The Mighty Walzer (35 page)

When I told him what had happened to my ice-cream job he had the decency to see the joke. Like father like son. We both couldn’t keep a shilling in our pockets.

And then one day it wasn’t funny any more.

The house went from noisy to quiet in a single instant, and then went from quiet to noisy just as abruptly, but now at all the wrong times. People I had never seen before arrived in the early morning carrying boxes, then more people I had never seen before arrived in the dead of night to carry them away. There were constant phone calls out of business hours, some of them confidential and rueful — shushkehing phone calls: mutter mutter, ech ech — some of them wheedling, many of them angry, all of them futile. The phrase ‘You soon know who your friends are’ was forever on my father’s lips. He lost stature. His brick shithouse shoulders looked as though they’d been hit by a semi-trailer. He slumped and lost weight. He lost his appetite. One by one, my mother lost the rings from her fingers. Pawned. Reduced to pawnage — us!
Us!
Who until now had never known what or where a pawn shop was. But we were learning quickly. We were helpless in the arms of a process which I thought only attacked the families of crooked financiers or ne’er-do-wells: we were going mechullah.

‘If it wasn’t for you kids,’ my mother said, ‘I’d put my head in the oven.’

To my sisters she said, ‘Let this be a lesson to you. Never marry a man who doesn’t know where his invoices are. However much he makes you laugh.’

She had become like the Lady of Shalott. She wouldn’t look out
of windows or answer the door or telephone. Thro’ the noises of the night she hid in shadows. The curse had come upon her.

There was only one consolation. The tower was in her name.

I’ve been told by other bankrupts that when it finally happens, when you go from
going
mechullah to
being
mechullah, there is a wonderful sense of relief. It wasn’t like that with us. The final blow was the bitterest blow. Because it was delivered not by any impersonal system of justice or retribution, but by a mortal enemy. Copestake.

Yes,
that
Copestake! Cockroach and fatherer of cockroaches.

Come the hour when the forests are all gone and the ice has all melted and the hole in the firmament is big enough to drop a hundred moons through, one creature will still be crawling across the face of the ruined earth, the copestake, inexpungible, impervious to all extremes of climate, proof against insult and obloquy, resistant to fire itself.

Yes, he had done well out of the insurance on the charred Cheetham Hill Road emporium. So well that for a while people wondered whether Benny the Pole mightn’t have been working for him and not the Beenstocks all along. Though it wasn’t beyond Benny, his old Kardomah chinas chipped in, to have been in the employ of them both. Against either of these theories was the condition of Mrs Copestake, who had begun to shake on the day after the fire and hadn’t stopped shaking since. Why would she be shaking if she’d got what she wanted to get — assuming she wanted what her husband wanted, that’s if he had ever wanted it (and conspired to get it) in the first place? Of course there could have been discussions between Copestake and Benny the Pole without Mrs Copestake being party to them; men who love their wives frequently keep them in the dark. But in that case Mr Copestake would surely be at the mercy of some pretty mixed emotions right now, seeing his wife quivering like an aspen, and by all accounts he wasn’t.

The only thing mixed about Copestake was the business he was doing, swallowing up every import warehouse and factory, every betting shop and flop house he could get his hands on in a rough square bounded by Cheetham Hill Road, Waterloo Road, Derby Street, and Strangeways. He’d grown up there, poor and unloved — for who can love a cockroach? Not even another cockroach can love a cockroach — and now was systematically making himself sole landlord of the place. Copestake returns! Deny me this time!

Another psychotic winner riding in triumph through Persepolis.

Among the warehouses he had most recently gobbled down was Patkin Bros, importers of chipped tsatskes from Taiwan, every one a shneid — my father’s biggest creditor. If Patkin Bros called in then that was that. And why wouldn’t they, now they were Patkin Bros only in name, in reality Cockroach and Son?

For two whole weeks my father went about klopping the side of his head. ‘How do you like it! Of all people! Him, of all people! What are the chances of that happening? Copestake! A klog oyf im! How many million people are there in Manchester? Two million? Three million? And it has to be Copestake. What are the chances of that? You’re the mathematician, Oliver — what are the chances of that?’

‘Between two and three million to one,’ I said.

Knowing the cold figures only made it worse. ‘Three million to one! Three million to one and it has to be that farbissener! My mazel!’

‘You could try talking to him,’ my mother said, from the shadows. She was lying down with a cold compress on her head. Migraine. We all had one. A migraine each. All except my father who could go on and on klopping the side of his head and never even get a headache.

