Then he spoke. Aloud. One word.
Not as Archimedes might have spoken it. Not with any recognisable emotion. Rather in the tone of the I-speak-your-weight machines that had enlivened the railway stations of his childhood. Mechanically, but with assertion.
‘Jonah,’ he said.
Harry Pendel was having his grand vision at last. It floated before him at this very minute, intact, superb, fluorescent, complete. He’d had it from the start, he now realised, like a wad of money in his back pocket when all this time he’d been starving, thinking he was broke, struggling, aspiring, straining for knowledge he never quite possessed. Yet he possessed it! It had been sitting there, his very own to dispose of, his secret store! And he’d forgotten its existence until now! And here it was before him in glorious polychrome. My grand vision, pretending to be a wall. My conspiracy that has found its cause. The original uncut version. Brought to your screens by popular demand. And radiantly illuminated by anger.
And its name is Jonah.
It is a year ago but in Pendel’s vaulting memory it is here and now and on the wall in front of him. It is a week after Benny’s death. It is two days into Mark’s first term at the Einstein and one day after Louisa has resumed gainful employment with the Canal. Pendel is driving his first-ever four-track. His destination is Colón, the purpose of his mission twofold: to pay his monthly visit to Mr Blüthner’s textile warehouse, and to become a member of the Brotherhood at last.
He drives fast, as people do when they are driving to Colón, partly out of fear of highwaymen, partly in anticipation of the riches of the Free Zone ahead of them down the road. He is wearing a black suit that he has put on in the shop in order not to cause aggravation in the home and he has six days’ worth of stubble. While Benny grieved for a departed friend, he gave up shaving. Pendel can do no less for Benny. He has even brought a black Homburg, though he intends to leave it on the back seat.
‘It’s a rash,’ he explains to Louisa, who for her comfort and safety has not been informed of Benny’s death as such, having been led to believe some years ago that Benny had died in alcoholic obscurity and accordingly presented no further threat. ‘I think it’s that new Swedish aftershave I was testing for the boutique,’ he adds, inviting her concern.
‘Harry, you will write to those Swedes and you will tell them their lotion is dangerous. It is not appropriate for sensitive skins. It is life-threatening for our children, it is inconsistent with Swedish notions of hygiene and if the rash persists you will sue the daylights out of them.’
‘I’ve already drafted it,’ says Pendel.
The Brotherhood is Benny’s last wish, expressed in a failing scrawl that arrived at the shop after his death:
Harry boy, what you have been to me no question is a pearl of very great price except in one regard which is Charlie Blüthner’s Brotherhood. A fine business you’ve got, two children and who knows what’s in the pipeline. But the plum is still before you and why you wouldn’t pick it all these years is beyond me. Who Charlie doesn’t know in Panama is not worth knowing, plus good works and influence have always gone hand in hand, with the Brotherhood behind you you’ll never want for business or necessities. Charlie says the door’s still open plus he owes me. Though never as much as I’ll owe you, my son, when I’m standing in the corridor waiting for my turn, which in my private opinion is a longshot but don’t tell your Auntie Ruth. This place is all right if you like rabbis.
Blessings
Benny
Mr Blüthner in Colón rules over half-an-acre of open-plan offices full of computers and happy secretaries in high-necked blouses and black skirts and he is the second most respectable man in the world after Arthur Braithwaite. Each morning at seven he boards his company plane and has himself flown for twenty minutes to Colón’s France Field airport where he is set down among the gaily-painted aircraft of Colombian import-export executives who have dropped by to do a little taxfree shopping or, being too busy, sent their womenfolk instead. Each evening at six he flies home again, except on Fridays when he flies home at three, and at Yom Kippur when the firm takes its annual holiday and Mr Blüthner atones for sins that no one knows about except himself and, until a week ago, Uncle Benny.