The Boxer (14 page)

At first sight Aron didn’t like him, he was too loud — someone who talks loud even without the help of Alkolat no doubt, someone who wants to be noticed. And to notice him, Aron claims, was anything but a pleasure. Ostwald was
the opposite of beauty
, sixty years old or just under, tall and scrawny; his hair grew in a small crown around his head. In the middle of his bald spot, Aron describes, bulged a big red scar that looked like a cockscomb. His gray skin hung from him everywhere in folds, like that of a person who lost half his weight over a very short period of time. Better still was his suit, the only one Aron ever saw him wear. Aron was certain that this man would soon ask him to get him a drink that looked as good as his, it was only a question of time; he kept an appropriate answer ready.

“Why are you looking at me in such an unfriendly way?” Ostwald asked. “A moment ago you were smiling at me.”

“I was smiling at you?”

“Of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t have dared to sit at your table. Besides, you look like a person with whom one can have a sensible conversation.”

Aron was confused by this compliment; he couldn’t remember having ever received a compliment that was based on his looks. His eyes looked friendlier; the man’s last words had sounded unassuming, almost in need, and the way he had explained why he preferred Aron’s company to that of the other customers sounded credible. Besides, the question of cognac was still unasked; perhaps Aron had been wrong all along.

“You’re mistaken,” Aron said. “Why should I have anything against you?”

Ostwald smiled, as if he didn’t know either; then he went to the counter and got his drink himself because the barman was taking too long. When he came back, Aron offered him a cigarette. Ostwald took it with no surprise, though cigarettes were still worth
their weight in gold
. He introduced himself with his first name. “I’ve seen you often here in the last couple of days,” he said.

“How do you do it?” Ostwald asked. “How do you get him to sell you cognac? That is cognac, isn’t it? I’ve been coming here longer than you have, but that dog never gave me a drop. Are you one of the local dealers?”

“Are you from the police?”

“No,” Ostwald said, “I’m not from the police.”

He emphasized the word police in a peculiar way, Aron says, almost as if in reality he was a murderer and a thief, who was wanted by the police for a long time — and here comes someone who asks him if he’s a policeman. He shook his head several times and looked at Aron with amusement, as if Aron couldn’t guess even in his wildest dreams what a great joke he had just made. His amusement had such a provocative effect that Aron, disregarding possible consequences, said, “Yes, I’m one of the dealers. And that’s why I drink cognac. And you’re not a dealer, and that’s why you drink swill.”

In that moment, I hear, Ostwald’s face turned sour; he furrowed his brow, surprised at this sudden change of tone. “You know what — screw you.”

He stood up. Aron heard him mumble on his way out, “I’ve had enough anyway …”

Ostwald paid at the counter, came back to Aron’s table, and snuffed out the only half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray; then he left. Aron called the barman and asked, “Who’s that man?”

“His name is Ostwald,” the barman said. “He always comes and goes alone.”

The next day Ostwald didn’t come, but he did on the following day. Aron saw him through the window as he approached the Hessischen Weinstuben. Without a coat, he wore only a hat and scarf against the cold; he stopped directly in front of the window and counted his money. Aron put on the most good-natured face possible and made a welcoming gesture as soon as Ostwald walked through the revolving door. Ostwald stopped in his tracks right there at the entrance. He looked around extensively, then went to Aron’s table and sat down without further ado. Without a greeting, he remained silent and looked at Aron curiously, as if he expected an explanation, perhaps an apology. Aron snapped his fingers at the barman, at which he immediately brought two disguised glasses of cognac, as agreed. When the glasses were on the table, Ostwald accepted this conciliatory gesture; his eyes moved from Aron to the glass. They toasted and drank, Ostwald in an exalted manner, reveling in the sensation as if he had just drunk the first cognac of his life. Then the last touch — a cigarette. Aron said, “But don’t throw it away again only half-smoked. They’re very expensive.”

“I wish I hadn’t,” Ostwald said.

“Why did you leave like that?” Aron asked. “So angrily?”

