Gold-Hatted, High-Bouncing Lover

Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

ONE                                                 

The beaches on the North Shore were closed as enormous seas stormed the coast. There were warnings on the radio. The two young men had hired a jeep to take a look – as Sol said, brimming with New York skepticism, ‘to see what all the damned fuss is about!’

On the beach at Sunset they stood side by side at a respectful distance from the water’s hissing surge of foam. A large crowd of people, mostly beach clad, mostly young, had gathered to watch.

Surrounded by tanned well-built youths, Coredale was aware of his own average, perhaps even meager, physique; Sol was even less impressive. He was short, the top of his balding head barely came to Coredale’s shoulder. His skin was sallow and with sharp features, an abnormally large pointed nose, and skinny frame, he might be mistaken for an Indian guru, someone spiritual, until you heard the Brooklyn accent. And saw the glint in the eye.

With the sun’s heat Coredale sweated heavily under his grey Harvard T-shirt, which, though desperate for a tan, he had decided not to remove for fear of revealing his New York winter whiteness.

His irritation with Sol had increased from the moment they stepped onto the beach. Sol was being a damned idiot, dancing and jigging about like an excited child. Coredale imagined people were looking at them with snide amusement. Though he feared to lose Sol in the crowd, mentally he was trying to conjure some metaphysical distance between them.

They had met three days before and Coredale quickly saw, with some distaste and bewilderment, that Sol possessed an unwholesome willingness to give of his all. As with most generalisations, Coredale reflected, given time, this might not prove entirely accurate, or even fair.

Coredale was gullible. He ignored all the signs, gave charlatans the benefit of his doubt. It was a form of cowardice, he supposed. It shamed him that he shirked even minor confrontations. Uncovering some long suspected deceit, he would also be surprised to discover his own guilt – his fault for being such a fool! It was obvious from the start that Sol was, if not a complete liar, a dissembler.

Meeting him back in wintry America, Sol had not seemed too awful, not much different from the dark and bulkily clad mass of the nondescript that made up the student body.

Here on the beach in tropical Hawaii, his skinny frame exposed, he invited pity or scorn (with Coredale it change from second to second).

Coredale had been embarrassed then angered at the first sight of Sol as he stepped boldly onto the sand in the skimpiest of swim suits, a tiny bulging bright yellow triangle of shiny material that flashed and winked disconcertingly in the sun.

Coredale had been musing on what to do with the situation (and for him it was a situation) when he was bumped rudely, nearly fell; some fat person clutching a hamburger had suddenly barged in front of them to get a better view of the wild ocean. Coredale felt a sudden rage. But then quickly recovering, told himself he would just have to make the best of things. Even so, he couldn’t help reflecting how his relatives, most of whom were esteemed and privileged, and none of whom had ever been known to stand for any kind of nonsense, let alone displays of bad form…oh, with what amused astonishment they would regard his plight!

A haze hung over the beach and Coredale licked his lips to taste the salt.

My God! he gasped, as he caught sight of what appeared to be people, far out to sea, in peril, beyond the swelling line of waves. Look! Sol, look! There! People! Out there! Sol, hey, look at that! I think…my god, what is it?

Sol couldn’t hear against the noise of the surf, the relentless pounding, freight-train roar of it. People? Sol’s head spun, apparently searching the beach for celebrities.

Out there, Coredale said pointing, realising as his alarm abated what a fuss he was making. For some moments he studied the magnificence of gigantic glassy green waves, rank upon rank, leisurely storming the shore, each looming for a moment as if to engulf the entire beach. Thirty feet, at least, he decided.

Yeah, Sol said, following Coredale’s gaze. Maybe somebody ought to go save them. Sol sniggered. Coredale was conscious again of how Sol’s voice had a capacity to carry. He found himself staring hotly at the sand. Giving the ocean one last indifferent glance, Sol’s eyes returned to the bikini-clad bottom of a girl standing a few feet in front of him. Should the girl turn around, as Coredale feared she might at any moment (such was the X-ray intensity of Sol’s stare), she would see a dark-skinned scrawny balding jerk with a thick coating of pink zinc on his large nose, wearing wrap-around sunglasses. Coredale imagined her disdainful look, which, by association, would be meant as much for him as for Sol.

