Parallel Stories: A Novel (113 page)

Occasionally, the noblemen would throw a bone or piece of meat to the dogs, who grew excited by the smell of food, but they forgot about the rabbi. The prince, who sat close to the rabbi but facing away from him so he could warm his aching back at the fireplace, turned to him only once.

If you ever blabber about my question to you, Jew, I’ll have your tongue cut out, and then I’ll have your head chopped off.

But nobody ever uttered, or ever would utter, the certain question or request that the rabbi might reveal to someone. No allusions to it have been found either in Rabbi Ephraim’s notes taken in Bonn, which, of course, is more than understandable.

However, they could not deceive the rabbi.

Because of the prince’s words, the drinks, the music, the dogs’ barking, and mainly because of the postprandial gratification coursing through their entire beings, the good mood kept rising among the noble lords.

The rabbi neither asked for nor received more than some fresh water.

He was still hoping somehow to get through this ill-omened visit.

Until the count of Cleve stood up and spoke for a long time directly into the prince’s ear. He spoke for about a quarter of an hour as if, in the midst of great giggles and guffaws, he were dripping poison in the royal ear. And Jan Willem, who was nicknamed the Wealthy because of his immense treasures, at first laughed at the deluge of words with which the whispering large-nosed count of Cleve inundated him; not until the count had stopped and, smirking under his large nose, contentedly strolled back to his seat did he summon the rabbi before him.

In the silence that fell in the great hall, the lashes of the flooding river could be heard.

Now, however, to everybody’s great surprise the prince addressed the rabbi by his name, as if the Jew too had a regular name like everybody else. He no longer needed his advice, the prince told the rabbi, and he could keep all his advice to himself, because he, the prince, had taken care of everything, he and the other lords had set the world aright. But just then Margit made a move on her stool and let out a painful moan.

I already put your mushroom soup on the stove.

Let your mushrooms be. Who’s interested in your mushroom soup now.

How could I let it be. The good mushroom juice will boil away, and I still have to thicken it with flour, and I haven’t chopped the parsley either, the woman whimpered, yet she seemed to be nailed to the stool.

Unless, with some luck, the fire’s gone out, oh, maybe I didn’t put in enough twigs.

We’re still very far from the end of the story, listen, Gottlieb said, and he looked up for a moment to ascertain whether he could continue.

Margit was of course paying very close attention not to the story but to him.

Here comes the terrible turning point, Margit, because the ruling prince says to the rabbi that along with his entire family, the rabbi should move to the court. The prince would be glad to have him as his permanent counselor, and he wouldn’t even have to give too much advice. What a great honor that would be, you see, and the only condition of receiving this position was, Gottlieb read on in his book, happy to see that with the bowl in her lap and her lips parted the woman was affected by the story and was leaning forward, that the rabbi abandon the faith of his ancestors.

Well, Margit, you can just imagine, that he should dress in civilian clothes, take off his hat to all the saints, and live his life with that name always on his lips and in his heart, the name of that big
Niemand
the goyim call their redeemer.

When he reached this point, Gottlieb laughed aloud with pleasure at how infinitely ignorant and stupid the goyim were.

Although Margit did not laugh along with him, the man’s joy did cause her some pleasure.

In his haste, Rabbi Ammon replied by asking for three days to think it over, and begged respectfully that he be allowed to spend the three days in his home.

Go, Jew, the ruling prince answered graciously and waved his hand as if, with this gesture, he had already forgotten what the count of Cleve had whispered to him. But he did not forget it, not by a long shot; when a week had passed, then another, and then a third, and the rabbi had still not returned, he sent after him.

The mean, the vile, the godless man, how mean can such a godless man be, Margit said, this time referring to the prince.

Don’t get excited, Margit, wait until the end. Gottlieb looked up again from his book.

In that year, the floods lasted a long time and it took the prince’s messenger a good week to reach the count of Cleve’s city, Gottlieb continued softly. But when the messenger finally got there, the rabbi and his family were not to be found, and nobody could tell him where they might be. In great secrecy, the rabbi and his family had moved to the town of Pfeilen.

Where in the world did they move to, asked Margit, irritated, and in her fear regarding the possible outcome of the story she pressed the bowl to herself even harder.

To Pfeilen, Gottlieb repeated the town’s name.

And where in the world is that. I’ve never heard of a town by that name.

After all these years, what difference does it make to you, Gottlieb replied, and he slowly closed his book.

It’s much more important that the Jews there dressed him in beggar’s clothes and he lived like that to the end of his life, enjoying the greatest respect of his people.

Margit laughed a light laugh of relief, and Gottlieb laughed along with her. Which was such an exceptional event in their lives that they kept laughing together for quite a while, guffawing with the pleasure generated by their own laughter. That on the same night the count’s soldiers burned down the synagogue of Cleve, along with the houses of the ghetto, Gottlieb chose not to tell Margit. And that they put to the sword every Jew they could find.

The Last Judgment

Interrupting the usual early morning music, the loudspeaker called him to the south gate.

Kramer to the south gate.

And it cannot be claimed that he did not know what that meant. The people they called to the south gate they put away for good.

The Niers flowed there, nice and slow.

By nature, he was the kind of man who rarely thought there was any problem he could not solve or avoid. He was breathing more heavily, or rather he had the feeling that with his body grown heavy he should be out in the fresh air. This time there was no way out. He could not avoid it. For days, he had counted on the water’s slow current to sweep him away. They could hear shots from the direction of the river; it was surprising they wasted bullets on people. And there was one fleeting moment when he still hoped. The person he loved more than his life, more than his long-forgotten wife, more than all his incidental lovers—and he did remember them all simultaneously during this long moment, all of them—the person he loved even more than his children was standing only two steps away from him at the deep-brown, empty table of the
Blockälteste
, in the harsh light. A pale, fragile, but strong and nimble young man whose ambition and energy had given him a stooped back and who could get away with nearly everything and could afford not to be completely bald like the others. His shapely skull was covered with maddeningly rich hair, curly, golden, and ruddy.

