Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart

by Stephen Benatar

  I laughed and put my arms about her shoulders and kissed the crown of her head. “Oh, I’m all in favour of his learning French! You know I am.”

  Then I went back to bed grinning, having given Arthur, too, a kiss on the crown of his head. But since I was no longer sleepy I read a short story and waited for Geneviève’s return. I didn’t want the day, or at least the dawn, to go down on her resentment.

  Yet, following this confrontation, there was something which now nagged at me. It wasn’t that I thought Geneviève capable of sabotage—she wasn’t at all, not on a conscious level—but she was a person who very much went to extremes, and I could imagine her thinking that if Arthur had to be force-fed on music, he also needed to know about Gershwin and Kern and Oklahoma! Again, I had no real quarrel with this, only believed he didn’t require a grounding in it. So I took to popping home a little more often than I had, and began to worry that my parish duties might suffer on account of it. For the first time it struck me that if I wanted to take a more active part in my son’s upbringing—in my children’s upbringing—I might have to think about giving up church work and looking for some sort of evening job instead. Or night position. On a temporary basis anyhow.

  About five months later there arose a further contretemps.

  I had offered to take the girls to the local swimming pool—Geneviève herself didn’t care for swimming—and I’d automatically assumed I should also be taking Arthur.

  “What! Are you crazy? What would you do with him?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Clearly you can’t have him in the water with you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Because he’s still a baby. Because he can’t even walk. Or perhaps you hadn’t noticed?”

  “It’s catching on in America that it’s easier for babies to learn to swim before they can walk.”

  “Ethan, I don’t care what is catching on in America. You are not taking Arthur to the swimming pool.”

  “I only wanted him to get used to the feel of the water. To realize how much fun it is.”

  “He can do that in his bath, thank you.”

  “I wasn’t going to say, ‘Go on, swim three lengths.’”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you. With that poor little baby I wouldn’t put anything past you.”

  “Oh, darling!”

  “Sometimes I think you’re not safe to leave him with.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “And what about your daughters? You have daughters, you know. Little girls of three and four years old! And a lot of fun they’re going to have with their daddy if he’s spending every minute looking after the baby he’s carrying! A fat lot of help with their swimming they’re going to get!”

  “Dammit, they’ve got water-wings. I could easily give them a hand under the chin. Just as easily as if I wasn’t holding Arthur.”

  “Oh, treats! What little girl ever wants to splash and race and ride upon the shoulders? But you can still do all that, of course, holding Arthur? Or have you perhaps left him by this time—how do you put it—to sink or swim? Sent him off on his fifty or sixty lengths?”

  “All right, let’s forget it. It obviously wasn’t a good idea. I’m sorry.”

  “And suppose that one of the girls got into difficulties? What then? You make me sound unreasonable but I wouldn’t have a moment’s peace. I didn’t raise my children to let them all be drowned.” She was beginning to cry. “Not by you nor anyone.”

  I slammed out of the room. It was the first time I’d really lost my temper with her. I was angrier than I’d been in years.

  It was the angriest I’d been since before I met Zack…originally met Zack.

  But, of course, we were fairly soon reconciled and I took Anne and Jacqueline to the pool and it was fine—Geneviève was right—Arthur would have been in the way.

  Yet our quarrel left me miserable. For many days I kept returning to it in my thoughts, wasting time and energy by wishing I’d avoided it, wishing I hadn’t lost control, wishing I’d stayed to comfort her when she had cried. Such behaviour seriously dented my image of the perfect husband I was trying to be…an event possibly overdue and very necessary. The only clearly positive things which resulted from it, apart from the relief and pleasure of our making up, was that it reminded me of how careful I should always have to be, and that when a month or so later I asked to take Arthur to the pool on his own, Geneviève agreed without any fuss, even though he still couldn’t walk, the lazy little brat.

