“Is it?”
“Sir, everybody in Israel knows what you are doing here.”
Just then I saw George Ziad walk into the hotel and approach the front desk.
“Please,” I said to Supposnik, “one moment.”
At the desk, where George embraced me, I found he was at the same pitch of emotion as when I’d left him the evening before.
“You’re all right,” he whispered. “I thought the worst.”
“I’m fine.”
He would not let me free myself. “They detained you? They questioned you? Did they beat you?”
“They never detained me. Beat me? Of course not. It was all a big mistake. George, relax,” I told him but was only able to secure my release by pressing my fists against his shoulders until we were finally an arm’s length apart.
The desk clerk, a young man who hadn’t been on duty when I’d checked in, said to me, “Good morning, Mr. Roth. How are things this morning?” Very jovially, he said to George, “This is no longer the lobby of the King David Hotel, it’s the rabbinical court of Rabbi Roth. All his fans won’t leave him alone. Every morning, they are lining up, the schoolchildren, the journalists, the politicians — we have had nothing like it,” he said, with a laugh, “since Sammy Davis, Jr., came to pray at the Wailing Wall.”
“The comparison is too flattering,” I said. “You exaggerate my importance.”
“Everyone in Israel wants to meet Mr. Roth,” the clerk said.
Hooking my arm in his, I led George away from the desk and the desk clerk. “Is this the best place for you to be, this hotel?”
“I had to come. The phone is no use here. Everything is tapped and taped and will turn up either at my trial or at yours.”
“George, come off it. Nobody’s putting me on trial. Nobody beat me. That’s all ridiculous.”
“This is a military state, established by force, maintained by force, committed to force and repression.”
“Please, I don’t see it that way. Stop. Not now. No slogans. I’m your friend.”
“Slogans? They didn’t demonstrate to you last night that this is a police state? They could have shot you, Philip, then and there, and blamed the Arab driver. These are the great specialists in assassination. That is no slogan, that is the truth. They train assassins for fascist governments all over the world. They have no compunctions about whom they murder. Opposition from a Jew is intolerable to them. They can murder a Jew they don’t like as easily as they murder one of us. They can and they do.”
“Zee, Zee, you’re way over the top, man. The trouble last night was the driver, stopping and starting his car, flashing his light — it was a comedy of errors. The guy had to take a shit. He aroused the suspicion of this patrol. It all meant nothing, means nothing, was nothing.”
“In Prague it means something to you, in Warsaw it means something to you — only here you, even you, fail to understand what it means. They are out to frighten you, Philip. They are out to scare you to death. What you are preaching here is anathema to them — you are challenging them at the very heart of their Zionist lie. You are the opposition. And the opposition they ‘neutralize.’”
“Look,” I said, “talk coherently to me. This is not making sense. Let me get rid of this guy and then you and I will have to have a talk.”
“Which guy? Who is he?”
“An antiquarian from Tel Aviv. A rare-book dealer.”
“You know him?”
“No. He came here to see me.”
All the while I explained, George looked boldly across the lobby to where Supposnik had taken a seat on the sofa, waiting for me to return.
“He’s the police. He’s Shin Bet.”
“George, you’re in a bad way. You’re overwrought and you’re going to explode. This is not the police.”
“Philip, you are an innocent! I won’t have them brutalizing you, not you too!”
“But I’m fine. Stop this, please. Look, this is the texture of things over here. I don’t have to tell you that. There is rough stuff on the roads. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is a mix-up, all right, but that’s between you and me, I’m afraid. You are not responsible. If anyone is responsible, I am responsible. You and I have to have a talk. You’re confused about why I’m here. Something most unusual has been happening and I haven’t been at all clever dealing with it. I confused you and Anna yesterday — I acted very stupidly at your house. Unforgivably so. Let’s not talk now. You’ll come with me — I have to be at the Demjanjuk trial, you’ll come with me and in the taxi I’ll explain everything. This has all gotten out of hand and the fault is largely mine.”
“Philip, while this court for Demjanjuk is carefully weighing evidence for the benefit of the world press, scrutinizing meticulously, with all kinds of experts, the handwriting and the photograph and the imprint of the paper clip and the age of the ink and the paper stock, while this charade of Israeli justice is being played out on the radio and the television and in the world press, the death penalty is being enacted all over the West Bank. Without experts. Without trials. Without justice. With live bullets. Against innocent people. Philip,” he said, speaking very quietly now, “there is somebody for you to talk to in Athens. There is somebody in Athens who believes in what you believe in and what you want to do. Somebody with money who believes in Diasporism for the Jews and justice for the Palestinians. There are people who can help you in Athens. They are Jews but they are our friends. We can arrange a meeting.”
I am being recruited, I thought, recruited by George Ziad for the PLO.
“Wait. Wait here,” I said. “We have to talk. Is it better for you to wait here or outside?”
“No, here,” he said, smiling ruefully, “here it is positively ideal for me. They wouldn’t dare to beat an Arab in the lobby of the King David Hotel, not in front of all the liberal American Jews whose money props up their fascist regime. No, here I’m much safer than in my house in Ramallah.”
I made the mistake then of returning to explain politely to Supposnik that he and I would not be able to continue our conversation. He did not give me a chance, however, to say even one word, but for ten minutes stood barely half a foot from my chest delivering his lecture entitled “Who I Am.” Each time I retreated an inch, preparatory to ducking away, he drew an inch closer to me, and I realized that short of shouting at him or striking him or streaking out of the lobby as fast as I could, I would have to hear him out. There was a commanding incongruousness about this Teutonically handsome Tel Aviv Jew who’d taught himself to speak English in the impeccable accent of the educated English upper class, and something also touchingly absurd about the bookish erudition of his hotel-lobby lecture and the pedantic donnish air with which it was so beautifully articulated. If I hadn’t felt that I was needed urgently elsewhere, I might have been more entertained than I was; in the circumstances, I was, in fact, far more entertained than I should have been, but this is a professional weakness and accounts for any number of my mistakes. I am a relentless collector of scripts. I stand around half-amazed by these audacious perspectives, I stand there excited, almost erotically, by these stories so unlike my own, I stand listening like a five-year-old to some stranger’s most fantastic tale as though it were the news of the week in review, stupidly I stand there enjoying all the pleasures of gullibility while I ought instead to be either wielding my great skepticism or running for my life. Half-amazed with Pipik, half-amazed with Jinx, and now this Shylock specialist whom half-amazing George Ziad had identified for me as a member of the Israeli secret police.