He was ordered to special details at least once a week. To sort clothing in the laundry building, which did not necessarily mean anything but sorting and loading clothes, though sometimes it could mean something else too. The camp had eyes for things like that, since close connections acquired a commercial value of their own. Eisele, an always well-dressed and very cruel man, the commandant’s deputy for supplies, personally managed the work in the laundry. At such hours, it was still dark outside. If the loudspeaker ceased, they could hear the intense bombardment. The potbelly stove was glowing red. Every breath of night dripped or cascaded down the small square windowpanes. He was chatting with someone, with Bulla, obviously doing business with him, explaining something very convincingly, his snow-white hands flashing in the lamplight.

The boy might get away with it, Kramer thought.

This was his first precise thought and perhaps the last hope of his life. He could not harbor resentment of the boy, because business is important for someone who has to live.

The morning cauldrons still had not been brought.

For more than two years now, he’d had no way of knowing whether members of his family were alive or not. Even political prisoners were forbidden to receive mail, and so it was all right if family members were alive and healthy, and it was even better if they were dead because an air attack had killed them all; they were easier to imagine that way, since he did not believe he would ever return to them. If God existed, he would have loved Peix more than God, but God showed himself neither in any person nor in any thing. He loved him enough as it was, did everything to love him even more, though he found no explanation for it and, as a result, could sometimes hardly suppress the disgust he felt toward the boy.

Kramer’s oldest son should in theory have been at the front, and this Peix was exactly the same age. What he did not like to think about at all was that his son might be serving the Nazis. And he could also love this boy because or especially because secretly he hoped, quite ashamed of himself, that he had a greater chance of surviving no matter where he was. The front was somewhere nearby, they could hear the British cannons and were somewhat familiar with the strategic situation. All the working radios had to be surrendered to the authorities, but guards in the area brought superannuated sets to be revived by one of his comrades. He also had occasion to listen to the English news in the orderlies’ room, the
Schreibstube
. They were forbidden to pass on information they heard, lest the Nazis discover it. Not to yell and shout to the world that they were coming, they’re here already, down by the gardens. The bombers carefully avoided the camp, which showed the British knew well that except for human flesh there was nothing worth destroying in the one- and two-story barracks among the low pine trees. However, the two nearest small towns, the Dutch Venlo and the German Pfeilen, received their daily dose almost every morning and every night. Prisoners disturbed by the explosions yelled and screamed, which aroused emotions that had been dormant for months or even years; they cried for joy.

When he looked at the boy, and he had been looking at him constantlessly for four years, eighteen hours a day, every one of his muscles, fibers, cells, and membranes told him, with a happiness that coursed through his soul, that this boy was his personal possession. This put him in the state of physical readiness one assumes when in love. Sometimes he wondered why, why was he not jealous or not more jealous, because when Peix came back from the laundry he felt no more than a dull thud or stab in his heart. No matter how exhausted he was, he wanted to start to wakefulness several times a night just to see the boy’s feminine face deep in sleep. Peix carried his mother’s face on his own, the face of an unknown woman, her milk-white skin and attractively ribbed full lips, and Kramer could not avoid the thought that he had known this woman. At night they often held each other, by chance and intentionally they would hug each other hard, pressing themselves to each other, or they gently touched and pressed each other’s hands. Kramer saw to it, took great care that they stayed together but never had to be squeezed into the same sleeping place. A night spent in deep sleep was one prerequisite for survival. He taught the boy more things than he himself could possibly have known. He realized that one creates not only one’s own sons, or that even if this boy was not the fruit of his loins, he would still make a man of him. And how could a man at the gate of some woman’s womb remember what he had done and when. He did not like remembering things like that; they had fallen out of his memory. He had been a prisoner for seven years; after the first long year in prison, this was the second camp he’d managed to survive in, along with Peix.

It was not that it hurt, that what was in him still hurt, but that he could not comprehend his own situation, that he should perish now when he was so healthy and well fed. They had taken an oath about what they would do if they both survived, that is what cropped up in his mind now, where they would go. They swore to each other what they would do if the other one did not make it. He would be the other one. He also knew that in these last days his death would greatly endanger his comrades. It would be like a signal, the criminals would know they had come out on top again. Unless the British got here sooner, or the prisoners weren’t taken away and slaughtered, which possibility always existed, the camp would slide back to the condition in which they had found it when they’d arrived two years before. The camp commanders knew they would get nowhere without the communists because only the communists had some consideration for others, yet it was in their interest that the criminals hold a superior position. Indeed, they smashed or weakened the secretly always-rebuilt communist cells in which it was virtually impossible to plant spies. It was just such a measure that was being taken now, Kramer knew.

It was not senseless, personal ambition that Kramer felt was ridiculous, not the eagerness of the will to survive, no, not that. One should stay alive at all costs, this he understood. He did not think the movement’s argument for breaking the criminals’ power was ridiculous, or at least for removing the threat of their superior force from the heads of many prisoners, ignorant men driven to bestiality. Surely reason allowed this much; at times he was even proud of himself. What he did find ridiculous was a man who, although identical with him, could neither comprehend nor avoid the last judgment. He and Peix could not go to Pfeilen to blow up the church whose tower they of course had never seen. They wanted to, so that those people could no longer ring the bell so peacefully and indecently every Sunday morning. He and Peix could not go to Paris together. Which they both had longed to do all their lives as ardently as small children wait for Christmas Eve. Maybe the little Huguenot, who in his former life specialized mainly in art treasures, would go there alone.