The Boxer (12 page)

“How long will he have to stay in bed?”

The doctor declared that he couldn’t say for sure, all he knew was that proper nutrition was more important than medicine. Mark would survive in any case, though whether or not he would be released without irreversible damage depended primarily on his nutrition.

“Anything specific?”

“Nothing specific. Everything that is good and expensive.”

Calories, said the doctor, vitamins until they come out his ears. Mark would probably have some stomach problems, but that was nothing to worry about. “Fatten him up. If another doctor tells you something different, don’t believe him. Believe me,” he said.

Till then, Aron’s job at Tennenbaum’s was nothing more than a stopgap measure, killing time; now it gained sense and purpose: the lavish salary that in the past month had procured
unimportant comforts
, or had served as a tranquilizing hoard, could now be used to heal Mark. Aron invested some of his money in groceries, vegetables, cheese, candies, juices, sausage, cookies; however, it wasn’t a big part, he earned much more, he says, than what Mark could eat. Kenik helped him with the shopping. Aron wrote his shopping list on a piece of paper and sent Kenik out. At first Kenik refused. “If you absolutely have to eat tomatoes in the middle of winter, then go look for them yourself,” he said. But when he learned whose health was at stake, his resistance crumbled and he was of great help; he knew the sources like no one else. He made his own suggestions about how to enrich Mark’s meal plan and occasionally would come back from his raids with delicacies that weren’t on the shopping list. “What do you think? He’ll definitely like this,” he would say.

For a pack of cigarettes per week, Aron could leave his bicycle with the Stationmaster. He rode out with his packages almost every day, at least at the beginning, he says. At the home they must have thought he was a millionaire.

*  *  *

A
nd Paula?”

Paula’s time was much more restricted; during the week she was tied up at Rescue. Aron was certain she would go with him to see Mark the first Sunday. “I still haven’t said a word to him about you. It’ll be an exciting moment,” he said.

Much to his disappointment, she didn’t seem at all excited at the idea of her first meeting with Mark. On the contrary, he found that she looked rather glum. To be on the safe side he asked her, “You are coming with me?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“I don’t know.”

Aron was puzzled; it made him angry that she should pretend not to know whether she wanted to keep such an important appointment, her head full of mystifying scruples. Her reasons, he says, were bound to be petty and, in his opinion, without substance. Perhaps that was precisely why he loved her, he suspected a particular kind of sensitivity behind all this insecurity. Yet her behavior this time really got on his nerves. Only later did he realize that his reasoning was based on the wrong assumption. His thinking had been more or less along these lines: if a father is happy to have found his long-lost son, how can the mother not be happy? It wasn’t her fault if he thought that way.

But at the time he had lost patience with her and saw no reason to conceal his anger. “Have it your way,” he said, “go ahead and stay home. There’s just one thing I don’t understand. Even if you don’t care about him, why can’t you do me at least this one small favor? Is it because it’s a long walk from the station to the home?”

He posed this hurtful question on a Saturday; they didn’t talk to each other until Monday. Then he asked, “Can you at least give me an explanation?”

“I’m a little scared.”

“Of what? That he won’t like you?”

“Nonsense.”

“Of what then?”

Paula didn’t explain; she just put her hand on Aron’s arm, smiled, and said, “Of nothing. I’m a silly goose, of course I’ll come with you. I’m sorry.”

The following Sunday they took the train out to the home. Aron had promised her a nice hour-long walk from the station to the home. It suddenly occurred to him that they had never gone anywhere together, not even out of the house. He had the feeling that he had
come a long way
with Paula at his side, but strangely it became clear to him only now that all his movements involving her ended within the walls of his apartment. Paula said that so many trees made her dizzy.

“You should see them when they’re green.”

She acted as if the road were going through a museum, as if she were parading past an endless row of extraordinary treasures, which is apparently how she categorized every second bush and every third tree, and the blackbirds, too. She was extremely reserved, held Aron’s hand, only now and again would cry out, “Look over there!”

