“A Diasporist? A Jew who lives in the Diaspora.”
“No, no. More than that. Much more. It is a Jew for whom
It would have been hard to say where I found the energy after what I’d been through in just forty-eight hours, but suddenly here in Jerusalem something was running away with me again and there seemed to be nothing I had more strength for than this playing-at-Pipik. That lubricious sensation that is fluency took over, my eloquence grew, and on I went calling for the de-Israelization of the Jews, on and on once again, obeying an intoxicating urge that did not leave me feeling quite so sure of myself as I may have sounded to poor Gal, torn in two as he was by the rebellious and delinquent feelings of a loyal, loving son.
II
6 HIS STORY
When I went up to the desk for the key to my room, the young clerk smiled and said, “But you have it, sir.”
“If I had it I wouldn’t be asking for it.”
“Earlier, when you came out of the bar, I gave it to you, sir.”
“I haven’t been in the bar. I’ve been everywhere in Israel but the bar. Look, I’m thirsty. I’m hungry. I’m dirty and I need a bath. I’m out on my feet. The key.”
“Yes, a key!” he chirped, pretending to laugh at his own stupidity, and turned away to find one for me while slowly I caught up with the meaning of what I had just heard.
I sat with my key in one of the wicker chairs in the corner of the lobby. The desk clerk by whom I’d first been confused tiptoed up to me after about twenty minutes and asked in a quiet voice whether I needed assistance to my room; worried that I might be ill, he had brought, on a tray, a bottle of mineral water and a glass. I took the water and drank it all down, and then, when he remained at my side, looking concerned, I assured him that I was all right and could make my way to my room alone.
It was almost eleven. If I waited another hour, might he not leave on his own — or would he just get into my pajamas and go to bed? Perhaps the solution was to take a taxi over to the King David Hotel and ask for his key as casually as he, apparently, had walked off with mine. Yes, go there and sleep there. With her. And tomorrow he meets with Aharon to complete our conversation while she and I get on with the promotion of the cause. I just pick up where I left off in the jeep.
I remained half dozing in that corner chair, groggily thinking that this was still last summer and that everything I took to be actuality — the Jewish courtroom in Ramallah, George’s desperate wife and child, my impersonating Moishe Pipik for them, the farcical taxi ride with the shitting driver, my alarming run-in with the Israeli army, my impersonating Moishe Pipik for Gal — was all a Halcion hallucination. Moishe Pipik was
With a start, I surfaced, and there to either side of me was a large potted fern; there too was the kind clerk, offering water again and asking if I was sure I didn’t need help. I saw by my watch that it was half past eleven. “Tell me please, the day, the month, and the year.”
“Tuesday, January 26, 1988. In thirty minutes, sir, it will be the twenty-seventh.”
“And this is Jerusalem.”
He smiled. “Yes, sir.”
“Thank you. That’s all.”
I put my hand in my inside jacket pocket. Had that been a Halcion hallucination as well, the cashier’s check for a million dollars? Must have been. The envelope was gone.
Instead of telling the clerk to get the manager or the security officer and advising them that an intruder posing as me and probably crazy and maybe even armed had gained access to my room, I got up and went across the lobby and into the restaurant to find out if it was possible at this late hour to get something to eat. I stopped first in the doorway to see if Pipik and Jinx might be dining there; she could very well have been with him when he’d come out of the bar earlier to get my key from the front desk — perhaps they were not yet up fucking together in my room but down here eating together at my expense. Why not that, too?
But except for a party of four men lingering over coffee at a round table in the furthest corner of the restaurant, the place was empty even of waiters. The four seemed to be having a good time, quietly laughing over something together, and only when one of them came to his feet did I recognize that he was Demjanjuk’s son and that the late diners with him were his father’s legal team, Chumak the Canadian, Gill the American, and Sheftel the Israeli. Probably they’d been working out the next day’s strategy over dinner and now they were bidding good night to John junior. He was no longer in the neat dark suit he’d been wearing in the courtroom but dressed casually in slacks and a sports shirt, and when I saw that he was carrying a plastic bottle of water in one hand, I remembered reading in my clipping file that except for Sheftel, whose home and office were forty-five minutes away, in Tel Aviv, the lawyers and the Demjanjuk family members were staying at the American Colony; he must be taking the water to his room.
Leaving the dining room, young Demjanjuk passed directly beside me and, as though it were he for whom I’d been waiting there, I turned and followed after him, thinking exactly as I had the day before when I’d seen him headed from the courtroom for the street: Should this boy be unprotected? Isn’t there a single survivor of the camps whose children or sister or brother or parents or husband or wife had been murdered there, someone who had been mutilated there or maddened for life, ready to take vengeance on Demjanjuk senior through Demjanjuk junior? Isn’t there anyone prepared to hold the son hostage until the father confesses? It was difficult to account for what was keeping him alive and safe in this country, populated as it was by the last of the generation to whose decimation his namesake stood accused of having made such a wholehearted contribution. Isn’t there one Jack Ruby in all of Israel?
And then it occurred to me: How about you?
Lagging only some four or five feet behind him, I followed young Demjanjuk through the lobby and up the stairs, suppressing the impulse to stop him and say, “Look, I for one don’t hold it against you that you believe your father is being framed. How could you believe otherwise and be the good American son that you are? Your belief in your father does not make you my enemy. But some people here may see it differently. You’re taking an awfully big chance walking around like this. You, your sisters, and your mother have suffered enough already. But so too, remember, have a lot of Jews. You’ll never recover from this no matter how you may delude yourself, but then neither have a lot of Jews quite recuperated yet from what they and their families have been through. You might really be asking a little too much of them to go walking around here in a nice sports shirt and a clean pair of slacks, with a full bottle of mineral water in your hand. … Innocuous enough from your point of view, I’m sure: what’s the water have to do with anything? But don’t provoke memories unnecessarily, don’t tempt some enraged and broken soul to lose control and do something regrettable. …”
When my quarry turned into the corridor off the landing I proceeded on up the stairs to the hotel’s top floor, where my room was situated midway down the hall. I moved as quietly as I could to the door of my room and listened there for sounds from within, while back by the staircase someone was standing and looking my way — someone who had been following only steps behind me while I had been following Demjanjuk’s son. A plainclothesman, of course! Stationed here by the police and watching out for John junior’s safety. Or is this the plainclothesman shadowing me, imagining that I’m Moishe Pipik? Or is he stalking Pipik, thinking that Pipik is me?
