The Boxer (6 page)

“Let me go,” Aron said.

The man wanted to let go, but he was nervous, Aron saw, and was waiting for an explanation.

“There is no bell on the door,” Aron said. “I called for an hour. Take me to the director.”

“So, you called for an hour? And then you simply broke in?”

“Listen,” Aron said, “I came from Berlin and I’m tired. Where’s the director?”

“There’s no director here now. Only tomorrow morning.”

Aron had an ugly thought. “This is the children’s home?” he asked.

The man scrutinized the intruder and didn’t reply, at which point the hostility vanished from his face. With a sigh he invited Aron to come with him. “And you be quiet.”

They went into a barrack; the man knocked on a door, a woman in a nurse’s uniform sat in the room. The man said that Aron wanted to speak with her, without however mentioning the break-in. She introduced herself as the night nurse, and Aron explained his request. She listened attentively, occasionally nodded understandingly; he didn’t get the impression that his story particularly interested her. When he was finished, she said, “I’m sorry but you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

“Why can’t I see him now?”

“First of all, I am not authorized to let just anybody in and, second, the children are already asleep.”

“Couldn’t you wake Mark?” Aron asked. “This is something that doesn’t happen every day.”

“I don’t know who Mark is,” said the night nurse.

“We have two hundred children here. Besides, he doesn’t sleep alone. There are at least twenty children in each room, do you want to disturb them all?”

Disappointed, Aron left, accompanied by the man and the dachshund, which in the meantime had calmed down. On the way, the man laid his hand on Aron’s shoulder and said, “Don’t be angry, that’s just the way it is here. You’ll see him tomorrow.”

When they reached the gate, he clapped his hands angrily; he had forgotten the key and wanted to fetch it.

“Never mind,” Aron said, “I know the way.”

He climbed back over the gate. The man made himself useful by giving directions, at least for the first half of the way.

“Thanks and good-bye.”

“See you tomorrow,” the man said.

Aron went along the asphalt road without knowing where it led. It was half past ten and dark; after a bend he saw the lights of a village set hard against a small mountainside. He walked toward it. Yet the closer he got to the lights, the more he questioned the sense of going to the village. He did have some money with him, even in the form of the alternative currency — which presumably was valid here too — cigarettes. It would certainly be enough for a bed, dinner, and breakfast. But his scruples were of a different kind, he told himself, a village that lies so close to a former concentration camp must be swarming with
unbearable
people. He came to the conclusion that the annoyance they could cause him would have been greater than the comforts of civilization that, in the best case, such a village could offer. He left the road and stepped into the woods.

At least it wasn’t raining. Aron looked for a soft place, not too far from the road, and lay down. He was so tired that dampness and cold could not prevent him from falling asleep. With his last thoughts he damned the circumstances. He woke up very early and felt unexpectedly well. It was, he says, as if someone had cleaned out his lungs; only his clothes were moist. The clock read four, the sun was shining, he saw several rabbits and a deer. A lake would be ideal, to wash and drink, but he didn’t find one. Birds, he says, so many birds, and yet he didn’t know the name of a single one. Aron considered how soon he could go back to the home without having to stand in front of a closed gate again. He passed his hand over his face and felt the stubble of his two-day beard. He didn’t want to appear like this to Mark and the doctors, not to mention his crumpled clothes. He ambled around the woods till seven thirty. Then he did go to the village after all. It turned out to be small, so small that he soon stood in the marketplace. He found a barber.

Aron was the only client; he sat in front of the mirror that confirmed the necessity of his detour and said, “Haircut and a shave.”

The barber, while he was preparing Aron, mentioned that he had never seen him before, did he have something to do with the home? Nowadays one couldn’t buy anything reasonable with money, except for a shave. Aron answered only with a yes or a no. When it was over, Aron paid and inquired where he could get something to eat.

“You must be joking,” said the barber.

Aron wanted to leave, but when his hand was on the door handle, he was asked if he had anything besides money to pay with.

“Only cigarettes.”

