Out of Such Darkness (23 page)

It’s a cold Saturday evening. New York is expecting snow soon but today’s clear skies encourage the temperature to drop and Jay and Rachel are well-wrapped up as they cross the jewelled tarmac of the High School car park. As they negotiate the narrow spaces between the cars, their windscreens dressed with fingers of frost, they become aware of a rumpus around the entrance to the school theatre.

The dark silhouetted figures are like Brownshirts.

It becomes clear that they’re Rabbi Stern’s pickets and Jay estimates that there are around thirty of them. Most carry placards but they’re unreadable at this distance. Each individual is swaddled against the cold. They have thick ski coats and pants with snow boots. Their heads are covered with tight-fitting bobble hats or fur-lined Mountie headgear with earflaps. All have gloves. Their breath clouds around them as they chant in rhythms that make it difficult for Jay to determine the words.

As an audience member jostles through, some break off the chant to jeer. A feeling of trepidation rises in Jay’s chest. If someone in the group recognises him – Rabbi Stern himself perhaps – it could turn ugly. They may receive special treatment. How will Rachel cope?

A group reaches the crowd and the chanting increases in volume. The pickets thrust their placards aggressively. Jay sees that Rabbi Stern is standing to one side. He isn’t shouting. Nor does he have a placard. Somehow, this infuriates Jay. It’s worse that the rabbi, having instigated the demonstration, sees himself as above it.

A taxi draws up and inches forward into the crowd. The demonstrators turn on it and the placards jostle with each other to gain the driver’s attention. The window slides down and releases a cloud of blue cigarette smoke. The chanting breaks up and Jay is now close enough to hear a voice emerge from the car. ‘Getaddadeway! I gotta disabled man here. How he gonna geddin wid you inda way?’

With the car as the centre of attention, Jay is able to lead Rachel round behind it to the passenger side. As he hoped, it’s Willy Keel. ‘You slip in and wait for me,’ he tells Rachel. ‘I’m going to help Willy.’

She leaves him and is inside even before the demonstrators recognise she’s there and now Jay is merely a man helping the disabled person out of the taxi; he has no identity in his own right. The demonstrators turn away and re-form between the taxi and the car park. Jay smiles. He’s made it inside their cordon without a mishap.

Don’t think it’s over.

He opens the passenger door. ‘Hi, Willy. Welcome. What good timing. Rachel and I have only just arrived.’

Willy swings his feet out. ‘I can walk in.’

The driver has left his seat and stands by the open boot. He points at the chair accusingly. ‘You gonna take dis ting?’

Jay nods, leans in and grabs the chair by the stays securing the side panel and, as he swings it round, it opens to provide the seat.

Willy waves a shaky hand. ‘Lock it, lock it.’

Jay wants to tell him that it’s the first time he’s done this but sees a locking clip on the top bar and presses it into place. He wheels it so that the chair is parallel to Willy. ‘Can you manage?’

‘Check the brake – make sure it’s locked down.’ Willy’s tremulous hand points to the brake lever by the chair’s push handle.

Jay follows the instruction and tests that the chair doesn’t move. He helps Willy transfer from one seat to the other. All the time the driver is standing by his door snatching glances at his watch.

‘Have you arranged for the cab to come back?’ Jay says.

‘It’s all arranged.’ Willy is now in the seat and has lifted his feet onto the rests. ‘Let’s go.’

‘You’ve paid the driver?’

‘Yeah. C’mon, it’s cold out here.’

A man steps forward to hold the door while Jay pushes Willy through. Rachel is there waiting. One of the students, a young woman in a black cocktail dress, steps up to them. She has a badge,
Amber Tressage – Enabling Companion
.

She leans down to Willy. ‘Hello. How are you today?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Are you Mr Keel?’ She speaks with unnatural enunciation.

He’s not deaf.

Willy nods.

‘Okay.’ Amber says, ‘I’m your designated companion. I’ll be looking after you today.’ She turns to Jay. ‘Thank you but I’ll take over now.’

Jay shakes his head. ‘Did you know about this, Willy?’

