The Boxer (4 page)

Surprised, she said, “Of course my name is Paula.”

P
erhaps she took what happened in the next few seconds as an attempt to seduce her. But I swear it wasn’t, it was nothing at all. I must have concentrated and reflected for a long time, I must have then stood up and given her a kiss. She was Rescue, you understand? Where else should I have kissed Rescue? It had nothing in the least to do with the question about her name.”

I
t‘s a pity,” Aron said, “that we can’t drink a schnapps now.”

Again Paula was surprised, but now she also smiled. She dialed anumber, asked someone if it was already open, hung up, and told Aron, “Come with me.”

They stepped out into the street; Aron followed her blindly. After a short distance, Paula pointed to a house. An American soldier stood at the entrance; Paula showed him her permit and made as if to go in. Looking at Aron, the soldier asked her a question in English. Paula answered him, whereupon the soldier nodded and let them pass. Not only that, says Aron, he even winked and, oddly, the wink was directed not at the pretty Paula but at him, Aron.

There was a restaurant on the first floor. They had barely sat down when a waiter with a white smock came to their table. Paula ordered, this too inEnglish. “This is an officer’s club,” she said.

“Are you an American officer?” Aron asked.

“God forbid, I’m very civil.”

The waiter brought a cognac for Aron; Paula had a glass of whiskey in which ice cubes clinked. Aron was curious about his first glass of liquor in years. “Let’s drink to you and your plans,” Paula said.

“All right,” he said, “no one has drunk to that in a very long time.”

But then there were still some details that Aron absolutely had to know. He found out that the camp where Mark was when the war ended had been turned into a sort of hospital right after liberation. The sick children — and almost all of the survivors were sick — could therefore be treated from the start by trained personnel, Paula intoned. Mark was still there, Paula said, no need to worry, he wasn’t suffering from one of the many well-known illnesses. The letter in reply to Rescue’s inquiry read: Malnutrition with all the usual collateral symptoms. It would take a couple of months, Paula said they had written, before Mark would be completely recovered, but there could be no talk of serious danger.

“Let’s have another drink,” Aron said.

“As many as you want.”

Paula said he should take some time to think of how to proceed with Mark. For the next few weeks it would probably be best to leave him where he was. “Do you have a decent apartment?”

“A luxurious one in fact,” Aron said.

“Naturally, once he is released, you can take him with you. But I think it would be more reasonable if he went to a convalescent home first. I mean, only until he is all better. Children who are just skin and bones do not turn into healthy people from one day to the next.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

She had already taken care of it, she said. Rescue had a number of convalescent homes at its disposal, some for children. In Berlin there was only a small one, in which all the places were spoken for in the long term, but if Aron wanted she could probably see to it that Mark was taken to another place in the American Zone, or in Switzerland.

“That’s very nice of you,” Aron said. “I’d prefer it if he was transferred near me.”

They drank a third glass; Aron felt the unfamiliar schnapps comfortably rise to his head. His limbs, he says, became noticeably heavier and his thoughts more light. I will buy myself some schnapps and drink a glass more often, it does one good, he thought. He observed that Paula emptied her glasses of whiskey with a certain nonchalance. In any case, she drank with no visible effort, unusual for a girl who was no more than nineteen, he says appreciatively. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty-six,” Paula replied. “Why?”

“Because you look really young and you like to drink.”

“I used to like drinking,” she said. “Now Ionly drink with company, like today.”

Aron found this a little brash, almost as if she were an adolescent wanting to impress an adult. They were silent for a while. Aron looked around; he remembers an amazing number of details — even the pattern of the tablecloths. He mentions that a young soldier, who sat a couple of tables away, was trying to attract Paula’s attention by giving her penetrating looks. “Would you like to go to Bavaria for a couple of days?” Paula asked.

This suggestion baffled Aron, not because Paula had guessed his most secret wish, but because until then that idea hadn’t arisen. Now he knewthat he wanted to go see Mark, it just hadn’t occurred to him before. Paula could arouse desires, he says, that would only have awakened much later and, what wasmore, she delivered the key to their realization. He was a little afraid, he says, because he doesn’t like having debts.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Of course I’d like to go.”

