Operation Shylock

by Philip Roth

  “Hey,” he said, laughing, “you don’t entirely trust me,” and came around to take the chair across the table.

  An indication of how stunned I’d been out in the lobby—and had remained even off by myself in the bathroom, where I had somehow got round to believing that victory was achieved and he was about to run off, never to dare to return—was that only when we were sitting opposite each other did I notice that he was dressed identically to me: not similarly, identically. Same washed-out button-down, openneck Oxford blue shirt, same well-worn tan V-neck cashmere sweater, same cuffless khaki trousers, same gray Brooks Brothers herringbone sports jacket threadbare at the elbows—a perfect replica of the colorless uniform that I had long ago devised to simplify life’s sartorial problem and that I had probably recycled not even ten times since I’d been a penniless freshman instructor at the University of Chicago in the mid-fifties. I’d realized, while packing my suitcase for Israel, that I was just about ragged enough for my periodic overhaul—and so too, I saw, was he. There was a nub of tiny threadlets where the middle front button had come off his jacket—I noticed because for some time now I’d been exhibiting a similar nub of threadlets where the middle button had yet again vanished from my jacket. And with that, everything inexplicable became even more inexplicable, as though what we were missing were our navels.

  “What do you make of Demjanjuk?” he asked.

  Were we going to chat? About Demjanjuk no less?

  “Don’t we have other, more pressing concerns, you and I? Don’t we have the prima facie case of identity appropriation to talk about, as outlined in point four by Professor Prosser?”

  “But all that sort of pales, don’t you think, beside what you saw in that courtroom this morning?”

  “How would you know what I saw this morning?”

  “Because I saw you seeing it. I was in the balcony. Upstairs with the press and the television. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. Nobody can the first time. Is he or isn’t he, was he or wasn’t he?—the first time, that’s all that goes round in anyone’s head.”

  “But if you’d spotted me from the balcony, what was all that emotion about back in the lobby? You already knew I was here.”

  “You minimize your meaning, Philip. Still doing battle against being a personage. You don’t entirely take in who you are.”

  “So you’re taking it in for me—is that the story?”

  When, in response, he lowered his face—as though I’d impertinently raised a subject we’d already agreed to consider off bounds—I saw that his hair had seriously thinned out and was striated gray in a pattern closely mirroring my own. Indeed, all those differences between our features that had been so reassuringly glaring at first sight were dismayingly evaporating the more accustomed to his appearance I became. Penitentially tilted forward like that, his balding head looked astonishingly like mine.

  I repeated my question. “Is that the story? Since I apparently don’t ‘take in’ what a personage I am, you have kindly taken it upon yourself to go about as this great personage for me?”

  “Like to see a menu, Philip? Or would you like a drink?”

  There was still no waiter anywhere, and it occurred to me that this dining room was not even open yet for business. I reminded myself then that the escape hatch of the “dream” was no longer available to me. Because I am sitting in a dining room where there is no food to be obtained; because across from me there sits a man who, I must admit, is nearly my duplicate in every way, down to the button missing from his jacket and the silver-gray filaments of hair, that he has just pointedly displayed to me; because, instead of adjusting manfully to the predicament and intuitively taking control, I am being pushed to within an inch of I don’t know what intemperate act by this stupidly evolving, unendurable farce, apparently all this only means that I am wide awake. What is being manufactured here is not a dream, however weightless and incorporeal life happens to feel at this moment and however alarmingly I may sense myself as a speck of being embodying nothing but its own speckness, a tiny existence even more repugnant than his.

  “I’m talking to you,” I said.

  “I know. Amazing. And I’m talking to you. And not just in my head. More amazing.”

  “I meant I would like an answer from you. A serious answer.”

  “Okay, I’ll answer seriously. I’ll be blunt, too. Your prestige has been a little wasted on you. There’s a lot you haven’t done with it that you could have done—a lot of good. That is not a criticism, just a statement of fact. It’s enough for you to write—God knows a writer like you doesn’t owe anyone any more than that. Of course not every writer is equipped to be a public figure.”

