The Lubetkin Legacy

Berthold: Unaccommodated Man

It was as I feared. Letting Inna go out in the cherry grove on her own was risky. Although she had obeyed my instructions to the letter by telling Mrs Crazy she was my mother, Mrs Crazy of course smelled a rat, and she was just the vindictive type to go telling tales to the authorities. She stopped me in the grove on my way to Luigi’s.

‘Berthold, who is this foreigner impersonating your mother?’ She pulled herself up stiffly; the polythene shower cap protecting her platinum bouffant sweated in the sun. ‘Your mother has gone through many changes, Berthold, and not all for the better. She may have embraced communism, but she never came from Odessa. I know, because Pastor Cracey and me went there on a deluxe cruise for our honeymoon.’

Bloody hell. Why did Inna have to mention Odessa? It took me a full twenty minutes of RADA-schooled performance with tearful eyes and quavers in my throat to persuade her that Lily was still in hospital and the twisted ankle had turned out to be a multiple-fractured leg — yes, with complications, Multi-Antibiotic-Resistant-Whatsit — and that Inna was, in fact, her sister, tragically struck with dementia, who had forgotten who she was. Yes, dementia made her talk funny. No, they didn’t look alike, that’s because they had different fathers. Yes, I do believe her father was actually of Ukrainian origin — really? Did Inna say she’s from Odessa? Ha ha — I expect she’s been watching travel programmes on TV. What she means is Ossett. Ossett in Yorkshire.

Ossett was a town lodged in my memory as the birthplace of my father, Sidney Sidebottom, Lily’s ex-husband, but I doubted Mrs Crazy knew this. She eyed me with suspicion. Legless Len came to my rescue with a meandering account of his late wife’s illness, which involved dementia, aphasia, amnesia, with a bit of mistaken identity and inappropriate behaviour thrown in, all of which he had endured with wisdom, wit and the occasional whisky. Len can vex the dull ear of a drowsy man, but sometimes it’s useful.

‘Are you sure you’re not getting just a little bit confused yourself, Mrs Cracey?’ I adeptly turned the tables on her, and she flounced off to the communal potting shed.

Still, it was a bad omen.

When Inna came in later with her shopping bags from one of her long afternoon outings, I sat her down and told her we must practise some techniques to enable her to perform the part of my mother better.

‘You see, my mother was often confused,’ I explained. ‘She didn’t know who she was. That’s what we must aim for.’

She looked at me acutely. ‘Lily like Soviet pioneer, Mister Bertie. No confused. I tell this crazy lady I am you mama, she tell me she seen you mother tooken in hospital wit ambulance.’

Bloody Mrs Crazy. She’s the consummate curtain-twitcher. ‘So what did you say, Inna?’

‘I said I seen her in hospital.’

‘That’s good, Inna, that’s very good. I told Mrs Crazy you are my mother’s sister, so naturally you would visit her in hospital.’

‘Aha! So I am mother or sister?’

‘Sometimes my mother, sometimes her sister. I tell you what, Inna, the best thing is to pretend that you are totally confused. Pretend you don’t know who you are. That should cover all eventualities.’

‘Oy, Mister Bertie! You are actor, I am not actor!’

She was beginning to cough and I could see a green phlegm moment coming on, so I grasped her hand.

‘You just have to talk about philosophy, while cultivating an absent expression. Like this.’ I rolled my eyes upwards, revealing the blank whites. I have played many fools and madmen in my time, but my favourite is Lear’s Fool, where the wisdom is concealed inside the madness. ‘Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.’

And unless Inna learned her part, I was in danger of becoming unaccommodated.

‘What is mean un-commandant?’

‘It means homeless. But it also means that we derive our station and our place in society from where we live. Underneath our finery, we are all naked.’

She looked alarmed. ‘You want I be naked?’

‘No, Inna. Shakespeare is full of double meanings. Just pretend to be a homeless madman.’ I flapped my arms and swivelled my eyes. ‘With hey, ho, the wind and the rain! Like you’re listening to the sound of an approaching storm on the blasted heath.’

She listened, cocking her head. ‘I can hear no storm.’

‘The storm is not there. It’s in your mind.’

‘Aha!’ She looked at me beadily. ‘You are too clever for me, Mister Bertie. Better I not pretend nothing, better I just cooking golabki kobaski slatki.’

‘Don’t lose heart.’ I patted her arm. ‘You can do it. Just say anything that comes into your head, and listen for the coming storm.’

‘Like this?’ She slid her eyes upwards and sideways, Kinski-style. I was impressed.

‘God is dead!’ Flossie squawked from her perch.

‘Shut up, Indunky Smeet! Devil-bird! God is not dead, he is risen!’ cried Inna.

It was perfect.

‘Let’s take a break for dinner,’ I suggested. ‘Bring on the globalki!’