Stanley Elkin - Boswell

“You’re a victim of a Philadelphia civilization which smothers credulity,” Dr. Perlmutter said. “That’s the difference between you and the so-called primitive — only a difference of the heart. The savage isn’t shocked by the world, and you are. He can believe in appeasable rain gods, in implacable demons, and you can’t. You say he’s more naïve. I say he’s more sophisticated. Your sophistication consists in saying ‘No, no,’ or, when the evidence or the authority is irrefutable, ‘Amazing. Amazing,’ while his sophistication, like my own, consists in a willingness to concede everything. Tell me, lady, when you saw the newsreels of Buchenwald did you say then, as you do to me, ‘Amazing, amazing’?” He looked accusingly at the rest of us. “The Philadelphia fascist mentality makes me sick,” he said. “Help me up!”

Whether by design or unconsciously, he offered his hand to the same woman he had been attacking. With a terrible self-effacement she reached down and pulled him to his feet. She was not a tall woman, but when he stood he came only to her shoulders. He pushed through the crowd. “I’m going inside,” he announced.

The others made room for him. I ran after him. He was going toward the house. I couldn’t risk going inside after him, so I stopped him on the lawn.

“Dr. Perlmutter,” I said.

He looked around at me. “Call me Morty,” he said.

“I’m James Boswell.”

A little piece of Dr. Perlmutter’s index finger was missing. We shook hands. “There’s a little piece of my index finger missing,” Dr. Perlmutter said, “but nobody ever notices it until I tell them about it.”

We walked along toward the house. Morty had a slight limp. “I’ll let you don’t notice my limp,” he said.

“Are you limping, Morty?” I asked. His left shoulder was slightly higher than his right.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s my left shoulder. It’s just a little higher than my right. I try to have my clothes cut to compensate for it. You’ve got to be loyal to your own culture.”

“That’s right,” I said.

We walked along. “You know what a lot of that Nobel Prize dough is going for?” Morty said. “Suits.”

“You can get a lot of suits with all that money,” I said.

“Appearance is very important in our culture,” Morty said solemnly.

Walking next to him I could see that his nose had an odd down-plunging aspect to it.

“My nose was broken once in the jungle and improperly set by a medicine man. It was so long before I got back to a non-Ur civilization that the bones had already healed. I think it’s too late to do anything about it. Probably people don’t notice, but I’m conscious of it.”

“Was your nose broken, Morty?”

“Kid,” he said, “I’m a dying Jewish anthropologist.”

We were on the steps of the Gibbenjoys’. “Morty, don’t let’s go in there,” I said.

“Why not? Gibbenjoy is all right.”

“He called you a little Yid,” I said desperately.

“He what?” Morty exploded. “When did he say that?”

“Before. When you were saying all those interesting things on the lawn to his guests.”

“He did, did he? Let go of my arm. Let go of my arm, damn it, I need a pill.” I let him put a pill in his mouth. He pushed past me.

“Where’s Gibbenjoy?” he asked Miller angrily.

“I think Gibbenjoy is in the library, sir.”

“Come on, Morty,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

I looked at Miller nervously, but he didn’t seem to remember who I was so I brushed past him and rushed after Morty. He must have been familiar with the house, for he was hurrying in what I supposed was the direction of the library. “The library’s always on the ground floor in these places,” he called back, stretching his neck over the shoulder that was slightly higher than the other one. “Conspicuous consumption,” he explained spitefully. He pushed through a double door. We were in the dining room. “Come on,” he said. I followed him into another room, a sort of office. An elderly man was kissing the young lady I had spoken to on the bench. “Where’s the damn library?” Morty yelled.

“Downtown, I should think,” the old man said calmly, “but it’s probably closed.”

“Oh, come on,” Morty said impatiently.

We went up a staircase. Morty kept putting pills into his mouth. “It’s even worse than I thought,” he said, talking this time over the lower shoulder and appearing oddly taller, “inconspicuous conspicuous consumption. Did you know that there is no word for ’snob’ in any but the Indo-European family of languages?” On the second- floor landing he chose a huge set of double doors and marched through.

There were about a half dozen men in the room. They were smoking cigars and drinking sherry. It was the first time I had ever seen anything quite like it and I was sorry that Morty was about to spoil it.

“Gibbenjoy?” Morty demanded.

By this time he had so many pills in his mouth that it was hard to understand him. “Gibbenjoy?”

“Yes?” Gibbenjoy said, breaking away from the men to whom he had been talking. “Ah, Perlmutter.”

“So I’m a little Yid, am I? Evidently the Nobel committee in Stockholm takes a different view of little Yids than people in Philadelphia. I’m a little Yid with the Nobel Prize. A little Yid with four brothers, all of them brilliant psychiatrists. A little Yid who earned the only doctoral degree ever awarded by the Columbia University Night School. A little Yid who’s been married six times and never had to bury a single wife and who during one of those times was married to a full-blooded black African princess six feet two inches tall. A little Yid who used to drive a taxi in the streets of New York and pulled a rickshaw for ten months in the city of Hong Kong, the only occidental ever so privileged. Also I speak fluently eight European languages, and thirty-one dialects of African and Indian tribes, including Hopi and Shawnee in this country. So that’s your idea of a little Yid, is it? Well, fuck you, Gibbenjoy.”

“Come on, Morty,” I said.

Gibbenjoy stared open-mouthed. If I had bewildered him before, Perlmutter astonished him now. He looked from Morty to me. “What have you to do with all this?” he asked me.

I looked at Morty. He was waiting patiently for me to deliver my evidence. I looked back at Gibbenjoy, rapidly calculating which of my hopelessly severed loyalties was liable to produce the most enduring results.

“You and the whole anti-Semitic crew aren’t worth the little piece of index finger Morty gave to science,” I said drunkenly. “Come on, Morty, let’s get away from these Nazis.” I pulled him with me out of the room. Since his angry speech to Gibbenjoy he seemed calmer, almost sedate.

“You were wonderful, Morty,” I said. I could believe in Morty’s courage though I had no reason to believe in the need for it.

Morty shrugged carelessly. It was neither a modest gesture nor sententious self-effacement. Morty would never buff elegant fingernails down well-bred lapels. His movement seemed instead rather hopeless, and I felt a brief panic of guilt.

“I thought Hitler would have finished all that,” he said quietly.

I nodded helplessly. “Well,” I said, “let’s get out of here.” A little extravagantly, I motioned for him to precede me down the staircase.

He went down the stairs apathetically and we left the house.

“Wait a minute,” I said, “I left my hat and coat in a tree. Wait right here.” I ran off to get them. When I returned a minute later Morty was sitting on the wide patio steps, his elbows on his knees. His chin was in his hands.

“Are you all right, Morty?”