The servants poured them some more peppermint tea.
Awromele was sitting on the other side of the low table. He looked proudly and longingly at Xavier. He would have liked to take him in his arms right then and tell him how much he loved him, but he knew this wasn’t the moment for expressions of tenderness.
On the table, beside a candlestick and a plate full of grapes, was King David. Wherever ha-Radek went, he always took King David with him.
The leader of Hamas had already looked at the jar with interest a few times.
“So let’s talk about death,” Xavier said, putting some grapes in his mouth. “What is death? Scholars say: nothingness. And they are probably right about that. But death does spread fear. That’s why death is nothingness only to those who are already dead. For the living, death is always present, like a mother who keeps her eye on you.”
The leader of Hamas put a grape in his mouth as well; he liked grapes, he liked all kinds of fruit. He often skipped dinner completely and ate only tropical fruit. He looked at the jar again; he couldn’t see it particularly well, but, still, it intrigued him, that testicle. He was old and tired; in the course of his life, he had seen almost everything, but never a testicle in a jar. He had dedicated his entire life to a struggle in which he barely believed anymore, even though he would never admit that, not even to his closest associates, his political heir-apparent, his family. Without that struggle he was nothing, and he didn’t want to be nothing. He had been that already, and he had no desire to return to that state. To be dead was one thing, but to be alive and still not add up to anything — never again.
Xavier leaned back. After all these years in the Holy Land, he still hadn’t become accustomed to the heat. He closed his eyes tightly, opened them again, and looked at the leader of Hamas. He liked him. The leader had eaten his fill, and Xavier liked people who enjoyed eating.
“I’ll speak honestly with you, the same way I speak to my friend here, and to my advisers,” Xavier said. He wiped his forehead; the heat was tiring him out. “It’s hard for me to take,” he said, “the heat. I’m sorry. I was born and raised in Basel. Couldn’t Theodor Herzl have picked out a place with a milder climate than this?”
The leader smiled graciously. He knew Basel; he had been there once, years ago, when he was still young. To silence a helper who had turned informant. But he had taken pity on him. He hadn’t killed him. He had simply deep-fried his feet. In the end, he always took pity, that’s why he wasn’t suited for fieldwork. Directing people — that was where his abilities lay, he was better at that. Although he had his doubts about that now as well. “I know the city,” he said. “Basel. Lovely town. I was there once. We do business with Switzerland.”
“Who doesn’t?” Xavier said. “The Swiss banking system brings us all together. Yes, Basel. Have you been there often?”
“Once or twice,” the leader said. “But only on business.”
Xavier nodded. The leader thought about all the times the Zionists had tried to infiltrate his movement. If you wanted to prevent infiltration, you couldn’t show pity, you had to eradicate the informants root and branch, but he had always felt pity for them. He had fried where he should have killed. That was why he had applied himself increasingly to office work, to the logistical preparations for their operations, to finances.
“What I had started to say,” Xavier continued, “is that I have no secrets from you. I don’t want to have secrets from you. That’s the only way for us to get any further. There is a collection of meaningless pain. That collection is also referred to as mankind. But all pain begs for meaning. That is why there is religion, that’s why there is art. I used to paint, so I know what I’m talking about. I made dozens, hundreds of portraits of my mother with my testicle in her hand. But back then the world wasn’t ready for that yet.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the leader of Hamas said. He had written poems as a young man. He had been just as much a lover of beauty as Xavier was. But now he was tired. Though he longed to work on a poem again, his vision was failing. His eyes were getting worse all the time, and that made it look as though the world was going backwards, getting smaller all the time, withering away, until it became only the things he knew by heart, the bathroom in his house, his office, the path from the bed to the toilet.
“No need to be sorry,” Xavier said. “That’s how things go. Would you like some more tea?”
The leader shook his head. He’d already had four cups of peppermint tea; more than that would be bad for his stomach.
“Art lends meaning to pain,” Xavier said. “You know that. You can call God art as well, it makes no difference to me. All art is God, and God is all art. There is no Godless art. There is only bad art, and art that is far ahead of its day. Like the paintings I made of my mother with testicle, for example. They weren’t appreciated at the Rietveld Academy, because the people there were narrow-minded, locked up in something I prefer not to honor with a name.”
Xavier had risen to his feet; he shook his fist now and paced back and forth. “I know what I’m talking about,” he shouted. “I painted, I lived for art. I know how narrow-minded and prejudiced they were, the anti-Semites of the Rietveld Academy. Those homophobes, those frustrated bureaucrats who could do nothing themselves but macramé.”
“Take it easy,” Awromele said. “Xavier, calm down, now. This gentleman isn’t interested in the Rietveld Academy, this gentleman came here to talk about a truce.”
Xavier walked over to Awromele and ran his hand through his hair. As a campaign manager he had been creative, and he was still one of Xavier’s best advisers; his loyalty was unswerving. In fact, Awromele was the only person Xavier trusted. Ha-Radek discussed all important decisions with Awromele. Not that he always followed Awromele’s advice, but he talked to him about everything. In the shower, in bed, while they were walking their dogs. Xavier had bought two German shepherds — to keep himself company when Awromele couldn’t say no again. Then he would let them into the bedroom. They would hop up onto the bed, and Xavier would scratch them behind the ears until he fell asleep. By the time Awromele got home, the bed would be covered in dog hair, but that was something Awromele would just have to get used to.
“We should get to know each other a little better,” Xavier said, sitting down again. “That makes things a lot easier. How many children do you have?”
“Twenty-four,” the leader of Hamas said quietly, and he looked at Awromele again. He saw only a silhouette. That was enough. This Awromele was interesting, but the prime minister annoyed him. His own movement was full of young men with more ambition than effectiveness, and they were lazy, that above all, simply lazy. Spoiled, loudmouthed, without creativity, without real idealism. Even those who were prepared to die did so often out of laziness.
“Twenty-four,” Xavier said. “That’s a fine number. But what I wanted to say to you is this: politics is an extension of art. Politics is art that doesn’t withdraw to some protected nature reserve. Politics is art that doesn’t run away from responsibility.”
Xavier took a big gulp of water. He leaned back on the cushions for a moment, then sat up straight again. He looked at Awromele. It was for him that he was sitting in this farmhouse in the desert, it was for him that he had come to this country. For him. Xavier had no regrets, but sometimes he needed to remind himself of that.
“You send your boys to the supermarket,” he said, “to a hotel, a bus, a roadblock, a pizzeria. They go on their way, full of high spirits. Their parents don’t know about it, because when you’re young and adventuresome your parents never know what you’re doing. I know how that goes. My own parents didn’t know a thing, nothing. I was swimming in the Rhine with Zionists when other kids were reading Donald Duck. But, okay, they get themselves something to eat, your boys, or girls, they drink a little water, and then they explode. Some people call it terrorism, others call it a legitimate act of resistance. Let’s call it kinetic theater. Without art, there is no meaning.”