The Tomb and Other Stories
Page 5
Paul felt a twinge of sadness as he looked at them. Jacob Wolff and Leon Polak had retired from the factory some years ago, while his father was still alive. When his father died and the business passed to him, dear old Abel Goedschalk had stayed on; now he too had retired. Much had changed since then. In their day the cutters, polishers, and traders were almost all Jewish, a traditional association with the diamond trade that extended back five centuries and had made Antwerp the diamond capital of the world. These days he was as likely to be dealing with Indians, Lebanese, Zairians, Armenians and Russians as Jews. It made little difference to him, so long as he could still rely on the skills of the workers and an honest handshake from the traders. Paul himself was a Catholic, a descendant of an aristocratic banking family which had started dealing in diamonds in the late eighteenth century. Nonetheless he had worked among Jews for so long that he had acquired many of the same speech inflections, especially when in conversation with them.
“Listen,” Paul said. “I was at the International Gem Fair in Las Vegas last month. They introduced me to a lady there, a Mrs. Plotnik. She was wearing a pendant with a diamond the size of a golf ball. I say to her, ‘That’s a beautiful stone’. She says, ‘Yes, it’s the Plotnik diamond. But you should know that with this diamond comes a coise.’ ‘A curse?’ I say. ‘So what is the curse of the Plotnik diamond?’ She says ‘Mr. Plotnik’.”
Leon passed his hand across his eyes. “Paul, that story has a beard longer than mine.”
“Yes, but he tells it good,” said Abel.
“You brought us here to tell us stories?” asked Jacob.
“No, I brought you here to show you this.” Paul opened a desk drawer and withdrew a roll of black velvet. He placed it on the desk and unrolled it.
*
In the street outside, the busy Antwerp traffic had ground to a halt. A van driver gazed idly out of the side window, past the rain-soaked pavement criss-crossed with a moving sea of umbrellas, over to the shabby, anonymous building with bars on its windows, and up at the third floor, where the rain was continuously materialising in the light from one window. A horn sounded. He cursed, turned slowly back, engaged gear and moved forward a few yards. Meanwhile, behind that third-floor window, four men were gazing at a rough diamond.
Diamond! Pure carbon, forged by unimaginable heat and pressure into a lattice so perfect, so strong, that it was harder than any other mineral. A crystal that could be cleaved and faceted and polished so that the dimmest illumination was refracted and splintered and hurled back in a thousand flashes of coloured light. A gem coveted the world over, for rings and bracelets, necklaces, tiaras and pendants, crowns and sceptres. And this one was huge.
The three men took turns, donning magnifying loupes to examine the stone minutely, turning it in the beam of a fibre optic light Paul kept on his desk.
Paul watched them. Jacob, a big man, beetle-browed, his gruff manner concealing a warm heart. Leon, the sufferer, who wore a wool scarf even in the height of summer, and never entered a room without hunching his shoulders forward and rubbing his dry hands together to chafe some life into them. Abel, a mild-mannered, gentle man, whose clothes always looked a couple of sizes too large for him. They were not just ex-employees; the bond was stronger than that.
*
In November 1941 the Nazi occupiers ordered the expulsion of all Jewish children from the public schools. It was the latest in a string of decrees, and Herman Demeester, Paul’s father, decided it was time to act. He offered his employees the chance to send their children to safety in England; he himself organized and paid for the transport. Twenty-two children went. The rest stayed because their parents could not bear to be parted from them and did not think things would get any worse. Within two months the borders were closed to Jews. In another six months the deportations had begun, to Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Ravensbruck, and Bergen-Belsen.
The children who had been sent to England thrived. As soon as the war was over they returned to Antwerp, anxious to be re-united with their families, only to learn that they would never see them again. Some returned disconsolately to England. Others contacted Herman Demeester and came to work at the factory. Among them were three teenagers, Jacob Wolff, Leon Polak and Abel Goedschalk. They never forgot why they were alive.
