to cheder, as if to square things with me, Carol said, ‘Well, they caught those Nazis.’
‘Not Nazis,’ said Shoshana, ‘Satanists, Mommy.’
‘Well, I hope they learnt their lesson: not to mess with Jews. Right, Ben?’
Everyone was relieved the Satanists had been caught. Nobody wanted to explore the glaring differences in the two incidents, and nobody talked about the slogan. It was the swastikas that had caused all the trouble and people wanted to put them behind them. Everyone except Elliot.
Ever since the falsely accused Satanists had received their punishment, he’d wanted to come forward and take responsibility. ‘Now you want to own up?’ said Ma. ‘Oh no. Now you shut up, Elliot. We’ve managed our way out of this one, and only just. Don’t mess things up now. Think of your brother – he still has to have his bar mitzvah.’
‘I don’t have to …’ I said.
‘It’s not up for discussion,’ said Ma. ‘Elliot, you’ll do a lot more harm than you’ve already done if you say anything now. And if you do, you’d better pack your bags for boarding school, my boy.’
That threat quelled his rebellion. With Elliot’s resistance limited to long silences and smoking openly, I found the space to raise my own protest. ‘Do I have to have a bar mitzvah?’ I asked Ma. While I still gripped secretly to belief, the idea of standing on the bimah, reading – singing! – in a foreign language was terrifying. And I still had months of cheder ahead of me, with those children I was so unlike, and I so disliked.
‘Once you’ve done the bar mitzvah,’ said Ma, ‘you can do whatever you like. You never have to go to shul.’
‘You don’t even believe in it. What’s the point?’
‘Your brothers did it. Even Elliot. Please, Ben – there’s enough going on right now. It’s almost over.’
Later that day I made a brave sortie to Elliot’s room. Strength in solidarity, I thought. ‘It’s so unfair I have to do a bar mitzvah,’ I said. ‘I mean, you don’t go to shul, she doesn’t – who cares?’
‘Just do it and then it’s over,’ said Elliot, rubbing at a charcoal sketch he was working on. It wasn’t often he tolerated me in his room.
‘I can’t believe you did yours. I’m not gonna do it.’
‘Don’t you get it, stupid?’ he said, pausing from the sketch. ‘She doesn’t make us do it for her, it’s for us. She hates that shit. She thinks it’s bullshit, too – so did Daddy. But what if something happens to her?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like she has an accident, dies.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who’s going to look after you then?’
‘I don’t need anyone to look after me.’
‘Don’t be stupid. Of course you do. She wants us to be able to go to Daddy’s side of the family in case we’re ever in trouble.’
‘I wouldn’t go to them.’
‘You don’t know that. They’re family. Fuck, you’re stupid.’
My father’s side of the family lived in other backward towns and in urbane suburbs of Johannesburg. For me, they were another absent history from a period before my father’s death, from before memory. My brothers had their memories of shared holidays with them, cousins sleeping seven or eight on blankets on the floors of crush-hugging aunts and teasing uncles I hardly knew; I had photo albums and my brothers’ anecdotes, inadequate memories a few steps removed.
I couldn’t help thinking of these dangling links to my father’s family, which inevitably brought me back to the dangling link of Leo Fein, and I felt his loss all over again.
* * *
Usually, Friday-night dinner at the Dorfmans was an ordeal of half-remembered rituals on my part and half-remembered identities on the part of the Dorfmans’ guests. ‘And you are …?’ was the phrase most likely to be heard in connection with me.
On this night, the guests knew exactly who I was, which didn’t make the prospect any more enjoyable, since they were Carol and her daughter. Potato Latke was tamping the chicken down with her jaws when the name of Leo Fein came up.
‘What a thing this is, Gail,’ said Carol.
‘What happened?’
‘What happened was Michael found him alive and well in Joburg.’
‘No,’ said Gail Dorfman with exaggerated disbelief. Mr Dorfman shrugged.
Leo Fein, alive! Joss and I looked at each other.
‘Michael went to Joburg,’ said Carol. ‘He’s got cousins there, you know. He’s never learnt how to look after himself. So he goes out while he’s at the cousins’, to buy cigarettes or who knows, and who does he see eating a big T-bone at MacRib but his flesh and blood, his father.’
‘No,’ said Gail.
‘Well, Michael almost fell over, of course. Not that he and his father have the best relationship, but you don’t see your dead relatives walking around every day, do you?’
‘My God.’
‘So anyway, Michael goes up to his father. He says, “Dad, you’re alive!” Leo is still chewing. He goes like this …’ Carol, playing the role of Leo Fein, stuck out her bottom lip and shrugged one shoulder.
‘Carol, no!’
‘“Dad, what happened?” Michael wants to know. “Oh, you know,” his father says, like it’s just one of those things. Oh, you know! It’s all he says, Gail, and he carries on eating his steak. He’s back from the dead and he doesn’t even invite the boy to come sit with him.’
‘Shame,’ said Mrs Dorfman in sympathy for Michael.
‘He’s been walking the city pretending to be a corpse … not even a corpse – ashes, he’s meant to be! While his son mourns for him. Sits shiva, even though – even though! – his father couldn’t care less.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Mrs Dorfman. ‘And the cremation?’
‘The cremation!’ said Carol.
‘He couldn’t have a nice Jewish burial?’ said Joss’s father, as if delivering a punchline.
Mrs Dorfman glanced at her husband impatiently. ‘But why, Carol? Why would he do such a thing?’ she asked.
‘Why does he do anything?’ said Carol, leaning her head forward over the table. ‘Money.’
‘From where?’
‘Search me. But it has to be.’ Carol helped her daughter to more chicken. While Gail Dorfman sat with her mouth still open, I realised I had a smile on mine. The silver Mercedes rides again!
‘What’s Leo Fein involved in, Stephen?’ Gail Dorfman asked.
‘I’ve told you before – it’s high-level stuff,’ said Mr Dorfman.
‘What kind?’
‘It’s way beyond me.’ Mr Dorfman rose up to slice more meat off the carcass.
‘And this thing – first dead, then alive?’
‘Probably a misunderstanding,’ said Stephen Dorfman.
‘Doesn’t sound like a misunderstanding.’
‘Michael’s a schlemiel,’ said Mr Dorfman without looking up from the cooked bird. No one disputed him.
‘Why play dead?’ asked Gail Dorfman.
‘Who knows – to get out of a deal, maybe.’