For five cigarettes he was given bread and a piece of cheese; he ate while he walked. By the time he had left the village behind, his hunger was stilled, at least for the moment. The road was longer than he had expected. Aron didn’t reach the gate, which was now open, until around ten. He saw something he hadn’t noticed in the dusk yesterday, that barbed wire lay on the ground all along the high walls that surrounded the home. Not too long ago it would have been fixed on top. It must have been since dismantled but not yet removed.

Several children played in a large free space,
definitely the mustering grounds
. Aron stood in their vicinity and observed them; he wasn’t interested in how or what they were playing, only in their condition. The children were mostly pale and very scrawny; their eyes, Aron says, were disproportionately large. He bent down to a boy and asked, “Do you know a Mark here?”

The boy shook his head and went on playing. Aron heard someone calling him. He looked around; his acquaintance from the previous night was waving. The man hurried closer and shook his hand. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “We’ll work things out now.”

He guided Aron to a different barrack from yesterday’s and said that he had already been to the director of the home and had announced Aron’s visit. By the way, his name was Weber, Alois.

The director of the home was a middle-aged doctor. From the very first moment, Aron found her disagreeable. His request was known to her and not just because of the mediation of Alois Weber. She said, “I have received a phone call from Berlin. Can you explain why your son was registered here as Mark Berger?”

“No,” Aron said, “it must’ve been a mistake.”

W
hy did you find her disagreeable?”

“Is that important?”

“Perhaps. And if not, explain it to me all the same.”

“She had lipstick and painted fingernails,” says Aron.

“Oh, my God,” I say, “millions of women go around like that. That’s not a good reason to dislike someone.”

“Normally not,” Aron says, “but it simply didn’t fit in there. You didn’t see the children. At the very best it was tasteless.”

H
ow is he doing?” Aron asked.

“Well, considering the circumstances,” said the director. “He is weak and emaciated and must stay in bed for another few weeks. Did you know that he had pneumonia?”

“No.”

“But it’s over. Luckily we received some medicines in the nick of time, otherwise things might have been different.”

She walked out with Aron, crossed the square; the children took no notice of them. Aron says he thought she could have pointed to any boy at all, anyone approximately the right age, and tell him he was his, he would’ve had to believe her.
She could decide who my son is
.

T
HE DIRECTOR SPOKE TO A NURSE
who took a stool and placed it by one of the beds in the hall. “That’s him. If you need me, send for me. And please don’t be too loud,” said the director.

Aron stood by the bed and savored the longed-for sight. Tears welled in his eyes, not just at the joy of reunion but also in shock. The face he saw, he says, looked like that of a small skull. It evaded all possible similarities with a previous appearance; the eyes were the only proof of life — alert and black. Aron immediately remembered that this was the color of his Mark’s eyes. Not to think what would have happened, he says, if they had shown him a green-eyed child. He pulled himself together and didn’t kiss Mark, he didn’t touch him, he wanted to proceed carefully and
not frighten him
.

He wiped his tears away and noticed that the black eyes followed his every move, yet the head didn’t stir. He moved the chair closer, so that Mark wouldn’t lose sight of him, and sat down. He smiled for a long time while he considered what his first words should be — if it were better to start with questions or with statements — far too long, evidently, because Mark closed his eyes. Aron said, “What’s your name?”

The eyes opened immediately; he heard the answer, “Mark Berger.”

Happily, Aron found that Mark’s answer sounded normal, not excessively weak or frail. Rather, it sounded strikingly obedient, almost military, as if Mark had been beaten into giving quick and exact answers.

“Does something hurt?”

“No,” in the same manner.

“Are you scared of me?”

“No.”

“Were you told who I am?”

“No.”

“I’m your father.”

At last not a question. At last a fact. Mark took note of this with composure. His face betrayed neither joy nor emotion.

“Do you know your father’s name?”

“No.”

“If I’m your father, then you’re my …?”

