Shylock Is My Name (21 page)

“Its weight is of no interest to me.”

“Symbolically weigh it.”

“Symbols are of no interest to me either. What I ask for is literal to the point of tedium.”

Shylock wasn’t going to argue with that. “How it will be corroborated, then. Do you want an affidavit from a doctor? Or will you be wanting to inspect the offending tissue with your own eyes? I never paused to consider such questions myself. I let the moment take me. I’d advise against that. It is better to be a master of events. In this case you have the opportunity to be the master of ceremonies. They seem to think you might favour a party. Or at least the woman does. She will throw it, she said, in her grounds.”

“Did she say whether there’d be dancing?”

“Whatever you desire. Fireworks, if you wish them. I believe she is in the catering business, so the food should be good. She is also offering a slot on her television programme if that appeals.”

“Stop, stop, stop. Are you saying they want to film the operation?”

“I think more the debate.”

“What debate? A debate implies there is something further to be decided. There isn’t.”

“If I understood what the woman was telling me—”

“I don’t for a moment doubt that you understood her. Tell me something you don’t understand.”

“
If
I understood her, the question of whether D’Anton should be circumcised in place of Gratan would be put to a public vote.”

“And if the public says yes?”

“We didn’t get that far.”

“And if it says no?”

“We didn’t get that far either. I took the liberty of turning down television. I felt I was empowered to make that decision for you since you seem to think it was I who got you into this.”

“But you said OK to the party?”

“I said I would relay the offer.”

“When it suited you to do so?”

“None of this suits me. I am not here on some whimsical personal errand. Allow me to remind you that it was you who found me in a cemetery and invited me back to your home. For which…”

“
I found you
? I think you misremember. I had business of the heart in that cemetery. I needed to be there. You have still to tell me what brought you.”

Shylock who never removed his fedora did so now and ran his hand through his hair. He had the look of a man who might just walk out into the snow of his own accord, whatever his host wanted. Walk out and not be seen again. Enough, his expression said. Enough of this.

He will never be my friend, Strulovitch thought. But then I will never be his.

He owed it to his guest, however, to remember his manners. “Forgive me,” he said. “I am grateful for your counsel.”

“Counsel is not what I’d call it.”

“I am grateful for whatever you call it. Your attention. Your time.”

“Then in my judgement,” Shylock answered, “you should accept the invitation, not to please them, but to please yourself. There is much mirth for you here—”

“Mirth!”

“Mirth, if you seize the opportunity to look upon it in the right spirit. Think of it as one for the Jews. View it sardonically as a giant outdoor
bris
.”

On Alderley Edge, the snow had begun to fall more heavily. Pretty, if you were in the mood. “Won’t it be a bit cold for that?” Strulovitch asked. “For D’Anton, I mean.”

“There will be a marquee. I’d be surprised if it isn’t heated.”

“Are you saying, since you’ve appointed yourself my event-planner, that they’re prepared for the procedure to be witnessed by the guests?”

“That depends on your definition of ‘procedure.’ If you mean the public settling of an argument—the denouement, so to speak, the just distribution of honours and deserts, the mortification of the guilty and the exoneration of the innocent, or vice versa: vice versa being the more usual way of it in my experience—yes. If you mean the removal of D’Anton’s foreskin, I doubt very much that D’Anton would consent to undergoing that before an audience. They are talking of a clinic.”

“The snivelling coward,” Strulovitch said, which was tantamount to an acceptance of Plurabelle’s munificence in all other regards.

I
t is one of those better-to-be-dead-than-alive mornings you get in the north of England in winter, though the absence of light is more markedly felt in the Golden Triangle of Wilmslow, Mottram St. Andrew and Alderley Edge on account of the sadness that prevails there in all weathers.

Sadness is among the tools which those who would live nobly employ to distance themselves from the farcicality of existence engulfing everyone else. The unfairness, the banality, the repetition of cruelty. That some are delivered to far grander sorrows than these is proved by their sadness.

