The Anatomy Lesson (11 page)

“
I
’
ve never heard anybody like you on the phone,
”
Diana said. She sat submerged in her secretarial camouflage: shapeless overalls and a bulky sweater intended originally to help him dictate his fiction. When she showed up in the child
’
s skirt, little dictation was ever taken. The skirt was another reason to give up.
“
You should see yourself.
”
she said.
“
Those prism glasses, tha
t
contorted face. You should see what you look like. You let something like this get inside you and it builds and builds until your head comes off. And with your hair in it. That
’
s exactly why you
’
re losing your hair. It
’
s why you have all this pain.
Look
at you. Have you looked in a mirror?
”

“
Don
’
t you get angry about things? I
’
m angry.
”

“
Yes. sure, of course I do. There
’
s always somebody in the background of anybody
’
s life driving you mad and giving you cystitis. But I
think
about them. I do my yoga. I run around the block and play tennis and I try to get rid of it. I can
’
t live like that. I
’
d have an upset stomach for the rest of my life.
”

“
You don
’
t understand.
”

“
Well,
I
think I do. You have it at school.
”

“
You can
’
t equate this with school.
”

“
Well, you can. You get the same kind of knocks at college. And they
’
re damn hard to gel over. Especially when they seem to you totally unjust.
”

“
Type the letter.
”

“
I
’
d better read it first.
”

“
Not necessary.
”

Through the prism glasses he impatiently watched her reading ii, meanwhile kneading away at his upper arm to try to subdue the pain. What helped sometimes with the deltoid muscle was the electronic pain suppressor. But would the neurons even register that low-voltage shock, what with this supercharge of indignation lighting up his brain?

“
I
’
m not typing this letter. Not if this is what it says.
”

“
What the hell business is it of yours what it says?
”

“
I refuse to type this letter, Nathan. You
’
re a crazy man when you start on these things, and this letter is crazy.
‘
If the Arabs were undone tomorrow by a plague of cheap solar power, you wouldn
’
t give my books a second thought.
’
You
’
re off your head. That makes no sense. He wrote what he wrote about your books because that is what he thinks. Period. Why even
care
what these people think, when you are you and they are nobody?
Look
at you. What a vulnerable, resentful mouth! Your hair is actually standing on end. Who is this little squirt anyway? Who is Milton Appel? I never read any books by him. They don
’
t teach him at school. I can
’
t fathom this in a man like you. You
’
re an extremely sophisticated, civilized man—how can you be caught in a trap by these people and let them upset you to such a degree?
”

“
You
’
re a twenty-year-old girl from an ultra
-
privileged Christian-Connecticut background, and I accept that you have no idea what this is all about.
”

“
Well, a lot of people who aren
’
t twenty and don
’
t have ultra
-
privileged Christian-Connecticut backgrounds wouldn
’
t understand either, not if they saw you looking like this.
‘
Why those Jews in
Higher Education,
all too authentic to you in 1959, are suddenly the excreta of a vulgar imagination is because the sole Jewish aggression sanctioned in 1973 is against Egypt, Syria, and the PL
O.
’
Nathan, you
can
’
t
believe the PLO is why he wrote that piece.
”

“
But it
is.
If it wasn
’
t for Yasir Arafat he
’
d never be on my ass. You don
’
t know what frazzled Jewish nerves are like.
”

“
I
’
m learning. Please, take a Percodan. Smoke some pot. Have a vodka. But
calm down.
”

“
You get over to that desk and type. I pay you to type for me.

“
Well, not that much. Not enough for this.
”
Again she read aloud from his letter.
‘“
In your view, it really isn
’
t deranged Islam or debilitated Christianity that
’
s going to deal us the death blow anyway, but Jewish shits who write books like mine, carrying the hereditary curse of self-hate. And all to make a dollar. Six million dead—six million sold. Isn
’
t that the way you really see it?
’
Nathan, this is all ludicrous and overstated. You
’
re a man of forty and you
’
re flailing out like a schoolboy who
’
s been made to stand in the comer.
”

“
Go home. I greatly admire your self-possession in telling me off like this, but I want you to go away.
”

“
I
’
ll stay till you calm down.
”

“
I
’
m not calming down. I
’
ve been calm long enough. Go,
”

“
Do you really think it
’
s intelligent to be so unforgiving about this great wrong that
’
s been committed against you? This enormous wrong?
”

“
Oh, should I forgive him?
”