A tiny, nasty smile nicked the corner of Sol’s mouth as his hands reached out with wiggling fingers as if to touch the girl. Coredale heard himself gasp. There was nothing but a thin strap of white material dividing the girl’s smooth, round, tanned buttocks. After playfully hovering for a second, Sol’s hands withdrew. The girl did not turn.

The ground seemed to be shaking under their feet as the waves rose and collapsed on the shore. They had noticed it back on the road where they parked the car, and they had looked at each other, the land trembling like the shock of an earthquake. It was disturbing, unsettling, even though you knew you were safe. An earthquake shock was different — Coredale knew that from his early school days in San Francisco.

Someone ought to go save those dumb fucks before they drown, Sol said.

Well, don’t look at me, Coredale said, trying to laugh, as if suddenly actually put on the spot I’m not saving anyone.

What? Sol grinned stupidly not hearing, then turned and gestured with a jerk of his head, indicating the girl again. There were several girls, a pretty hair-tossing girlish clump of them, and for a moment Coredale felt dizzy with impotent awe.

The two figures so far out on that heaving, deep blue ocean were on surfboards. Coredale had once seen a sea like this as a young boy, his father driving them out from San Francisco to Half Moon Bay. His father, an all-round sportsman, had surfed all the famous beaches as a youth.

Coredale imagined himself rushing into the water and swimming out beyond the break, the crowd on the beach gasping in admiration and shock at such daring. This quixotic reverie (probably a response to some half- remembered humiliation) was interrupted by Sol, who now stood in front of him, his sunglasses pushed back on his forehead. Anyways, I told you, he said pedantically, standing up close the way he always did, forcing Coredale to sway back slightly. The Sheik. Got it? The Sheik! Coredale nodded dumbly. He kept forgetting. Sol had told him several times before.

In defence he muttered, I might… staring back at the ocean, he hesitated a second, I might go down and immerse myself in the ocean yonder, feel the cool overall wetness of its tongue.

Sol frowned at him. What?

Nothing.

You call me the Sheik, everyone does, Sol had said when they’d introduced each other three days ago.

They were having coffee in the little town that was part of Williams College. Coredale had come in response to the notice he’d seen. Almost at first glance, Coredale decided he’d made a mistake. He began a stuttering explanation, an apology, but Sol gave him no chance to speak, wouldn’t listen.

Sweating with anxiety, Coredale attended to Sol who had begun an animated account of his own life. The details were garbled. The essential point Sol wanted understood was that he was someone important on campus. Coredale had no reason to doubt this, as he had spent the college year (in fact most of his adolescence) in shy retreat. His adored brother had been missing in Vietnam since 1968. Seven years and Coredale seemed to feel the loss worse each year. It had all but killed his mother and his father had come to treat his remaining son with a special kind of indifference, so that Coredale had begun to feel increasingly unworthy.

Sol paused in his breathless harangue to light a cigarette. Apparently finished with his own history, he began to question Coredale, sly, alert suspicion in his voice and expression. He was wearing wrap around sunglasses which he kept putting on and off. His dark bulging eyes, when revealed, seemed disarmingly forlorn to Coredale, who found the effort to terminate this meeting beyond him for the moment. He didn’t want to be rude.

You a freshman, huh?

Yes.

We never met before. How come?

I don’t…know.

You watch the game last week?

Game? Oh, yes, yes. I.

So how about Oscar, man? How about that, eh?

Oscar…yes, yes…

The thirty-yard dash, ten on the clock. He shook his head remembering fondly. Then he frowned. "You have heard of Oscar Turbull?"

Well, I…

You know, the quarterback for chrissake.

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that he…

Sol was becoming strident with disbelief. Reading, what do you mean reading? You never saw the game. You never heard his goddamned name, even?

Well, to tell the truth…

Jesus! Wally Brankenshaw, you gotta know him, right?

Ummm…

Sol curled his upper lip cynically. You want a hint? Will I give you a hint?

A hint…

Sol sat back and stared for some unblinking moments at Coredale, then replaced his dark glasses. The glasses provided a mask. The entire youth of college America seemed to be wearing sunglasses that winter. Only when a man wears a mask does he reveal the truth about himself. Coredale remembered that from somewhere.

