A Choice of Enemies

by Mordecai Richler

  “I’m not enjoying it.”

  “Silly clod. Think of it. Maybe you were unhappily married. Maybe your boss gave you the sack. Maybe all your life you’ve wanted to make a fresh start. Some people have all the luck.”

  “What if I was happily married?”

  Pip clamped his nose tight with one hand and pretended to pull a long chain with the other.

  “You think that’s unlikely?” Norman asked.

  “Um.”

  “Perhaps you’d better go and see if Morley’s come to.”

  “Do you like Morley?”

  “Yes. I think I do.”

  “He sends me up the wall, he does.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s not one.”

  “He’s not ‘one’ what?”

  “Oh, really, don’t try to take the mickey out of me.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “One. He’s not one.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t believe all the talk myself at first. Gay people are such dreadful gossips, actually, and I had his word of honour that his relationship with Vanessa was strictly platonic. But she stays the night here occasionally and once I caught them at the funny stuff.” Pip held his nose. “Ugh!”

  “You mean –”

  “He’s a nasty normie, actually. The rest is all a pose.”

  “A pose?”

  “Um.”

  “But why?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not to me, it isn’t.”

  “Morley is madly ambitious.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Coo – Aren’t we naïve?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “He’s trying to pass because he thinks it’ll help him in certain circles.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Cross my little.”

  VIII

  Again.

  The best ones were killed, Karp. Only the conniving, evil ones like you survived.

  With that the whole intricate structure of Karp’s plan for survival had toppled. No good the books on plant life, the acquired taste for sea food, and the cultivation of Gentiles. You were always a Jew. A blight if you perished, a blight if you survived. Norman, as sure as fire, had branded him again.

  Karp wiped his eyes and bit through another cube of nut milk chocolate.

  And there, in the outer darkness, was the gaunt face of Obersturmführer Hartmann. Karp shut his eyes, swallowed his chocolate cube, and the face became Norman’s face, smiled, and was Hartmann once more.

  Hartmann.

  Hartmann, the ace shot of the camp, had once tumbled a hundred men without even stopping for a smoke, but the worst, the most vividly remembered agony of Karp’s days as a Sonderkommando, was the young girl. Thousands, every day thousands by gunshot and fire and gas, and in all that time only the young girl had survived the crematorium. When the lights were turned off she breathed in a few lungsful of gas. Only a few, however, for her little body gave way under the pushing and shoving of others. It must have been by chance that she fell with her face against the wet concrete. Cyclon gas doesn’t work under humid conditions: she was not asphyxiated.

  While Karp and the other Sonderkommandos prayed, while they hoped, wept, and waited, the doctors worked on her. They brought her back to life. A miracle. Someone had survived. But even as they gathered round the frail, frightened young girl Hartmann came to claim her. “It’s impossible,” he said. “She would tell the others what she had been through. Discipline would collapse.”

  A miracle, someone had survived, but – objectively speaking – you had to admit Hartmann was right. If the girl was sent to any of the women’s work camps, and told them what she had been through, discipline would collapse.

  Obersturmführer Hartmann took the girl outside and shot her.

  The next day Karp asked the doctor for a sure quick poison, but that was a standard Sonderkommando request, and of course it wasn’t granted.

  Thousands, Karp remembered, every day thousands, but all that seemed to matter was the young girl who was brought back to life only to be shot.

  Again.

  The best ones were killed, Karp. Only the conniving, evil ones like you survived.

  After all I did for him, Karp thought, after I bathed and washed him in the hospital, this is my reward. All right, Norman. Splendid. Now I’ll show you a thing or two. You need a lesson.

  IX

  As soon as Norman saw what had happened he rushed right over to the information desk. “Where is it?” he asked.

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “The balloon,” Norman said. “It’s gone.”

  “Balloon?”

  “How did you get it down?”

  “If you’ll just calm down, sir, and try to speak more slowly perhaps we can –”

  Norman seized the clerk by the collar and shook him. “The balloon is gone. I want to know what happened to it. Is that clear?”