“And you ask? It’s none of my business if you’re a dealer, that’s your choice. If you have a bad conscience it’s your choice. As far as I’m concerned, you can even be cynical, if you can’t think of anything better, because most people can’t think of anything better. But if you want to say something at my expense, then it is very much my business.”

“Not at your expense.”

“How can you think of mocking me, of dumping all your complexes on my back? Did you get the impression that I deserve this, because I’m not a dealer and must drink swill instead of cognac? Do you think I’m too stupid to become a dealer? I’m not a dealer because I don’t want to be.”

“All right,” Aron said.

(He had noticed what was actually remarkable about Ostwald’s words, he tells me, weeks later, only when they knew each other better. It was the fact that Ostwald accused him of cynicism although he himself, Ostwald, was the greatest cynic he had ever met. As far as I can see, there’s no evidence in Aron’s story to back this assertion.)

Aron told himself that his first impression of Ostwald as a primitive drunkard had been rash. The direction their conversation could take was still a mystery;
schnapps aside
, neither knew the interests of the other. In the meantime, Aron was looking forward to developing a conversation. He decided however to wait and see; he sat, as it were, with his arms crossed. After all, he hadn’t been the one to sit at Ostwald’s table, it was Ostwald who had come of his own free will. Aron didn’t want to relieve him of the burden of beginning.

“Are you a Jew?”

This was, Aron found, not a very happy choice. He said yes with appropriate reserve. “So?”

“Were you here during the war?”

“Where here?”

“In a camp?”

“Yes.”

“How did you survive?”

Aron didn’t understand how his life in the camp could be of interest to someone who was, at least for now, nothing more than a casual acquaintance. He said, “Tell me about you. You already know practically everything about me. That I’m a Jew, that I’m a dealer, that I have complexes. I only know that your name is Ostwald and that you like to drink cognac. And that you probably don’t have a coat.”

Now Ostwald asked for a cognac after all, and Aron didn’t have the impression that he found it embarrassing. Ostwald expressed this wish as if it were a demand; the barman will sell it to you and not to me, so why wait? Aron came to an understanding with the barman. Ostwald was silent until the glasses were on the table.

“To your health.”

Ostwald still said nothing about himself; Aron thought he looked pensive. Finally, he asked, “Why do you sit here in this gloomy bar every day and get drunk?”

“Is that any of your business?”

“Why don’t you sit in the backroom at least, with your people? Why do you get drunk here, up front?”

Aron was taken aback by his lack of diplomacy, but at the same time he had to admit that Ostwald was an uncommonly sharp observer. The directness of his question was almost annoying, but it sprang not necessarily from bad manners, rather from simple thinking, and this is why Aron didn’t react curtly. “You won’t hear another word from me until I know who I’m sitting with at this table,” he said.

“With a fifty-three-year-old idiot.”

“You’ll have to elaborate on that.”

Ostwald drank the last drop of cognac,
demanded
a cigarette, and began, Aron reports, the story of his life with these strange words: “My father had a whitewashed house in Stuttgart by the Neckarstrand.”

A
ron tells me the Ostwald story for an entire afternoon; it’s clear that the main character is a man he loved, I had suspected this from the first. Just the way Aron had announced that one day Ostwald, whom he hadn’t mentioned till then, came up to his table was evidence enough that a very important person had entered the scene. Aron languishes in details; he elaborates on anecdotes from Ostwald’s life, which, as far as I can tell, have nothing to do with Aron himself. Should Aron go on with such detail, I fear that Ostwald will hold us up for days. “Excuse me, but you’re wandering a bit far now. This is no longer our subject.”

“Is that so?” Aron says. “What is our subject?”

“Not this Ostwald in any case.”

He says he can’t recall an agreement between us that tied him to a specific topic. In the worst case, he says sarcastically, I must summon up a little forbearance for his garrulousness. When I risk further objections, he declares today’s meeting is over.

The next day he says, “Listen to me, young man. If you’d like us to remain in business, there’s one thing you must understand. You can do as you please with the things I tell you, you can even forget them. I have just one request: you must let me finish speaking.”

