Black Box (21 page)

187. A man minds his own private business as long as he has business and as long as he has privacy. In their absence, for fear of the emptiness of his life, he turns feverishly to other people’s business. To straighten them out. To chastise them. To enlighten every fool and crush every deviant. To bestow favors on others or to persecute them savagely. Between the altruistic zealot and the murderous zealot there is of course a difference of moral degree, but there is no difference in kind. Murderousness and self-sacrifice are simply two sides of the same coin. Domination and benevolence, aggression and devotion, repression and self-repression, saving the souls of those who are different from you and annihilating them: these are not pairs of opposites but merely different expressions of man’s emptiness and worthlessness. “His insufficiency to himself,” in the phrase of Pascal (who was infected himself).

188. “For want of anything to do with his empty, sterile life, he falls on the necks of others or reaches for their throats” (Eric Hoffer,
The True Believer).

189. And this is the secret of the surprising similarity between the charitable maiden who labors night and day for the outcasts of society and the ideological brigand, the head of a secret service, whose life is utterly dedicated to the elimination of rivals, or aliens, or enemies of the revolution: their modesty. Their making do with little. Their sanctimoniousness, which can be sniffed from afar. Their habit of secret self-pity, and hence their radiation of megawatts of guilt feelings. The shared hostility of the maiden and the inquisitor toward anything that might be taken for “luxury” or “self-indulgence.” Dedicated missionary and bloodthirsty purge-master: the same gentle manners. The same flowery politeness. The same smell of undefined sourness emanates from the two of them. The same ascetical style of dress. The same taste (trite, sentimental) in music and art. And, in particular, the same active vocabulary, characterized by hackneyed flourishes, affected modesty, avoidance of all vulgarity—
toilet
instead of
lavatory, pass away
instead of
die, solution
instead of
annihilation, purge
instead of
slaughter.
And, of course,
salvation, redemption.
The shared slogan: “I am only a humble instrument.” (I am an “instrument,” therefore I am: “cog”—
ergo
sum?!
)

190. Torturer and victim. Inquisitor and martyr. Crucifier and crucified. The mystery of the mutual understanding, of the secret fellowship that frequently grows up between them. The interdependence. The covert mutual admiration. The ease with which they are able to exchange roles with changing circumstances.

191. “Sacrificing private life on the altar of sacred ideals” is nothing more than a desperate clinging to ideals when private life has died.

200. In other words: with the death of the soul the walking corpse turns into a totally public being.

201. “The sanctity of duty”: a convulsive grasping of any life raft that floats within reach. The nature of the life raft almost incidental.

202. “Purging oneself of all trace of selfishness”: a selfish survival stratagem, verging on blind instinct.

***

Prof. A. Gideon
Midwest University
Chicago, Ill., U.S.A.

Jerusalem
13.8.76

My dear Dr. Strangelove,

At this moment in time it is not clear to me whether I am fired or not. Our purchaser is prepared to pay you thirteen for the property in Zikhron, swears that that is his final offer, and threatens to withdraw if he has not received a positive answer within a fortnight. As for poor Roberto, I have almost managed to persuade him to return your files to me of his own free will. Apparently he is beginning to realize what sort of customer he is dealing with. While I, for my part, have decided to wipe away the spittle and carry on: I shall not abandon you to your lunacy or allow you to bring calamity on yourself. Apparently you suspect me of selling you to Sommo, but the truth is the contrary: All my efforts have been directed to buying him for ourselves, and to put a bridle on him (in the form of my son-in-law Zohar). And in the meantime, in accordance with the instructions you sent me in your last cable, here is a summary of the latest news: It transpires that Baron de Sommo is buying himself a fancy apartment in the refurbished Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. All the evidence points to its being a bargain deal between him and one of the members of his tribe. In addition to which he is learning to drive and making plans to buy a car. An expensive suit of clothes he has now (although when he is wearing the alarming object he has selected, I regret bitterly ever having advised him to buy one). His Jewish Fellowship organization he has recently converted into a sort of reconnaissance unit or security guard in the service of an investment company called Tentpeg that he and Zohar Etgar have set up in partnership with a group of pious investors and with some discreet backing from Paris, anent which I shall report to you once I am convinced that you have returned to your senses. The joint financial handle of this Tentpeg is held, of course, by Zohar (with my Holy Spirit illuminating it from on high). The various devout partners take care of the ethical side of the business, that is to say, they have managed to convince the revenue authorities to recognize them as a sort of orphanage, brackets “charitable status.”

