Table Talk - A Geschichte

Dear Lauren, Grace, Alice, Louis, Noah, Jonathan, Liz

Are  we all here? Good. Well, gather round because it's that time
of year again - Lauren's birthday - which means you all  need  to
humour  me once more. Make yourselves comfortable because I'm go-
ing to tell you a geschichte. But don't make yourselves too  com-
fortable,  because  I  know  only too well how easy it is to fall
asleep during a geschichte, however interesting it might be. Just
before we begin, can anyone tell me what a geschichte is? There's
a Werther's Original for the first one of you to tell me. No?  In
that  case,  I'll  eat  the  Werther's Original myself. And, as I
don't want to create a competitive spirit in  any  of  you,  I'll
award  a  Werther's  to each of you - only, as you are all so far
away, you'll have to ask your parents to pop out and buy some for
you, on my behalf.

'Geschichte'  is  a  German and Yiddish word.and it means 'story'
However, a Jewish geschichte is rather more of  a  story  than  a
German  geschichte,  I  think   Jews  like  geshichtes. What is a
geshichte? Well, I'll tell you. A geshichte is a story told in  a
special  way, which tells the truth. Actually, it tells the truth
in a special way. Really, it tells better than  the  truth.  Some
details  may be changed, some events introduced which, who knows,
may or may not have happened? The result is a story that is basi-
cally true, but better than true. I'll give you an example. Aesop
told geshichtes. You don't think the lion really  remembered  the
Christian,  do you? Of course you don't. The lion probably killed
the Christian. But what sort of a geshichte  is  that?  So  Aesop
told  the story about a different lion and a different Christian.
Does that make it untrue?  No.  It's  just  a  more  satisfactory
truth.  The  geschichte  I  am  telling you today isn't true. But
there's much truth about it. Just remember that it's a story.  It
didn't really happen. But it nearly did.

I'll  go  now.  We'll  all  be meeting later this year, all being
well. I'm really looking forward to it. Until then, all my love.

Grandpa

TABLE TALK

'Tell your father his dinner's ready ?,' said Rose, with a  clat-
ter of crockery on the table and winter in her words.

'She's not talking to me,' said Lou, with a shrug in his voice.

'?because I'm not talking to him.'

Very  clearly,  the reason for Rose's instruction to Stanley went
much further than her desire for Lou to get his  food  whilst  it
was still hot. If Stanley hadn't known this from past experience,
he would surely have deduced it from present  observation.  After
all, in a back-to-back house, everyone knows when dinner's ready.
Even the neighbours on all three sides know  when  your  dinner's
ready.  Stanley was only eight years old, but he knew this is how
grown-ups behave from time to time. First, she'd called him 'your
father'  and not 'your dad'. Then, he could see that Lou was sit-
ting much closer to the table than Stanley, so  the  request  was
unnecessary. Unnecessary as a request, that is; very necessary as
a technique.

'Tell your mother "Thank you very much",'  said  Lou  with  heavy
irony.

'He says "Thank you very much",' said Stanley.

'Tell  him  I can hear him clearly, thank you very much. Tell him
I'm not deaf. Tell him?'

'Why can't you tell him?' said Stanley. He might  be  only  eight
years  old,  but  he  wondered  which  of them was supposed to be
grown-up.

'Because I'm not talking to him,' said Rose,  with  the  finality
that only a perfectly logical answer deserved.

Lou  moved  from armchair to dining table, only a couple of steps
even for his short legs. He wasn't  angry,  just  resigned.  He'd
stopped being angry years ago. This is how Rose behaved. Happy to
humiliate him in front of his son.  Happy  to  humiliate  him  in
front of anyone, really. So, why wasn't he angry? Because he just
didn't care. When they were first married, he was hurt,  unhappy,
lonely  when  she didn't talk to him. Then a bit later, he became
angry at her nonsense. Then he stopped caring. He supposed he was
sad  as  well; sad that this is what being married was like. He'd
thought it was going to be different. Now, he  just  wished  that
when she wasn't talking to him, she'd keep quiet.

It's not as though he was a difficult man, or demanding or uncar-
ing. True, he was uneducated but so was every one of his  genera-
tion  and  background.  There'd been no chance for education; the
older children of large and poor immigrant families went straight
from  school  desk  to factory bench with scarcely time to change
their clothes. In Leeds, that usually meant MONTAGUE BURTON,  THE
TAILOR  OF  TASTE.  For Lou, this meant a lifetime at the cutting
room table. He had accepted this, of course;  that's  how  things
were.  You  had to cut your coat according to your cloth.But that
didn't stop him wishing for an education, even though  he  wasn't
too  sure what that meant. So he spent all his spare time reading
through the non-fiction sections of the public  library.  No  one
had told him that education could include reading novels. As soon
as he could afford it, he bought a ten-volume encyclopaedia on an
instalment  plan. In his search for wisdom, he read right through
from Volume One (A to Ashbrook) to Volume Ten (Sucre to Zyrians),
sadly  mistaking knowledge for wisdom. In one way it paid off. He
was constantly in demand at work to settle arguments and bets be-
tween  his workmates. In another way, it didn't pay off. He never
developed many social skills or made a lot of friends.

