The Prosperous Thief (38 page)

Soon the Middle East conflict was left far behind and he was attacking her secularism and accusing her of shallowness, and she was attacking his orthodoxy and blaming his Holocaust background for it.

‘I’m a Jew,’ he had shouted at her. ‘Not just someone once removed from genocide.’

And when she shouted back she was as much a Jew as he was, he plunged in the knife.

‘Show me,’ he said. ‘Just show me what sort of Jew you are.’

But she couldn’t, for she had nothing whatsoever to show for her Jewishness. As for the Jewish sensibility she waved at him, it was laughable.

‘A little bit of guilt, a little bit of neurosis, a fondness for disinfectant and a belief in the restorative powers of chicken soup? That makes you a cliché, Melissa, it doesn’t make you Jewish.’

She accused him of Holocaust superiority: ‘All you descendants of survivors think you’re so much more authentic than the rest of us.’

It showed how little she knew: he had chosen religious observance not the Holocaust to inscribe his Jewish identity. Melissa knew nothing about his choices, like she had known nothing of the yearnings which had precipitated them. She was wrong in everything she had said the other night, had been wrong about everything she had said for years. His bags were half packed, he already had one foot outside the door, and he knew that driving him away was not that he and Melissa shared so little but that she disparaged what he valued most.

He looked up as the back door clicked open. Silhouetted against the light were his wife and his sister. He guessed they would either call out to him from where they stood, or Melissa would send Laura to find him. He watched as they exchanged a few words, then Laura turned and went inside. His wife lingered a moment on the doorstep and then she advanced slowly down the path. She would know exactly where to find him. He knew he should meet her halfway, but he couldn’t.He watched her draw closer, he could hear her shoes on the gravel, he thought he could smell her perfume. He sucked in hard, sucked in his life and sadness, and tasted memory. He sighed, deep to his heart he sighed, and at the last moment stepped out of the alcove to meet her. Without a word the two of them walked back to the house together.

From the kitchen Laura watched them come up the path. There was something deeply moving about the scene. She turned to Nell, ‘Melissa will never leave him,’ she said quietly.

Nell assumed her irritated expression.‘You’re such a romantic, Laura. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Melissa stays with Daniel because she gets something out of it. Quite a lot actually, particularly for a strong-minded woman like her. She leads a life entirely separate from her husband. She could go out all day and half the night while he’s at his prayers and never have to account for herself. She has all the trappings of marriage and, as long as she’s discreet, none of the constraints.’ Then still totally oblivious to Laura’s mood, her face softened into a grin.‘There’s a lot to recommend it.’

Was Nell tiring of their relationship? Laura found herself wondering, and quickly brushed the thought aside: of course they were all right, just going through a rocky patch.

Later when they were all congregated around the Shabbat table with Nick leading the service, Laura looked at Melissa and Daniel. There was every reason for them to separate, but whenever that had seemed a real possibility, something always prevailed. Perhaps Nell was right, perhaps it was pragmatism not love, but alternatively there were the mysterious ties of long-term couples. Whatever the reason, the two of them would draw back from the precipice, at least for a short time.

And so it happened that evening. Melissa decided to ignore her son’s desertion, while Nick himself confined his conversation to secular topics. Sophie shed her anger at her brother sufficiently to allow a dark and sprightly humour to surface. Even Daniel was more his old self; he complimented his wife on the meal, and passed a few jokes with Nell. There was only one fragile moment when Sophie raised the topic of the asylum seekers.‘You must have your work cut out for you at the moment,’ she said to Laura, who simply nodded and went to change the topic.

Daniel, however, was too quick.‘This sort of racism is why Jews have to start behaving like Jews,’ he said.‘Be seen as Jews, make an impression as Jews, present a strong united front as Jews.’ Laura was tempted to say that black coats and shaggy beards and umpteen children and out-moded dietary laws and time switches on Shabbat and living in modern
shtetls
and burying your head in the Talmud would do little to stop any sort of violence and bigotry, but could anticipate her brother’s retort: Jews who don’t deserve to be called Jews have no right to an opinion on Jewish issues. And besides, for the sake of her relationship with Nell she’d made a private pact to leave her politics at work.

It was little more than a thumb print on the mood of the evening and soon the jollity returned. Daniel even did a shortened
bentshing
after the meal because they wanted to continue an hilarious discussion about the film each of them would make if they had Steven Spielberg’s money and connections. By the time they said goodnight even Nell was her old self, and when in the car Laura picked up the dangling threads of their earlier conversation – Nell’s boredom, her obvious discontent – Nell brushed them aside. ‘It’s probably hormonal,’ she said.

Whatever it was, it refused to go away. The next day, after an awkward breakfast together, Laura attempted to talk about the tensions between them. But Nell refused, accusing Laura of nagging.

‘You’re making trouble where there is none,’ she said.‘Just leave it alone.’

Laura might have persisted, out of fear more than desire, but at that moment the doorbell rang.

Standing in the doorway was the part-time tutor from Nell’s department, a woman young enough to be called Cyndee. Nell was suddenly her old charming self. How nice it is, Laura was thinking as she watched the two of them, that Nell has a young friend in the department. And how fortunate, given that Nell has alienated quite a few of her other colleagues. Nell invited the girl in, made the introductions, and as the three of them chatted together, Laura felt the recent tensions fall away. This was better, she was thinking, much better; perhaps all they needed were some new friends. But soon the conversation turned to departmental matters, which was, as far as Laura was concerned, the fast track to boredom. Several times a week for several years now she had heard about this or that idiot in the department, or this or that incompetent, or this or that sleaze. In fact, if Nell were bored with their friends, perhaps she should take note that many of their friends were, like Nell, academics, and wanting, like Nell, to talk university issues ad infinitum. It was like a mutual dabbing at weeping sores and Laura not up to it today, so when Cyndee suggested they continue their talking on a walk, Laura made an excuse and let them go alone.