  At eleven months my unconcerned son may have been a lazy little brat; at almost twenty-eight his deeply concerned father was getting ever more industrious. Once Arthur was finally sleeping through, I began to get up two hours earlier every morning and go down to the kitchen, the warmest place in the house, to make myself a pot of strong black coffee and spread my books all over the table and start to study. I studied world history—the word ‘world’ now figured a lot in my endeavours—world politics, world religion, world mythology, world geography. I rotated and integrated and imposed on myself no deadlines, as I had while learning French, because on all such subjects it was clearly absurd to set limits. Gradually I would try to add at least the rudiments of all the major ideas and beliefs which people had at various times held, as well as the rudiments of philosophy and psychology and astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology…well, in short I wanted to become as well-informed as it was possible for any layman to be, not for the sake of my own education but for the sake of my son’s. Yet please—please!—don’t ever let me pontificate. This was a prayer I now added to my many others. I want to teach, but don’t let it appear like teaching. Let me be lively and stimulating and funny and relaxed. Endlessly patient. Tolerant and understanding.

  Save me from solemnity.

  I began my course of studies, appropriately enough, by reading about King Arthur; both the Celtic warrior and the creator of the Knights of the Round Table. It was strange I hadn’t thought of doing this before. Right at the beginning I didn’t even know which of them was spoken of as being the one who would return.

  The Once and Future King.

  21

  “Death to the infidels!”… “Enemies of Christ!”… “Child killers!”

  Oh, how they hated us. A lot of them regularly came to borrow money and I don’t know how they’d ever have got on without us, but oh how they hated us, these solid citizens of York. Often they didn’t pay the money back—so then we’d have to take them into court; and often too, for no reason at all, they’d spit on us in passing, or even assault us…sometimes, for a great joke, corner one of us and force him to eat pork, at other times beat us up so cruelly our blood would run between the cobblestones. Somehow those robes of ours seemed always an affront. We tried to make them look less costly and occasionally risked taking off our yellow badges. But our swarthy skins and Semitic features invariably betrayed us and so invited trouble; and there’d have been fines to pay, perhaps imprisonment, if the papal authorities had ever heard we were defying regulations. Besides, it appeared to most of us dishonourable: we aimed to wear our badges with distinction. With pride.

  A lot of it had to do with the crusades. A priest from the Christian Pope had come to the marketplace on a recruiting drive, to get men to join the armies in the Holy Land and take up arms against the infidels.

  “But what about the infidels in York?” That had been the immediate reaction of the crowd. “All Jews are infidels!”

  So it seemed there was just as much anti-Jewish as anti-Moslem hysteria sweeping through the city. And even the Pope himself had warned the English to beware of us: we exerted a ‘corrupting influence on Christian souls,’ he had written. That priest in the marketplace was a demagogue who hardly cared in what direction the passions of the mob would flow.

  It hadn’t always been like this. Intermittently we’d been allowed to get along in peace—especially when King Henry ruled. He’d treated us well. It was largely due to him we’d usually won
our cases at the assizes. (Even if we did have to send him a tenth of all our damages!) Throughout King Henry’s reign, York really hadn’t been—well, by and large—such a bad place to live.

  I’d started off in Lincoln, I’d spent the whole of my last life there…although until I was old I never used to think in terms of this life, next life, last life, why should I? It was a passing stranger in our tiny synagogue on Steep Hill who drew me to one side and acquainted me with how things stood. He told me that a thousand years ago I’d struck the Messiah while he was on his way to crucifixion. I couldn’t believe I had done that. I still can’t believe it, not deep in the heart of me. Done something so contemptible? Something so utterly vile?

  I mean, I’m not a saint. My God, you should have asked my wife, Rebekah, about that. I’m not even a passably good man, I’ve never pretended to be. No patience, that’s my trouble. I do sometimes lash out, not so much physically any more, but with a vicious and irrepressible tongue. Intolerant is what I am, although at least these days I usually feel ashamed and seek forgiveness. But what I’m saying is—I may not be a good man but I can’t believe I would actually have hit somebody when he was down, not even somebody in whom I’d felt so disappointed, some self-proclaimed deliverer. You see, I know only too well what it’s like to be spat on and reviled, what it’s like to be the underdog.

