Zuckerman Unbound

by Philip Roth

  “I was wondering if you could recommend an editor or an agent who might be able to help someone like me.”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Fine. No problem. Just asking. I already have a producer, you see, who wants to make a musical out of my life. My own feeling is that it should come out first in public as a serious book. With all the facts.”

  Silence.

  “That sounds preposterous to you, I know, even if you’re too polite to say so. But it’s true. It has nothing to do with me being anybody who matters. I ain’t and I don’t. One look and you know that. It’s what happened to me that’ll make the musical.”

  Silence.

  “I’m Alvin Pepler.”

  Well, he wasn’t Houdini. For a moment that had seemed in the cards.

  Alvin Pepler waited to hear what Nathan Zuckerman made of meeting Alvin Pepler. When he heard nothing, he quickly came to Zuckerman’s aid. And his own. “Of course to people like you the name can’t mean a thing. You have better things to do with your time than waste it on TV. But I thought, as we’re landsmen, that maybe your family might have mentioned me to you. I didn’t say this earlier, I didn’t think it was in order, but your father’s cousin, Essie Slifer, happened to go to Central with my mother’s sister Lottie way back when. They were one year apart. I don’t know if this helps, but I’m the one they called in the papers ‘Pepler the Man of the People.’ I’m ‘Alvin the Jewish Marine.’”

  “Why then,” said Zuckerman, relieved at last to have something to say, “you’re the quiz contestant, no? You were on one of those shows.”

  Oh, there was more to it than that. The syrupy brown eyes went mournful and angry, filling up not with tears, but what was worse, with truth. “Mr. Zuckerman, for three consecutive weeks I was the winner on the biggest of them all. Bigger than ‘Twenty-One.’ In terms of dollars given away bigger than ‘The $64,000 Question.’ I was the winner on ‘Smart Money.’”

  Zuckerman couldn’t remember ever seeing any of those quiz shows back in the late fifties, and didn’t know one from another; he and his first wife, Betsy, hadn’t even owned a television set. Still, he thought he could remember somebody in his family—more than likely Cousin Essie—once mentioning a Pepler family from Newark, and their oddball son, the quiz contestant and ex-Marine.

  “It was Alvin Pepler they cut down to make way for the great Hewlett Lincoln. That is the subject of my book. The fraud perpetrated on the American public. The manipulation of the trust of tens of millions of innocent people. And how for admitting it I have been turned into a pariah until this day. They made me and then they destroyed me, and, Mr. Zuckerman, they haven’t finished with me yet. The others involved have all gone on, onward and upward in corporate America, and nobody cares a good goddamn what thieves and liars they were. But because I wouldn’t lie for those miserable crooks, I have spent ten years as a marked man. A McCarthy victim is better off than I am. The whole country rose up against that bastard, and vindicated the innocent and so on, till at least some justice was restored. But Alvin Pepler, to this day, is a dirty name throughout the American broadcasting industry.”

  Zuckerman was remembering more clearly now the stir those quiz shows had made, remembering not so much Pepler but Hewlett Lincoln, the philosophical young country newspaperman and son of the Republican governor of Maine, and, while he was a contestant, the most famous television celebrity in America, admired by schoolchildren, their teachers, their parents, their grandparents—until the scandal broke, and the schoolchildren learned that the answers that came trippingly off the tongue of Hewlett Lincoln in the contestants’ isolation booth had been slipped to him days earlier by the show’s producers. There were front-page stories in the papers, and as Zuckerman recalled, the ludicrous finale had been a Congressional investigation.

