The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  ‘I’m reading, lad,’ Willis said unconvincingly.

  ‘I’m such a worthless piece of shit.’

  ‘If you say that again, I won’t begin work on the painting.’

  ‘Did somebody mention work?’ Willis asked, looking up. ‘Surprise surprise! I thought I’d dozed off and woken up at a meeting of the Mothers’ Union.’

  Refusing to be provoked, Clement studied the canvas while Stick kept resolutely to the far side of the easel. He had banished any scruples about posing as Christ, relishing the prospect of the triple portrait: ‘Like when you have your photo taken in a machine!’ He quickly grew bored with the delay. ‘Same as when you left it, is it?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. You may even have done me a favour by enabling me to get some distance.’

  ‘Do you want us to stand farther off?’

  ‘What? No, not a step. I should have known what to expect. Look at Titian.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘One of the greatest painters of all time. The story goes that he was totally happy with a finished picture, only to look at it six months later and find, in his own phrase, that it might have been painted by his worst enemy.’

  ‘Who was that then?’

  ‘What?’ A glance at the eager face was enough to erase all suspicion of mockery. ‘Himself.’

  After struggling to place Stick in his former pose, he tentatively set to work.

  ‘You aren’t seriously planning to paint him like that?’ Willis asked.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Clement replied, puzzled.

  ‘Our Lord in prison uniform!’

  ‘That’s right, boss,’ Stick broke in. ‘It’s like saying being in the nick is like being crucified.’ Willis shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘Or even,’ Clement added gently, ‘that being in prison is still being with Christ.’

  ‘I warned the governor it would be blasphemous.’

  ‘I’m sure he appreciated your input, sir.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘But there’s another way you can help. I’ve decided to include a fourth figure of the Centurion,’ he said disingenuously. ‘I’d like to model him on an officer.’

  ‘You use me or any other member of staff in any way, shape or form, laddie, and your picture will be firewood – and you’ll be toast!’

  Clement had barely recovered his stride when he was forced to break off for Christmas. The holiday was particularly poignant in prison, where the cooked breakfast and the goody bag and the taped carols blasting out from the canteen felt more like parodies than gestures of goodwill. Faced with the muted festivities, Clement was glad to be sharing a cell with someone for whom it was just another Thursday. He went to chapel, ate his turkey twizzlers and watched seasonal specials on TV, but declined to put up even a handful of his stack of cards. While telling himself that it was a courtesy to Shlomo, he recognised that it was the best defence against despair. There was nothing more calculated to expose the pretence of normality than the newspaper chain across his neighbour’s door.

  His first visit of the New Year was also his first from Shoana. In a recent letter, she had expressed the desire to see him along with concern about her reception. Having assured her of its warmth, he found himself shaking all the way to the hall and was grateful for the conciliatory presence of Carla, who greeted him at the table with her usual broad smile.

  ‘Great scar,’ she said, tracing it with her finger. ‘Super sexy.’

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked Shoana who stood up, making no move or comment. ‘Any advance on sexy?’

  ‘You look well,’ she said, kissing him rapidly. ‘I was afraid that… you know, the stress and the diet would damage your cells.’

  ‘Quite the reverse. I had a test at the end of November. Curiously, it seems that all my counts have gone up, while my viral load is still undetectable. Of course we can’t discount the idea that the authorities are trying to lure me into a state of dangerous complacency.’

  ‘Of course we can,’ Carla said. ‘You look better than I’ve seen you in years.’

  ‘How’s Zvi?’ he asked Shoana.

  ‘He’s well… wonderful. Frantically busy at work and in the community. He’s away this weekend with our youth group.’

  ‘He said to send you his best, didn’t he?’ Carla nudged her.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘My cell-mate’s one of your lot,’ he said, uncertain if he wanted to establish the link or punish the lie.

  ‘A Jew?’

  ‘A Lubavitch.’

  ‘Is that an accusation?’