“
Yes. You see, I
am
a Christian. I do believe in Christ. And in people like Gandhi. And
you
’
re
going back to that dreadful Old Testament. That stonelike book. Eye for eye and teeth for teeth and never forgive anybody. Yes, I
’
m saying that I believe in forgiving my enemies. I can
’
t believe in the end that it isn
’
t healthier for everybody.
”

“
Please don
’
t prescribe peace and love, Don
’
t make me a member of your generation.
”

“
Gandhi wasn
’
t a member of my generation. Jesus isn
’
t a member of my generation. St. Francis of Assisi wasn
’
t a member of my generation. As you God damn well know,
I
’
m
not even a member of my generation.
”

“
But I
’
m not Jesus, Gandhi, St. Francis, or you. I
’
m a petty, raging, vengeful, unforgiving Jew, and I have been insulted one time too many by another petty, raging, vengeful, unforgiving Jew, and if you intend to stay, then type what I
’
ve written, because it cost me bloody hell in my aching joints to write it.
”

“
Okay. If you
’
re such a Jew, and these Jews are all so central to your thinking—and that they have this hold
is
unfathomable to me, really—but if you really are stuck on Jews like this, and if Israel does mean something to you, then sure I
’
ll type—but only if you dictate an essay about Israel for
The New York Times.
”

“
You don
’
t understand. That request from him, after what he
’
s published in
inquiry,
is the final insult. In
Inquiry,
run by the kind of people he used to attack before he began attacking people like me!
”

“
Only it is not an insult. He
’
s asked you what he
’
s asked because people know who you are, because you can be so easily
identified
with American Jews. What I can
’
t understand is what you
’
re in such a state about. Either do it or don
’
t do it, but don
’
t
t
ake it as an insult when it wasn
’
t meant as one.
”

“
What
was
it meant as? He wants me to write an article that says I
’
m not an anti-Semite anymore and that I love Israel with all my heart—and that he
can
stick up his ass.
”

“
I can
’
t believe that
’
s what he wants you to write.
”

“
Diana, when somebody wh
o has said about me and my work
and the Jews what this guy has, then turns around and says why don
’
t you write something nice about us for a change—well. how can you fail to understand that this is particularly
galling
to me?
“
Write something in behalf of Israel.
’
But what about the hostility to Jews that
’
s at the heart of every word I publish? To propagate that caricature in
Inquiry,
publicly to damn
me
as the caricaturist, and then in private to suggest this piece—and with some expectation at least of the crypto anti-Semite
’
s acquiescence!
‘
He has prestige with segments of the public that don
’
t care for the rest of us.
’
Right—the scum, the scum whom his novels are fashioned to please. If Zuckerman, a Jew adored by the scum for finding Jews no less embarrassing and distasteful than they do, were to make the argument
for
the Jews
to
the scum,
‘
it would be of some interest.
’
You bet! Like a case of schizophrenia is of interest! On the other hand, when Appel speaks up in a Jewish crisis,
‘
it
’
s expected.
’
Sign of deep human engagement and predictably superior compassion. Sign of nothing less than the good, the best, the most responsible Jewish son of them all. These Jews, these Jews and their responsible sons! First he says I vilify Jews under the guise of fiction, now he wants me to lobby for them in
The New York Times
’
.
The comedy is that the real visceral haters of the bourgeois Jews, with the
real
contempt for their everyday lives, are these complex intellectual giants. They
loathe
them, and don
’
t particularly care for the smell of the Jewish proletariat either. All of them full of sympathy suddenly for the ghetto world of their traditional fathers now that the traditional fathers are Filed for safekeeping in Beth Moses Memorial Park. When they were alive they wanted to strangle the immigrant bastards to death because they dared to think they could actually be of consequence without ever having read Proust past
Swann
’
s Way.
And the ghetto—what the ghetto saw of these guys was their heels: out, out, screaming for air, to write about great Jews like Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Dean Howells. But now that the Weathermen are around, and me and my friends Jerry Rubin and Herbert Marcuse and H. Rap Brown, it
’
s where oh where
’
s the inspired orderliness of those good old Hebrew school days? Where
’
s the linoleum? Where
’
s Aunt Rose? Where is all the wonderful inflexible patriarchal authority into which they wanted to stick a knife? Look, I obviously don
’
t want to see Jews destroyed. That wouldn
’
t make too much sense. But I am not an authority on Israel. I
’
m an authority on Newark. Not even on Newark. On the Weequahic
section of Newark. If the truth be known, not even on the whole of the Weequahic section.
I
don
’
t even go below Bergen Street.
”