Choose Somebody Else Page 15

  But the real pacesetter, the one almost always leading the pack, is Leopold. Tall and lean with a craggy face that is just beginning to droop at the jowls, he is the one they all struggle—futilely—to overtake. He greets only a select few every morning and ignores the rest. Sometimes—I think he is tired after a late night and mistakes me for someone he thinks he knows—he grants me a regal inclining of his head.

  The interesting thing about this Como contingent is that it comprises quite a few Anglo-Jews, some whom have come here at very early ages, in the ’thirties, when whispers of the Hitler tempest were just starting to become audible in Europe. Then there are those stemming from families who have had at least one generation, but sometimes two or three, in which to have built up the family fortunes.

  Why do they all run, I wonder?

  If some of them can get you alone at a fundraiser or charity performance, they are convinced they can persuade you that, as Jews on this side of the globe, their suffering at the hands of Australian anti-Semites was at least commensurate with that of their northern hemisphere brethren. They’ll tell you about football matches where Jewish players were called ugly names. They’ll tell you how they suffered at the hands of golfing clubs whose fellows denied them membership; or in business how certain companies refused to buy their goods; or they’ll even go back as far as their school days, when some playground bullying of outsiders was de rigueur.

  I bite my lip. I don’t want to get into a pissing contest: my-family-suffered-more-than-your-family, but I think I hate the Anglos just a little bit more now. They don’t get it. They’ll never get it.

  And then there is beach running. At least once a year, every year, we migrate to Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. You cannot walk more than a step or two without accosting or being accosted by a familiar voice or face. There is no question but that we entirely take over the town. We flood the restaurants, denude the shops of their overpriced merchandise and generally make our presence felt.

  There, one can see Saul and Leopold, Sue and Leon, Mum and Dad, jogging and sweating profusely as they pound the sand in their specially designed Reeboks. They gasp in the humidity. In Paradise it is much harder to catch their breath, much harder to converse and hammer away at each other than it is in Melbourne.

  Occasionally I run there, too, on my own as the sun comes up. I savour the peace and the flat polish of the ocean. I do my best to ignore the menace of the high-rise developments. One morning, later than usual, I run and I pass an alter Yid, an old Jew. He is wheezing and winded as he tries to keep up with the Como brigade. They don’t even notice him. On my way back, I see paramedics carrying him off the beach on a stretcher. They are jogging, too, trying to get him to the ambulance before it’s too late. He’s dead by midday.

  Another day, I wave to Zach as we cross each other’s paths. He is a hard, regular runner, frantic about his abs, his pecs, his six-pack. He turns around now and catches me up.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ he says.

  ‘Won’t I be too slow for you?’ I would far rather run alone.

  ‘Nope. It’s good to vary the pace.’

  We jog along in silence and then he tells me this story.

  A week before I arrive, he goes out for dinner with a large group of friends. As it happens, most of them are children of survivors—it’s a Melbourne thing. Our city has the largest number of Holocaust survivors outside Israel.

  So, they go to one of the more upmarket Gold Coast restau-rants which relies heavily on the holiday trade. The group is high-spirited and jovial. Cracking jokes at each other’s and the waiter’s expense, they chomp their way through formidable quantities of food. When the maître d’ approaches to ask if they require coffee or liqueurs, the requests become complicated. One wants a fruit tea, another a herbal brew; yet another desires boiled water with a slice of lemon. There are a few requests for short blacks, long blacks, lattes and cappuccinos. The maître d’ returns some fifteen minutes later and, with impressive recall, distributes the various beverages to the respective patrons. But the recipient of the boiled water with a slice of lemon is less than pleased. She clicks her fingers to attract the maître’s attention. Always a good idea.

  ‘I asked for boiled water, not lukewarm, and if the lemon were any thinner, I could read a newspaper through it. Is there a lemon shortage? I’d gladly pay for an extra piece.’

  ‘Something,’ says Zach, as we pass Broadbeach and keep going, too immersed in the tale to think of turning back, ‘something snaps inside the guy. You can see it. His face goes pale and his eyes start to gleam like a crazy man’s just before he says: “I’m sick of you Jews coming in here thinking you own the place. I’m sick of all you bloody Jews”.

