Portnoy’s Complaint

During the day, at dinner, then as we walked along the romantic harbor wall at Akko that night, I told her about my life. I asked if she would come back with me and have a drink at my hotel in Haifa. She said she would, she had much to say about my story. I wanted to kiss her then, but thought, "What if I do have some kind of venereal infection?" I still hadn't been to see a doctor, partly because of a reluctance to tell some stranger that I had had contact with a whore, but largely because I had no symptoms of any kind. Clearly nothing was wrong with me, and I didn't need a doctor. Nevertheless, when I turned to ask her back to the hotel, I resisted an impulse to press my lips against her pure socialistical mouth.

"American society," she said, dropping her knapsack and bedroll on the floor, and continuing the lecture she had begun as we drove around the bay to Haifa, "not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possessions, money, property-on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success. Meanwhile," she said, perching herself cross-legged upon the bed, "great segments of your population are deprived of the minimal prerequisites for a decent life. Is that not true, too? Because your system is basically exploitive, inherently debasing and unjust. Consequently, Alex"-she used my name as a stern teacher would, there was the thrust of admonition in it-"there can never be anything resembling genuine equality in such an environment. And that is indisputable, you cannot help but agree, if you are at all honest.

"For instance, what did you accomplish with your quiz-scandal hearings? Anything? Nothing, if I may say so. You exposed the corruption of certain weak individuals. But as for the system that trained them in corruption, on that you had not the slightest effect. The system was unshaken. The system was untouched. And why? Because, Alex"-uh-oh, here it comes-"you are yourself as corrupted by the system as Mr. Charles Van Horn." (By gum, still imperfect! Dang!) "You are not the enemy of the system. You are not even a challenge to the system, as you seem to think. You are only one of its policemen, a paid employee, an accomplice. Pardon me, but I must speak the truth: you think you serve justice, but you are only a lackey of the bourgeoisie. You have a system inherently exploitive and unjust, inherently cruel and inhumane, heedless of human values, and your job is to make such a system appear legitimate and moral by acting as though justice, as though human rights and human dignity could actually exist in that society-when obviously no such thing is possible.

"You know, Alex"-what now?-"you know why I don't worry about who wears a watch, or about accepting five pounds as a gift from my 'prosperous' parents? You know why such arguments are silly and I have no patience with them? Because I know that inherently-do you under- stand, inherently!"-yes, I understand! English happens, oddly enough, to be my mother tongue!-"inherently the system in which I participate (and voluntarily, that is crucial too-voluntarily!), that that system is humane and just. As long as the community owns the means of production, as long as all needs are provided by the community, as long as no man has the opportunity to accumulate wealth or to live off the surplus value of another man's labor, then the essential character of the kibbutz is being maintained. No man is without dignity. In the broadest sense, there is equality. And that is what matters most."

"Naomi, I love you."

She narrowed those wide idealistic brown eyes. "How can you 'love me? What are you saying?"

"I want to marry you."

Boom, she jumped to her feet. Pity the Syrian terrorist who tried to take her by surprise! "What is the matter with you? Is this supposed to be humorous?"

"Be my wife. Mother my children. Every shtunk with a picture window has children. Why not me? I carry the family name!"

"You drank too much beer at dinner. Yes, I think I should go."

"Don't!" And again told this girl I hardly knew, and didn't even like, how deeply in love with her I was. "Love"-oh, it makes me shudder!-"loooove," as though I could summon forth the feeling with the word.

And when she tried to leave I blocked the door. I pleaded with her not go out and lie down on a clammy beach somewhere, when there was this big comfortable Hilton bed for the two of us to share. "I'm not trying to turn you into a bourgeois, Naomi. If the bed is too luxurious, we can do it on the floor."

"Sexual intercourse?" she replied. "With you?"

"Yes! With me! Fresh from my inherently unjust system! Me, the accomplice! Yes! Imperfect Portnoy!"

"Mr. Portnoy, excuse me, but between your silly jokes, if that is even what they are-"