“So your Redeemer lives in a jar,” the leader of Hamas whispered. He felt how warm Awromele’s face was, he felt the stubble of his beard, the sweat, the lips, the eyebrows.
“Fine,” Xavier said as the Hamas leader’s hands moved over Awromele’s features, “all right, we’ll round it off. Twenty-five a month. And then not all of them in Israel, but also the occasional synagogue in Rome, or Istanbul, or Vancouver. Scattering. Wherever art has locked itself up to languish away like a sick dog, it must be dragged from its preserve. The EU and the States know about it, and they say scattering is fine. But everything in moderation. No need for the whole thing to explode. Because then people won’t go shopping anymore. Scaring them a little, okay, that’s the task of art. Teaching the audience to shiver a little, to wipe the smile off the participant’s face, but the rest still have to be able to leave their homes and go shopping. So things can’t get out of hand. Are you listening to me?”
The leader of Hamas leaned over and kissed Awromele. First on the cheek and at the base of his neck, then on the mouth. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked between kisses. “That I kiss your friend?”
“No, of course not,” Xavier said. “Go right ahead. You are my guest. Besides, he can’t say no. And you are an artist, I admit that freely. You are my opponent, but I am not blind to creativity.”
Then Xavier fell silent and watched as the leader of Hamas kissed Awromele. He thought: Why can’t he say no? What’s the real reason why he can’t say no? I must ask him, before it’s too late.
His hands shaking, the leader of Hamas fumbled at the buttons of Awromele’s shirt, but because he was so nearsighted Awromele had to help him.
The leader of Hamas smelled Awromele, the aroma of young life, the odor of youth — yes, that was it, there was nothing but beauty and softness, that’s what life boiled down to when you started seeing less and less. And beauty and softness together, that was youth. His hand slid over Awromele’s bare stomach. He thought about Basel again for a moment. Long ago, after the operation he had not fully completed, he had visited a strange massage parlor. It had been recommended to him. But this was much better. This was lively, wistful. All true lust was bound together with wistfulness. At the massage parlor, the wistfulness had been eradicated by money. Did beauty have any greater enemy than money?
“How many deaths will that involve, then, on our side?” he whispered.
“We’re sticking to a ratio of one to three,” Xavier stated. “We’ve stuck to that for years; it’s a ratio we can work with. The United States and the EU have also let me know that they can live with that. Chaos in moderation perpetuates power, so that’s my offer: twenty-five.”
No answer came. The leader of Hamas had buried his face in Awromele’s warm torso. He kissed it, he licked off the sweat; it almost made him cry, it was so sweet. There was something about youth that made all politics futile, that made all power pale, that reduced all ambition to a tiring, almost superfluous affair.
“Thirty-five,” the leader cried, his hands running over Awromele’s trousers and thighs. “I have to take my constituency into account.” He felt Awromele’s buttocks. They were hard; he liked that. Not those flabby, gelatinous buttocks — they had to be hard.
“Twenty-eight,” Xavier shouted. “Because I’m out of my mind, because I want only the best for you.”
“Mmm,” the leader said. He murmured something Xavier couldn’t understand, and pulled with trembling fingers at Awromele’s zipper.
“Twenty-nine,” Xavier whispered, “twenty-nine a month.”
“Thirty,” said the leader, his hand in the underpants now.
There he had the sex organ. He could barely see it, but he felt it growing in his hand. How lovely it was. He was breathing heavily.
“Thirty,” Xavier cried. “Thirty, it’s a deal. Thirty a month, that’s decent, that’s respectable. And the States and the EU are behind us all the way. I tell you this in all confidence. They sent their envoys to tell me: don’t mess around with us on this one. No experiments. Chaos in moderation is good for all.”
“I want to see your ass,” the leader of Hamas whispered. And while Awromele was pulling off his gym socks, the leader said: “The interpreters can leave now. Now there’s no need for us to understand each other any longer.”
“Go away,” Xavier told the interpreters. “Go away. Can’t you see that our guest no longer needs you?”
Xavier paced the room with a bunch of grapes in his hand. “A flower shop,” he mumbled, “I bet they’re sorry about that now, and they’ll be even sorrier.” Occasionally he stopped pacing to look at Awromele and the leader of Hamas. How the leader pushed his way into Awromele and grew wild, almost youthful.
And Xavier wondered where the jealousy was, where the pain remained, the uncontrollable rage, the overpowering sense of loss.
But he understood that what was happening now was perpetuating his power. That made up for everything.
The Unjustly Neglected Principles of Streicher and Himmler
ALTHOUGH HE HIMSELF would never have admitted it, after years of chaos in moderation, electoral victories, crises, and power that had been increasingly perpetuated, ha-Radek began tiring of politics. He had learned Arabic, he had brought down Cabinets, he had campaigned and been re-elected, he had been maligned but re-elected nonetheless, yet still he missed something. And that missing became increasingly active; it grew like a wound that becomes more inflamed with each passing day.
The number of people who saw King David as the Redeemer no longer increased, but it didn’t decrease, either. And those who did believe in the King did so with a rare fire and conviction. Children wrote letters to King David, grown-ups prayed to him, and photos and drawings of King David hung on the walls of living rooms and bedrooms all over the world.
After years of tenderness and tenderness deferred — Awromele still couldn’t say no, but he always came back, even if it meant coming back from Cape Town — after all those years, Xavier lay in bed one night and dreamed of his grandfather, in the uniform he had once found so manly.
It was February, and it was snowing in Jerusalem, a rare event. And snow that fell and did not melt right away was rarer still. Xavier awoke. He looked to see whether Awromele was lying beside him. He was. That happened more and more frequently lately; it was almost as though Awromele had finally learned to say no. Xavier got up and went to the window to look at the snow. His official residence in Jerusalem had a little garden that he never used. His two dogs were the only ones who ever walked around in it.
He stared at the snow. He was feared, hated, and, by those who believed in King David, loved as well, yet he still had to admit that when it came to comforting he had made little headway. He could no longer blame it on the need to keep perpetuating his power. Power could never become much more perpetual than his. He was a master in the creation, manipulation, and control of seemingly boundless chaos, but that mastery no long produced happiness or excitement, only a dull sense of reluctance at best. He had already taken every step; his speeches reminded him of speeches he had made years ago, only in a different form. He had seen opponents come and go. He had survived attacks on his life. He was still there. In this world of eternal struggle, ha-Radek was a survivor, there was no denying that. His grandfather would have been proud of him.