The little man laughs. “There will always be a power, an order, an enthusiasm that will permit me to win my converts. How foolish people are, with their drums and bands, their flags and parades. So raucous, so raucous. Bah, who needs a black shirt? It’s enough to wear mere flannels. Caesar needs no disguise. He is Caesar, and he knows it. If he is mistaken for the plebe in the street, all the better. He can melt into the mass on the street, then, and invisibly attain what he seeks. And I shall be at his side.”
“We will be fallen masters, but our own masters,” Jakob whispers, turning White Rabbit’s face tenderly between his hands. “Constant pain and great happiness we will have. I promise you only that.” “But I don’t feel anything, Jakob,” she replies. “There are sores on my nipples but I don’t feel them. I don’t feel the fire burning my feet, or the nails in my palms…”
“Pah, promises, indeed,” the little man chuckles. “From afar I shall tempt you to abandon every promise you have ever made. Come to me. I too am eternal.”
“I hear music,” Boston Boy interrupts.
“Be quiet, my young friend. Listen to it and enjoy it and keep quiet.”
“I see light falling around us.”
“Idiot, you see nothing of the kind. No one is talking to you.”
“Herr Urs, you have told me of my temptations. My homeland. My blood, my imagination and my memory, even my love. Tell me … No, excuse me. That’s the master of ceremonies’ line.”
“Fool, imbecile, you have no right to ask questions now. You have been condemned.”
“I? And what of you, who infected me?”
“As he has infected every servile bellhop who stands in the lobby of every hotel awaiting his precious tip,” pronounces Judge Morgana, advancing.
“As he has infected every teenage Fascist who stands, disguised as a Tyrolean youth or a Bavarian maiden, on the German frontier with a fistful of shuttlecocks that he throws at passing cars in order to preserve the memory of Germany’s greatness and the hope that she will be great again, that the little map of Germany today will become once again the map of Germany’s vast dream.” Jakob holds White Rabbit tight in his arms. “Tell me,” he says to her softly, “where was your home?”
“In Holland, sir. Father. John. Vacation. We will take the train and go on a long vacation.”
“And you?” to Morgana.
“From beyond the Oder, sir. We had traveled south, also by train, to Czechoslovakia, and as I was getting down from the truck that took us to the fortress, I dropped my doll and its head broke. I remember I cried. Someone touched my head.”
“And you?” to Rose Ass.
“Bratislava, on the Danube. I can hardly remember it. I was a child. The dogs were howling. It was cold. They undressed us and separated us and someone made a bitter joke, Arbeit Macht Kalt.”
“And I? I the son of Hanna Werner who died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz in October 1944? I, her son Jakob, who at the age of two weeks was sent from Terezin to Treblinka? And you, the rest of you, the chorus of the children’s opera at Theresienstadt, didn’t you admire the efficiency and dedication of your captors? Weren’t you pleased by the excellent construction of your prisons? Didn’t you feel warm and protected by your guards’ fanatic attention to the least detail? Could you ever point accusingly to the slightest want of foresight, to the slightest frivolity in the treatment you received? My God, what did you want? To live in a cell built by Franz Jellinek was to be safer than on a Lufthansa flight.”
“Bah!” snorts Herr Urs. “The ghetto has contaminated all of you. And the infection of the ghetto is real infection.” His hands are out of my control now. They touch the keyboard of an invisible piano, trip off grotesque fluttering arpeggios, strike violent chords, tap a sentimental melody. “Neurosis was born in the ghetto. By fear out of ridicule.” He stares at his fingernails and becomes silent Tired-eyed White Rabbit, sitting now beside the fireplace, exhausted but serene, wrapped like a magician in her opulent robes, finally looks at him neither afraid nor attracted:
“No. You don’t understand anything. The ghetto taught us that nothing ever ends. Nothing is ever resolved. Everything has to be lived and relived and relived, over and over, again and again.”
“Yes. You may be right.” The little man on my knee is becoming every moment softer, yet more rigid, between my supporting hands. “Just once, only once, my dear friends, I myself lost my calm patience and succumbed to the temptation to live life over again.” I set him down on the floor and his legs double under him like rags. “Pride blinded me. Just once, to be sure, yet that was enough. Before that I had lived with true humility. But that one time, having flesh, I was weak. I wanted an immediate demonstration of my powers. I betrayed my role, which ought to have been one of simple, steadfast waiting. The role of pride so strong it could survive by itself alone, supported by no act, by nothing.” I raise his arms over his head and make him walk, feebly, tottering, an infant of twelve or thirteen months, toward the trunk. “I decided to take the chance. To die simply that I might return to life on the third day and prove who I was, that there was at least one other Savior, not merely one.” I lead him to the trunk and wrap him in the red silk coverlet. “And on the third day, I did indeed rise. I came out of the refrigerator and took some pills and went back to my room and covered myself with my sheet, my face with a pillow. And waited. And now … Gute Nacht, meine Herren und Damen. Ich muss Caligari werden. Ich muss nach Hause gehen.” I cover the yellow face of Herr Urs von Schnepelbrücke with a little cloak.
The only requiem is spoken by Boston Boy: “No man has a claim on eternity. Yet our every action demands no less.” He turns and faces Jakob. “Wasn’t I a man in spite of everything? If I was inhuman, nevertheless didn’t I go on being a man? Whom do I harm today? The scar on my soul has healed. A soul of jelly, like Javier’s, is far more guilty than mine. Forgive the great dreams, brothers, and punish the foolish little naps. Brothers, brothers, hasn’t twenty years with a clean conscience been enough to earn forgiveness for what was at most a guilt of abstention, a submission to a temptation which I swear I never clearly understood?”
Judge Morgana laughs dryly. “Sure, man, sure. Go back. You’ll be honored by the whole nation.”
“Go back,” says Rose Ass. “You’ll be given a job at Krupp.”
“Or at Farben,” chimes Jakob.
“Or maybe in the Bundeswehr,” says White Rabbit.
“Why even go so far?” booms Brother Thomas’s bass. “Just head north to Laredo and cross the border. That’s where the busy factories are today. You can get yourself a job making napalm or detergents that wipe away the color of the skin.”
“On the contrary, he must go further,” Jakob says. “Duty itself calls. More strategic hamlets are needed in Vietnam. The accused is efficient. He’s careful. He executes orders with energy and precision. Such professionalism is invaluable. He is needed urgently in all the prisons and death rows and crematoriums that still must be built. In Cambodia. In Laos. In Peru. In the Congo. In Mexico. In Spain. In South Carolina. Oh, there is a world of building yet to be done. The labor of organizing isolation remains. To be concluded in his image and semblance. A great work, one that requires men of dedication and responsibility. Before the end of the century the entire world must become one single vast concentration camp. Each individual citizen must become a black star wandering through black space, isolated and alone and giving off light, if at all, only invisibly. The accused faces a bounteous future indeed.”