Out of Such Darkness (4 page)

Great-Uncle Hymie’s clothes hanger will never again be the silly joke of a dying old man. Jay places it reverently on the windowsill. He will find a proper place for it in the morning.

He returns to bed, moving gently. The MC is tiptoeing theatrically behind him with a white-gloved forefinger pressed against his pursed lips. Jay is awake for another thirty-four minutes while the MC nips at the open sore –
if you had been in the office on time there would be nothing left to show you had existed
. But eventually he desists. He’s not cruel. He’s not an inconsiderate spectre. He knows Jay has to have enough sleep for there to be something to work with in the morning. As Jay’s eyes close and he loses consciousness the MC loosens his arm from around his waist and turns to face the other way.

Peter Everley had assured me it was a short walk to the hotel and, true to his account, the hotel came into view the instant I turned into Carmerstrasse. I climbed a few steps and entered through the open outer door into a porch. A glass panel in the inner door allowed me to view the reception desk by the staircase. I took a deep breath, opened the door and went inside. “I have a booking. My name is Mortimer.” I spoke carefully, enunciating each consonant.

“Herr Mortimer, of course. Welcome in the Carmer Hotel. It is an honour for us to have such a famous guest.”

Peter had evidently paved the way with a little exaggeration but I was happy to find that this man spoke good English. “I don’t know about that …”

The man pressed a bell and the “ting” echoed around the enclosed space. “You will need help in the stairs with your bag, yes? We have not the elevator. Now if we can deal with the registration?”

I soon settled in as a resident of the west end of Berlin. Most of the sights of the city were to be found towards the east near the boulevard called Unter Den Linden. But Peter was right, I did not need distraction. My room on the third floor was perfectly adequate for me to work in and it had a tall French window that I could open inwards. For the next few days I sat at my desk and worked on the book. I took breakfast in the nook below the stairs with a cast of other guests renewing itself daily. They were always men dressed in suits and carrying heavy bags of samples.

It became my habit, around mid-morning, to take a walk down Carmerstrasse to Savignyplatz where there was a coffee shop on the corner. It was gay with a dark-green awning which hung over the tables arranged outside. As long as I was there before midday, the sun illuminated the tables and I would customarily enjoy a coffee with a cinnamon pastry while writing notes for Dexter Parnes. The white-aproned waiter spoke very good English and after he realised that I would become a regular customer, he asked my name. From then on he would call across in English as I arrived, “Your normal order, Herr Mortimer?” I would wave my notebook in response and this became our ritual.

On one such occasion there was a tall, wild-haired man of about my age sitting at my preferred table and I had to take the one next to it. I may have looked at the man distastefully but he seemed oblivious because he started up the conversation straight away. “You’re English.”

“Yes,” I said, taking out my notebook and pen and placing them carefully in front of me.

“Cigarette?” He held out an open tin. The white tubes had tan-coloured ends.

“Are these the new ones? With cork tips?”

He lifted his chin as if his neck needed a stretch and spoke with lazy assurance. “Yes. Regatta brand by Greiling. The cork tip makes for a smoother smoke. Go on.”

“I will.” He flicked his lighter and I discovered that I had to suck quite hard to get a draw.

“Takes a bit of getting used to – but worth the effort.”

I blew out the smoke and touched my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “Takes away a lot of the taste. Is the goodness still there?”

“Supposed to be. If you look at the cork afterwards you’ll see it’s trapped some dark brown matter. Looks bad. Better not to have it inside you, they say.”

“Who?”

“Greiling – the advertisements.”

“Well …” I didn’t need to say any more because he nodded and snorted blue smoke as he suppressed a laugh. For the first time since I arrived I felt my guard – the resistance to company that one feels in a foreign country – drop. I offered my hand. “Cameron Mortimer.”

“Leonard Plomer. Call me Leo. Everybody does.”

“Cameron.”

The waiter appeared by Leo’s shoulder and started to shuffle behind him.

“Look here, Cam,” Leo said. “Sit with me and take in the sun.” He signalled and patted the table. The waiter deposited my order alongside him. “Noch einen Kaffee, bitte,” Leo said.

