The Only Problem (13 page)

Harvey Gotham,
the American ‘prophet’, inveighing against God, who he claims has unjustly
condemned the world to suffering.
God is a Shit
was one of the
blasphemies preached at an international press conference held yesterday in his
40-roomed château recently acquired by this multimillionaire husband of the
gangster-terrorist Effie Gotham, leading activist of FLE.

In the
article, the writer of it reflected on the influence of Harvey on a girl like
Effie ‘from the poorer classes of London’, and on her sister and an infant,
Clara, still under his control at the château.

Harvey
said to Stewart, ‘I never once said
“Dieu est merde.”‘

‘Maybe
you implied it.’

‘Perhaps
I did. But I did not speak as a prophet; I discussed some aspects of
Job
in
an academic sense.’

‘For a
man of your intelligence, you are remarkably stupid,’ said Stewart. ‘It’s Effie
they wanted news of. Failing that, they made the best of what they got. You
should have let Effie divorce you with a huge settlement a long time ago. She
can get a divorce any time; it’s the money she wanted.’

‘To
finance FLE?’

‘You
asked me to assume she isn’t involved.’

‘I don’t
want to divorce Effie. I don’t want a divorce.’

‘Are
you still in love with Effie?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then
you’re an unhappy man. Why did you leave her?’

‘I
couldn’t stand her sociological clap-trap. If she wanted to do some good in the
world she had plenty of opportunity. There was nothing to stop her taking up
charities and causes; she could have had money for them, and she always had
plenty of time. But she has to rob supermarkets and banks and sleep with
people like
that.’
He pointed to a row of photographs in the paper. Three
young men and Effie. The photograph of Effie was that which the police had
found among his papers. Harvey told Stewart this, and said, ‘They don’t seem to
have any other picture of Effie. I wonder how they got photos of her friends.’

‘In the
same way that they got Effie’s, I expect. Through rummaging in the homes of
their families, their girl-friends.’

‘What
can she see in them?’ Harvey said. Stewart turned the paper round to see it
better. One of the men was dressed in a very padded-shouldered coat, a spotted
bow tie and hair falling down past the point where the picture ended, which was
just above his elbow; the second man was a blond, blank-faced boy with thick
lips; the third seemed to be positively posing as the criminal he was alleged
to be, being sneery, narrow-eyed and double-chinned, and bearing a two-day
stubble beard. There was Effie amongst them, looking like Effie. The men were
identified by French names, Effie by the name of Effie Gotham, wife of the
millionaire guru.

‘What
does she see in them?’ demanded Harvey. ‘It’s not so much that I’m jealous as
that I’m intellectually insulted by the whole thing. I always have been by
Effie’s attitude to life. I thought she’d grow out of it.’

‘I am
to assume that Effie is not involved,’ said Stewart.

‘Well,
there’s her picture along with the others. It’s difficult for me to keep up the
fiction,’ Harvey said.

‘Do you
mean that the photograph convinces you?’ Stewart said. ‘You know where the
police got the photograph. Out of a drawer in your desk.’

‘It
wasn’t exactly out of a drawer in a desk,’ Harvey said. ‘It was out of a box. I
keep things in boxes down there in my working cottage. I’ll take you to see it.
I haven’t been back to the cottage since I was arrested in Epinal three days
ago.’

‘Were
you really arrested?’

‘Perhaps
not technically. I was definitely invited to come along to the commissariat. I
went.’

‘I
wonder,’ said Stewart, ‘why there’s been so little in the press about Nathan
Fox. I only heard on the radio that he’d disappeared suddenly from your house.
And they don’t include him in the gang. Maybe they couldn’t find a photograph
of him. A photo makes a gangster real.’

‘There
was an identikit of Effie in the papers the day I was hauled in,’ said Harvey.

‘Did it
look like Effie?’

‘I’m
afraid so. In fact it looked like Ruth. But it would pass for Effie. It looked
like Job’s wife, too. You know, it was a most remarkable thing, Stewart, I was
sitting in the museum at Epinal reflecting on that extraordinary painting of
Job and his wife by Georges de La Tour, when suddenly the police —’

‘You
told me that last night,’ said Stewart.