Willy shrugs. ‘They called to ask me about my chair and whether I would have a companion. I said no.’ He spreads his hands palms upward. ‘What’m I gonna do? You go. Let this young lady look after me.’ He’s smiling broadly as Amber wheels him away.

Jay takes Rachel by the arm. ‘Come on. Let’s take our seats.’

Only minutes after they settle, the orchestra strikes up and Jay feels his spine tingle. He’s nervous for Ben but prepares by reminding himself that it’s only a High School show. Ever since he knew the school had chosen to perform
Cabaret,
he’s been concerned about how they would deal with the explicit nature of the sex. He hadn’t dared say anything, in case Rachel thought it was inappropriate even to consider it, but as the MC appears for the opening number with the ‘girls’ behind him Jay is reassured.

You may be reassured. I am not so sure. This boy playing my part is not subtle at all. All this camping it up. Ambiguity. We’re looking for ambiguity.

Yes, the boy playing the MC is overdoing his mannerisms but it’s not enough to shock a New York audience. The senior girls who play the chorus line
are
dressed in what could be defined as lingerie, but their camisole tops and silk shorts, while exposing the straps and gussets of robust underwear, give more coverage than what they’d wear for a pool party. He need not have worried.

Meanwhile, I am being most troubled. The boy is murdering my song – and with such a bad accent.

Sally Bowles makes her first appearance for
Don’t Tell Mama.
The girl playing her has the voice to rival Liza Minnelli’s but she’s at least three dress sizes bigger. Her version of the famous ‘bowler’ outfit is more like a skirted swimming costume. But none of this detracts from the enthusiasm of the young performers and Jay is soon lost in the love stories of Bradshaw and Bowles and Schultz and Schneider.

We’re nearly there, Jay. Sit up.

His blood slows when the boy playing the MC brings a gramophone onto the stage. The air is bloated with anticipation. Jay clenches one fist inside the other. He resists the urge to lower his head between his knees.

It’s as clear as a crystal bell when Ben’s voice, without accompaniment, comes in from the wings: ‘The sun on the meadow is summery warm
…
’ A pause, and the quiet is so intense it hurts Jay’s ears. The voice comes in again, melancholy, keening: ‘The stag in the forest runs free
…
’ And so it goes for the first two verses. It’s masterly direction to have the disembodied voice sing at the pace of a funeral march. The audience is willing him to speed it along but he stubbornly refuses.

At the end, when the boy playing the MC leers the words ‘To me
…
’, the house is plunged into darkness and the audience explodes into a cacophony of whoops and screams. Jay thinks that a British audience would have maintained a silence suited to the mood.

No. This is better. We need the high emotion. Imagine what they’ll be like when Ben sings the song to close the first half.

Further scenes play through until two students, stooped and with their smooth skin lined haphazardly in black pencil, act out the awkwardness of Herr Schultz’s proposal and Fraulein Schneider’s acceptance. Then on to the engagement party where the American writer Bradshaw discovers he’s been an unwitting courier for the Fascists. Herr Ludwig, a Nazi who is at the party, learns that Schultz is a Jew. He tells Fraulein Schneider not to marry Schultz – ‘he is
not
a German,’ Herr Ludwig declaims.

Even I lose myself in this moment. But soon it will be Ben on stage.

Seeing that Frau Schneider is not going to be warned off, Herr Ludwig grabs his coat and is about to leave. Jay tenses. The song is close. It’s usually sung by the Fraulein Kost character as an act of revenge against her landlady and to ingratiate herself with Her Ludwig. But in Mark Costidy’s version, Ben, as Fraulein Kost’s younger brother, arrives at the party and stands in Herr Ludwig’s way as he tries to leave.

Fraulein Kost takes Ben’s hand: ‘Herr Ludwig, wait! You’re not leaving the party so early.’

Ludwig: ‘I do not find the party
amusing
.’

Kost: ‘But it’s only just beginning.’

She pulls Ben centre stage. ‘Come, my brother is here, we will make it amusing, ja? The three of us, Herr Ludwig, ja?’ Her eyes wander contemptuously over the assembled cast. She nods to Ben and he unbuttons his coat. She turns to the Nazi. ‘Herr Ludwig? This is for you.’

