It always starts in the evenings. He comes back from what he’s been doing all day, sits down at his computer and starts in on me. There was a time when all he felt for me was a little malice and a sort of distant curiosity. But then we had the whole thing with the names, and everything was downhill from there. Now, you tell me if it doesn’t show malice when he picks a name for me like Gimpel Zaftig. Come on! Gimpel Zaftig? Before he even knew me, he was already making me the butt of bad jokes. I mean, the name itself was already a bad joke, and you tell me there weren’t going to be a whole lot more where that came from?
So right away I knew he was out to get me. Maybe he thought that making me a buffoon would make his job easier. You know, so that he wouldn’t have to work so hard to make an ordinary person seem interesting, wouldn’t have to probe so deeply into motives and things. Maybe it was just plain laziness. Well, he wasn’t going to be lazy at my expense, not if I could help it! And besides, it wasn’t just laziness; he couldn’t fool me. It was a nasty little streak there that made him call me Gimpel Zaftig. I could sense it right through his fingertips. After a whole day of grappling with all kinds of problems and people, now was his chance to pick on someone who couldn’t fight back.
Well, he made one little mistake, because I can be just as mean and nasty. The day after he called me Gimpel Zaftig, I started my revolution. Whenever he put me into different scenes, I ignored the situation and made some remark about him instead. And I called him Schreiber, even though I know his real name and all the other names he uses.
I
SCHREIBER’S STRUGGLE 2
At first, he was shocked that I had the audacity to speak out of turn. I don’t
think he realized right away that I was talking about him, but it didn’t take
long for him to catch on when I mentioned some private things I know about
him. That really shook him up. He’d never expected me to stand up and assert
myself, and all of sudden, there I was, speaking my own mind and making
remarks about Schreiber’s personality, literary abilities and private life.
Schreiber decided to let things go on for a little while just to make sure he
wasn’t making a mistake. Well, I didn’t want to leave any doubt in his mind
so I dropped a few more remarks. And I kept calling him Schreiber.
Like a rumbling volcano, I could sense the realization settling into his
mind and a molten anger collecting near the surface, but his curiosity got the
better of him; the artist in him was intrigued. So! Gimpel Zaftig was going to
be quite an interesting character after all, much more interesting than he had
anticipated. Well, that was a good thing, wasn’t it? It would make the story
much more real and compelling, wouldn’t it? The story would, of course, have
to be changed to accommodate this unexpectedly difficult Gimpel Zaftig, but
it was workable. At least, that was what he thought.
And he might have been right had he let things ride until the next day. You
know, let things cool off for a night before charging straight into something he
hadn’t figured out yet. He actually did think about taking a break for the night,
but he didn’t have the patience to wait. Right away, he threw me into a
situation that put me to the test, and you know I wasn’t going to take it lying
down.
His fingers started pounding on his keyboard, and suddenly, I found
myself walking along Henry Street on the Lower East Side on a sweltering
summer day. The air hung over me like a moist blanket smelling of raw
garbage and horse droppings. Judging by the few backfiring cars that chugged
by every once in a while with horns blaring, I figured the year to be ‘22 or ‘23.
Suddenly, I had a whole life story, a wife and family in Warsaw and a
room in a loft on Pitt Street, right under the Williamsburg Bridge. And I was
SCHREIBER’S STRUGGLE 3
looking for a job, clutching an ad from the Daily Forward in my hand. The place I wanted was a coal yard off Allen Street, and it wasn’t hard to find.
Half a block away, I could hear the vulgar shouts of the men shoveling coal into the coal wagons, the foreman louder and more vulgar than the whole lot of them. I waited at the gate until the foreman walked off by himself to have a beer and a smoke, and then I approached him.
“Whaddya wan’, fella?” he said in greeting.
“I’m looking for a job,” I said.
“Whas yer name?”
Schreiber wasn’t wasting time. Straight to the point. I clamped my lips shut.
“Whas yer name, fella?” the foreman repeated and spat on the ground.
“I need a job,” I said. “I’m a good worker. I can shovel coal just like any of them over there. You’ll see, I’m a good worker.”
“Whassa madder, fella? Aintcha got no name? Eh? On the lam from the cops maybe?”
I really wanted that job, because I needed the money. I knew what was waiting for me back on Pitt Street. Nothing. If I was going to get anything to eat that day, I needed the job. But no way was I going to tell this guy that my name was Gimpel Zaftig.
“My name is Schreiber,” I said.