Aron’s pleasure in the surroundings was
worn-out
because he had seen them so often, but he was delighted by Paula’s joy and spent his time thinking. It’s always been that way with him, he says, his mind works best while walking.
But now don’t immediately say you want to go for a walk with me
.

He started to brood over what Paula could have meant when she said she was scared to meet Mark. Her only hint, that it wasn’t for fear of being disliked by Mark, seemed credible to Aron; otherwise, he was sure, she would have easily admitted it. She probably had the opposite fear, he thought, the fear of being horrified by the way Mark looked and of not being able to cover it up sufficiently, so that Mark, seeing the expression on her face, would be frightened and Aron, hurt. Yet he dismissed this thought too; she was unlikely to have such a fear, he told himself, which was
inhuman somehow
, she was too clever and sensitive. Besides, during her work with Rescue she had certainly been confronted by similar experiences. But what kind of fear was it then? The only explanation Aron could think of was not only uncomfortable but, the more he thought about it, even alarming: Paula was afraid of getting too involved in his affairs. Her behavior, he thought, was noncommittal — in spite of all apparent trust, she always kept her options open. The most obvious of these was that Paula still kept her own apartment, didn’t in fact use it, just owned it, why? Surely not to waste extra money in the form of rent, surely not to challenge Aron, or to threaten him. She didn’t give up the apartment, Aron told himself, because the apartment was an escape route from which she found it rash to part. Till then, Paula’s affection had been limited to one man. Yet a man and a child were
incomparably
more people than just the one man. If a woman came into the picture, the scene would look distinctly like a family, overpoweringly so in Paula’s eyes, hence the fear.

I
point out to Aron that Mark wasn’t just born that day; not only had Paula known for some time that he existed, but she had met Aron because of Mark in the first place.

“That’s true,” Aron says, “but you can’t compare the time before to the time at this point. Before, Mark wasn’t a real child; he was nothing more than a problem to solve. A reason to write letters and make phone calls. Our personal relationship aside, it was her job to take care of him. Mark became a real person for her only now, with our first visit to him. There lies the boy, and she walks in with his father. Isn’t that different?”

T
hey arrived at a most unfortunate moment. The previous night, Mark had come down with a fever. No cause for concern, a doctor reassured them, but he advised against a visit; the excitement, which is often caused by visitors, should be avoided at all cost. They stood in the corridor. Aron wanted to see him at least for fifteen minutes. Then a nurse passed by, hurriedly pushing a bed on wheels ahead of her. A child was lying on the bed, motionless; the doctor ran after them. This, Aron says, was like an alarm signal, like a thick red line under an imminent danger. He gave up the idea of introducing Paula to his son that day after all; he gave the nurse a little package and asked her to say hello to Mark from the two of them.

“May I take a quick look in the room?” Paula asked the nurse. “I won’t say a word and I’ll leave right away.”

The nurse gave her permission without Aron having to intervene; he didn’t go with Paula into the room. The doctor’s warning still ringing in his ears, he thought that the sight of Paula could hardly excite Mark, for him she was just another woman. He waited by the door and was happy that Paula had expressed
that wish
. A little while later she came back out and said, “He didn’t even see me, they’re all fast asleep.”

And when they were outside, on the way back to the station, she said, “He’s a handsome boy after all.”

Aron says it sounded as if he had previously claimed the opposite. In any case, she had seen Mark even though she could easily have
avoided
it. The motives that Aron had attributed to her before, and that had appeared to be so plausible on the way there, no longer seemed valid.

T
oward the end of our afternoon I ask Aron if he remembers the address of the Hessischen Weinstuben. “Of course,” he answers.

I then ask if the building is in West Berlin, and he replies, “No, it’s on our side.”

After that I ask if he would agree to drive there with me once — right now if he’d like.

“What for?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Out of pure curiosity. After all these years, wouldn’t you like to have a drink there again?”

“No.”

“You’re a spoilsport.”

