That’s
the tragedy.’

I fell quiet. Why didn’t I run home then and there and tell my aunties what I’d found out? That Gershom was a man who would sin against his own neshome. Who would poison his own soul. Who would betray the only gift he had. What grief I could have saved them!

But consequences take a long time to pan out. Had Gershom Finkel not bet against himself in 1946, had I not kept silent about what I knew about him, had the aunty of mine he finally plumped for been able to have children of her own, who knows whether I would be living today in the circumstances I do.

I live off Gershom Finkel’s winnings?

Only in a manner of speaking.

And only indirectly.

And only partly.

And not to any very high standard.

Because he didn’t lay that big a bet against himself, the miserable shvontz. He wasn’t just a cheat, he was a cheap cheat.

Aishky Mistofsky was back playing for the Akiva in five months. The progress he’d made was so extraordinary that the Manchester League struck a special medal for him, inaugurated a handicap tournament in his honour, and named him inspirational player
of the year. Opposing teams clapped him when he went on to the table. Everybody wanted to be the first to lose to him. There seemed to be some superstition in it, as though losing to a new playing hand was in the same category of trespass as touching a humpback, and therefore bound to be lucky. But by week three of the following season he was out again.

This time, though, his nerves weren’t to blame. He had simply got caught up in the Bedding Wars.

One way or another, what with the blast shattering our windows, and Cheetham Hill Road being closed to traffic for three days, and the police knocking on our doors asking if we recognized a particular suede shoe which had been blown off in the explosion and presumably belonged to the incendiarist, the Bedding Wars affected just about all of us. But Aishky more than most.

Taking the Copestakes to be the aggrieved party — aggrieved in the sense that it was their bedding shop that was blown up — I could claim some small originating role in their disaccommodation myself. It’s just possible that had we not beaten them to the punch for the bomb site between Boots and Woolworths on London Road in Liverpool they wouldn’t have opened up their bedding shop in Cheetham Hill in Manchester and ended up a bomb site themselves.

How my father got to hear that there was a plum pitch going begging in the centre of Liverpool, right by Lime Street Station, a handkerchief of waste ground just big enough to back the van on to, unhampered for some reason by any Toby Mush or bye-laws, and yet enjoying all the advantages of a prime retailing position, I don’t recall and probably never knew. But the Copestakes, father and son, had got to hear about it as well. Every Saturday morning for six weeks we raced one another down Hilton Lane, over Rainsough Brow, past the Agecroft Collieries, across the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal, swinging left on to Bolton Road, sharp right just before Irlams O’ Th’ Height,
and then out like the very devil on to the East Lancs Road, approaching Liverpool through Carr Mill and Knowsley, skirting the West Derby Cemetery (‘That’s where we’ll end up if you don’t slow down, Joel’ — Sheeny Waxman), the Sugar Brook Sewage Disposal Works (‘And that’s where you’ll end up if you don’t take a shtum powder’ — my father), and on to the London Road bomb site via Norris Green, Tue Brook and Everton. And every week we won. Sometimes by a whisker, sometimes by a full van’s length, but always by enough to thwart them, for once you’d got your front wheels on to the kerb there was no getting past you. Usually we were neck and neck until about three-quarters of the way along the East Lancs. My father liked to keep them just in sight in his rear-view mirror. Then, with seven or eight miles to go, he’d put his foot down. But on the morning of the seventh Saturday we didn’t see them at all. It was still pitch black. Week by week the race had been starting earlier, to the point where Sheeny was now going without sleep the night before and wondering whether it wouldn’t be easier all round if my father simply picked him up outside the Plaza in his Friday-night jiving and head jockey clobber.

‘Any sign of ’em yet?’ my father said, as we scorched through Agecroft.

‘Don’t ask me, Joel,’ Sheeny said. ‘This is still a Friday night for me. And on Friday nights I don’t have eyes for anything except goyishe k’nish.’

My father leaned across me and punched Sheeny’s arm. ‘Shveigst du,’ he said. ‘The kinderlech!’

The kinderlech was me — although strictly speaking you have to be more than one child to be kinderlech — sitting up between them on a blanket over the engine. When I was present there was to be no swearing or lewdness of any kind. What Sheeny and I talked about when my father wasn’t there was another matter. Similarly what they talked about when I wasn’t there. But when we were in each other’s company not an immodest word was to
be spoken. It was biblical. A word was an event, and for us to have met over an impudicious event would have been tantamount to my uncovering his nakedness. Which is forbidden.

‘Like the kinderlech doesn’t know from anything!’ Sheeny laughed. He was especially hoarse this morning. ‘Tell your old man how you’ve never seen what’s between a shikse’s polkes, Oliver. Oink! oink!’

I blushed, liking the imputation of wantonness and ashamed because I had done nothing to deserve it.

‘Shtum,’ my father said. ‘And tell me when you see the Copestakes.’

But we didn’t see the Copestakes. Not charging out over Rainsough Brow, not anywhere along the East Lancs, not charging into Carr Mill. Not a hair of them. ‘Do you know what I think?’ my father said as we hit Norris Green. ‘I think they’ve finally had a sickener and packed it in.’

‘Alevei!’ Sheeny said in his sleep.

‘Yep. The grobbers have given up. Bleh, bleh, bleh bleh bleh!’

Had he had an ounce of Saffron superstition in his bones he’d have known never to exult in a victory even after the event, let alone before it. But there’s no telling a Walzer. And what of course we saw, as we came rattling up the London Road with the brakes of our yellow Commer smelling like Saudi Arabia and the engine smoking like Gehenna, was the Copestakes’ Ford, already on the bomb site, in full and uncontested possession!

Bleh, bleh, bleh bleh bleh!

‘How the hell,’ my father wanted someone to tell him, ‘have they managed that?’

But just a moment … There was the Copestakes’ Ford right enough, but where were the Copestakes themselves? Were the boot on the other foot, and the boot
had
been on the other foot every Saturday prior to this, the Copestakes would have found us jumping about and clapping our hands to keep them warm, bleary
eyed and hungry, but already busy putting up the stall, clanking bars, throwing planks, in other words incontrovertibly
in evidence.

So why weren’t they?

My father got out of our van and went over to theirs. He walked around it a few times, keeping his distance as though he feared it could be boobytrapped, then chancing a closer inspection, peering into the cab, trying the doors. At last, after scratching his head, he felt the radiator. Cold! Ice cold!

‘The chazerim must have driven here last night,’ he said. He was outraged by this breach of etiquette, hopping mad, like a boxer who has been hit low.

‘So what do we do?’ I said. It was early in the morning. There was still time for us to drive to one of our old gaffs, shmeer the Toby
and
have a bacon and liver butty prepared for us by one of my father’s transport café floozies.

‘I’ll tell you what we do,’ he said. ‘We move the van.’

‘Our van?’

‘Their van.’

‘They’ve left the keys in?’

‘Course they haven’t left the keys in. We’ll have to bump it. Wake Sheeny.’

Sheeny was still asleep, with his head on his chest. It was the only time he was ever still. I shook him gently. ‘We’re bumping the van,’ I said.

‘Bumping whose van?’

‘Bumping their van.’

‘Not me,’ he said. ‘Not in this whistle. Tell your old man he’s off his rocker. You can’t go round bumping people’s vans.’

But my father was resolute. We hadn’t been beaten fair and square. The Copestakes had pulled a fast one. Which meant that we were within our rights, morally, to bump their van out of the way before they got back from wherever they were skulking. If Sheeny wouldn’t help, fine. We’d do it together. Father and son. Backs to the bumper, shoulders to the wheel.