by Philip Roth
“You’re thinking Pipik was our fall guy,” I said, “the scapegoat’s scapegoat—but, no, Pipik was protean, a hundred different things. Very human in that regard. Moishe Pipik was someone who didn’t exist and couldn’t possibly exist, and yet we were claiming he was so real he could answer the telephone. To a seven-year-old child this was all hilarious. But then Meema Gitcha would say, ‘He left half an hour ago,’ and I was suddenly as stupid as the operator and I believed her. I could see him leaving. He wanted to stay and talk more with Meema Gitcha. Going to visit her reassured him of something. That he wasn’t entirely alone, I suppose. There weren’t that many Jews in Danbury. How had poor little Moishe Pipik got there in the first place? Oddly, Gitcha could be a very reassuring bulk of a person for all that there was nothing that didn’t worry her. But the worries she attacked like a dragon slayer—maybe that was it. I imagined them speaking in Yiddish, Meema Gitcha and Moishe Pipik. He was a refugee boy who wore an Old Country refugee cap, and she gave him food to eat out of the cooking pots and her dead husband’s old coat to wear. Sometimes she slipped him a dollar. But whenever he happened to come around to see her after the New Jersey relatives had been visiting for the weekend, and he sat at the table telling her his problems, she would sit there eyeing the kitchen clock, and then suddenly she would jump up and say, ‘Go, Moishe! Look at the time! God forbid you should be here when they call!’ And in the midst of everything, in mitn drinen, you know, he grabbed his cap and he ran. Pipik ran and he ran and he ran and he never stopped running until fifty years later he finally reached Jerusalem and all that running had made him so tired and so lonely that all he could do when he got to Jerusalem was to find a bed, any bed, even somebody else’s bed. …”
I had put my sonny boy to sleep, with my story anesthetized him. I remained in the chair by the window wishing that it had killed him. When I was younger my Jewish betters used to accuse me of writing short stories that endangered Jewish lives—would that I could! A narrative as deadly as a gun!
I took a look at him, a good long hungry look of the kind I hadn’t quite been able to take while he was looking back at me. Poor bastard. The resemblance was striking. As his trousers were gathered up on his legs because of the way he had fallen to sleep, I could see that he even had my spindly ankles—or I his. The minutes passed quietly. I’d done it. Worn him down. Knocked him out. It was the first peaceful moment I’d known all day. So this, I thought, is what I look like sleeping. I hadn’t seen myself as quite so long in a bed though maybe it was just that this bed was short. Anyway, this is what the women see when they awaken to contemplate the wisdom of what they have done and with whom. This is what I would look like if I were to die tonight in that bed. This is my corpse. I am sitting here alive even though I am dead. I am sitting here after my death. Maybe it’s before my birth. I am sitting here and, like Meema Gitcha’s Moishe Pipik, I do not exist. I left half an hour ago. I am here sitting shivah for myself.
This is stranger even than I thought.
No, not that tack. No, just a different person similarly embodied, the physical analogue to what in poetry would be a near rhyme. Nothing more revelatory than that.
I lifted the phone on the table beside me and very, very quietly asked the switchboard operator to get me the King David Hotel.
“Philip Roth, please,” I said, when the operator came on at the King David.
The phone in their room was answered by Jinx.
I whispered her name.
“Honey! Where are you? I’m going crazy!”
Weakly I replied, “Still here.”
“Where?”
“His room.”
“God! Didn’t you find it?”
“Nowhere.”
“Then that’s it—leave!”
“I’m waiting for him.”
“Don’t! No!”
“My million, damn it!”
“But you sound awful—you sound worse. You took too much again. You can’t take that much.”
“I took what it takes.”
“But it’s too much. How bad is it? Is it very bad?”
“I’m resting.”
“You sound ghastly! You’re in pain! Come back! Philip, come back! He’ll turn everything around! It’ll be you who stole from him! He’s a vicious, ruthless egomaniac who’ll say anything to win!”
This deserved a laugh. “Him? Frighten me?”
“He frightens me! Come back!”
“Him? He’s shitting his pants with fear of me. He thinks it’s all a dream. I’ll show him what a dream is. He won’t know what hit him when I’ve finished scrambling his fucking brains.”