‘I
know. I want to talk about it.’

‘Don’t
you think,’ said Stewart, ‘that it would be odd if Effie wanted alimony from
you simply to finance the FLE, when she could have sold her jewellery?’

‘Hasn’t
she done that?’

‘No, it’s
still in the safety-box at the bank. I hold the second key. There’s still
enough money in her bank to meet the standing orders for insurances and
charities. Nothing’s changed.’

‘Well,
why did she want to fleece me?’

‘I don’t
see why she shouldn’t have tried to get maintenance of some sort from you. It’s
true that her child by Ernie Howe damaged her case. But you walked out on her.
She behaved like a normal woman married to a man in your position.’

‘Effie
is not a normal woman,’ said Harvey.

‘Oh, if
you’re talking in a basic sense, what woman is?’

‘Women
who don’t get arrested in Trieste for shoplifting are normal,’ said Harvey. ‘Especially
women with her kind of jewellery in the bank. Whose side are you on, anyway,
mine or Effie’s?’

‘In a
divorce case, that is the usual question that the client puts, sooner or later.
It’s inevitable,’ said the lawyer.

‘But
this is something different from a divorce case. Don’t you realise what’s
happened?’

‘I’m
afraid I do,’ said Stewart.

Next day was a Saturday.
They sat in Harvey’s cottage, huddling over the stove because the windows had
been opened to air the place. There had been a feeling of spring in the early
March morning, but this had gone by eleven o’clock; it was now winter again,
bleak, with a slanting rain. As Harvey unlocked the door of his little house
Stewart said, ‘Lousy soil you’ve got here. Nothing much growing.’

‘I
haven’t bothered to cultivate it.’

‘It’s
better up at the château.’

‘Oh,
yes, it’s had more attention.’

This
was Harvey’s first visit to the cottage since the police had pounced. He looked
round carefully, opening the windows upstairs and downstairs, while Stewart lit
the stove. ‘They haven’t changed the décor,’ Harvey said. ‘But a few bundles of
papers are not in the places I left them in. Shifted, a matter of inches—but I
know, I know.’

‘Have
they taken any of your papers, letters, business documents?’

‘What
letters and business papers? You have the letters and the business papers. All
I have are my notes, and the manuscript of my little book, so far as it goes —
it’s to be a monograph, you know. I don’t know if they’ve subtracted the few
files, but they could have photographed them; much good might it do them. Files
of notes on the
Book of Job.
They did take the photograph of Effie;
that, they did take. I want it back.’

‘You’re
entitled to ask for it,’ said Stewart.

From
the window, a grey family Citroën could be seen parked round a bend in the
path, out of sight of the road; in it were two men in civilian clothes
occupying the front seats. The rain plopped lazily on to the roof of the car
and splashed the windscreen. ‘Poor bastards,’ Harvey said. ‘They do it in three—
or four-hour shifts.’

‘Well,
it’s a protection for you, anyway. From the press if not from the terrorists.’

‘I wish
I was without the need for protection, and I wish you were in your office in
London.’

‘I don’t
go to the office on Saturday,’ Stewart said.

‘What
do you do at the week-ends?’

‘Fuck,’
said Stewart.

‘Do you
mean, fuck the question or that on Saturdays and Sundays you fuck?’

‘Both.’

‘Don’t
you ever go to a concert or a film on Sundays? Never go to Church?’

‘Sometimes
I go to a concert. I go away for the week-ends, often. I do the usual things.’

‘Well,
you’re wasting your time here,’ Harvey said.

‘No,
because first you’re my most valuable client. That’s from a practical point of
view. And secondly, I’m interested in your
Book of Job;
it just beats me
how a man of your scope should choose to hide himself away in this hole. And
thirdly, of course, I’m a friend; I want to see you out of this mess. I
strongly advise you to come back to London here and now. Do you have your
passport?’

‘Yes,
they gave me back my passport.’

‘Oh,
they took it away?’

‘Yes,
they took the stuff out of my pockets,’ Harvey said. ‘They gave it all back. I’m
not leaving.’