This is it.

Jay feels the tension build around him. As his tongue passes across his lip, he tastes electricity in the air. He reaches out and grips Rachel’s hand.

The first descending chords of the song mimic the movement of Ben’s coat as it slips from his shoulders. The boy is in the uniform of the Hitlerjugend. The notes drift downward as if responding to gravity. Ben stands straight-backed and stiffens. The lights on the rest of the stage dim, leaving only the spotlight illuminating Jay’s son.

His voice is strong and sharp. It cuts through the silence. Behind it, the notes of the accompaniment are like the burbling of a brook underscoring the evening trill of a blackbird. Jay feels the hairs on the back of his neck prick into life. It sends chills down to his backside. His legs tremble. There is an almost overwhelming urge to stand. Jay controls it, knowing that the buzzing in his head, the rush of electricity along his limbs is the effect of a massive adrenalin dose.

Tears well up in his eyes. His throat is constricted. He never knew his son’s voice could carry such emotion.

Fraulein Kost and Herr Ludwig join in for the second verse and when, in the third, the words, ‘The Blossom embraces the bee
…
’ sound out, the cast and orchestra join in. The sound of it nearly lifts the scalp from Jay’s head.

On stage, only the Jew, his new fiancée, the American and the Brit are silent. They stand, confused and aghast at this display of fanatical, patriotic aggression.

In the final verse, ‘Now Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign
…
’ the crescendo and the descant combine to take the volume and intensity to even higher levels. And as the last ‘Tomorrow belongs to me
…
’ fills the hall, the boy playing the MC, now in full SS uniform, goose-steps to centre stage, stands alongside Ben, Fraulein Kost and Herr Ludwig. They start with their right arms straight by their sides but then raise them slowly, palms facing down, in what is clearly going to be a Nazi salute. When their arms are at waist-height the lights go off and the black void of the stage is lost behind the fast-dropping curtain. The house lights come on.

Yes! This is everything I expected and more.

The silence lasts for less than a second before the audience is standing and roaring its approval. The applause is loud and the whooping and hollering continues even as those keen for refreshment or a cigarette start to leave their places. It’s as if the show is over.

Hello, Jay. It’s me, Willy. I’m typing this on the same Remington that Cameron used to record the story of our lives together. I’ve posted it to you so you’ll read it after your son’s show. It will explain.

Cameron writes at the end of his story about the guilt – the guilt because he left me to my fate in Berlin. But what could he have done? If he had come back from London one day earlier – who knows? He would have died less tormented, yes. But when would he have died?

Is it not more likely that his crazy scheme to smuggle me out as his brother would have failed? That we would have both been caught? We might have died together in a concentration camp. What a waste it would have been.

After the war started it was enough to survive. I’ve thought about this so much since you started coming to see me. It’s all been about survival. Frau Guttchen survived Berlin’s destruction and so did the Green House. Miraculously, the English passport was still there when I returned.

A British passport with my picture, my name as Cameron’s brother – it had expired. If it had been valid and I had money, who knows, I could have got out in the chaos of 1946. But I had to wait until another survivor, Bernie Gunther, found me. It was Gunther arranged for a wartime renewal stamp on my charmed passport and he introduced me to his old flame – the rich widow Gerda Hardt – my Geraldine. Her survival – another miracle.

So many individual stories of survival against the odds. Without them there would have been no flight through Europe – no marriage – no stepson to bear his mother’s maiden name.

And this is the thing, Jay. Out of such darkness that enveloped Europe, out of the shadows of so many broken lives, someone darker emerges. This man who talks of his destiny. Fifty years ago Cameron gave him a home and, like a father, I gave him unconditional love. Yet, after his mother died, he spat insults in our faces and made false accusations that, if the authorities had listened, would have seen me imprisoned again.

He claims he is religious but his message is one of hatred. He preaches the subjugation of a race. He lectures the town about the dangers of symbolism but he won’t sleep until the Star of David flies on every rooftop from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. He has to be stopped or where will it lead?

If Hitler had been killed during the Bierkellerputsch in 1923 there would have been no war, no Holocaust. Sometimes a man has to die in order to deflect history from its path.