Where in New York did you say you lived exactly?

Exactly…I…er…

Jesus, man! Sol slapped the plastic table in exasperation. Coredale jumped at the sudden noise. The cup rattled. He quickly roused himself in defence. The notice, if I can remind you, said you wanted…

I know what the notice said. I wrote the goddamned thing, didn’t I. Three weeks to share an apartment in Waikiki.

No questions asked.

Huh?

The notice. It said no questions asked.

Jesus, man, you’re being fuckin’ picky now. I mean give me a break, here. You think I’m gonna be impressed you live on fifth avenue or something?

Central Park West.

So, well, we got that straight. Sol flicked a cigarette from his pack. How do I know you’re not some kinda masher. A pervert or some damned thing. Know what I mean?

Coredale had suddenly had enough. He stood to leave.

Hey, where you going, man?

Coredale sighed. Look, this isn’t going to work out.

Who said it isn’t…Come on, man, sit down. Give me a break here. Sol was less brash now in appeal. There was a slack smile tugging at his lips.

Coredale hesitated. He stared around the crowded coffee shop. He was thinking of his options. Three weeks alone over Christmas in New York, his mother in the health clinic, his father abroad somewhere on business. The same every year. Hawaii, even with this nervy little stranger, couldn’t be too bad.

Coredale sat and they drank another cup of coffee together while Sol talked and it suddenly became obvious to Coredale with a sinking sense of horror that they were two of a kind – both lonely as hell.

By sitting back down now, Coredale had made a commitment. He should have been firm. It was always the same. People pushing him around. He seemed to have no will. This paralysing propensity he had for always going against his better judgment.

At one point Sol wanted to know, Do you got a doorman?

What?

Like at a fifth avenue address you gotta have a doorman, don’t you?

Central Park West.

My Grandma has a doorman. Over in Brooklyn, you know. They got doormen there, you know. Golda. You ever hear of her? Golda Epstein?

Golda? Coredale said thoughtfully, as if trying to place the name, tempted to ask wasn’t she quarter back for the Rams.

Come on, man. You’d never heard of her. She owns the apartment. In Hawaii. She owns the entire goddamned building. She runs the Hereford foundation.

Cattle? Beef cattle.

You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Sol leaned across the table and hissed, Nazis, man. Fucking escaped Nazis.

Escaped Nazis?

Skip it. Maybe I’ll tell you later.

No, really. I’d like to know…

A strange fugitive look had come upon Sol, as he suddenly got to his feet, keeping his head lowered… Later man. I gotta split. Here’s my card. I got your number. I’ll call you. He shrugged. Keep the faith, baby.

Coredale was left wondering. He lifted his cup. The coffee had gone cold. Sol Epstein was Jewish. Had a Jewish ring to it. Chasing Nazis? Everything about Sol was preposterous. Lies. A liar. Coredale lit a cigarette and found his hand was shaking, found he was burning with indignation.

After leaving California, Coredale completed the last years of high school in New York. Even so, he was always ill at ease with the New Yorker. Sol was a New Yorker. And New York was nothing if not a Jewish city, something Coredale was still reckoning with. He’d grown up with an open attitude, but New York had been a shock. His father had once said it was hard for a Jew to trust anyone who wasn’t a Jew. Sol’s suspicion, as rude, as insulting as it was, was only to be expected.

Yes, New York was a Jewish city and a black ghetto, Coredale decided. For those, like his mother, who felt this detracted from New York’s sophistication, it was necessary to adopt an attitude of nonchalant indifference, believing that it was possible to make your own world in the city. Not that Coredale had tried. He was a California boy. Searching the college notice board he’d been hoping to find someone needing a co-driver for a trip to California. That’s when he saw Sol’s notice. Female preferred it had said.

On his way back to his residence Coredale assumed it was the last he’d hear from Sol.

On the plane ride over the Pacific, Sol munched through bags of pretzels and guzzled beer, occasionally spraying Coredale with specks of pretzel as he resumed his sporadic interrogation. Coredale was still rankled by this impertinence but said nothing. Sol was not making the physical constraints of flying any easier.

