Kuperman's Fire

by John J. Clayton Narrated by Anthony Heald

Overview

High-tech entrepreneur Michael Kuperman has discovered that a powerful American corporation has been selling chemical weapons abroad illegally. What must he do with this knowledge? Ultimately, the Kuperman family must flee Boston and hide their identity. Dealing with danger soon changes their life as a family.

Kuperman struggles with his heritage as a Jew. Wishing he could hide in a sentimental version of his heritage, he becomes aware of its passion for justice and remembers moments from his ancestors' past that have made survival possible. In a direct, literal way, the legacy of his grandfather protects him and his family in their immediate danger.

Kuperman's Fire both celebrates the miracle of our survival and insists on our responsibility to face evil and continue the miracle.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Clayton (The Man I Never Wanted to Be) adroitly combines thriller elements with one man's particular, but resonant, Jewish legacy. Michael Kuperman's innovative company, Fusion, is on the cusp of a hoped-for merger when he's informed of something rotten with Chemicorp, a major factor in the deal: the company is making legal-to-produce chemicals specifically for clients with nefarious purposes, and the bad guys will do anything to protect their secrets. The actions of Michael's maternal grandfather, Jacob Goldstein, guide Michael in thinking about what to do next: before Michael was born, Goldstein saved multiple families from a vicious pogrom in Russia, at great risk to himself. As Michael weighs the risks to his family and debates whether to turn a blind eye, Clayton brings Michael's family's Holocaust history, the historical struggles of the Jews and the recent genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia into the mix. His morality tale effectively explores the courage, costs and rewards involved in putting others first. (July)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Kirkus Reviews

An ethical Jewish businessman fights corporate evil in this seriously flawed third novel (The Man I Never Wanted to Be, 1998, etc.). Michael Kuperman has a thriving business, an attractive family and a swell house in the Boston suburbs, but what's on his mind is genocide. The 1994 slaughter in Rwanda is in full swing, and this manifestation of evil reminds Michael of the pogroms which drove his grandfather Jacob Goldstein out of Russia. Jacob, who enabled seven other Jewish families to reach America, has become Michael's spiritual mentor, even though he died before Michael was born. As an observant Jew married to a determinedly secular wife, Michael is increasingly reflecting on his roots, when he's not hard at work with his African-American partner, negotiating a merger which will greatly expand their software business. But there's a problem; their brilliant techie Steve has come across something horrible involving their major client Chemicorp, one of whose subsidiaries has been shipping deadly nerve gas. The action heats up, literally, when Michael's car is set on fire (Michael sees a Biblical reference); then a Chemicorp executive is shot dead and whiz-kid Steve is blown to pieces. All this happens past the halfway point. The first half is full of family matters: Michael's mother's sudden death from an aneurysm, the disappearance of his cranky father Ira and his reappearance in the love nest of his mistress, a well-kept secret. Clayton's attempt to fuse Michael's midlife identity quest with dastardly corporate crime just doesn't work. Michael and his family take shelter with Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, but the bad guys track him down and Michael ("he's Tutsi, he's Bosnian") runs for hislife. The action borders on farce, but everything is resolved before Ira's schmaltzy wedding to his mistress-nothing beats a happy ending. Pretentious and silly.

JUN/JUL 08 - AudioFile

Michael Kuperman is weighed down with worries about his marriage, his new-found commitment to Judaism, and his discovery that the prospective merger of his company with another may be in jeopardy. Anthony Heald superbly narrates this complex story. He provides accurate Hebrew pronunciations, a perfect Yiddish accent, and great voices for the many characters. Narrating quietly and gently when called for, he excels in delivering appropriate inflections and tone of voice. All the characters are complicated and flawed, and the story is compelling. Although this might not have universal appeal (much of the story is spent on Jewish religious observances), there is plenty of action and danger to satisfy interested listeners. S.S.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169636116
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	11/01/2007
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

KUPERMAN'S FIRE

---

By JOHN J. CLAYTON

The Permanent Press

Copyright © 2007 John J. Clayton
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57962-152-0

---

Chapter One

Adonoi, open my lips, and let my mouth declare your praise.

Again this morning in his study, as Michael begins davening the Amidah, the standing prayer, he senses that he is living within Jacob Goldstein, or that Jacob Goldstein is living within him. Michael needs his dead grandfather Jacob this morning to help him handle the French documentary on television last night; the pictures from Rwanda, unbidden, come back to him. A one-story building; inside, one room, part of the roof gone, corpses, over a hundred, no space to die without being crushed by others, charred, clothes on skeletons, a sea of matted cloth on bones, so much like the tangle of once-Jews being bulldozed by Americans liberating Buchenwald, tumbled like dead fish into a mass grave.

They both inhabit the one flesh, Jacob and Michael.