I hope, Jay, this helps you understand.

Willy Keel

(Wolfgang Koehler)

December 2001

They’re in the lobby outside the auditorium where ‘Friends of Jefferson High’ sell refreshments on trestle tables. The Gagliano family, which owns the White Plains restaurant, has donated the pastries. Rachel and Jay stand accepting the congratulations. ‘You must be
so
proud of your son.’

It’s a triumph, Jay.

‘It’s something of a triumph, Rache. Isn’t it?’ he whispers.

There’s a crashing sound and Jay turns to see that a man stands inside the double-doors.

Here he is – Rabbi Stern. Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!

He’s alongside one of the parents who’s prostrate on the floor. The rabbi stoops and helps him up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, as he flicks at the man’s jacket to remove some dust. ‘But you shouldn’t have tried to stop me.’

All faces have turned to watch him. He removes a thick coat and stands in a black jacket extending to his knees. There’s a collarless, white dress shirt beneath it. His head is covered by a wide-brimmed fedora.

If he had ringlets it would be a caricature. Fremde, étranger, stranger. Glüklich zu sehen, je suis enchanté, happy to see you, bleibe, reste, stay.

To the left there’s another commotion. A wheelchair emerges from the crowd around one of the tables. ‘Push me to him, Amber. Now – before it’s too late,’ Willy says. Amber steers him in the direction of the rabbi. Jay recognises Willy and steps forward.

Rabbi Stern addresses the people gathered around. ‘I know what’s just happened in there. I could hear you from the car park. I know how the first half ends. You’ve been screaming and shouting your support for Nazism. You’ve been applauding a Jewish boy wearing the Hakenkreuz. You should be ashamed.’

Now my cast is assembled …

Willy Keel is in front of the rabbi and saying, ‘Brake, Amber! Put on the brake.’ And as she fiddles with the handle he’s already struggling to stand. ‘David!’ he says. ‘You’re the one should be ashamed.’

It unfolds exactly as to my direction.

The rabbi looks at Willy and his eyes widen as if he’s in the presence of an apparition, ‘Wolf!’ His voice is dull, registering resignation rather than surprise.

Willy is now standing upright. His right hand is hidden inside his jacket, Napoleon-style.

… holding the gun.

‘
You’re
the one in the wrong here! You’re the bigot – the fascist!’

‘You silly, old fool. You dare to call this to
me
.’

‘I saved you, David,’ the old man hisses. His right arm moves. ‘Did we survive – your mother and me – to put you here … in this place?’

Yes. You served your purpose, Willy. And now, Jay, it’s your time.

Jay takes another pace forward. He’s responsible for bringing Willy; he’s the one to take him away.

‘Oh yes. You saved me,’ Rabbi Stern says, ‘but you abandoned me as soon as Mom died.’

‘You said I was an abomination! You lied about me! You and Zion and your fucking destiny. I can stop you
…
’ He’s pointing a Luger pistol at Rabbi Stern – at his stepson. ‘You’re as bad as them
…
’

Jay’s heart stutters. The heat in his chest is furnace-high. He’s lost his hearing as if his ears have popped.

Now!

Jay moves alongside the wheelchair and turns to face Willy. He sees out of the corner of his eye that Mr Costidy has come through one of the auditorium doors and is approaching. The performers of the play cluster by the entrance. They want to see what the fracas is about. Ben is there still wearing the Hitler Youth uniform.

Now each person is positioned on the stage exactly as I wish. It is just for the rabbi to say his final words:

‘You sick old fool. With that gun drooping in your scrawny hand. You threaten me while filth oozes from your pores. You dirty faggot.’

Willy tightens his grip.

This is your moment, Jay!

Jay steps forward at the instant Willy’s finger closes. The old man senses that somebody has crossed the line of fire but the signals travel too slowly in his worn-out nerves and he’s unable to stop the muscles in his hand. His arm stiffens to absorb the recoil.

Jay’s mind is once again back twenty years standing in his Student Union bar watching a stray dart embed itself in the soft panel of a loudspeaker. The unseen bullet plunges into his body below his ribcage. It snicks his aorta and bursts from his back amid a spray of blood and flesh particles. He falls to the floor.

