Free Private Novelist by Nell Zink Page A

Daniel Deronda.” Obviously, these critics are boys. I have a friend who’s every bit as nice as Daniel. Plus, he’s never been married, has a master’s degree, a good job, and wants kids. He lives in Washington, D.C., and you can reach him at [address redacted, even though it’s all still true].
    Daniel lived with his mother, a narcissistic and sexy actress, until he was two years old. She was a Sephardic aristocrat, something that turns up again and again in English literature. The most fabulous and intellectual Jews in European myth are the ones who escaped from Spain, late and in small numbers, bringing with them the mysterious spiritual culture of the ancient world—orange blossoms, fiery chariots, numerology, the Alhambra, etc. The paler native Jews, shrill and irritating, insist on trying to pass for white, and constant vigilance is required to keep them out of our swimming pools. Daniel attended Eton, then went off to college, but it wasn’t until he was twenty-two that it occurred to him that there was something just a little tiny bit unusual about his penis. Hisstrange penis then leads him on a voyage of discovery that ends in cabalistic studies, intimate involvement with a beautiful Jewish singer, estrangement from his adoptive family, and ultimately the realization that he was born a Jew.
    Actually, of course, George Eliot doesn’t mention Daniel’s penis. I think of it only because I am not Jewish, and if I were to have a son, he would not be Jewish, so I see no particular reason for circumcision unless he asks for it by name, but Zohar thinks an uncircumcised Israeli child would be beaten to death in the first year of kindergarten. There is nothing I can say to refute him—I don’t really know how much time and energy boys devote to examining each other in the bathroom and punishing deviants—except to present to him the shining example of Daniel, whose unusual penis, far from handicapping him socially, helped make him the most popular boy in the world and the third most charming character in English literature.
    At the end of Daniel Deronda, the newly married Daniel heads “East” on a journey expected to take several years, and drops out of the purview of George Eliot. However, we find him again at the First Zionist Congress, giving the keynote address to the Spirituality Special Interest Group and meekly consenting to model for a bust of Aaron. Later that night, he stands with his back to the buffet, scanning the crowd for his wife so he can tell her he’s stepping outside for a cigar.
    At last he sees her—Herzl’s wife has her cornered, trying to talk her out of ten acres near Jaffa that Herzl wants for an experimental vineyard. “I’m keeping it in olives and lemons,” he hears his wife say. “The Lord will save the Jewish people by bringing them to a land where a kosher diet can be fresh, nutritious, and high in fiber. Does Daniel look to you like I feed him nothing but cream sauce, port wine, and strawberry jam?”
    â€œHe doesn’t look a day over thirty-five,” Mrs. Herzl is forced to admit. “Maybe Theodor should talk to you, he has some digestive problems . . .”
    Daniel blushes.
    â€œSeals don’t get HIV,” Mary said to me as we rode home on the bus.
    â€œAre you a seal? Be serious.”
    â€œI’m not exactly not a seal,” she said. “I mean, ask me to hold my breath sometime. I’m not like most things, which are what they seem to be, and if you put them under a microscope, you see the same thing, only smaller. I’m different. I think it’s like in Platonism where you have substances and accidents, and my substance is to be a seal. I think. My parents were seals. If I look like myself, it’s by accident. When I’m a seal, I’m a hundred percent seal, but when I’m human it’s not quite a hundred percent.” I begged her to explain and