End of the Jews

by Adam Mansbach

  “I need you, too,” said Nina. “You’re all I—all I want to need.”

  The phrase that had been sounding in his mind all the way home returned to Tris now: Consecrate the lie. He didn’t know quite what it meant, had only theories about the words’ persistence. In some obscure and awful way, he knew he would not be standing here with Nina, ready to bind himself to her in a ceremony he had until now disdained, if not for the anticipation of his grand public vindication, or the ferocious shame of his betrayal and the victory he had wrung from it, or the massive loneliness that lurked behind it all.

  Tris understood the enormity and viciousness of his own will as never before. It was intoxicating and repellent. He felt like a murderer and an innocent, shapeless and rigid, an initiate to sacred rites and a thief in the temple. Full of love and empty of everything, words even.

  He didn’t know what the fuck he felt like. Whatever he and Nina had together would have to define and redeem and sustain him. That was, after all, what marriage was about, wasn’t it?

  “Let’s go to New Jersey,” he said.

  Nina glanced at the Marcus Flanagan print hanging on the wall behind Tris, then took his hand in hers.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Tristan fit his worn key into the lock, opened the front door, and turned to wave at Linda. She waved back, shifted her vehicle, accelerated out of sight. Amalia had invited her in, but Linda had declined, explaining that she had to go home and tell everyone she knew that the New York Times Magazine was going to profile her son. It was all she’d talked about between Long Island and Connecticut, probably all she’d talk about for quite some time.

  “What about a drink?” the old man said as he and his wife slung their jackets over the bannister.

  For as long as Amalia had known him, the question had meant “what about fixing me one?” She would not play this moment the way she’d played so many others. She would not allow the public obligation to be civil to each other carry over into private, flattening a crisis by virtue of mere low-grade momentum.

  “What about a drink, Tristan?”

  He headed toward the bar. “I’m having scotch.”

  Amalia seated herself on the couch and toyed with the fringe of a blanket. “The same for me, then.” Tristan handed it over, and Amalia studied the golden liquid through the beveled glass.

  “I was proud of you today, with Tris.” She owed him that much.

  Tristan placed his own drink on the coffee table and backed into the chair across from her, balancing his weight against the armrests as he bent at the knees. The process was controlled and gradual at first, and then the old man’s elbows buckled and he fell the last third of the way into the seat. He’d been sitting down this way for years now, but it still unnerved Amalia terribly.

  “Don’t be proud of me. I only did what I had to.” A short sip, punctuated by a twitch of lips, as he recalled the way Tris had bounded over to the family table, not five minutes after Tristan had walked away from him and sat down at it, and asked, Did Grandpa tell you the good news? Smiling right at Tristan. Daring him to tell the truth. He hadn’t.

  The old man straightened in his chair. “Where’s Mariko?”

  “She went home for a bit.”

  “She’ll be back, then?”

  “I believe she will.” Amalia thought about it, then added, “I hope so.”

  Tristan jiggled his drink. “Would it be accurate to say that Mariko now lives here?”

  Amalia held her scotch in both hands, the way a little girl might hold her apple juice. “It would not be inaccurate. Am I to understand that you object?”

  Tristan’s palm floated up from his knee, hung in midair. “I didn’t know we were running a refugee camp is all.”

  “It’s Mariko who’s running the camp, I’m afraid.”

  Tristan fell silent. Amalia watched the furrows of his brow compress and expand like the bellows of an accordion. He was laboring at something. Trying to locate the words, or the courage to say them. Or perhaps he was backtracking, regressing an idea to its point of origin and examining its parentage, so that when he finally elucidated it, he could begin at the beginning, as a storyteller ought.

  “I want to say this right,” he explained.

  Amalia nodded, bemused and saddened at his need to account for himself. As if she didn’t know him at all.

  “I’ve been considering the notion of forgiveness,” the old man said at last, crossing his legs, and Amalia knew his rumination had not yielded the approach he’d sought. Instead, Tristan had decided to come at the subject from a great distance, begin with lofty abstractions and rely on her to do most of the work for him. She was not surprised. She was not even disappointed.

  She waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. “What about it?” Amalia asked, resolving that she would not prompt him again.

  “Well, first in terms of our grandson. It was very liberating for me to forgive him for his book….”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Perhaps you’re growing up.” The words were out of her mouth before Amalia could help it. This was new to her, to pick on him when he was trying.

  “Yes.” The barb didn’t seem to have registered. “I think that may be the single greatest mistake I’ve made in life, Amalia. Among thousands. To hold on to every insult, every offense, rather than forgive. Or ask forgiveness.” He paused. “I’ve been terribly unfair, and I’d like to apologize to you. For everything.”

  He shut his mouth. Because he was finished? Amalia wondered. Or because he realized how much cowardice was packed into that word everything, how little content was contained in that stilted, swift apology, and how much presumption?

  It was moving to see him struggle toward her, as overmatched as he was. But Tristan’s words did not touch her. For the first time in Amalia’s life, words seemed powerless, ignoble—mercenaries without honor, willing to serve any conceit.

  “I appreciate that, Tristan. I never thought I’d hear it. But it’s too late. It’s just…too late.”

