The Lubetkin Legacy

Berthold: Slatki

Something miraculous has happened.

The beautiful black girl from Luigi’s has moved in next door. I saw her catching the lift, poised behind the closing doors as I approached, like a goddess about to ascend to Elysium. I raced up the stairs and was in time to see her letting herself into the next-door flat with her key. (Since losing my bike, I do sometimes climb the stairs in a fruitless attempt to stay svelte — I hadn’t realised how pissy they were.) Since then, I have been thinking of ways of introducing myself. I must stock up on sugar, in case she decides to borrow a cup. Or coffee. Ah! ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, I’m having a dinner party, and I’ve run out of coffee’. One little-known fact about that iconic 1980s Nescafé Gold Blend ad is that I, Berthold Sidebottom, actually auditioned for the part. Okay, smarmy Tony Head got it, but that doesn’t mean I’m barred from using the lines. Then of course George bloody Clooney got in on the act with that fussy coffee machine and its overpriced capsules. Ristretto! A woman would have to be unbelievably shallow to fall for that.

‘Bertie!’ Inna called from the next room. ‘Come drink vodka, it slatki. I make it special for you!’

Actually, I have developed quite a taste for slatkis, which is a generic term for small delicious pastries with honey, almonds, pistachio or other nuts, and an unspeakable calorie count, best consumed with vodka, though mint tea is an acceptable substitute. Unfortunately, these sweet delights don’t always seem to agree with me. Once or twice, I had noticed a feeling of nausea after eating them, which I put down to the accompanying vodka or just unaccustomed overindulgence, but now there was something about Inna’s beady-eyed insistence that sent a shiver through me. I suddenly remembered. Almonds. Prussic acid. The murderer’s poison of choice. In my first year at drama school we’d done an improvisation on an Agatha Christie novel in which the victim was murdered by small regular doses of prussic acid, whose distinguishing characteristic was the odour of almonds. As a nurse, she must know about poisons.

I stared at the pastries in horror. I knew of course that Inna liked our flat, but would she go so far as to kill for it?

‘Ittit!’ Inna insisted. She popped one into her mouth and washed it down with a good slug of vodka.

That convinced me I was being paranoid. A murderess would not deliberately take poison herself. Even in low doses. Would she? I ate a couple more, letting them melt on my tongue with a sip of vodka, which I had come to prefer over Mother’s sweet sherry.

‘Delicious, Inna!’ My heart thudded weirdly.

‘Aha, Mister Bertie! My good husband always used to said way to men heart is veeya stomach.’

I paused for thought as I savoured another mouthful, trying to remember how she said her husband had died. Then I observed that all the slatkis had little halves of glacé cherry on top of them. Except the one she had eaten. I started to feel an unpleasant tightness in my throat. My pulse began to race. What was Inna’s motive to poison me? A moral objection to my supposed gay lifestyle? Or was her real purpose to gain possession of Mother’s flat? Then she popped another slatki in her mouth — this one definitely had a glacé cherry on top. I relaxed.

‘It! It!’ she urged. ‘I make sweet special for you because you lady-man like it everything sweety.’

I resisted the temptation to slap her, for her words kicked off a new train of thought in me. Femininity and sweetness often go together. Women have a weakness for pastries and chocolate. I had stumbled on the perfect way to woo my delectable next-door neighbour. Then I had a moment of pure inspiration which I felt in my loins would be life-transforming. Call it the Gold Blend Gambit. Call it the Clooney Clemency. Call it the Berthold Breakfast Breakthrough. It would be an opportunity to put Inna through her acting paces, and at the same time to get my delightful neighbour hooked on these honey-loaded morsels.

‘Inna,’ I said. ‘There is a new neighbour next door. Is it not customary in your part of the world to call round with a welcoming gift?’

‘I seen it,’ grumped Inna. ‘Is blackie.’

‘Now, Inna …’ I remembered the firm but kind way my mother had squashed a similarly unacceptable outburst in the hospital. ‘It’s wrong to be racist. Black people can be very … nice.’

It hadn’t come out quite as forcefully as I intended, but she backed down at once.

‘Aha! You are right, Mister Bertie. Your mama told me is bad to think such thoughts. In my country everybody whitey, everybody normal, we not meet another type of person. She say we must be good to everybody. Same like Lenin say all nationalities equal. Same like Jesus say everybody is negbur.’ She clasped her hands together in an attitude of prayer. ‘She was like saint in heaven, your mama.’

Funnily enough, I think she meant it.