As he started the car, I asked, "Do you have any cigarettes?"
"No." His tone was flat, and he clipped the end of the word as if with a hatchet.
We drove for a few minutes in uncomfortable silence. He seemed to know the way. His work as a columnist for the newspaper Davar must have involved frequent visits to Jerusalem.
"What are you doing here, Shmuel?" I asked when he stopped to let a quintet of rowdy boys cross the street.
"I came to spring you out of jail. Though I'm far from sure you deserve to be sprung. I heard what you did to that policeman."
"That wasn't me. It just looked that way." I explained what had happened.
"Is that the truth, Adam?"
"Yes. I swear it."
His lips twitched into what might have become a half-smile if he hadn't killed it in its infancy. "Do you know how many people have sworn to me over the years and how many of them were lying through their teeth?"
"Dozens, hundreds—I don't know. It's part of the job, isn't it? Yours as well as mine."
"I haven't counted, but it just might be that the majority of those who swore most fervently were being dishonest."
"Then count me among the virtuous minority. I'm not lying to you, Shmuel. I did not put that cop in the hospital."
"But you did take part in the assault on the Knesset. You struck other cops?"
I didn't answer, just looked through the side window at shopfronts whizzing by.
"Have you lost your mind, Adam? How could you?"
I spun around to face him, incensed by his tone and words. "You dare ask me that? After what you've been writing these past few weeks? All the columns praising the government and ridiculing all those opposed to negotiations with Germany?"
"I haven't ridiculed anyone."
"Yes, you have, Shmuel. And quite sharply, too. As though their moral position has no merit whatsoever."
"I never belittled the ideological stance of those opposed, just some of the arguments they present. Such as saying that we're legitimizing Germany as a country by agreeing to negotiate with it."
"We are," I said.
He shook his head. "If only we were so powerful. In truth, we are a tiny, weak, inconsequential country. Our tradition may say that Jerusalem lies at the center of the world, but that's hardly the case today. Not in the realm of global politics, in the struggle between East and West. You know what does lie at the center of that struggle, Adam?"
"I have a feeling you're about to tell me."
"It's Germany. A quick glance at a map of Europe can tell you that. That's where the line between the Russians and the Americans stretches. The Americans and their allies want West Germany on their side, to serve as a bulwark against the Soviets. To do that they first have to allow Germany back into the family of nations. This will happen regardless of what Israel says. In fact, it's a process that's already underway."
"But it will speed things up if Israel makes a deal with Germany, right?"
"Perhaps. But not by all that much."
"Are the Americans pressuring Israel to negotiate with Germany? Is that why the government is doing this?"
"Whatever gave you that bizarre idea?"
"Some say Ben-Gurion always tries to curry favor with the great powers. Before 1948, that was Britain; now, it's America."
"If that were true, Ben-Gurion wouldn't have made Jerusalem the capital of Israel in the face of worldwide opposition. Jerusalem was supposed to be an international city, remember? Not a part of Israel at all. But Ben-Gurion decided otherwise and moved the seat of our government to Jerusalem. If he hadn't, your little riot yesterday would have taken place in Tel Aviv."
A policeman was directing traffic on Jaffa Street. Birnbaum stopped as instructed. The car engine throbbed and rumbled. The wind whisked a newspaper across the hood and away. The heavens uncorked, and rain spattered the windshield. Birnbaum started the wipers. The policeman waved us forward.
Birnbaum said, "Let's see, what else does our loyal opposition say? Ah yes, that West Germany is full to the brim with Nazis, while East Germany has been utterly de-Nazified. Now they're all wonderful communists, not a Jew-hater in the bunch. They would be happy to assist us financially if only we came to our senses and stopped supporting the imperialists. Of course, East Germany has never shown the slightest willingness to acknowledge, let alone pay for, Germany's crimes against the Jewish people; only West Germany has."
"The communists differentiate between West and East Germany, not Begin."
"You're right; he doesn't. Begin believes every German is a Nazi, every German is a murderer. He said as much in his speech yesterday, didn't he? The bloody meshuggeneh."
"I thought you admired him," I said.
Birnbaum shot me a stern look. His newspaper, Davar, was the unofficial party newspaper of Mapai, Ben-Gurion's party. Expressing even mild approbation of Menachem Begin was likely to cause him serious problems with his employer.
"You know my views well, Adam," he said. "Begin and the Irgun fought bravely against the British. He's perfectly suited to lead a resistance group. But as a politician, as a statesman"—he let out a laugh—"that would be a joke. No, I take that back—it would be a tragedy. You know what Begin's problem is? He's drunk on his own rhetoric, a victim of his own pathos. But he was smart enough to not personally participate in the march on the Knesset. While you and the rest of his disciples were outside bashing policemen's heads in, he was safely inside the Knesset, delivering his most outrageous speech to date, calling Ben-Gurion a hooligan, a murderer, a fascist. Tell me, Adam, do you believe Ben-Gurion is a murderer and a fascist?"
"I don't know what I think of Ben-Gurion anymore."
"And do you believe every German is a Nazi? Every single one of them?"
"I know that there are former Nazis in the West German government, some holding high offices. I know that millions of Germans served in the Wehrmacht and the SS, and millions more supported them. Do you think they suddenly had a change of heart, that they stopped hating Jews a mere seven years after trying to exterminate us?"
Now it was Birnbaum's turn to stare out the window and not utter a sound. A few minutes later, we exited Jerusalem and were on the road to Tel Aviv. The Jordanians controlled a section of the road near the fort of Latrun, where several frontal assaults by the Israeli Defense Forces during the War of Independence had ended in calamity. Therefore, one needed to take a circuitous route to get from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, making the trip long and arduous.