“You’re so passive,” Paula said. She would take care of the ticket and the authorization, Aron should report to her in three days. She then called the waiter and signed the bill.

B
ack home, Aron lay fully clothed on the bed, closed his eyes, and tried to imagineMark. Not the way Mark might look today, not an image conjured by suppositions, but his two-year-old child whom he had had to leave behind with his neighbor Fisch. Yet despite all his efforts, he could not. Everything possible was reflected behind his closed eyelids. Two dead children, the trip to Prague with Lydia while she was pregnant. Lydia’s deportation, incidents from the camp, roll calls, hard work, blows, over and over the face of a particularly hated prison guard — the child Mark never surfaced.

*  *  *

C
an you understand that?” Aron said. “It was enough to drive me crazy. It was as if you had lost a picture and, to make things worse, you forgot what the image was. I only knew that it was a son of mine, and that his name was Mark. Nothing else.”

I’m a little amazed at the degree to which his forget-fulness still angers him after all these years. “You had simply forgotten what he used to look like, why was that so important? You saw him again soon after that anyway?” I ask.

“But I couldn’t recognize him, you idiot!” Aron says impatiently. “Do you think it didn’t give me a headache thatin the papers it said Berger? Why did it say Berger and not Blank? Paula could repeat a hundred times that Mark was an uncommon name — naturally it bothered me. Don’t you understand that it was particularly important for me not only to see him but to recognize him?”

“Sure, I understand.”

“It would have been far easier if he suddenly had three eyes or eleven fingers. Then I could’ve said, No, that’s not my child, I remember clearly, mine had ten fingers. Do you think that in the ghetto my mind was free to make note of moles? Lydia would have definitely recognized him.”

“Something else, Aron,” I say. “How did youmake your living?”

“In due course.”

He looks at me disapprovingly, as if it were presumptuous to change the topic or to interrupt the flow of his story. He also says, “I decide what the order will be.”

Perhaps, I think, he doesn’t want to tell me. Perhaps there are some things he doesn’t want to talk about.

A
fter a while, Aron recognized the uselessness of his search. He opened his eyes, stood up, and somehow got through the day. In the late afternoon, somebody knocked. Aron didn’t feel like opening the door. By now knocking had ceased to frighten him. Usually when someone knocked, it was the super who, since the day Aron had shaken him and forced him to testify in court, never lost the opportunity to demonstrate his good behavior and sub-missiveness. The pushy fellow kept knocking until Aron sullenly went to the door. There stood Paula. She held a bouquet and a package; she smiled and said, “I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

“No, no,” Aron replied.

D
on‘t forget, I was still fairly young back then, only forty-five. And sinceI had lied to this Rescue lady, just as I had to the police when I needed my papers, in Paula’s eyes I was six years younger.”

H
e put the flowers in a vase, then they sat across from each other at the table in the living room. Paula looked embarrassed; Aron found her less self-assured than that morning in the office or in the club, where she had been his host. Aron was embarrassed, too. He guessed that she hadn’t come for business. The fact that this was both a determined and a shy attack on his affection was sufficiently evident from the flowers and her face, he says. Yet the reason for his embarrassment was not this knowledge. Paula’s sudden materialization had made him happy, he had likedher from the start. Neither was Lydia the cause, for at that moment she played a negligible role. Rather, the reason was to be found in Aron’s reaction to women in general, which, according to his account, I would describe as tense, uncomfortable from the very first.

