This afternoon, I stopped by the St. Mark’s Bookshop to look through the Collected Stories of Isaac Babel on my way to buy groceries for dinner. I found the book in the back of the bookstore, on a shelf below Paul Auster and above Italo Calvino. I knelt down and read about how Babel had been killed by the NKVD, after he was arrested, forced to confess, and shuttled to a prison camp in Siberia.
To my left, beyond the table of discounted books, an agitated man with white-hair and a short, neat beard was talking politics with the woman behind the desk. When he mentioned Rumsfeld, he swung his arm above his head to make a point. When I looked over to him I noticed that I was crouching next to a rack of postcards with photos of the president and his administration. Their faces had been doctored, certain features were elongated, others erased. Rumsfeld was a monster with tiny eyes and a sharp pointed head.
“The people I know who have been shot,” man with the white hair declared, “were shot because they were thoroughly understood.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” said the woman. “It’s better to be misunderstood.”
“I totally disagree,” he said. “I want them to understand me. That’s what’s important.”
“But then they’ll shoot you.”
“Great.” He threw both hands above his head.
“But you’ll die.”
“At least then they’ll understand who they were messing with.”
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