Requiem (10 page)

Tom decided to
leave him alone. He got up to go, but as his fingers touched the door handle,
he was summoned back to the bedside. 'Tom. Could I ask a small favour in
return?'

'Of course.'

'Go to my
wardrobe. There is a jacket I need altering. I want to wear it when I am well
again. I've decided to step outside, for the first time in years.'

'That's good, David. A fine idea. Is it
this one?'

'No. The
Harris Tweed, at the back of the wardrobe. Yes, that's it. I bought it in
England a long time ago. Quality. I will wear the Harris Tweed. But you must
take it to the tailor's and have it altered.'

He
insisted Tom should take it to a friend who'd been in the tailoring business
and who would carry out the alterations for a very modest fee. Concerned that
he should incur no extra expense, he made Tom write down the name of the
tailor, who lived only a few streets away. He knew, David assured all his
measurements.

The
jacket was old but barely worn. There was a
Savile
Row label. It smelled of something Tom associated with old men and more than a
trace of naphthalene from the wardrobe. Folding it across his arm, Tom was
about to ask when he should return with the altered jacket, but David had
fallen asleep.

On his way
out he rang the supervisor's bell. The boy appeared. 'The hotel owner should be
told about the old man in room seven.'

The boy looked puzzled. 'What is it?'

'He's very frail.'

'I know. But he's seen a doctor. What else
can we do?'

'I
don't know,' Tom said. 'It's just that I don't think he's going to be alive
much longer. He needs proper attention.'

'He refuses to go to hospital.'

'But
shouldn't the hotel owner know about his condition?'

'You
misunderstand,' said the boy. 'He
is
the owner of the hotel.'

'What? David Feldberg owns this place?'

'That's right.'

Tom
was astonished. 'But he's always complaining about the coffee!'

'Yes.'

Tom
went directly from the hotel to the tailor's shop that afternoon. He should
have noticed before reaching the address that all was closed for
Shabbat.
He'd
forgotten it was Saturday.

He shrugged and headed
towards the bus station, still carrying the jacket over his arm. Then he turned
again, realizing there would be no bus service on
Shabbat
and that he
would have to take a shared
sherut
Arab
taxi back to Sharon's apartment.

17

Returning to Sharon's
apartment, Tom turned the key in the lock, swung into the living-room and
caught Sharon in bed with a young man. The door to Sharon's room was half-open:
the man lay on his back with Sharon astride him. Both were naked. The moment
failed to register, and with David Feldberg's jacket draped across one arm, Tom
gazed dumbly at them, as if puzzling out what exactly it was they were doing.

They didn't
hear him come in. Then the man lifted up his head and, on spotting him, smiled
stupidly. Tom backed out of sight, shutting the door, eyes closed, cheeks
burning. Sharon would be furious.

After
some minutes, the door opened and the man came out. Sharon, now wearing a silk
dressing gown, held the door as he nodded at Tom. She bade the man goodbye.

'I'm sorry,' Tom burbled.

'Forget it.'

'Really, I -'

'It's
nothing. Want a coffee?' She scratched the back of her head. 'I'm going to have
a shower.'

With Sharon
in the bathroom, Tom stood in the doorway of her bedroom. The bedcovers had
been hastily pulled back into place. The room reeked of coitus. He retreated
from the bedroom, draping David's jacket over the back of a hard chair.

Sharon
emerged in a bathrobe, her skin shell-pink from the shower, a white towel
swathed around her head. She picked up the jacket from the chair and ran her
hands across its silk lining. Standing behind him, she took off her wet
bathrobe and slipped on the jacket. 'Cold silk,' she said, slumping on the
sofa. 'Love it.' She pulled the hem of the jacket across her thigh to hide her
cunt
, a partial concession to modesty. 'Didn't shock you,
did it? When you came in like that?'

'Not at all.'

'You lie.'

'Well, it was a bit of a surprise.'

'My
boyfriend thought so. Actually, he's not my boyfriend any more. We were just
saying goodbye, so to speak.'

'Goodbye? He didn't look like he was
saying goodbye.'

'He didn't know it.'

Sharon
reclined on the sofa, her crossed legs steaming slightly from the hot shower,
her natural colouring poking from under the hem of the jacket.

'Why are you doing this, Sharon?'

'Doing what?'

'Sitting there, like that.'

'Does it
make you uncomfortable? I'm sorry, I never think of you in that way.'

While she was dressing
Tom thought about the time they'd fallen into bed together one evening at
college. They were both drunk. Both were suffering from unrequited love, and
they'd grabbed at each other for comfort. For two days they pretended to find
True Love right under their noses. On the third day they admitted to each other
it wasn't working. Ordinary friendship was resumed, apparently undamaged, and
the episode was never referred to again.

Sharon
reappeared, dressed, still rosy and perfumed from her shower. She sat down on
the sofa beside him and took his hand. 'You must miss her like crazy. I didn't
even want to mention it. But she was my friend too, Tom. She was my friend
too.'

'Waking
up. That's the worst thing. Every morning you wake up, you remember what
happened to her. Every morning.'

'I
know how hard it is, Tom. But it's been a year. Life has to go on. And I'm not
sure it was a good idea to quit your job. I mean, it put structure into your
life.'

Tom said nothing.

'Did
something else happen? Something that made you leave the school?'

And
for a moment he was back there. First Monday of the summer term, with the
emptiness of the Easter holidays and Katie's absence still very much in mind.
He'd collected his form register and was on his way to the classroom. A
drizzle of rain outside. Kids with a crumpled, whey-faced look as they filed
into their respective classrooms. As he pushed open the door to his own room
the children became unusually quiet. With an unfelt heartiness he expressed
the hope that they'd all had a good break before their murmured replies made
him wonder why they were so strangely subdued. He became aware that they were
focused on something behind him. An instinct.
If it's the mere matter,
the
Head had opined,
if it's the mere matter . . .
That instinct had made
him turn, very slowly. The entire class stiffened as they waited for him to
discover what they'd all seen the moment they'd entered the classroom.

