‘Knock it off!’ Joe yelled, banging on the bar. ‘I read the stories too. This guy and his committee simply asked for some money. Some shots were fired. But nobody was hit. As a matter of fact, later on, the church did turn over some money … voluntarily.’
‘But isn’t there a warrant out for his arrest?’
‘There is,’ Cato said.
‘Hope you beat the rap,’ a girl called from a corner, and the excitement subsided.
But now Cato was a member of the group. He had bucked the Establishment His picture had been in the paper as a young revolutionary. The fuzz was after him, and that made him automatically one of them. Britta put a stack of rock-and-roll records on the machine and the great good sounds of youth began to fill the bar, the ear-splitting sounds that few people over the age of twenty-five could tolerate, and through the terrifying crescendo of noise which he liked so much, Cato could hear two GIs explaining to a new arrival, ‘He’s the one who shot hell out of that Episcopalian church in Philadelphia. You saw the photos.’ But above the noise and the chatter of aimless conversation Cato remained preoccupied with the rhythmic movements of Britta as she placed bottles of Coca-Cola on the various tables.
He returned to the bar each day, mesmerized by this Norwegian girl. Both Britta and Joe realized that he was infatuated with her, and one evening Joe said, ‘Why don’t you two have dinner? I’ll tend bar.’
So Cato invited her to select a restaurant, and she chose a small Swedish place that served good food and they talked aimlessly, and finally he took her hand and said, ‘You know I’m bowled over by you,’ and she laughed and told him in her lilting accent, ‘But I’m Joe’s girl.’ He said, ‘But suppose you weren’t Joe’s girl? Could I …’ and she said, ‘You’re handsome and you’re intelligent. I think any girl would like to know you,’ and he said, ‘But you are Joe’s girl?’ and she nodded.
When they returned to the bar Cato told Joe, I’ve been making wild love to your girl,’ and Joe said, pointing to the soldiers who were waiting for Britta. ‘Get in line, buddy.’ Then he added, ‘That girl in the corner said she’d like to meet you … about the church,’ and he led Cato to a corner table, where he said, ‘Cato Jackson, this is Monica Braham. Ask her where she’s from, you won’t believe the answer.’ With that he left them.
Later, in this same bar, seated at this very table, Cato told me, ‘I came into that room in love with Britta. Of that there can be no question, because she was the best-looking girl I’d ever seen. But when Joe left me standing there, looking down at Monica Braham, all the muscles seemed to run out of my legs, because this was a girl so special … something was eating her … we blacks have a sense about people in trouble … and when she asked, in that cool knowing way of hers, “Shooting up any churches lately?” I knew she intended to hurt me—that her future questions would be even tougher, uglier. So I sat down and said, “Where you from?” and she said, “Vwarda,” expecting me to go into a big Africa bit. Now I knew all about Vwarda. In North Philadelphia you hear one hell of a lot about Vwarda this and Vwarda that—you’d think it was the new Athens—but I said, “Where’s that?” and she smiled at me real cool and said, “As if you didn’t know, you cunning bastard.” ’
Monica and Cato stayed in the bar till four in the morning. With the echoes of the music still ringing in their ears, they walked arm in arm down the hill to the sea front and she took him into the apartment, where he saw the two big beds, and she explained that one belonged to Jean-Victor—‘The Pimp? I met him’—and the other to Joe, and when she said that Britta shared the latter bed, it seemed as if the Norwegian name had come from another world, one that he had known decades ago.
Then she indicated the tartan sleeping bag and said, ‘This is where I live,’ and they stood there for an electric moment, after which she said quietly, ‘I’m sure you’ll get into the bag with me sooner or later. We might as well make it sooner.’ And she proceeded to strip, and when she stood before him, slim and pale, as beautiful as the Greek statuary that Paxton Fell spoke about, Cato knew that she was the most compelling girl he would ever meet. He leaped at her, thrust her into the sleeping bag and joined her in the wildest love-making of his imagination, at the end of which they both fell asleep, exhausted.