I shifted across so I was alongside him with my coffee and pastry in front of me. We both faced out into the square and I could hear the klaxons and beeps of traffic from beyond the trees. “You speak German.”

He waved a hand, “Enough to get by.”

“How long have you been here?”

He rubbed his stubbled chin as if trying to recall a difficult theorem. “About a year. You?”

“Less than a month. I need to organise German lessons. You don’t know anybody, do you?”

Again it seemed as if I had asked him to disclose a terrible secret. There was a long pause during which his coffee arrived. “Danke.”

“Bitteschoen.” The waiter bustled away.

“There must be somebody in my digs but I can’t think. They all come and go.”

“What do you do?”

He held out his hands. “Guess.” His fingers were long with large pads on the end and I would have said he was a musician but for the spatters of all the shades of blue and red that coloured his palms. He turned his hands over. I could also make out other fine spots of yellows and browns.

“Painter?”

“In one. You?”

“I write.”

I expected him to ask about my writing. Most people did. Instead, he sipped his coffee and, with my ego lightly bruised, I took the opportunity to take a mouthful of the spiced pastry which was usually the taste highlight of my day.

“Where are you staying?” Leo asked.

My mouth was still churning the sweet ball round and I had to swallow quickly. “Carmer Hotel. Just along the road. My agent in London booked it for me.”

“Hotel? You must be doing well.”

I stubbed out the cigarette and took a gulp of coffee. It boosted the blandness of the smoke. “I hadn’t thought about it. I assumed an apartment would be more expensive.”

“Apartment?” He snorted. “That’s not the way it’s done. Look–” he waved a hand regally as if showing me the extent of his demesne, “–look at all these grand houses. Most are owned by people who once had pots of money. But they were done for in the inflation. What with that and the crash they’ve had to find ways of earning money you wouldn’t believe. You’d get a room for much less than you’re paying at the hotel. But you have to be careful. You’ll need a bit of space and privacy if you’re working.”

“How do I go about it?”

“You’re already doing it, Cam. You talk to someone who knows. When you’ve finished your coffee we’ll take a stroll and I’ll introduce you to Frau Guttchen.”

Within ten minutes he had walked me up Carmerstrasse, past my hotel, to the point where it joined Hardenbergstrasse. There was a circular lawned area where four streets intersected.

“You are now standing in Steinplatz.” Leo pointed to a green-painted kiosk on one of the corners. “Ernst runs it. He’s a veteran of the war and deserves our custom. You can’t see it through the little window but he’s lost his legs. You must buy your cigarettes from him.”

I said I would.

“If you don’t like Regatta, try Enver Bay. They have a strong Turkish taste and Fritz will give you a good price if you buy them a hundred at a time. Now, let’s meet Frau Guttchen.”

We crossed Uhlandstrasse and found ourselves in front of a muddy-green building with gothic-arched windows. Leo led me through an entrance into an open courtyard. I guessed that when the block was new – as few as ten years before – this had been laid to grass but now it was fenced off and divided into vegetable plots. They looked like the kitchen garden at home but the soil was sandy dust and it seemed able to support only a limited variety of plants.

We turned left and climbed a staircase to the first floor. “Frau Guttchen owns two apartments here. She is a widow. I think, when her husband was alive, they may have owned the whole block but I don’t like to ask. She rents me the loft space in the top apartment. It’s bloody cold in the winter and can get stiflingly hot in the summer but the light is good. I can get on the roof when the city heats up. It’s all mine up there.”

“Does she have a room spare?”

He pulled at a bell knob. “Not on this floor but the one below me. It’s at the front. View over the square. It has a gas ring, I think. You share the bathroom, of course.” There was a sound inside. “Here she comes.”

The alarm goes off and the heat builds as Jay’s systems fire into life. His blood pump wheezes into an acceleration cycle, spinning its wheels like a steam engine on an icy track. His brain reboots and he comes to life. Why? Why has he woken so early? It’s not as if he’s going anywhere. He turns to Rachel who’s invisible except for a spread of hair across the cream pillow. ‘Is Ben going in today?’

‘Uh?’

‘Ben, is he going in?’

She groans and mumbles something about the time.

‘Wednesday. We have to treat it like a normal Wednesday. I have calls to make. Ben is going to school, isn’t he?’