In the dim lit cabin of the plane, with Sol finally dozing off, Coredale, feeling helpless, again considered the situation. How could he make Sol understand that they had nothing in common? Try to relax, think of sun and sea, he told himself. Of course the last thing Coredale wanted was for Sol to think he was a snob. Sol had a terrible inferiority complex, Coredale had concluded.

Leaving the plane in Honolulu, hit by the first exotic blast of hot, humid air, the tantalising fragrance of sweet, aromatic rot, Coredale’s spirits lifted.

In the cab ride to the apartment Sol stared eagerly out the window at every girl he saw. The cab driver, a large woolly haired Hawaiian, said Aloha!

Aloha to you too my man, Sol said, winking at Coredale. Coredale crouched against the cab door.

So what you gonna do when you get out of College? Sol wanted to know.

Coredale, wondering if Sol would ever shut up, murmured something offhand about Harvard. He was tired, could hardly keep his eyes open. He was hoping desperately that he’d have a room to himself at the apartment.

Harvard! Sol almost jumped on him. What’s such a big deal about Harvard? Had his father gone to Harvard or something? Fuck Harvard, Sol said.

Coredale raised his hand to fend off anymore of Sol’s questions. Sol, you asked me all this before, you know, like a thousand times.

Sol nodded and said nothing. Then he began shaking his head ruefully. Yeah, I also asked you to call me the Sheik.

It’s kind of impossible for me to do that.

Why? I told you…I don’t mind. It’s because I’m Jewish they call me the Sheik, right? Or didn’t you get that. Like it’s some big dumb goy joke. It’s a joke, right?

Sol explained it again, jauntily. You call Count Basie the count or Duke Ellington the duke – it immediately diminishes the title that is supposed to exalt you – or them. Somebody is called the king of Comedy. Nobody wins. Neither the king nor the comic. It was the same more or less with the sheik, Sol declared. Whatever you say, Coredale thought, suppressing a yawn. He felt as if he had been juggling oranges for some vital reason over a period of days and now was overwhelmed by the futility of his task.

Now Coredale and Sol stood on Sunset beach with the sea roaring its ferocity. It was deafening. Coredale caught only a word here and there as Sol lectured him once more about the sheik business.Coredale was unsure as to why he was uncomfortable about the word: it might be used affectionately now, but it had no doubt originated as a collegiate slur, a barb, a disparagement. And, if the occasion arose, it could still be used that way. Nothing against sheiks of course, Coredale thought, smiling to himself. Certainly not against Jews, he hoped.

Sol turned to glance back over his shoulder at the ocean, giving a little shrug to show it took a lot more than a wild surf to impress him. Listen, we go back to Waikiki. Swim there. It’s safer. Believe me. The Jews know the safe places to swim.

Coredale was glad to leave. They trudged across the sand and crossed the hot black top, jumping and scurrying to save their burning feet.

Sol lit a cigarette as soon as he got in the car and muttered something Coredale didn’t hear.

What?

I just said…I just said… He cleared his throat and expelled smoke. Well, I’m getting on your nerves. I know. If I’m getting on your nerves…I mean, I get on everyone’s nerves…

Coredale stared ahead as they drove. Despite being a little surprised that he might have made his feelings so obvious, a stubborn streak of honesty kept him silent until it was too late to speak, to say the polite thing. Breeding (a word Coredale detested but could find no substitute for, a word his mother in her better days used frequently) always seemed to demand harmless acts of duplicity.

They drove past the flat fields of pineapples in silence. Was Sol offended, Coredale, wondered? Could Sol be offended?

After a while, Sol brightened. He began calling Coredale ‘Thang’, a name he found amusing to say, chuckling each time he said it now.

Though he couldn’t hear this himself, Coredale’s speech bore traces of his mother’s accent – she a well-born lady from North Carolina. She certainly didn’t say ‘thang’.

At that moment she was residing at her ‘retreat’ in Pennsylvania. They look after her well there, his father said. This year as always around Christmas, his father was away, in Japan or somewhere, on business. They were a family of three strangers, had been ever since his brother was reported missing. Coredale stared sullenly ahead through the windscreen, ignoring the scenery now.

So, Sol said, when you’re not riding the waves at Sunset what do you do? Like for entertainment?

Read. Go to the movies.

The movies I can’t sit still long enough. I got to get up and pace.