  But if I didn’t know it then and if I really did strike him—as I suppose I must have done—well, at least I’ve got to be improving. This travelling wise man, I’m not sure what to call him, in fact he reluctantly admitted I might be making progress—well, half reluctantly, half teasingly, it seemed like an odd mix. (Certainly taking your time about it was the phrase he used.) And though, as I say, I didn’t quite believe him at the start—how could he even be a Jew, with a countenance as fair as that?—I was obliged to stop and listen on account of some magnetic power he had, magical maybe (since, later, no one could remember seeing him), and I was also obliged to believe him afterwards, long afterwards, just by the very fact of my staying alive so incorrigibly…and then by the very fact of my coming back, so incorrectly.

  Therefore, I’m making progress. I believe that, too, and if there’s hope for me there must be hope for anyone.

  Improving…and the knowledge that you’re improving makes you want to improve still further, like when you’ve first got a bit of money saved and you’re keen to see it grow.

  Improving.

  But at what a cost.

  Because I’ve got to tell you.

  I’ve spilt blood! I’ve spilt a lot of human blood.

  Spring, 1190—and I myself am older than the century. There’s this man called Malebisse, Richard Malebisse, who’s the arch-conspirator against us Jews. And some months back he borrowed heavily from one of my neighbours, Benjamin of York. But, only a short time later, categorically denied having done so. Declared his signature was forged.

  The case was about to come to court. Malebisse would definitely have had to cough up. But one stormy night in mid-March he and a band of his henchmen broke into Benjamin’s house, killed him, killed everybody, then set the place on fire and carried off what treasure they could find.

  I heard the screams and smelt the smoke but thought at first these were only a part of some appalling dream. I believed that Benjamin had fortified his windows, doors and courtyard gates just as we all had, and kept servants always on the watch just as we all did. So by the time I’d struggled up and managed to get downstairs and out into the street, the murdering cowards had made their getaway. But I knew that it was Malebisse, because my own two servants saw him and soon afterwards, anyway, before he fled to Scotland, he even bragged about it. Drunkenly. Claimed recognition as—get this!—‘the man who gave the signal for the massacre’.

  That’s right. Massacre.

  For by the middle of the next day the narrow streets were all but jammed with looters on the rampage, with murderers crying out for vengeance. Vengeance for what, you ask? Vengeance for the fact our forefathers had come to England with nothing? Had by sheer hard work turned that nothing into something? Vengeance for the fact that a year ago hundreds of Christians had died in York from a localized plague which hadn’t killed a single Jew? For the fact that three ‘boy martyrs’ had recently been canonized in England because we allegedly had killed them—ritually and horribly—by crucifixion?

  Or was it vengeance for that most terrible crime of not sharing in their beliefs? Of being more thorough in our ablutions, more particular about our diets, more anxious to teach our sons whatever we could teach them?

  More intent on securing for ourselves a close-knit family life? Was it because they felt jealous of this—or threatened by it—or what?

  Anyhow.

  By now it was nearly dark and the whole of the Jewish population had been smoked out and was running for its life—or I, for my unmutilated limbs. There were fewer than two hundred of us; of them there were many thousands. We thought about hiding in one or other of the city’s forty churches, or in the crypt of the Minster, but that rabble would no more have respected the holy laws of their own places of worship than the sanctuary of ours. So we decided to make for the castle.

