Live a Little, by Howard Jacobson
CHARLES KEEN
Live a Little
Jonathan Cape £18.99 It may be the ultimate in ageism for a man in his 70s to write a satirical novel about women (and a man) in their 90s, picking over the detritus of their murky sex lives. But we can forgive Mr Jacobson anything for the sake of his wit and wisdom.
Beryl Dusinberg (‘the Princess Schw… you know who’, as she calls herself to herself) has reached a state of amnesia in which she cannot remember and cannot count the throng of husbands and lovers who have enjoyed her sexual favours. It matters not, because none has inspired any emotion in her. Her heart is hard, and love is a physical activity. Children – it is hard to remember how many, or what happened to them – are part of the luggage of life. The only two who are still in touch, Sandy and Pen, are crashing bores – one a Labour MP, one a Tory. So were their fathers. She calls them Laurel and Hardy, though they are unfunny.
She speaks in epigrams, and many a true word is spat out in jest. The only nice and normal people in her life are her carers, Nastya (pronounced Nastier) from Moldova and Euphoria from Uganda. Nastya has come to England in search of a lord to marry. Euphoria is a huge woman, garishly dressed in tight-fitting, primitive colours, sweet and devoted to her mistress, who teases her a lot, but is not unkindly. ‘She has a heart like molasses,’ and needs to be toughened.
The Princess lives in Finchley Road, not far from the Chinese restaurant owned by Raymond Ho, who lets the upstairs room to Shimi Carmelli in exchange for the latter telling the fortunes of his clients. Shimi, who is 90, has an infallible memory and an acquired skill with cards (as well as knowledge of phrenology), which equip him for the profession of ‘cartomancy’; roughly speaking, if you can ascertain a person’s past and know their mental bumps, you can divine what’s going to happen to them next. Shimi is tormented by the past. ‘He truly does remember everything. What he would give not to!’
One memory in particular cannot be banished and has blighted his entire life. In his early teens, he secretly tried on his mother’s bloomers and climbed into bed. He was instantly shocked and sickened by his own unnatural behaviour and, from then on, sought to exile himself from the world of men. His father brutalised him and his younger brother excelled him in all worldly activities. He constructed a protective wall round himself and lived in isolation from the world.
And, of course, that puts him in a position not dissimilar to that of the ‘Princess’. She is flamboyant, worldly and rich but stone-cold inside, because that for her is the only way to avoid being sucked down in the turgid soup of male emotionalism.
In this way, they discover a lot of things about each other, including, disturbingly, that each has a streak of human decency lurking deep down within. Both reveal one more horrible secret from their pasts. They share, too, a gift for repartee, so, as any good cartomancer could have predicted, they are made for twinning.
This novel is pervaded by Jacobson’s ‘unsmiling sense of the absurd’. Readers would be ungrateful not to allow themselves an occasional smile or chortle. The pathos may be left to do its own work.