A few minutes later Laura, too, prepared to leave the house. She had a huge amount of work to do, but she needed to unwind. She was about to shut the door and head off to Dight Falls, the rapids in the centre of Melbourne and a place always conducive to thought, when she heard the phone ring. She hesitated a moment, then reentered the house and bounded up the stairs to interrupt the message mid-flow.

It was the American, Raphe Carter. Laura had not heard from him since that day several months ago when he turned up at her office.

‘Four days not enough to unearth the family history?’ she now said.

He was laughing. Not nearly enough, and besides, it left no time to see anything of the city. So he was back in town, and with no special plans.

Laura found herself agreeing to meet him for coffee; not simply the dull moan of the recent tensions with Nell, but something about the American, his newness, his humour and ease, suddenly seemed exactly what she needed.

But first she had to know about Alice Carter. ‘She’s an American like you,’ she said. ‘Also from San Francisco. She knew my father.’

His response was quick and uncomplicated. He’d never heard of an Alice Carter, and then added that Carter was not an uncommon name in his part of the world.

Laura was more relieved than surprised. When there had been no word from Raphe after their first meeting, she decided he had no sinister motives, that he was probably nothing more than an American accustomed to easy solutions and immediate gratification. In fact, she’d hardly given him a thought these past three months. Now, however, she found herself looking forward to seeing him again. She directed him to her regular café, changed her clothes, and set off immediately to meet him.

Intimate Betrayals

H
e liked her, he liked her very much, and would prefer not to. He liked her humour, her ideas and her politics. He liked her tall womanly figure, her mass of blonde curls and her fine pale skin. As they sat opposite each other drinking their double espressos, the ideologically suspect Australian ‘long black’, Raphe reached across and touched her hair. ‘Something caught in your curls,’ he said, surprised at how wiry it felt.

He liked her so much it would be easy to forget why he was here. He had to keep reminding himself that certain wrongs would always be wrong, that murder in the past was no less murder now, that no one had paid for his grandfather’s death and someone damn well ought to. But while his thoughts were set firm, the rest of him was wavering. It was far easier, he decided, to be an effective hater in the confines of your own mind. For in the presence of the very real Laura Lewin, reason had deserted him. What on earth had made him return to Australia? What on earth did he think he could achieve?

He wanted to go home and return to the drawing board. At the same time he wanted to stay right where he was, drinking coffee with Laura Lewin who was so different from the Laura Lewin of his imaginings. Calm down, he told himself. No one is forcing you to do anything, no one even knows the real purpose of this trip, and managed to settle himself sufficiently to ask about her work, a topic designed to keep her talking while he regained his composure.

As soon as she began to talk, so he began to feel better, although not in the way he had hoped. His anxiety and conflicts disappeared because Laura Lewin occupied his entire attention. Such an expressive speaker, he couldn’t take his eyes off her; the tiniest movement of her face, the lift of an eyebrow, the flicker of a grimace, emphasised and elaborated her words. She was equipped with that special skill of exposing brutality and injustice through reference to individual stories. She guided him through some terrible narratives, sparing him nothing but at the same time ready to lend a hand should he falter. He saw the dust and disease of refugee camps, he felt the stink and cramp of rotting trawlers, he knew the loss of whole families, whole villages, he saw death and mutilation in all their cruel diversity. As she told the stories it was as if the victims themselves were speaking and his own urgency fell away.

Hearing about her work at the commission, Raphe couldn’t help but wonder if he had judged the law too quickly all those years ago, for Laura, it seemed, managed to operate within a framework of justice.

‘Although it takes regular beatings,’ she said.‘Revenge – a form of rough justice by any other name – is so much easier than justice, and certainly less encumbered by rules and regulations.’

Rough justice. And suddenly Raphe found his feet. Rough justice, and Laura Lewin’s attractions fell away. Rough justice, and Raphe knew exactly what he was doing here.

So many times had he imagined those last dreadful moments in a wooded area not far from Belsen, two men, opposites in every respect, one his grandfather, sick, but perhaps not dying, and the other Laura’s father, strong and healthy – and still strong and healthy in his eighties according to Raphe’s mother. A crime had been committed yet no one had paid. The courts had failed, and with the increasing passage of time, soon they would stop bothering. Which left only rough justice.

As Laura chatted on about her work, he wanted to grab her by the arms tight enough to hurt, grab and shake and squeeze her to the bone. He wanted to tell her the truth, make her listen, make her understand who her father really was. Now that would be a form of rough justice.

More than sixty years ago and another era, two men in a wood, one on the side of the barbarians and the other among the persecuted, and, despite his mother’s account, Raphe still tormented by the possibilities. Was his grandfather forced to lie in his weakness as Laura’s father came towards him? Might there have been a stick, or a gun, or perhaps a knife? Or did the brute rely only on his bare beefy fists. Did Martin Lewin in a sweat of fear and helplessness watch his own death drawing closer? Did he with his last breath beg to be spared?

Raphe had spent a good many nights lying in his own sweat gnawing at the unfairness of it all. As he lectured his students, or worked at his keyboard, even on occasions when he was with a woman, he was aware of the weight of his grandfather’s suffering, a leaden cladding as snug and heavy as custom-made armour. He felt the torment so intensely, he couldn’t help but wonder if there was something specific to him, some nugget of madness or idiocy that had him choking the present in the long reach of the past. Even his mother had handled the knowledge better. What you can’t change, she used to say, you have to accommodate. You have to move on.And while Raphe had tried, his grandfather refused to be left behind.