“Where was I?” the architect asked.
“In the Middle Ages,” his wife said, “but you don’t have to drag that into it. Otherwise we’ll be in here all day.”
“The Enlightenment. Yes, that was it. The Enlightenment is not a straight line from point A to point B, Xavier. Are you listening? Sometimes the Enlightenment takes a step back, and then, in the next decade, it takes two steps forward.”
“Lovely, that eucalyptus,” the mother said.
Xavier thought about school. Most of the boys in his class talked about girls all the time, which was not unusual for boys that age, but Xavier thought Jews were a lot more interesting. There, in the sauna, Xavier felt the need to someday cover a Jew in kisses, from head to toe. The thought caused him such anguish, or so much joy, he couldn’t quite say which, that he almost began to weep.
“I’m hot,” Xavier said. “Could we open the door?”
“It’s always hot in the sauna,” the architect said. “That’s what saunas are for. It’s the only way to get all the dirt out of your body. The heat burns the body clean.”
“I feel like my eyebrows are getting scorched,” Xavier said.
“Don’t forget,” the architect said, pulling the towel a little straighter beneath him, “that it wasn’t your grandfather’s first choice. He would much rather have done something else with his life.”
“He would much rather have worked on the land, with cows,” the mother said. “But back in those days, normal, everyday people didn’t run the show.”
“Normal, everyday people still don’t run the show,” her husband chimed in.
“Can’t we talk about this some other time?” Xavier asked. “I feel like my head’s on fire.”
“Your grandpa had to watch over the Jews,” the architect said. “That was all he had to do, watch over them, to make sure they didn’t run away or do crazy things. But because he had so much energy, sometimes he hit one of them.”
“He had a lot of energy,” the mother said. “He was hyperactive. He didn’t need much sleep, either. All he had to do was close his eyes for two or three hours and he was fit as a fiddle. These days, people take pills for that.”
Xavier said nothing. He couldn’t look at the pink sand anymore. He was starting to see things.
“Jogging, for example, didn’t exist back then,” the architect said. “What were people supposed to do with their energy?”
“Could we open the door?” Xavier asked.
“Fitness,” the architect said, “things like that. You’ve never known anything else, Xavier. Today every town, every neighborhood, every village has its own fitness center. But that’s all fairly new. Fitness didn’t exist back then. Can you imagine that? No. We can’t imagine that anymore, any more than we can imagine life without a telephone or television. Even this hotel has a fitness center, and later on we’re going to use it. Right?”
The father thought about Singapore again. Bringing things out in the open wasn’t his favorite activity, but he knew it was necessary at times.
“Sunday,” the mother said, but she choked and couldn’t finish her sentence.
Xavier thought that if he stayed in the sauna any longer he would end up with third-degree burns.
“On Sunday,” the mother said, changing her position, “Sundays, he never beat anyone to death, because he honored the Lord’s day. Even under such extreme conditions.”
“Do you hear that, Xavier?” the architect asked. “Do you hear that?’
No reply came. The son was having visions he couldn’t place, visions that he forgot immediately. All they left him with was a vague, unpleasant feeling, rather like the feeling he’d been left with when he lost his virginity.
The architect said: “If they’d had fitness back then, history would have been very different. People like your grandfather didn’t know what to do with all their excess energy.”
“And he never hit anyone without a reason,” the mother added.
Xavier got up and tried to open the door. But the father slid off his shelf, gave his son a playful punch, and said: “Not yet, buddy. Our fifteen minutes aren’t up yet. Let that sweat pour!”
Xavier sat back down on his towel. After standing up so quickly, he was afraid he was going to pass out. He was dizzy.
I have to spare my parents, Xavier thought, it’s hard enough for them as it is. He took the hand of his father, who was still standing beside the door to make sure it wasn’t opened, and said: “Papa, later on we’re going to have a great workout.” And then he kissed his father’s hand, more times than he could count.
THE FITNESS CENTER wasn’t much bigger than the sauna. Loud, monotonous music was coming from the speakers. The father settled down on a machine where you had to push weights apart. Just to please his parents, the son climbed onto a bicycle. His mother had withdrawn to the solarium. Normally she didn’t like sunlamps much, but since it was included in the price of the room, she thought it would be a waste not to use it.
The father panted. He was wearing knee-length red swimming trunks, and he was pushing the weights apart with abandon. He, too, had surplus energy.
Xavier loved his father, even though he had never been able to find the words to say so, even though he had never found access to gestures that would make that clear. But he felt it, even now, seeing his father panting away in the fitness center — even now, although Xavier had to admit that his pity for this man seemed greater than the peculiar business they called love.
The father got up from the machine and poured himself a glass of water. His body was drenched in sweat.
“If they’d had fitness fifty years ago,” he said, “the concentration camps would have been gigantic fitness centers where the Jews could have worked off their excess fat. Believe me, if fitness had been invented a little earlier, history would have looked very different.”
Xavier climbed off his bicycle, walked over to his father, and embraced his wet body. You couldn’t actually call it suffering, not yet, but he did feel something. Something to which could you could really only react with animal growling, or with a knife. Xavier discovered that it was easier to feel alive when you were in pain.
“Come on,” his father said, “let’s see how your mother’s doing.”
Her feet were sticking out from under the sunlamps.
The father lifted the lid.
His wife was lying there, naked, with a cloth covering her eyes like a corpse. She was startled. “Are you having a nice roast?” the architect asked.
“I took off my bathing suit,” she said. “Otherwise you can see the lines, and I think that’s so ugly.”
She got up and pulled her bathing suit on quickly. It was a blue one, with fish on it.
THAT EVENING, the Radeks dined in the hotel restaurant, by candlelight.
“If people would talk to each other more,” the father said, “there wouldn’t be any war. The only thing to do about it is talk to your enemy. Lay your cards on the table, the way we did today. If that would take place on a large scale, peace would have a chance. If the Jews had talked to the Germans, man-to-man, without starting to shout right away, peace would have had a chance.”
He took his wife’s hand and patted it softly. On his lap lay a pink napkin.
Like Hotcakes
LESS THAN FOUR WEEKS after the family talk in the sauna, Xavier’s parents split up. Without fighting, without screaming or making a scene.
One afternoon, when Xavier got home from school, his mother had disappeared, taking along her dearest, most valuable possessions. Lying on the table was a typewritten note in which she simply expressed the hope that now everyone would be happier.