When Jean-Victor came in with Sandra toward five, he looked down at the floor and asked casually, ‘Who’d she bring home with her tonight?’ but when Britta and Joe returned after closing the bar, Britta looked at the sleeping bag, smiled and said quietly, ‘It was bound to happen.’
V
YIGAL
A man who changes his country is like a dog who changes his bark … not to be trusted.
On the basis of fact alone, you could deduce the theory that wherever you have x number of Jews, you will have + plus 2 committees.
I have never understood this adulation of Moses. I calculate that in the forty years he wandered about the desert, not knowing his ass from his elbow, he could have accomplished great things. For example, if he had led his people just thirty yards a day in the right direction, he would have landed them not in Israel but in England, and all this confusion would have been avoided.
God is not dead. He simply refuses to get involved.
The other night I brought my girl friend home to meet my parents. They liked her but they couldn’t stand me.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.—Shaw
Following World War I, the countries of Europe absorbed a million five hundred thousand refugees. Following the Greek-Turkish war, Greece absorbed a million four hundred thousand refugees thrown out of Turkey. Following World War II, the countries of Europe had to adjust to thirteen million refugees. Following the India-Pakistan war, the two sides absorbed upwards of fifteen million refugees. But in the wake of the Arab-Israel war, the Arab countries proved themselves totally incapable of absorbing a few hundred thousand refugees, for which they were themselves largely to blame.
A rose-red city—‘half as old as Time.’—Reverend John William Burgon
In this country we get stuck with taxes, but in the old country we used to get stuck with bayonets.
The use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.—Woodrow Wilson
Worse than war is the fear of war.—Seneca
One of the historical highlights of this century has been the stubborn insistence by the Arab nations that they did not lose the Six-Day War. By girding their loins, adhering to a simplistic interpretation of facts, and bolstering up each other’s flagging resolve, they accomplished a miracle. They simply announced to themselves and to the world, ‘It was an Arab victory,’ and as a result they were obliged to attend no peace conference and make no adjustments. They accomplished in the world of will what they could never have accomplished in the world of battle, and their victory was the greater because it was spiritual and not physical. We had better all accommodate ourselves to what has become a fact: the Arabs won the Six-Day War and must be dealt with as victors.
It was the saying of Bion that though the boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest.—Plutarch
Look after the other man’s belly and your own soul.
The Arabs can lose every war, if only they win the last one.
The Jews have gained nothing if they win all the wars but lose the last one.
Everyone complains of his memory, and
no one complains of his judgment.—La Rochefoucauld
If you insist upon booking passage on the Titanic, there’s no point in going steerage.
History tailgates.
Each year, in various nations around the world, a select group of young people nearing the age of twenty-one is faced with a dilemma, which though gratifying, is nevertheless most perplexing. They must sit down, judge alternatives and make a choice that will determine their future. The choice, once made, is irrevocable, and if wrongly made, can produce unhappy consequences that will permanently damage them.
> Of course, the above could be said of every human being in the world: sometime around the age of twenty-one he or she will make a series of crucial choices which will delimit the future, but usually one is not aware of this. The young people of whom I speak are painfully aware of what they are doing, because in one brief moment of time they must select the nationality to which they will owe allegiance for the rest of their lives.
Because of accidents of place of birth—or the peculiar decisions of their parents at that time—they find themselves legally entitled to two or even three different passports. In the years of their childhood they may travel one year on a British passport, for example, the next on an Italian, as convenience dictates. But at the age of twenty-one they must make up their minds and state formally, ‘From this date on I shall be a British subject,’ or a German, or an American.
I have known several such multiple-passport people, the most dramatic being a lovely Swedish girl living in the unlikely kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific. Her parents were both Swedish, so she was entitled to a Swedish passport. She had been born in London, so she could claim British citizenship. She had lived in Tonga most of her life, and was eligible for Tongan citizenship. And when, some years after her birth, her father became an Australian, she was included in the legal maneuvering and came away with a passport from that country.
