16 Friday, August 21, 1970 1965-66 It was the first time in at least five nights that he woke up with the feeling of having slept well. The good feeling lasted until he looked at his watch, which showed a quarter to seven, and realized with a dash of panic that he had neglected to set it to Israeli time and it was really a quarter to eight. He was due to meet Nili in three quarters of an hour. He bolted out of bed, took the briefest of showers, shaved, and gargled with the mouthwash provided by the hotel. He fished some clean clothes out of his bag and put them on without bothering to look at the shirt he had taken. He then put on his disguise and left the room. It was now eight o’clock. The fifteen-minute walk to Nili’s office left him just enough time for a quick breakfast at the first café he found along the way, accompanied by a quick glance at the copy of the Jerusalem Post that he had bought just outside the Dan Hotel. To have a full Israeli breakfast at the hotel would have taken far too long. He knocked on the door bearing the shingle ‘N. Rosen, Attorney-at-Law’ and heard “Come in!” from within. It was definitely Nili’s voice, and it gave him a warm feeling inside, complementing that of the coffee he had just drunk. He opened the door and walked in. She was seated in her chair, but had rolled it away from behind the desk so that she was in full view. Her jet-black hair was cut short, but stylishly. She was wearing a navy-blue short-sleeved dress and high-heeled shoes, with her bare legs crossed. Her breasts were as small as Miki remembered them, and she seemed to be wearing no brassiere. She quickly got up and walked, quite gracefully, to the door to meet him. She’s obviously learned to wear high heels, he said to himself. She seemed a little nonplussed by his appearance. He pulled off the beard and the sunglasses and put them, together with the newspaper, on a little table that stood beside the door and that was probably intended as a place for women clients to put their purses. “A little late for Purim, isn’t it?” she said. He laughed, and so did she. “Shalom, Miki,” she said. “Shalom, Nili.” They met in a warm embrace. “What’s with the disguise?” she asked. “Did Hanna tell you why I’m here?” he asked in return. “A little bit. She was calling long-distance from Germany, so she kept it short, but there was something about a girl claiming to be my daughter.” “Yes,” he said, and, after they both sat down facing each other, he told her the rest. He could think of no reason to withhold any details from her. “By the way,” he asked after finishing, “what is your daughter’s name?” “It’s Ora” He said nothing. “I should be amazed,” she added, “but I really am not. You obviously have some enemies here. And the crowd that governs this state, since the Six-Day War, they think they can do anything they want. Even supposed intellectuals like Abba Eban.” “But to concoct a story about you and me having a daughter? Somebody must have known that we once did it without a condom, in order to be able to create a hoax like that and have me believe it. Can you think of who it might be?” She thought for a long time before a smile of enlightenment came over her face. “Yes, there is one person who knows about it. I am ashamed to admit it.” He waited. “It’s Tzvi,” she said, lowering her eyes. “Tzvi?” “Yes,” she said. “Do you remember how he was always pestering me to go out with him? I couldn’t stand him. I would tell him that he smelled like a fishpond, but he only laughed. And, after you left and it turned out that you weren’t coming back, he was the first one to tell me about it. He told me that you had a piece in Germany who looked like Brigitte Bardot. He thought that that would make me angry with you, and that it would give him an advantage. But it only made me angry with him. I got a little too blunt with him. I told him that he could never compare with you, that you had left me with beautiful memories that he couldn’t even imagine, and I mentioned in passing, just to goad him, that you and I had even done it without a condom. He asked if I wasn’t afraid of getting pregnant, and I told him that it was none of his business. He seemed to be really angry, but I didn’t care, since I already knew that I was leaving the kibbutz.” “Because of the beauty contest?” Nili laughed. “That was a joke. It was just an excuse for getting away from there. But, honestly, I can’t think of anyone, besides Tzvi, who could be behind this business.” “But why would he do that? And why now?” “For one thing, he is probably still angry with you, after what you did to his sister. So he’s killing two birds with one stone.” “What I did to Ruti? You mean, raping her?” “Rape? What rape? She was a virgin, and maybe you were a little rougher than your usual self, but that’s not unusual. No, it’s that you dropped her after the first time. A girl doesn’t like that.” “That didn’t happen to you, did it?” She smiled. “In all modesty,” she said, “I could always get anyone I wanted. No one ever dropped me. Not even you,” she added with a smile. “Going away isn’t the same as dropping a girl.” “I agree,” Miki said. “But I understand how girls feel. I’m a divorce lawyer, you know.” “But Tzvi… I’ll have to find him.” “Today is Friday… It wouldn’t be very difficult if you went to Refadim tomorrow. But be very, very careful.” “What do you mean?” “Do you know who Tzvi is?” “Hanna told me that he works in the Security Office.” “That’s true, technically. He’s in the Mossad. It’s a secret, but an open one.” A kind of fog, one of which he had not even been aware, began to lift. “The Mossad…” he said. “So, when you said ‘two birds with one stone,’ you implied that there’s another side to this, which is not so personal, but rather official.” Nili said nothing, but uncrossed and recrossed her legs as she nodded. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked after a while. “Thank you for asking,” he said. “Frankly, I do mind. I am very sensitive to tobacco smoke.” “I always liked your frankness,” she said, laughing. “I remember that about you. We Israelis pride ourselves on our frankness, but it’s really just rudeness. Not you. Always a gentleman.” “What else do you remember about me?” “A lot. What I said before about beautiful memories… they’re still with me. I’ve never stopped thinking about you.” “I have them too. I have had many dreams about you. Some of them very erotic, I should add.” “Dreams, reality…” Nili said, speaking slowly and in a husky voice, “they are not so far apart, are they?” She came closer to him. “I am a married man,” he said. She laughed. “To most men that doesn’t matter. Not even ones married to a beautiful woman, like you.” “Your ex-husband, for example?” “Probably. I left him before I had a chance to find out.” “So you left him because of something else?” “I’d rather not talk about it. You see, I’m not as frank as you.” It was his turn to laugh. He looked at the clock on her wall; it read 9:20. “You have a client coming soon. It’s time for me to become Etzel Andergast again.” “Etzel Andergast! What a great name. You know, I read those novels, by Ya’akov Wassermann.” “Was that under Hanna’s influence?” he asked as he reattached his beard, making her laugh again. “Yes!” she exclaimed amid her laughter. “How did you guess? You know, after I left, she was the only person from the kibbutz that I stayed in touch with, besides my parents.” “I didn’t know. She didn’t tell me that.” “Isn’t it a miracle,” she said as she took his hands in a farewell gesture, “that she came at just the right time?” “Speaking of miracles,” he said, “do you know if she already has a telephone?” “Not that I know of. When she calls me it’s from a public telephone, or from her neighborhood grocery store. When was she due back?” “Last Sunday.” “I haven’t heard from her. If you want to find her, you’ll just have to go to her house. Good luck.” “Thank