For the first time, Mark disobeyed the rules of the interrogation. He didn’t answer but shrugged. Under the little white shirt, Aron says, which until then had appeared to be lying empty on the bed, shoulders moved up and down.

“Then you’re my son,” Aron said. “Do you understand?”

“No.”

For a couple of minutes it was a mystery to Aron what Mark didn’t understand about it; the director hadn’t mentioned that he was also
meshugge
. He said, “What don’t you understand?”

“That word.”

“Which word?”

“The one you just said.”

“Son?”

“Yes.”

“It’s really easy,” Aron said. “I’m your father and you’re my son. Those are simply the words for it. Do you understand now?”

“Yes.”

“Then say it again.”

“You are my father, sir,” Mark said, “and I am your son.”

“Right. But you mustn’t say sir to me. Say it again, You are my father.”

“You are my father.”

“I am your son.”

“You are my son.”

“No, that’s wrong,” Aron said.

Suddenly Mark started to cry. He wasn’t sobbing, and tears didn’t stream from his eyes, rather he was whining like a spoiled child, one who thinks nothing else will get him out of an uncomfortable situation. Aron was frightened and didn’t know what he should do to soothe Mark. The nurse stood behind him and said it was enough now, Mark had to sleep.

“Leave the chair here,” Aron said. “I’ll come back later.”

He went to the large square, sat on a bench in the sun, and looked at the children playing. Although a lot of time had passed since he had last observed children playing on a playground, and although he wasn’t in a frame of mind for comparisons, he soon thought he perceived a striking difference between the children here and the ones before. No one fought and, amazingly, the game proceeded noiselessly, almost as if it were repressed. He also noticed that most of the children played by themselves. They painted in the sand, shoveled little buckets full of sand, and kicked balls around, all in a subdued manner, without children’s habitual rush and excitement.

Aron started making calculations about Mark. A great part of Mark’s life lay in the dark of suppositions. It was quite probable that witnesses would not be found, and Mark himself wasn’t a reliable informer — this much was clear. Only conscientious calculating remained. Assuming that Mark Berger and Mark Blank were one and the same, and Aron didn’t want to think of any other possibility, then it was certain that at age one and a half he had lost his mother, months later his father, was deposited with his neighbor, and then ended up in a camp. There he lived until the end of the war, but how? Certainly among children and women who, Aron says, had worries other than his well-being. Among people who, forced by the circumstances, stole his food and in doing so taught him to do the same — with success, as his survival proved.

Or he lay for years in a dark corner. Sick and apathetic, provided continuously with the necessary nutrition by a well-wishing destiny. Perhaps by destiny in the form of a commiserating woman who shared her meals with him because, who knows, her own son had died, for example, or because Mark’s face reminded her of someone, Aron says, or simply because she was a great lover of children. But how could this hypothetical woman find the time to teach him everything that was known to a child his age, to explain who’s the father and who’s the son, and to whom one says sir or, simply, you? A further stroke of luck in his thought process, which was almost adventurous in Aron’s view, was that Mark could speak German in the first place. He was brought to the camp with almost no knowledge of language; all possibilities were open, his surroundings may just as well have been Hungarian or French or Polish.

Alois Weber sat next to Aron on the bench and asked him, “How is he?”

“He must sleep now.”

“I’m the maid-of-all-work here,” Weber said. “When there is something to buy, or repair, or carry — the women can’t do everything on their own.”

Aron thought that they should have hired a bigger man. “What did you do before?” He asked.

“When before?”

“Before you came here.”

“I was in Dachau, not far from here.”

“In Dachau? Wasn’t that also a camp?”

“‘Also’ is good,” Weber said.

“As a prisoner?”

“You think as a prison guard?”

“Then you’re a Jew?”

“Do I look like one?” Weber asked. “Political.”

A conversation followed, in the course of which Aron learned a thing or two about Weber’s past, and Weber learned this much, that Aron would be picked up in the morning and that he didn’t know where to spend the night. “If you like, you can come to my place later. There’s plenty of room and food, too. I live right over there,” Weber said.