  Somebody tried to grab him from behind, but Norman shook him off. “All I want to know is what happened to the balloon.”

  Suddenly Norman’s arms were pinned behind his back. He struggled, but it was no use. There were too many of them.

  “Is he drunk?”

  “I wish ‘e were, mate.”

  “Barmy?”

  “You have no right to hold me,” Norman said. “Just tell me what you’ve done with the balloon.…”

  A crowd gathered around him.

  “John! Come quickly, John!”

  “Hélène! Vite, cheri. Un Anglais fou. Regarde. Il porte la mine d’un cochon.”

  A short beefy man poked Norman in the ribs. “Use your loaf, mate. Don’t admit anything until you’ve spoken to your solicitor.”

  “Wolfgang! Komme hier.”

  “That’s how it all starts,” a bearded man said to another. “First they build a few airbases. Next thing you know decent women aren’t safe on the streets any more.”

  “Is he a rapist?”

  “I dare say.”

  A woman with a spilling bosom pushed through for a closer look at Norman’s ashen face.

  “Act dumb.” The short, beefy man poked Norman harder. “Otherwise you ‘aven’t ‘alf a chance.”

  Norman was immensely relieved to see Vivian pushing through the crowd towards him. He smiled weakly.

  “It’s you,” she said. “Thank God you’re all right.”

  “You know him?”

  “Let him go at once,” Vivian said. “He’s sick.”

  “Sick? He’s barmy, he is.”

  Two men helped Norman over to a chair in the corner. Vivian followed behind with a senior official.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Please,” Norman said, “please make them tell me what they did with the balloon.”

  “Balloon?” the senior official asked.

  Vivian pressed Norman’s hand. “Relax,” she said.

  “Balloon?” the senior official repeated. “What’s your name?”

  “He’s suffering from amnesia,” Vivian said in a hushed voice.

  The senior official frowned.

  “He was in some sort of accident,” Vivian said. “In the war, perhaps.”

  “ ‘Ere you are, mate, I think this might help.”

  Vivian took the glass of brandy from the porter and made Norman drink it. “If one of you gentlemen would be kind enough to call a taxi.…” Vivian shook Norman gently. “Please,” she said, “let’s go.”

  “Your taxi’s waiting, Miss.”

  Norman froze when they passed under the spot where the balloon had used to be. The woman with the spilling bosom hit him with her umbrella. “Shame,” she said. “Shame.”

  “Who took the balloon?” Norman asked.

  The bearded man confronted him. “If you were a Negro,” he said, “and this was your own country, you would have been lynched by now.”

  The senior official was obviously dismayed
. “Perhaps we ought to send for a doctor,” he said.

  “No,” Vivian said. “I’ll take care of him.”

  “He might be D-A-N-G-E –”

  “Nonsense,” Vivian said.

  “If only someone would explain,” Norman began. “It’s a simple question.…”

  They got him as far as the door.

  “Why does he go on and on about a balloon?”

  Vivian told the senior official what she knew.

  “A bit thick, that.”

  “Tell them to stop staring at me,” Norman said.

  “Murdoch would know,” the senior official said. “He was on duty last night. Leave me your phone number and I’ll give you a tinkle after I’ve had a word with him. He’ll know how they got the – the B-A-L-L-O –”

  “Don’t be an ass,” Vivian said. “He can spell.”

  The senior official helped Norman into the taxi.

  Vivian gave him her phone number. “Thanks for being so kind,” she said.

  “I know this may be like trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, but one thing more.” The senior official smiled self-effacingly. “If you’re taking this chap home with you don’t leave any sharp instruments around.”

  Vivian slammed the taxi door. As they drove off she lit two cigarettes and passed Norman one.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” he said.

  She loosened his shirt collar. Norman opened the window on his side. His mouth open, he breathed deeply.

  “Feel any better?”

  He leaned back and shut his eyes.

  “Why is the balloon so important to you?”