  ‘In the silence that follows, you could hear the sound of the waves rolling over the sand. Everybody stands as though directed by an invisible choreographer. I think some of them are actually in shock. They fumble in their wallets and purses and all drop money on the table.

  ‘I don’t know who to be more angry with, the maître or my friend of the lemon-slice calamity. We are not entirely blameless in this little charade. But in a town like Surfers, the story, like any good conflagration, burns whoever it touches.

  ‘From that day on, the Jews of Surfers boycott the place. Business slumps. The story has spread back even to Melbourne; everyone who hears it resolves never to go near the it again. What’s more, they will tell as many people as they know to follow their lead.

  ‘So the owner panics,’ Zach says, ‘and approaches Mr Big, the Jewish Don of the Gold Coast.

  ‘“What can I do?” he asks, tears in his eyes, or so the story goes. “A moment’s madness and my livelihood is snatched from my hands. I’m a good man. I don’t deserve this.”

  ‘“I have a solution, a final solution,” responds Big calmly, but those who know this graduate of Bergen-Belsen would recognise the tone. The maître d’ does not, nor does he catch the reference

  ‘“Tell me,” he says, “tell me what I should do”.

  “Get out of town,” says Big.’

  In the rhythm of the run, I am suddenly breathless.

  ‘Did it really happen like that?’ I ask.

  Zach is puzzled by my urgency. ‘Absolutely. Big’s niece told me the day after.’

  I am almost airborne. I begin to leap across the sand and Zach has to increase his footfall to keep pace with me.

  ‘Hey, slow down,’ he calls. ‘You’ll wear yourself out. We’ve gone way past the Broadbeach flags.’

  So we turn back, but I don’t decrease my speed. I can’t. I’m swooping high and low through endless waves of exultation.

  ‘He told him to get out of town?’ I marvel. I am alone on the early morning beach.

  Zach has lagged behind, unable to match me.

  Then I hear someone shouting. It takes a while before I realise it’s me.

  ‘Run, you bastard,’ I cry to the spirit of the departed owner.

  ‘Run! See how it feels,’ I call into the wind that whips my hair across my eyes, making them blur with unexpected tears.

  ‘Ru-un,’ I shout to Pharaoh, the first genocidal maniac, and to Haman, the second.

  ‘Run.’ This time to Titus who raped and crucified my people.

  ‘Run,’ I roar to Isabel and Ferdinand who said, No room for Jews here. Get out. ‘Run,’ I yell at Catherine the Great who caused us to be shut up in ghettoes for three hundred years.

  ‘Run,’ I howl at Hitler for tossing the family I would never know into the gas ovens. ‘Run,’ I whisper as I slow to a walk. ‘You run, not me. Not me, ever again.’

  THE SECRET LIFE OF JOSIE DAIN

  Vale James Thurber

  The fan clatters in the silence of my study like an old man’s dentures wrestling with an apple. The article is going well. My editor has let it slip that there might be a series in it. Most excellent. I
like interviewing famous people; I’m good at it, and my session with Pitt has been ripple-free. He’s given me enough details about chasing and losing Jolie to make the mere gossip pedlars greener than a boy with his first hangover.

  The doorbell rings. I put the Scotch in the drawer. Visitors would talk if they found me chin deep in a double so soon after breakfast. For a woman, it’s still too damn hard to explain about the warm flow and the way the words begin to drip off the end of a pen to someone who doesn’t drink. We’re supposed to stick to tea and sympathy.

  It’s the postman with a registered letter. I sign for it and my body goes cold, though I don’t stop sweating. Lighting a cigarette off the one I’m ready to stub out, I inhale almost all of it with my first breath. I tear open the envelope.

  Schlecht sighted in Geneva. Proceed to Montreux. Contact ‘Irving’. He’ll be carrying The Complete Works of Dashiell Hammett and smoking a cigar. Midnight at the Rio bar.