I met her when she was twenty, a beautiful, fair-skinned young lady living among the dark Tongans and exciting the imagination of all young men who passed through her island. She talked with me often about which of the four passports she should choose when she became twenty-one; I advised the Australian, since she would presumably live within the influence of that nation, but in the end she surprised me by opting for Tonga, and her reasoning introduced me for the first time to what later came to be known as the disengaged generation.’ She said, ‘I don’t want to belong to any large nation with large plans. I don’t want the responsibility of either England or Australia. Let them solve their problems in their own ways, without involving me. I don’t want to be a Swede with the schizoid problem of living next to Russia, so that I must insult America, yet trying to be a free nation, so that I must defend myself against Russia. I want to be a Tongan. Nobody hates us. Nobody envies us. Any of the great powers can invade us by mailing a penny postcard, addressed Chief of Police, Nuku’alofa.’ And damned if she didn’t drop all her other passports and keep the Tongan.
Psychologically, the most interesting case was that of a young man whose history I followed from birth—indeed, from before birth. Thanks to a curious set of circumstances, he was legally entitled to two passports—United States and Israel—and as he matured he grew increasingly aware that one day he would be required to state which of these two nations he would elect as his permanent home.
It happened this way. Many years ago, when I was still working for Minneapolis Mutual, peddling funds throughout the midwest, I spent one campaign in Detroit, where I wasted two weeks trying to sell an investment program to one of the merchandising experts at General Motors. He was an extraordinary man, an Odessa Jew named Marcus Melnikoff; around the automobile industry he was called with some affection ‘Mark, our mad Russian,’ it being more fashionable in Detroit to be known as a renegade communist than as a Jew. He was a genius in the management of ideas and men but was having much difficulty with his daughter, a pretty senior at Vassar with headstrong ideas and numerous admirers from Yale and Amherst.
I remember Melnikoff’s interrupting me one afternoon in 1949 when I was trying to explain the merits of Minneapolis Mutual: ‘You’re lucky your kid’s a son. Don’t never have daughters. Zowie, what a headache!’ Seeking to ingratiate myself, I asked why, and he exploded: ‘Because they grow up and want to get married. Last summer a tennis bum. Never earned a kopek in his life. Last autumn, an exchange student from Indonesia. Where the hell is Indonesia? This winter an assistant professor at Mount Holyoke with radical ideas. My wife keeps asking, “Why can’t you settle on some nice, respectable Jewish boy?” ’
Several days later, when I dropped by to see Melnikoff at his home in Grosse Pointe, I found him awaiting a visit from his rabbi. ‘It’s embarrassing to have that goddamned Rabbi Fineshriber park his Ford in our driveway,’ he growled. At first I thought the make of the car was the problem, since his job at General Motors was to fight Ford, but he explained, ‘When the social committee was meeting to determine whether my wife and I were educated enough to be permitted entrance into Grosse Pointe, our sponsors passed us off as fugitive Russian scientists. That idea seemed rather exciting, so we were admitted, but there has always been a distrustful faction which suspects we’re Jewish. Now this goddamned Rabbi Fineshriber begins driving up, and everyone knows.’ I was startled at such a statement and was about to question him, when I realized that he was making fun of the system he had outsmarted.
When Rabbie Fineshriber arrived, he turned out to be a plump, jovial man of about fifty, as extroverted in religion as Melnikoff was in salesmanship. He felt no embarrassment at having me overhear what he had come to say and welcomed my questions, so we had a pleasant drink together, waiting for the arrival of Mrs. Melnikoff, an ebullient woman in her middle fifties. When she joined us, she warned that the rabbi would have to go over his admonitions a second time when Doris came back from playing indoor tennis with her latest admirer. ‘Non-Jewish, naturally,’ Mrs. Melnikoff said wryly.