“Hon, this is suicide.”
“I love you, Jinx.”
“Really? Am I anything at all to you anymore?”
“What are you wearing?” I whispered, keeping my eye on the bed.
“What?”
“What do you have on?”
“Just my jeans. My bra.”
“The jeans.”
“Not now.”
“The jeans.”
“This is crazy. If he comes back …”
“The jeans.”
“They are. They are.”
“Off?”
“I’m pulling them off.”
“Around your ankles. Leave them around your ankles.”
“They are.”
“The panties.”
“You too.”
“Yes,” I said, “oh, yes.”
“Yes? Is it out?”
“I’m on his bed.”
“You crazy man.”
“On his bed. I’ve got it out. Oh, it’s out, all right.”
“Is it big?”
“It’s big.”
“Very big?”
“Very big.”
“My nipples are hard as a fucking rock. My tits are spilling out. Oh, hon, they’re spilling over—”
“All of it. Say all of it.”
“I’m nobody’s cunt but your cunt—”
“Ever?”
“Nobody’s.”
“All of it.”
“I worship your stiff cock.”
“All of it.”
“My lips around your stiff stiff cock—”
On the bed Pipik had opened his eyes and I hung up the phone.
“Feel better?” I asked.
He looked at me as if a man deep in a coma and, seemingly seeing nothing, closed his eyes again.
“Too much medication,” I said.
I decided not to call Jinx back and finish off the job. I’d got the idea.
When he came around next there was a mask of perspiration clinging to his forehead and his cheeks.
“Shall I get a doctor?” I asked. “Do you want me to call Miss Possesski?”
“I just want you, I just want you …” But tears appeared in his eyes and he couldn’t go on.
“What do you want?”
“What you stole.”
“Look, you’re a sick man. You’re in a lot of pain, aren’t you? You’re taking painkilling drugs that are bending your mind. You’re taking tremendous doses of those drugs, that’s the story, isn’t it? I know from experience what that’s like. I know how they can make you behave. Look, I don’t particularly want to send a Demerol addict to jail. But if that’s what it takes to get you to leave me alone, I don’t care how sick you are or how much pain you’re in or how loony the drugs are making you act, I will take it as my business to see that that happens. I’ll be absolutely merciless with you if I find that I have to be. But do I have to be? How much do you need to get out of here and to go somewhere with Miss Possesski and try to get some peace and quiet? Because this other thing is a stupid farce, it means nothing, it can come to nothing, you’re bound to fail. It’s very likely to end for you two in a stupid catastrophe brought on by yourselves. I’m willing to pay your way to wherever you want to go. Two round-trip first-class airplane tickets to anyplace your two hearts desire. Something toward expenses too, to tide y
ou over until you sort things out. Doesn’t that seem reasonable? I press no charges. You go away. Please, let’s negotiate a settlement and put an end to this.”
“Easy as that.” He didn’t seem quite as bleary now as when he’d first come round, but there was still perspiration beading his upper lip and no color at all in his face. “‘Moishe Pipik Gets Paid Off. NBA Winner Wins Again.’”
“Would the Jewish police be a more humane solution? A payoff isn’t always without dignity in a mess like this. I’ll give you ten thousand bucks. That’s a lot of money. I have a publisher here”—and why hadn’t I thought of calling him!—“and I’ll arrange to have ten thousand dollars in cash in your hands by noon tomorrow—”
“‘Providing you are out of Jerusalem by nightfall.’”
“By nightfall tomorrow, yes.”
“I get ten and you get the balance.”
“There is no balance. That’s it.”
“No balance?” He began to laugh. “No balance?” All at once he was sitting up straight and seemed entirely resuscitated. Either the drugs had suddenly worn off or they had suddenly kicked in, but Pipik was himself again (whoever that might be). “You who studied arithmetic with Miss Duchin at Chancellor Avenue School, you tell me there is no balance when”—and here he began gesturing as though he were a Jewish comic, his two hands to the left, his two hands to the right, distinguishing this from that, that from this—“when the subtrahend is ten thousand and the minuend is one million? You got B’s in arithmetic all through Chancellor. Subtraction is one of the four fundamental operations of arithmetic. Let me refresh your recollection. It is the inverse of addition. The result of subtracting one number from another is called the difference. The symbol for this operation is our friend the minus sign. Any of this ring a bell? As in addition, only like qualities can be subtracted. Dollars from dollars, for instance, work very nicely. Dollars from dollars, Phil, is what subtraction was made for.”
