Prelude To A Certain Midnight

15

She wanted to do something to somebody. She felt a need for a hushed Old Bailey, a Black Cap, a Sentence, a rope snapping taut and a gratified crowd outside grey walls half-cheering while a man in uniform pinned up a bit of paper. She was out for blood. First of all she tried to get hold of the Superintendent at Scotland Yard; but he had had about enough of Asta Thundersley and was not available when she called, nor did he reply to a six-page letter which she sent him. She made several attempts to get hold of Detective-Inspector Turpin: he, aware that he had managed, with all the goodwill in the world, to put a new bee into Asta’s bonnet — which was already droning like a kicked hive — thanked God for an assignment that sent him to the north.

For the first time of her life, Asta was conscious of a sense of frustration. She realized that the police had their difficulties, but felt that if she were the police she would manage to do something drastic and sensational. In any case, she was determined to make trouble for someone, somewhere, somehow. The Home Secretary was out of town. The Secretary for Scotland was the only other Cabinet Minister whom she knew, and he was, or pretended to be, ill. London, which she had hitherto seen as a concentration camp for persecuted dogs and starved children, now became, in her eyes, something like a criminal sanctuary full of ravening child-murderers. She could not live in peace while the killer of Sonia Sabbatani was at large. So at last she decided to do something about it on her own.

She began by calling on the Sabbatanis. She knew them. Sam Sabbatani used to send to her house every week or so for clothes to be sponged and pressed. Now, when she saw him, she was shocked. His child had been dead for seven days, and the Sabbatanis were observing the prescribed eight days of mourning. He had not shaved for a week, and his cheeks, which were sunken and flabby — for he had been unable to eat since his daughter disappeared — were covered with a black-grey mat of sprouting beard. Mrs Sabbatani, in the first burst of her grief, had torn out some of her hair: there was a little raw patch on her forehead. The room was full of people; at least ten men and a dozen women. Asta arrived in the evening after they had finished the mourner’s prayer: she heard the last mutter of it and the concluding Amen as she came up the stairs; then, as she entered the room, the prayer having finished, conversation broke out. She darted forward, got Mrs Sabbatani in her wrestler’s grip, shed a few genuine tears and said:

‘Oh, my dear, my dear! Oh, my poor dear! What can I say? What can I do?’ In that moment she ceased to be a crusader and wanted only to be able to work a miracle — to produce Sonia Sabbatani alive and give her back to her mother.

‘So nice of you to come.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do, Mrs Sabbatani, is there? If there is, say so.’

‘Do? Do? What is there to do? It is nice of you to come. It is nice of you to think of it. What more is there to do?’

Sam Sabbatani, who had been listening, seemed suddenly to go out of his mind. He burst into tears and began to shout in a language which Asta Thundersley could not understand: a thunderous, reverberating language made terrifying by the intensity of his emotion. He shook his fists at the ceiling and shouted. Sam Sabbatani was calling upon the head of the murderer the curse that is written in the book of Deuteronomy:

‘Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field! Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store. Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine and the flocks of thy sheep! Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out! The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexations and rebuke in all that thou settest thy hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings whereby thou hast forsaken me! The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee until He hath consumed thee from off the land whither thou goest to possess it! The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption and with a fever, and with an inflammation and with an extreme burning, and with the sword and with blasting, and with mildew — and they shall pursue thee until thou perish…’

It went on. Even Asta Thundersley was shocked to silence by the frightful vehemence of the man:

‘… And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night and shalt have no assurance of thy life! In the morning thou shalt say, would God it were even! And at even thou shalt say, would God it were morning! For the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see…’

The old man in the round hat, and another old man with a rabbinical grey beard and a skull cap, forced Sabbatani back into his chair, while a woman thrust into his trembling hand a glass of tea with a slice of lemon floating in it, and an aged man with a clipped silver beard told him: ‘It is a sin to curse like that. You don’t repeat that curse. Sha, then!’

Asta was glad that none of her friends or enemies were present, because the time had come when she, of all God’s creatures, was struck dumb. She had understood the intonation and the gestures but not the words; Sabbatani had been speaking Hebrew with a Rumanian accent, the old man in the round hat had been speaking Yiddish with a Polish accent, and the old man with the bristly beard had been speaking something that sounded like a mixture of Aramaic and Lithuanian — which everybody else appeared to understand, since, when he had finished speaking, there had been some npdding of heads and clicking of tongues. Asta withdrew to the back of the room, edging towards the door, and there she almost collided with Catchy, with whom she had exchanged a few civil words from time to time in the Bar Bacchus. Catchy’s eyes were shiny and purple with weeping; they opened and closed slowly, like squeezed antirrhinums.

‘Have you ever heard anything more terrible in your life? No, but have you? That poor child! These poor people! And someone did it who knew them! Oh, darling, what is one to do? Look at him! Look at poor Sam! He used to be fat, fat as a pig — and shaved, shaved like a billiard ball. And now look. Oh God, dear God, is it possible to imagine? And look at Mrs Sabbatani. Those eyes! That hair! When she heard the news she tore a handful out — but by the roots, the roots — and her poor dear blood ran down! Oh, Miss Thundersiey, Miss Thundersley, what can one do, what can one do?’

This question recalled Asta Thundersley to herself. She said: ‘Do, Catchy? Do? I don’t know what I’m going to do, but you mark my words — something is going to be done. Something or other, as I’m a living sinner! You wait and see!’

A belated condoler, saying as he came in: ‘I wish you long life,’ trod on her foot, for the room was crowded.

She brushed him aside; looked towards Mrs Sabbatani and saw a densely-packed mass of muttering people; postponed her intention of rushing over and going into details; turned and rattled away down the stairs on her hard flat heels. Asta went out purposefully, as she had come in. But in the wet, dreary street a puff of wind, like a derisive sudden laugh, sprayed her with ice-cold rain. She turned up her collar. A hundred yards away a policeman in a blue greatcoat stamped through a puddle of rain in a disc of lamplight. The wind whistled and the rain came down, striking the shop window and making a noise that sounded like a sort of signal: What to do? What to do, what to do, what to do? To do what? To do what, to do what?

Full of impotent anger, Asta Thundersley went home.