  “So you’ve gone public for me.”

  “A rather cynical way to put it, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes? What is the uncynical way?”

  “Look, at bottom—and this is meant with no disrespect, but since bluntness is your style—at bottom you are only instrumental.”

  I was looking at his glasses. It had taken this long for me to get round to the glasses, glasses framed in a narrow gold half-frame exactly like my own. … Meanwhile he had reached inside his jacket pocket and withdrawn a worn old billfold (yes, worn exactly like mine) and extracted from it an American passport that he handed across the table to me. The photograph was one taken of me some ten years ago. And the signature was my signature. Flipping through its pages, I saw that Philip Roth had been stamped in and out of half a dozen countries that I myself had never visited: Finland, West Germany, Sweden, Poland, Romania.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “Passport office.”

  “This happens to be me, you know.” I was pointing to the photograph.

  “No,” he quietly replied. “It’s me. Before my cancer.”

  “Tell me, did you think this all out beforehand or are you making the story up as you go along?”

  “I’m terminally ill,” he replied, and so confusing was that remark that when he reached across for the passport, the strongest and best evidence I had of the fraud that he was perpetrating, I stupidly handed it back to him instead of keeping it and causing a fracas then and there. “Look,” he said, leaning intensely across the table in a way I recognized as an imitation of my own conversational style, “about the two of us and our connection is there really any more to say? Maybe the trouble is that you haven’t read enough Jung. Maybe it comes down to nothing more than that. You’re a Freudian, I’m a Jungian. Read Jung. He’ll help you. I began to study him when I first had to deal with you. He explained for me parallelisms that are unexplainable. You have the Freudian belief in the sovereign power of causality. Causeless events don’t exist in your universe. To you things that aren’t thinkable in intellectual terms aren’t worth thinking about. A lot of smart Jews are like that. Things that aren’t thinkable in intellectual terms don’t even exist. How can I exist, a duplicate of you? How can you exist, a duplicate of me? You and I defy causal explanation. Well, read Jung on ‘synchronicity.’ There are meaningful arrangements that defy causal explanation and they are happening all the time. We are a case of synchronicity, synchronistic phenomena. Read a little Jung, Philip, if only for your peace of mind. ‘The uncontrollability of real things’—Carl Jung knows all about it. Read The Secret of the Golden Flower. It’ll open your eyes to a whole other world. You look stupefied—without a causal explanation you are lost. How on this planet can there be two men of the same age who happen not only to look alike but to bear the same name? All right, you need causality? I’ll give you causality. Forget about just you and me—there would have been another fifty little Jewish boys of our age growing up to look like us if it hadn’t been for certain tragic events that occurred in Europe between 1939 and 1945. And is it impossible that half a dozen of them might not have been Roths? Is our family name that rare? Is it impossible that a couple of those little Roths might not have been called after a grandfather Fayvel, like you, Philip, and like me? You, from your care
er perspective, may think it’s horrible that there are two of us and that you are not unique. From my Jewish perspective, I have to say I think it’s horrible that only two are left.”

  “No, no, not horrible—actionable. It’s actionable that of the two of us left, one of us goes around impersonating the other. Had there been seven thousand of us left in the world, only one of us, you 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 Ceauescu 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 café 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 under
stands, 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 in the simplicity with which the imminent horror is perceived in your novels.

  APPELFELD: You’re right. In Badenheim 1939 I completely ignored the historical explanation. I assumed that the historical facts were known and that readers would fill in what was missing. You’re also correct, it seems to me, in assuming that my description of the Second World War has something in it of a child’s vision. Historical explanations, however, have been alien to me ever since I became aware of myself as an artist. And the Jewish experience in the Second World War was not “historical.” We came in contact with archaic mythical forces, a kind of dark subconscious the meaning of which we did not know, nor do we know it to this day. This world appears to be rational (with trains, departure times, stations, and engineers), but in fact these were journeys of the imagination, lies and ruses, which only deep, irrational drives could have invented. I didn’t understand, nor do I yet understand, the motives of the murderers.