Kafka in Brontëland
Derek tells me about the first time he ever laid eyes on a Black man. “I just stared.” It was in the next village. “Nothing so exceptional now.” “Yes,” nods Hilda. “You don’t see that many here still ; but they’re creeping up the valley road.”
Hilda is a Baptist, Derek a Wesleyan ; or it might be the other way round. They are always sparring. When she hears that I play the piano, she lends me a copy of The Methodist Hymn Book. “You’re not the only Jew round here, you know. Mr. Simons who runs the off licence, I think he’s half-Jewish.”
I ask about Mr. Kafka. Kafka, I say uncertainly, is a Jewish name.
“I thought he was Polish. Isn’t he Polish, Derek?”
“Dutch,” says Derek, with conviction. He lights his pipe. “Some sort of a writer fellow, so I’ve heard.”
Then he tells a story about the Irish navvies who helped to build the reservoir. One of them, who was in love with the same lass as his neighbour, took the brake off one of the carts one day and ran him over, and they carried him up to the village, dead. “They said it was an accident,” he concludes, “but you ask Ian Ogden and he’ll always tell you, murder was committed in this village.”
The Greenwoods and the Shackletons all have Irish blood. Derek’s great-grandfather was a Sussex landlord. Hilda’s used to make boots for Branwell Brontë.
Twice a week I ride down from the white highlands to the black town. In fact it is more of a grey colour. It has a shopping centre, a cenotaph and a community college. I am learning Urdu.
Ap ka nam kiya hai?
Mera nam Judith hai.
On Tuesdays I teach English to a young woman from Lahore. She is recently married: at the moment she seems to spend most of her time rearranging the furniture in the lounge. Every time I visit we sit somewhere else.
As a matter of fact her English is rather more advanced than my Urdu. She has a degree in Psychology. I decide we will read Alice in Wonderland together.
Mrs. Rahim has lovely tendrils of hair at the nape of her neck, and I spend much of the lesson watching her play with them. I also stare at a framed picture of the Ka’ba done in hologram. The mad dream of Wonderland, taken at such protracted length, makes no sense whatever: we might as well be reading Japanese.
Mr. Rahim pops his head around the door: a cheerful face, a white kurta. He is carrying a live chicken by the legs. Shortly afterwards I hear him killing it in the kitchen.
As I leave the house at five the children are making their way to mosque to learn Koran: boys in white prayer caps, solemn little girls in long habits. I remember that a Jew should not live more than half a mile from a synagogue, to prevent the desecration of the sabbath ; nor can he pray the services alone. Ten men are required for a congregation; though they do say that a Jewish woman is a congregation in herself.
