Atop a dresser in his bedroom lay the translation of the book by You-Know-Who. He still worked on it in his free time, along with Awromele. The end was in sight, though it had taken them a long time. His free hours were limited.
“Xavier,” Awromele called out to him from the big bed. “What are you doing? Why don’t you get some sleep?”
Xavier didn’t reply. He looked at the snow: he pressed his nose against the windowpane and looked at the mark his nose had made.
It had been a month or two since he had called the mother. Not that she had said anything. She was living in a nursing home these days. The nurse who came on the line brought him up-to-date on the situation that hadn’t changed in years. The mother didn’t talk to anyone, she remained silent. But she ate well, she was strong. She, too, unlike her father, had proved to be a survivor.
Awromele got out of bed, put on the slippers Xavier had given him two years ago at Hanukkah, and came over to stand beside him. He was wearing light blue pajamas. “What is it?” Awromele asked. “Why are you standing here? It’s the middle of the night.”
“I’m looking at the snow,” Xavier said.
Awromele looked, too, but snow didn’t interest him. Then Awromele said: “There’s something wrong. I know you. I can tell when there’s something wrong.” He put his arm around Xavier.
“I’ve mastered this,” Xavier said quietly. “All of this, the politics, this life, I can do it, I know how it works. I’ve carried out negotiations, I’ve dragged art out of its preserve, I’ve raised the body counts and lowered them again. I know it like the back of my hand, this life. But it’s not enough.” He turned around. “It’s nothing, Awromele. This, here, is less than nothing. Art gives meaning to pain. But is this meaning? And is this pain? And if it isn’t pain, then what is it? I’m afraid of becoming embittered, and I don’t want that. My father was embittered. I don’t want to end up like him. That’s not why I came here, that’s not why I achieved what I’ve achieved.”
“Well, then, what do you want?” Awromele asked. “What do you want? You’re trembling.”
“It’s cold,” Xavier said. “I want to astonish people.”
Awromele looked at him. The man with whom he had gone to the Venice of the North and then, albeit unwillingly, followed to the Promised Land. The man whose campaign manager he had become, for whom he had come up with slogans the way he had once come up with jokes while stocking shelves, the man with whom he had stayed despite his inability to say no. He tugged on Xavier’s ear, tickled his neck, and kissed spots he had kissed before. “You’ve astonished me,” he said. “Me.”
“You? You’re my friend. You’re only one person. That’s not enough. One person is nothing.”
“Put something on, you’ll catch cold.” Awromele rubbed Xavier’s back and put his hand under Xavier’s T-shirt. He felt moles, thicker than the rest of the skin. He knew them the way a person knows a hotel room in which, owing to circumstances beyond his control, he’s been living for the last eighteen months.
“Start a flower shop — that’s what they said. But is this really so different from a flower shop? I send soldiers to their deaths, children, families. I feel nothing. It’s as though I’m arranging flowers and cutting off the dead leaves. I know what to say, what to cover up, I play the game better than the rest, I know the pitfalls. I could go on like this for years, but when I came here I had something else in mind. Is this it, Awromele, is this what happens when you drag art out of its seedy preserve? When I was still painting, thoughts like that never bothered me. I had hope; I was a different person.”
Awromele grabbed Xavier by the shoulders, the way you grab hold of a child. “Stop talking about art and preservation all the time. That nice Hamas man can’t stand listening to it either, anymore. Just stop thinking about it. It only makes you sad, and other people have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“They know exactly what I’m talking about,” Xavier said, yanking himself free.
But Awromele wasn’t about to be put off. Gently, he began kissing Xavier on the neck.
“They know exactly what I’m talking about. They understand me perfectly, the ones who need to understand me. You remember when you told me why you couldn’t say no? Because I would betray you, that’s what you said. Because I had something you didn’t. That’s why you had to go with everyone who wanted you, that’s why you couldn’t say no, because I had talent. Is this talent, Awromele? Look around you — is this talent? Is this what it does to you? Is that what it makes of you?”
“You’re blathering,” Awromele said, and he caressed Xavier more firmly. The way he used to caress him. “We weren’t going to feel anything. That’s why we were able to stay together, that’s why we stayed together. Don’t feel anything. You promised. There’s nothing else you have to do. Feel nothing. That’s surviving.”
“What do I need to do?” Xavier asked.
“What do you mean? Right now?”
“No, not now. It’s nighttime now. What do I need do in order to leave the world behind different from the way I found it? Because, if I don’t do that, I haven’t comforted anyone, and then we could just as well have stayed in the Venice of the North, with a flower shop, or maybe two.”
“Go back to bed. You’ll get sick.”
Xavier shook his head. “Just take a look,” he said. “Look at who we’ve become.”
“Who have we become? I see the same thing I’ve been seeing for years, what I saw when I first met you, at lunch at my parents’ house on the Sabbath. That’s all I see.” Awromele squeezed the back of Xavier’s neck, and Xavier shivered even more, as though he had come down with a fever.
“It stinks in here,” Xavier said. “Don’t you smell it? What kind of cleanser do they use when they clean this place? Or is it you? Is it your deodorant? The stench is driving me crazy.”
Awromele ran his fingers through Xavier’s hair. It didn’t matter what Xavier said; he was used to his tantrums, with the smashed furniture, the torn clothing, and the vases thrown across the room. “You haven’t been getting enough sleep lately,” he said. “You’ve had a hectic program these last few weeks, all those foreign ministers coming to visit. It would drive me crazy, too. You just need to take it a little easier.”
“No,” Xavier said, “that’s nonsense — too hectic, take it a little easier. Listen to you spouting clichés. Nothing but laziness, like something out of the self-help books. The point is not to compete with the mediocre. Competing with the mediocre is only an alternative form of being dead. You have to compete with the ones who have really made a mark on this world, the ones who left it behind different from the way they found it.”
“But you’ll leave me behind different from when you found me,” Awromele said. “Can’t you see that? Isn’t that enough?” He stopped running his fingers through Xavier’s hair; he took off his pajamas. “Take me,” Awromele said. “Then you can feel that I’m here. Take me the way you used to, right after we met.”
“But I don’t know if I’m here,” Xavier said. “I don’t know.” He looked at the secret-service man who was walking through the garden. It was still snowing. What’s that man doing there? he thought. Why can’t they ever leave me alone? Why do they have to walk through my garden when I’m trying to look at the snow? Why are they always there? “You once told me,” Xavier said, “that loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of. Do you remember that?”
“Yes, of course I remember that,” Awromele whispered. “I remember everything, but let’s not talk about that again, not now, not tonight.”
“The only thing I see anymore is the shame,” Xavier said. “That’s the only thing I see. No matter where I go, wherever I am, whatever bed I lie in, whoever I’m with, whatever Cabinet minister I talk to, whatever general comes to talk to me, I see the shame, I smell the shame, I taste it, even when I’m eating. And why is that man walking through my garden? Is that security? Is that what they call security these days, a little walk around the garden?”