The Book of Stone. Jonathan Papernick
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to know what Zohar had to say. Who was his father after all, and what did he expect of Stone? His father’s legacy would become his own, in the same manner the Judge had been obliged to carry his own father’s bad name around with him like a yellow star pinned to his chest. Stone knew whatever Zohar was up to concerned his own future and that his prospects depended on the past and how it was framed. This was an opportunity to gain perspective, to understand how the critics and haters saw Walter Stone. He needed to know what Zohar was up to if he was going to fight back and defend his father’s name, his own life. Stone said a curt good morning and turned onto Myrtle Avenue. Zohar, at his heels, burned-coffee breath in his face, said, “Going somewhere, Matthew?”
“You certainly are observant.”
Zohar stepped in front of Stone and blocked his way with his body, arms crossed. “Maybe you can tell me why Zalman Seligman’s man, Moshe Reisen, has called on you three mornings in a row.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“But you do know Zalman Seligman.”
Stone continued to walk. Let Zohar beg.
“I know you know Zalman Seligman. You’re not going to deny that, are you?”
“If you know the answer, why are you asking me?”
“Do you know who Zalman Seligman really is? He is not some kindly old rabbi living out his golden years in Miami Beach. He is a violent criminal, hiding behind his faith, who has been arrested more than a dozen times in the past twenty years in relation to violent incidents throughout the West Bank.”
Stone couldn’t help but roll his eyes at Zohar’s intensity.
“Maybe this laundry list will put things in perspective for you. Seligman is alleged to have assaulted a Palestinian mother of two while her children watched; he has been arrested for overturning shopkeepers’ carts in the Hebron casbah; he has been cited for firing his pistol in front of a mosque on numerous occasions; he has been fined for trespassing, harassment, arson, vandalism of property. He was arrested for shooting a Palestinian man’s donkey, for which he spent fifteen days in prison. The list goes on and on: harassment, intimidation, violence . . . Rabbi Seligman will stop at nothing to advance the cause of a Greater Israel.”
“That’s quite a resumé,” Stone said, “but it means nothing to me. Sounds like you know Zalman Seligman a lot better than I do.”
“Does the name Avraham Grunhut mean anything to you? Another rabbi—also connected to your father and the Eretz Fund, the foundation Seligman and your father co-founded. He was a controversial religious leader until he was assassinated.”
“Assassinated?” Stone said, amused at how a subtle shift in language could so alter meaning. “That’s sort of gilding the lily, isn’t it? I’d say he was murdered. He wasn’t exactly a head of state or Nobel laureate.”
“He was close friends with your father.”
“What exactly are you suggesting?”
The words his father had circled in Rabbi Grunhut’s book certainly gave credence to whatever Zohar was implying. But there was a disconnect, a misreading of intention. The Judge and Grunhut had been friends and partners, but that had all ended when the rabbi was killed.
Stone picked up his pace, his languid blood circulating throughout his body and awakening some desire deep within him to fight, to punch back hard.
“Matthew, just hear me out.”
“I’m not my father’s keeper, and you’re nothing but a parasite. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep? You smell like shit.”
Zohar laughed. “So Grunhut was ‘murdered’ by whom? The common belief is that he was killed by a Palestinian terrorist—a bullet in the back of the head. Yes, they arrested a Palestinian, put him on trial, and convicted him, but he wasn’t the killer; he wasn’t even involved. He had gotten himself in trouble elsewhere, so the killing was pinned to him to avoid reprisals and to close the book.”
“You sound like a crazed conspiracy theorist.”
A bus roared past, blowing a huge cloud of exhaust in their faces.
“You know, Matthew, I hated my old man,” Zohar said. “He used to hit me with a belt when I was a kid. If I struck out in baseball, if I came in second, if I got a B in school, out came the belt. Strict immigrant father trying to make it in America through his son. Nothing was ever good enough for him. I always let him down. I prayed for him to die, prayed for it as I lay in bed at night. What did I know? Then one day he was gone—but I’m never rid of him. He’s always there, an indelible print I can never wash off.”
“Are you trying to suggest I hated my father? Are you trying to make some sort of false connection with me, one disgruntled son to another? I’m sorry you hated your father, and I’m sorry for you that you can’t get over him, but that’s not me. You’ve got it all wrong. You don’t know me, and you don’t know my father.”
Zohar pressed on, undeterred. “I know about him. I know his life, the milestones, the ins and outs, the facts of his life, his accomplishments and failures. I know he was a tenacious bulldog. At the age of twenty-two, he prosecuted organized crime figures as the state’s youngest assistant district attorney—notably street gangs in Hell’s Kitchen. He doggedly nailed down prosecutions after the theft of priceless jewels from the Museum of Natural History. Wouldn’t Dr. Freud have a field day with that knowledge?”
In the sky above the park, to their left, a red kite flew against the pure blue sky, flashing back and forth like a streak of blood.
“I know your father received a Bronze Medal for Meritorious Service after serving as a judge advocate general in the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division in Vietnam from 1966 to 1968. By all accounts, he sounds like a good man. Doesn’t he?”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Stone said. “Are you going to tell me about his kindergarten crayon drawings next? The past is past.”
“Matthew, you are smart enough to know the past is never past, especially when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians. I want you to help me know him, the flesh-and-blood man he really was. I want you to help me complete the picture before something terrible happens. I know Walter Joseph Stone, but I know him academically, the way you know Whitman—intimate yet distant.”
“Whitman?” Stone stammered. Now Zohar had hit the mark, finding that tender spot behind Stone’s heart that made it hard to breathe, his failure writ large for everyone to see. He’d heard enough from Zohar.
“I know you were halfway through your graduate thesis on the universal spiritualism of Walt Whitman’s work before you took a leave of absence from your studies to tend to your father. I know it was to be called ‘Perennial with the Earth’ and that you’ll never go back and finish it, will you? I know you took a leave of absence as an undergraduate five years earlier after suffering a psychotic break in which you spent a month in a mental health facility.”
“Enough,” Stone said, covering his ears. “That’s enough.”
But Zohar continued, keeping pace with Stone. “I know of your predilection for self-mutilation, burning in particular. I know your father sent you to Israel when you came out of the psych ward, and I know you spent time with Zalman Seligman at Giv’at Barzel. But most importantly, I know all about your relationship with a Palestinian girl named Fairuza Freij and I know what happened to her after you left.”
This was too much for Stone to handle, her name in his ears after all this time. A hot knife of shame plunged into his lungs. Gasping for air, he ran down Myrtle Avenue, past the toppled trash bins, past the black albino rapping on the corner, past the fried-chicken joint, and, howling some barely articulated curse, he crossed busy Flatbush Avenue against the light, not caring if he was struck down by a speeding car.