you. Shalom, Nili,” he said. “Shalom, Mi… I mean Etzel. It’s funny: it sounds as if your name were that of a former paramilitary organization, just as mine is.” It had not occurred to him before that moment that Etzel was the Hebrew acronym of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi, the ‘National Military Organization’ from which the Herut party had sprung. But, he remembered, Nili always had been observant. A good quality for a lawyer, he thought. She let go of his left hand in order to open the door for him with her right, and he used his free hand to take hold of his newspaper. She slightly leaned forward in his direction and he knew that if he were to do the same, she would continue leaning until they met in a kiss. He remembered their farewell kiss eighteen years before and the sudden, powerful surge of desire he felt at the time. He did not want to repeat the experience, and he remained upright. He shook the hand that he still held, dropped it, and turned away from her in order to pass through the door into the hallway. As he walked away, he did not hear the door close behind him. She must have remained in the doorway, watching him leave her again. As he waited to cross Ben Yehuda Street, a military truck, its bed filled with kafiya-wearing Arabs, roared by. Who were they? Captured Fatah fighters? Workers like the one in Bathtub Queen? *      *     * When he received Leon’s itinerary, he calculated that Brigitte would need to go to Vienna directly from Paris. He found that Air France had a flight going there less than an hour after the one that he, Leon and Fela would take to Tel Aviv, the morning after their arrival. He immediately made the reservation for her, without waiting for Billung to do so. Just before leaving for Paris, Miki received a copy of a new book, titled Beyond Guilt and Atonement, by the same Jean Améry whose essay Torture he had briefly written about the previous year. An expanded version of the essay was, in fact, one of the book’s five chapters. Miki was not interested in reviewing the book, and neither was Reich-Ranicki. In the end, the review was assigned to Horst Krüger, the literary editor of Southwest Radio in Baden-Baden. Miki did, however, take the book with him to Israel, thinking that he might have something to say about the final essay in it, On the Necessity and Impossibility of Being a Jew. The trip to Paris in the first-class sleeping car of the night train, their first such trip together, was like a belated tenth-anniversary honeymoon. Miki was able to forget his anxiety about Leon’s condition, and arrived in Paris relaxed and rested. The euphoria lasted only until they saw Leon. The emaciated figure that emerged from the Air France gate at Orly reminded Miki so forcefully of the one who, newly liberated at Buchenwald, made his way to the Bergen-Belsen DP camp in search of surviving family members that, for a moment, he felt himself to be the ten-year-old boy who could barely recognize his uncle. Leon, who was not yet sixty, looked to Miki at least seventy-five, and any unknowing onlooker would take Fela, walking beside him and looking just like the well-preserved mid-forties woman that she was, to be his daughter. It was only when Leon smiled, displaying the benefits of excellent dentistry, that he came closer to looking his age. In order to avoid the traffic between Orly and Paris, they had booked rooms at the recently opened Hilton Orly Airport Hotel. For Leon such accommodations were what he was used to in his business travels, but Miki and Brigitte were put off by the hotel’s sterile environment. “To think that Elizabeth Taylor was once married to a Hilton…” Brigitte remarked. At dinner, Miki sat facing Leon, and Brigitte, on his left, faced Fela. The conversation somehow devolved into two separate face-to-face encounters, with the women speaking in English and the men in a free-flowing mixture of French and Yiddish. Leon, Miki noticed, ate very little of his food. In the course of talking with Fela, Brigitte managed to find out at last what Leon was suffering from: an inoperable gastric cancer that was diagnosed too late. One of the several reasons for the trip to Israel was the presence, at Tel Hashomer Hospital in Ramat Gan, of an oncologist who had been recommended by one of Leon’s Montreal doctors as someone who might have a miracle cure for his condition. Leon, for his part, told Miki only that he and Fela had rented a house in Ramat Gan for an indefinite stay, and that he expected Miki to stay with them there. “The Israelis call it a villa,” he said, “but I’ve seen the photos, and it’s just a house.” “I remember thinking the opposite when I was at your house in Montreal,” Miki remarked, and Leon replied, “Eh! A house is a house.” Otherwise, their conversation dwelt mainly on the past and on Miki’s career since their London visit. “Have you made any money from your book?” Leon asked. “Not much,” Miki replied, “but it’s a succès d’estime.” “That’s how my coffee was at first,” Leon said, “a succès d’estime, until the good restaurants began to use it, and then it became a succès d’argent.” Miki thought that staying in a house in Ramat Gan, away from the places haunted by journalists, might be a good way to take the pulse of what was going on in and around Israel. The first thing that they found after settling down in Ramat Gan, after Miki had made some telephone calls, was that Dr. Gartenberg, to whom Leon had been referred, was not actually on the medical staff of Tel Hashomer but only had admission privileges there. Nor was he a certified oncologist, but a general practitioner with an office in his large house, one that, at least from the outside, could honestly be called a villa. Both Leon and Miki were reminded of the villas in which the doctors of Bad Harzburg lived and practiced. Dr. Gartenberg’s practice was evidently very successful. The house had two wings: a public, clinical one, with a large, crowded waiting room, examining offices (there were two associates) and a laboratory, and a private one that included – besides the family residence – a consulting room for special patients. Leon was one of these. The taxi ride from the rented house to Dr. Gartenberg’s house – the driver did not need to be told the address – was a short one, and when they were dropped off Miki decided that there was no need for him to accompany Leon and Fela into the clinic. He hugged them and wished Leon good luck. It would have been a short walk back to the house, but the free time that Miki had was a good opportunity to hang out among ordinary Israelis and listen in on their conversations. He stopped at a busy café on Rambam Square. The talk that he overheard, when not personal, was full of anxiety. Since the spring there had been a series of border crossings by Fatah fighters from Syria, with both Arabs and Israelis killed in the process. And the common theme that he heard was that “something must be done with the Arabs.” He got into the conversation to the extent of asking, “What do you think can be done?” When one of the men – they were all men – suggested a preemptive attack, he was immediately contradicted by someone else who said, “No, the Soviets are on their side, and the Americans are too busy in Vietnam to help us.” “You sound like Eshkol,” a third man said with a sneer. “Yes,” seconded the first one, “we need a real man in office, like Golda Meir!” A fourth man then said, “Don’t count the Americans out. Eshkol and Johnson have a good relationship.” When Miki got back to the house, Leon and Fela were already there. Leon’s pallor was suffused with an optimistic glow, beyond his usual cheerful self. Fela – who was wearing a large, obviously expensive gold-and-diamond brooch that Miki had not seen on her before – explained that the doctor had found him a perfect candidate for the treatment, which would begin the next day. It was to be a nutritional