Killing the Second Dog
Published in Issue #12 Translated from Polish by Tomasz Mirkowicz(Excerpt from a Novel)
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Robert left, taking the dog with him. He was spending the night at the bouncer’s apartment so I would have our room to myself. I sat on the balcony, reading Chekhov. I read him all the time, lugging the heavy volumes wherever I went; they were a present from Robert, who also gave me a lecture on Chekhov’s greatness. He was right. There are many great writers, but Chekhov is more than that: he’s a friend. It always surprises me how cruel he can be at times. I think he was unaware of his own cruelty; it wasn’t something he aimed for, which is why he seems so vicious at times. “His imagination was completely lacking anger,” Robert said. He had his own ideas of how to stage Chekhov, and he used to talk about them often and at length. The last time he enlarged on his theories was in the Jaffa jail—his audience was a beggar who used to beat his children with an iron rod. I think the beggar understood the lecture; he broke into tears when Robert recited parts of The Cherry Orchard. That happens, too.
Robert was a fanatic when it came to theater. In the slammer he always performed for other inmates. He had fixed rates for his artistic services: one cigarette for the Macbeth monologue, which begins, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,” if delivered in Polish, two if in English. The balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet belonged to the cheaper classical repertoire: one smoke for the two of us, since I played Juliet. These were the more expensive pieces. The modern stuff I did alone and for much lower rates. Robert never attempted anything contemporary; he was a priest of High Art. I remember how once he and a smuggler, who in his youth had been a member of an amateur theater company in Cairo, came to blows while playing Faust together; or rather how Robert started beating the other guy for overacting his role and being too theatrical. When we finally managed to pull them apart, Robert continued to upbraid him, screaming that while on stage an actor should tie the wings of his soul. I was much more modest than Robert; I usually acted out scenes from movies. My greatest success was impersonating Goofy. Naturally, I had more cigarettes than Robert, so he would smoke mine and bitch about the degeneration of public taste and the stupidity of films.
Robert had come to Israel from Poland. His big wish was to create Art. He found employment in a...
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