  “I wouldn’t dream,” Pepler was saying, “of comparing the two of us. An educated artist like yourself and a person who happens to be born with a photographic memory are two different things entirely. But while I was on ‘Smart Money,’ deservedly or not I had the respect of the entire nation. If I have to say so myself, I don’t think it did the Jewish people any harm having a Marine veteran of two wars representing them on prime-time national television for three consecutive weeks. You may have contempt for quiz programs, even the honest ones. You have a right to—you more than anybody. But the average person didn’t see it that way in those days. That’s why when I was on top for those three great weeks, I made no bones about my religion. I said it right out. I wanted the country to know that a Jew in the Marine Corps could be as tough on the battlefield as anyone. I never claimed I was a war hero. Far from it. I shook like the next guy in a foxhole, but I never ran, even under fire. Of course there were a lot of Jews in combat, and braver men than me. But I was the one who got that point across to the great mass of the American people, and if I did it by way of a quiz show—well, that was the way that was given to me. Then, of course, Variety started calling me names, calling me ‘quizling’ and so on, and that was the beginning of the end. Quizling, with a z. When I was the only one who didn’t want their answers to begin with! When all I wanted was for them to give me the subject, to let me study and memorize, and then to fight it out fair and square! I could fill volumes about those people and what they did to me. That’s why running into you, coming upon Newark’s great writer out of the blue—well, it strikes me as practically a miracle at this point in my life. Because if I could write a publishable book, I honestly think that people would read it and that they would believe it. My name would be restored to what it was. That little bit of good I did would not be wiped away forever, as it is now. Whoever innocent I harmed and left besmirched, all the millions I let down, Jews particularly—well, they would finally understand the truth of what happened. They would forgive me.”

  His own aria had not left him unmoved. The deep brown irises were cups of ore fresh from the furnace—as though a drop of Pepler’s eyes could burn a hole right through you.

  “Well, if that’s the case,” said Zuckerman, “you should work at it.”

  “I have.” Pepler smiled the best he could. “Ten years of my life. May I?” He pointed to the empty chair across the table.

  “Why not?” said Zuckerman, and tried not to think of all the reasons.

  “I’ve worked at nothing else,” said Pepler, plunging excitedly onto the seat. “I’ve worked at nothing else every night for ten years. But I don’t have the gift. That’s what they tell me anyway. I have sent my book to twenty-two publishers. I have rewritten it five times. I pay a young teacher from Columbia High in South Orange, which is still an A-rated school—I pay her by the hour to correct my grammar and punctuation wherever it’s wrong. I wouldn’t dream of submitting a single page of this book without her going over it beforehand for my errors. It’s all too important for that. But if in their estimation you don’t have the great gift—well, that’s it. You may chalk this up to bitterness. I would too, in your shoes. But Miss Diamond, this teacher working with me, she agrees: by now all they have to see is that Alvin Pepler is the author and they throw it in the pile marked trash. I don’t think they read past my name. By now I’m one big laugh, even to the lowliest editor on Publishers’ Row.” The speech was fervent, yet the gaze, now that he was at the level of the table, seemed drawn to what was uneaten on Zuckerman’s plate. “That’s why I asked you about an agent, an editor—somebody fresh who wouldn’t be prejudiced right off. Who would understand that this is serious.”

  Zuckerman, sucker though he was for seriousness, was still not going to be drawn into a discussion about agents and editors. If ever there was a reason for an American writer to seek asylum in Red China, it would be to put ten thousand miles between himself and those discussions.

  “There’s still the musical,” Zuckerman reminded him.

  “A serious book is one thing, and a Broadway musical is something else.”

  Another discussion Zuckerman would as soon avoid. Sounded like the
premise for a course at the New School.

  “If,” said Pepler weakly, “it even gets made.”

  Optimistic Zuckerman: “Well, if you’ve got a producer…”

  “Yes, but so far it’s only a gentlemen’s agreement. No money has changed hands, nobody’s signed anything. The work is supposed to start when he gets back. That’s when we make the real deal.”

  “Well, that’s something.”

  “It’s why I’m in New York. I’m living over at his place, talking into a tape machine. That’s all I’m supposed to do. He doesn’t want to read what I wrote any more than the moguls on Publishers’ Row. Just talk into the machine till he gets back. And leave out the thoughts. Just the stories. Well, beggars can’t be choosers.”

  As good a note as any to leave on.

  “But,” said Pepler, when he saw Zuckerman get to his feet, “but you’ve eaten only half a sandwich!”

  “Can’t.” He indicated the hour on his watch. “Someone waiting. Meeting.”

  “Oh, forgive me, Mr. Zuckerman, I’m sorry.”

