The Puttermesser Papers E-Book

Cynthia Ozick

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Ruth Puttermesser lives in New York City. Her learning is monumental; her love life is minimal. And her most idle fantasies have a disconcerting tendency to come true. She yearns for a daughter and promptly creates one, unassisted, in the form of the first recorded female golem - a Jewish mythological homunculus. She also manages to get herself elected mayor. Then Puttermesser inadvisably contemplates the afterlife, whereupon she is immediately hurtled into it headlong and discovers, at the end of it all, that a paradise found is also paradise lost.

Leseprobe

THE PUTTERMESSER PAPERS

Fiction by Cynthia Ozick:

Foreign Bodies

Dictation

Heir to the Glimmering World

The Puttermesser Papers

The Shawl

The Messiah of Stockholm

The Cannibal Galaxy

Levitation: Five Fictions

Bloodshed and Three Novellas

The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories

Trust

First published in the United States of America in 1997 by

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

This edition published in Great Britain in 2014 by Atlantic Books, an

imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Cynthia Ozick, 1997

The moral right of Cynthia Ozick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978 0 85789 979 8

E-Book ISBN: 978 0 85789 980 4

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books

An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

FOR

Elaine, Esther,

Francine, Gloria, Helen,

Johanna, Lore,

Merrill, Norma, Sarah,

Susan, Susanne

Contents

Puttermesser: Her Work History, Her Ancestry, Her Afterlife

Chapter One

Puttermesser and Xanthippe

I. Puttermesser’s Brief Love Life, Her Troubles, Her Titles

II. Puttermesser’s Fall, and the History of the Genus Golem

III. The Golem Cooks, Cleans, and Shops

IV. Xanthippe At Work

V. WHY THE GOLEM WAS CREATED; Puttermesser’s Purpose

VI. Mayor Puttermesser

VII. Rappoport’s Return

VIII. Xanthippe Lovesick

IX. The Golem Destroys Her Maker

X. The Golem Snared

XI. The Golem Undone, and the Babbling of Rappoport

XII. Under the Flower Beds

Puttermesser Paired

I. An Age of Divorce

II. The Night Readers

III. The Unspeakable Joy

IV. The Awful Discrepancy

V. The Honeymoon

VI. The Marriage

Puttermesser and the Muscovite Cousin

I. History

II. A Joke out of Moscow

III. A Soviet Martian

IV. The Great Exposition

V. More History

VI. Interviews

VII. Another Interview

VIII. Entrepreneurs

IX. The Idealists

X. A Tea Party

XI. The Farewell

XII. Letters

Puttermesser in Paradise

Chapter One

Note on the Author

Flaubert does not build up his characters, as did Balzac, by objective, external description; in fact, so careless is he of their outward appearance that on one occasion he gives Emma brown eyes; on another deep black eyes; and on another blue eyes.

—A comment by Dr. Enid Starkie,

quoted (disapprovingly) in Flaubert’s

Parrot, by Julian Barnes

THE

PUTTERMESSER

PAPERS

Puttermesser:

Her Work History,

Her Ancestry, Her Afterlife

Puttermesser and Xanthippe

Puttermesser Paired

Puttermesser and the Muscovite Cousin

Puttermesser in Paradise

PUTTERMESSER:

HER WORK HISTORY,

HER ANCESTRY,

HER AFTERLIFE

PUTTERMESSER WAS THIRTY-FOUR, A lawyer. She was also something of a feminist, not crazy, but she resented having “Miss” put in front of her name; she thought it pointedly discriminatory; she wanted to be a lawyer among lawyers. Though she was no virgin she lived alone, but idiosyncratically—in the Bronx, on the Grand Concourse, among other people’s decaying old parents. Her own had moved to Miami Beach; in furry slippers left over from high school she roamed the same endlessly mazy apartment she had grown up in, her aging piano sheets still on top of the upright with the teacher’s X marks on them showing where she should practice up to. Puttermesser always pushed a little ahead of the actual assignment; in school too. Her teachers told her mother she was “highly motivated,” “achievement oriented.” Also she had “scholastic drive.” Her mother wrote all these things down in a notebook, kept it always, and took it with her to Florida in case she should die there. Puttermesser had a younger sister who was also highly motivated, but she had married an Indian, a Parsee chemist, and gone to live in Calcutta. Already the sister had four children and seven saris of various fabrics.

Puttermesser went on studying. In law school they called her a grind, a competitive-compulsive, an egomaniac out for aggrandizement. But ego was no part of it; she was looking to solve something, she did not know what. At the back of the linen closet she found a stack of her father’s old shirt cardboards (her mother was provident, stingy: in kitchen drawers Puttermesser still discovered folded squares of used ancient waxed paper, million-creased into whiteness, cheese-smelling, nesting small unidentifiable wormlets); so behind the riser pipe in the bathroom Puttermesser kept weeks’ worth of Sunday Times crossword puzzles stapled to these laundry boards and worked on them indiscriminately. She played chess against herself, and was always victor over the color she had decided to identify with. She organized tort cases on index cards. It was not that she intended to remember everything: situations—it was her tendency to call intellectual problems “situations”—slipped into her mind like butter into a bottle.

A letter came from her mother in Florida:

Dear Ruth,

I know you won’t believe this but I swear it’s true the other day Papa was walking on the Avenue and who should he run into but Mrs. Zaretsky, the thin one from Burnside not the stout one from Davidson, you remember her Joel? Well he’s divorced now no children thank God so he’s free as a bird as they say his ex the poor thing couldn’t conceive. had tests he’s O.K. He’s only an accountant not good enough for you because God knows I never forget the day you made Law Review but you should come down just to see what a tender type he grew into. Every tragedy has its good side Mrs. Zaretsky says he comes down now practically whenever she calls him long distance. Papa said to Mrs. Zaretsky well, an accountant, you didn’t over-educate your son anyhow, with daughters it’s different. But don’t take this to heart honey Papa is as proud as I am of your achievements. Why don’t you write we didn’t hear from you too long busy is busy but parents are parents.