S
o in the name of God, in the year 1912, Ostwald started studying law. Shortly before his final exams, his presence was requested on the stage of war. Several experiences as a soldier confused him; his knowledge of life was turned upside down. After the war Ostwald, who had been non-political up to his conscription, made contact with a group of anarchists in Munich. Before that he had looked around briefly, to see where a person with his opinions and inclinations belonged. The Communists were too unworldly, planning too much for the long term and not concerned enough with the present. Apparently he said, “If I had the certainty that I’d grow to be two hundred years old, I would have become a Communist.” He didn’t like the Social Democrats either; they were far too conservative and fearful of the law. Because they didn’t challenge the rules of the game; first they tied their hands behind their backs and then they went into battle, which consequently they lost. Only the anarchists remained. He finished his studies, no longer only for his own sake but also under the instructions of his new friends. They thought of the future too and wanted to position their people everywhere, even in the legal system. Ostwald was to do everything that was expected of a jurist; he led a double life. During the day he wore the mask of an industrious young man, but after closing time he was an anarchist. He visited the secret meetings regularly, participated in the preparation —- never in the execution — of assaults that failed without exception. Often he was implicated in skirmishes with the Nazis.

When he took stock years later, he was disappointed. They had achieved nothing, and the group had gradually become smaller. Ostwald realized that his activities had had no significant consequences whatsoever, that they had only served the purpose of self-gratification. He left the underground movement, dedicated himself completely to his job, and came to the conclusion that his anarchist activities were nothing more than a tardy youthful folly. He advanced steadily but not sensationally; by the age of thirty-three, he had made it to the post of judge in the regional court of appeal. He never strayed into serious conflicts with his superiors. At times he regretted the fact that he wasn’t any different from the other jurists. For his liberal views, which he openly expressed with his colleagues, never found expression in his judgments. He had to, Aron says in his defense, judge according to the laws after all.

When the administration of justice fell into the hands of the National Socialists, Ostwald was fired. He did not accept the dismissal, the reasons for which he didn’t know. He issued a complaint, once and then again, not so much because he was worried about making a living, Aron says, but rather because he believed that, in times like those, men like him must counteract evil. His resistance had fatal consequences. It led to the Nazis’ thorough examination of Ostwald’s tiresome person, and this uncovered information that had serious repercussions. Colleagues accused him of subversive activities and proved their suspicions with quotations. One day the main inspector told Ostwald to his face that he had been a member of an anarchist group. Instead of denying it, Ostwald said, “So what?” That was a decisive mistake, he was arrested on the spot. After he’d spent two months in custody, a trial took place. The prosecuting attorney demanded the death penalty; in his opinion substantial evidence indicated that Ostwald had participated in the attempt to assassinate the Führer in Munich. The judge was lenient and sentenced his former colleague to life imprisonment. Ostwald spent four years in prison, the following seven in a concentration camp.

After his release he put himself at the disposal of the Allies, coincidentally the English — they were the ones who had taken his camp. Men like him were badly needed, at the time; jurists with a clean past were a rarity. Ostwald was allowed to practice the law again. Since there were no German courts, he was assigned to an English authority as an expert for the prosecution of National Socialist crimes. This was the very job he had yearned for during those eleven years; Ostwald
grabbed whomever he could grab
. He used every millimeter of leeway the Allied law offered; Aron names examples.

Then one day, just before the beginning of an important trial, Ostwald was called to a commanding officer he had never seen before. The officer accused him of bloodthirsty behavior; he said he had watched long enough while Ostwald misused his position as a means for personal revenge. Despite fully understanding Ostwald’s tragic past, he said, this proved once again that the victim does not belong in the judge’s seat. Ostwald was fired
again;
since then he had taken to drinking heavily but not outrageously.

A
ron wanted to order more cognac, but the barman objected. He said the other guests had noticed the preferential treatment and, since he didn’t have enough cognac for everybody, either Mr. Blank could drink the same thing as everyone else or he should go and sit in the backroom. Aron decided to leave.