program, using extracts that Dr. Gartenberg had developed, combined with intestinal cleansing. And the doctor would make a special time to begin Leon’s treatment, since the clinic would be closed for the first day of Sukkot. The treatment would take place in stretches of five days, which would be followed by five days off during which the patient would be encouraged to eat his fill, and so on. Miki felt skeptical, but did not voice his feelings. He complemented Fela on the brooch, and Leon told him that it came from a jeweler named Kleinberg, who had beautiful jewelry at great prices. “In case you want to get something for Brigitte…” he went on but did not finish. A sudden bout of pain seemed to strike him. By the second day of treatment, however, Leon’s condition had improved so dramatically – externally and, according to Leon, internally – that Miki was ready to take back his skepticism. When the first five-day course of treatment ended, Leon’s skin no longer looked cadaverous. He was still feeble, and he still looked unmistakably like a sick man, but not frighteningly so. What in Leon’s view was best of all was that Dr. Gartenberg was satisfied with his progress, and held out hope for another round of improvement when the treatment was resumed. Miki, meanwhile, took daylong excursions to Tel Aviv – of which Ramat Gan is practically a suburb – as well as to Jerusalem and Haifa. He went there by train; he found that he could easily walk to Arlozorov station in Tel Aviv, which was just across the city limit from the diamond dealers’ district of Ramat Gan. Along the way he noticed Kleinberg’s jewelry store. He liked Haifa, which he had not visited before, the best. Besides enjoying the city’s beauty – one day, he knew, he would be back there with Brigitte – he was heartened by the way the city’s Jewish and Arab residents managed to live together. He ate lunch in an Arab restaurant, and the friendliness he encountered there impressed him, as did the waiters’ and customers’ fluency in Hebrew. With one another, of course they spoke Arabic, and he could not participate in political discussions with them as he could with Jews. Back in Ramat Gan he noticed, in a bookstore on Rambam Square, a teach-yourself book of spoken Palestinian Arabic for Israelis, with the Arabic written in Hebrew letters. He bought the book and resolved to learn the language. On the day before Leon’s treatment was to resume, disturbing incidents occurred on Israel’s borders. Fatah launched two cross-border attacks from Syria. Bomb explosions in West Jerusalem injured three Israeli civilians. A mine explosion south of the Sea of Galilee injured four more. Two days after treatment resumed, Leon suddenly took a turn for the worse. Dr. Gartenberg admitted the failure of his program, and stopped it. Another physician was called in, but by the time he showed up Leon was in a coma. The new doctor estimated Leon’s life expectancy at three or four days. Fela immediately made some telephone calls to Montreal. On Friday, about half a dozen of Leon’s closest friends showed up in Ramat Gan, all of them about his age, and most of them with their wives. There was also Fela’s cousin Renée, who had lost her husband the year before, and two younger men, about Miki’s age. It did not feel like a time for introductions. Leon never regained consciousness, and died, seemingly free of pain, on Saturday. The burial took place on Sunday. One of the younger men, of medium height, turned out to be the rabbi of their congregation, and he managed all the arrangements and the ceremony with the practiced skill of one who had already handled several Israeli burials for his congregants. He asked Miki to say a few words at the burial, and Miki did so like a man dazed by emotion, with no thought about what he would say, and no memory afterwards of what he had said, but the people in attendance were visibly moved. After the ceremony the other young man, who was very tall, approached Miki and introduced himself in as Greg Berman, an attorney in the firm handling Leon’s estate. He asked Miki if he had a copy of Leon’s will with him. When Miki said the had not thought of bringing it, Greg Berman said that it was just as well, because that will was obsolete. He went on to tell Miki that by dint of hard work, a good business sense and some luck, Leon had managed to amass a sizable estate, one half of which was to go to his widow (in addition to jointly held assets such as the house), one fourth to various charities, and one fourth to his beloved nephew, Dr. Michael Wilner of Hamburg, Germany. But this quarter was in trust, in an investment account at the Bank of Montreal, until Dr. Wilner turned thirty-five, at which time it would be transferred to his control. “The idea is,” Greg Berman went on as Miki listened in silence, “is that…” Miki wondered briefly if the repetition of ‘is’ was as peculiarity of Montreal English or an individual speech habit, but he listened to the gist of the idea, which was that Miki’s portion, worth a little under a million Canadian dollars, was to grow to a cool million by his thirty-fifth birthday. For the time being it seemed that, the way the trust was invested, it was growing faster than necessary for this goal, and Miki would receive the fruits of this excess growth as income. Greg was not sure of how much this would be, but told Miki not to be surprised if he received quarterly checks of at least five thousand dollars during the next three-plus years. Miki thanked Greg Berman for the information. He asked him if the terms of the trust meant that he could not use any of the principal before the age of thirty-five. “That’s correct,” Greg answered. In principle it could be used as collateral for a loan, but, Dr. Wilner not being a resident of Canada, in practical terms that would be difficult. Miki suddenly found himself transported to a mundane world. He felt like a child who was punished for a nonexistent transgression. Why had Leon picked the age of thirty-five? Was it only in order to let the trust grow to a round million, so that he could have the posthumous satisfaction of having made his nephew a millionaire? But Miki did not need a million, only a fraction of one, in order to buy, with Brigitte, the house of their dreams. He could, of course, let Brigitte pay for the house, and he would pay her his share after he got the money. But that, somehow, did not feel right. He did not want to be his wife’s debtor, and he did not think that she would want to be his creditor. He decided that on her thirty-fifth birthday, three years hence, he would tell her about his fortune. He would buy her an obviously expensive piece of jewelry as a present, and explain that he could now easily afford it. They could start their house hunting immediately, since it would be only four months until the principal was his. *      *     * He was back at the Dan in time for the breakfast service. An Israeli hotel breakfast was not something he liked to pass up. The array of fresh breads and rolls, fruit, eggs, cheese, smoked fish, yogurt and Israeli salad was something that had even impressed Brigitte during their visit, three months earlier, and nowhere more so than at the Basel, where they had stayed in Tel Aviv. Compared with the Basel, breakfast at the Dan looked more mass-produced. The cheese slices, for one, did not seem to be freshly cut from a slab but extracted from packages. The fruit did not look orchard-fresh, nor did the bread look bakery-fresh, as they did at the Basel. But, as he had already concluded, staying at the Basel was too risky. The Avis office was about two hundred meters away. He needed to pick up the car by noon, since the office would be closing for Friday afternoon. By half past ten it was already quite warm – at least thirty degrees, he estimated when he stepped outside the hotel for a walk along the beach – and he was looking forward