‘Why?’

‘Well,
all my books and things are here. I don’t see why I should run away. I intend
to go on as usual. Besides, I’m anxious about Effie.’

‘Maybe
Effie would move to another field of action if you weren’t in the Vosges,’ said
Stewart. ‘You see, I don’t want you to become an unwilling accomplice.’

‘Effie
follows the gang,’ said Harvey.

‘Doesn’t
she lead it?’

‘Oh, I
don’t know. I don’t even know for certain that she’s in it. It’s all mere allegation
on the part of the police.’

Stewart
walked about the little room, with his scarf wound round his neck. ‘It’s
chilly,’ he said. He was looking at the books. ‘Does Anne-Marie cook for you?’
he said.

‘Yes,
indifferently. She’s a police agent by profession.’

‘Oh,
that doesn’t mean much,’ said Stewart, ‘when you know that she is.’

‘I used
to love mealtimes with Effie,’ said Harvey. ‘I enjoyed the mealtimes more than
the meals.’

‘Let’s
go out somewhere for lunch,’ said Stewart.

‘We can
go in to Nancy. Undoubtedly we’d be followed.’

‘That
doesn’t mean much if you know you are being followed,’ said Stewart.

Harvey
stood in the middle of the room watching with an irritated air while Stewart
fingered his books.

‘There’s
nothing of interest,’ said Harvey, ‘unless you’re interested in the subject.’

‘Well,
you know I am. I still don’t see why you can’t write your essay elsewhere.’

‘I’ve
got used to it here.’

‘Would
you like to have Ruth back?’ said Stewart.

‘Not
particularly. I would like to have Clara back.’

‘With
Effie?’

‘No,
Effie isn’t a motherly type.’

‘Ruth
is a mother?’

‘She is
a born children’s nurse.’

‘But
you would like to have Effie back?’ Stewart said, and he made light of this, as
of all his questions, by putting them simultaneously with a flicking-through of
the pages of Harvey’s books.

‘Yes, I
would; in theory,’ said Harvey. ‘That is the
New English Bible.
The
translation is godforsaken.’

‘Then
you’d be willing to take Ruth back if she brought Clara. But you’d prefer to
have Effie to make love to?’

‘That
is the unattainable ideal. The
New English Bible’s
version of
Job
makes
no distinction between Behemoth and Leviathan. They translate the two as “the
crocodile”, which has of course some possibility as a theory, but it simply
doesn’t hold in the context.’

‘I
thought Behemoth was the hippopotamus,’ said Stewart.

‘Well,
that’s the general view, not necessarily correct. However, the author of
Job
turns God into a poet at that point, proclaiming wonderful hymns to his own
creation, the buffalo, the ostrich, the wild ass, the horse, the eagle; then
there’s the sparrow-hawk. And God says, Consider this, look at that, reflect on
their ways, how they live and survive; I did it all; where were you when I did
it? Finally come Behemoth and Leviathan. Well, if you are going to translate
both Behemoth and Leviathan as the crocodile, it makes far too long a passage,
it gives far more weight to the crocodile as one of God’s marvels than is
obviously intended. As for the features of Behemoth, they fit in with the
hippopotamus or some large and similar creature equally as well as with the
crocodile. Why should God be so proud of his crocodile that he devotes
thirty-eight verses to it, and to the horse only seven?’

‘There
must be some good arguments in favour of Behemoth and Leviathan both being the
crocodile, though,’ Stewart said.

‘Of course
there are arguments. The scholars try to rationalise
Job
by rearranging
the verses where there is obviously no sense in them. Sometimes, of course, the
textual evidence irresistibly calls for a passage to be moved from the
traditional place to another. But moving passages about for no other reason
than that they are more logical is no good for the
Book of Job.
It doesn’t
make it come clear. The
Book of Job
will never come clear. It doesn’t
matter; it’s a poem. As for Leviathan and Behemoth, Lévêque who is the best modern
scholar on
Job
distinguishes between the two.’ Harvey was apparently back
in his element. He seemed to have forgotten about the police outside his house,
and that Effie was a criminal at large.