Free The Prince of West End Avenue by Alan Isler

Middle European seder. Certainly it is impossible to hold a conversation there and expect not to be seen. This Lipschitz must have known.
    "As for me, I have not yet made up my mind," I said, pulling away from his slimy grasp, anxious to be gone. "You will kindly remember, I agreed to play in Shakespeare's Hamlet, not in Tosca Dawidowicz's. Not even in yours. There are questions of literary integrity here that I, for one, take very seriously. As for the Red Dwarf, he must speak for himself."
    As it happened, the Red Dwarf was hurrying past at that moment. Friday is boiled chicken night, and he dearly loves a drumstick. He eyed us with grave suspicion.
    Lipschitz waved his hand airily, dismissing him. "Poliakov is no loss."

    The Red Dwarf grinned nastily. "Cossack!" he hissed at me, and hurried on, food for thought being no substitute for the real thing.
    Lipschitz drew me aside. "Listen, a little goodwill on your side, a little on mine, we can iron out our differences. What's so important it should come before the production? Cooperation is what I'm talking about; personalities, we don't need. If this one plows the field and that one makes the dinner, another keeps the accounts and still another stands with his rifle in the watchtower, each is working for the good of all. No big, no small. Any other way, the Arabs will be raping our women and cutting off our balls."
    "On this particular kibbutz," I told him, "equality is achieved in other ways."
    "All right," he said, "let's talk candidly." Lipschitz's lizard head darted this way and that. His tongue flicked his lips. "What I was thinking was this: a man like you, Korner, is valuable to the production. Such a man should be second only to me myself in authority. Here's what I'm offering: return to rehearsals, and you're my understudy. If anything, God forbid, happens to me, you're Hamlet! This I shall announce to the entire company."
    He was trying to bribe me! My cheeks burned with shame.
    "Wait," he went on. "That's not all. Come back to us and I'll make you my codirector. This, too, I shall announce. Think about it, don't answer right away. God forbid anything happens to me, you sit in the director's chair, no questions asked." He paused; his tongue flicked his lips. "That's my best ofTer."
    One does not have to do with such a man. I turned on my heel and walked away. Still, I can only admire his cunning: we had been seen in private conversation by many of the residents on their way to dinner. The possible political implications of this meeting would set beaks atwitter all around the Emma Lazarus, the factions shifting and realigning: "Just a parley

    before the first salvo." "Obviously the putsch has collapsed." "It's Chamberlain at Munich all over again." "Rapprochement." "War by other means." "Zionist encirclement and annexation." In this war of nerves, Lipschitz had made an impressive first move.
    Later Hamburger and the Red Dwarf came to my room. The Red Dwarf rudely pushed past me and climbed into the easy chair, almost disappearing in its embrace. For Hamburger he left the straight-back chair at my desk. They looked at me silently for a moment. I closed the door.
    The Red Dwarf's gold tooth glinted. "So, comrade, you have chosen a life for the czar?"
    Naturally I said nothing. To such sarcasm there is nothing to say. But since, standing there, I felt a little like the accused before his judges, I went and sat on the bed.
    "What did Lipschitz want?" asked Hamburger.
    "Perhaps you should ask," said the Red Dwarf, "what did Korner want?"
    "For God's sake, Poliakov," said Hamburger. "Korner is no traitor. What nonsense is this? Apologize to him, or I quit this whole business."
    "No offense, comrade," said the Red Dwarf smoothly.
    I told them what Lipschitz had said.
    "So Lipschitz knows," said Hamburger woefully.
    "This is what we get for pussyfooting around," the Red Dwarf snarled. "If you'd listened to me, Lipschitz and his lackeys would be already groveling at our