A Stillness in Bethlehem(40)

“Tibor?”

“I am very worried about Bennis, Krekor.”

Gregor read the book’s title upside down on the top of the left-hand page: Get Thin, Stay Thin, Be Thin Forever! He blinked.

“Thin?” he asked dubiously.

Tibor flushed. “It is not the first I have read, Krekor. In my room, I have others.”

“Diet books?”

“Yes, of course diet books. The Pritikin Program. Fit for Life. The Woman’s Advantage Diet. I must have two dozen of them, Krekor, and I don’t have half of what I found in the bookstore. There are millions of these books.”

“You don’t need to lose weight.”

“I know. Bennis, she also does not need to lose weight.”

“Bennis is trying to lose weight?”

“She has bought a diet book, Krekor. The Raise Your Metabolism Diet. I have read it.”

“Why?” Gregor asked him.

“Because I am worried, Krekor. And I have a right to be worried. This is a book for crazy people.”

“What is? The book you’re reading or the book Bennis was reading?”

“Both. I am telling you, Krekor, it is a conspiracy.”

“What’s a conspiracy?”

“Diets,” Tibor said seriously. “It is a conspiracy against the women of America.”

“By whom?”

“Male chauvinist pigs,” Tibor said.

Male chauvinist pigs. Gregor’s belt had gotten itself wound around the bamboo pole that held the utility shelves together. Gregor got it unwound and began to thread it through his belt loops. The utility shelves had been pasted over with sprightly red-and-green holiday shelf paper. Gregor’s head felt heavy, as if he had smashed it into something harder than itself. His head often felt this way after long-term discussions with Father Tibor Kasparian on any subject that related directly to modern American life. It wasn’t that Tibor was unintelligent or unsophisticated in the ordinary sense. Nobody who could read that many languages was unintelligent. Nobody who had spent so much time in the great capitals of Europe—and in the gulags—was unsophisticated. The problem was more like a matter of tone, a shift in emphasis. Tibor didn’t think like other people, and he had no sense of time. Did he realize that nobody said “male chauvinist pig” anymore? Did he care?

“Tibor,” Gregor said cautiously, “I don’t think—”

But Tibor had jumped up from his seat and begun to pace. He was patrolling the hall Gregor needed to get through to get back to his room. “I am telling you, Krekor, it is right. Think about it. We have now many women in this country like Bennis, they have very good educations, they have the chance to build empires and write books and make world peace—although the way the world is, I am not sure there is ever going to be peace. Never mind. They have this chance, and what do they do instead? They diet.”

“Tibor—”

“It is not right for women to be as thin as they try to be in America, Krekor. The good God did not make women thin. He made them round. When they try to be thin, they do not eat enough, they make themselves starve—and let me tell you, Krekor, I know about starving. I have starved. In the last days before I was able to leave the Soviet union  , I had nothing to eat for four days, and then when I got to Israel, I had no money and so not much to eat for the next two weeks, and let me tell you what I thought of, Krekor, I thought of food. All the time food. It was only after I had started to teach at the university and I had money to eat all the time that I could concentrate again. You see.”

“Not exactly.”

“Bennis will begin with this diet and then she will not write her books, Krekor, instead she will think only about food. Like the other women, they do not build big business empires, they do not get together to elect a woman president, they do not write philosophy as much as they could because so many of them are thinking only about food. It is a plot, Krekor. I know plots. I have spent my life in the midst of plots.”

Gregor was beginning to think he was condemned to spend his life in the middle of another one—Tibor’s against the male chauvinists, maybe. He caught Tibor at the start of a new lap in pacing and darted through the window of opportunity, relieved once he stopped to find himself in the middle of the hall. Tibor had not quit his pacing. He had simply created a new route, around Gregor, past the bathroom door and around Gregor again. He had his hands clasped behind his back and a frown on his face as furious as any he could ever have directed at the people who had persecuted him.

“I am worried about Bennis,” he repeated, “and if you have any sense, Krekor, you will be worried about Bennis, too. You will help me stop this thing.”