  “Good luck with the musical.” He reached down and shook Pepler’s hand. “Good luck all around.” Pepler was unable to hide the disappointment. Pepler was unable to hide anything. Or was that hiding everything? Impossible to tell, and another reason to go.

  “Thanks a million.” Then, with resignation, “Look, to switch from the sublime…”

  What now?

  “You don’t mind, do you, if I eat your pickle?”

  Was this a joke? Was this satire?

  “I can’t stay away from this stuff,” he explained. “Childhood hang-up.”

  “Please,” said Zuckerman, “go right ahead.”

  “Sure you don’t—?”

  “No, no.”

  He was also eyeing the uneaten half of Zuckerman’s sandwich. And it was no joke. Too driven for that. “While I’m at it—” he said, with a self-deprecating smile.

  “Sure, why not.”

  “See, there’s no food in their refrigerator. I talk into that tape machine with all those stories and I get starved. I wake up in the night with something I forgot for the machine, and there’s nothing to eat.” He began wrapping the half sandwich in a napkin from the dispenser on the table. “Everything is send-out.”

  But Zuckerman was well on his way. At the register he put down a five and kept going.

  Pepler popped up two blocks to the west, while Zuckerman waited for a light on Lexington. “One last thing—”

  “Look—”

  “Don’t worry,” said Pepler, “I’m not going to ask you to read my book. Nuts I am”—the admission registered in Zuckerman’s chest with a light thud—”but not that nuts. You don’t ask Einstein to check your bank statements.”

  The novelist’s apprehension was hardly mitigated by the flattery. “Mr. Pepler, what do you want from me?”

  “I just wonder if you think this project is right for a producer like Marty Paté. Because that’s who’s after it. I didn’t want to bandy names around, but, okay, that’s who it is. My worry isn’t even the money. I don’t intend to get screwed—not again—but the hell with the money for now. What I’m wondering to myself is if I can trust him to do justice to my life, to what I have been put through in this country all my life.”

  Scorn, betrayal, humiliation—the eyes disclosed for Zuckerman everything Pepler had been put through, and without “thoughts.”

  Zuckerman looked for a taxi. “Couldn’t say.”

  “But you know Paté.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Marty Paté. The Broadway producer.”

  “Nope.”

  “But—” He looked like some large animal just batted on the head at the abattoir, badly stunned but not quite out. He looked in agony. “But—he knows you. He met you—through Miss O’Shea. When you were all in Ireland. For her birthday.”

  According to the columnists, the movie star Caesara O’Shea and the novelist Nathan Zuckerman were an “item.” Actually, off the screen, Zuckerman had met with her but once in his life, as her dinner partner at the Schevitzes’ some ten days before.

  “Hey, how is Miss O’Shea, by the way? I wish,” said Pepler, now suddenly wistful, “I could tell her—I wish you could tell her for me—what a great lady she is. To the public. To my mind she is the only real lady left in the movies today. Nothing they say could besmirch Miss O’Shea. I mean that.”

  “I’ll tell her.” The easiest way. Short of running for it.

  “I stayed up Tuesday to watch her—she was on the Late Show. Divine Mission. Another incredible coincidence. Watching that and then meeting you. I watched with Paté’s father. You remember Marty’s old man? From Ireland? Mr. Perlmutter?”

  “Vaguely.” Why not, if it brought this fellow’s fever down?

  By now the light had changed several times. When Zuckerman crossed, Pepler did too.

  “He lives with Paté. In the town house. You ought to get a load of the layout over there,” Pepler said. “Offices downstairs on the main floor. Autographed photos all along the hallway coming in. You should see of who. Victor Hugo, Sarah Bernhardt, Enrico Caruso. Marty has a dealer who gets them for him. Names like that, and by the yard. There’s a fourteen-carat chandelier, there’s an oil painting of Napoleon, there’s velvet drapes right to the floor. And this is only the office. There’s a harp in the hallway, just sitting there. Mr. Perlmutter says Marty directed all the decoration himself. From pictures of Versailles. He has a valuable collection from the Napoleonic era. The drinking glasses even have gold rims, like Napoleon had. Then upstairs, where Marty actually lives, resides, completely done up in modern design. Red leather, recessed lights, pitch-black walls. Plants like in an oasis. You should see the bathroom. Cut flowers in the bathroom. The floral bill is a thousand a month. Toilets like dolphins and the handles on everything gold-plate. And the food is all send-out, down to salt and pepper. Nobody prepares anything. Nobody washes a dish. He’s got a million-dollar kitchen in there and I don’t think anybody’s ever used it except to get water for an aspirin. A line on the phone direct to the restaurant next door. The old man calls down and the next thing, shish kebab. In flames. You know who else is living there right now? Of course she comes and she goes, but she was the one who let me in with my suitcase when I got here Monday. She showed me to my room. She found me my towels. Gayle Gibraltar.”

