Authors: Philip Roth
“Then why did you tell Ted
something
worked out?”
“It did.”
“Eli, maybe you should get a little more therapy.”
“That’s enough of that, Miriam.”
“You can’t function as a lawyer by being neurotic. That’s no answer.”
“You’re ingenious, Miriam.”
She turned, frowning, and took her heavy baby to bed.
The phone rang.
“Eli, Artie. Ted called. You worked it out? No trouble?”
“Yes.”
“When are they going?”
“Leave it to me, will you, Artie? I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.”
In bed Eli kissed his wife’s belly and laid his head upon it to think. He laid it lightly, for she was that day entering the second week of her ninth month. Still, when she slept, it was a good place to rest, to rise and fall with her breathing and figure things out. “If that guy would take off that crazy hat. I know it, what eats them. If he’d take off that crazy hat everything would be all right.”
“What?” Miriam said.
“I’m talking to the baby.”
Miriam pushed herself up in bed. “Eli, please, baby, shouldn’t you maybe stop in to see Dr. Eckman, just for a little conversation?”
“I’m fine.”
“Oh, sweetie!” she said, and put her head back on the pillow.
“You know what your mother brought to this marriage—a sling chair and a goddam New School enthusiasm for Sigmund Freud.”
Miriam feigned sleep, he could tell by the breathing.
“I’m telling the kid the truth, aren’t I, Miriam? A sling chair, three months to go on a
New Yorker
subscription, and
An Introduction to Psychoanalysis
. Isn’t that right?”
“Eli, must you be aggressive?”
“That’s all you worry about, is your insides. You stand in front of the mirror all day and look at yourself being pregnant.”
“Pregnant mothers have a relationship with the fetus that fathers can’t understand.”
“Relationship my ass. What is my liver doing now? What is my small intestine doing now? Is my island of Langerhans on the blink?”
“Don’t be jealous of a little fetus, Eli.”
“I’m jealous of your island of Lagerhans!”
“Eli, I can’t argue with you when I know it’s not me you’re really angry with. Don’t you see, sweetie, you’re angry with yourself.”
“You and Eckman.”
“Maybe he could help, Eli.”
“Maybe he could help you. You’re practically lovers as it is.”
“You’re being hostile again,” Miriam said.
“What do you care—it’s only me I’m being hostile towards.”
“Eli, we’re going to have a beautiful baby, and I’m going to have a perfectly simple delivery, and you’re going to make a fine father, and there’s absolutely no reason to be obsessed with whatever is on your mind. AH we have to worry about—” she smiled at him “—is a name.”
Eli got out of bed and slid into his slippers. “We’ll name the kid Eckman if it’s a boy and Eckman if it’s a girl.”
“Eckman Peck sounds terrible.”
“He’ll have to live with it,” Eli said, and he went down to his study where the latch on his briefcase glinted in the moonlight that came through the window.
He removed the Tzuref notes and read through them all again. It unnerved him to think of all the flashy reasons his wife could come up with for his reading and rereading the notes. “Eli, why are you so
preoccupied
with Tzuref?” “Eli, stop getting
involved.
Why do you think you’re getting
involved,
Eli?” Sooner or later, everybody’s wife finds their weak spot. His goddam luck he had to be neurotic! Why couldn’t he have been born with a short leg.
He removed the cover from his typewriter, hating Miriam for the edge she had. All the time he wrote the letter, he could hear what she would be saying about his not being
able
to let the matter drop. Well, her trouble was that she wasn’t
able
to face the matter. But he could hear her answer already: clearly, he was guilty of “a reaction formation.” Still, all the fancy phrases didn’t fool Eli: all she wanted really was for Eli to send Tzuref and family on their way, so that the community’s temper would quiet, and the calm circumstances of their domestic happiness return. All she wanted were order and love in her private world. Was she so wrong? Let the world bat its brains out—in Woodenton there should be peace. He wrote the letter anyway:
Dear Mr. Tzuref:
Our meeting this evening seems to me inconclusive. I don’t think there’s any reason for us not to be able to come up with some sort of compromise that will satisfy the Jewish community of Woodenton and the Yeshivah and yourself. It seems to me that what most disturbs my neighbors are the visits to town by the gentleman in the black hat, suit, etc. Woodenton is a progressive suburban community whose members, both Jewish and Gentile, are anxious that their families live in comfort and beauty and serenity. This is, after all, the twentieth century, and we do not think it too much to ask that the members of our community dress in a manner appropriate to the time and place.
Woodenton, as you may not know, has long been the home of well-to-do Protestants. It is only since the war that Jews have been able to buy property here, and for Jews and Gentiles to live beside each other in amity. For this adjustment to be made, both Jews and Gentiles alike have had to give up some of their more extreme practices in order not to threaten or offend the other. Certainly such amity is to be desired. Perhaps if such conditions had existed in prewar Europe, the persecution of the Jewish people, of which you and those 18 children have been victims, could not have been carried out with such success—in fact might not have been carried out at all.
Therefore, Mr. Tzuref, will you accept the following conditions? If you can, we will see fit not to carry out legal action against the Yeshivah for failure to comply with township Zoning ordinances No. 18 and No. 23. The conditions are simply:
1. The religious, educational, and social activities of the Yeshivah of Woodenton will be confined to the Yeshivah grounds.
2. Yeshivah personnel are welcomed in the streets and stores of Woodenton provided they are attired in clothing usually associated with American life in the 20th century.
If these conditions are met, we see no reason why the Yeshivah of Woodenton cannot live peacefully and satisfactorily with the Jews of Woodenton—as the Jews of Woodenton have come to live with the Gentiles of Woodenton. I would appreciate an immediate reply.
