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By Root 12413 0

és did not regard us as a ménage à trois. Nathan was marvelous, bewitching, so perfectly “normal” and so delightful to be with that were it not for Sophie’s wretched little references (sometimes made inadvertently during our Prospect Park picnics) to terrible moments during their past year together, I would utterly have erased from memory that cataclysmic scene when I had first glimpsed them battling, along with other hints I had had of another, blacker side of his being. How could I do otherwise, in the presence of this electrifying, commanding character, part magic entertainer, part big brother, confidant and guru, who had so generously reached out to me in my isolation? Nathan was no cheap charmer. There was the depth of a masterful performer in even the slightest of his jokes, practically all of them Jewish, which he was able so inexhaustibly to disgorge. His major stories were masterpieces. Once as a boy sitting in the Tidewater Theatre with my father as we watched a W. C. Fields movie (I believe it was My Little Chickadee) I saw happen what was supposed to happen only as a figure of speech, or in cornball works of fiction: I saw my father caught up in a rapture of such mind-dissolving laughter that he slid completely out of his seat and into the aisle. Laid out, by God, in the aisle! I did nearly the same in the Maple Court bar as Nathan told what I always remember as his Jewish country club joke.

It is like watching not one but two separate performers when Nathan acts out this suburban folk tale. The first performer is Shapiro, who at a banquet is attempting to propose once more his perennially blackballed friend for membership. Nathan’s voice grows incomparably oleaginous, gross with fatuity and edged with just the perfect trace of Yiddish as he limns Shapiro’s quaveringly hopeful apostrophe to Max Tannenbaum. “To tell what a great human being Max Tannenbaum is I must use the entire English alphabet! From A to Z I will tell you about this beautiful man!” Nathan’s voice grows silky, sly. Shapiro knows that among the club members is one—now nodding and dozing—who will try to blackball Tannenbaum. Shapiro trusts that this enemy, Ginsberg, will not wake up. Nathan-Shapiro speaks: “A he is Admirable. B he is Beneficial. C he is Charming. D he is Delightful. E he is Educated. F he is Friendly. G he is Good-hearted. H he is a Helluva nice guy.” (Nathan’s stately, unctuous intonations are impeccable, the vapid slogans almost unbearably hilarious; the back of my throat aches from laughter, a film blurs my eyes.) “I he is Inna-resting.” At this point Ginsberg wakes up, Nathan’s forefinger furiously stabs the air, the voice becoming magisterial, arrogant, insufferably but gloriously hostile. Through Nathan, the terrible, the unbudgeable Ginsberg thunders: “J joost a minute! (Majestic pause) K he’s a Kike! L he’s a Lummox! M he’s a Moron! N he’s a Nayfish! O he’s an Ox! P he’s a Prick! Q he’s a Queer! R he’s a Red! S he’s a Shlemiel! T he’s a Tochis! U you can have him! V ve don’t want him! W X Y Z—I blackball the shmuck!”

It was a grand display of wizardry, Nathan’s production-inspired mockery of such outrageous, runaway, sublime silliness that I found myself emulating my father, gasping, shorn of strength, collapsing sideways on the greasy banquette. Sophie, half choked on her own mirth, made weak little dabs at her eyes. I sensed the local barflies regarding us glumly, wondering at our delirium. Recovering, I gazed at Nathan with something like awe. To be able to cause such laughter was a god’s gift, a benison.

But if Nathan had been merely a clown, had he remained so exhaustingly “on” at all times, he would have, of course, with all his winning gifts, become a staggering bore. He was too sensitive to play the perpetual comedian, and his interests were too wide-ranging and serious for him to permit our good times together to remain on the level of tomfoolery, however imaginative. I might add, too, that I always sensed that it was Nathan—perhaps again because of his “seniority,” or maybe because of the pure electric force