(First experience: a visit to the brothel at the age of seventeen in the presence of friends.
Embarrassing result
. Then, to prove himself, an affair with a secretary that was conducted with greaterseriousness on his part than on hers. She dumped him in favor of an acquaintance of the same age whom he couldn’t stand anyway. Then a long pause, accompanied bysexual desires that he found excessive and of which he was consequently ashamed. Following the advice of a book he had bought secretly, he tried to reduce these urges by practicing physical activities, primarily swimming and tennis. At the age of twenty-two he fell in love with Agathe. Like him, she was reserved. Months had to pass before one could speak of marriage, of a sunny future, but before the plans were carried out, Agathe had drowned in a swimming accident. Thoughts of suicide. Only at the age of twenty-seven did the next story
worth mentioning
take place. The driving forces were his father and the owner of the aforementioned textile factory in which Aron had been working in the interim. This owner, a practicing Jew by the name of London, not only had placed Aron in his heart but also had a daughter for whom he wanted an honest man. According to ancient custom, the fathers sat down together and worked out the details. The engagement went through unopposed. The girl, Linda, did not object; the wedding took place a year later. A marriage of convenience rather than conviction. Aron could never get rid of the thought that this was a bond dictated primarily by social goals. They had no children. Towardthe end of 1931, Linda announced she’d like to move to America, and Aron answered, “Fine. Go ahead.” A short while later she left, as did London senior, who took tearful leave of Aron and hoped that his son-in-law would have second thoughts and follow them. Aron thought about it and stayed. A few months later he and Linda were divorced, but this did not alter London’s behavior toward Aron in any way. London delegated all sorts of powers to him; perhaps he was actually happy to have such a reliable man in Europe. A relatively comfortable time followed in which Aron concentrated on his job; the business was doing better than ever. Then, finally, Lydia.)

With this as his past experience, Aron now sat in front of Paulaat the living room table, with flowers on it. They smiled at each other and hardly knew what to say.

(I want to add that Lydia was the last woman Aron held in his arms. Unlike most of his fellow prisoners, he hadn’t used the few occasions that had presented themselves, first in the ghetto and later in the camp. They often talked about it, incomprehensibly often, he says. For him, this had been the most bearable side effect of his imprisonment.)

“You still don’t know why I’m here,” Paula said.

Aron found this strange. He thought he knew very well why she was there. In fact, he could have bet his life on it. But Paula said, “One of our cars is going to Munich tomorrow morning. The route takes it close to Mark’s home, it would be just a tiny detour. Or is this all too sudden?”

“It is sudden,” Aron said, “but it’s good.”

“Tomorrow morning at eight, at our office.”

At that moment, the prospect of seeing Mark so soon excited Aronmore than anything else. He stood up, paced the room, and smoked. He thought of hisfutile attempts to imagine Mark, and he tried again. Paula didn’t disturb him, whether out of courtesy or because of renewed embarrassment is not clear. She sat still and watched him. After a while, she stood up and left the room. In the middle of his wandering Aron stopped. He was troubled because Paula was no longer sitting inher chair. It was definitely not very exciting to watch a middle-aged man as he paced to and fro. From that moment on, he was determined to be more attentive if only she hadn’t already left, or he would be the next time he saw her. Luckily, he says, he found her in the kitchen.

“I’m looking for glasses.”

“There should be some in the living room.”

In the living room she finally unwrapped the package, a bottle of cognac. Aron remembered his wish in the club to buy some liquor for himself; he didn’t remember now if he had just thought about it or had said it out loud. Heput the glasses on the table and poured the drinks. Then Paula said this
puzzling
sentence, “If we wanted to forget everythingelse first, then we would never get around to living.”

Again, Aron had something to think about. He wanted, he says, totake her words as a familiar noise, as a kind of music, but they had to be decoded — what could Paula have meant? One of the meanings, the somewhat philosophicalaspect of her sentence, was obvious.

O
r should I explain it to you?”

“No, keep talking,” I say and ask myself why in the world he so often suspects, at precisely the wrong time, that I’m unable to followhis reckoning.

B
ut Aron racked his brains over the other meaning, the second. Did she want him to understand that it was time to put an end to his past life and start a new one, perhaps with her? Or were her words directed less at him than at herself? Presumably it had also happened to me, says Aron, sometimes one says things that are not intended for other ears but only as a validation. Had Paula wanted to bolster Paula? Had she wanted to gather up some favorable wind, like soldiers do when they storm over a field shouting, “Charge!”? If we wanted to forget everything else first. She was twenty-six. Sure, he says, she wouldn’t have been spared experiences that are best forgotten,
from the point of view of continuing to live
. Then we would never get around to living. Aron couldn’tfigure out exactly what that meant, and he didn’t like to ask — he drank.