  ‘Not at all. If it were, I’d tell you what he did.’

  ‘I know what he did.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘He’s the son-in-law of a friend, who owned the house where I studied the Kabbalah.’

  ‘Small world!’

  ‘But that’s not why I know the story. The reason is that it’s so rare… so rare and so shocking. How many Christian child molesters are there in here?’ she asked, in a voice so shrill that she might have been addressing the entire hall.

  Squirming in his seat, Clement gave thanks for Carla’s intervention.

  ‘Listen, both of you, I have news!’

  ‘A man?’ he asked.

  ‘I wish! No, I’ve booked to go in May on a purification practice to India and Nepal.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ he said, muffling his disappointment. ‘You deserve a holiday.’

  ‘It’ll be far more than that. We visit several of our holiest sites, including Bodh Gaya and the Deer Park of Sarnath.’

  ‘I’ll rephrase that: you deserve a pilgrimage.’

  ‘Mike’s promised to look after Pearl Bailey.’

  ‘That’s great.’ For all his boyfriend’s unfulfilled love of cats, Clement wondered if he would have offered so freely if Carla had been travelling to Santiago de Compostela.

  ‘Since we’re swapping news, here’s mine,’ Shoana said. ‘I’m selling the agency.’

  ‘You’re not?’ Clement asked. ‘To do what? Stay at home and keep house for Zvi?’

  ‘And his child. I’m pregnant.’

  Clement gazed at her and, for the first time since his sentence, his eyes filled with tears. ‘That’s fantastic. Truly! I’m so happy for you, Nanna. How long?’

  ‘Three months.’

  ‘Then the baby’s due in June? The same month as my release. We’ll have a double celebration… That’s if you want.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here. Never in a million years did I mean this to happen. I still believe what you did was very wrong. But I know that you had your reasons.’

  ‘Thank you… It’s strange. I always imagined prison life would be utterly alien but, in many respects, it’s no different from how it is “on the out”, except that you see things from an oblique angle. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever be able to look at them squarely again.’

  ‘Of course you will,’ Shoana said. ‘You said yourself you’ll be released in a few months. Think June.’

  ‘Right now it’s hard enough to think January. Next Tuesday will be a year since Pa’s funeral.’

  Shoana’s hand instinctively reached to her stomach. ‘I know. I went down to the crypt with Ma when I was in Beckley last weekend. She was so thrilled to see the colours on Pa’s coffin. You’re a wonderful painter, Clem. You have a very special gift.’

  ‘Well I’m back at work on my Crucifixion. They’re letting me use my old model.’

  ‘The madman who gave you that scar?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘You never give up, do you?’

  ‘I hope not. Learn, yes; change, yes; give up, no.’

  The glow of the visit faded when Clement returned to a freezing cell. Shlomo explained that the duty officer had forgotten the code for the Unit heating.

  ‘Can’t he ask someone?’

  ‘I suspect that he wanted to forget.’

  ‘That’s outrageous!’

  ‘It’ll pass. Last w
inter it happened several times. I had to wear socks on my hands and, look, I still have all my fingers.’

  ‘We should speak to our lawyers.’

  ‘It’d only make things worse. Turn on your television. Tell me about your visit.’

  ‘You want to talk?’

  ‘If it helps take our minds off the cold. Was it your mother and your… friend?’ Shlomo spoke the word as if he had a strong urge to clear his throat.

  ‘No, my sister and my sister-in-law. My sister’s a Lubavitch.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You told me.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Then somebody else did. What does it matter?’

  ‘It’s because of my sister I’m here,’ Clement said swiftly. ‘She told the police I’d committed murder. Doubtless you share her belief that we should take the Bible literally?’

  ‘How else should we take the Word of God? Torah was given to Moses on Mount Sinai.’

  ‘Says who? Moses?’

  ‘Are you an anti-Semite?’

  ‘With a Jewish mother? I think not!’

  ‘Then why are you so hostile?’

