In Babylon. Marcel Moring
wasn’t there.
‘Okay,’ I said.
Uncle Chaim placed both hands on my shoulders, then kneeled down heavily so his face was on a level with mine. ‘Nathan,’ he said, ‘Nathan. Don’t say “okay”. It’s not “okay”. It’s not nobility. Not a privilege. Highly dubious privilege, at best. You can go back. You can ask your father to redeem you. He won’t know what it means, but if you ask him he’ll do it for you. It’s possible, you’re allowed. Think about it.’ His face was a white-grey-yellow haze. I smelled his breath, a whiff of thyme.
‘It’s okay,’ I said, after a while.
Uncle Chaim shook his head.
Magnus shuffled closer. They were both standing so close now that it was as if I was lying under the blankets and sawheard-smelled nothing but the hollow I had made in the bed. Magnus was hay, fresh hay. ‘We’ll be back, if that’s what you decide,’ said Magnus.
‘We’ll be back,’ said Uncle Chaim.
They stood there all around me and I shut my eyes in the scent of thyme and hay and the heat of their bodies, the feathery touch of their hands on my shoulders and head and …
‘Nuncle,’ I said to Uncle Chaim.
‘Yes, child,’ he said.
‘Can you see the past?’
‘Yes.’
A cloud slid in front of the moon. It grew dark in the room and then light again, lighter than before. It was nearly morning.
‘And the future?’
There was a very long silence.
‘Yes,’ said Magnus, ‘we can see the future. But we don’t know if what we see is right.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay.’ The heat from their bodies was so intense that I felt myself gliding away in the paper boat of sleepiness.
‘God,’ said Uncle Chaim, ‘why this child?’
‘Shhh,’ said Magnus. ‘It’s okay. He’s right.’
Just before I reached the land of slumber and my body went limp, I heard Uncle Chaim sigh, ‘Oh, Magnus …’
Not that I had an image of God. Not that I even believed in such a thing as God. I was a child who read the Old Testament with the thirst of a desert traveller and the hunger of a fasting penitent. At night, when the Hill was swathed in velvet darkness, no wind, no voices, now and then the scuffling of a lizard on the roof, the crackling of stones in the desert, at night I lay in bed and looked at the green hands of Mickey Mouse, who kept the time in my alarm clock. And through my bedroom, in the space between Zeno’s bed and mine, the Old Testament caravans trekked from Mamre to Canaan. On the Indian rug that covered the wooden floor, Jacob fought with the angel and lay in his well, staring up at the starry night. I believed in stories. I was a believer of stories. The question of whether or not God existed didn’t interest me. God was the least of my worries.
A family of travellers, yet I never told anyone where I went each night with Uncle Chaim and Magnus. Life was confusing enough as it was. Manny worked day and night on something we knew nothing about and when he came home he fell asleep at the table. Sophie sat during the day with the other wives at Mr Feynman’s calculators, and my sisters, Zoe and Zelda, had reached the age when they were turning from girls into women and were practically unapproachable. And so I kept silent. I kept silent and I listened and as I listened I lost the distinction between then and now, here and there, reality and fantasy. That wasn’t so bad. Later, much later, I would make it my profession to be of another time, and as a child, in an environment where no one paid any attention to me, it wasn’t so bad to be considered a dreamer.
And so I became a fairy tale writer, all because of Great-Great-Grand-Uncle Chaim and Cousin Magnus. Hand-in-hand, we travelled through the forest of stories. ‘The only way to understand the world,’ Magnus once said, ‘is by telling a story. Science,’ said Magnus, ‘only teaches you the way things work. Stories help you understand.’
The only person in the family who ever opposed my choice of career was Uncle Herman. I can vividly remember the moment when he first heard what I wanted to do with my life. That was in Holland.
I was about fifteen and Herman, who had come to visit, asked my mother, his sister-in-law, whether she had found a school for me yet.
‘He’s been at school since he was six,’ Sophie had answered.
‘University,’ said Uncle Herman. ‘Have you given any thought to what the boy should study?’
Sophie had looked at him in amazement. ‘Herman,’ she said, ‘young people decide for themselves what they should study. Who they marry, too.’
At that last remark, Uncle Herman had gone slightly red in the face. He turned to me and asked what I had in mind. I said that I had nothing in mind.
‘You’re not the only one,’ he said. ‘But the question is: what do you want to be when you grow up?’
‘A fairy tale writer.’
We were sitting in the sun lounge. It was the middle of summer. The doors were open and from the garden came the sound of late birds who were letting other late birds know where they were.
‘Fairy tale writer,’ said Uncle Herman.
‘Fairy tale writer,’ I said.
‘Lord of the Universe,’ said Uncle Herman.
‘I’m good at writing fairy tales,’ I said.
‘Just how do you intend to do this?’
‘What?’
‘Become a fairy tale writer! What are we talking about here?’ The subject made him rather hot under the collar. He slammed his hand down on the armrest of the wicker chair in which he was sitting, his lips pressed firmly together.
I looked at my mother.
‘N,’ said Sophie, glancing worriedly at Uncle Herman, ‘I think what you’re supposed to do now is tell him what you’d like to study.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
Uncle Herman closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the chair. He took a deep, slow breath. After a long while he straightened up again and after another long while he opened his eyes and looked at me wearily. ‘All right,’ he said hoarsely. ‘What do you plan to study, Nathan? Are you going to university?’
‘To become a fairy tale writer? I don’t think that exists,’ I said.
‘No, of course it doesn’t exist!’ he shouted.
‘Herman,’ said Sophie. Her mouth had settled into a disapproving frown. ‘If you can’t behave yourself, go back to your big house so you can play lord of the manor.’
Uncle Herman bowed his head and nodded. There was a brief silence, and when he looked at me again it was as if he were seeing me for the first time. I turned around on Sophie’s painting stool and tried to look interested in a charcoal sketch on the easel. ‘Nathan,’ he said finally, ‘you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, but if you do something, then do it well. What I mean is that you shouldn’t just piddle around and see if it works. Think up your own course of study, your own training, so that you can choose from different skills and won’t be restricted by some accidental talent.’
‘Hold on,’ said Sophie, ‘talent is no small thing, I mean …’
‘Talent, Soph, is the curse of anyone who really wants to do something. Talent is the greatest handicap you can have. Why do you think you’re giving painting lessons to frustrated housewives instead of exhibiting at the Stedelijk? All you’ve got is talent.’
Sophie looked at him with an expression that gave new meaning to the word freeze-dry.
I didn’t