As it happens, it is also one of those mornings when a person neither sad nor hopeful might feel that the sun could yet show itself. Not this day, and not even the next, but in the weeks or months to come.

Plurabelle wished they’d waited. Her gardens would not look their best until spring arrived. But she was at the mercy of Strulovitch’s impatience. And D’Anton’s, come to that. And for herself, too, she knew that the sooner this was settled the better.

“Up,” she said to Barnaby who believed that Sundays were for lying in bed. Indeed, as a man who’d only ever had to look presentable for a living, Barnaby believed that most mornings were for lying in bed, and since his curly head looked so pretty on her pillow Plurabelle was usually content to indulge him. But today was different. “There is something in particular I’m going to want from you,” she told him. “Can you guess what it is?”

Barnaby felt tested to within an inch of his life. He doubted he had an answer to any question left in him, or that he could find within himself a single further proof of his devotion. D’Anton had still not succeeded in getting him the Solomon J. Solomon sketch that would show Plury how much and how unconventionally he valued her, but at least he’d found Barnaby a ring much like the one Barnaby had lost. So it couldn’t be
that
that she wanted from him. And they’d made love sweetly the night before, so it couldn’t be
that
either.

“A clue wouldn’t go amiss,” Barnaby said, knowing that theirs was a multiple-choice relationship and that, as always, she would give him three.

“It’s about today,” Plury helped him. “A very important day, as you know.”

Barnaby sat up on one elbow and turned his profile to her. That usually helped him out of trouble. “You either want me to welcome guests at the gate,” he guessed, “go around with the raffle tickets, or dress D’Anton’s wounds and I’m not going to do that.”

Plury shook her head. “You can make yourself scarce for the day,” she told him, “or you can make yourself scarce for the day, or you can make yourself scarce for the day.”

Barnaby, being boyish, wondered if there was a fourth option.

“You can make yourself scarce for the day,” Plury said, kissing him.

“Is this because you fear I will faint at the sight of blood?”

“No, it is because I fear my women friends will faint at the sight of you.”

“I know,” said Barnaby, “that that isn’t the real reason you want me out of the way.”

“And you are right. The real reason I want you out of the way is that your very presence is suggestive of sexual pleasure. You are so young and so beautiful and so indolent that no one will believe we devote ourselves to anything here but indulgence of the flesh. That is not the impression I want to give, today of all days. I was sad before I met you and it will better serve our cause—yours, mine and D’Anton’s—for me to look sad again.”

“Very well,” said Barnaby, pleased she hadn’t mentioned Gratan, “I will drive to Chester Zoo.”

Plurabelle could tell he was hurt. But this was a day for sacrifices.

Strulovitch and Shylock had also risen early.

Strulovitch tried on a number of suits, all of them black, and spent much of the morning at the mirror. How do you dress for such an occasion?

At last he sought Shylock’s advice.

“Taking one thing with another,” he asked, “which of these three ties strikes you as the most appropriate?”

He was reminded of his marriage mornings. The same intestinal tumult. The same wondering if he was looking forward to the day’s events or dreading them.

“As a rule you don’t wear a tie,” Shylock said.

“No, but I think today calls for one.”

“Then any but the red,” Shylock said.

“I am assuming,” Strulovitch mused aloud, “that you will not be making any changes to your wardrobe yourself.”

Nothing moved on Shylock’s face. “There is, though,” he replied, “the question of the hat.”

“I was guessing you would wear it.”

“The point is not what you were guessing but whether I
ought
to wear it.”

“You are more threatening in it.”

“Meaning I shouldn’t wear it?”

“No, meaning you should.”

Shylock looked at himself in the mirror. He too was nervous and reminded of an earlier time.