Meanwhile, our Sommo is starring in the role of foreign minister. He is involved in expert lobbying. He is swimming around in the corridors of power like a fish or a seaweed. Spending his days and his nights in the company of party hacks, MPs, secretary generals, and director generals. Circulating in and around his brother’s court, expounding Jewish love to the officials of the Military Administration, planting the longing for redemption in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, causing messianic stirrings among the staff of the Israel Land Authority, preaching, beseeching, cajoling, quoting Holy Writ, spreading a thick cloud of guilt feelings, with one hand upon his heart and the other around his interlocutor’s shoulder, sweetening the whole thing with Biblical honey, dusting it with homilies, seasoning it with a pinch of gossip, rolling up permits and certificates, and, in sum, tirelessly paving the way for the Last Days and also speedily consolidating our investments to the south of Jerusalem. At the head of the third chapter of your excellent book you quote an epigram from Jesus of Nazareth, who admonished his disciples to be simultaneously “as cunning as vipers and as innocent as doves.” On the basis of this specification Sommo might be promoted to the rank of senior apostle. Soon, according to information from our good friend Shlomo Zand, he is intending to set out on an urgent mission to Paris with his French passport, and I’ll wager that he will return home laden with goodies. The final outcome will be that, thanks to him, we—that is, you and I, Alex—shall receive a double invitation to Paradise because of our part in the redemption of the land.

I am writing this in the hope that you will soon give me a little sign, and I will harness your dormant cash to these chariots of the gods. And I will undertake to steer Sommo in such a way that he will do for you in the present what I did for your father in the good old days. Think it over carefully, my dear friend: If your old Zakheim has not rusted entirely, then you simply have to rely on his intuition and climb onto this new wave without delay. In this way we can kill three fine birds with one paltry million: we harness Sommo to us, make your Gulliver’s fortune (if you have definitely made up your mind to appoint him your crown prince), and also get our hands on Lady de Sommo. Because Zand reports to me that while Napoleon is advancing toward the pyramids, signs of restlessness are appearing in Desirée, who has begun to take an interest in the possibility of going back to work in the same bookshop where she made her living in those fiery two years of hers, after the prince left and before the frog arrived. If I have read your mind correctly, then this development is playing straight into our hands. Would you like me to book her a ticket and send her to you
prontísimo?
Or should I wait until I am quite sure that she’s ripe for it? Would you like me to send Zand to sniff out what’s going on in Zikhron? And the main thing, Alex: Will you let me sell that ruin that brings in nothing and costs you a fortune in taxes, and use the money to hammer in a little Tentpeg of your own? Please, send me a one-word cable: “Affirmative.” You won’t regret it.

Take good care of your body and your nerves. And don’t hate your only real friend, who is waiting for a sane answer from you and signs off now anxiously but affectionately—

Your miserable
Manfred

***

PERSONAL ROBERTO DIMODENA JERUSALEM ISRAEL

FORBID YOU TO LET YOUR PARTNER MEDDLE IN MY AFFAIRS FIND OUT AND REPORT AT ONCE WHO HIS PURCHASER IS KEEP PAYING BOAZ ALEXANDER GIDEON

***

Professor Alexander Gideon
Political Science Department
Midwest University
Chicago, Ill., U.S.A.

15.8.76

Dear Alec,

From Zikhron I traveled on to Haifa. A strong, strange smell, a heady mixture of pine resin and Lysol, pervaded the sanatorium on Mount Carmel. From time to time the moan of a ship’s siren floated up from the harbor. Trains hooted and fell silent. The gardens lay in rustic tranquillity shrouded in gentle sunlight. A couple of old women were dozing on a bench, shoulder resting on shoulder, like a pair of stuffed birds. An Arab male nurse who was pushing a patient in a wheelchair slowed as I passed and eyed me lasciviously. From a corner of the garden rose the croaking of frogs. And in an arbor of thick vines I finally found your father, sitting alone at a white-painted metal table, with his shock of prophetic white hair waving slightly in the breeze, his unkempt Tolstoyan beard flowing down over a stained dressing gown, his face brown and shriveled like a dried fig, with a teaspoon in his hand and a cake on a plate and a half-finished glass of yogurt on the table in front of him. The blue eyes sailing away toward the blue of the sea. His deep, calm breathing stirring the spray of oleander that he was fanning himself with.

