See Under by David Grossman (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

tummy protruding in front, and his little posterior behind; his face, however, hardened with the bite of anxiety and confusion, and a wild and to him unintelligible desire. Kazik: “Am I—who am I—who—am—I?”

Also see under: CHOICE; GINZBURG, ILYA

ZEIDMAN, MALKIEL

Biographer. One of the ARTISTS [q.v.] Otto collected from the Warsaw Ghetto in December 1939 [see under: HEART, REVIVAL OF THE CHILDREN OF THE].

A scholar who won a certain reputation with the first two volumes of his biography of Alexander the Great. An elderly, sensitive-looking man, flapping around in a pair of old shoes given to him by Otto, he carried a worn leather briefcase that smelled like rotten fruit containing his current opus: The Main Circumstances and Events Leading to the Suicide of Laizer Mellinsky, Watchmaker of Kremlitska Street, a work which, according to Wasserman, “had been destroying him for nine years, his cynosure and his doom.” Wasserman tells of an awkward meeting between Zeidman, Fried, and Paula: Once, at three in the morning, the biographer knocked on the door of the couple’s pavilion to protest, with all his sensitive, infantile self-assertiveness, what he had overheard the doctor telling Otto that morning, in front of the parrot cage. Malkiel Zeidman had been working nearby when he distinctly heard Fried shout that they couldn’t go on running the zoo this way anymore, because Otto was spending all his time in the Jewish ghetto and coming back with these freaks, these lunatics, these primitive barbarians who never lifted a finger to help Fried with the work. Fried: “Nu, well, that’s how it is with lunatics, they’re so wrapped up in themselves, so incredibly egotistical, they barely even notice each other! All they care about is their ‘art,’ as Otto calls it, ha! And of course, they do nothing to earn the food Otto gives them here, though admittedly they don’t eat much, in fact, hardly anything: Hannah Zcitrin eats only fruit because the sight of meat disgusts her, and Marcus always forgets to eat, and that poor fellow Ginzburg, he doesn’t have any teeth left after his interrogation by the Gestapo, but Munin, the maniac, the disgusting barbarian, he gobbles down enough food for all of them put together! Because he needs energy, that’s what he always says, the pervert; and the little one, the one who’s always frightened, Zeidman, well, he eats nothing but the animal feed in the cage he’s in charge of on any particular day, like wheatberries. No, they don’t eat much food, it’s true, but they don’t help us either, and the way they behave, bozhe moi! Like animals! Like animals! Animals behave better!” So the little biographer came around to protest Fried’s use of the term “primitive barbarians.” He woke the couple up from a sound sleep, and inflicted Fried (who was boiling mad) and Paula (who was dumbfounded) with an exhausting account of his past.

Some time ago, he said, he had decided that his duty both as a biographer and as a man lay in writing the definitive biography of an ordinaryhuman being, one who had never made a name for himself in any public realm or achieved fame. From the moment the idea took root in his mind, he could not stop thinking about it: he was convinced that such a biography would be at least as valuable as the biography of Alexander the Great, which had won him a certain reputation among historians and knowledgeable people. Zeidman: “Ah, two large volumes I wrote about the Macedonian, Pani Fried, and I must say I found him exceedingly interesting at first! Absolutely fascinating! But I finished the second volume in a condition of ennui. You see, this same Alexander who plucked up hills and transplanted nations and sent his armies over half the globe had become in my eyes something of a natural force, like a storm or an earthquake, and he wearied me! Yes, sometimes, while writing about—Alexander—I would find myself thinking, What would he have done to me and my kind if he had encountered us on his way? … You understand? I should not have entertained such thoughts … I, a man of science, a teacher at the university, but with all that was happening in the world, beyond the ivory tower, that is, I could not shut my eyes. Yes, yes, this Alexander began to frighten me so much that I could not sit down to write the third volume! And to myself I said that out of the life of the Macedonian, a man such as I could never find guidance … perhaps one man in a generation, a Hitler type, for instance, could! Of course he could! Tfu! Pardon. But I wanted to write for little people like myself and you, for frightened people like us, I wanted to write. You understand, Pani Fried [Editorial comment: Zeidman, like several other zoo artists, thinks Fried is a Polish Catholic], it takes tremendous, even tragic efforts to write the faithful biography of another human being. It is nearly impossible, in fact, ah yes, and the truth is, we know no one. We are utter strangers to each other [see under: STRANGENESS]. Every man is a kingdom, a castle with his own God, his own Satan, and a thousand secrets to be discovered over time. We are each endemic, to borrow a term from the learned Pan Fried’s field of work, as if in each of us existed a single animal, and the resemblances between us are only illusion, wishful thinking, the fruit of despair and loneliness … And though the Macedonian is interesting enough, Laizer Mellinsky the watchmaker is also wonderful! Believe me! (Fried leafed through the torn and dusty pages of Zeidman’s research, written in a crabbed and clumsy hand, and read the table of contents in amazement:”The Struggle with Brother Zvi-Hirsch overthe Clock, Bequeathed by His Father of Blessed Memory”; “Laizer’s Feelings of Nostalgia for the Wallpaper in the Bedroom of His Mother of Blessed