The gun’s explosion freezes the crowd. Their faces are empty – uncomprehending. One person steps forward. It’s Ben. ‘Dad!’

Rachel screams, ‘Jay!’

My man is resigned for this moment. He understands that he’s been living on borrowed time. He knows that Willy didn’t mean to shoot him. Jay knows all of this and he knows none of it. I’m thinking for him.

Ben drops to his knees and cradles his father’s body. Jay’s heart is pumping faster, faster. It’s not able to comprehend that this only causes the blood to spew more rapidly through the breach in his artery. A carmine puddle spreads on the tiled floor. As his blood pressure drops, Jay’s heart pumps faster still. It’s a race it can never win.

Jay’s eyes roll and the insignia on his son’s arm burns into his retina.

The bullet that mortally wounded Jay was diverted from its original path barely at all. Its energy mostly spent, it hit Rabbi Stern in the chest with only enough force to lodge between two of his ribs. He fell because of the shock of the impact.

The MC stands by the rabbi and notices the reflection of Ben’s uniform in Jay’s glossy eyes.
Like so many of our tribe, Jay’s last sight is the red, black and white of the swastika.
The MC makes this idea echo between Jay and the rabbi. It fades in one as a closing thought and assails the other as an opening salvo.
If the last thing you see as you die is the symbol that characterises evil – does this make you Jewish enough?

But his hypothesis strikes a solid wall of resistance. There’s no crack in the rabbi’s certainty – no chink that the MC can exploit to worm his way in. He has to acknowledge that his role as destiny’s agent is over. There’s nothing left for him but to share Jay’s fate. It’s time to rest his weary spirit.

White greasepaint collects in the deepening crevices of his face; his lips turn from red to blue. A yellow star shines on his drab, striped garb. The stench, the dejected murmuring, the palpable fear of the shuffling queue overpowers them both.

Melissa Rosenberg was there when BL resident

Jay Halprin was gunned down at Jefferson High

You all know what happened. A crazy old man shot Burford Lakes resident Jay Halprin during the interval of Jefferson High’s final performance of Cabaret. At the time the Buzz went to press we understand that the alleged perpetrator will plead guilty to manslaughter.

Jay Halprin died in his son’s arms. His wife was there. I saw her by the ambulance waiting to accompany her husband’s body to the hospital. His blood blighted the finery she had worn in anticipation of her son’s triumph. In her I saw the pale ghost of Jackie Kennedy – traumatised, shivering. The Halprins were visitors to our boro. It doesn’t seem so fair, these days. You explain it. I can’t.

When the police had finished interviewing witnesses I went back into the school’s auditorium. The stage was empty, set up for the second half of a musical that would never happen. Neither will there be further scenes in the life of Jay Halprin.

We in Burford Lakes knew Jay as our 9/11 survivor. Yet he only lived another three months. We can’t know why. We can only have faith that the God who blesses our sweet land and guides its destiny has His reasons.

Now the actors in our real-life drama have left the stage. Rachel Halprin came to our community as Jay’s wife and left it as his heart-broken widow. She and Ben will attempt to re-start their lives in England. The alleged killer Willy Keel is an old man – he’s going to die in jail. Rabbi Stern has already left us for his new life in Israel.

I sit here at my computer and, through my tears, I see across the street the home I still call the Halprin house. It’s empty, ­awaiting new tenants. The Stars and Stripes is attached

to the mailbox. I watched Jay fix it there after 9/11. It was good that our British neighbor stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us.

Jay was killed by a bullet alleged to have been intended for another man. September and January – editions of our community magazine that are the bookends to the life of a stranger in our country.

The first heavy snow of the winter is settling around the Halprin house at the close of a year that has brought us so much tragedy. The mood I’m in is captured by words that were never spoken the night Jay died because the school’s production never ended. In Cabaret the disillusioned American writer speaks them as the orchestra strikes up the finale. I’ve altered only the place-names:

There was a cabaret, and there was a master of ceremonies … and there was a city called New York, in a country called America … and it was the end of the world.