When I pronounced his name he deigned to turn and look at me. He rose slowly, majestically, from his seat and bowed to me twice. I held out a bunch of chrysanthemums I had bought at the Central Bus Station. He handed me his oleander spray, drew the chrysanthemums to his chest, carefully inserted one of them into the buttonhole of his dressing gown, and unhesitatingly planted the rest of the bunch in his yogurt glass. He called me Madame Rovina, and thanked me for finding the time to come to his funeral and even bringing flowers.

I laid my palm on the back of his broad hand, which was crisscrossed with a fascinating network of delicate blue blood vessels and blotched with patches of brown pigmentation, like a landscape of rivers and hills, and asked him how he was. Your father fixed me with his hard, piercing eyes, and his enchanting face darkened. Suddenly he chuckled as though he had seen through my little scheme but had decided to forgive me. Then he turned serious, frowned, and demanded that I tell him if there is any pardon for Dostoevsky; how was it possible that such a man of God “could beat his wife all through the winter and then get drunk and play cards like a beast while his baby is dying?”

Here he was apparently shocked at his own bad manners. He snatched the chrysanthemums out of the yogurt glass, hurled them disgustedly over his shoulder, pushed the glass toward me, and asked me if I would care for some champagne. I raised the glass to my lips—there were petals and dust floating on the murky liquid—and pretended to take a sip. Meanwhile your father wolfed down the remains of his cake. When he had finished it I took out a hankie and brushed the crumbs from his beard. He responded by stroking my hair and declaiming in tragic tones: “The wind,
krassavitsa,
the autumn wind, all day long stealing into gardens. Ho, and its conscience is not clear! It knows no rest! Banished! And in the night they start to ring the big bells. Soon snow will be falling, and we—
dayosh!—
will ride on.” Here he lost his way. He fell silent. He gaped slightly, with a cloud of sadness on his face.

“And your health is all right, Volodya? The pains in your shoulder have gone?”

“Pains? Not me! I don’t have pains—he does. I heard tell that he’s alive, that he talked on the radio even. If I was in his place I would marry a wife and immediately make her have a dozen babies.”

“Whose place, Volodya?”