I suppose in a way it was true, but Schreiber didn’t like it. I could feel him getting angrier and more frustrated by the minute. Sure, he could have forced the words into my mouth, but Schreiber is too much of an artist to do something like that. He’d never force words into the mouth of one of his characters, and I knew that perfectly well. If I didn’t want to say my name was Gimpel Zaftig I wasn’t going to say it, and there was nothing he could do about it.
So I guess I was feeling really proud of myself when the left side of my head suddenly exploded in a flood of pain. When my vision cleared, I saw the
SCHREIBER’S STRUGGLE 4
smirking face of the foreman coolly blowing on the palm of his hand, the one that had just struck me across the face.
“Don’ lie to me, greenhorn,” he sneered at me. “Yer name’s Schreiber like mine’s Woodrow Wilson. Whas yer name? Whyn’t ya wanna tell me yer name, huh? And how come ya talk such good English, greenhorn, huh?”
The anger really boiled up in me, but I wasn’t angry with the foreman. The guy didn’t even exist. No, I was mad at Schreiber. The bully! Just because he couldn’t get me to say what he wanted me to say he had to turn to violence? Well, that was the last straw. He could beat me to a pulp, but I wasn’t going to cooperate. There wasn’t going to be any story with me in it. I was going to destroy every scene, every conversation.
Of course, he could delete all the nasty things I would say, but if he was going to keep his self-respect as an author, he was going to have to let me talk for myself and not speak through my mouth. And there was no way I was going to say what he wanted me to say.
“You know why I don’t want to tell you my name?” I screamed at the foreman. “You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like it, that’s why.”
“Crazy greenhorn, whaddya do till now? Never told nobody yer name?”
“I never had to before today.”
The foreman looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Ya loss yer mind, greenhorn? You married?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Don’ yer wife know yer name?”
“No.”
“So wha name’s yer wife know ya by?”
It was plain to see Schreiber was maneuvering me into a spot where I’d have to say that hateful name, but no sirree! This was a matter of pride now, and neither of us was going to back down.
SCHREIBER’S STRUGGLE 5
“Look, why don’t you ask Schreiber all your questions, Mr. Imaginary Foreman?” I snapped.
“Wha! Whas with this imaginary foreman? And who’s this Schreiber?”
“You mean you don’t know Schreiber?”
The foreman stared at me kind of strangely. Then I realized he really didn’t recognize the name Schreiber because that wasn’t his real name, just the name I’d given him. So I told him Schreiber’s real name. Still no understanding. I mentioned each of Schreiber’s pen names. Nothing.
“Ya really are a crazy greenhorn, ain’t ya?” he finally said. “Schreiber, huh? Imaginary foreman, huh?”
“So you don’t know Schreiber,” I burst out. “And you know why? Because you’re nothing but a two-dimensional minor character, that’s why. You’re nothing. A dummy! A puppet! Schreiber can’t put words into my mouth, but he can put anything he wants into your mouth. Well, let me tell you something about Schreiber. He’s also a nothing. A talented writer? Hah! He’s nothing but a hack, that’s what he is. He doesn’t know how to deal with real characters, only with stuffed doll like you!”
The foreman reached out his burly arm, grabbed me by the throat and lifted me off the ground.
“Who’re ya callin’ a stuffed idiot?” he screamed in my face, spraying me with his beery spittle.
“Put me down, Schreiber,” I shouted. “Isn’t there anything else you can do besides resort to violence? Where’s your self-respect? A character doesn’t do what you want so you beat him up, right? You ignorant bully! You don’t like the name Schreiber? Well, I don’t like that imbecilic name you made up for me and the stupid role you’re shoving me into. Where’s your imagination? Where’s your creativity? How about showing some talent, Schreiber? Huh? What do you say, Schreiber? Schreiber. Schreiber. Schreiber. Schreiber!”
The foreman slowly lowered me to the ground. He spat at my feet and walked away.
SCHREIBER’S STRUGGLE 6
I went back to Pitt Street, flopped onto my cot and went to sleep hungry. But I made up my mind that the next day, when I went looking for work, I was going to use Schreiber as my name, and if Schreiber didn’t like it he could just let me starve to death. That wouldn’t do his story much good, would it? He might be mean and stubborn, but he’d met his match in me.
