Operation Shylock by Roth Philip

Author:Roth, Philip [Roth, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780099307914
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2000-06-02T06:00:00+00:00

* * *

I am looking down on an open-air hospital ward or public clinic that is set out on a vast playing field that reminds me of School Stadium on Bloomfield Avenue in Newark, where Newark’s rivalrous high schools — the Italian high school, the Irish high school, the Jewish high school, the Negro high school — played football doubleheaders when I was a boy. But this arena is ten times the size of our stadium and the crowd is as huge as the crowd at a bowl game, tens upon tens of thousands of excited fans, snugly layered with clothing and warming their dark insides with steaming containers of coffee. White pennants wave everywhere, rhythmically the crowd takes up the chant, “Give me an M! Give me an E! Give me a T! Give me an E!” while down on the field white-clad doctors glide agilely about in clinical silence — I am able to see through my binoculars their serious, dedicated faces and the faces, too, of those who lie still as stone, each hooked up to an IV drip, their souls draining into the body on the next gurney. And what is horrifying is that the face of every one of them, even of the women and of the little children, is the face of Ivan of Treblinka. From the stands, the cheering fans can see nothing but the balloon of a big, stupid, friendly face swelling out of each of the bodies strapped to the gurneys, but with my binoculars I see concentrated in that emerging face everything in humanity that there is to hate. Yet the electrified crowd seethes with hope. “All will be different from now on! Everybody will be nice from now on! Everybody will belong to a church like Mr. Demjanjuk! Everybody will raise a garden like Mr. Demjanjuk! Everybody will work hard and come home at night to a wonderful family like Mr. Demjanjuk!” I alone have binoculars and am witness to the unfolding catastrophe. “That is Ivan!” But nobody can hear me above the hurrahs and the exuberant cheering. “Give me an O! Give me an S!” I am still shouting that it is Ivan, Ivan from Treblinka, when they pluck me lightly out of my seat and, rolling me down atop the soft tassels of the white woolen caps worn by all the fans, pass my body (swathed now in a white pennant bearing a big blue “M”) over a low brick wall that has painted across it “The Memory Barrier. Players Only,” and into the arms of two waiting doctors, who strap me tightly to a gurney of my own and wheel me out to midfield just as the band strikes up a quick-time march. When the IV needle pierces my wrist, I hear the mighty roar that precedes the big game. “Who’s playing?” I ask the nurse in the white uniform who attends me. She is Jinx, Jinx Possesski. She pats my hand and whispers, “University of Metempsychosis.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.