A FAKER'S DOZE

grew gaunt, as if attempting to simulate in his own body the survivors

who had, ironically, grown fat.

M E LV

Jewish

Literary c _upplement

He sipped his own tea and looked at her. "There's a book I'm think-

ing of," he said. "I know it's here somewhere." He glanced at the shelves.

All of this was a tragic loss, but Jane accepted the academic lifestyle

She recalled the way her husband would sit in bed reading and say,

with as much grace as she could summon. She attended his depress-

"Listen to this It's awful. Just awful," to which she would usually reply,

ing symposia, performed the good wife routine at graduation

"Your son's grades are awful. The Jews spend time with their children

ceremonies and made the most of: the meagerly stocked bars at the

and you spend time with the Jews."

huge, horribly kosher dinners at Midtown hotels. he dragged her to in

the name of research, but the sight of the domestic: extravagance at

"Ah, here it is." Simon Keeper handed her a copy of Madame

Bova? y.

Chanka Moscowitz's home piit'her over the edge. And so, what she

And then Jane Hawkins got a gleam in her eye, and she effected a

had said about that home . when She - met Keeper th4 night was, "Not

terrible mockery of a Yiddish accent "Vhy bother to read it vhen von

bad for a refugee."

lives it?"

"Cozy," he agreed, and.she couldn't tell if he was sly.. He explained,

"Her husband was in trac g stamps."

He remained silent.

"I really must be leaving," she said.'

"Collected them?"

"Really?"

"Created them."

"Yes, she said, but as she approached the door, something made her

"Deceased, I presume."

hesitate. He stood waiting. But she was the one who made the sug-

"Heart attack in Aspen. Chanka is hard to keep up with. Someone

gestion. He had never heard anything like it before.

once called her the doyenne of despair."

"Cuddle?"

"Who was the somebody?" she asked, fairly certain that she knew

the answer.

Months later, a new book started to come to Simon, sentence by sen-

"Me," he replied. "Obviously."

tence, chapter by chapter, and, since the writer inevitably recycled his own

"And you, Alr. Keeper, how do you live?"

experience, from ghetto to penthouse, she recognized every word. There

"Recently, I must say, well." He never mentioned The Prize, as a

was the Jewish hero, Elijah, full of angst and suffering, and there was the

king never mentions his crown.

"And not so recently?"

gentile heroine, Joan, her hair described to a follicle, unmistakable.

Sometimes, to tease Simon, Jane brushed her hair against his ears

"Mv friends helped me when I required help, when I was writing

as she read what he wrote at a sleek portable computer. She giggled

my first books. Velvel"— he gestured to the brassiere maker —"bought

at the thinly disguised scene at "Malka Horowitz's" when the fiction-

me an apartment a few blocks from here. I still live there. You must

al couple first met. But then., as she watched, the writerly imagination

see it some time."

took hold. He described Joan removing her silk shirt while Elijah

"I would be delighted."

wrote. Jane had never done that, but she did so now as if defying him

"Say Wednesday?"

to make up something which she could not make real, thus turning his

"Two o'clock."

disguise of truth into a new truth, which he could then revise to dis-

At first, Jane was not impressed. Keeper's apartment was as bad as

guise, which she would subsequently reenact. But then he. started a

her husband's study, book-lined with many of the same titles. Jane

scene that she could not possibly do anything about, when he brought

recognized the jackets with swastikas emblazoned on their spines.

in the figure of the heroine's husband.

Right away she felt uncomfortable, but her host offered her tea, in a

"Oh, what will he say, Simon?"

glass, with a spoonful of strawberry preserves, and she sipped.

"Read it when it's published."

"It's not usual to find a gentile so interested in the Jewish experi-

ence," he said.

"Then I'm afraid that I'm quite usual." She smiled.

He thought for a moment and then said, "Good. I don't like to be

abused of my preconceived notions."

"Do you prefer to be abused in other ways?"

"Simon, I can't wait."

He was busily writing when she lay down on the floor in front of

his desk and kicked off her shoes and repeated, "Simon, I can't wait."

He typed, "Joan lay down in front of his desk and moaned, 'Elijah,

I can't wait,' and he put down his work for the day," and he put down

his work for the day.

Copyright by Alefrin Jules Rukiet. Reprinted by permission of WW: Norton.

NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CULTURE

19