The final plans, hammered out by persons better suited than the principals to putting their minds to such things, were these:

The two men would be driven by Strulovitch’s chauffeur Brendan to the Old Belfry where there would be a small champagne reception at which, if Gratan and Beatrice had not returned to face the music—Plurabelle had booked a string quartet just in case—Strulovitch and D’Anton would have a final conversation, confirm terms in front of witnesses chosen for their discretion, and then be transported in a limousine belonging to neither party to a private walk-in circumcision clinic in Stockport for surgery—a preliminary check of D’Anton’s physical and psychological fitness for such an operation, minor as it was, having taken place at the clinic several days before. Strulovitch would see D’Anton across the threshold (and hang about a while outside to be certain he didn’t make a run for it) and then return to the party. In due course—the procedure itself, barring complications, not being lengthy—news of its verified completion would be relayed to the Old Belfry, Strulovitch would sign papers to the effect that no further action would be taken against Gratan, no further restraints placed on Beatrice, and no further word spoken against the good names of Plurabelle and D’Anton. The latter would remain in the clinic for as long as necessary, receiving the best care that Stockport had to offer, and Strulovitch would take his leave satisfied. How much champagne he drank would of course be up to him. Ditto the making of a speech.

“As best man you might want to say a few words yourself,” Strulovitch said to Shylock.

“I am not your best man.”

“I am joking,” Strulovitch said.

“Your joke is not welcome.”

“It was kindly meant.”

“I thought we had agreed that no joke is kindly meant.”

Fifteen minutes of tense silence between them in the course of which first one, and then another, repaired to a bathroom to inspect his appearance in a mirror.

It was Strulovitch who spoke first. “I am wondering,” he said, “if we ought to make sure that all is well at the clinic.”

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Ideological misgivings.”

“It’s a circumcision clinic.”

“You can never rule out second thoughts.”

“Second thoughts on the part of whom?”

“The surgeon.”

“He does this operation all the time. It’s a routine procedure for him. It’s how he makes his living. If I were you I’d be more concerned about D’Anton turning up.”

“D’Anton! Of D’Anton I have not the slightest doubt. I have sounded his nature to its dregs—not much of an achievement I grant you, given how little of his nature is anything else. But I know him, I have him, he is mine. He will need, more than anything, to demonstrate his bravery and in the process show us to be inhuman wretches. He might even be hoping we will kill him. I am only sorry we can’t oblige.”

“We?”

Strulovitch stopped what he was doing and looked across at Shylock who was not looking across at him. “Don’t tell me it’s
your
constancy I should be worrying about.”

“Do I owe you constancy? I am not aware I owe anyone anything. I certainly don’t owe this D’Anton harm.”

“No, you don’t owe me or D’Anton a thing. But our actions have consequences.”

“You will have to explain that.”

“There are consequences to setting an example.”

“I set an example!
I
?”

Shylock would have liked at that moment to be in Strulovitch’s garden, expressing incredulity to his wife. “My host seems to see me,” he would tell her, “as a role model. Would you believe that?”

“I shouldn’t let this go to your head, my dear,” he knew Leah would reply, “but you were always a hero to me too.”

“Then you are both fools.”

D’Anton, though eager until the last moment to know if there’d been news from the Rialto, was perhaps the least anxious of the actors. Let the axe fall. What would be, would be. The readiness is all.

Considering his initial reluctance to Plurabelle’s plans, he was in remarkably good spirits. But then she had worked on him and got him to understand how much hung on his co-operation. He too, she hoped she didn’t need to remind him, could only gain from this in the end.

But she was impressed nonetheless by how calm he seemed on the day. “I am armed by the knowledge of our rectitude,” he said, taking her hand and putting it to his cheek.

“And I by the quietness of your spirit,” she said.

They both laughed.

When Strulovitch and Shylock arrived a small party was gathered in a snowy white tent, warmed by banks of the most efficient patio heaters money could buy.

It fell to Shylock, who was not wearing his hat, to effect the introductions.

