Read Online The Making of Henry by Howard Jacobson - Free Book Online

Ekaterina Nagel came as close as was within her power – short of jumping him from the summit of the pyramid of Cheops – to stop him being born at all. He should have been the Baby Jesus. As far as the nursing home was concerned he already
was
the Baby Jesus, that honour going to the first child to show its nose on Christmas Day, and little Henry being more than halfway there. Seeing as Henry’s nearest rivals were of Singaporean academic and Nigerian diplomatic parentage respectively, and in the Nigerian case were thought highly likely to come out twins, there was undoubtedly some
faute de mieux
favouritism in this. Whatever else there was to say on the subject, at least in Henry the Baby Jesus would be single, white and with a fifty-fifty chance of being male.
    So why did Ekaterina hold back? Bombs and spiders. Given the situation vis-à-vis the aerial war with Germany, Irina Stern had insisted that South Manchester was the only place for her daughter’s confinement and to that end had found a nursing home not very many miles from Alderley Edge. Izzi was a young soldier stationed outside Basingstoke, waiting to be sent overseas to entertain other young soldiers with his sleights of hand, and he had no views on the matter other than that he wanted his wife to be safe and his son – though he had a feeling it went against the grain faithwise – to be the Baby Jesus. What no one had counted on was the inaccuracy, not to say the irreligious-ness, of German pilots, dropping bombs in the vicinity of Alderley Edge on Christmas Eve while aiming for Ellesmere Port. As soon as Ekaterina heard the explosions she reversed her labour, ignoring all exhortations to push for Christ’s sake. In the early hours of Christmas Day, with the prize still there for the taking and the sky clear, Ekaterina did begin to push, but went into reverse again on account of a spider with long sticky legs crawling across her belly. Talking about it later, with a shudder, Ekaterina multiplied the spiders which had taken advantage of her helplessness, increasing not only their number but their size. She wasn’t superstitious and didn’t hold with omens, she simply refused to bring a child of hers into a world which had such horrors in it. By mid-afternoon her fears had been almost stilled: this was rural England, the countryside, and in the country even the cleanest nursing home could not be one hundred per cent insectproof. As for the offending insect itself, it was just a daddy-long-legs left over from the summer, looking for somewhere warm to hide. ‘On my stomach!’ Ekaterina cried. ‘Shush,’ they told her. ‘Across my baby’s brain!’ ‘Shush,’ they told her. ‘Shush and push.’ And thus, at four o’clock on a dark December afternoon, the Saviour’s birthday, Henry Nagel was delivered, with a brief scream and a cough of blood, into an existence marred by bombs and spiders. But by that time he was too late to make it as the Baby Jesus. The honour of being the Redeemer for the day had fallen to Taiwo and Kehinde Mabogunje, sleeping soundly in a crib decorated with crêpe paper, silver cut-out moons and shepherds.
    A family joke for years afterwards, beloved of his father. ‘How do you like that? A Yiddeler, two Schwartzes and a Chink. Some choice, eh?’
    They brought it out the way you bring out old photographs. Henry remembers the tears of laughter, and maybe of sadness too – regret, horror, who can say? – streaming down his mother’s cheeks. Now the family would go to prison just for smiling inwardly at the comedy of colour.
    Henry’s view is that there was more racial harmony when no one was trying to promote it. But then who of any importance cares what Henry’s views are, Henry no longer being in any position to influence events, even in the Pennines.
    Take that ‘no longer’ with a pinch of salt, Henry feeling sorry for