see, would have written my books.”
“Philip, nobody could treasure your books more than I do. But we are at a point in Jewish history when maybe there is more for us to be talking about, especially together here at last in Jerusalem, than your books. Okay, I have allowed people to confuse me with you. But, tell me, please, how else could I have got to Lech Walesa?”
“You can’t seriously be asking me that question.”
“I can and I am, and with good reason. By seeing Lech Walesa, by having with him the fruitful talk we had, what harm did I do you? What harm did I do anyone? The harm will come only if, because of your books and for no other reason, you should want to be so legalistic as to go ahead and try to undo everything I achieved in Gdansk. Yes, the law is on your side. Who says no? I wouldn’t have undertaken an operation on this scale without first knowing in every last detail the law that I am up against. In the case of Onassis v. Christian Dior — New York, Inc., where a professional model, a Jackie Onassis look-alike, was used in advertisements for Dior dresses, the court determined that the effect of using a look-alike was to represent Jackie Onassis as associated with the product and upheld her claim. In the case of Carson v. Here’s Johnny Portable Toilets, a similar decision was reached. Because the phrase ‘Here’s Johnny’ was associated with Carson and his TV show, the toilet company had no right, according to the court, to display the phrase on their portable toilets. The law couldn’t be any more clear: even if the defendant is using his own name, he may be liable to prosecution for appropriation if the use implies that some other famous individual of that name is actually being represented. I am, as you see, more knowledgeable than you are about exactly what is actionable here. But I really cannot believe that you can believe that there is a telling similarity between the peddling of high-fashion shmatas, let alone the selling and renting of portable toilets, and the mission to which I have dedicated my life. I took your achievement as my own; if you like, all right, I stole your books. But for what purpose? Once again the Jewish people are at a terrible crossroad. Because of Israel. Because of Israel and the way that Israel endangers us all. Forget the law and listen, please, to what I have to say. The majority of Jews don’t choose Israel. Its existence only confuses everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike. I repeat: Israel only endangers everyone. Look at what happened to Pollard. I am haunted by Jonathan Pollard. An American Jew paid by Israeli intelligence to spy against his own country’s military establishment. I’m frightened by Jonathan Pollard. I’m frightened because if I’d been in his job with U.S. naval intelligence, I would have done exactly the same thing. I daresay, Philip Roth, that you would have done the same thing if you were convinced, as Pollard was convinced, that, by turning over to Israel secret U.S. information about Arab weapons systems, you could be saving Jewish lives. Pollard had fantasies about saving Jewish lives. I understand that, you understand that: Jewish lives must be saved, and at absolutely any cost. But the cost is not betraying your country, it’s greater than that: it’s defusing the country that most endangers Jewish lives today — and that is the country called Israel! I would not say this to anyone else — I am saying this only to you. But it must be said. Pollard is just another Jewish victim of the existence of Israel — because Pollard enacted no more, really, than the Israelis demand of Diaspora Jews all the time. I don’t hold Pollard responsible, I hold Israel responsible — Israel, which with its all-embracing Jewish totalism has replaced the goyim as the greatest intimidator of Jews in the world; Israel, which today, with its hunger for Jews, is, in many, many terrible ways, deforming and disfiguring Jews as only our anti-Semitic enemies once had the power to do. Pollard loves Jews. I love Jews. You love Jews. But no more Pollards, please. God willing, no more Demjanjuks either. We haven’t even spoken of Demjanjuk. I want to hear what you saw in that courtroom today. Instead of talking about lawsuits, can we, now that we know each other a little better, talk about —”
“No. No. What is going on in that courtroom is not an issue between us. Nothing there has the least bearing on this fraud that you are perpetrating by passing yourself off as me.”
“Again with the fraud,” he mumbled sadly, with a deliberately comical Jewish intonation. “Demjanjuk in that courtroom has everything to do with us. If it wasn’t for Demjanjuk, for the Holocaust, for Treblinka —”
“If this is a joke,” I said, rising out of my seat, “it is a very stupid, very wicked joke and I advise you to stop it right now! Not Treblinka — not that, please. Look, I don’t know who you are or what you are up to, but I’m warning you — pack up and get out of here. Pack it up and go!”
“Oh, where the hell is a waiter? Your clothes are wet, you haven’t eaten —” And to calm me down he reached across the table and took hold of my hand. “Just hang on — waiter!”
“Hands off, clown! I don’t want lunch — I want you out of my life! Like Christian Dior, like Johnny Carson and the portable toilet — out!”
“Christ, you’re on a short fuse, Philip. You’re a real heart-attack type. You act like I’m trying to ridicule you, when, Christ, if I valued you any more —”
“Enough — you’re a fraud!”
“But,” he pleaded, “you don’t know yet what I’m trying to do.”
“I do know. You are about to empty Israel of the Ashkenazis. You are about to resettle Jews in all the wonderful places where they were once so beloved by the local yokels. You and Walesa, you and Ceau
escu are about to avert a second Holocaust!”
“But — then — that was you,” he cried. “You were Pierre Roget! You tricked me!” And he slumped over in his chair at the horror of the discovery, pure commedia dell’arte.
“Repeat that, will you? I did what?”
But he was now in tears, second time since we’d met. What is it with this guy? Watching him shamelessly carrying on so emotionally reminded me of my Halcion crying jags. Was this his parody of my powerlessness, still more of his comic improvisation, or was he hooked on Halcion himself? Is this a brilliant creative disposition whose ersatz satire I’m confronting or a genuine ersatz maniac? I thought, Let Oliver Sacks figure him out — you get a taxi and go, but then somewhere within me a laugh began, and soon I was overcome with laughter, laughter pouring forth from some cavernous core of understanding deeper even than my fears: despite all the unanswered questions, never, never had anybody seemed less of a menace to me or a more pathetic rival for my birthright. He struck me instead as a great idea … yes, a great idea breathing with life!
* * * Although I was over an hour late for our appointment, I found Aharon still waiting for me in the cafe of the Ticho House when finally I arrived there. He had figured that it was the rainstorm that delayed me and had been sitting alone at a table with a glass of water, patiently reading a book.
For the next hour and a half we ate our lunch and talked about his novel Tzili, beginning with how the child’s consciousness seemed to me the hidden perspective from which not just this but other novels of his were narrated as well. I said nothing about anything else. Having left the aspirant Philip Roth weeping in that empty hotel dining room, crushed and humiliated by my loud laughter, I had no idea what to expect next. I had faced him down — so now what?
This, I told myself: this. Stick to the task!
Out of the long lunchtime conversation, Aharon and I were able to compose, in writing, the next segment of our exchange.
* * * ROTH: In your books, there’s no news from the public realm that might serve as a warning to an Appelfeld victim, nor is the victim’s impending doom presented as part of a European catastrophe. The historical focus is supplied by the reader, who understands, as the victims cannot, the magnitude of the enveloping evil. Your reticence as a historian, when combined with the historical perspective of a knowing reader, accounts for the peculiar impact your work has — for the power that emanates from stories that are told through such very modest means. Also, dehistoricizing the events and blurring the background, you probably approximate the disorientation felt by people who were unaware that they were on the brink of a cataclysm.
It’s occurred to me that the perspective of the adults in your fiction resembles in its limitations the viewpoint of a child, who, of course, has no historical calendar in which to place unfolding events and no intellectual means of penetrating their meaning. I wonder if your own consciousness as a child at the edge of the Holocaust isn’t mirrored
