Free Shylock Is My Name by Howard Jacobson

they sing ‘Suwannee’ every time they meet a black man?”
    Strulovitch wished he knew the answer to that. “They might under their breath. But I take a joke to one’s face to be the equivalent of a little white flag. Look, we come in peace.”
    “And when they joke about my unbending, mercenary nature?” He was evidently unmoved by Strulovitch’s pacifism. “When they finger banknotes in my face, when they jeer at my separatism, wondering that I consider myself favoured when everything about my existence declares the opposite, when they question my morality—though until we taught them they didn’t know morality existed—when they dispute the principles by which I live, the things I believe, the food I put in my mouth, and when they expound their theories on where, given my faith, I should be living—are they still waving a little white flag?”
    Strulovitch remembered boys at school making fun of his name—Strudelbum—and telling him to go back to where he came from. Where did they think that was? Ur of the Chaldees?
    “So where are they sending you?” he asked.
    “To hell, eventually. But in the meantime to nowhere in particular—that’s their point. We had a chance at a Homeland and we blew it. Belonging was never what we were good at anyway. Being a stranger is what we do. It’s the diaspora, they are at pains to assure me, that brings out the best in us. Which neatly sidesteps the question of what brings out the best in
them
. But they feel no embarrassment in proclaiming that the proper Jew is a wandering Jew. Citizens of everywhere and nowhere, dandified tramps subsisting wherever we can squeeze ourselves in, at the edges and in the crevices. Precarious but urbane, like flâneurs clinging to a rock face, expressing our marvellously creative marginality.”
    “My daughter thinks the same.”
    “I could speak to her…”
    Strulovitch risked an ironic expression.
    Shylock’s face gave nothing away. His olive skin was polished to a mirrored bleakness, reflecting all that there was of sorrow. “Who’s to say I won’t make a better job of speaking to yours?” he said. “Since I’m here I might as well give you the benefit of my experience.”
    “
That
’s why you’re here?”
    “I’m here because I’m here. What other explanation could satisfy an unbeliever such as you?”
    —
    The men sit in silence for half an hour, neither looking at the other. Finally, Strulovitch does the unhostly thing and rubs his eyes.
    “You can choose any bedroom you fancy,” he says. “But the best are at the back of the house looking out over the Edge. If you stay up late or wake early you might see one of the wizards come tobogganing down.”
    “Ah, so it’s a magic place,” Shylock says, sniffing paganism.
    Strulovitch remembers the sketch in which the Italian comedian Dario Fo attempts to eat himself. Shylock looks as though he means to eat Alderley Edge.
    Strulovitch laughs with deep appreciation. Nothing beats my people’s disdain for folklore.
    He regrets he doesn’t have more Jewish friends with whom he can exchange black thoughts and scoff at nature.
    This pang of cultural loneliness might explain why he suddenly asks what book Shylock was reading to his wife earlier in the day. One last convivial conversation about literature before sleep.
    “You should be able to guess,” Shylock says.
    “It looked well worn. If it’s the Bible, I’d be honoured if you’d read to her from one of mine. I have a Geneva Bible that’s beautiful to hold and opens easily.”
    “Thank you. But we are giving the Bible a rest. We fear we have exhausted Jacob and his sheep. And besides, these days Leah prefers a novel. Last week we finished
Crime and Punishment
for the second time. I’ve promised her
Karamazov
. But for the moment she is disposed to laugh, and takes heart from hearing me read to her from
Portnoy’s Complaint
. Some of the chapters are embarrassing but I feel it would be wrong to leave them