Really?

Yeah, I usually last about twenty seconds, Sol said. What sorta movies?

Sort…er, oh, Italian, French.

French movies. No shit? With all the dirty bits?

Yes…I guess.

Maybe if they move all the dirty bits up to the start I could see a French movie.

Yes. Maybe you could.

What’s wrong with American movies?

Nothing.

So what’s the last American movie you went to?

Er…Citizen Caine.

Citizen Canine. Doesn’t sound like any movie I ever heard of.

Coredale was thinking why stupid people always made you feel stupid for being smarter than them.

So Thang, how do I know that name, Coredale Saxon-White?

Coredale refused to reply.

The social columns of the New York Times?

Coredale was enough of a snob to be annoyed at Sol’s sneering lisp. The family name was mentioned in the columns from time to time, his mother’s in particular, having, for good or ill, some illustrious connections to American history and certain ancient aristocratic houses of Europe. Coredale and his family were never likely to mention such connections. People like Gore Vidal, for instance, whom the family otherwise tolerated, would never miss a chance to mention his connections, which were laughably tenuous compared to those of Coredale’s mother’s family.

I know I’ve seen it somewhere. Like written. In type, you know, Sol said, removing his sunglasses. The lenses were smeared with pink zinc cream and he was trying to clean them, one- handed, on his T-shirt.

I don’t know, Coredale said. I was on the tennis team. Do you check the notice boards? Maybe you saw it… Coredale stopped. Two paniolos on horseback appeared on the side of the road ahead. Coredale held his breath as the car sped towards them. Sol did not slow or even glance at the two cowboys, but gave a long blast on the horn as the jeep rushed past. Dumb fucks on horse back, Jesus!

Coredale was speechless.

"You play tennis?" Sol grunted. Shit! Tennis! I mean, Jesus, really? Crouched over the steering wheel, he wagged his head to emphasise his disdain.

I was only a reserve, Coredale managed to mumble. Looking back he saw the two cowboys shouting and waving angrily. When he managed to speak again, his voice came as if from an icy locked vault. Yeah, the tennis team.

Naw, naw, wasn’t that. You got a write up I’d remember.

My name would only be listed as a reserve.

No, man. I know all the jocks, believe me. Ida remembered that. Really bugs me though I can’t remember a thing like that. Fucking bugs the hell out of me, you really wanna know.

Sol’s brow was puckered as he drove, trying to remember, having to squint through the windscreen without his glasses.

After a long silence he declared, Far as I’m concerned Pancho, tennis is a game for all those goddamned snobs who never had to wipe their own asses.

Coredale flinched. But then he sighed quietly and kept his gaze on the road.

What’s that Pancho guys name. Spick name. What is it?

Coredale was beginning to suspect Sol might have some mental affliction beyond just being stupid.

Who the hell gives a damn what his name is, right, Sol said. Anyways when you play what side arda racket do you use?

Huh? What?

I asked you what side arda…

Coredale cut him off with a scornful laugh. Side? It doesn’t really matter. If you’ve seen a tennis racket you might have noticed that both…

Come on, man, you gotta have a favourite side. Like old Jimbo what’s his goddamned name, I’ll bet he’s got a favourite side. Anyone tries to touch it old Jimbo goes crazy, right?

"It’s really not like that. What matters is the sweet spot. Which is on both sides of the strings."

The what spot?

The sweet spot. Where the ball comes off best… Coredale began to falter, suspicious now that Sol might be putting him on. …in the centre…of the strings.

The sweet spot, Sol said thoughtfully. Then he said. I always thought the sweet spot was on the end of my dick. Now you tell me it’s on my tennis racket. Which I don’t have one of.

Coredale grinned.

Sol said, Jimbo whatever he calls himself married this Playboy centrefold chick.

Coredale nodded. Can’t do better than that, he said, to humour Sol.

Coredale asked, not without some spite, Do you…er, do any sports yourself ?

Barkxing, Sol said. It took a moment for Coredale to understand.

You box? Coredale hadn’t meant to sound so surprised.

Then he said: So what are you? – like after a tennis scholarship to Harvard?

