Free The Mighty Walzer by Howard Jacobson

International Federation another few years to wake up.’
    ‘That means that if the World Championships had been held in America –’
    Twink saw where Aishky was heading. ‘- And Gershom had been drawn against Schiff there –’
    Louis laughed wildly. It was almost a sob. ‘- He’d have been given a walk-over, yeah. And maybe gone on to take the title. But what’s the point of talking? He didn’t.’
    We exchanged crestfallen expressions, then turned our eyes as one man on the strange loping buttoned-up figure of Gershom Finkel, wispily bald in that manner that suggests the hairs are yet to come rather than that they’ve been and gone, still circumnavigating the room and still muttering and laughing sarcastically to himself. We were all thinking the same thing. Was this any way for a great ping-pong player to have ended up?
    My father was waiting for me as he’d promised, asleep on the wheel of his bus. I’d been in the club four hours. I was surprised I recognized him.
     
    ‘So how was it?’ he wanted to know.
    ‘They’ve all got something wrong with them,’ I said.
    He let go of the wheel and banged the side of his head with the heel of his hand. An upward brushing movement, as though he wanted to clear unwelcome matter from his brain.
They’ve all got something wrong with them.
He hated that sort of talk. Judgements, judgements. The stuff I’d picked up from my mother and the Violets. We couldn’t say boo to a goose, any of us, but we knew what we thought of the goose, oh yes.
    ‘I didn’t ask what they were like,’ he said. ‘I asked how it went.’
    ‘It went well,’ I said. ‘They’ve asked me to play for the team.’
    ‘Ah!’ Now he was pleased with me. ‘Thank you.’ He drove on in silence for a few minutes, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. Pride? Did I see pride? Then he asked, ‘And how was the bat?’
    You can’t hurt your own father on the one occasion he’s pleased with you. ‘It was good,’ I said. ‘Better than the book.’
    ‘Ah! Thank you.’ More silence, and then, ‘You had a good night, then?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    Why did he keep on thanking me? I can only suppose it was because I’d put him in the right, at last. Proved that I was his true son and heir. Proved that he knew how to do the best for me. There was so much unaccustomed harmony between us, at any rate, that instead of turning left at Middleton Road he turned right, kept on going past the park and the mills and pulled up in front of a detached white-washed cottage by the rubberworks in Rhodes. ‘Home, James,’ he said.
    I had to explain to him that this wasn’t where we lived.
    He took a moment or two to get his bearings, then he said, ‘You’re right. Thank you. Thank you.’
    ‘So how was it?’ my mother wanted to know. My aunties, too, who had stayed around at our place later than usual, waiting for me to come home. Waiting to kvell.
     
    ‘They’ve all got something wrong with them,’ I said.
    ‘Such as what?’ Tell us, tell us.
    ‘Bits missing.’
    ‘We don’t believe you.’ Love and laughter, for the bright boy. We don’t believe you, but tell us, tell us anyway.
    ‘They have. They’ve all got bits missing. Broken ribs. Tuberculosis.’
    ‘Tuberculosis?’
    This was a tactical error on my part. My mother was all forme playing ping-pong because she believed it was safe. No one got hurt playing ping-pong. Now I was telling her the game was riddled with infectious diseases.
    ‘Well, not tuberculosis exactly,’ I corrected myself. ‘More like asthma.’
    ‘If they’ve got asthma they shouldn’t be playing.’
    ‘Ma, none of them should be playing. One of them’s about a hundred and won’t take his coat off. Another’s blind.’
    ‘Blind?’
    ‘He was the one I beat.’
    How they laughed. They loved it when I was wicked, my mother’s side. It empowered them. We’d get into a huddle and we’d call the goose for all sorts.
    But that always