“It seems odd,” Plurabelle said, shaking Strulovitch’s hand, “that we have not met until now.”

“Since we don’t move in the same circles, except those my daughter runs around me, and you around her, I don’t find that odd at all,” Strulovitch replied. What did, however, strike him as odd was the look of hurt surprise—like a person drowning where there is no water—which the thousand cuts of surgery had lent Plurabelle’s every feature. May the knife do as ill with D’Anton, he wished.

He is as horrible as I imagined, Plurabelle thought, feeling a renewed surge of pity for Beatrice. No wonder her own father had hated Jews. For the first time she understood the tests he’d devised for her prospective lovers. They were calculated to protect her from the depredations of such monsters. Of the two examples here, she much preferred Shylock, a preference she emphasised by taking him by the arm and walking him into the marquee, scattering him like gold dust among her friends.

“Who are these people?” Strulovitch enquired, following her.

“They are well-wishers of D’Anton and friends of mine,” she told him. “You were invited to bring an equal number of supporters.”

“I have no need of supporters.”

“I promise you they are not here to sway opinion, one way or another.”

“There is no opinion to be swayed. I and your co-conspirator in the abduction of my daughter are agreed as to what will happen should Gratan not return Beatrice by noon, and I see we are only a few minutes away from that. It doesn’t look as though they are coming.”

At noon exactly, D’Anton emerged from the house and, with eyes becomingly lowered, his back bent slightly as though feigning weariness, he walked to meet Strulovitch. Strulovitch noted that under his coat and jacket he wore a shirt as snowy as the earth, the top three buttons of it open like a crooner’s. Has he forgotten what we’re here for, Strulovitch wondered. Does he think I have designs on his heart?

Neither man made an attempt to shake the hand of the other.

“The matter is settled then,” Strulovitch said, looking at his watch. “You will submit to my wishes in place of your crony, Gratan—”

“He is not my crony.”

“As you wish. You will submit in his place, and once the thing is done—”

“The slate between us will be clean. You will have no further call on any of us, including your daughter.”

“My daughter will remain my daughter, I will not consent to thinking of her as ‘one of you,’ but yes, whatever she wants I will consent to so long as I have written assurance that you have left the clinic other than as you entered it.”

“That exceeds our agreement, I think. Will it not give you room from now until evermore to complain that I am still, in some respect or other, the man I was before?”

“How you remain, ‘in some respect or other,’ is none of my affair. The state of your mind, your character, your affections and temperament, your prejudices, are yours to do with as you please. They are such as the Devil himself could not change and I don’t flatter myself that I could. You know what I ask. It is a strictly circumscribed demand.”

“That I return, God willing, fit to be your son-in-law…”

“That you will never be.”

“Nor will I ever want to be. I mean in your ‘strictly circumscribed’ sense only. Fit in your God’s eyes to be a Jewish husband were I ever to desire to be one. Ha!”

Strulovitch wondered what it was about that phrase “your God’s eyes” that made him want to put out D’Anton’s. He had been hoping, even after the clocks struck, that Beatrice would turn up, with or without Gratan. Now he prayed she wouldn’t.

He nodded his assent.

“Then do your worst,” D’Anton said.

He looked around, hoping to see Barnaby. It was only a shame that it wasn’t his but Gratan’s debt he was paying. There was poetry in his heart for Barney. “Give me your hand, Barnaby,” he could have said. “Bid your wife judge whether Barnaby had not once a love…” D’Anton was a man for a dying fall. “Bid your wife judge whether Gratan had not once a love” had a very different ring to it.

He was about to ask Plurabelle to commend him to Barnaby’s favour, but Plurabelle had business of her own to attend to. “May I make a final plea,” she said, addressing Strulovitch, “before this business is concluded. I understand a father’s pain. My father died dreading what might befall his daughter. I won’t say he did too much to protect me, but his precautions didn’t exactly smooth my way. Sometimes a father must chance his child to the world—”