In the post-war years Antwerp began to dominate the world diamond market once more. There was a new mood of optimism. Herman Demeester married, and within a year the couple had a son, Paul. Paul liked to ride the train to Centraal Station with his father, to walk through the strangely characterful Diamond Quarter to the factory, and to watch the men working on the sparkling stones. And so he became something of a favourite with Uncle Jacob, Uncle Leon and Uncle Abel.
*
“Very nice,” said Jacob.
Leon looked affronted. “‘Very nice’, he says.”
“So what else should I say?”
“All your lifetime you should have the luck, the… the privilege, of casting eyes on such a stone!”
“So I’m saying different? What do you want of my life? I said, it’s a lovely stone.”
Abel spoke in hushed tones. “It must be close to a hundred carats.”
“Good guess, Abel. 96.72 carats, to be precise. Of course we’ll lose in the splitting and cutting.”
“How to split it, that’s the question,” Jacob said.
“That’s why I brought you here,” said Paul. “I need your advice.”
Paul had little faith in the modern analysts with their degrees and expensive scientific instruments. They could distinguish real from fake, natural from synthetic, or determine geographical origin. But when it came to the crucial step of splitting a stone these three old men were still the best in the business, and he would get an opinion based not just on expert knowledge, but on love and loyalty.
“It’s not easy,” said Jacob.
“What do you mean?” Paul asked quickly.
“He means,” Abel said, “that it’s not a single crystal.”
Leon nodded. “It’s more like an unequal twin. Just where you should divide it there’s two cleavage planes with a small angle between them. It’s tricky.”
“You can’t treat it as a single. You cleave it here, you get two stones about twenty or twenty-five carats, not an ideal shape but usable.” Jacob offered. “The other piece will give you three of about fifteen carats, and some left over. Cut and polished you’re looking at five good stones, a twelve, a ten, a couple of eights and a seven, and quite a few nice brilliants.”
“No.”
“Whaddaya mean ‘No’?”
“What I mean,” said Leon, “is that if you cleave it here, you get a fifty-five and a forty. The forty you have to divide again. Cut and polished you end up with two nice ten-carat stones, bu…t,” he raised a forefinger, “you get the big one, thirty or thirty-five carats minimum.”
“Yes, yes,” Jacob agreed impatiently, “but look at the risk. If you go just slightly this way, it’ll shatter. It’s always a risk, but on this one it’s a real risk. You could end up with a whole bunch of small rocks. You might as well not begin with such a stone.”
“All the same, you hit it right you got yourself a world-class diamond.”
Jacob grimaced. “So, Paul, do you want to play safe, and turn a nice profit, or go for the big one and risk getting a heap of garbage?”
Paul was thoughtful, but not for long. “I may never get another chance like this. I want the Plotnik!”
They smiled. Leon sighed. “You know, I think your father would have said the same, God rest his soul.”
“Oleha hashalom,” grunted Jacob.
“A saint of a man,” added Abel.
Paul leaned forward. “Can you do it?”
“We got the experience but we ain’t got the hands any more. You need someone at the top of his profession. Old enough to have the knowledge and the experience; young enough to have a steady hand and a cool head.”
“How about Elie Pinkhof?”
“Why doesn’t his wife light them?”
“You didn’t hear? His wife passed away. Must’ve been a good year ago.”
“Really? I didn’t hear. Usually I hear.”
“Gentlemen…?”
“Oscar Meijer,” announced Jacob.
The others considered this, puckering their lips and nodding slowly.
“Oscar’s good,” agreed Leon.
“The best,” agreed Abel. “Modern, but experienced.”
“Is he a planner or a cleaver?”
“It’s not a production line job. He’d want to do both.”
“Do you think he’d take it on?”
“A stone that size he’ll come to see. Make him a good offer, that’s all.”