‘I’ve tried talking to him.’

‘Recently?’

‘What’s recently? I’ve tried talking to him. He doesn’t talk. He puts bricks under vans. And he swears like a yok.’

‘I could try talking to
her.’

‘Why bother talking to her? She’s tsedrait. She shakes all day.’

‘She’s got St Vitus’s. You should be sorry for her. She didn’t shake before she married him. She was a Fingerhutt before she married him.’

‘I know she was a Fingerhutt. What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘I went to school with her.’

‘I went to school with
him.’

‘They were nice people, the Fingerhutts. Her father was a lovely man. Very gentle. I could talk to her.’

‘What about? Her father? They may be very nice people, the Fingerhutts, they may be the nicest people in Manchester. But they’ll still want their money.’

‘I thought you said it’s not their money. I thought you said it’s Morris and Henry Patkin’s money.’

He threw his hands in the air. ‘Just leave it to me,’ he said. ‘You’ve never understood money.’

And a month later he was mechullah.

All very well having everything we owned in my mother’s name, we still had to upkeep it. And we still had to eat.

My sisters were working, but they had flibbertigibbet jobs like demonstrating in Kendalls or giving away cigarettes at car shows, and they spent more on vanity bags and false eyelashes than they earned. Their long-term prospects were good — you never heard of a demonstrator at Kendalls who didn’t ultimately marry well — but until then we couldn’t look to them to do much more than buy their own bagels every Sunday. And not give my father the platz in these trying times by being seen out on the arm of a shvartzer.

As for me, I’d be off to Golem College any day now, and there was no question of my putting that off to help out. I was the future. Our hedge against ever having to be sent back to the Bug.

‘I could try the buses again,’ my father said.

‘Over my dead body,’ my mother told him.

Shtuck, that’s what we were in. Serious shtuck.

Then, out of the blue, mitten derinnen, Sheeny turned up with a suggestion. Lancelot Waxman, his armour ringing as he rode between the barley sheaves. Singing tirra lirra, instead of oink oink.

Giving Sheeny his cards hadn’t been easy for my father. Despite their age difference, they had grown fond of each other. Sheeny was like a little old man half the time, anyway. And my father was more of a boy than I had ever succeeded in being. So they met each other coming the other way. They had good times together. Better times, I suspect, than they ever let on. And no doubt better times than Sheeny and I had ever had. They were on a similar wavelength. They were both pleasure opportunists. They didn’t think there was anything wrong with tsatskying if it made you happy. And they worked well as a team. As my father said, they shifted a lot of gear between them.

‘It won’t be the same without you revving up the Commer outside my lettee in the shvitzing cold, Joel,’ Sheeny told him. ‘I won’t know what to do with myself Shabbes mornings.’

‘You could try going to shool,’ my father said.

‘Only if you pick me up and take me, Joel.’

I wasn’t there when they shook hands and called it quits, but my father described the farewells to us. ‘I don’t know what the kid’s going to do now,’ he said. ‘He took it hard.’

He was taking it hard himself.

‘He’s not a kid,’ I said. ‘He’s five years older than me. And every grafter in Manchester will be after him once the word’s out that you’ve sacked him.’

‘I haven’t sacked him. That farbissener Copestake’s sacked him.’

A couple of afternoons later, sitting over keife and coffee in the KD, Sheeny said, ‘I’m worried about your old man. He’s getting on. What’s he going to do now?’

That was the nice thing about the KD. You had to have skirt with you but you weren’t obliged to address it. You just talked normally, as though it wasn’t there.

‘He isn’t getting on,’ I said. ‘He’s only about five years older than me. He’ll be all right. He’s a good grafter.’

‘You’re telling
me
he’s a good grafter? Listen to me, Oliver — he’s the best grafter there is, your old man.’

‘Then he’ll be all right. He’ll find something. Another coffee, girls?’

But no one is in too much of a hurry to employ a person who’s just gone mechullah, good grafter or not. It’s bad karma, apart from anything else. Shit sticks. And you’re always wondering -did he go bust because he’s a shmuck or because he’s a villain?

Of course your old enemies are quick to offer you something demeaning. Copestake himself put it about, for example, that he was prepared to let bygones be bygones and rustle my father up a warehouseman’s job or the like provided he came crawling on his belly to ask for it.

‘I’d rather beg on the streets,’ my father said.