  The name meant nothing to Zuckerman. All he could think was that if he kept walking, he was going to have Pepler with him all the way home, and if he hailed a cab, Pepler would hop in.

  “I wouldn’t want to take you out of your way,” Zuckerman said.

  “No problem. Paté’s on Sixty-second and Madison. We’re almost neighbors.”

  How did he know that?

  “You’re a very approachable guy, really, aren’t you? I was terrified even to come up to you. My heart was pounding. I didn’t think I had the nerve. I read in the Star-Ledger where fans bugged you so much you went around in a limousine with drawn shutters and two gorillas for bodyguards.” The Star-Ledger was Newark’s morning paper.

  “That’s Sinatra.”

  Pepler enjoyed that one. “Well, it’s like the critics say, nobody can top you with the one-liner. Of course, Sinatra’s from Jersey too. Hoboken’s own. He still comes back to see his mother. People don’t realize how many of us there are.”

  “Us?”

  “Boys from Jersey who became household words. You wouldn’t be offended, would you, if I eat the sandwich now? It can get pretty greasy carrying around.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “I don’t want to embarrass you. The hick from home. This is your town, and you being you—”

  “Mr. Pepler, it means nothing to me either way.”

  Gently undoing the paper napkin like a surgical dressing, leaning forward so as not to soil himself, Pepler prepared for the first bite. “I shouldn’t eat this stuff,” he told Zuckerman. “Not anymore. In the service I was the guy who coul
d eat anything. I was a joke. Pepler the human garbage can. I was famous for it. Under fire in Korea I survived on stuff you wouldn’t feed a dog. Washed down with snow. You wouldn’t believe what I had to eat. But then those bastards made me lose to Lincoln on only my third week—a three-part question on Americana I could have answered in my sleep—and my stomach trouble dates from that night. All my trouble dates from that night. That’s a fact. That was the night that did me in. I can document it with doctors’ reports. It’s all in the book.” That said, he bit into the sandwich. A quick second bite. A third. Gone. No sense prolonging the agony.

  Zuckerman offered his handkerchief.

  “Thanks,” said Pepler. “My God, look at me, wiping my mouth with Nathan Zuckerman’s hankie.”

  Zuckerman raised a hand to indicate that he should take it in stride. Pepler laughed uproariously.

  “But,” he said, carefully cleaning his fingers, “getting back to Paté, what you’re saying, Nathan—”

  Nathan.

  “—is that by and large I shouldn’t have much worry with a producer of his caliber, and the kind of outfit he runs.”

  “I didn’t say anything of the sort.”

  “But”—alarmed! again the abattoir!—”you know him, you met him in Ireland. You said so!”

  “Briefly.”

  “Ah, but that’s how Marty meets everybody. He wouldn’t get everything in otherwise. The phone rings and you hear the secretary over the intercom telling the old man to pick up, and you can’t believe your ears.”

  “Victor Hugo on the line.”

  Pepler’s laughter was uncontrollable. “Not far from it, Nathan.” He was having an awfully good time now. And, Zuckerman had to admit it, so was he. Once you relaxed with this guy, he wasn’t unentertaining. You could pick up worse on the way home from the delicatessen.

  Except how does he know we’re almost neighbors? And how do you shake him off?

  “It’s a Who’s Who of International Entertainment, the calls coming into that place. I tell you what gives me the greatest faith in this project getting off the ground, and that’s where Marty happens to be right now. On business. Take a guess.”