Operation Shylock: A Confession by Philip Roth

happens to be me, you know.” I was pointing to the photograph.
    “No,” he quietly replied. “It’s me. Before my cancer.”
    “Tell me, did you think this all out beforehand or are you making the story up as you go along?”
    “I’m terminally ill,” he replied, and so confusing was that remark that when he reached across for the passport, the strongest and best evidence I had of the fraud that he was perpetrating, I stupidly handed it back to him instead of keeping it and causing a fracas then and there. “Look,” he said, leaning intensely across the table in a way I recognized as an imitation of my own conversational style, “about the two of us and our connection is there really any more to say? Maybe the trouble is that you haven’t read enough Jung. Maybe it comes down to nothing more than that. You’re a Freudian, I’m a Jungian. Read Jung. He’ll help you. I began to study him when I first had to deal with you. He explained for me parallelisms that are unexplainable. You have the Freudian belief in the sovereign power of causality. Causeless events don’t exist in your universe. To you things that aren’t thinkable in intellectual terms aren’t worth thinking about. A lot of smart Jews are like that. Things that aren’t thinkable in intellectual terms don’t even exist. How can I exist, a duplicate of you? How can you exist, a duplicate of me? You and I defy causal explanation. Well, read Jung on ‘synchronicity.’ There are meaningful arrangements that defy causal explanation and they are happening
all the time
. We are a case of synchronicity, synchronistic phenomena. Read a little Jung, Philip, if only for your peace of mind. ‘The uncontrollability of real things’—Carl Jung knows all about it. Read
The Secret of the Golden Flower
. It’ll open your eyes to a whole other world. You look stupefied—without a causal explanation you are lost. How on this planet can there be two men of the same age who happen not only to look alike but to bear the same name? All right, you
need
causality? I’ll
give
you causality. Forget about just you and me—there would have been another
fifty
little Jewish boys of our age growing up to look like us if it hadn’t been for certain tragicevents that occurred in Europe between 1939 and 1945. And is it impossible that half a dozen of them might not have been Roths? Is our family name that rare? Is it impossible that a couple of those little Roths might not have been called after a grandfather Fayvel, like you, Philip, and like me? You, from your career perspective, may think it’s horrible that there are two of us and that you are not unique. From my Jewish perspective, I have to say I think it’s horrible that
only
two are left.”
    “No, no, not horrible—
actionable
. It’s actionable that of the two of us left, one of us goes around impersonating the other. Had there been seven thousand of us left in the world, only one of us, you see, would have written my books.”
    “Philip, nobody could treasure your books more than I do. But we are at a point in Jewish history when maybe there is more for us to be talking about, especially together here at last in Jerusalem, than your books. Okay, I have allowed people to confuse me with you. But, tell me, please, how else could I have got to Lech Walesa?”
    “You can’t seriously be asking me that question.”
    “I can and I am, and with good reason. By seeing Lech Walesa, by having with him the fruitful talk we had, what harm did I do you? What harm did I do anyone? The harm will come only if, because of your books and for no other reason, you should want to be so legalistic as to go ahead and try to undo everything I achieved in Gdansk. Yes, the law
is
on your side. Who says no? I wouldn’t have undertaken an operation on this scale without first knowing in every last detail the law that I am up against. In the case of
Onassis v. Christian Dior–New York, Inc
., where a professional model, a