  J

  Contact Irving. That’s the first sour note in the instructions from the Shamus Inc. Detective Agency. Irving sounds like someone who thinks pickled herring is haute cuisine, and who’d enjoy smoked salmon and cream cheese more than Beluga and Brut. I do admit a little salmon on the rye and a little vodka from the freezer is soul food for my people. Neither does chopped liver followed by chicken soup ever go astray. But I digress.

  I examine the ticket and groan. Tomorrow is flight time. That means working through the night to finish the article. I put a lid on the Scotch. Pitt and Jolie have paled since I’ve been away from my desk and are now about as interesting as dandruff. Only a couple like Bogey and Bacall could reclaim my attention, but they’re long gone.

  Seven the next morning, I’m up and under the shower. Wrapped in a towel, I don’t like what I see in the mirror. Two hours’ sleep and my face has more wrinkles than Maggie Smith’s in ‘Downton Abbey’. I slap on the paint and powder before driving to the newspaper office.

  My editor is one of those guys who never sleeps and only speaks in monosyllables.

  ‘Morning Augusta,’ he says, surprised into garrulousness by my early arrival.

  ‘Here’s the article.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘I’m going to need a couple of weeks off.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Can’t say too much now, but there’s a story in it if I come back to tell the tale.’

  ‘Fine.’

  I’m that good and he knows it.

  After I’ve packed, I down a shot or two—or maybe three or four—of whatever I can find in the cabinet. Then I doze the afternoon away and wake up feeling like AC/DC are rehearsing inside my skull. I down about a litre of coffee and head for the airport. The flight is smooth, but I don’t sleep. Thinking about Schlecht keeps me awake. I hate the little runt, but he’s smart. The flight attendant brings me a drink, the cheap stuff they serve the poor bums in Economy. My mind starts to wander.

  ‘There’s a price,’ a voice says in my head, ‘a price for everything’.

  Customs formalities are minimal. Shamus Inc. has a reciprocal agreement with the Swiss government, but the airport guys know me anyway. They wave me through with a Bonjour Liebchen, ben arrivata! mixing three languages into one greeting. It’s how they tell me I’m welcome all over their tri-lingual land.

  At the station I buy a ticket for Montreux. When I arrive, I check in at Le Grand, which it isn’t, and I sleep the sleep of the righteous.

  At midnight, I find Irving supporting the bar at the Rio. The smell of cheap pipe tobacco and the bright yellow cover of Dashiell Hammett assault my senses. Still, I sit down at a table to give me time to size him up.

  Is this the price? I wonder as I sip my mineral water. I never drink anything stronger when I’m on the job. And finally, they’ve done the right thing by me. I’ve told them I’m sick of little halfwits I can knock over with my handbag.

  This one has thick hair and deep eyes. Most of his face is covered by a dark beard shot through with silver. He looks about six feet tall, like you could lean on him and he could take the pressure.

  I approach the bar.

  ‘Double orange juice, ice and the twist of a young, pale lime. No spoon, no straw.’ The barkeep looks at me strangely. Somewhere in the bowels of Shamus Inc. there’s a little guy dreaming up these masterpieces.

  I take out a cigarette and Irving leans over, flicking a lighter.

  ‘I wouldn’t trust the limes,’ he says. ‘The penguins in Peru have found them fatal.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I watch him coil back into position.

  ‘I know a great little bistro in the square where we could have supper,’ he says. His voice is low, like the notes on a bass guitar. ‘It’s quiet and very private.’

  I pay for the drinks and we leave. He’s right about the bistro being private. Maybe people know it’s dangerous to be seen when he’s there, or maybe they’ve eaten there. Once.

  We go to the station and board a train for Lausanne. Irving has a tip that Schlecht was seen dancing the night away in a club near the middle of town and is expected there again around three the following morning. Then he suggests we go to his room to pass the time.

  Now I’m no blushing schoolgirl, but I start to drop things and forget to finish sentences.

  ‘No sweat, sweetheart,’ he says. ‘Maybe I read you wrong. We’ll keep it strictly business.’

  The voice inside my head that bugged me on the plane seems to have been programmed into my hard drive. Somewhere beyond it I hear a cuckoo clock do its shtick three times. I ignore that, too.