  He didn’t reply. But a couple of minutes later he opened his eyes. “The Thames,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, looking briefly out of the window, “that’s right.”

  “I’ve been here before.”

  Vivian saw the dull, leaden river for what seemed to be the first time. “It froze up one winter,” she said. “During Elizabethan times.”

  “What?”

  “The Thames. It froze up.”

  “Oh,” he said, “when?”

  “During Elizabethan times. I read it in a book.”

  X

  “Any news?”

  “Nothing,” Ernst said.

  Sally took off her coat and sat heavily down on the bed. “Teaching is a nightmare these days,” she said. “I’m always afraid you won’t be here by the time I get home.”

  Ernst sat by the window, mending a patch in his work trousers. “Maybe,” he said, without looking up, “we should inform the police.”

  “Absolutely no.”

  “He’s been gone three days, Sally. What chance have we got of finding him?”

  “He’ll come back. Don’t you worry.”

  “Perhaps it would be best.…”

  “No,” she said. “No police.”

  Ernst smiled wistfully. “After the Zusammenbruch, the surrender,” he said, “I got into trouble peddling black market stuff in the cafés around the Bayerischeplatz, and a British Youth Officer gave me a talk. He told me a man needs a hobby to keep out of trouble. So you see,” he said, holding up his needle and thread, “I took his advice.” Sally didn’t seem to be listening. “You didn’t sleep last night,” he said.

  “Neither did you.”

  “I was thinking that if I had left when you tried to throw me out of your room that first day maybe it would have been better.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  “If not for me,” he said, “you and Norman.…”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “How can anyone be sure? Maybe we would have – but this kind of talk is senseless. Don’t you think I’m sometimes sorry? But look here, Ernst, we met, we … Well here we are.”

  “Norman is a good man.”

  “Are you sorry, Ernst? Have you been happy with me?”

  “Happy for the second time in my life,” he said.

  “And the first?” Sally asked warily. He had never mentioned another girl before.

  “In the Jungvolk,” he said.

  “The Hitler Youth?”

  “At the Heimabend every Wednesday night we used to sing stirring songs.”

  Around the nocturnal campfires on the banks of the Nuthe, Ernst told her, he had learned about the myths, manners, and customs of ancient Germans, and about the characteristics of inferior races. He had also been given a dagger inscribed “Blood and Honour.”

  “That’s horrible,” Sally said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “If you hadn’t met me,” she said, “you would never have run into Norman. You might have been in America already with your rich fat lady.”

  “It is no longer possible.”

  “Oh,” she said petulantly, “why?”

  “It’s like you have given me a –” He turned away from her. “I can’t express myself.”

  “What you are saying is that you are no longer free.”

  “No, no. I am free for the first time.” He sat down beside her on the bed and stroked her hair. “Maybe you are right. Maybe we should run away.”

  “Let’s go, darling. Please let’s. They’ll never find us.”

  “What do you think Norman will do?” he asked.

  “Are you afraid?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Norman has no right to judge you.” She held him close. “You have a duty to me too, Ernst. Please let’s go away.”

  “We can’t have it both ways,” he said.

  Sally flushed angrily. “Oh, how you’ve changed,” she said. “You sound like a priest.”

  But she was not dissatisfied. She didn’t want him to run out; she didn’t want the others to have that pleasure. Norman, she thought, Norman, her heart told her, would understand that it was all a tragic accident. It would work out. You thought you’d never learn to do long division or ride a bicycle, you never really believed you’d get to Europe, but you did, you thought you were surely pregnant this time, but you were late, that’s all. In the end everything worked out. Norman would come to understand. It would be difficult. But he would respect Ernst for not having fled when he had had his golden chance. Norman was like that.

  “You have changed too,” he said. “Once you were shocked that I had killed. Now you are begging me to run for it.”

  “Oh, shut up. Please shut up for once.”

  “To you the fact that I killed Nicky is no longer – It has become an inconvenience, no more. But me,” he shouted, “I’m the Hitler Youth scum. Oh, you big, wonderful moral people. Is this what I’ve been missing?”

