scandalous talk any longer and he slapped the old man’s face. The coach by then had rolled up to its stop in the next town. The streets all around were jammed with followers of the Chofetz Chaim excitedly awaiting his arrival. He disembarked, a roar went up, and only then did the Jew in the coach understand whom he had slapped. Imagine the poor man’s mortification. And imagine the impression that his mortification made on as loving and gentle a soul as the Chofetz Chaim. From that moment onward, the Chofetz Chaim decreed that a person must not utter loshon hora even about himself.”
He had charmingly recounted the story, expertly, wittily, so very graceful in his speech despite his heavy accent, his tone mellifluous and quite spellbinding, as though with a treasured folktale he were coaxing a little grandchild to sleep. I wanted to say, “Why do you entertain me, in preparation for what? Why am I here? Who exactly are you? Who are these others? What is Pipik’s place in all of this?” I suddenly wanted so much to speak — to shout for help, to cry out in distress, to demand from him some explanation — that I felt ready to jump not from the window but from my own skin. Yet by this time the wordlessness that had begun as something closely resembling hysterical aphonia had become the bedrock on which I was building my self-defense. Silence had settled in now like a tactic, albeit a tactic that even I recognized he — Uri — they — whoever — wouldn’t have much trouble negating.
“Where is Uri now?” Smilesburger asked, looking down at his watch. “The man is half a man and half a panther. If on the way to the restaurant there is a pretty soldier girl … But this is the price you pay for a specimen like Uri. Again I apologize. It’s days since you’ve eaten a nutritious meal. Someone else might not be so gracious about this terrible situation. Another man of your eminence reeling with hunger might not be so civil and restrained. Henry Kissinger would be screaming at the top of his lungs had he been made to wait alone in a stuffy room like this for the likes of a crippled old nobody like me. A Henry Kissinger would have got up and stormed out of here hours ago, would have hit the ceiling, and I wouldn’t blame him. But you, your even temper, your self-possession, your cool head …” Hoisting himself up on his feet, he hobbled to the blackboard, where, with a stump of chalk he wrote in English, “YOU SHALL NOT HATE YOUR BROTHER IN YOUR HEART.’’ Beneath that he wrote, “YOU SHALL NOT TAKE VENGEANCE OR BEAR ANY GRUDGE AGAINST THE CHILDREN OF YOUR PEOPLE.” “But then maybe secretly,” he said while he wrote, “you are amused and this explains your patient composure. You have one of those Jewish intellects that seize naturally on the comical side of things. Maybe everything is a joke to you. Is it? Is he a joke?” Having finished at the blackboard, he was gesturing to the TV screen, where the camera had momentarily focused on Demjanjuk as he scribbled a note for his defense attorney. “In the beginning he used to nudge Sheftel all the time. Sheftel must have told him, ‘John, don’t nudge me, write me notes,’ so now he writes notes that Sheftel doesn’t read. And why is his alibi so hopeless? Doesn’t that surprise you? Why such a contradictory jumble of places and dates that any first-year law student could discredit? Demjanjuk’s not intelligent but I thought at least he was cunning. You would think he would have got someone long ago at least to help him with the alibi. But then this would entail telling someone the truth, and that he has been too cunning for. I doubt if even the wife knows. The friends don’t. The poor son doesn’t. Your friend Mr. Ziad calls it a ‘show trial.’ Ten years of hearings in America by American immigration and the American courts. A trial in Jerusalem before three distinguished judges and under the scrutiny of the entire world press already going on for over a year. A trial where nearly two days are taken up with arguing over the paper clip on the identity card to establish if the paper clip is authentic or not. Mr. Ziad must be making a joke. So many jokes. Too many jokes. Do you know what it amuses some people to say? That it’s a Jew who runs the PLO. That surrounded by a circle of henchmen as inept as he is, Arafat could not himself, without at least some Jewish assistance, administer a multinational racket with ten billion dollars in assets. People say that, if there is not a Jew to whom Arafat reports, there must be a Jew in charge of the money. Who but a Jew could rescue this organization from all the mismanagement and corruption? When the bottom fell out of the Lebanese pound, who but a Jew prevented the PLO from taking a bath at the Beirut banks? Who now manages the capital outlay for this rebellion that is their latest futile public-relations stunt? Look, look at Sheftel,” he said, drawing my attention once again to the TV set. Demjanjuk’s Israeli lawyer had just risen to raise an objection to some remark of the prosecutors. “When he was in law school here and the government had canceled Meyer Lansky’s entry visa, Sheftel became chairman of Students for Meyer Lansky. Later he became Lansky’s lawyer and got Lansky a visa to come. Sheftel calls this American Jewish gangster the most brilliant man he ever met. ‘If Lansky had been in Treblinka,’ Sheftel says, ‘the Ukrainians and the Nazis wouldn’t have lasted three months.’ Does Sheftel believe Demjanjuk? That isn’t the point. It’s more that Sheftel can never believe the state. He would rather defend the accused war criminal and the renowned gangster than side with the Israeli establishment. But even this is still a very long way from a Jew who manages the PLO portfolio, let alone a Jew who makes them charitable contributions. Do you know what Demjanjuk said to Sheftel after the Jews had fired the Irishman O’Connor and put Sheftel in charge of the case? Demjanjuk told Sheftel, ‘If I’d had a Jewish lawyer to begin with, I’d never be in this trouble now.’ A joke? Apparently not. The man who sits accused of being Ivan the Terrible is reported to have said it: ‘If only I’d had a Jewish lawyer. …’ So I ask once again, is it necessarily a joke, and only a joke, that the sound investments in stocks, in bonds, in real estate, in motels and currency and radio stations that have given the PLO some financial independence from their Arab brothers are said to have been made for them by Jewish advisers? But just who are these Jews, if they really exist? What is their motive, if they really exist? Is this only stupid Arab propaganda, designed to try to embarrass the Jews, or is it true and truly embarrassing? I can more readily sympathize with the motives of a traitorous Jew like Mr. Vanunu, who gives to the British press our nuclear secrets, than the motives of a rich Jew who gives his money to the PLO. I wonder if even the Chofetz Chaim could find it in his heart to forgive a Jew so defiant of the Torah prohibition that tells us we must not take vengeance against the children of our people. What is the worst loshon hora compared to putting Jewish money in the pockets of Arab terrorists who machine-gun our youngsters while they play on the beaches? True, it is told to us by the Chofetz Chaim that the only money you can take with you when you die is what you spent here in charity — but charity to the PLO? That is surely not the way to amass treasures in Heaven. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, you shall not follow a multitude to do evil, and you shall not write checks to terrorists who kill Jews. I would like to know the names that are signed on those checks. I would like to have a chance to talk to these people and to ask what they think they are doing. But first I must find out if they truly exist other than in the hate-filled imagination of this mischievous friend of yours, so bursting with troublemaking tricks and lies. I never know whether George Ziad is completely crazy, completely devious, or completely both. But then this is the problem we have with the people in this region. Are there really in Athens rich Jews waiting to meet you who support our worst enemy, Jews ready to put their wealth at the disposal of those who have wished to destroy us from the moment that this country first drew breath? Suppose for the sake of argument that there are five of them. Suppose there are ten of them. How much can they contribute — a million apiece? Inconsequential beside what’s given to Arafat every year by a single corrupt little Arabian sheikh. Is it worth tracking them down for a measly ten million? Can you just go around killing rich Jews because you don’t like the people they give their money to? On the other hand, can you reason with them instead, people so poisoned with perversity to begin with? Probably it is best to forget about them and leave them to their everlasting shame. And yet I can’t. I am obsessed by them, these seemingly responsible members of the community, these two-faced fifth-column Jews. All I want to do is to converse with one of them, if such a one exists, the way I am conversing with you. Am I misguided in my Jewish zeal? Am I being made a fool of by an Arab liar? The Chofetz Chaim reminds us, and I believe it, that ‘the world rests on those who silence themselves during an argument.’ But perhaps the world will not cave in immediately if you should dare now to say a few words. Should such Jews prey on my mind like this? What is your opinion? With all the work still to be done for the Jews of the Soviet Union, with all the problems of security that beset our tiny state, why devote one’s precious energy to hunting down a few self-hating Jews in order to discover what makes them tick? About these Jews who defame the Jewish people, the Chofetz Chaim has told us everything anyway. They are driven by loshon hora, and like all who are driven by loshon hora, they will be punished in the world to come. And so why, in our world, should I pursue them? That is the first question I have for you. The second is this: If I do, can I count on Philip Roth to assist me?”
As though at last the cue had been uttered for which he’d been waiting, Uri entered the classroom.
“Lunch,” said Smilesburger, smiling warmly.
The dishes were crammed onto a cafeteria tray. Uri set the tray beside the TV set, and Smilesburger invited me to pull up my chair and begin to eat.