No. I’ll do law. He found it slightly alarming to hear himself actually say it, almost reflexively blurting it out. At home it was just understood he would do law; no one had actually ever decreed it, that he could remember. His brother had been going to do law. What exactly, he wondered now blinking in the dazzling sunlight that streamed into the jeep, was law? His father, an ex-military man, had, of course, refused to use his considerable influence to exempt Coredale’s brother from the draft.

I’m probably going to be a golf course architect. You know what that is?

Well might I dare to suggest that it’s someone who…

Sol was nodding his head, self-absorbed, pleased with himself. Just one of the deals I’m in.

He was puffing another cigarette, flicking the ash randomly. He had put on a pair of shorts over his swimming briefs. Ash was dropping on his smooth, dark hairless legs.

You know that Cassius Clay? What a rat fink son of a bitch. Sol slammed the palm of his hand against the dash board to express his anger. Fuckin' big mouth nigger. Like avoiding the draft and all that Moslem bullshit about Muhommed. Is he an American or isn’t he an American, is what I want to know, daddyo. Did you see the last Liston fight. I was there, man. Jesus what a hoax. I never seen such a fuckin' hoax, you wanna know.

Muhommed Ali, you mean, Coredale said to give the boxer his correct name, wondering how they had got onto this. What exactly is your connection with boxing?

Still seething about Muhommed, Sol said, I mean our number comes up we go, right? Then he said in answer to Coredale’s question, with a smile that was more of a nervous twitch. Me? Always find me at the gym, right. I referee. Cut man too. I was a cut man for a couple of semi-pros. Do some promotion. Catch me at the gym anytime. He hesitated, took a quick breath. I’m also a casual consultant to the Olympic team, that sort of thing.

No kidding, Coredale said trying not to smile, then alarmed when Sol turned angrily.

You think its funny for some goddamned reason. What’s it…what’s so goddamned funny. You lookin' down your goddamned nose at me or something…

Coredale drew back in his seat. No, no, I…

I was going to Nam. I’d go tomorrow. I’m no…I’d go man. Just waiting for the call. Man!

The draft is over, Coredale told him, as gently as possible. There’s no need…

I’d go they need me or not, right?

Coredale certainly had no desire to ‘discuss’ the Vietnam War with someone like Sol. Sol was sullenly silent. Any silence from Sol was ominous, so Coredale quickly declared : It will all be over soon enough. We have nothing to fear.

Fear? Sol said. Then after some time he said. I know we don’t have to go. But for Crissake, if it was on, like we’d go, right? No fucking question. Heavyweight champion of the world, refuses to fight. How does that make America look?

Coredale tried to imagine Sol as a soldier. Though in the book he was reading, From Here to Eternity, the tough guy Maggio was a scrawny little runt too. When a job had to be done the US military still took scrawny little runts.

No Vietnamese ever called me nigger, Ali had said, when he refused to register Coredale remembered. He didn’t follow the fights, but seemed to remember hearing Ali was fighting again.

I kind of admire the guy. Ali, the fighter, I’m talking about. Coredale said, not wanting to appear totally without convictions, even in the face of Sol’s level of ignorance.

Sol wound the window down and flicked his cigarette butt out in a gesture of generalised contempt.

A plan had begun to form in Coredale’s mind, as they reached the outskirts of Waikiki: he would call a friend and ask him to call him back at the apartment with bad news. Explain to Sol he had to return home urgently, his mother was ill or something. Which was not untrue. She was ill. But who would he call? There was no one, really.

Later walking along the beach towards Diamond Head, past the pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Coredale was trying to imagine old colonial Hawaii, before all the high-rise apartments and hotels, before the Japanese tourists and the Alamoana. Before the Americans and the air base. He’d left Sol sitting at a beachside bar sucking on a ridiculous maitai, ogling some college girls, making a complete idiot of himself. I’m going for a walk, he’d said. No one had heard.

Buildings cast their shadows on the beach and the water lapped gently on the white imported sand. The sea breeze might be trying to tell him something about the past, about the way it was. Alone he was safe to indulge such foolishness –imagining the noble Duke Kahanamoku and his retinue surfing these shores on their twenty foot boards oblivious to the desecration of the future wrought by tourists. There were no Hawaiians of pure blood left Coredale had been told. Certainly no royal blood.

When he got back to the apartment he was relieved to find Sol had not yet returned.