Sincerely,
E
LI
P
ECK
, Attorney
Two days later Eli received his immediate reply:
Mr. Peck:
The suit the gentleman wears is all he’s got.
Sincerely,
L
EO
T
ZUREF
, Headmaster
Once again, as Eli swung around the dark trees and onto the lawn, the children fled. He reached out with his briefcase as if to stop them, but they were gone so fast all he saw moving was a flock of skullcaps.
“Come, come…” a voice called from the porch. Tzuref appeared from behind a pillar. Did he
live
behind those pillars? Was he just watching the children at play? Either way, when Eli appeared, Tzuref was ready, with no forewarning.
“Hello,” Eli said.
“Sholom.”
“I didn’t mean to frighten them.”
“They’re scared, so they run.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Tzuref shrugged. The little movement seemed to Eli strong as an accusation. What he didn’t get at home, he got here.
Inside the house they took their seats. Though it was lighter than a few evenings before, a bulb or two would have helped. Eli had to hold his briefcase towards the window for the last gleamings. He removed Tzuref’s letter from a manila folder. Tzuref removed Eli’s letter from his pants pocket. Eli removed the carbon of his own letter from another manila folder. Tzuref removed Eli’s first letter from his back pocket. Eli removed the carbon from his briefcase. Tzuref raised his palms. “…It’s all I’ve got…”
Those upraised palms, the mocking tone—another accusation. It was a crime to keep carbons! Everybody had an edge on him—Eli could do no right.
“I offered a compromise, Mr. Tzuref. You refused.”
“Refused, Mr. Peck? What is, is.”
“The man could get a new suit.”
“That’s all he’s got.”
“So you told me,” Eli said.
“So I told you, so you know.”
“It’s not an insurmountable obstacle, Mr. Tzuref. We have stores.”
“For that too?”
“On Route 12, a Robert Hall—”
“To take away the one thing a man’s got?”
“Not take away,
replace
.”
“But I tell you he has nothing.
Nothing.
You have that word in English?
Nicht? Gomisht?
”
“Yes, Mr. Tzuref, we have the word.”
“A mother and a father?” Tzuref said. “No. A wife? No. A baby? A little ten-month-old baby? No! A village full of friends? A synagogue where you knew the feel of every seat under your pants? Where with your eyes closed you could smell the cloth of the Torah?” Tzuref pushed out of his chair, stirring a breeze that swept Eli’s letter to the floor. At the window he leaned out, and looked, beyond Woodenton. When he turned he was shaking a finger at Eli. “And a medical experiment they performed on him yet! That leaves nothing, Mr. Peck. Absolutely nothing!”
“I misunderstood.”
“No news reached Woodenton?”
“About the suit, Mr. Tzuref. I thought he couldn’t afford another.”
“He can’t.”
They were right where they’d begun. “Mr. Tzuref!” Eli demanded. “
Here?
” He smacked his hand to his billfold.
“Exactly!” Tzuref said, smacking his own breast.
“Then we’ll buy him one!” Eli crossed to the window and taking Tzuref by the shoulders, pronounced each word slowly. “We-will-pay-for-it. All right?”
“Pay? What, diamonds!”
Eli raised a hand to his inside pocket, then let it drop. Oh stupid! Tzuref, father to eighteen, had smacked not what lay under his coat, but deeper, under the ribs.
“Oh…” Eli said. He moved away along the wall. “The suit is all he’s got then.”
“You got my letter,” Tzuref said.
Eli stayed back in the shadow, and Tzuref turned to his chair. He swished Eli’s letter from the floor, and held it up. “You say too much … all this reasoning … all these conditions…”
“What can I do?”
“You have the word ‘suffer’ in English?”
“We have the word suffer. We have the word law too.”
“Stop with the law! You have the word suffer. Then try it. It’s a little thing.”
“They won’t,” Eli said. “But you, Mr. Peck, how about you?”
“I am them, they are me, Mr. Tzuref.”
“Aach! You are us, we are you!”
Eli shook and shook his head. In the dark he suddenly felt that Tzuref might put him under a spell. “Mr. Tzuref, a little light?”
Tzuref lit what tallow was left in the holders. Eli was afraid to ask if they couldn’t afford electricity. Maybe candles were all they had left.
“Mr. Peck, who made the law, may I ask you that?”
“The people.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Before the people.”
“No one. Before the people there was no law.” Eh didn’t care for the conversation, but with only candlelight, he was being lulled into it.
“Wrong,” Tzuref said.
“We make the law, Mr. Tzuref. It is our community. These are my neighbors. I am their attorney. They pay me. Without law there is chaos.”
“What you call law, I call shame. The heart, Mr. Peck, the heart is law! God!” he announced.
“Look, Mr. Tzuref, I didn’t come here to talk metaphysics. People use the law, it’s a flexible thing. They protect what they value, their property, their well-being, their happiness—”
“Happiness? They hide their shame. And you, Mr. Peck, you are shameless?”
“We do it,” Eli said, wearily, “for our children. This is the twentieth century…”
“For the goyim maybe. For me the Fifty-eighth.” He pointed at Eli. “That is too old for shame.”
Eli felt squashed. Everybody in the world had evil reasons for his actions. Everybody! With reasons so cheap, who buys bulbs. “Enough wisdom, Mr. Tzuref. Please. I’m exhausted.”
“Who isn’t?” Tzuref said.
He picked Eli’s papers from his desk and reached up with them. “What do you intend for us to do?”
“What you must,” Eli said. “I made the offer.”
“So he must give up his suit?”
“Tzuref, Tzuref, leave me be with that suit! I’m not the only lawyer in the world. I’ll drop the case, and you’ll get somebody who won’t talk compromise. Then you’ll have no home, no children, nothing. Only a lousy black suit! Sacrifice what you want. I know what I would do.”