  ‘Because I believe with all my heart that to place so much trust in a book – any book – is as dangerous as burning it. Books should stimulate debate, not stifle it. Think of the Muslims destroying the library of Alexandria – surely the greatest loss in the history of civilisation – because it held books that denied the truth of the Quran.’

  ‘The mistake you make is to suppose that there’s only one kind of truth. Torah has four: literal; subtextual; metaphoric; and kabbalistic. Not that that’s any help to you since, with no knowledge of the language, you can’t even hope to understand the first.’

  ‘I don’t dispute that, as a Hebrew speaker, you appreciate the nuances of the text better than me. But the Bible is far more than nuances. Won’t you admit in turn that large parts of it have been superseded by science?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as… almost everything.’ Clement strove to curb his exasperation. ‘But let’s stick with the biggie. Genesis Chapter One.’

  ‘You say that Torah is disproved by science. I say it starts from the opposite standpoint. Torah is concerned with cause and science with effect. Torah describes the purpose of the universe; science explains its nature. Torah’s story of Creation begins in the infinite consciousness of God; Darwin’s theory of evolution develops in the finite mind of man.’

  ‘That’s very elegantly put.’ Clement mimed applause. ‘But you can’t get away from the crucial fact. Genesis speaks of the world being created in seven days. Now that may have a subtextual truth, and it may have a metaphoric one, and for all I know it may have a kabbalistic one, but it sure as hell doesn’t have a literal one.’

  ‘You forget two things. First, when Adam and Eve ate the apple, the whole nature of reality changed, so the seven days of Creation aren’t the same as seven days now. Second (and here I’m happy to invoke science), time, as Einstein showed, is relative to the speed at which we move and the physical conditions around us. Although the variations in the speed at which men move remain small, those between God and man are boundless. So a day to God is very different from a day to us.’

  As Shlomo returned to the Hebrew commentaries that were his constant study, Clement reflected on his arguments. It was heartening to hear him echo his own distinction between human and divine timescales, even if they disagreed on the cause. Whereas Shlomo located the split in the Garden of Eden, he located it at the moment of Creation, when God sacrificed a measure of His freedom to give us ours. It was not that mankind forfeited perfection by disobedience, but that God acknowledged that imperfection was the price of human existence. This had consequences way beyond biblical exegesis. Whatever bishops or rabbis or imams might say, moral relativism was not an indulgence or a sin, but a recognition that absolute truth was to be found only in God and that it was both futile and dangerous to demand perfection in a world which would always be at one remove from the infinite from which it derived.

  Keen to honour his belief, he had a sudden urge to make a sketch of Shlomo. He stepped off the bunk, picked up his pad and pencil, and leant against the chest of drawers, from which slightly cramped position his cell-mate’s face emerged, literally and figuratively, out of the shadows.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Shlomo asked, both suspicious and shy.

  ‘Drawing you. Do you mind? I’m thinking of making a picture of Lot and his daughters.’

  ‘Wicked girls, who got their father drunk and then seduced him.’

  ‘I see it rather differently. He was a tyrannical patriarch who refused to treat his children as autonomous beings. He even proposed to prostitute them to his fellow townsmen. So they took their revenge by leaving him with an unbearable burden of guilt.’ He stopped short and gazed at Shlomo, who was struggling to interpret this new biblical subtext.

  ‘So you know about me,’ he said, after a long pause.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s all lies, put about by my wife… my enemies.’

  ‘Would you like to talk about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m a stranger to you but not to grief.’

  Shlomo stared at him in confusion. ‘My son, my Daniel,’ he said haltingly, ‘was in an accident at school. Nothing serious – Blessed be the Lord God of the Universe! – but they took him to hospital. When they examined him, the doctors found other bruising. They questioned him. They had no right to do that without my consent! He didn’t know what he was saying. There’s so much filth around. Children pick it up.’

  ‘I thought you were a closed community.’