* It's the month of Tishri, 5664 (1903) in Kishinev, Bessarabia-Russia then, now Moldava.

* It's September 23, 1994, the middle of Tishri (5755) in Brookline, Massachusetts.

We're in the New Year, inscribed, somehow, in the Book of Life.

Michael Kuperman is fused somehow with an imagined, imaginary grandfather. But it's his historical grandfather who rides his bones.

Michael folds away tallis and yarmulke into tallis bag, packs bag into overnight case. Going into the bathroom to shave,separate from Jacob now, he talks to his grandfather about the pogrom in Rwanda. Because Jacob Goldstein, his mother's father, who died just before Michael was born-he knows pogroms.

The stories from Rwanda (dear God) have become unbearable. As if Bosnia weren't enough, as if the siege of Sarajevo weren't enough. To make sure that Tutsi and Hutu could never again live side by side in peace, fanatics in the Rwandan government made sure, when the slaughter began, that neighbors were assigned to kill neighbors, kill neighbors' children-or be killed themselves. A photograph: clothed skeletons hugging infant bones. And the numbers, the numbers keep growing, growing. Three-quarters of a million? A million? Militia members bragged that one band could kill "two thousand Tutsis in twenty minutes." You hear that figure again and again. Two thousand in twenty minutes. They slice at the Achilles tendon, the people go down, and they can butcher at their leisure. And now, Tutsi "reprisals." Half a million Hutus are running in terror to the borders.

What do you do with these stories? Michael tells them to his mother's father.

He talks to Jacob, but hears no Jacob answer-as you'd expect, since Jacob is long dead, dead before Michael was born-we're not talking crazy here. So Michael answers for him in wise, alte-jude, grandpa voice, sighs Aach ... I know, I know. But really, what can this Jacob know? What Michael needs him to know. Still, sometimes, when he's sure he can't be overheard, in the bathroom with the water running, Michael speaks for his grandfather.

Daddy's Talking To Somebody

You shouldn't be ashamed, Jacob tells him, that this is your life course, to make money, even a great deal of money, in a world full of suffering. 'Why you?' Why not you? Does it mean you have to be a sweatshop operator?

"Who said ashamed? I'm not ashamed. I give people a livelihood."

"Nu? Then?" And Jacob, this invented, patched-together Yiddishkeit Jacob, sighs ...

... While Ari, eight years old, listens at the bathroom door.

Because Daddy is really talking to himself this time. Shaving and talking. Loud, easy to hear over the water, except not the words. But that's not what's so weird (Ari's used to that). It's that somebody's in there with him.

And this other person is answering.

So Ari goes to Señor Pedro's cage and lets the parakeet hop from his cage to his finger, then carries him down the hall to his mother's study.

Freeze-frame: you need to understand this house of theirs. It's substantial, one of a number of imposing houses in Brookline, part of greater Boston, built early in the century but in a mid-nineteenth century style, with brick façade, classical portico, long, multi-paned windows downstairs in high-ceilinged rooms with mahogany trim and deep Victorian moldings. In the spacious entrance hall, a broad carpeted staircase. To the right, a large living room; to the left, dining room and paneled library. Deborah has modernized the big kitchen with new cherry cabinetry, a twenty thousand dollar island of wood and technology in the center, and French doors onto the rock garden at the rear. There are bright-oiled wood floors covered with Orientals downstairs; upstairs, thick, taupe, wall-to-wall carpeting.

Ari, in socks, slides along this carpet to his mother's study. Señor Pedro's clipped wings flap.

Ari knocks, "Mo-mm?" (Two syllables, descending)

"Mmm?"

"Hi." Ari isn't supposed to be in here, he knows that. But he's so sleepy this morning. He needs her. And Dad is being so weird. Ari plays it casual. Tentatively, he cuddles into his mom's big leather reading chair, old leather cold against his skin, bird against his cheek, and listens to the click of her keyboard. One look at her shoulders tells him she isn't in the mood. She half turns, keeps typing. "Good morning, Ari, I'm really busy, I'm sorry. But I've got to go so soon." He just sits. She turns a little more. "Yes, honey?"

He thinks about how to say it. "I thought ... maybe you were in the bathroom with Daddy."

"Uh huh ...?" She's typing again.

"Because Daddy's talking to somebody."

"Well, that's nothing new, for godsakes. He talks to himself, you know that."

"But somebody's there-"

"-Nobody's there. Your daddy is just a little peculiar sometimes."

"-With a different voice."

"Oh, you know, sometimes...." She stops typing, swivels. "What kind of voice?"

"With an accent."

"An accent?"

"And old, and, you know, like from another country. Like the shammes at synagogue?-except older, even."