  He hadn’t been expecting that, and she could see that it hit Tristan hard. His face sagged, and suddenly Amalia didn’t feel cold anymore; she felt horrible.

  “How can it be too late? We’re still alive. We can still forgive each other.” He pounded his fist against his bony knee. “Goddamn it, Amalia! If I can forgive Tris, you can forgive me!”

  She reached forward and took his hand. It seemed like years since she’d last held it. “You have my forgiveness. As much of it as I can give.”

  She squeezed his hand, but before Tristan could squeeze back, or decide not to, Amalia pulled hers away and brought it to rest in her lap. “And if I wanted your forgiveness, Tristan, I would have asked for it.”

  Tristan slumped down in his seat, tried to formulate a reply and found that prayers filled his mind, blowing about like scraps of paper in the wind, hugely and ridiculously distracting. They had occupied him for the whole ride home and they were back now, pulsing quiet and insistent. The only way to shake free, he decided, was to say one aloud. Perhaps that was what the prayers wanted from him anyway: passage out into the world.

  “Can you recall the Shema?” he asked his wife.

  Amalia stopped herself from demanding to know what the hell this had to do with anything. It was the sort of question one just answered.

  “Only the way my father sang it. The Broadway stage version.”

  “Would you say it with me, please?”

  “Tristan—”

  “Please.”

  Amalia tipped her face to the ceiling, straining in recall, then began to recite: uncertainly at first, but gaining resonance, fluidity, with every phrase. Tristan joined her, and with gazes locked on each other, the two of them made their way through the Hebrew prayer.

  Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

  Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever.

  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart an
d with all your soul and with all your might.

  And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart.

  And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.

  And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.

  And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

  They sat in silence. After a moment, the old man sighed, deflating as the breath left him. “It seems like such a failure, to give up now. You’ll say we gave up years ago. That may be so.”

  Amalia crossed her arms. “I have to reclaim something, Tristan. And you have to let me.”

  “I can’t stop you.”

  “I want you to understand. I want you to agree. That’s what I need.”

  The ice in Tristan’s drink had melted. He lifted the glass until it was upside down and let the scotch-tinged water trickle down his throat.

  “I suppose I do,” he said at last. “I suppose you’re right about it all, Amalia. I deserve this.”

  She opened her mouth to speak.

  “And you deserve this,” he added. She closed it.

  The thermostat clicked. Heat hissed through the house. Amalia uttered her husband’s name, and Tristan raised his eyebrows.

  “Thank you,” she said. The old man nodded.

  Both of them were still, and then Tristan lifted himself to his feet and made his way upstairs. Amalia watched him go, listened until she heard him sink into his office chair. The wheels slid over the floor as he pulled himself closer to his desk. Amalia picked up her drink, and walked into her study.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my grandfather Benjamin Kaplan; my great-uncle and great-aunt, Philip and Esther Kaplan; Victor and Juliet Brudney; and Daniel and Pearl Bell for allowing me to pester them about such things as City College cafeterias, Bronx stickball rules, and 1930s subway routes. To Elvin and Keiko Jones for taking me on the road and giving me the chance to learn everything I know about jazz and opening wine bottles. To Andre C. Willis for facilitating that invaluable experience, and countless others. To Delfeayo Marsalis and Ashley Kahn for answering my esoteric questions about prebop trap sets. To KET for his continued expertise on all matters aerosol. To Professor David Goldberg for vetting the manuscript for historical accuracy. To Eddy Port-noy for providing 1930s Jewish slurs. To David and Lenka Siroky for fact-Czeching. Get it? Get it? To Daniel Alarcón and Vinnie Wilhelm for their invaluable comments on early drafts. To the Giants of Science for bringing violent retribution back to literature. To my cousin Matthew L. Kaplan, for brewing me many cups of extremely strong Brazilian coffee during one particularly grueling stretch of editing. To my father, Charlie Mansbach, for his newpaperman’s ability to quote from memory the particulars of any news event concurrent with his lifetime, and my mother, Nancy Mansbach, whose zeal for researching truly random shit has not diminished despite a lengthy absence from the newsroom. To superagent Victoria Sanders, who bears no resemblance to the agent portrayed in this book. To everyone at Spiegel & Grau/Doubleday Broadway, and in particular my brilliant editor, Chris Jackson, for holding up his half of our endless and endlessly productive conversations. And to Victoria Häggblom for love, patience, editorial guidance, and putting up with me.

  ALSO BY ADAM MANSBACH

  Angry Black White Boy

  Shackling Water

  genius b-boy cynics getting weeded in the garden of delights (poetry)

  A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing (editor)

  PUBLISHED BY SPIEGEL & GRAU

  Copyright © 2008 by Adam Mansbach

  All Rights Reserved

  Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.spiegelandgrau.com

  SPIEGEL & GRAU is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mansbach, Adam, 1976–

  The end of the Jews: a novel/Adam Mansbach.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Jews—United States—Fiction. 2. Authors—Fiction. 3. Family—Fiction. 4. New York Region—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.A57E53 2007

  813'.6—dc22

  2007019465

  eISBN: 978-0-385-52568-8

  v3.0