  ‘Not closed enough,’ he said grimly. ‘The doctors twisted his words to make it sound like he was accusing me. I would never hurt him. He’s my son. I love him more than life.’

  ‘Does he know that?’

  ‘Of course he does.’

  ‘But he never visits. You never ring.’

  ‘It’s better that he thinks I’m dead. It’s better that they all think I’m dead.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘Leib and Malkie, my daughters.’ Clement was struck by the incongruously small family. ‘It’s Daniel’s birthday next week,’ Shlomo said with a gulp. ‘He’ll be twelve. What sort of a man will he become with no father to guide him? How will the girls be safe without me to protect them?’

  ‘Then speak to them. Speak to him.’

  ‘And say what? How… No!’

  ‘You might start by buying him a birthday present.’

  ‘What do you suggest I find in here? Drugs?’

  ‘Can’t you ask a friend to buy something on your behalf?’

  ‘You, you kill your father and have friends who write to you every day! I’m the victim of a smear campaign and all my friends vanish.’

  ‘I could draw something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you have a photo of him?’

  ‘Why?’ Shlomo shrank, as from the threat of voodoo.

  ‘I could make a sketch of him. Or better still his namesake! How about a comic strip version of the story of Daniel? I’m a dab hand at lions!’

  ‘Why?’ Shlomo asked in amazement. ‘I can’t pay you.’

  ‘I thought Jews believed in mitzvahs.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s a chance for me to do one for you.’

  After re-reading the Book of Daniel, Clement settled on a sequence of ten frames, focusing on the early episodes of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the burning fiery furnace and Belshazzar’s feast. He toyed with including Susanna and the Elders but decided that false charges of adultery were uninteresting to the average twelve-year-old and inappropriate to one who had been abused. He worked in pen-and-ink, which was not only best suited to his format but allowed him to avoid a tiresome trek to the office each time that his pencil needed sharpening. For all that Parker had been permitted his Stanley knife, the officers in the Unit were determi
ned to maintain the blanket ban on blades.

  Weeks passed and, to his surprise, he grew quite content. At first he worried that he might be becoming institutionalised, but he realised that, on the contrary, he had been given the means to escape. As he worked on the painting by day and the drawings by night, he found himself living increasingly inside his head. The prison bars were no more intrusive than the locks on the studio window. He relished the paradox of his double sentence. Just as a deadly virus had inspired him to produce his most vital pieces, so a spell in jail had taught him to be truly free.

  He finished the comic strip at the end of March and handed it to Shlomo, who had resolutely refused to take an interest, as though preparing himself for the inevitable moment when Clement perceived that the drawings had value and kept them for himself.

  ‘Are you showing them to me or giving them to me?’

  ‘Giving, of course. I’ve said so all along.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve told you, it’s for your son. I only wish I could have made it in time for his birthday. See, his name on the cover. In the bubble from the lion’s mouth. To Daniel from Daddy.’

  ‘He calls me Tateh.’

  ‘Oh hell! I can ink it out.’

  ‘No don’t. You might spoil it.’ He studied each drawing in detail. ‘This is too good for him.’

  ‘He’s your son!’

  ‘I mean he won’t realise what it’s worth.’

  ‘Its worth is what he gives it. No more, no less.’

  Shlomo burst into tears, great heaving tears as emphatic as his snores. Clement hovered at the edge of the bunk, embarrassed by the older man’s vulnerability. ‘Careful, you don’t smudge the ink!’ he said, in a vain attempt at humour.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s not fair. I shouldn’t…’

  ‘Of course you should.’

  ‘Please don’t pity me. I’ve no right to anyone’s pity after what I did.’

  ‘Except your own?’

  Shlomo made no reply or, if he did, it was choked by weeping, but later, when they’d switched off the light, he seemed eager to build on their newfound rapport. ‘May I ask you a personal question?’

  ‘Whatever you like.’

  ‘Were you never attracted to women?’

  ‘As the man said, I experimented with heterosexuality when I was younger but it ended when they went back to their wives.’