"Oh, well, you know your dad, he's kidding around, that's all it is. I see you're all dressed. Well you look nice. Margaret will be here any minute to take you to school. You know your mom's leaving for the airport in like five minutes." "Mom? You promised you wouldn't talk about yourself in third person."

"I'm leaving for the airport in five minutes. Okay?"

"Maybe I'll ask Daddy."

"Oh, I wouldn't. You'll just embarrass him."

"Daddy? Daddy doesn't get embarrassed."

"Anyway, it's nothing." Coming up for air, she asks, "Has Karen gone?"

She has gone; the private bus service has picked Karen up for Buckingham. Deborah's chest feels suddenly heavier-she won't be seeing them for two days, and Karen didn't even stop in to say goodbye? Well, that's a statement, that's certainly a gesture. Her face tenses up like a soldier: grim. Life. All right. Packed, ready for battle in Dallas. But really-talking to himself, for godsakes! In another voice? They're going to lock him up and throw away the key.

"Give me a kiss goodbye, you sweet, sweet boy." And he does. She kisses his forehead. Is he hot? He's probably fine. Unlike Karen, whom Deborah thinks of as earthy, full of juice, living at the edges of her skin (and not in some imitative, vulgar, Victoria Secret way), Ari looks to his mother like a black-haired angel; about Ari she's sentimental and unashamed. It's as if God had sculpted his delicate face into being, and just before letting him go from heaven, had put forefinger to nose: there, and pressed lightly. She saves to disk, shuts down the computer, fusses with papers, picks up laptop and suitcase by the door to her study. And, right on time for a change, taxi's at the front door. "Michael? MICHAEL? Got to go, Michael."

She's on her way down when he comes to the staircase in boxers, shirt off, hair uncombed, and waves. "So. You're leaving?"

"Of course I'm leaving. Barely time as it is if there's traffic in the tunnel. Goodbye." Making sure Ari's not around, she says, "Oh, by the way, Ari heard you talking to yourself."

"When was that?"

"And he doesn't look so hot. Make sure he's not getting sick, will you, Michael? Have Margaret bring him home after school; I think he's coming down with something." She sets her bag on a newel post. "What does Jonathan say about this peculiarity of yours?" When he doesn't answer, she shrugs him off. "So. Have a great week talking to yourself."

"Have a great meeting."

Margaret Corcoran has let herself in and is fixing breakfast for Ari. Deborah gives him a kiss, takes a hug, and she's off. She hears Ari telling Margaret, "Daddy loves to talk to himself when he's shaving."

"Well, it reminds me, sweetheart, I had an old uncle, when he first came over ..." Margaret begins-one of Margaret's Irish-immigrant stories. Deborah's comforted: that Ari will have a comic frame to contain his father's ... whatever-it-is. And Deborah's out the door. A consultant. A soldier for Thayer, Fletcher, and Gringold.

The old man Jacob, hand to a cheek, has to fade out. Michael has an important day ahead. Becoming a modern businessman, he buttons his shirt of fine, pale blue cotton, while his eyes narrow onto a patch of sunlit motes in the middle of the air where he can scroll through a mental hologram of his schedule. He used to like this shift to firm practical focus, nothing better than having a clear plan to carry out. He should be joyous today. After months of negotiations, months of listening to Ken McNair's "concerns"-meant to express, like a dance in words, his canniness-here's a victory: a merger which will take their system-software company into a safe harbor. It's not a buy-out; it's a true merger of strengths, though McNair's InterCom is the bigger partner. It's Jonathan-his partner Jonathan Greene, who charmed McNair, who made McNair want to marry this contemporary high-energy company, young company going places. "We can be," Jonathan said at one meeting, "your interface with the future." But it's Michael who gave McNair the assurance: we're solid; merging with us is a shrewd move. Narrowing his eyes, Michael nodded across the table at McNair's shrewdness. And why not? Let McNair be as canny as he dreams; Michael reflects back to him his dream of himself-and closes the deal.

He and Deborah both have to be out of the house this week. It can't be helped, and at least he'll be back tomorrow night. He puts on a shirt, a tie from Hermès, and one of his better suits, dove-gray. He's not the dresser Jonathan is, but when he tries, he looks pretty good. His hair, like his father's, curls at the sides; unlike his father, he keeps it cut. Adjusting the tie in the mirror, he begins to feel more alive, his old business-self, like a dancer in mourning who brightens as he gets into his costume. Suitcase in one hand, laptop in the other, he goes downstairs in time to fool around with Ari, take comfort from Mrs. Corcoran. He lets her make him toast and pour coffee. "Margaret? Margaret, I wish you'd kind of ..." (he wraps himself in his own arms) "... you know, take care of Karen tonight. We forget-because she's so competent. But she needs a little ..." He makes a hugging gesture but doesn't say mothering. "And before you leave tonight-do make sure she practices piano. That they both practice. Okay?"

