She had already decided once, and walked away, but she wasn’t satisfied with what she’d chosen, and so she came back. Besides, her mother was still in the bathroom, freshening up.
HE HAD CALLED his dogs; he had petted them, scratched them behind the ears, held their muzzles up to his face, tasted the dried slobber around their mouths. “Saul,” he had said, “Jacob. You’re so thirsty, so terribly thirsty.”
Then he shot them. He had fired at least five times: because he wasn’t a practiced marksman, a few of the shots had missed. He had cut his index finger on the gun.
Then he knelt down beside Awromele, with the translation of the bestseller by You-Know-Who. The work was almost finished. The notebooks, the notes, the footnotes in a separate folder, the things they weren’t sure about, the construction for which they had not been able to find the right words. He had it all with him, held it all in his hands.
“The best way,” he whispered, “to say nothing is not to be silent, but to speak, so I’m going to read to you from our book, the book we translated, because we belonged together. We always did, and now more than ever. I can’t say the prayer for the dead for you, Awromele. The words won’t leave my lips. But I miss you already. I miss you so badly.”
He buried his face in the formless mass, all that was left of Awromele’s body.
“This is the only prayer I’ll say for you,” he said. Then he opened the manuscript. He saw Awromele’s handwriting, and began reading aloud from the Yiddish translation of the Book of Books. Occasionally he stopped, opened his mouth wide, and howled at the ceiling like a crazed animal.
“Dos lebn wos a jid firt afn kerper foen andere meloeches oen felker, iz di sibe foen a tipisjer ejgnsjaft, wos hot gebracht Sjopenhoiern tsoem friër dermontn sroiszog, az der jid iz der ‘groiser maister foen lign.’ Dem jidns lebnsbadingoengen tswingen im tsoe ot dem lign, oen take tsoe a basjtendikn lign, poenkt azoi wi di lebsnbadingoengen foen mentsjn in kalte raionen tswingen zej tsoe trogn wareme malboesjiem.”*
THEN THE PHONE RANG.
THE TALL BOY, who had become a tall man, had loaded his family, his wife and children, into the jeep. “We’re going into the mountains,” he’d said. “We’ll be safe there.” He had brought along enough food for a month. Cans, cheese, freeze-dried food. Things that couldn’t spoil.
He was already sitting at the wheel when he realized that he hadn’t told his mistress about it, hadn’t said goodbye to her. That wasn’t nice. He suddenly longed for her so badly. He wanted to see her one last time, even if only for a moment, even if it was only for five minutes.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “I forgot something.”
He left the door of the jeep open and began walking hurriedly towards his mistress’s house.
“Don’t take too long,” his wife shouted after him. “Don’t leave us waiting here too long.”
“IT’S TIME,” said the voice on the phone, which he, for a fraction of a second, didn’t quite recognize.
He tilted his head to hold the receiver against his shoulder, and picked up King David. In the white light, the testicle looked bluer than ever.
“Yes,” he said.
The conversation didn’t take long. It didn’t have to take long.
He hung up. “Redeemer,” he whispered to King David. “Redeemer.”
He carried the King over to Awromele’s body, and knelt down with the King beside the translated manuscript by You-Know-Who.
“Listen,” he said, “here it is. ‘A person can easily change languages, that is, he can use another language; but in his new language he will continue to express his old thoughts, his character will not be changed. The clearest demonstration of this can be seen in the Jew, who can speak thousands of languages yet always remains the same Jew.’”
A few minutes to go. He closed the book. The notebooks, the sheets covered in footnotes, he put away.
“I’m going to tell you a fairy tale, Awromele,” he said. “A bedtime story.” He held one of his beloved’s hands, half charred, a hand attached to the arm only by a single strand of flesh.
“My grandfather,” he said, “worked in a place they called ‘the anus of the world.’ And as you know, Awromele, the good comes from the anus. Do you hear me? Just tell me if you can’t hear me. This is your good ear, isn’t it? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. But the anus is everywhere. Wherever you go, it’s there. Whatever direction you start walking, whatever street you turn into, everywhere you go, you run into the anus of the world. It’s always there, everywhere, you can smell it, you can feel it, you can see it. But it’s nothing to be ashamed of, Awromele. Just like loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of. And you don’t have to be afraid. Suffering is the emergency exit of beauty, and we took that emergency exit. We have to learn to speak the language of the future. The language you taught me, Awromele.”
Like a dog, he licked the black, clotted blood from Awromele’s face. “Is this it?” he asked. “Is this the meaning of pain?”
DANICA RAN DOWN the deserted street with her Snoopy pajamas in a plastic bag. Her mother was still in the bathroom. She was putting on her wig.
“WHY AREN’T WE in the shelter?” Rochele’s elder daughter asked.
“Because we’re fine right here,” Rochele said. “Come on, I’ll make some more chocolate milk for the two of you.”
“When’s the pelican coming?” the younger girl asked. She was too tired; she’d been whining for a while.
“In just a little bit,” Rochele said. “When you see him, I want you to shout, Pelican, look at me. You have to stamp your feet on the floor and shout, Pelican, look at me.”
Then Rochele’s two daughters stamped their feet and shouted, “Pelican, look at me!”
HE WAS LYING on Awromele’s body, on what was left of Awromele. The corpses of his dogs were lying a few yards away.
It stank inside the bunker. It stank of old blood, rotting flesh. Almost nothing was working anymore, not even the ventilation. He remembered the teeth of the Armenian who had watched over the synagogue in Baseclass="underline" he remembered the lunch he’d eaten at Awromele’s house; he remembered happiness. It broke him.
“Awromele,” he whispered, holding his friend’s head, a head that was gradually coming loose from the body. Nothing was attached anymore. Awromele had been brought to him as a collection of loose parts. A collection of flesh and bones, wrapped in an old blanket.
“Do you hear the music, Beethoven, Awromele? Everything else has fallen silent, no pleas, no complaints, no declarations of love in which no one believes anymore. Only he speaks. Can you hear it?”
He got up. He was holding the head loosely in his arms; it had no color anymore, it was pure black, from the back, from the front, from the side. He carried it to the table, and sat down beside King David.
He held the head in his lap, rocked it back and forth like a baby that needs to go to sleep. That’s how much he loved this head, even now that it was only a head, without a front or a back, without eyes or ears, a head like a soccer ball.
He had Awromele’s head on his knees, held it with both hands. He hummed for a few moments. Then he stopped and said: “I came to comfort. But the only comfort you people have is destruction.”
He held up the head, pressed it against him, planted hundreds of little kisses on the burned crust. “Awromele,” he said. “Are you listening? Our only comfort is destruction.”
“THERE’S THE PELICAN,” Rochele said. She was standing at the window with her younger daughter on her arm. The little girl’s mouth was brown from the chocolate milk.
“There’s the pelican. You can see him now.”
~ ~ ~