Rachel sits up and Jay’s blood fizzes because the nipple of her left breast is pushed out above the twisted neckline of her top. The sight of it stirs him and the MC asks whether after twenty-whatever years such a reaction is sweet or pitiable.

Don’t make a grab for her.

Jay leans across to nuzzle into her neck and his right hand touches her breast; his thumb flicks across the nipple. She brushes his hand away. ‘I have to pee. I have to get a pot of tea on the go for Ben, make sure he has a good breakfast and see him off. We both have a lot on our minds. Do tell me you’re not thinking …’

Jay places his offending hand flat on the duvet. ‘I was … I was just being affectionate.’

She leans into him. ‘You can be affectionate later.’

His thoughts turn to the realisation that the MC has crept into his life again and he considers the implications. Does it mean he’s mad? He shakes his head. The MC is a defence mechanism dreamed up to help him deal with the unthinkable. As long as he keeps him in his place, he can’t see any harm.

Breakfast is a cheerless procedure. They’re following the script like actors in a first read-through.

Jay on the musical: ‘Have rehearsals started yet?’

Ben, toast halfway to his lips: ‘They were meant to start today. I’m not sure it will happen now.’

Rachel, sipping her tea: ‘They’ll want to keep things normal.’

Ben: Yeah, but what if one of the cast has lost somebody?

Jay: Have they?

Ben: Don’t know. Who knows what’s happened to anybody?

Rachel: They’d be missing, I suppose.

Ben: Well, the kid wouldn’t come in until they knew.

Jay: Shall I turn on the TV – find out the latest?

Both: No!

Rachel: We had enough yesterday.

Ben: I’d better go.

Jay: I hope rehearsals start. It’ll give you something to think about.

His wife and son glance at him.

‘What?’ He considers what he said.

It’s not Ben who needs something to fill his mind.

‘You know what I mean,’ Jay says.

All three of them cock their heads as if responding to a noise off-stage; it’s the blare of the school-bus engine.

‘Gottarush!’ Ben says.

‘Have a nice day.’ Jay steps forward and hugs his son. There’s tension in the embrace. He pulls away.

‘You too, Dad.’

Jay and Rachel follow Ben out and arrive at the corner as the bus draws up. Ben is acting as if his whole life has been spent in line waiting for the school bus.

Rachel nods to the children from next door. ‘Good morning, Tyler, Peach.’

They nod back. Their faces are pale with deep, dark eye-sockets.

Jay shakes his head. How does she remember their names?

The bus doors fold back and the kids clamber up into a leaden atmosphere. The doors whisper shut. The bus moves away past Jay and Rachel’s house on the left. Three-hundred-or-so metres further on at the far end of the lane, where it turns right, another group of kids stands by the entrance to the town park.

‘Look! Josh and Leah Edler are there.’ Rachel stands on tip-toe, her back arched, and she waves. Jay takes her hand. They watch the bus slow and stop. Its rear lights blaze and a red disc swings out to warn cars not to overtake. Jay wonders at how different life is in America.

When they go back to the house a silence fills the large space in the small kitchen vacated by their son. Avoiding eye contact, they tidy the used crockery and utensils into the dishwasher. Jay looks at his watch. Coming up to eight o’clock. Nearly 24 hours on. No point calling anybody until at least 08.30. His case is nothing like an emergency.

‘I’m going down to the den,’ he says.

Ben has left the computer switched on. Jay, prompted by what he remembers as his own decision to support Ben, uses the webpage
Yahoo!
to locate a site that provides information on the movie
Cabaret
. The page has scenes from the film embedded in it including the one where the boy sings
Tomorrow Belongs to Me.
Jay has time to make a cup of tea while his machine loads with the necessary software. Finally, the computer unfreezes and the extract is ready to play.

The quality of the boy’s voice is the first thing to make an impression; it is youthful, just-broken. Jay hasn’t thought about it before but the young actor doesn’t seem to be singing in a recognisable register. Perhaps this is what Ben meant when he said that he had been told that he was a natural counter-tenor. Jay’s mood shifts as the song morphs from something bucolic and wistful. It creeps up on him but it starts when the
volk
around the singer join in and the song swells into a menacing anthem. By the end, when the singer gives the Nazi salute, the garden is bursting with nationalistic fervour. Michael York turns to his aristocratic companion – a German: ‘So you still think you can control them?’