The three of them sat around the table, eating silently. If  only
it was silently, thought Rose. If only Lou could eat without mak-
ing loud eating noises. If only he didn't embarrass her  so  much
that  she was ashamed to go out to visit family with him for tea.
She couldn't even be sure that he wouldn't fart in company.

'Stanley, will you please pass me the salt?' she said.

Stanley looked at Rose, fat and domineering. Then  he  looked  at
Lou, thin and resigned. 'Jack Spratt,' Stanley used to think when
he was younger, 'and his wife Mrs Spratt, who didn't have a first
name.'  Then he looked at the salt on the table. The salt was al-
most exactly half way between her and Lou, and a good  deal  fur-
ther  away  from him. 'I wonder why she's not talking to him this
time?' he thought.

Lou picked up the salt cellar. 'I wonder why she's not talking to
me  this  time?'  he  thought, as he reached across the table and
handed the salt to Stanley. To tell the truth, he  didn't  really
care.  He just wished she'd leave him alone. 'Please pass this to
your mother,' he said.

'Don't you get all sarcastic with me,' said Rose.

'I thought you weren't talking to me,' said Lou.

Rose was livid. Why hadn't she married Sam  instead?  She'd  have
had  a  better  life  with him, she knew. And he'd begged her. On
bended knee.

'Tell me, why should I ever talk to you again?'

'What have I done?'

'"What have you done?" Better ask "What haven't you done?"'

Lou didn't like silly games. He couldn't  think  of  anything  he
hadn't  done  that  he should have done. He'd bought bread on his
way home from work. There were no cards on the mantelpiece, so he
hadn't  forgotten her birthday or their anniversary. In any case,
when had Rose ever not reminded him in good time when her  birth-
day  or their anniversary was coming up? Never. That's when. He'd
raked out the ashes and laid the fire before  he  went  to  work.
He'd  taken  the  ashes to the dustbin on his way to work. In any
case, even if he'd forgotten to take out the ashes, that wasn't a
hanging offence. Not even to Rose.

'So, tell me,' said Lou, 'what haven't I done?'

Stanley thought: 'Well, at least they're talking.' He was happier
when they were talking, even if they were arguing or shouting  at
each  other.  It  was  a bit friendlier than not talking. Stanley
felt more secure than when they weren't talking.

'If you don't know what you haven't done, then I'm not  going  to
tell you.'

'If you're not going to tell me, then I'm never going to know.'

'I'm not talking to you.'

Sometimes,  Stanley  couldn't tell the difference between talking
and not talking. Sometimes, Lou wished that Rose not  talking  to
him  was  permanent.  Not  only permanent but accurate. He wished
that when she wasn't talking to him, she'd keep her bloody  mouth
shut.

'I should have married Sam Blum.'

'You're right. You should.'

'I don't know why I didn't.'

Lou knew quite well why she didn't. 'Because he married Celia in-
stead,' he said.

'On the rebound!' Rose cried. 'On the rebound!  He  only  married
Celia because I turned him down.'

'Your best friend. She stole him.'

Stanley  found  this very interesting. Puzzling, but interesting.
How can you steal another person? Maybe he'd ask his mother a bit
later.  More puzzling, and a bit worrying, was the thought of his
mother with a different husband. Where would he fit in? Would  he
fit  in? Would there be a Stanley to fit in? He didn't know a lot
about having children but he knew you had to have a mother and  a
father.  Did  it  matter who the father was? Would he be the same
Stanley Ziff if his father had been  Sam  Blum?  Would  everybody
still  say  'He's got his father's eyes'? Or would they say 'He's
got Lou Ziff's eyes - you know, the one she didn't marry'?  Would
there still be a Stanley Ziff? Would they call him Stanley Blum?

Rose  was  nearly  beside  herself  with rage. 'I'll never, ever,
speak to you again,' she yelled, 'as long as I live.'

'From your lips to God's ear,' said Lou.

'Not if you beg me.'

'Who's begging?'

'On bended knee.'

'So if you're never going to speak to me  again,  why  don't  you
start  to not speak already?' He still didn't know what he hadn't
done. He didn't care, either. He went back to  his  armchair  and
picked up his newspaper.

'Mum,' said Stanley.

'What?'

'Are you ever going to speak to me again?'

'Of  course,  love.'  Poor  child, thought Rose, having to suffer
just because of his rotten father. It wasn't Stanley's fault that
Lou  was  always rowing with her. Why should the poor kid have to
suffer just because he was a bully?