What was he? Was he fifty-one percent smart or was he fifty-one percent stupid? Was he fifty-one percent crazy or was he fifty-one percent sane? Was he fifty-one percent reckless or was he fifty-one percent cunning? In every case it was a very close call.
“Miss Duchin. I must confess,” I said, “I’d forgotten Miss Duchin.”
“You played Columbus for Hana Duchin in the Columbus Day play. Fourth grade. She adored you. Best Columbus she ever had. They all adored you. Your mother, your Aunt Mim, your Aunt Honey, your Grandma Finkel—when you were a tot they used to stand around the crib, and when your mother changed your diaper, they used to take turns kissing your tuchas. Women have been lining up to kiss your tuchas ever since.”
Well, we were both laughing now. “What are you, Pipik? What’s your game? You have this amusing side to you, don’t you? You’re obviously much more than just a fool, you have a stunning companion who is full of life, you don’t lack for audacity or daring, you even have some brains. I hate to be the one to say it but the vehemence and intelligence of your criticism of Israel makes you into something more than just a crackpot. Is this just a malicious comedy about convictions? The argument for Diasporism isn’t always as farcical as you make it sound. There’s a mad plausibility about it. There’s more than a grain of truth in recognizing and acknowledging the Euro-centrism of Judaism, of the Judaism that gave birth to Zionism, and so forth. Yet it also strikes me, I’m afraid, like the voice of puerile wishful thinking. Tell me, please, what is this really all about? Identity theft? It’s the stupidest con going. You’ve got to get caught. Who are you? Tell me what you do for a living when you aren’t doing this. As far as I know—though correct me if I’m wrong—you’ve never plugged into my American Express card. So on what do you survive? Your wits alone?”
“Guess.” Oh, he was very bright and sparkly now, practically flirtatious. Guess. Don’t tell me he’s bisexual! Don’t tell me this is more of the guy in the hallway! Don’t tell me he wants us to have it off together, Philip Roth fucking Philip Roth! That, I’m afraid, is a form of masturbation too fancy even for me.
“I can’t guess. You’re a blank to me,” I said. “I even get the feeling that without me around you’re a blank to yourself. A little urbane, a little intelligent, a little self-confident, maybe even a little fascinating—Jinx-like creatures don’t just drop from the sky—but mostly somebody who never arrived at a clear idea of what his life was for, mostly uncohesive, disappointed, a very shadowy, formless, fragmented thing. A kind of wildly delineated nothing. What enkindles you when I’m not here? Under ‘me’ isn’t there at least a little you? What do you aim for in life other than getting people to think that you are somebody else?”
“What do you aim for other than that?”
“Yes, I take your point, but the question asked of you has a broader meaning, no? Pipik, what do you do for a real life?”
“I’m a licensed law-enforcement official,” he said. “How’s that grab you? I’m a private investigator. Here.”
His ID. Could have been a bad picture of me. License No. 7794. Date of Expiration 06/01/90. “… A duly licensed private investigator … and is vested with all the authorities allowed him by law.” And his signature. My signature.
“I run an agency in Chicago,” he said. “Three guys and me. That’s all. Small agency. We list what most everybody else lists—thefts, white-and blue-collar crime, missing persons, matrimonial surveillance. We do lie detection. Narcotics. We do murders. I do all the missing-persons cases. Missing persons is what Philip Roth is known for throughout the Midwest. I’ve been as far as Mexico and Alaska. Twenty-one years and I found everybody I was ever contracted to find. I also handle all the murders.”
I gave back the ID card and watched him return it to his wallet. Were there a hundred more phony cards in there, all of them bearing that name? I didn’t think it wise to ask just then—he’d caught me up short with “I handle all the murders.”
“You like the dangerous assignments,” I said.
“I have to be challenged twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I like to live on the edge, always up—it keeps my adrenaline going. Anything other than that I consider boring.”
“Well, I’m stunned.”
