Free The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

Treslove hadn’t understood why. He liked it himself, not because he wanted to kill his mother, but on account of Ophelia, the patron saint of watery women. Whatever their separate motivation, they entwined the play around their friendship. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Samuel, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ Treslove used to say when Finkler wouldn’t go to a party with him because he didn’t believe in getting pissed. ‘Come on, it’ll be a laugh.’ But Finkler, of course, was bound to tell him that he had of late, wherefore he knew not, lost all his mirth.
    After which he usually changed his mind and went to the party.
    Speaking for himself, all these years later, Treslove wasn’t sure he had any native mirth to regain. He hadn’t been amused for a long time. And he wasn’t exactly amused now. But without doubt he felt more purposeful this minute than he had in years. How this could be, he didn’t know. He would have expected himself to want to stay in bed and never rise again. Mugged by a woman! For a man whose life had been one absurd disgrace after another, this surely was the crowning ignominy. And yet it wasn’t.
    And this despite the unpleasant physical after-effects of the attack. His knees and elbows smarted. There was nasty bruising around his eyes. It pained him to breathe through his nostrils. But there was air out there and he was eager to breathe it.
    He got up and opened his curtains and then closed them again. There was nothing to see. He lived in a small flat in an area of London which people who couldn’t afford to live in Hampstead called Hampstead, but as it wasn’t Hampstead he had no view of the Heath. Finkler had Heath. Heath from every window. He – Finkler – had not the slightest interest in Heath but he had bought a house with a view of it from every window, just because he could. Treslove checked this near re-descent into consciousness of loss. A view of the Heath wasn’t everything. Tyler Finkler had enjoyed a different view of the Heath from every window and what good had any of them done her?
    During breakfast there was a light nosebleed. He normally liked to take an early walk to the shops but he couldn’t risk being seen by someone he knew. Nosebleeding – like grief, as Treslove recalled Libor saying – is something you do in the privacy of your own home.
    He remembered what, in his humiliation and exhaustion, he had forgotten the night before – to cancel his credit cards and report his mobile phone lost. If the woman who had robbed him had been on his phone all night to Buenos Aires, or had flown to Buenos Aries on one of his cards and been on the phone all morning from there to London, he would already be insolvent. But strangely, nothing had been spent. Perhaps she was still deciding where to go. Unless theft was not her motive.
    Had she wanted simply to complicate his life she couldn’t have chosen a more efficient method. He was on his house phone for the rest of the morning, waiting for real people who spoke a language he could understand to answer, having to prove he was who he said he was though why he would have been worrying about the loss of his cards if he wasn’t who he said he was he didn’t know. The loss of his mobile was more serious; it seemed he would have to have a new number just when he had finally got round to memorising the old one. Or maybe not. It depended on the plan he was on. He hadn’t known he was on a plan.
    Yet not once did he turn tetchy or ask to speak to a supervisor. If further proof was needed that actual as opposed to imaginary loss had done wonders for his temper, this was it. Not once did he ask for someone’s name or threaten to get them sacked. Not once did he mention the ombudsman.
    There was no mail for him. Though he had the emotional strength to open envelopes, as was not always the case with him in the morning, there was relief in there being nothing to open today. No mail meant no