to the cooler air of Jerusalem. No need to wait till noon, he told himself. He went back to his room to prepare what little baggage he would need for his journey. He would, of course, not check out of the Dan. He had no idea of how long he would be away, or of whether he would find either Hanna or Tzvi. But this time he found the uncertainty exciting. *      *     * As a nephew, Miki was not technically obligated to sit shiv’a for Leon, but he felt with all his heart that he had to do so. He was the only blood relation, and the nearest thing that Leon had to a son. He was, moreover, Leon’s heir. But most of all he felt that he owed it to himself, to his newly found self-awareness as a Jew. Not as a matter of faith – for nothing had occurred to shake his atheism – but as a matter of belonging to the Jewish people, something that he fully felt for the first time since he had, fifteen years before, returned to Germany from Israel. Being a Jew was now an integral part of his being, not merely a badge that he could flash when he wanted to write something that might outrage the German reader. The seven days of mourning would be over on Sunday, but there were no more seats on that day’s flights to Vienna. There was a tourist-class seat available on the Monday morning flight, and Miki booked it, forfeiting the first-class premium. By then, Brigitte’s turn as Laura at the Josefstadt would be over – he was sorry to miss it, but not too much, since The Glass Menagerie was not a favorite play of his – and she would already be back in Hamburg, working on Germelshausen. Miki would, then, simply change planes in Vienna and go on to Hamburg. The layover would be a long one, some four or five hours, but it didn’t matter. For the first three days, the house was full of visitors. But on Wednesday, all the Canadian contingent left, except Renée. It happened to be Brigitte’s thirty-second birthday. He called her as soon as the hubbub of the farewells was over. It was nine in the morning. She was still in bed, but awake. After wishing her a happy birthday, which she acknowledged with a forced yawn, he told her that he would not see her in Vienna. “That’s too bad,” she said. “I would have liked you to see me as Laura. I’ve been having a constant fight with the director: he thinks I’m making her too sexy.” Now he was really sorry to miss Brigitte’s performance. For the rest of the shiv’a the two widows kept each other company. Miki had plenty of time to himself, and he finally read Améry’s book from beginning to end. When he finished it he knew that he had to write a reply to the last essay in it, On the Necessity and Impossibility of being a Jew. On the Sunday before his departure he went to Kleinberg’s and bought Brigitte a pair of diamond earrings for eighty dollars (“In New York they would be a hundred and fifty,” Kleinberg told him) as a belated present for their tenth wedding anniversary and – though of course he would not tell her that – as a foretaste of what he would give her on her thirty-fifth birthday. When he boarded the flight at last, he made sure to pack the book and his Olivetti in his carry-on bag. When the seat-belt sign went off, he had the gist of the article in his head, ready to type. It took a bit of maneuvering to get the typewriter out of the overhead bin – it would have been far easier in first class – and to set it on the tray table, but, with some help from his neighbor, he managed. Typing while flying turned out to be more difficult than he had supposed. There were far more typographic errors than was usual for him. About halfway through the flight, he gave up. In Vienna he took advantage of the long layover and of his first-class ticket to find a seat in the VIP lounge, where he finished the article. By the time the flight to Hamburg was announced, it was ready for submission. Whose Guilt? Whose Atonement? Last year I had the occasion to write a few lines about a most moving essay titled Torture by Jean Améry. The essay has reappeared, in slightly extended form, as one of five chapters in a book by Améry that, under the title Beyond Guilt and Atonement: Attempts to Overcome by One Who Was Overcome, has taken West Germany by storm. The book has already been reviewed in these pages by Horst Krüger, but since I seem to have a few things in common with the author, I was asked by the editors to give the readers some of my reactions to the book. I am publishing them with somewhat of a delay, because I have recently spent some time in Israel, witnessing the grave deterioration of the political and military situation there as well as, on a personal level, the terminal illness of my uncle, the late Leon Rozowski. As I read the book, I discovered that what I have in common with Améry does, in fact, more to distance me from him than to bring us closer. While I have not personally experienced physical torture, I found much to admire in Améry’s analysis of his own experience thereof (which, as he readily admits, was of a relatively benign nature and did not leave any permanent scars), and it bettered my understanding of others who had experienced it. But our common experiences are another matter. They reduce to two things: being a Jew and being a concentration-camp survivor (including being liberated at Bergen-Belsen). Améry’s reflections on being a Jew are contained in the last essay in the book, On the Necessity and Impossibility of being a Jew. As Shakespeare wrote in What You Will, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Shakespeare’s formulation can be applied to other qualities than greatness; for example, that of being a Jew. Some are born Jews, by the simple fact of having a mother who is already Jewish. I belong to this category, and so, I daresay, do most of us. Others achieve Jewishness: by conversion; by being raised in a Jewish community; by immersing themselves in Jewish culture. And others still have Jewishness thrust upon them, as, for example, by a regime decreeing that they are Jews according to some so-called laws. Améry is one of those who had their Jewishness thrust upon them. As he tells us, his mother was Catholic and in fact opposed his marriage to his Jewish girlfriend. He also tells us that he was quite ignorant in Jewish lore, and that his biblical knowledge comes from reading Thomas Mann’s Joseph novels. No, he had Jewishness thrust upon him by a reading, in a coffee house during his Vienna student days, of the Nuremberg laws. And his understanding of anti-Semitism comes not from having experienced it (except in its most extreme form) but from another reading, that of Sartre’s Réflexions sur la question juive. Moreover, he accepts Sartre’s dictum that the Jew is who the anti-Semite defines him to be. In other words, what he knows about being a Jew comes from non-Jewish writers. He seems to have an aversion to hearing Jewish voices such as those of Hannah Arendt and Martin Buber. What is more, Améry’s assumption of his identity as a Jew is simultaneous, if not synonymous, with that of being a victim, or as he puts it, “a dead man on furlough.” It seems curious to me that Améry’s stance of Jew-as-victim has found such resonance in present-day Germany. But perhaps it should not. A little over a year ago I reported on the cool reception that West Germans gave the opening of the Israeli embassy in Bonn. The State of Israel is the very embodiment of the Jew-as-actor, diametrically opposed to what Améry represents. Could it be that Germans are more comfortable with the one than with the other? And if so, why? Could it be that the image of the Jew-as-victim, referring to the past – a past that will eventually be buried – is easier to deal with than that of the Jew-as-actor, who is here in the present and probably also in the future? Let me skip back to the beginning of the book, which is the essay titled At the Mind’s Limits and whose subject, as announced in the first