One person in the scene stays unmoved. An old gentleman in a blue, peaked cap, nursing his beer in his left hand. He’s seen it before. He shifts his cap to one side and scratches his head at their folly.

Jay’s also shaking his head. There are Americans who will be looking for a nationalistic response. Their country is at its lowest since Pearl Harbor. Who can they turn to if it’s to be raised up again? Can their President, who distinguished himself on the day by his absence, step up to the plate, as they say? Is he capable of taking war to the Muslim extremists? Or is it the terrorists themselves who offer the parallel with that scene?

While Jay waits for the film’s opening to load, he tries to determine a profound way of linking what he’s watched to the horrors of the day before, but he’s unable to grasp it. When the computer’s ready, Jay clicks on ‘play’ and immediately recognises the
bm-ta-ta, bm-ta-ta, bm-ta-ta-ta-bm-ta
introduction. It’s the rhythm of the train wheels as they crossed the points when the presence moved in alongside him. Joel Grey’s face appears in close-up to sing the first word
Willkommen
and consolidates it – these thoughts and images that spring from nowhere, they are not Jay’s. They come from
him
– the MC.

He hears Rachel’s feet on the rush-matted stairs and clicks ‘pause’. She’s carrying a plastic basket of washing. She shrugs. ‘Life must go on.’

He watches her disappear behind the open door to the laundry area and hears the lid of the top-loader swing back.

‘What were you listening to?’ she calls.

‘Ben’s song from
Cabaret
– the film version.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I’d forgotten how scary it was.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Has he told you about how it works in the musical?’ He hears the washer rumble into life.

Rachel emerges wiping her hands on a towel. ‘Only that he has to sing it twice. First time he’s off stage. The MC guy, you know, the Joel Grey part in the film …’ Jay experiences a jolt of guilt as she names his white-faced, carmine-lipped secret ‘… he plays it on a gramophone. Only a few minutes later, Ben has to do it properly on stage. There’s a party and one of the guests asks him to sing it to embarrass some Jews who are there.’

Great-Uncle Hymie’s clothes hanger! ‘People like us,’ he says.

Rachel turns the corners of her mouth down. ‘If you put it like that …’

‘Have you wondered about it, Rachel, our Jewishness?’

‘What makes you ask? Is it yesterday?’

‘It’s this country. Everybody has a religion. It was the first question that guy Edler asked me at their party. “Which synagogue do you go to?” What would
you
say to that? ’ He recalls the evening they had prepared for the Edler ‘soiree’.

‘It feels like we’re “coming out”.’ Rachel was standing with her black dress gaping at the back.

‘We will be a bit “on show”.’ Jay was halfway through a decision whether or not to wear a tie but automatically he reached forward to pull the dress’s zipper to the top. Rachel made to step away but he put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Just a second, love. There’s a claspy thing.’ As he fiddled the hook into the loop of cotton he studied the nape of his wife’s neck.

He had loved her thick hair from the first time he saw her and even now, after nearly thirty years, he was excited by the way she flicked it behind her tiny ear, stabbed through with a black pearl stud. Finally the hook was in. He nuzzled his lips into her collar bone. It always made her shiver and scrunch up her shoulders. ‘Okay. You’re done.’ He patted her bottom to help her on her way to the dressing table. He hoped they would return to the house neither too drunk nor too tired. He groaned. It was work next day. ‘Any idea why we’re doing this on a Thursday? Why not the weekend?’

Rachel was putting a lipstick to her mouth and sounded like a ventriloquist with a swollen-tongue but Jay still understood: ‘No idea.’

When they had arrived at the Edler house Beth Edler and Melissa Rosenberg snatched Rachel’s comfortable presence away. Ben rushed up the stairs to join Josh Edler who had beckoned him from an open doorway and Jay was suddenly alone – facing the backs of people as they pecked at each other’s party blah. He felt like a mariner set adrift in a rowboat.