  ‘No sweat,’ I say, but my hand shakes as I take out a cigarette.

  ‘Do I make you nervous, Augusta?’ His voice is gentle.

  ‘This whole deal makes me nervous.’

  ‘Be cool, sweetheart. Schlecht will fall for our plan. A good-looking dame like you falling into his arms? He’ll be a sucker for it. I’ll help him carry you outside, and with the music blaring inside, nobody’ll hear when I shoot him.’

  ‘What if something goes wrong?’

  ‘What if Bogey never loved Bacall?’

  That clinches it for me.

  He takes me in his arms then. His lips are soft, like chocolate melting over silver, and velvet-red, like the rose between the teeth of a flamenco dancer. No thorns…

  Café Bellagio, on the shores of Lake Geneva, is all class, smoke and jazz. Women with scarlet fingernails and lips to match sit with guys who look like they all visit bespoke tailors. I take another quick look at the photograph J sent me. Now I’m worried. The man on Schlecht’s left in that snapshot is familiar to me in a way he hadn’t been when I’d left home.

  ‘What if he doesn’t show?’ I say, keeping my voice calm as I sip on a fruit punch.

  He looks at me over the rim of his schnapps glass.

  ‘He’ll show.’

  So, we eat. Irving is almost up to the gherkin inside his pickled herring when the knuckles around his fork grow white. I glance up. There can be no mistake: scar on the left cheek, lush Magnum P.I. moustache. And the woman on Schlecht’s arm—a stunner.

  In a flimsy black evening gown and short sable jacket, she wears only a little jewellery, but each piece tells a story of a free and easy relationship with money. Her hair looks like white gold in the dimly lit room. She and Schlecht sit at the table next to ours and, from the way the waiters do the tango around them, I calculate he has a good few zeroes after the numbers in his bank account.

  Music begins to play. Schlecht stands; clicks his heels. The woman rises and they coil around one another with the easy flow of people who know each other’s rhythm and like it.

  I’m not too keen on the way Irving keeps manoeuvring me around the floor so he can look at Schlecht’s lady. Is he really interested in someone else so soon?

  We edge in close to them. I feel a current of distrust
as Irving’s hand rests on the small of my back. My pulse skyrockets. We move in closer still.

  Schlecht is executing one of those complicated cha-cha moves which involves swinging his lady out wide and waiting for her to cha-cha back. He swings her out again.

  ‘Now!’ Irving hisses, and I catapult neatly into Schlecht’s arms.

  He catches me like I’m the ball and he’s a shortstop who never fumbles. In an accent that must come from high society Vienna, the woman says, ‘It would seem your lady friend has had of the wine a little too much’.

  Irving inclines his head and agrees.

  Schlecht’s voice rasps out like a razor being stropped on gravel.

  ‘The Fräulein would like some fresh air, nicht wahr? I will take her myself. I’m sure this—ah, gentleman, will take you back to our table, Schätzchen, and order you a drink.’

  When they leave, I taste the fear; something that never quite leaves me because when I play the game, I stake my life. But a good operative needs danger like an addict needs a hit. Once I thought that the risk was the price, but I know better now. You can’t put a value on something you love.

  The cool night air is a relief. I flutter my eyelashes as though I’m coming to. A soft English voice, sounding like the star in a BBC series, where everyone drinks tea and goes boating on the Thames, says: ‘You’re in great danger, Augusta. That is not Irving. The real Irving was taken to the Zürich morgue yesterday with a knife in his ribs.’

  ‘Then who the hell are you?’

  He moves into a street lamp’s circle of light and pulls the wax-like scar off his cheek.

  He also removes his moustache to reveal a sensuous upper lip.

  ‘The fellow you think is Irving is actually Schlecht’s second-in-command—Tibor Mal. Somehow they got to the real Irving and killed him. They knew he was supposed to meet up with you today, so they sent Tibor instead, knowing he’d kill you too. That’s where Shamus Inc. made its fatal error. We assumed they’d substitute someone from the lower echelons of Schlecht’s empire—someone who’d never actually seen the bastard face to face.