“You know, that little fellow, whats-his-name. That one. The little brother. Binyomin. The one who used to wander around in front of the Arab village of Budrus with the first flock of sheep from the settlement. Binyomin, they used to call him. Described to the life in Dostoevsky! Even truer than he was in
realia!
I was in
realia
also, but as a swine. We had another one there—Sioma. Sioma Axioma, we used to call him. He was one in million. Not one ounce of swine in him. He came from my hometown. Shirky. Minsk Region.
Realia
could not forgive him, and it killed him with love for woman. He took his own lovely soul with my revolver. Could I do something to stop him? Had I the right to? Would you offer him, dear lady, one goblet of woman’s love? He would repay you with crimson and turquoise. Generously he would repay you. His soul for one single goblet! Half? Quarter? No? Well, then! Never mind. It is not necessary. Do not give. Every human being is—one planet. There’s no way through. Just twinkling far away whenever there are no clouds.
Realia
itself is swine. May I offer you one flower? In memory of that poor miserable one. One flower for ascent of his soul? Dostoevsky killed him, with my revolver. Anti-Semite he was! Despicable! Epileptic! He crucifies Christ at least twice on every single page, and still he accuses us. He beats the Jews murderously. And perhaps he is right, dear lady? I am not talking about Palestine. Palestine is—another song. What is Palestine?
Realia?
Palestine is dream. Palestine is
cauchemar,
but still is dream. Perhaps you have deigned to hear of Lady Dulcinea? Well, Palestine is like her. In the dream, myrrh and frankincense, but in
realia
swinery! Misery of swines. And in the morning—‘behold it was Leah!’ What Leah? Malaria. Ottoman Asia. I was just little boy, little boy catching sparrows. I used to sell them two for a kopeck. I loved to wander by myself on the steppe. So: dreamily strolling in the meadows. And all around—terror! Forests! And muzhiks, with, whatdyacallem, not boots—leggings. That is our Palestine back in Shirky. The stream is Palestine too. And I can swim in it. And one day, there am I as young boy wandering between forest and meadow, and suddenly right in front of me out of the ground up pops little peasant girl. With braid. A swineherd, begging your pardon. Maybe fifteen years old. Well, I don’t ask her how old she is. Up she pops and without a word she starts to hoist up—begging pardon—her skirt. And beckoning with her finger. Not one goblet of woman’s love—one whole river. Take and it shall be given to you. And I am only young stripling, my foolish blood boiling, and my brain—begging his pardon—fast asleep. Would I lie to you, madame, in the middle of my own funeral? No. Lying is totally contemptible. All the more so before open grave. In short, I do not deny, my dove, I lay hands on her in that field. And for that sin I am sent to Ottoman Asia. ‘Flow on, Jordan . . .” My father himself smuggles me out in middle of night, so they will not hack me to death. And there, in Palestine—wilderness! Graveyard! Fear! Foxes! Prophets! Bedouins! And the air all ablaze! Take another sip; it will do you good. Drink to memory of women’s love. On the way, when I am still on ship, I throw my tefillin straight in sea. Let fishes eat and grow fat. And I will explain this to you also: Short while before we reach city of Alexandria, I have one big row with God. Both of us screaming at each other half the night there on the deck. Maybe we overdo it. What does He want from me? That I should be his little
zhid.
And that’s all. Whereas I for my part, I want to be one great swine. And so we quarrel, until comes the night watchman and kicks both of us off that deck in middle of the night. That is how He loses me and I lose Him. Such a secondhand, grumpy, sour God. So. He stayed up there all alone like a dog muttering in his mustache, and I stay down here, one swine among swines. And so we part. And what do I do?
Na,
tell me what I do with the gift of life? What do I spend it on? Why do I sully it? I smash teeth, I cheat, I steal, and, above all, I hoist up skirts. Filthy swine in every way. And now, begging your pardon, dear lady, it is not quite clear to me why you deigned to come and see me today. Are you sent by Binyomin? He has been horribly punished. And who by? By the fair sex! Only because he was such a nonswine. They broke his heart at their pleasure but they did not let him beat a path to their bodies. Even before the shadow of a touch he would faint with embarrassment. So much he suffered that his pure soul departed. And by means of my own revolver! Is madame maybe familiar with the location of the city of Simferopol? There was a terrible battle there. The boys were dying like flies. And who does not die loses God. Does not know what is up and what is down. Gives up God for the sake of women’s love, but women they do not find. Women in the Land of Israel are rare then. Perhaps five or six between Rosh Pina and Kastina. Perhaps ten, if you count Baba Yagas. But a
barishnya—
not to be found. The boys, after the discussions, they lie down each one on his mattress and they dream of brothel of Odessa. And this because God tricks us. He never comes to Ottoman Asia. He stays behind in attic of synagogue in Shirky, lying there and waiting that Messiah should come. In Land of Israel there is no God and there is no love of women. So everybody gets screwed up. And those that go under bridal canopy? Well, of course, in the morning—behold it is Leah. They are ringing the village bells again far away in the distance. Soon it will start to snow, and we will ride on our way. Can the good lady understand me? Can she pardon me? Forgive me? She is alone and I am alone in that field, and she hoists up her skirts and with her little finger she beckons to me and I lay my hands on her. Therefore I am smuggled to Zion. I am first Jew to extract honey from bees. First since Bible times. Malaria passes me over and I hoist up skirts, like a demon! I am first Jew to hoist up skirts in Palestine since Bible times. Assuming Bible is not legend. For that I am punished in Simferopol. One horse falls on top of me and breaks my legs. In Tulkarem they blow off my head. I get them in the teeth. Much blood spilled. Does madame know? My life is no life at all. Great tearfulness I have until day of my death. And yet once I also loved a woman. Even I forced her to go under bridal canopy with me. Although her heart did not desire me. Perhaps she desired some poet? Whereas I—how should I put it?—from navel up I was in love, singing serenades, offering handkerchiefs and flowers, but from navel down a swine from the land of swine. Hoisting skirts left and right in fields. And she, my beloved, my wife, she sat all day long at her window. She had little song: ‘Yonder, where the cedars grow. . . .’ Do you happen to know this song? Permit me to sing it in your honor: ‘Yonder, where the cedars grow...' Beware of these songs, dear lady. They are written by angel of death. And she, on purpose to punish me, she ups and dies on me. Just to be contrary. She leaves me and goes up to God. She does not know that He is one swine also. She jumps out of frying pan into fire. Give me your hand. Let us be off. The watch is ended. The Jews built themselves a land. It is not the right land, but they built it anyway! It is all askew, but they built it anyway! Without God—but they built it anyway! Now let us wait and see what God has to say about it all. Well, that is enough now: two kopecks I should give you for your sparrows? Two. More than that I will not pay. My whole life has been battle and defilement. I soiled the gift. Skirts and punched teeth. So why should I give you money? What have you done with your own gift of life? One flower I will give you. One flower and one kiss on the lips. Do you know what is my secret? I have never had anything. And what about you? What brings you to me? What have I done to deserve this honor?”