Operation Shylock

On the phone he wept with gratitude even as he reminded me of all that I had promised the day before … and so how could I tell him that it hadn’t been me? And was I even certain that it had been Pipik? It couldn’t be! It had to be Apter dreaming aloud, under the pressure of the Arab uprising; it had to be the eruption of the hysteria of a resourceless, deformed, infolded spirit on whom the grip of a horrible past was never relaxed, someone who, even without an insurrection in progress, hourly awaited his execution. It had to be Apter pining for that restful safety he could never possibly know, longing for the lost family and the stolen life; it had to be the unreality of the hysteria of this little blank-faced man shut off and in dread of everything, whose whole existence was shrinking; it had to be withdrawal and longing and fear — because if it wasn’t that and had indeed been Pipik conscientiously back at work pretending he was me, if it wasn’t either Apter cut loose from his tiny anchor to life and fantastically deluded or Apter openly lying, Apter simulating Apter so as to alarm me into understanding how fantastically deluded existing as Apter required him to be, if Pipik had really made it his business to hunt him down and take him to lunch and toy like this with Apter’s ruined life, then I’d been exaggerating nothing, then I was up against a purpose that was as diabolical as it was intangible, I was up against someone wearing my mask who wasn’t human at all, someone who could get up to anything in order to make things into what they were not. Which does Pipik despise more, reality or me?

“I won’t be a small boy — don’t worry, Cousin Philip. I’ll just be in the barn, that’s all.”

“Yes,” I said, “yes,” and this was the only thing I was able to say.

“I’ll be no bother. I won’t bother anyone. I need nothing at all,” Apter assured me. “I’ll paint. I’ll paint the American countryside. I’ll paint the stone walls you told me about. I’ll paint the big maple trees. I’ll paint pictures of the barns and of the banks of the river.”

On he went, the whole load of his life falling away as he gave free rein, at fifty-four, to his naked need and the fairy tale it engendered of the perfect refuge. I wanted to ask, “Did this happen, Apter? Did he take you to lunch and tell you about the stone walls? Or has the violence so filled you with terror that, whether you know it or not, you are making all this up?” But even as Apter fell deeper and deeper under the spell of the dream of the unhaunted life, I heard myself asking Pipik, “Did you really do this to him? Did you really excite in this banished being who can barely maintain his equilibrium this beautiful vision of an American Gan Eden where he will be saved from the blight and din of his past? Answer me, Pipik!” Whereupon Pipik replied, “I couldn’t resist, I couldn’t do otherwise, neither as a Diasporist nor as a human being. Every word he spoke was filled with his fears. How could I deny him what he’s craved all his life? Why are you so outraged? What have I done that’s so awful? No more than any Jew would do for a frightened Jewish relative in trouble.” “And now you are my conscience, too?” I cried. “You, you are going to instruct me in matters of decency, responsibility, and ethical obligation? Is there nothing that you will not pollute with your mouth? I want a serious answer! Is there nothing that you will not befoul? Is there anyone you will not mislead? What joy do you take in raising false hopes and sowing all this confusion?”

I want a serious answer. From Moishe Pipik. And after that, how about peace on earth and goodwill among men? I want a serious answer — as who doesn’t?

“Apter,” I wanted to say, “you are out of contact with reality. I did not take you to lunch yesterday. I had lunch with Aharon Appelfeld, I took him to lunch. If you had this conversation at lunch yesterday, it was not with me. Either it was with that man who is in Jerusalem pretending to be me or it was perhaps a conversation with yourself — is it possibly an exchange you imagined?”

But every word he spoke was so filled with fear that I did not have the heart to do anything other than repeat “Yes” to it all. I would leave him to awaken by himself from this delusion … and if it was no delusion? I imagined myself ripping the tongue out of Pipik’s mouth with my own two hands. I imagined myself … but I could not give any more thought to the possibility that this was other than a delusion of Apter’s for the simple reason that I would have exploded.