Which, week by week, was looking more and more like his only option. Until — tirra lirra — Lancelot Waxman came riding out of the shtuck-mist.

I was surprised to see him at the door. I wasn’t aware we were going out that night. I was also surprised not to see him in a whistle and flute (which meant we definitely
weren’t
going out that night). He was wearing jeans, which I’d never suspected him of owning, and a turtleneck sweater, ditto. Casual didn’t suit him. It diminished him. It took away from his seriousness. Especially the roll neck, which chafed his skin and exacerbated the twitching.
But I now understand that his choice of wardrobe was dictated by exquisite tact. He didn’t want to look prosperous. He didn’t want to appear up while my father was down. He didn’t want to look like the boss. For that was the proposition he had come to put. That he should now employ my father!

‘This is the emmes, Joel. I’m offering you the job you gave me, except that I’ll still be pitching and you’ll still be working the edge. It’ll be no different. You can even pick me up in the shvitzing cold. But half an hour later.’

‘This is very, very nice of you,’ my father said. ‘I really appreciate it. But I don’t think it’s on.’

‘Why not? Have you got a better offer?’

‘I’ll be straight with you, Sheeny — I don’t have any offer. So I’m grateful to you. But I don’t see it.’

‘What don’t you see? It’ll be the same as before. I’ll sleep, you’ll graft.’

‘It can’t be the same, Sheeny. I’ve lost the gaffs, for a start.’

‘We’ll get new gaffs. We’ll get better gaffs. That was half the trouble. Your gaffs were no bottle, Joel.’

Tough words. No gaff worker wants to be told his gaffs were no botde. Not when you’ve put as much work into greasing up the Tobies as my father had. But he had to take it. That’s what going mechullah means. You have to accept the world’s retrospective judgement on you.

‘No gaffs are any bottle these days. The gaffs are over.’

‘We’ll find. We’ll find. You leave that to me. The gaffs are my deigeh.’

‘I don’t think I’ve got the stomach left for it, Sheeny.’

‘You’ve got a stomach left for eating, Joel.’

My father patted himself. ‘Well it won’t do any harm to eat a little less,’ he said.

‘Who’s talking less? If you’re not working soon you’ll be eating gornisht. Am I right? Say you’ll think about it, at least.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘No. Reem. Say you’ll seriously think about it.’

‘I’ll seriously think about it.’

‘Good. Don’t take too long, that’s all I ask. I’ll ring you later tonight.’

‘That’s a bit soon, Sheeny. Ring me tomorrow. But you know now what the answer’s going to be.’

‘I’ll ring you in the morning, Joel. Not too early. Sleep on it.’ And he went off, goaded to madness by his turtleneck, jerking and twitching like Houdini in a straitjacket that was finally too much for him.

My father, too, was exercising tact. He hadn’t said, ‘Sheeny, it takes money to start a business. I know how much I’ve been paying you. And I know how much you spend on cuff-links. Forgive me, but you’re dreaming.’

They had to get to that, in the end. ‘I know it’s none of my business,’ my father finally said, ‘but how are you … ?’

‘That’s a fair question, Joel. I’ve got a backer. And if you’re worried, I’ll pay you three months’ greens in advance. How’s that?’

How else could it be?

And the backer? Well, as my father said, it was none of our business. But you can’t help being curious. And our curiosity stopped at the door of Sheeny’s father. Who else? Of course Sheeny was being mysterious. He didn’t want to say, ‘My dad. That’s who.’ Whereas
a backer
had the ring of high finance about it.

But he let the cat out of the bag to me, one night, having got himself uncharacteristically drunk. One thimbleful of sweet red Israeli wine from a squeaky padded bar had done it. Another way in which he was like my father. Shicker at the sight of a corkscrew. We were with keife in Benny the Pole’s pad. Our last night there for the time being. Because in the morning Benny would be out of cheder. Not free, just on highly conditional parole — which, wouldn’t you know, the meshuggener blew, but free enough to stand on the pavement outside the Kardomah again and waylay
young women. I made some denigrating reference to criminals and society’s responsibility to lock ‘em all up for life, especially arsonists who fuck up to the extent of making millionaires out of their victims. ‘Well, let’s hope he ends up making millionaires out of us, Oliver,’ he said. I said that I didn’t see how Benny the Pole was ever likely to make anything out of me, and that was when Sheeny blurted out that he’d already made an employed man out of my father.