sentence, is the intellectual in Auschwitz. I found that I had two problems in reading this essay. One is Améry’s curiously confining definition of an intellectual, which excludes any interest in natural science or technology. The intellectual à la Améry has no interest in “the physical process that leads to a short-circuit,” and if he is asked to name a famous person whose name begins with “Lilien-” he will respond with the minor poet Detlev von Liliencron, not the aeronautical pioneer Otto Lilienthal. I must confess, then, that to Améry I – with my Göttingen doctorate in philosophy, German literature and modern history – am not an intellectual. My other problem is deeper, however. Améry bemoans the fact that in Auschwitz, or more specifically in the labor camp of Auschwitz-Monowitz where he was imprisoned, the privileged men were skilled workers such as locksmiths, electricians, plumbers, cabinetmakers and carpenters. After them came the likes of tailors and shoemakers, masons and mechanics, all of whom could find bearable work with a chance of survival. Even among the learned professions, chemists (like his fellow prisoner Primo Levi) or physicians had it better than university professors, librarians, art historians and economists, who were soon removed from the labor pool and sent to the main camp with its gas chambers and crematories. Nor was their situation, according to Améry, any better within the camp community, in which, unable to master the inmates’ slang, they could not even find friends. Somehow, though Améry never says so explicitly, the impression comes through that this situation – if it is true – is, in his view, a Nazi-generated perversion of the natural order of things. I am no more a Marxist than Améry is, and I do not believe in the superiority of the working class. But I believe in the equality of man, or at least in the Jeffersonian dictum that all men are created equal. I was in the camps as a child and not at Auschwitz, but my late uncle was of Améry’s generation and passed through Auschwitz, and he, a well-read socialist who had studied economics, had no difficulty either in learning whatever manual skills were needed under the circumstances or in making friends among inmates from all walks of life, even intellectuals who could pass Améry’s test with flying colors. I find myself forced, to my great discomfort, to judge Améry’s analysis in negative terms, to think of such qualities as self-pity, arrogance or egocentrism. I would be greatly comforted in being found wrong. After all, I forgot to mention a third thing that I have in common with Jean Améry: being human. It was only when his response to Améry was out of his viscera and on paper that, back in the first-class comfort of Lufthansa on the Vienna-Hamburg flight, he allowed himself to take stock of the ways in which the month in Israel had changed him. He lost the only blood relative that he had left. He became a rich man, or at least learned that he would be a rich man a few years hence. He found himself again as a Jew who was, above all, devoted to the survival of Israel as a state at peace with its neighbors. One of these neighbors would be a sovereign Palestinian Arab state. He was still in the midst of these reflections when the plane landed. It was five o’clock, and a little before six the taxi dropped him in front of the apartment house. As he entered the lobby he realized that this was his first homecoming to their new dwelling. Alone with his bags in the elevator, after a month of returning to the house in Ramat Gan, he did not quite feel that he was coming home. Once he was in the apartment, Frau Schmidt was there to greet him and to tell him that Frau Wilner had herself come home just a short while before, and was probably taking a shower. She was already at work, Frau Schmidt informed him, on the filming of Germelshausen, shooting outdoor scenes in a village that stood for the one in the story and that was located, miraculously (as befitted the story, Miki thought), only forty kilometers down the Elbe from the center of Hamburg. Frau Schmidt knew the place, for she had been there with Klaus, who lived nearby. Its name was Haselau, it was surrounded by woods and marshes, and it had a thirteenth-century church (another perfect fit) and an old inn with excellent food that had been owned by the same family since 1700. Speaking of food, Frau Schmidt concluded, dinner would be ready at any moment. He thanked Frau Schmidt and walked toward the master bedroom. As he passed the bathroom he heard the running water and visualized Brigitte standing under it. He felt at home at last. He left his bags in the hallway, just outside the bedroom door, and went back to tell Frau Schmidt that dinner could wait an hour or so. During that time, from the moment that Brigitte entered the bedroom in her terry-cloth robe and slippers to find Miki waiting for her, they did not exchange any words other than each other’s names, even when in the end they were getting dressed after he had presented her with the earrings. Over dinner of roast chicken, fried potatoes and mixed vegetables, they finally talked. Miki told her briefly about what had happened in Israel, and promised to tell her more details as he settled down. Brigitte, in turn, told him that she had impressed the Viennese enough to receive several film offers from Austrian producers. Hetty advised her to accept the one in which she would not need to affect an Austrian accent: a comic parody of L'Année dernière à Marienbad, to be titled Last Year at Bad Ischl, in which Brigitte’s character was that of a visiting North German woman. Brigitte protested that she could speak perfect Viennese, and gave Hetty a demonstration. “To me you sound Viennese,” Hetty replied, “and you would sound fine if you were cast as an Austrian in anything except an Austrian film taking place in Austria. Perhaps Marie-Antoinette!” she added with a laugh. But Brigitte did not really need convincing; she liked the Bad Ischl outline better than the others, anyway. The Améry article, as soon as it appeared in the following week’s Die Zeit, sparked a storm of controversy in the German media. Jean Améry had, in the two years since his tape-recorded essays began to be broadcast on the German radio, become almost a cult figure. He had been invited to lecture and to sign books all over West Germany, and West German intellectuals somehow found his lone-voiced, existentialist-tinged writing on the Nazi past easier to swallow than that of more accusatory writers who had closer ties with the Jewish community. To criticize him seemed somehow un-German, and Michael Wilner was attacked on the grounds of not being German enough to understand the reasoning of someone like Améry, on the grounds of being too young, and even on the grounds of envy over Améry’s meteoric success. There was no reaction from Améry himself, and Miki chose not to respond publicly to the attacks. He was no longer interested in fighting in the German cultural battleground. His interest now lay in Israel and its neighbors, and his future as a journalist would be in that domain. The task he now set for himself was to learn some Arabic: colloquial Palestinian from the book he had bought in Ramat Gan, and the written standard from the classic little textbook – published in the same series as the one from which he had taught himself Spanish – by Ernst Harder. He bought a new edition, revised by Rudi Paret, a noted Islamic and Semitic scholar whose works on Islam Miki occasionally consulted. The counterattack came in the form of letters to the editor from Jews all over West Germany and Austria, and some German Jews living abroad. They all expressed their resentment of the undeserved representative status that the German media had given Améry, as well as their gratitude to Michael Wilner for having voiced it for them. The controversy died down quickly. A