Professor Schiff's Guilt


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 www.newvesselpress.com 
 Copyright © Agur Schiff, First published in Hebrew in 2021 as by Achuzat Bayit
 Published by arrangement with The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature Translation copyright © 2023 Jessica Cohen
 All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 Schiff, Agur
 [Ashmato shel Professor Schiff, English]
 Professor Schiff’s Guilt/Agur Schiff; translation by Jessica Cohen.
 p. cm.
 ISBN 978-1-954404-16-8
 Library of Congress Control Number 2022943250
 I. Israel—Fiction
 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
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 10
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 12
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 51
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 
 
 “When a white European author writes about Africa, he is unwittingly reenacting an exploitative act. Literary colonialism, I would call it. I have no better description.” 
 —George Aboagye
 
 
 1 
 
 Yes, it’s true: my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather was a slave trader.
 I cannot deny it. Nor do I see any point in obscuring this embarrassing fact. After all, I feel no affinity with the man, who departed this world almost a century and a half before I entered it. And I trust you will believe me when I say that our genetic linkage arouses more than a shred of discomfort in me.
 Ladies and gentlemen, there are those who claim that the past always makes surprise appearances. Indeed, that is sometimes true. Except that what we have here is not a long-forgotten parking ticket that crops up out of nowhere and, if not paid—with interest, of course—might result in your bank account being seized. Nor are we dealing with an old woman who stops you on the street to remind you that she was the girl you were once madly in love with. No. The past I am being asked to submit to you, distinguished members of the Special Tribunal, is my family heritage, for good and for bad, and when it rears its head, I cannot pretend to be surprised.
 Because I have known for years about my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Klonimus Zelig Schiff. About his business affairs, the fortune he amassed, and his mysterious disappearance. I have read about him. I have written about him. I have dreamed about him. I even know what he looked like.
 In a portrait that hangs in the Surinaams Museum in Paramaribo, he stands upright and rigid, wearing a tricorn and a stern expression. He is flanked by his wife Esperanza, her head covered with a snood, and although she is not beautiful, she certainly is—how can I put this?—charismatic. In the background, a ship with billowing sails glides across a flat, gray sea that glistens like a sheet of zinc.
 Naturally, almost instinctively, one seeks out the resemblance. It’s a bit like searching a baby’s face for the parents’ features. And when one persists, one always finds something. A certain glint in the eye. An angle. A contour. Generally speaking, though, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps you will agree that a face is an asset we tend to overvalue. Particularly if we take into account how quickly it withers and loses its capacity to do justice to its owner.
 Then again, why should anyone care what the slave trader who was my great-great-great-great-grandfather looked like? As far as I’m concerned, you are entitled to think that Professor Schiff—namely, I—am him, as long as you can maintain your judicial objectivity. Not that I doubt your integrity, distinguished members of the tribunal. Not at all. I trust you unequivocally.
 Members of the Special Tribunal, Madam Attorney General, Head of the Investigation Team:
 I stand here before you.
 It is hard to believe that up until a few weeks ago, I knew nothing of your existence or of the existence of your lovely country. Truth be told, I could barely have placed it on a map. And so you see, there was not even the slightest chance of me ever landing here.
 Besides, I am a truly wretched traveler. I have not the foggiest sense of adventure. Zero aspiration to self-transport. I prefer to stay at home, in my own private disarray, surrounded by the illusion of safety among familiar landscapes. The disruption, the waiting, the carrying, the pushing, the ups, the downs—all these, for me, are torture. I detest airports. Sitting on airplanes. Flight attendants’ saccharine smiles. Small talk with potential partners to an aviation disaster. Explanations about life jackets in two languages I do not speak. Immigration officials. Standing in line. Staying at hotels—oh yes, sleeping on mattresses that are too soft and smell like too many honeymoons. Special effects from an American action movie blaring from the television in the next room. The impossible modulation of hot and cold water in the drizzle of a shower . . .
 Not to mention the sojourn itself: city maps that rip down the middle, streets with impossible names, incomprehensible information flashing on a cellphone screen, the fear of pickpockets and overzealous vendors and relentless self-appointed tour guides. And the endless yearning—for shade, for shelter from the rain, for a bench to rest on, for a cup of espresso, for a toilet! The mere thought of battling a full bladder while traipsing around a foreign city causes me unimaginable suffering. And what about sustenance? Yes, that is also a challenge for the likes of me, an aging man set in his ways.
 Be that as it may, precisely when I had made the decision to never again travel more than a two-hour drive