mansions, and they’re intent on dusting the vestibules.
From the main room of the flat come scraps of conversations, leftovers of sentences which float through. Then there’s yet another burp from the intercom, and Molly, the Elverses’ maid, arrives to clean. Jesus! It must be like the stateroom scene from the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera in there. I wonder if I’d find them funny any more. I wonder if there’s a last particle of amusement left inside this rotting body. Perhaps if I vibrated at the right frequency the worms would quit me, like a stream of rats running out of Hamelin. In truth, I never thought them that funny. I always equated Groucho Marx with Hitler – saw him as Hitler, with his bogus, greasepaint moustache and his rapid-fire delivery of deranging demagoguery. Like Hitler and like my father, with his big hands, his scarred face, his Indian-head money clip, his wiseacre’s patter. ‘A child of five would understand this. Send somebody to fetch a child of five.’ So that he can perform unnatural experiments on it, flay its skin off for a nightlight’s shade. Yeah, nothing cosy about Groucho, giving the lie to Hitler’s own Semitism – surely only a Jew could hate Jews with such intensity, wish to rip out the kike sleeved within the Jew? I married Dave Kaplan, I understood later, because of his own – soon to be manifested – Jewish anti-Semitism. ‘Y’know Kaplan isn’t my real name,’ he used to say to people, ‘I changed it in order to appear Jewish – my real name’s Carter.’ And this from a man with such a melting-pot of features – it was irresistible.
Dear Dave – he styled himself ‘the Fatalistic Funnyman’, or even ‘the Ya-Ya Yid’. I suppose his defiance was beefed up all the more by my appearance – at that time willowy and very blonde. It was quite a thing in the forties, in the States, this marriage between a Jew and an apparent Gentile. When people caught on that I was Jewish as well it was already too late, we’d moved on, doubtless leaving an unpleasant taint behind us. Moved on. The late forties and early fifties were a succession of hole-in-the-wall appointments for Kaplan, whose communist sympathies made it impossible for him to teach politics with any candour. So he drifted into admin, which is how we ended up in Vermont, in 1955, in time for Dave Junior to rendezvous with that fender.
It destroyed the driver’s life – hitting my child. Destroyed it. He went crazy – or rather, he had a breakdown, and in those days, in that place, if it was severe enough they’d put you in an insulin coma and hook your temples up to the mains. I felt sorry for him even when I was caught in that vile ballet of shock – the five steps to where Dave and his pals were playing. Sorry because I was always guilty, ever in the wrong myself. I was on him in two strides, grasped his blond hair, smacked his head once, twice, three times. Then he was out in front of me, his narrow little ass covered in mud, out of the back yard, across the front yard, and then WHACK! A twisted scrap of flesh on the asphalt. The impact was so strong it split the child’s head in two. In two. His face was hanging off like a crumpled bit of cloth – and there was blood and grey stuff. Kaplan and I lasted a year after that. I don’t think he ever styled himself ‘the Fatalistic Funnyman’ ever again. Not after I’d taken all of my guilt out on him and remoulded whatever love we’d ever had for each other; fired it in a kiln of white-hot anger and smashed the fucking ugly memento.
‘Mumu?’ Here she is, looking scrubbed in jeans, sneakers, sweatshirt, black hair back in a ponytail. Looking very American today.
‘Natty.’ I’m alarmed by my croak, it sounds like ‘N’nerr’.
‘Mumu!’ She swoops down on me, crying. I suppose the junk is out of her system and a little of the real world is seeping in. She plants kisses on my moulting skull. ‘Mumu, Esther’s
From the main room of the flat come scraps of conversations, leftovers of sentences which float through. Then there’s yet another burp from the intercom, and Molly, the Elverses’ maid, arrives to clean. Jesus! It must be like the stateroom scene from the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera in there. I wonder if I’d find them funny any more. I wonder if there’s a last particle of amusement left inside this rotting body. Perhaps if I vibrated at the right frequency the worms would quit me, like a stream of rats running out of Hamelin. In truth, I never thought them that funny. I always equated Groucho Marx with Hitler – saw him as Hitler, with his bogus, greasepaint moustache and his rapid-fire delivery of deranging demagoguery. Like Hitler and like my father, with his big hands, his scarred face, his Indian-head money clip, his wiseacre’s patter. ‘A child of five would understand this. Send somebody to fetch a child of five.’ So that he can perform unnatural experiments on it, flay its skin off for a nightlight’s shade. Yeah, nothing cosy about Groucho, giving the lie to Hitler’s own Semitism – surely only a Jew could hate Jews with such intensity, wish to rip out the kike sleeved within the Jew? I married Dave Kaplan, I understood later, because of his own – soon to be manifested – Jewish anti-Semitism. ‘Y’know Kaplan isn’t my real name,’ he used to say to people, ‘I changed it in order to appear Jewish – my real name’s Carter.’ And this from a man with such a melting-pot of features – it was irresistible.
Dear Dave – he styled himself ‘the Fatalistic Funnyman’, or even ‘the Ya-Ya Yid’. I suppose his defiance was beefed up all the more by my appearance – at that time willowy and very blonde. It was quite a thing in the forties, in the States, this marriage between a Jew and an apparent Gentile. When people caught on that I was Jewish as well it was already too late, we’d moved on, doubtless leaving an unpleasant taint behind us. Moved on. The late forties and early fifties were a succession of hole-in-the-wall appointments for Kaplan, whose communist sympathies made it impossible for him to teach politics with any candour. So he drifted into admin, which is how we ended up in Vermont, in 1955, in time for Dave Junior to rendezvous with that fender.
It destroyed the driver’s life – hitting my child. Destroyed it. He went crazy – or rather, he had a breakdown, and in those days, in that place, if it was severe enough they’d put you in an insulin coma and hook your temples up to the mains. I felt sorry for him even when I was caught in that vile ballet of shock – the five steps to where Dave and his pals were playing. Sorry because I was always guilty, ever in the wrong myself. I was on him in two strides, grasped his blond hair, smacked his head once, twice, three times. Then he was out in front of me, his narrow little ass covered in mud, out of the back yard, across the front yard, and then WHACK! A twisted scrap of flesh on the asphalt. The impact was so strong it split the child’s head in two. In two. His face was hanging off like a crumpled bit of cloth – and there was blood and grey stuff. Kaplan and I lasted a year after that. I don’t think he ever styled himself ‘the Fatalistic Funnyman’ ever again. Not after I’d taken all of my guilt out on him and remoulded whatever love we’d ever had for each other; fired it in a kiln of white-hot anger and smashed the fucking ugly memento.
‘Mumu?’ Here she is, looking scrubbed in jeans, sneakers, sweatshirt, black hair back in a ponytail. Looking very American today.
‘Natty.’ I’m alarmed by my croak, it sounds like ‘N’nerr’.
‘Mumu!’ She swoops down on me, crying. I suppose the junk is out of her system and a little of the real world is seeping in. She plants kisses on my moulting skull. ‘Mumu, Esther’s
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