A couple of days later he says that as far as he’s concerned we can visit the Weinstuben, if I haven’t changed my mind in the meantime. I call a taxi, Aron gives the driver the address.

The bar is now called Balkan. When we’re inside, Aron’s eyes dart restlessly from one side of the room to the other — a lot must have changed. He looks at me only when the waiter puts on the table the two glasses of cognac I had ordered.

“Do you know how many years it’s been?” he says. “Twenty-eight.”

I ask myself if emotion will take over now, because often when I see old people remembering things long past I find that they are moved, no matter whether their memories are pleasant or unpleasant. Perhaps they belong to each other, perhaps remembering is a form of emotion — not for Aron apparently. He takes in the room with one last glance, then he’s finished, as if a curtain has been drawn over his thoughts, or as if he has decided to consider any further memories superfluous. He drinks his cognac and orders another. “And now what?” he asks.

“Have things changed much?”

“Everything’s changed,” he says. “You can’t recognize anything. Did you bring me here to find out how much it has changed?”

“Of course not.”

“Why did you then?”

I don’t know what he’s getting at; the waiter comes to my aid by bringing more cognac. Aron drinks and then says, smiling, “If you thought that something extraordinary would happen to me while I’m here, you were dead wrong.”

“That’s not what I thought.”

“Then it’s okay”

“Where was the room where you’d always meet?”

“Over there,” Aron says. “Pay now, I don’t like it here.”

We walk leisurely to the next taxi stand; Aron makes fun of me. He says that if someone hears the story of Spartacus, or the story of gladiator fights, he can understand that this person would like to visit the Coliseum; the grandeur of the story justifies such a wish. However, what brought me to the Hessischen Weinstuben wasn’t clear even to me.

I talk my way out of it; I never claimed to know why I wanted to go there.

M
ark made his first attempts to walk, initially in the corridor, then in the snow in front of the home. The muscles in his legs, which had become as thin as birch twigs because of his constant lying in bed, needed to be strengthened. Aron attentively registered Mark’s progress.

He felt that his frequent presence was necessary especially now, not so much to oversee Mark’s training — for that he trusted the personnel — but he thought Mark required treatment of a different kind.

*  *  *

o
f what kind?”

“I was convinced that the years in the camp had damaged his mind too. That is, I was convinced, it was totally clear — everyone could see. He was seven, and you had to talk to him as if he were four. Not to mention that he couldn’t read or write. His vocabulary was ridiculously small and his knowledge was small and his interests were small. Who should have taken care of that if not me?”

“Did you give him lessons?”

“Lessons?” Aron said. “I sat down and talked to him.”

f
irst he spoke to the doctor, not to strengthen his determination but because he wanted to make sure Mark’s physical condition would allow for daily conversations without causing him too much strain. The doctor had no doubt. He said, “I’m an internist, not a pedagogue, but what you’re planning to do sounds sensible.”

Aron decided to look for a room in the neighborhood. He found that the three hours it took him each time to get back and forth were better spent by Mark’s bedside. He asked the Stationmaster if he knew someone with a small room to spare, without any particular amenities and for a good price. The Stationmaster asked Aron to wait for a moment, he wanted to talk to his wife; then he came back and said he knew someone, in fact, himself. “We came to an agreement about your bicycle, why not on this, too?” Aron could have a room right there in the train station, a pretty one, if he would consider a pound of real coffee appropriate monthly rent.

Aron was pleased by the quick resolution of his search and accepted. But he used the room only at the very beginning. On the one hand, his work suffered while he was away His duties had increased in scope; Tennenbaum’s business affairs were improving steadily. Still, he would immediately have given up the job if doing so had been useful for Mark. On the other hand, and above all, the few nights he spent in the attic room depressed him terribly; he suffered from an insomnia that fatigue couldn’t overcome. He would lie awake and hear the trains pass below him and yearn for Paula. He saw pictures and heard noises that he had forgotten in bed next to her; now they returned in full clarity and volume. That was too high a price to save three hours a day.