*
Oscar Meijer was the hit man of the diamond profession. He wore thin white gloves except when he was working, and preserved an icy calm, never drinking, using bad language or indulging in any other behaviour that might affect the sureness of his touch. He studied the stone carefully in Paul’s office, examined the laboratory findings, and listened with deference to Jacob, Leon and Abel. In view of the risk, Paul explained, he would give Oscar a percentage of the value of what he produced, rather than a fixed fee. Oscar’s eyes gleamed briefly. Paul realized he’d created a massive incentive, and wondered if he should have added so much to the pressure. Oscar made one stipulation: only Paul would be allowed to watch. Jacob, Leon and Abel could wait in the office.
Oscar worked with great deliberation. He set the rough diamond in place with a quick-drying cement. He used a laser to cut a fine groove in the surface of the stone. He picked up a razor-sharp steel blade, placed it in the groove and spent an unconscionable time aligning it. He seemed to be holding the blade at an awkward angle, and a fine mist of sweat had formed on his forehead. He raised the mallet. Paul swallowed hard and licked his lips. He heard the sharp tap as the mallet came down. And then Oscar Meijer did a very uncharacteristic thing: he uttered a short, extremely rude word.
*
When Paul returned to the office he looked ashen. The three old men leapt up, searching his face for clues.
Slowly Paul stretched out his arms, turned his face to the ceiling. Then he shouted to the world at large, “I’ve got the Plotnik!”
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then they all started to embrace one another, hammering their palms on each other’s backs. They linked arms around shoulders and danced a wild hora in the middle of the office. Leaving Abel gasping in a chair, Paul pulled open the top drawer of a filing cabinet, withdrew a bottle of whisky, and started to fill glasses. His secretary came in to find out what all the noise was about.
“Ah, Mrs. Stern, just in time! Here, hand these around and…” He looked up to see Oscar Meijer standing in the doorway with a handkerchief in his hands. “Come in, Oscar! Oh, Mrs. Stern – could you do something for Mr Meijer’s thumb? He cut it just now when he was cleaving a diamond for me.”
[First published in Alexei’s Tree and Other Stories, Matador, 2005]
Mountain Walk
I had a strange sensation the whole time we were on the mountain. I don’t know whether the others felt it too; no one actually said anything about it. In fact they weren’t saying anything at all; I’ve never known them so subdued on a walk. I couldn’t see Gwen around and I prefer my own company to dull company so when we reached the plateau I took a detour and left the main party behind me.
The sun had come out when we set off that morning; it warmed the crisp Autumn air and chased cloud shadows over the rolling Welsh countryside. It had been lovely weather for walking, but once we reached the mountain the sky turned to the colour of putty and it stayed like that for the rest of the day. A fine drizzle came down from time to time. It wasn’t raining hard. That was something.
I turned up eventually at the meeting place, a pub called “The Druid’s Ring”. I was sure I’d be the last to arrive, but when I looked around I couldn’t see Gwen.
“Gwen not here?” I asked the rest of the party.
They stared at me in stony silence. Somehow their pale faces all looked the same. I’d never noticed that before.
“I best go back and look for her then, shall I?” I said.
I thought someone would say, “Wait there, man, and I’ll come with you.” But again that stony silence. I shrugged and went out on my own.
It wasn’t easy finding the route back. The whole mountainside was criss-crossed with rough paths, most of which petered out to nothing. When I reached the plateau I found myself alone with the standing stones. They stood in rather more than a half-circle, rocky sentinels, carved with intricate spirals, circles and radiating lines. Solid. Implacable. A light mist began to settle on the plateau, deadening all sounds. The horizon disappeared and only the tops of the stones were visible above the mist. My palms were tingling; that sensation I’d had before was very strong now. What strange Celtic magic had been worked in this place? What spells had been woven, what ancient rituals performed, within this charmed stone circle? The mist thickened and I was left floating in the whiteness. I couldn’t see the standing stones any more, but I could feel their presence. It seemed like the whole plateau was laced with a spider’s web of invisible forces; I’d blundered into it and it was drawing me in. Panic rose in my chest; I backed off, turned and stumbled away.