He muscles up Ari, digs his knuckles into his curly hair. "Honey, you look absolutely woozy-you get enough sleep?"

Ari mumbles something and Michael kisses him. Warm-from sleep? Ari kisses back, fervently, for real. Oh, Michael thinks, I'm worried from guilt-that we we're both going away.

Jacob in Kishinev

Kuperman has a car and driver to pick him up-not a sign of his vanity or of corporate pomp: he works on laptop, on phone and fax, while Dennis slogs through dense morning traffic that Kuperman tunes out. It's a rolling office. His laptop gives him his day's schedule, but Michael Kuperman has a methodical mind and forgets little.

His grandfather Jacob groans. Michael is not having auditory hallucinations-but to say imagines is too weak. At any moment he can turn his attention that way, and his grandfather's life is happening, a parallel reality. His grandfather, a grandfather Michael knows only through pictures, breathes through him. He finds his own big frame shrinking. Michael's well over six feet tall, he's got thick black hair, receding where Michelangelo gave Moses horns, giving him a long, high forehead; he's long-boned, a tennis player; in photographs, Jacob Goldstein is squat, bearded, balding. It's oddly comforting, this metamorphosis, Grandfather's presence, or Michael's presence in this other life.

Michael imagines Bearded Grandfather in a Shtetl. This Jacob, his Jacob, dances through the street on Simchat Torah in an ecstatic line of black-coated Hasidim. Michael can't see the actual, the historical, shrewd Jacob Goldstein leave the house of study in expensive gabardine black suit and walk out into the streets of Kishinev. The cobblestone streets are noisy with wagons, as if this were London in Dickens' time. But it's Kishinev, and Kishinev, turn of the century, is no shtetl, is many shtetls, a small city, lots of business goes on there, and there are discussion groups and concerts. Some of the young, both men and women, not permitted to attend universities, are becoming radicalized. Beardless, in cap and open shirt, they look like people from the new century.

The cobblestones form and transform, pattern into pattern of elegant curves. Prayer (he's coming from morning prayers in the new shul) often makes Jacob Goldstein see in this way. The windows of the shops have been replaced-those shops that remained in business. It's a gray, wet-gray day. His own shop has survived, has revived-dry goods, combined peculiarly but profitably with the business of buying and selling lambs, raising lambs to sell. Whatever was in the shop was stolen or dragged in the mud. But most of the business is on paper. It is this business that his parents, and his brother Avrom and his family, can live on when Jacob leaves Kishinev.

For of course he has to take his family away. This, this is insane. He thinks of the poems of Chaim Bialik that have come to him recently. Bialik is angry at the Jews of Kishinev for having stood helplessly by while their wives were shamed.

There are two choices: to join the Jewish defense league being formed-or to leave.

Every winter the hot blood rises against us, and when the streets are passable, Easter and agents of the Czar come to remind the muzhiki of the death of their messiah, and vodka burns in the blood, and a man you might do business with, might ask to have him repair your roof, might even have a schnappes with, meets another and the two meet with others and all of a sudden it's a mob. But last Easter came the pogrom the whole world talks about. Cossacks in their red shirts, brand-new shirts provided by-provided by whom? You tell me! Who provided these brand-new shirts so the Cossacks could recognize one another right away?-Cossacks came into town to do the business right.

And thanks be to God, General Ostrov came to him, not waiting to be asked: "You gather your whole family and come to us; we have a place waiting in the cellar. It's going to be terrible this time. Never mind how I know. I know."

The Jews were going home after Passover services. A sunny day. Well-dressed Jews passed through the market square on their way home. It began there.

General Ostrov's house is on the main street. The cellar windows, high up in the wall, Ostrov's wife covered with curtains, but between the curtains you could see the boots, the heavy legs, running, you could hear the drunken yells, the screaming. And when the servants came with food, three times a day, Sarah made them taste it first, afraid they'd poison us.

General Ostrov has done business with Jacob, with Jacob's father, for many years. They're invited to his house for cards. Ostrov, twenty-five years his senior, has watched Jacob grow up; now, he likes mentoring him: partly, it's the seriousness of Jacob's secular reading. They talk about books that arrive, pages uncut, from Moscow, from Paris. Ostrov lends the books so they can talk together. And argue. Ostrov loves to argue.

We heard the screaming outside, and we shuttered the windows and said prayers-a week to live that way!

In New York there was a rally at a great hall, thousands; money came to Kishinev. Money, letters. In Paris, in London, in Berlin. Kishinev has lost its reality as a large provincial town in which many Jews live; it has become a symbol of Russian barbarism.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from KUPERMAN'S FIRE by JOHN J. CLAYTON Copyright © 2007 by John J. Clayton. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Videos