  We made for it along the back alleys and even—the more nimble amongst us—over the rooftops, and prayed we wouldn’t be anticipated. Behind the thickness of castle walls we might be safe; or certainly as safe as anywhere. The Royal Constable would have to let us in, since we went in fear of our lives and were as much the subjects of the King as were those who’d do us harm. In a day or two, we thought, the situation must surely be defused…either by the authorities or by the elements: it was excessively wet and windy. Disappointed of their sport, please God, and lacking the stamina for any lengthy siege, the crowds would eventually drift home in search of food and sleep and dry clothing. Besides—didn’t they have their livelihoods to think about?

  We assumed that getting to the castle would be the hardest part. We did so in little groups of two or three, and in the main, though terrified, were able to slip through successfully; only nine of us were seen and chased—and caught and killed. Plainly, I would have made a captured tenth, if it hadn’t been for the two young men who gave me their support, half lifting me between them as they ran. We huddled against walls, pressed into doorways—once disturbed a pair of sheltering cats which, stepped on in the gloom, sprang into screeching life. Often we heard the clamour of the crowd come agonizingly close, and saw the blaze of torches lighting up the brickwork only yards from where we cowered. But, yes, in the end, fighting for every breath and with the sweat of fear making our robes feel even damper and more weighty, we got there, to the castle. We got there and the Constable had been prevailed upon to admit us and safety seemed—almost—within our grasp.

  Yet there were those who didn’t trust the Constable and infused the rest of us with their suspicions.

  Until, eventually, we locked the man out of his own castle.

  Which proved a wretched move. The Constable appealed to the Sheriff of Yorkshire. And the Sheriff decided to use his soldiers to eject us.

  The soldiers joined the mob now waiting jubilant beneath the battlements. The people cheered at their arrival. They believed the presence of the troops bespoke the new King’s sanction for the way they were behaving. It was a kind of royal warrant.

  A white-robed monk, parading back and forth along the walls, whipped them up into an even greater frenzy. The soldiers had a battering ram with which they stormed the gate.

  By then, in spite of our more confident predictions, the siege had lasted several days. Several days of prayer and fasting and of trying to keep our spirits up, days of darkness and of hunger. Of shivering and of fear.

  Of the screaming of babies, the sobbing of children.

  Of acts of kindness and of sacrifice.

  Confessions in the dark.

  In conditions such as these…you learn about your fellow beings.

  But this was the end. There remained only one cour
se available to us if we wished to avoid a lingering death.

  If they wished to avoid a lingering death.

  Yet only exceptionally do we Jews commit the sin of suicide. So it was agreed that the men should first cut the throats of their children and their wives, then kill each other. Which was how it started. But the rising consternation as the children realized what was happening, the stifled sobs and hysteria of the mothers, the final terror in the eyes of women who had always been so giving and were now so dearly loved: all this led inevitably to a weakening of resolve. Strong men, hardened men, world-weary men—they found they couldn’t do it.

  And so it was that with the regular and horrifying thud of that battering ram shaking the very floor beneath us, the very walls around us, I felt obliged to volunteer my services.

  Oh, God! Dear God! I dispatched maybe sixty lives in the space of just ten or fifteen minutes.

  And it didn’t get any easier, not even after practice. “Peace, and may the Lord receive you,” fifty or sixty times over. All of these people were known to me, some of them were my friends, had shown me many kindnesses. This was a kindness I was showing in return but the thought did nothing to increase my courage—possibly the two most difficult throats to cut were those of the strong young men who had recently supported me, saying as they did so, “Are you all right, old Solomon, rest a moment, have no fear that we’ll desert you.”

  Only fifteen minutes, yes, but undoubtedly the most debilitating of my life…or lives. When I was the only living thing left in that foul-smelling room, I sank down on my knees through sheer exhaustion and slumped red-handed and wet-robed across the nearest pile of corpses.

  Not a minute too soon. Already they were battering at the dungeon door. The hinges were about to give.

  And, oh, you should have heard them shouting at us. Telling us to come out to be slaughtered. Asking if we had crucified any little boys recently. Describing the terrible things they were going to do to us as soon as they had broken through.