Читать книгу Life Underwater - Ken Barris - Страница 10

Simon

Jude and Simon enter the study and wish mother Rose and young Eli good Shabbes. It is a small room with worn green furniture, and a mahogany unit messily lined with books. It is also littered with oddities such as a vibrating electric backscratcher, dusty binoculars, a broken camera, a battery-driven rotating tie hanger, an elegant shoehorn with a knotted leather handle, many golf trophies, an electric foot massager that no longer vibrates, a broken club soda device with several gas cartridges, half a bottle of crème de menthe, and a box of matches that are fully twelve inches long, brought home some years ago from England. These are all Archie’s devices.

Rose stubs out the remains of her cigarette, grinding it thoroughly into the ashtray before she returns their greeting. She smokes exactly ten Viceroys a day. This will have been her tenth, and therefore her last. The sequence is timed to expire just before supper.

“Your father isn’t home yet,” she remarks bitterly.

“How surprising,” replies Jude.

Eli, nine years old, doesn’t look up from the book he is reading.

“How come you’re allowed to skip synagogue and not be bored?” Simon asks him irritably.

“I have a terrible cold.”

“You look well enough to me.”

“I didn’t want him coughing through the service,” interjects Rose. “It can be very distracting for those who take it seriously.”

“Why do we have to go if we don’t take it seriously?”

“Ask your father.”

Eli coughs suggestively.

“So obviously at death’s door,” mutters Simon, and walks to the room he shares with Jude. He flops down on his bed, switches on the lamp and picks up the book he is reading, Youngblood Hawke by Herman Wouk. David Goldberg happens to be reading the same book. Perhaps it isn’t coincidence: he often does things that Simon does.

Simon puts the book down and heads for the study when he hears his father open the front door. He likes being around Archie until he gets too drunk.

“Hi, Dad,” he says. “Welcome home.”

“Hello, old chap,” replies Archie Machabeus absently, preoccupied with fixing his drink. He pours a finger of brandy into a tumbler, reconsiders, and pours in another. He adds ice cubes, a trickle of water, and another half-inch of brandy. He sits down on the green meadow of his vinyl BarcaLounger and slips off his shoes. Then he takes a sip and sighs, so appreciative of this triple blessing.

“So, old man, what did you do today?” he finally asks.

“Went oyster diving.”

“What did you do with them?”

“Sold them to Bernard Kessel.”

“You should have kept them for your mother!”

The joke is so weary that no one considers it a joke. Rose doesn’t eat oysters: they are simply too revolting.

She calls everyone to the table in her irritable voice, expecting the usual struggle to get Archie there.

“Has anyone put out the bell?” he asks.

“No,” says Eli, not looking up from his book.

The corner of Archie’s mouth sags in irritation. The new bell is his idea. They have a brass bell in the form of a bonneted shepherdess, not unlike Little Miss Muffet, whose layered skirts form the cowl of the bell itself. Rose used it to call Euphonia from the kitchen, to bring on the next course or take it away. However, the clapper has inexplicably gone missing. The new bell is an electric unit screwed to the kitchen wall and plugged in there. The button is attached to it by a long wire. It has to be brought in from the kitchen, unrolled across the passage and left on the dining room table. At the end of the meal it is rolled up again and taken back into the kitchen. This button unit often falls off the table and Rose has to bend down and dig for it between the legs of her chair and the serving trolley. No one else in the family shares Archie’s vision of graceful living. It is an endless struggle to make the boys assemble this apparatus for summoning Euphonia, and then dismantle it after the meal.

Eli coughs. “I have a disgusting cold,” he says, adding a nasal twinge. “I’m too sick.”

“Do it,” says Jude.

“I have a cold,” whines Eli.

“I say do it.”

“I’m too sick, really I am.”

Jude is relentless: “I’m telling you, you’re going to do it.”

Eli gets up, slams his book face down, and fetches the bell. His face is red with anger. When he is angry, his cheeks turn tomato.

This week it is Jude’s turn to say Kiddush before supper. Simon watches and listens as his brother intones the words of the prayer, taking it seriously, giving each syllable more than its due, despite his lack of Hebrew. No one understands anything in that worn black book, or ever reads the translation on the facing page. Yet Simon does understand the closing blessings, remembering them from cheder:

Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who createst the fruit of the vine; Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who bringeth forth bread from the earth.

After the first of these two, Jude takes a sip of wine and passes the chalice round. After the second, he breaks off a chunk of the braided loaf and eats a piece before passing the bread on. No one talks until this has been done.

Jude is handsome, though sallow, with intense, dark eyes. He picks up the book again and reads, frowning.

“Dad, the instructions for this prayer are quite clear, and you’re not following them. Here it is, word for word: ‘The following prayer is said in the Home by the Master of the House.’ Why then do Simon or I have to do it? You’re supposed to be the master of the house, and therefore you’re the one who should do it. At least if you believe in this, which you say you do.”

“I don’t believe in it. I just say you should do it.”

“That’s not a good reason, Dad. It’s not a reason at all. I want a reason to do whatever I do.”

“I don’t have a reason. I’ve been brainwashed, I admit it. I can’t help the way I think, but this is the way we live.”

“I’m sorry, that’s just rubbish.”

“You or Simon have to do it,” Archie replies testily, “because I say so.”

“You’re not making much sense, Dad,” interjects Eli, staring through the spectacles that so magnify his eyes. “You insist that we follow your instruction, but you’re not following the instruction in the book. If that instruction wasn’t there, you wouldn’t even think of doing the prayer in the first place.”

Archie ignores him, reaches for his tumbler of brandy and misses. He glances down more carefully and succeeds this time. He gestures with it in Rose’s direction and says, “What I keep telling you is that your mother is the master of the house.” He gives it a fake French twist: “Your muzzaire is the master of the house.”

“Hah hah,” replies Jude sourly, closing the prayer book with a thump.

Bored by the polemic, Simon swirls Kiddush wine around his tongue. He recognises suddenly that he came close to drowning this morning. He knows what happens to defenceless flesh underwater. He has cut open the leathery mantle of red bait and exposed its meat. Fish will throng around immediately, dart in and tear vivid flesh to fragments. Guilt threads through the sweet tar in his mouth, guilt that he allowed matters to progress so far, nearly causing his death. How could this have happened? He burns quietly with shame, a discomfort infused by wonder that he passed through such stillness and colour, such abundant undersea light.