“Maybe I should go with you sometime when you can’t say no,” Xavier said, rubbing his hand over his cheek. The wound had healed, but it had left a big scar that Awromele said made Xavier even better-looking. “Maybe that would make it easier. Maybe I should see you when you’re with the others. Then I wouldn’t have to imagine what you’re doing with them — I’d see it, and then it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Maybe,” Awromele said. “Maybe.”
Xavier’s nail clippings were lying on a piece of toilet paper. Awromele examined the clippings, picked them up, and put them in his mouth for a moment; he was curious about how they tasted. “What I have to sell,” Awromele said, “is my youth, my flesh, the lack of wrinkles, my hair. And there’s always something you have to sell, you always have to sell something. Only when you stop selling things does loneliness become something to be ashamed of. But you, you have more to sell than just your youth and your flesh, Xavier. That’s why I don’t say no. Because I don’t want to say no, because you have something to sell that I don’t, because someday you’ll betray me. That’s why.”
“But what do I have,” Xavier asked, “that you don’t? What?”
“Talent,” Awromele said.
Xavier laughed; the clippings on the piece of toilet paper fell to the floor. “They didn’t think so at the Rietveld Academy; they thought I should open a flower shop.”
“Maybe it’s not a talent for painting,” Awromele said. “I don’t know. I know that I can’t imagine being anyone else but this, the Jew who can’t say no. That’s who I am, that’s who I should be. But you can be someone else, and you will become someone else. You can make other people believe in your transformation. That’s talent, and I don’t have that. In the end, all I want is a house, just a house, it doesn’t matter where; I want to sit with you in a living room and cut your nails. But you’ll always want more than that. That’s why I don’t say no, because it’s the only way to make sure you don’t lose interest. Only as long as I don’t say no, only as long as I sell myself, will you still long for me.”
“But, dearest,” Xavier said, pulling off Awromele’s underpants. “I won’t betray you. You don’t have to sell yourself to other people, you don’t have to go with them. I don’t amount to anything.”
And then Awromele cooed, and Xavier took him. As he thrust himself into him, he thought about what Awromele had just said. He saw his mother with the knife, standing in her kitchen, talking about rat poison.
“Come on,” Awromele said after they had rested for a while. “Let’s translate a little Mein Kampf. We were always so good at that together.”
IN ISRAEL THERE were no longer books by Schiller in their bookcase, but King David had received a place of honor. King David no longer had his picture painted: Xavier had stopped painting. But he still looked at his testicle often, and he talked to him, too. During a crash course at Bar-Ilan University, Xavier worked on his Hebrew. Soon he spoke it even better than Awromele. In order to improve his writing skills, he sent letters to the editors of Israeli newspapers. Yediot Achronot printed his first one, dealing with draft exemption for Orthodox Jewish men.
That encouraged him to write more letters. He expressed his views on all kinds of issues, ranging from traffic congestion in downtown Tel Aviv to the peace process to the privatization of state-owned companies. The less he meant it, the better he wrote about it. In one way, the opinion of his teachers at the Rietveld had been borne out: he found work as a photographer. First he worked for a small Russian-language paper, later as a wedding photographer as well. He made a reputation for himself in Tel Aviv and the surroundings.
He began pulling in a lot of assignments, so many that he had to turn some of them down. Word-of-mouth advertising worked very well indeed. Here and there, people whispered about his sexual preferences, but his charm, his bearing, his competitive prices, and his hypnotic brown eyes silenced all backbiting. Before long, he was receiving assignments from high-circulation magazines, glossies, daily papers. People were very pleased with his capabilities as a photographer.
During an assignment dealing with local corruption, he met a councilman from the Likud Party. The councilman, who thought Xavier was a nice fellow, asked him: “Couldn’t you do a nice portrait of me? I’m not pleased with ones that have been done so far. You’re a sharp kid — I think you know what I mean. A picture should spruce things up a bit, or at least not make things worse than they already are.”
Xavier hired a studio and did a fine portrait of the politician.
After the shooting session, the councilman talked to the photographer and became even more impressed by his abilities. The politician considered himself someone with a nose for talent, and even though he had gone bankrupt three times before starting a career in politics, this time his nose for talent didn’t fail him.
“How would you like to write a speech for me?” he suggested. “No strings attached, of course.”
The speech Xavier wrote made the national papers. From that day on, Xavier began writing speeches more often. Not only for the councilman, but for other politicians as well. He began to see a way in which he might comfort the Jews. The fact that Awromele often did not come home at night still caused him pain. But when he was sitting at the window of their dirty little apartment, writing a speech, with King David on the table beside him, he could forget that pain.
“It’s weird,” Xavier told Awromele, “but without King David I can’t write. He gives me inspiration.”
“You shouldn’t be so superstitious,” Awromele said. In Tel Aviv, he had found a job in a supermarket as well. These days he was a checkout assistant.
THE MOTHER REMAINED lying on the kitchen floor, the night she had mixed rat poison into the cake. She lay there silently, panting occasionally like a woman in the pangs of childbirth. After a few hours, at a little past eleven, she went into the living room and cleaned up the mess. She leaned down and looked at Marc. He was cold, and he had changed color. Reminded of her late husband, she said, “Well, there you go again, out cold.”
She cut the rest of the cake into slices and put them on a plate. She took them to the neighbors’, but they didn’t answer the bell — they were probably already asleep.
Then she went to bed herself. She slept soundly, or at least more soundly than usual. She got up the next morning at eight, put on her bathrobe, and went back to the neighbors’ with the cake. She had wrapped the plate in foil to keep it from drying out. It looked good. She had a way with baking.
She rang the bell.
“I made some cake last night,” she said. “There’s still a little left. I thought, well, maybe you’d enjoy it.”
The neighbor, a woman in her late sixties who had never had children and was now living out her twilight years with her husband, peered at the cake, and then at the mother. “My,” she said, “isn’t that kind of you. How lovely.”
“Don’t worry about the plate,” the mother said. “I’ll get it back some other time.” She placed the cake in the neighbor lady’s speckled hands.
Then the mother went back to her own house. She felt better than she had in ages. She felt satisfied. In the kitchen, she took off all her clothes and examined her body, to see where her lover hadn’t taken her yet. There were still so many places left untouched.
Two days later, just as she was sliding an apple pie into the oven, they came for her. She put a few clothes in a suitcase, turned off the oven and the pilot light in the gas heater.