Uri poked his head into the room. “Taxi!”
“Good,” said Smilesburger, flipping off the TV set. “Here begins your journey back to everything that is self-willed.”
But could I be sure this taxi was going to turn out to be a taxi, when I was increasingly uncertain that these people had any affiliation whatsoever with Israeli intelligence? What proof was there? The profound illogic of it all — was that the proof? At the thought of that “taxi,” I suddenly felt endangered more by leaving than by staying and listening for as long as it took to figure out the safest possible means of extricating myself.
“Who are you?” I asked. “Who assigned you to me?”
“Don’t worry about that. Represent me in your book however you like. Do you prefer to romanticize me or to demonize me? Do you wish to heroize me or do you want instead to make jokes? Suit yourself.”
“Suppose there are ten rich Jews who give their money to the Palestinians. Tell me why that is your business.”
“Do you want to take the taxi to the American Embassy to lodge your complaint or do you want to continue to listen to someone you cannot believe? The taxi will not wait. For waiting you need a limousine.”
“A limousine then.”
“Do as he says,” Smilesburger said to Uri.
“Cash or credit card?” Uri replied in perfect English, laughing loudly as he went off.
“Why does he stupidly laugh all the time?”
“This is how he pretends not to have a sense of humor. It’s meant to frighten you. But you have held up admirably. You are doing wonderfully. Continue.”
“These Jews who may or may not be contributing money to the PLO, why haven’t they a perfect right to do with their money whatever they wish without interference from the likes of you?”
“Not only do they have a right as Jews, they have an inescapable moral duty as Jews, to make reparations to the Palestinians in whatever form they choose. What we have done to the Palestinians is wicked. We have displaced them and we have oppressed them. We have expelled them, beaten them, tortured them, and murdered them. The Jewish state, from the day of its inception, has been dedicated to eliminating a Palestinian presence in historical Palestine and expropriating the land of an indigenous people. The Palestinians have been driven out, dispersed, and conquered by the Jews. To make a Jewish state we have betrayed our history — we have done unto the Palestinians what the Christians have done unto us: systematically transformed them into the despised and subjugated Other, thereby depriving them of their human status. Irrespective of terrorism or terrorists or the political stupidity of Yasir Arafat, the fact is this: as a people the Palestinians are totally innocent and as a people the Jews are totally guilty. To me the horror is not that a handful of rich Jews make large financial contributions to the PLO but that every last Jew in the world does not have it in his heart to contribute as well.”
“The line two minutes ago was somewhat at variance with this one.”
“You think I say these things cynically.”
“You say everything cynically.”
“I speak sincerely. They are innocent, we are guilty; they are right, we are wrong; they are the violated, we the violators. I am a ruthless man working in a ruthless job for a ruthless country and I am ruthless knowingly and voluntarily. If someday there is a Palestinian victory and if there is then a war-crimes trial here in Jerusalem, held, say, in the very hall where they now try Mr. Demjanjuk, and if at this trial there are not just big shots in the dock but minor functionaries like me as well, I will have no defense to make for myself in the face of the Palestinian accusation. Indeed, those Jews who contributed freely to the PLO will be held up to me as people of conscience, as people of Jewish conscience, who, despite every Jewish pressure to collaborate in the oppression of the Palestinians, chose instead to remain at one with the spiritual and moral heritage of their own long-suffering people. My brutality will be measured against their righteousness and I shall hang by my neck until I am dead. And what will I say to the court, after I have been judged and found guilty by my enemy? Will I invoke as my justification the millennial history of degrading, humiliating, terrifying, savage, murderous anti-Semitism? Will I repeat the story of our claim on this land, the millennial history of Jewish settlement here? Will I invoke the horrors of the Holocaust? Absolutely not. I don’t justify myself in this way now and I will not stoop to doing it then. I will not plead the simple truth: ‘I am tribesman who stood with his tribe,’ nor will I plead the complex truth: ‘Born as a Jew where and when I was, I am, I always have been, whichever way I turn, condemned.’ I will offer no stirring rhetoric when I am asked by the court to speak my last words but will tell my judges only this: ‘I did what I did to you because I did what I did to you.’ And if that is not the truth, it’s as close as I know how to come to it. ‘I do what I do because I do what I do.’ And your last words to the judges? You will hide behind Aharon Appelfeld. You do it now and you will do it then. You will say, ‘I did not approve of Sharon, I did not approve of Shamir, and my conscience was confused and troubled when I saw the suffering of my friend George Ziad and how this injustice had made him crazy with hatred.’ You will say, ‘I did not approve of Gush Emunim and I did not approve of the West Bank settlements, and the bombing of Beirut filled me with horror.’ You will demonstrate in a thousand ways what a humane, compassionate fellow you are, and then they will ask you, ‘But did you approve of Israel and the existence of Israel, did you approve of the imperialist, colonialist theft that was the state of Israel?’ And that’s when you will hide behind Appelfeld. And the Palestinians will hang you, too, as indeed they should. For what justification is Mr. Appelfeld from Csernowitz, Bukovina, for the theft from them of Haifa and Jaffa? They will hang you right alongside me, unless, of course, they mistake you for the other Philip Roth. If they take you for him, you will at least have a chance. For that Philip Roth, who campaigned for Europe’s Jews to vacate the property they had stolen, to return to Europe and to the European Diaspora where they belonged, that Philip Roth was their friend, their ally, their Jewish hero. And that Philip Roth is your only hope. This man, your monster, is, in fact, your salvation — the impostor is your innocence. Pretend at your trial to be him and not yourself, trick them with all your wiles into believing you two are one and the same. Otherwise you will be judged a Jew just as hateful as Smilesburger. More hateful, for hiding from the truth the way you do.”
“Limousine!” It was Uri back at the door of the classroom, the smiling muscleman, mockingly unantagonistic, a creature who clearly didn’t share my rationalized conception of life. His was a presence I couldn’t seem to adapt to, one of those powerfully packaged little five-footers who have organized just a bit too skillfully everything that’s disparate and fluctuating in the rest of us. The eloquence of all that sinewy tissue unimpaired by intellect made me feel, despite the considerable advantage of my height, like a very small and helpless boy. Back when the battlers settled everything and anything that was in dispute, the whole male half of the human species must have looked more or less like Uri, beasts of prey camouflaged as men, men who didn’t need to be drafted into armies and put through specialized training in order to learn how to kill.