‘Jay, you seem to be far away, there. What, no drink? What’s your poison? Follow me, I’ll show you what we have.’ Howard Edler led the way to the kitchen and a worktop with enough booze to tank a party in a bordello. He waved at the selection of drinks like a conjurer’s assistant demonstrating something that would shortly disappear.

‘White wine?’ Jay said.

‘No problem. But it’s not as cold as it should be.’ At the same time as he pointed this out, and before Jay could protest, he poured a slug of wine into the glass and followed it with a sloppy handful of melting ice cubes. He wiped his hand on a paper towel and handed over the slush.

Jay offered it up like a priest’s chalice. ‘Cheers!’

Raising his beer glass, Howard responded, ‘L’chaim!’

Jay took a sip and grimaced. After some seconds, in which time he looked into his wine glass, he said, ‘How long have you lived in Burford Lakes?’ Then, realising that he was talking to the party host, ‘It’s Howard, right?’

‘That’s right, Jay. Howard Edler. Oh, Beth and I have been here … what? A couple of years before Josh was born … fifteen years?’

Jay tried another swallow of wine-flavoured water and it sloshed across his tongue without troubling his taste buds. ‘Fifteen! Have you seen a lot of changes in that time?’ He looked up into Howard’s face. The man loomed over him. He had an enormous head. His features filled it, so they too were magnified. His greying moustache hung from his upper lip like Spanish moss. His hooter – it’s the only word for a nose such as his – was a bulbous Tube map of broken veins.

Howard rocked his head from side to side as he weighed up his response. ‘Let’s see: the Kisco Skies apartment building, the mall and the High School they’re all newish but they’re more Burford Station. This old part, Burford Lakes, hasn’t changed; couple of new smarter eating places. Oh! And the little movie house, which had been derelict, that re-opened.’

‘Sort of gentrification of the old part, then.’

‘Hmmm.’ Silence.

Jay looked down into his glass hoping the next topic would float by on the slivers of ice. He wanted to flee to the main room but Howard’s bulk was between him and the door. It was a relief when Howard reached forward and took him by the elbow. ‘I’d wanted to ask you,’ he lowered his voice and steered Jay towards the door to the backyard, ‘which temple are you going to join?’

‘Temple?’ Jay remembered the research he had done before coming to America. He had read that men in the suburbs had their strange lodges of Mooses and Buffalos and other animals it was their habit to kill. Did one of these meet in a temple? Was Howard trying to recruit him into a Freemason-like sect before anybody else could tie him in?

‘Temple. Synagogue. Have you and Rachel decided where you’re going to worship?’

Synagogue? What was he saying? ‘No. I mean: not, no, we haven’t decided; more no, we haven’t thought about it.’

Howard nodded. He was frowning. ‘It’s too early, right?’

Jay shook his head. ‘No!’ His voice sounded squeakier than he’d hoped. ‘No. It’s … we’re … we’re not … religious.’ He felt like a child-molester who had just confessed. In his mind, the room next door had become shocked into silence but the continuing hubbub reassured him this wasn’t so. He leant into Howard. ‘We’re not Jewish – I mean we’re not practising.’

It was Howard’s turn to be puzzled. He placed his paw on Jay’s arm. ‘I’m so sorry, Jay. I misspoke. I shouldn’t have assumed. It’s just … your name’s Halprin, right? I looked it up; it’s Ashkenazi in origin – possibly rabbinical. You’re Jacob and Rachel. You can see where I made the mistake, right?’

Jay relaxed.
He
was on the front foot. ‘No problem.’ He gripped Howard’s upper arm. ‘We are Jew-
ish.
It’s just we’re not practising. We don’t do religion.’

Howard stroked his moustache down as if he could pull it over his top lip and this would take back what he had said. ‘It was when Josh told me your son’s name – Ben Halprin – another good Jewish name. You can understand how I could have got it wrong.’

‘It’s an easy mistake, Howard.’

They chuckled like conspirators.

‘Anyway, Jay, I’m with the Reform Temple myself. That’s the easy-going branch. So if you ever feel in need – well, you know where to come.’

‘It’s very kind of you, Howard, thank you.’ He slugged back the tasteless dregs in his glass. ‘Now, if it’s okay, I’d like to try some more of your excellent wine.’