  XI

  Once in the flat with Vivian again Norman had begun to shiver.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asked.

  “I’d like to get into bed.”

  She helped him undress.

  “I’m getting the shakes,” he said.

  Vivian kicked off her shoes recklessly and flung her dress over her head.

  “Oh, please,” he said huskily, “do something for me.”

  She jumped into bed with him and hugged him as tight as she could.

  “It’s terrible,” he said. “Oh, it’s terrible.”

  His hands dug into her back. The pain made her wince.

  “I’ve got the shakes.”

  “Please,” she said. “Please. Oh, please.”

  “I’m going to cry.”

  “Cry,” she said ferociously. “Go ahead.”

  His hand went instinctively to her small bosom and Vivian stiffened. Please be nice, she thought. Please.

  “Your knee,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Your knee. Please, you’re hurting me.”

  He moved his knee. “Jesus,” he said. Then, as he succumbed to another seizure of violent shaking, she hugged him still closer.

  “Cry,” she said. “Go ahead.”

  He wept. A great, rock-like sob split and broke inside him, another, another and another,
he gasped, he jerked, his arms quivered, then his body loosened sweatily at last, and his head on her breast became a dead weight. She whispered soothingly to him and in a remarkably short time he was asleep. He talked some through his sleep, but she could not make out what he was saying. At last she slipped out from under him and set his head down gently on the pillow. Her slip was wet and wrinkled. Like we had a battle, she thought.

  Kate was waiting in the living room. “You found him,” she said enthusiastically.

  “Kate,” Vivian said wearily. “Kate.”

  Kate smiled tenderly. Some six months ago, after she had discovered that her cousin occupied a bed-sitter at Earl’s Court in a house where everyone else was elderly, she had promptly insisted that Vivian move in with her. Vivian had been working for an historical society at the time. She had known no men other than the kind who took you to the proms and brought you gifts of Penguins when you were ill. Kate had taken her in hand swiftly. She had landed her a job with a fashion magazine, and helped her to select a clever wardrobe. At first the two cousins had got on splendidly. Then, inevitably, they had begun to get on each other’s nerves. The men who visited Kate’s flat had been put out by the presence of a distinctly extra and rather hostile, sharp-tongued girl. Vivian, on her side, had poked merciless fun at the intellectual limitations of Kate’s friends. Kate hoped that the present crisis might help to bring them closer to each other again. She got a blanket out of the wardrobe and covered Vivian. “I’m going to stay with Nancy tonight,” she said. She wrote out the phone number. “Promise me one thing, darling. If you need me you’ll call immediately. You can call me at any hour. Promise?”

  “Ta,” Vivian said gratefully.

  “I’m going upstairs now to warn Polly not to come snooping around.” Kate paused in the middle of the room. Once more Vivian envied her grace. “He could have a wife, you know.”

  “I know.”

  Kate stopped again at the foot of the stairs. “If you want to use my – I mean it would be silly to take chances, wouldn’t it?”

  Vivian’s cheeks burned.

  “It’s in the kitchen,” Kate said quickly, “second drawer, under the –”

  “I have one of my own.”

  “You know how to –”

  “Certainly,” she said with defiance.

  Vivian smoked another cigarette before she went shyly into the kitchen hoping, all the while, that Kate was mistaken, and that it wasn’t in the second drawer as she had said. But there it was, wrapped in a towel, with the tube and injector alongside. Vivian took it into the bathroom with her, laying it down quickly behind her, just on the odd chance that she might go through with it. Then, pretending not to know what she was about, she washed under her arms and dabbed perfume behind her ears and brushed out her short black hair. Applying lipstick to her mouth she made it appear larger, the way Kate had taught her. She brushed out her hair again. Then, happily, she found something else to do. She squeezed a blackhead out of her nose. She brushed her teeth. When she turned around again, however, the cold precautionary equipment was still there. Vivian read the instructions twice, not understanding a word. She felt dizzy. I might as well, she thought, taking a deep breath, just in case.