After all, wasn’t he me and me him, sort of? How could he expect to create a real character if that character didn’t exist at least to some extent in him? Wasn’t every character, every real one, that is, another little part of the writer? How is a writer supposed to create a good character who says wise and moral things if there isn’t a wise and moral side to the writer? And how is he supposed to create a character who speaks evil from the heart if a little evil doesn’t lurk in the writer’s own heart as well? Schreiber had made a mistake with me, hadn’t thought me out carefully, and there he was, confronted with a mirror image of himself. And we were at war.
For the next few nights, it was like a chess match between Schreiber and me. Everyone I met up with kept asking me my name, and when I said it was Schreiber, they didn’t accept it and just kept probing and probing. It was exhausting, but I just wouldn’t give in.
A few times, he tried to replace me as the main character. That suited me fine, but it didn’t suit Schreiber. He wasn’t about to be beaten by one of his own characters. So I was thrust back into my role as the main character, and the struggle continued.
You realize, of course, that all he had to do was change my name to something respectable, but Schreiber is too stubborn. Once he even had the police arrest me and take my papers from my pocket by force and read that hateful name to my face. But I just denied it and told them that it wasn’t my name, just something Schreiber had made up and stuck into my pocket. So they wanted me to tell them my real name. I told them my name was Schreiber, and they wanted to know if I was related to the Schreiber who had put the papers in my pocket. I said we were sort of related but that we didn’t
SCHREIBER’S STRUGGLE 7
get along very well and that I wasn’t going to say another word about the whole thing, no matter how many questions they asked me, no matter what they did to me.
That’s when I got my idea about how I was going to win against Schreiber. I would just refuse to talk altogether. Nothing. Not a word. If that created too many difficulties, that was just too bad. It was Schreiber’s problem, not mine, wasn’t it? Well, my plan worked. Schreiber was stuck with a main character who refused to talk, and the story ground to a halt.
For two or three nights, everything was really peaceful. Schreiber left me alone, although I could feel malevolent vibes right into my room on Pitt Street. But I knew it wasn’t over. Schreiber had something up his sleeve, and I wondered what it was.
Over the next few weeks, the pressure built up again in scene after scene. I was bombarded from all sides by inquiries about my name and all sorts of questions and demands, but I steadfastly refused to speak.
The tension was building up to an unbearable point. I lost weight and my face became haggard. Everyone—my friends, my family, the neighbors, the authorities, everyone—tried to discover the secret of my silence, but I stood my ground like a rock. Schreiber was throwing his whole arsenal at me, and I was surviving. But something kept gnawing at the back of my brain, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on for a long time.
And then one day I realized what had been bothering me. The bad vibes from Schreiber had disappeared. I almost felt as if he was enjoying our sparring match, that he was taking it with a very sportsmanlike attitude, without anger or frustration. And that just wasn’t like Schreiber, not the Schreiber I knew. Then the full force of his plan struck me like a bolt of lightning. Oh, the sheer cunning of it! And I had almost fallen for it! But there was still time. Now that I knew what he was up to, I could come up with a counterplan.
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You see, he had replotted his story, and he had made my stubborn silence the central theme. All the pressure situations I was being put into and the harried way I was reacting were carrying the story along like a tidal wave. He had saddled me with a foolish name, and in turn, he was rewarded with a fascinating, enigmatic character who was physically able to speak but absolutely refused to do so through one powerful scene after the other, and no one knew the reason. That is, no one except for Schreiber, and he wasn’t telling anyone. I had to admit with grudging respect that his plan was fiendishly clever, especially how he had kept me from finding out.
We’re probably coming to the climax of the story any day now, and if he had been able to keep me in the dark for just a little while longer, he would have gotten away with it and probably come out with the best story he’s ever written. But in the nick of time, I figured it out. Now I can prepare for the great climax.
I’ve considered a number of options and decided on a course of action. In the next scene, I’m going to resume talking as if nothing ever happened; I’m going to play it perfectly normal, and I’ll continue using Schreiber as my name. The whole buildup about this enigmatic silent character with the mysterious deep dark secret is just going to crumble and collapse in an ignominious shambles, and Schreiber will be back to square one.
I know it’s not going to be easy. Schreiber is an extremely crafty fellow, and I don’t expect him to accept defeat very graciously. He is going to maneuver and twist that scene every which way until he gets me to do what he wants, but he won’t succeed.
You see, I have the advantage this time, because I know what he’s up to and he still thinks he has me fooled. This is going to be a real showdown, and I’m ready for it. Unfortunately, I also know that even if I win this particular battle that’s not going to be the end of it. He’s just going to start all over again, and the struggle will continue. But this much is for sure, he won’t catch me off guard again. You’ll see.