“I see that.”
“I had you figured for an adrenaline freak but it wasn’t exactly a law enforcer that I would have thought to call you.”
“It’s impossible for a Jew to be a private detective?”
“No.”
“It’s impossible for a detective to look like me? Or like you?”
“No, it’s not even that.”
“You just think I’m a liar. It’s a cozy universe you’ve got going—you’re the truth-telling Philip and I’m the lying Philip, you’re the honest Philip and I’m the dishonest Philip, you’re the reasonable Philip and I’m the manic psychopath.”
“I like the missing-persons bit. I like that that’s your specialty. Very witty in the circumstances. And what got you into detective work? Tell me that, while we’re at it.”
“I was always the type of person who wanted to help other people. Since I was a kid I couldn’t stand injustice. It drove me crazy. It still does. It always will. Injustice is my obsession. I think it has to do with being a Jewish kid growing up in the war era. America wasn’t always fair to Jews in those days. Beaten up in high school. Just like Jonathan Pollard. I could even have gone in the same direction as Pollard. Acting out of my love of Jews, I could have done it. I had the Pollard fantasies, volunteering for Israel, working for the Mossad. At home, FBI, CIA, they both turned me down. Never found out why. I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t because of you, because they thought it was just too much bother, a guy who was a veritable duplicate of somebody in the public eye. But I’ll never know. I used to draw a cartoon strip for myself when I was a kid. ‘A Jew in the FBI.’ Pollard is very important to me. What the Dreyfus case was to Herzl, the Pollard case is to me. Through my PI contacts I’ve heard that the FBI attached Pollard to a polygraph machine, gave him l
ists of prominent American Jews, and told him to identify the other spies. He wouldn’t do it. Everything about the guy repels me except that. I live in dread of a second Pollard. I live in dread of what that will mean.”
“So, is what I’m supposed to gather from all this that you became a detective to help Jews?”
“Look, you tell me you know nothing about me and you’re at a disadvantage because I know so much about you. I’m explaining to you that it’s my profession to know as much as I know, not just about you but about everyone. You ask me to level with you. That’s what I’m trying to do. Except all I meet with is a barrage of disbelief. You want me to take a polygraph? I could pass it with flying colors. Okay, I haven’t been calm and collected with you. It surprises me, too. I wrote and apologized for that. Some people blitz you, no matter who you are. I have to tell you that you are only the second person in my life to blitz me like this. In my line of work I’m hardened to everything and I see everything and I have to learn to handle everything. The only other time it happened before, that I was blitzed anything like this, was in 1963, when I met the president. He came to Chicago. I was doing some bodyguard work then. Usually I was employed by a private contractor, but at this time I was employed by the public sector, too. It was the mayor’s office. I couldn’t speak when he shook my hand. The words wouldn’t come out. That doesn’t usually happen. Words are a large part of my business and account for ninety percent of my success. Words and brains. It was probably because I was having masturbatory fantasies in those days about his wife on her water skis and I felt guilty. Do you know what the president said to me? He said, ‘I know your friend Styron. You’ve got to come down to Washington and have dinner with us and the Styrons some night.’ Then he said, ‘I’m a great admirer of Letting Go.’ That was in August 1963. Three months later he was shot.”
“Kennedy mixed you up with me. The president of the United States thought a bodyguard in the mayor’s office was a novelist on the side.”
“The guy shook a million hands a day. He took me for another dignitary. It wasn’t hard—there was my name, my looks, and besides, people are always taking a bodyguard for somebody else. That’s part of the job. Somebody desires protection. Somebody like you, say, who might be feeling threatened. You ride around with them. You pretend you’re a friend or something. Sure, some guys tell you they want to make it obvious that you’re a bodyguard, so you play that part. Nice dark suit, the sunglasses, you carry a gun. The goon outfit. That’s what they want, you do it. They want it obvious—they like the flash, the glitter of it. I had one client I worked with all the time in Chicago, a big contractor and developer, lots of money, and a lot of people who might be after him, and he loved the show. I’d go to Vegas with him. Him and his limousine and his friends—they wanted it always to be a big thing. I had to watch the women when they went to the bathroom. I had to go into the bathroom with them without their knowing it.”