'Can I ask you a question?' Stanley thought he'd better get some-
thing  sorted  out  right  away. Before he went to bed. Before he
said his prayers which, he assumed, would still ask God to  bless
Daddy  as well as Mummy; nobody had suggested that should change.
Before he was lying there in the dark, wide awake, not  tired,  a
bit  scared despite the fact that he would have asked God to keep
him safe till morning light (frankly, he wasn't sure that God was
up  to  the job). Before he got to the 'Can I have a drink of wa-
ter?' stage.  Before he got to that stage, he needed to ask.

'Go ahead,' said Mummy (because that's what Rose had suddenly be-
come).

'Well, if you had married Sam Blum, what about me?'

'What about you?'

'Would there still be me?'

'Now  look  what  you've done!' said Rose, who had snapped out of
being Mummy. She addressed her remarks to the one person  in  the
world  to whom she was never speaking again as long as she lived,
not if he begged her on bended knee.

'Have I begged you?' said Lou.

'What?'

'On bended knee? Stanley, have you heard me beg her to  speak  to
me?'

Stanley  couldn't  tell a lie. Well, he could. He had. Often. But
he didn't this time. 'No,' he said. Stanley  didn't  really  know
what  'bended  knee'  meant. Lou had always encouraged him to ask
questions when he didn't understand something.

'What does "bended knee" mean?' he asked

'It means?.' said Lou. He'd always believed  in  answering  Stan-
ley's  questions  because  that  was the only way the child would
learn. His own father had always believed  the  same  thing.  Not
that it had helped Lou much. He knew the answers to so many ques-
tions but still, here he was with a dead end factory  job  and  a
dead  end  home life. What good had it ever done him, knowing the
name of the longest river in the world, or the height of Everest,
or  the name of the first Labour Prime Minister, except to settle
bets amongst the men at work?

'Leave the child out of it,' said Rose.

'Leave me out of it,' said Lou.

'I want you should answer his question.'

'I want you should leave me alone,' said Lou, not quite under his
breath and he knew it.

Rose  went wild again. 'I know what I want. But I can't have what
I want. I want, I want?' She was almost  speechless  with  anger.
Almost. '?I want? I wish I'd never met you.'

'So  Sam  Blum  married your best friend. So you wish you'd never
met me. So you answer the boy's question. So where would he be if
you  had  your  wish?' said Lou. Not wishing to lose what he per-
ceived to be a great advantage, he pursued his point.  'Stanley,'
he  said, 'you're an intelligent boy. You work it out. You know a
boy's got to have a father. Your mother was jilted by  Sam  Blum?
('What's  "jilted" mean?' Stanley wondered) ?and she wishes she'd
never met me. Answer your own question.'

It was a question Stanley couldn't answer. After all, if he  knew
the  answer,  he wouldn't have asked the question. Rose knew what
Lou meant though and, after all, it was to her that he was  talk-
ing. Except, of course, they weren't talking to each other.

'There were others,' shouted Rose. 'I could have had anybody when
I was younger.'

'So there you are,' said Lou. 'Anybody could have been  your  fa-
ther.'

You  can't  storm out of the living room of a back-to-back house.
There's nowhere to storm except into the street and Rose wouldn't
give  the  neighbours the satisfaction. In any case, she was cer-
tain that they'd heard every  word  of  the  argument.  In  fact,
they'd probably only heard her side of the story because Lou nev-
er ever raised his voice. That was another thing about  him  that
made  her  mad.  So she did the next best thing. She stormed into
the kitchen, all of three steps away, and started to wash up.

That was the end of the argument. Lou and Rose  didn't  speak  to
each  other  for the rest of the evening, nor for the next day or
two. Lou never found out what it was that he  hadn't  done.  Rose
probably  forgot.  And,  of  course, Stanley was no clearer about
anything.


*

Sometime, years in the future, Lou Ziff will have a sudden  heart
attack.  He  will  die quickly, without knowing that he is dying.
Rose will be with him. She won't know that he's dying, either. It
will  be  during  one of the times when they are speaking to each
other but neither of them will say anything.

Sometime after that, Stanley will sit one evening with  Rose.  Of
course,  by  now  he will have a wife and family of his own, Rose
will realise that he can't spend a great deal of time  with  her,
but she knows that she's a woman who doesn't complain.

'It's a pity you hardly ever visit,' she'll say.

'Four times a week? Hardly ever?'

'The days are long. The nights are longer.'

'I come as often as I can,' he'll say.

'I  know,  love,  I  know.  But it's lonely. Do you know what the
worst part is?'

'No.'

'Not having anyone to talk to. That's what I miss. The chats. The
discussions.  We were very close, Lou and me. Always something to
talk about.'

Stanley doesn't believe in God. If he had believed in  God,  he'd
have  thanked Him silently for his mother's selective memory. In-
stead, he'll smile.