Rabbi Fineshriber said, ‘I oppose heartily your plan for taking Doris to Israel. She’ll meet Jewish young men … some with great potential. But there’s a danger. Word will circulate very quickly concerning your purpose in coming to Israel. They’ll hear about your husband’s fortune. The suitors will begin to gather, and I want you to promise me this. Whenever one of them proposes, as they will, Doris must say rapturously, “Oh, David! All my life I’ve wanted to live in Israel.” When he hears that she intends to live there instead of bringing him to the United States, you’ll see his interest evaporate. I said evaporate. It vanishes.’ He waved his hands violently back and forth across his face to indicate total abolishment.
I asked, ‘You mean the Israeli young men see American girls principally as passports?’
‘For a gentile, you express yourself very well,’ he replied. ‘And with a girl as pretty as Doris, the urge to get to America and her fortune will be … well, accentuated.’
Now Doris returned from her tennis, a tall, attractive, dark-haired girl in her early twenties. It seemed ridiculous for Rabbi Fineshriber and her mother to be worrying themselves about getting her a husband, for I judged she could have pretty nearly anyone she wished. Melnikoff must have guessed my thoughts, for he said, ‘Mr. Fairbanks may thing it strange that with a girl like Doris we should be so concerned about her marrying a Jewish boy.’ I noticed that Doris showed no embarrassment at such discussion before a relative stranger; apparently it had occurred before. ‘But when you’ve been a boy in Odessa, you see Jewish-gentile relationships in a different way. I support the idea of taking this longlegged colt to Israel for some training.’ He leaned forward and slapped his daughter on the knee.
‘So what you are to do, Doris,’ the rabbi instructed her, ‘is to say, as soon as the boy proposes, “Thank God, I’ve always wanted to live in Israel.” ’ He snapped his fingers in an afterthought: ‘Even better, say, “I’ve always wanted to live on a kibbutz.” That will really scare hell out of them.’
There was much discussion of Israel, which Rabbi Fineshriber knew favorably from having led three pilgrimages of his synagogue members there. He liked it, understood why Jews might want to settle there, and hoped to return often in the years ahead. But as a practical man who also knew Detroit and its surroundings, he preferred the United States and felt that a Jew had about as good a chance in Michigan as he did anywhere in the world. He especially wanted Doris Melnikoff not to make a fool of herself; three times in the last year she had come close to doing so with unworthy gentile men, and he saw no reason why, having escaped that nons
ense, she would now fall into an equally bad Jewish trap. As I left, still unsuccessful in my attempt to peddle mutual funds, I heard the rabbi saying, ‘Doris, if you really want yourself a nice Jewish boy, why don’t you inspect my sister’s son? Thick glasses, failing grades at Stanford, thirty pounds overweight and vaguely addicted to Karl Marx.’ In Boston I had once known an Irish priest who talked with his parishioners in this same joshing way.
Doris Melnikoff did go to Israel, she did fall in love with a nice Jewish boy, and she did tell him, ‘All my life I’ve wanted to live on a kibbutz.’ The hell of it was, he replied with great emotion, ‘I’m so relieved. I was afraid you’d want me to go to America and work with your father.’ He was Yochanan Zmora, a scientist teaching at the technical school in Haifa. When he took Doris to see that marvelous city, perched on a hill at the edge of the Mediterranean, with the Crusader city of Acre to the north and timeless Megiddo, the scene of Armageddon, to the southeast, she knew that this was what she had always hoped for, and on the spur of the moment she married him to share in the excitement of building a new land.
I was with her father in Detroit when Mrs. Melnikoff’s cable reached him. ‘My God! Married to a Jew named Zmora and living in Haifa?’ He looked it up in the Bible and got it confused with Jaffa, so that for the whole time his wife remained in Israel, buying furniture for the newly-weds, he imagined her and Doris in a much different part of the country. By cable he employed a private detective in Tel Aviv to find out who this Yochanan Zmora was, and the man reported: ‘Reputation excellent. Professional ability excellent. Personal appearance excellent. Born an English citizen under the name of John Clifton, Canterbury, Kent, England. Honors in science at Cambridge. Emigrated to Palestine in 1946. Assumed Hebrew name Yochanan Zmora in 1947. I find no adverse report on this man except that he tends toward the left in Israeli politics.’