'I don't know, Sharon. Maybe.'

It was Monday before Tom took
David's jacket to the tailor's. Jacob
Sarano
was a
miraculously tiny figure, rescued by only centimetres from the condition of
dwarfism. His white hair, white moustache and heavy black spectacles, coupled
with his stature, suggested a mythological species of Jewish tailor. His
workshop was piled high with bales of cotton. A nude tailor's manikin stuck
with pins stood in the window. He smiled sadly as Tom entered his shop.

'David
Feldberg sent me with this. He wants it altered.'

The
smile vanished from the tailor's lips. He came from behind his counter, bolted
the door and pulled down the black window shades. A bare bulb hanging from
scorched flex lit the room.

'I hear David is dying.'

'Dying?
Possibly. I didn't know how poorly he was. I'm just doing this as a favour.'

'A favour?' He spread the jacket out on
his counter.

'When can I collect it?'

'It will be
two minutes. Here, it's almost done.' He took a large pair of shears and
carefully separated the lining at the vent, following the stitching very
carefully around the jacket. 'I haven't seen David in years,' he said as he
worked.

'Oh? I got the impression you were old
friends.'

'Old
friends, yes. We were in
Belsen
together. That's when
we met. I'll tell you how we became friends.' He readjusted his glasses on the end
of his nose and resumed his work, now skimming the blade very slowly and
accurately around the lining to the front of the jacket. 'There was a
particularly cruel captain. Always trying to find ways of adding to our misery.
Knowing I was a young tailor, he came to me one day with a copy of the Torah.
It was all vellum, beautiful leather, understand? And he insisted that I make a
jacket for him out of the pages. Can you imagine, a jacket from the Torah?' He
paused for Tom to appreciate the blasphemy.

'What could
I do? I wrung my hands. If 1 did, it was a desecration. If I didn't ... perhaps
I wouldn't be here now. Anyway it was David who told me what to do.'

The tiny
tailor busily separated the lining from the sleeves, anxious to ensure that the
rest of the lining could be detached in a single piece. 'Do it. Make him a
jacket, David told me. Talk with the rabbi. Find every curse written on those
pages and make it from that. Make it beautiful so that he will want to wear it
all the time. Make the strongest curses on the inside, nearest to his heart and
his liver and his lungs. Make it the most beautiful jacket he ever had.

'There was a
rabbi there with us, and he helped me. I took the curses and woes from
Deuteronomy and Isaiah and wherever I could find them. All the plagues and the
diseases and the sore sicknesses and the rest of it. And I made the most
beautiful jacket. And the captain wore it. He wore it! Here. We've finished.'

Laying the
jacket aside, he spread the lining on the counter, inside uppermost. Now Tom
could see that something had been stitched to the inside of the lining itself.
Carefully sewn, so as not to extrude, were three cloth rectangles. The largest
rectangle was in the middle and had been stitched at the back of the jacket.
The two side pieces had hung at either breast. Together they made a kind of
triptych, still attached to the silk.

'Scrolls,' said Tom.

'David had
me make this up for him. He told me he would send for them one day.'

'It's
incredible.' He examined the stitching. Fragments had been sewn together with
almost invisible thread, to make up the three pieces. 'The skill.' The scrolls
themselves had been written in the highly unusual form of a spiral, presumably
to be read from the outer arm of the spiral towards the dense concentration of
letters in the centre.

The
tailor folded the lining carefully, finally wrapping it in tissue paper. 'Now
you can take them to him. Tell him I'll repair the jacket, and you can come
back for it in a few days.'

The
tailor moved to the windows and let up the blinds. Then he unbolted the door.
Tom stepped outside into the sunlight.

'There's
one thing,' Tom said. 'The German captain. At the concentration camp. What
became of him?'

'I don't know,
so I can't say.' The tiny tailor had a murderous gleam in his eyes. 'All I can
tell you is that within two weeks he was sent to the Russian front.'

The
door was closed softly. Tom was left standing in the street clutching his
bundle of silk scrolls wrapped in tissue paper.

His first thought was to
get back to David and dump the scrolls. The hotel was only a few streets away,
but it seemed every passing pair of eyes was fixed on the tissue-wrapped
package under his arm. Every ultra-Orthodox brain mysteriously detected the
contents:
See! He has the scrolls. The stolen scrolls. The legacy of Jewish
culture. The literature of our people.

He
was sweating heavily when he reached the hotel. With some irritation he rapped
on David's door, annoyed to have been used in this way. When no one replied he
tried the handle. The door was locked.

He went to find the
supervisor. The boy's dark eyes were swollen blots behind his glasses. 'He
died,' the boy said simply.

'Died?'

'Yes.'

Tom
stood holding the package. The palm of his hand was sweating on to the tissue
paper. 'Has he got any family here? Anyone I could talk to?'

'He never
had anyone. This hotel is all he had. Anything I can do?'

Tom shook
his head. The boy shrugged and went back to his room. Then Tom looked in the
communal kitchen. Dirty mugs and cups were piling up at the sink.

He considered having the
room unlocked and simply dumping the scroll fragments there. Let them become
someone else's problem. Then he realized what David had done by passing them
on. He'd made an attempt to clean up things before he died; he'd tried by this
gesture to rinse something from the bottom of his own cup of life. He'd known
it was
Shabbat,
and he'd known he was dying when he gave Tom the jacket.
He could easily have removed the lining from the jacket himself. But the
problem of what to do with the things had been successfully passed to Tom.