few weeks later, as he was picking up the mail while Brigitte was at the studio, he found two envelopes addressed to him and bearing stamps with the image of Queen Elizabeth II. One was from England, and the London return address had above it the name A. & H. Lightman. It meant nothing to him. When he opened the envelope he found a brief letter, and between its folds a color photograph of a well-dressed young couple with a little boy. Both the woman, who was quite pretty, with light-brown hair in a braid that hung down one shoulder, and the man looked vaguely familiar to him. He began to read the letter, which was of course in English. London, 19 November 1966 Dear Mickey, I am writing to express our deepest sympathy on the loss of your uncle Leon Rozowski. I hope you remember us. I am Helen Lightman, née Kaminsky, and my husband Alan and I were among the young people recruited by our fathers (as in my case) or bosses (as in Alan’s) to keep you company on the occasion of your late uncle Leon’s and your visit to London in 1958. We have fond memories of that occasion, because not only did we make your acquaintance – and a most enjoyable one it was – but also each other’s. One thing led to another, and three years later we were married. We now have a three-year-old son whom we named Michael and whom we call Mickey (yes, in part after you), though if he grows up to be a rock star – and he is showing indications of that – he will probably change it to Mick. In any case, you may regard yourself as a godfather in absentia. We sent you an invitation to our wedding, but it was to the address in Goettingen, and it was returned to us after a long delay, too late to try to find out your correct address and re-send the invitation. This time, it so happened that my father’s cousin Henry, who lives in Montreal and was your uncle’s friend (it was he who made the business connection between Leon and my father), stopped off in London on his way back from the funeral in Israel and told us about you. He also advised us on how to get your address (through a law firm in Montreal), and so we did. Once again, please accept Alan’s and my condolences. Sincerely yours,       Helen       Miki’s first, altogether involuntary, response to the letter was to imagine Alan and Helen having sex while saying their similar-sounding names to each other: Alan-Helen-Alan-Helen-Alan-Helen… He then tried to remember if he himself had fantasized about Helen when he was in London, but could not dredge up the memory, which in all likelihood had been erased as soon as he was back with Brigitte. Finally he reflected on the fact that there was in London a child who was “in part” – whatever that meant – named after him. He was a “godfather in absentia”! This was probably the closest he would ever get to being a father. So be it. But the idea of his childlessness closed a circuit with his recently renewed consciousness of being a Jew. It occurred to him that, not having children, he would need to have no concern about their Jewishness. The second envelope came from Canada and its sender was the Bank of Montreal. It contained a check, made out to him, for a little over six thousand Canadian dollars. Though Greg Berman had prepared him, it still took little time for the realization to sink in that he would henceforth be receiving this amount, worth more than his annual salary from Die Zeit, four times a year. He was now financially independent. He could be a free-lance journalist, and write only about what interested him. And that, from this point on, was the fate of Israel and of the Palestinian Arabs. But then he had already told Margot that this was what he wanted to write about, and she, after checking with M-M and the Countess, told him that it was fine with them. He would not, he decided, leave Die Zeit just yet. He would, however, in the course of the coming year, write an essay about Leon, part biography and part tribute. It would be longer than his usual articles. Perhaps Merkur would be interested in another contribution from him. *      *     * When he entered Jerusalem, about half past twelve, he turned left off Jaffa Road in order to skirt the Haredim neighborhoods on the north. Eventually he came to Nablus Road, where he turned right, heading south in the direction of the Damascus Gate, until he came to the InterContinental Hotel, where he was going to spend the night. He had decided that he would be best off in the Arab section, since he was going to be in Jerusalem Friday night and Saturday morning, and wanted nothing to do with religious Jews on a Sabbath. He found a free parking space on the street, almost directly across the street from the hotel, and decided not to bother with the hotel’s garage. He entered the hotel, checked in, and climbing two flights of stairs rather than taking the elevator, carried his bag up to his room, declining in deliberately rudimentary Arabic the services of the bellhop who had offered to do it for him, but tipping him a pound nonetheless, for potential future services. The man thanked him profusely in Arabic, and Miki felt gratified at understanding all of what he said.. The room was pleasant, with a view of the Dome of the Rock. He still had the newspaper, and had not read much of it. What he would have liked to read was Davar, where he might have found an article by Amos Oz, a talented young writer whom he had met the year before and who had recently published a novel titled My Michael. When they met, Miki had jokingly told Oz that he took the title personally. In Amos Oz in person, and in his articles that Miki had read previously, he detected a kindred spirit on matters of Jewish-Arab coexistence. But he had to maintain the pretense of not knowing Hebrew, so that he had to buy the English paper, whose pro-Labor editorial position was similar to Davar’s. Between the main part of the paper and the Friday supplement there was enough to keep him occupied until he got hungry for lunch. He decided to forgo the hotel’s dining room and went out for a walk. Emerging from the crowd thronging the Damascus Gate into the Christian Quarter of the Old City, he found a pleasant-looking café where he had a lunch of shawarma, salad and rice, with a bottle of Goldstar beer. He continued through the old city, running across of group of Polish pilgrims carrying a cross on the Via Dolorosa, until he emerged again into the New City through the Jaffa Gate. He found his way to the Yemin Moshe neighborhood and the street where Hanna’s house was. He rang the doorbell of her apartment. There was no answer, but a woman, about Hanna’s age, came out from the apartment next door. “Are you looking for Hanna Korn?” the woman asked. He wondered if it wasn’t obvious what he was doing, but before saying anything he reminded himself that he didn’t understand Hebrew. The woman’s accent was German; the way she pronounced ‘Korn’ was pure Berlin. He asked her if she spoke German. She smiled and repeated her question in German. “Yes,” he said. “She isn’t here.” That, too, seemed obvious, but the woman went on. “She is still in Europe.” “Wasn’t she due to come back last Sunday?” he asked. “Yes, but she telephoned to say that she missed her connecting flight and decided on the spur of the moment to go to Greece. She will be back this coming Sunday.” “Good for her,” Miki said. “Would you like to leave a message for her?” “No, that isn’t necessary. I don’t know if I’ll have a chance to come by again. But thank you, and Shalom.” “Shabbat shalom,” the woman said. He wondered if she assumed that he was a Jew. On his way back he went first to the New City center. The Steimatzky bookstore on Jaffa Road was already closed, as were most other stores. A year before, he could find the Hebrew edition of The Long Seventh Day in the display window. Now there was not a trace. He went back into the Old City. He had a Turkish coffee, and found a bookstore