96
JANE MAYHALL
Jane Mayhall
THE ENEMY
When I first met him, he looked like a handsome, red–
haired snake. But no, I will go back....
When I read his first published story, which had already cre–
ated a sensation, I was struck by nothing but its cruelty. But at the
time, I felt obliged to keep my trap shut. "Just think of it, how
daring!" somebody said. Or words to that effect. We were at a
New York party. "A Jew, writing antisemitic literature." A girl across
the room gave an unexplained giggle. My stomach turned. It was
1947. Just the right year, just the right timing. And by god, I
thought, I'll bet he knows this. I'd never met the young man who
had been in the war, I'd no doubt we shared the same dislike for
sanctioned killing, and he was making himself famous by hitting the
right perversity, which everyone with any ambitions or pretentions
to literary fame would catch on to in a moment.
It
was the next
thing to wearing a swastika, with the millions of Jews scarcely
buried. How smart, how chic. My stomach turned. But silently, I
kept silent. Or, rather, to whom could I speak? Intuitions are the
sponge-boats of the unlucky. I was also a writer and - of no
im–
portance, unless you think it - a female, and about the same age
as my enemy, the Young Famous. He was already famous, and
I could sense his being buoyed up by the tides of political disen–
chantment, and the backwaters of meanness, and (this
is
harder
to say) the natural reaction to the sufferings of the many martyrs.
Because, oh clever enemy, he had pounced on the little fact
that not all martyrs are especially saints. He had tracked down the
nastiest nifty. So, a man
is
eligible for dying
in
.a gas chamber? Well,
look, he's not so great. He cheats his partner, he scratches
his
tail,
he urinates in the bathroom. Methodically the young Author brought
out the hilarious facts. And shamelessly, he "uncovered mounds of
maggots." Brave? No, shameless. But the world wanted to be shame–
less. Who was their best example? Well, that man of simple tastes.