The mist was spilling over the edge of the plateau and curling around the rocks scattered on the upper slopes of the mountainside. It was still clear lower down, though, otherwise I wouldn’t have spotted Gwen’s backpack, discarded on a patch of thin grass. I slipped and slid down the slope. Her clothes were close by, outside a cleft in the mountainside. I squeezed through. The diffuse light illuminated a pool. In it was Gwen. She was swimming, stark naked.
“Jesus, Gwen, I been looking everywhere for you, girl. Come out of there now!”
She stood in the shallow pool with just her head and shoulders out of the water, and smoothed back her wet hair. It was like a painting of a mythological scene.
She looked at me, eyes half-closed in an expression of dreamy sensuality. “What’s your hurry?” she said, in her lovely low voice. “We have all eternity in front of us.”
A feeling of great contentment washed over me, all tension vanished from my body, and I sighed with relief. She was right: there was no urgency, none whatever. I would join her in the pool and we would swim there for ever…
It took an immense effort to bring my brain back into focus. I knew I had to act quickly before the feeling overtook me again. I waded in and dragged her out. She made no protest. She stood there unselfconsciously as I tried to avert my eyes from her breasts, from the dark flame of pubic hair. It was cold in there, but she wasn’t shivering.
Outside I helped her into her clothes. We walked down to join the others, and neither of us said a word the whole way. As we approached the pub the faint sounds of lively conversation leaked down the path and when I opened the door the noise was overwhelming. The door closed behind us and we paused in the sudden embrace of warm air laden with the smell of cigarettes and wood smoke and beer, damp clothes and wet dogs. They looked up and saw who it was and gave a little cheer; someone patted me on the back and put a drink in my hand; I saw that Gwen had one too. It was good to be among friendly faces – whatever made me think they all looked the same before? There was a nice log fire going, so we went and sat in front of it to dry our clothes while the others returned to their tables and resumed their conversations.
The firelight flickered on Gwen’s face. Red highlights danced through strands of her hair that had broken free. I felt very close to her. We were enjoying each other’s company more and more since we first started to meet on these walks a few months ago. Even so, she was holding off from the greater intimacy I thought we both needed.
She sensed I was watching her and tu
rned to look at me. She smiled. I asked her gently what she thought was happening to her when I found her. She was taken aback for the moment. Then she laughed.
“Get it right, Mike!” she said. “It was me who found you, remember?”
She must have seen the expression on my face, because she continued patiently: “You didn’t show up here so I offered to go back and look for you. I found you wandering around – soaking wet, you were – muttering something about naked girls in a grotto...” She frowned. “What’s the matter?”
“Come on now, Gwen,” I said. “I can understand you being embarrassed but…”
“Embarrassed? Why the hell should I be embarrassed?”
I started to feel irritated. “Look, Gwen, it wasn’t any girl I found swimming naked in that underground pool. It was you.”
She recoiled. “In your dreams!”
“Well, how come my trousers and socks and shoes are soaking wet, then?”
“Oh, you were wading around in some pool somewhere, Mike. But whoever or whatever was in it, it wasn’t me, you can be very sure of that!”
“But your clothes are still damp and your hair too…”
“They’re damp because it was raining and cold and I still came back to look for you, you ungrateful man! Go and ask one of the others if you don’t believe me now.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you…”
“Go on,” she urged. “You won’t be happy till you get it sorted. Ask Dilwyn. He was here.”
Dilwyn Williams was talking to Huw Roberts. He saw me coming and broke off.
“All right, are you?” he boomed, raising a pint glass of beer, half full. Dilwyn was going on the walks to lose weight. Unfortunately he always had such a thirst when we finished that he immediately put it all back on again.
“Thanks,” I nodded. “Dilwyn, when we met up here earlier and I said I was going back…”
“What are you talking about, man?” he said.
“You didn’t see me earlier?”
They both shook their heads. I bit my lip. I had the same crawling sensation I’d experienced on the plateau.