selling English books. Prominently displayed was a new arrival, a paperback edition of A Small Town in Germany by John Le Carré. He had seen the film based on The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and had enjoyed it, but he had not read the book, or any other espionage novels. He now felt that this was a good time to begin, since was engaging in a bit of espionage himself. This book, he thought, might be a good introduction into the genre, since it dealt with West German politics, a topic he knew something about, rather than the Cold War. He bought the book – it turned out that the display copy was the only one the store had – and retraced his steps back to the hotel. It was the hottest time of the day, and while he tried to find the shady side of the street wherever he could, by the time he got into his room he felt that he needed a shower. He took off his wig and beard, shaved again, and let the lukewarm water spray him like a spring rain. *      *     * The first time that he stayed at the InterContinental was when the hotel had just reopened after the Six-Day War. He had arrived in Israel five days into the armistice, and immediately headed for Jerusalem. He wanted to witness the joy at the conquest of the Old City and at the liberation of the Western Wall, and the InterContinental, by its location in East Jerusalem, near the Damascus Gate, proved convenient. He would then write an article, or more likely a series of articles, about his impressions. He had been encouraged to do so by Theo Sommer, with whom he was now working directly while Margot was on vacation. Under Jordanian rule, the InterContinental had been a favorite with Western journalists. It even provided Latin-letter electric typewriters that could be used in one’s room. Miki decided to rent such a typewriter. Though he was a journalist, and though he had written reports on events that he had covered, he did not think of himself as a reporter. His usual modus operandi was to gather impressions, taking notes only on details, and then write his articles on his own time, on his typewriter, in the comfort of his study. But this situation was different. He had met the expected joy among the Jews, though not all: he found skepticism among the likes of Uri Avnery, the one Israeli journalist whom he admired. And while he expected to find bitterness among the Arabs that he met in and around the hotel, and on his walks through the old city, it was of an intensity he had previously encountered only among his Jewish fellow survivors after the war. It was something that he had tried – successfully, he believed – to contain within himself by focusing his hostility on individuals such as Hitler and Hemme. He wondered what an Arab who was like him could do. Dayan, Eshkol, Rabin were, after all, not evil men. The whirlwind of impressions, and the feelings they generated in him, were so powerful that he felt the need to write about them immediately, as they came upon him, still raw. He could edit what he wrote once he was home. He typed some test sentences in which the letters Y and Z abounded, in order to accustom himself to the English keyboard, on which the positions of these letters are the opposite of what they are on German typewriters. Once he felt ready, he inserted a new sheet of paper, and decided that he would begin in a detached, scholarly style, like his memory of the way preachers in American Negro churches would begin their sermons. He began to type single-spaced. “And he stood still on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.” My translation of this clause, from the second verse of the second chapter of Genesis, is different from that of Luther, who wrote “And he rested…” My reason for the change is not theological but linguistic. It is not that I have a different representation of God (I have none whatsoever), but of the language. Our German word ‘weapons standstill’ (what in English or French is called armistice) is, in Hebrew, sh’vitat neshek. Neshek means ‘weapons,’ and sh’vita (which also means ‘strike’) comes from the verb shavat, which is precisely what God is said to have done in the original version of the verse. And, needless to say, the word ‘Sabbath’ also comes from the same verb. But now we shall take a leap from linguistics to theology after all. When modern theologians, Christian or Jewish, try to reconcile the Biblical account of creation (in what they call the “E” version) with a scientific point of view, they interpret the six days of creation as “God’s days” or “long days.” Some even go so far as equating them with the geological eras, conveniently grouped so as to come out six in number. But they do no such thing with the seventh day; they leave it as an ordinary day. No wonder: if the seventh day were also a “long day” then it would extend up to the present moment. Theologians, who for the most part represent the established order, cannot allow that we should be living in a permanent Sabbath. Otherwise, no work would ever get done. And now, let us take the final disciplinary leap: to contemporary history. For the just-concluded war, which is already becoming known as the Six-Day War, the days must be counted in the opposite way to those of creation. The six days of active fighting were ordinary days, the kind we read off on the calendar. But the seventh day, that of the weapons standstill, will be a relatively long one. How long? I cannot answer that question quantitatively, in terms of calendar days. But qualitatively, the answer is simple, even tautological: until the weapons standstill comes to an end. It can come to an end in one of two ways. For a weapons standstill is a state that is neither war nor peace, and it will end when it is replaced by one or the other. I am not referring to sporadic violations, like those that went on during the nineteen years preceding the Six-Day War and that, in fact, led to it. Such violations, of greater or lesser intensity, will resume almost immediately, and may already have occurred by the time you are reading these lines. They will be a characteristic of the long seventh day. He came to the end of the page and immediately replaced it with another. Which alternative do I foresee for the end of the long seventh day? I am afraid that there is only one. There is no doubt in my mind that, sooner or later, war will break out again between Jews and Arabs. In the last war the Arabs have been humbled and shamed. And the Arab people is not a humble people, and cannot long live in shame. In poverty, yes; there has been no economic miracle in the Arab world (except where the miracle of petroleum has occurred). In ignorance, yes; there have been no scientific breakthroughs in the Arab world since the Middle Ages. And, by the way, when I say these unflattering things, I am only quoting Arabs who have said them to me. What am I basing my pessimistic prediction on? I like to think that I am, by nature, an optimist. When I came here, to visit Israel and its newly occupied territories, a few days after the war had ended, my intention was to look for signs of hope. And, I thought, the smiles that I saw on Israeli faces when I first arrived were just such signs. But it did not take long to realize that those smiles, when contrasted with the scowls on the faces of the occupied Arabs, were not of cheer but of gloating. I have old memories of gloating smiles, and they are not pleasant ones. He was not sure if what he would write next would follow what he had just written sequentially, but the thoughts that were crowding his mind as he was typing needed immediate expression. He started another page. Many other impressions have crowded into my mind during my few days here, and they have all contributed to my pessimistic outlook. But before I describe them in detail I would like to point out that their validity may be restricted by two factors. First of all, I am