* * *

That morning’s Jerusalem Post was outside my door when I left the room, and I picked it up and quickly scanned the front page. The first lead story was about the 1988 Israeli budget — “Worry over Exports Casts Shadow on New State Budget.” The second lead story concerned three judges who were to be put on trial and three others who were facing disciplinary action on charges of corruption. Situated between these stories was a photograph of the defense minister visiting the wall that George had tried to take me to see the day before, and beneath that were three stories about the West Bank violence, one datelined Ramallah and headed, “Rabin Inspects Wall of Bloody Beatings.” On the lower half of the page I spotted the words “PLO” and “Hezbollah” and “Mubarak” and “Washington” but nowhere the name “Demjanjuk.” Nor did I find my name. I ran quickly over the paper’s remaining nine pages while going down in the elevator. The only mention of the trial I could find was under the television listings. “Israel Channel 2. 8.30 Demjanjuk trial — live broadcast.” And further on, “20.00 Demjanjuk trial roundup.” That was all. Nothing calamitous was reported to have happened to any Demjanjuk in the night.

Nonetheless, I decided to skip breakfast at the hotel and to proceed immediately to the courtroom to be sure that Pipik was not there. I’d had no food at all since lunch with Aharon the previous noon, but I could pick up something at the coffee bar just off the entrance hall to the courtroom, and that would replenish me for now. I realized from the TV listings that the trial began much earlier in the day than I had thought, and I had to be there from the very first moment — I was bent on ousting him today, on supplanting him and taking charge completely; if necessary, I would sit in that courtroom through both the morning and the afternoon sessions so as to avert, before it could even get going, anything that he might still be plotting. Today Moishe Pipik was to be obliterated (if, by any chance, he hadn’t already been the night before). Today was the end of it: Wednesday, January 27, 1988 Shevat 8, 5748 Jomada Tani 9, 1408.

Those were the dates printed in a row beneath the logo of the Post. 1988. 5748. 1408. Agreement on nothing but the last digit, dissension over everything, beginning with where to begin. It’s no wonder “Rabin Inspects Wall of Bloody Beatings” when the discrepancy between 5478 and 1408 is a matter not of decades or even of a few little centuries but of four thousand three hundred and forty years. The father is superseded by the rivalrous, triumphant firstborn — rejected, suppressed, persecuted, expelled, shunned, terrorized by the firstborn and reviled as the enemy — and then, having barely escaped extinction for the crime of being the father, resuscitates himself, revives and rises up to struggle bloodily over property rights with the second-born, who is raging with envy and the grievances of usurpation, neglect, and ravaged pride. 1988. 5748. 1408. The tragic story’s all in the numbers, the successor monotheists’ implacable feud with the ancient progenitor whose crime it is, whose sin it is, to have endured the most unspeakable devastation and still, somehow, to be in the way.

The Jews are in the way.

The moment I stepped out of the elevator, two teenagers, a boy and a girl, jumped up from where they were sitting in the lobby and came toward me, calling my name. The girl was redheaded, freckled, on the dumpy side, and she smiled shyly as she approached; the boy was my height, a skinny, very serious, oldish-seeming boy, cavern-faced and scholarly-looking, who, in his awkwardness, seemed to be climbing over a series of low fences to reach me. “Mr. Roth!” He spoke out in a strong voice a little loud for the lobby. “Mr. Roth! We are two students in the eleventh grade of Liyad Ha-nahar High School in the Jordan Valley. I am Tal.° This is Deborah.°”

“Yes?”

Deborah then stepped forward to greet me, speaking as though she were beginning a public address. “We are a group of high school students that has found your stories very provocative in our English class. We read ‘Eli, the Fanatic’ and ‘Defender of the Faith.’ Both created question marks about the state of the American Jew. We wonder if it would be possible for you to visit us. Here is a letter to you from our teacher.”

“I’m in a hurry right now,” I said, accepting the envelope she handed me, which I saw was addressed in Hebrew. “I’ll read this and answer it as soon as I can.”

“Our class sent you last week, all the students, each one, a letter to the hotel,” Deborah said. “When we received no answer the class voted to send Tal and me on the bus to make our offer directly. We’ll be delighted if you accept our class’s offer.”

“I never got your class’s letters.” Because he had gotten them. Of course! I wondered what could possibly have constrained him from going out to their school and answering questions about his provocative stories. Too busy elsewhere? It horrified me to think about the invitations to speak he had received and accepted here if this was one he considered too inconsequential even to bother to decline. Schoolkids weren’t