There were two small bedrooms, a tiny kitchen and a small living room that opened onto what was more a ledge than a balcony from which, if you darted your head back and forth to avoid swaying palm trees, you could glimpse the sea between the other buildings. No one could eat or prepare food in the kitchen because it was not kosher, Sol had explained. The kitchen was too small to be made kosher. Coredale had no idea what he was talking about.

The apartment was owned by Sol’s grandmother(in fact she owned the entire building) and in the living room there were ancient photographs of her Polish forebears, assembled to pose stiffly in their dark heavy clothes, somber haunted faces staring suspiciously at the camera. There was also a large photo of Bobby Kennedy placed conspicuously on a sideboard next to the menorah. He died for the Jews, Sol had explained. "This my grandmother believes. When Coredale looked blank, Sol added. …because he was killed by an A –rab!"

An assemblage of photos on another wall, which was also adorned with a drab piece of stained carpeting, depicted the suffering of Jews at the hands of the Nazis: ragged children dead or dying on the streets of Warsaw, the SS officer with his whip jammed against the old lady’s face, the piles of white naked bodies flung into open graves, the collection of skulls, of teeth, shoes.

It raised a point of etiquette with Coredale: whether or not he should acknowledge having seen them. They never failed to shock and Coredale wondered at the person who felt compelled to enshrine such horrors in a tropical paradise.

Sol’s grandmother was by Sol’s account a formidable lady. Apart from her varied business interests she ran her own Nazi hunting organisation. Coredale must have said something or looked incredulous, prompting Sol to explain: Sure she was too old to do that sort of thing but who else better was there, since she was a survivor, who else knew enough to really care? What else would such a person do? Coredale was lost for the right response. He couldn’t honestly say he cared enough, or even had thought about it (Vietnam had consumed all his adolescent concerns with evil). For a long time as a youngster, before moving to New York, he thought the Holocaust was the name of a blockbuster movie about giant blood sucking insects, a movie he had missed because his parents considered it unsuitable.

Looking at the photo of Kennedy again, Coredale had a notion to take a pencil and black out one of the teeth of the buck-toothed grinning annoyingly handsome man ; Kennedy who was dead maybe seven years now, and who’s crooked Irish heritage had been forgotten in the maudlin American lament for promise unfulfilled. One tooth missing and you would see immediately the centuries of bog Irish stock. The rube. McCarthy’s man.

Coredale had educated himself not to accept all the Camelot crap about the Kennedys. For him they had come to epitomise the gangster mentality that paradoxically had made America great. Coredale’s father, the ‘general’ and the well-connected Republican, knew all the inside dope about the pious, catholic, whoring, drunken, kissing- the- ass- of- the- pope Kennedys and for years Coredale, as any idealistic boy would, silently rejected such calumny against the nation’s president. How did his father know all this? Yet how could you doubt your father? How could you doubt the president? But then it became more or less common knowledge, though the tactful press generally remained silent. Coredale had been shocked by the revelations. Still found himself trying to come to terms with it. Stories of mafia connections, election rigging, and the poor dumb slut Marilyn Monroe. Old Joe Kennedy the bootlegger, ambassador to the Court of St James. It was worse than he had ever imagined.

Then of course it got even worse. Nixon and his pals in Miami. Kissinger that oily Iago. Of those two swarthy villains only Kissinger was left, and he would lurk satanically in the shadows of power for years to come, the Nobel Peace Prize winner!.

During the period of his adolescence, which coincided with the progress of the war in Vietnam, Coredale learned a lot about the way things were. He discovered by reading the I.F. Stone weekly and the reporting of intellectuals like Mary McCarthy, Bernard Fall, not only that the war was evil, but by inference, that the whole system based on greed and profit was rotten. Most of his friends at school were liberal, but they all seemed to draw the line here and there. Not always able to contain his outrage, Coredale was shocked and sobered when on one occasion, having spoken with a more than usual forthrightness, some contrary know-all classmate responded by reminding him with a Republican’s smirk that not so long ago, in the 1950s, expressing such thoughts was treasonable. Called before the HUAC, how would he behave? To be labeled a communist! He was not a communist. He was an American. As an American he had a right to speak freely, a defence that