not, by training or experience, an on-the-spot investigative reporter. Those who are familiar with my work know that my articles have usually been the result of long and – I hope – careful reflection. It may be that seasoned reporters have tricks for checking quickly, under the pressure of a deadline, just how valid their impressions are. I don’t know any such tricks, and the deadlines that I operate under are self-imposed. The situation that I am reporting on is one of disequilibrium, fluid and dynamic, and the impressions that I wish to share with my readers are such that they may become irrelevant in a short time. A second restricting factor is that the actors in the drama that I am witnessing are Jews and Arabs, but while my Hebrew is fluent (I lived in Israel as a youth), my Arabic is extremely limited. It was less than a year ago, when I realized that my attention would be henceforth focused on this part of the world, that I began the study of Arabic, using a textbook on the Palestinian vernacular, intended for use by Israelis, in which Arabic is written with Hebrew letters. Only some months later did I begin to learn Arabic script and a smattering of classical Arabic grammar, to the point that I can now get the gist of articles that I read in the Arab press, but I must rely on translators in order to get the full meaning, just as I still need interpreters in order to engage in anything but the most perfunctory conversation. I have therefore decided, as the trained philosopher (Göttingen, Frankfurt, Hamburg) that I am, that I would put the validity of my impressions to the test by making predictions based on them. This is simply the scientific method in action; I do not mean to become, here in the land of prophets, yet another prophet. The risk in making predictions in these circumstances is not that they may be falsified; that would only tell me that my impressions were wrong, and it would teach me something. No, the risk is of a journalistic nature: that they will be verified or falsified before they have been published. I will therefore try to publish my articles in this series at great speed, and forgo the refining touches that I usually like to indulge myself in. He realized, on rereading the last sentence, that he had definitely committed himself to writing a series of articles. He would finish the first one right there, at the InterContinental, as quickly as possible, and send the typescript to Hamburg by courier. He would then discuss details by telephone with Margot, or whoever took her place if she was still on vacation. He looked at the text. It did not quite fill the page, but it seemed to be complete in itself, so that he unrolled the sheet and inserted yet another. He felt eager to have his predictions, at least in provisional form, down on paper. He would splice them into the finished articles, as appropriate. Here are some of the things I predict. My first prediction is that East Jerusalem, where I am sitting as I am writing this, will be unilaterally annexed by Israel, as soon as the necessary legislation, which will have to determine, among other things, the status of the Arabs living here, can be drafted in the Knesset. This action will be seen by the Arab world and its sympathizers as such a provocation that it will make peaceful coexistence impossible in the foreseeable future. My second prediction follows from the last conclusion: that hostilities short of a formal war will begin again in due time. The Soviet Union, having dropped its pretense of neutrality and gone over fully to the Arab side, will help the Arab states rearm after the losses of the last war, and as soon as one of them feels ready it will begin some sort of armed cross-border activity. A likely target is the Israeli troops massed on the east bank of the Suez Canal, within view of their Egyptian counterparts, forming yet another provocation to Arab pride. Sporadic shelling that will be excused as defensive is likely to begin within a year. This will probably be echoed by similar activity across the Jordan and the Golan. Another possibility of attack is in the canal itself, or even the Mediterranean Sea. If an Israeli ship is judged as trespassing on what Egypt, or, for that matter, Lebanon or Syria, regards as her territorial waters, it will be another potential shelling target. Israel will thus be engaged in something that will not qualify as a war but that, the Arabs hope, will gradually bring it down from its present euphoria to a state of exhaustion. And so the long seventh day will continue. He now had about almost one hundred fifty lines. It was enough for the first article, though the Countess had given him up to two hundred. He might as well include the predictions, in summary form, in this one, and elaborate on them in subsequent articles. He was sure that by the next day he would have it completed, with the words To be continued at the bottom. *      *     * When he felt clean and dry, he shaved and put his disguise back on – one never knew if someone might knock on his door unexpectedly and he would have to open it – and lay on the bed. He opened the book to the copyright page, which informed him that the original hardcover edition had been published two years earlier, the same year as his own book. From the introduction he learned that the small town in the title was, unsurprisingly, none other than Bonn. The man writing as John Le Carré had, according to the blurb on the back cover, worked in the British embassy there, and Miki knew that diplomats liked to refer to Bonn as a small town. This was especially true of European ones, who tended to think that only places like London, Paris or Rome were worthy of their presence; not so much the American ones, who were used to a federal capital that was but a minor star in the constellation of their cities. The introduction also told him that the action took place in the recent future. This was a strange use of recent; Miki wondered if this was an English usage that he was unfamiliar with, or a coinage by the author. But, as he began to read the book, he understood that it meant the recent past, but from a reference point sometime in the near future. The time described was then, essentially, the present. The historical background was that of Britain’s negotiation for admission to the European Community, which was still going on. This book was therefore making predictions about the near future just as his book had done, but in the form of fiction. There was nothing new about future fiction, but usually the future described there was a distant one, not so close that its validity could be tested while the book was still in print. The action took place almost entirely within the confines of the British embassy. Miki found the dialogue among members of the embassy staff, in the early chapters, confusing, but could not help noticing references to student demonstrations. These demonstrations were joined to a kind of a populist, quasi-Nazi movement led by a fictitious character, an industrialist named Karfeld. Miki could think of no real German to whom Karfeld bore even the slightest resemblance, certainly not the likes of Thielen or von Thadden, who were active in electoral politics. It struck him as strange, moreover, that the movement of student demonstrations that was really forming in Germany, probably at the very time when John Le Carré was writing his book, was of an almost diametrically opposite nature, using slogans taken from second-hand Marxism. He decided that he would put his critical instincts to rest and try to pay no mind to any relation the book might have to reality. An investigator named Turner made his appearance, with the mission of investigating the disappearance of a low-ranking embassy official named Leo Harting and of some secret files. The book became a detective novel, to be enjoyed as such, and, at least at first, Miki enjoyed it.