That evening, the father shed a few tears.
Two days later, he told his son: “I’ve spoken to your mother. It seems best to me that the two of you stay together. You two need each other the most. And I’m out of the country so often. They need me again in Singapore — I’ll be leaving in ten days.”
To get over the divorce, his father began staying in Singapore for increasingly long periods of time, much longer than necessary. There he had himself massaged by Asians of all genders and ages. In a Buddhist magazine he read that massage frees the soul from the body, so he started saying to himself, before going to the massage parlor, “I’m going to church.”
Xavier searched the house where he was born and had lived for sixteen years to see whether the pictures of his grandfather, and the book, were still there. But his mother had taken them with her.
WITH THE HELP of her ex, the mother and Xavier found a neat apartment in another part of Basel. The kitchen had recently been refurbished and had all the amenities. To get over the divorce, she bought new towels, a famous Italian brand.
The mother and Xavier didn’t remain alone for long. After a couple of weeks, Marc, a soundman at a Swiss radio station, moved in with them.
Marc had hair down over his ears, which he tied back in a pigtail when he was working. He came from a little village in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, but had been unable to find work there. His passion was the flight simulator. His computer had a program that provided him with the illusion of piloting a Boeing 737. Every free moment he had, he spent at the computer. He never grew tired of it. Sometimes he offered Xavier a chance to fly the Boeing as well, but Xavier was not particularly interested in aircraft. Her new boyfriend’s passion, the mother felt, had a calming influence. All the more because he treated her in bed with the same tenderness, amazement, and stamina that he applied to his flight simulator.
ONE FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Xavier’s girlfriend, Bettina, said, “I feel sorry for you, about your parents’ breaking up.”
“It’s no big deal,” Xavier said. He was sitting on her bed, rubbing his hands together. “My mother has a new boyfriend, Marc. He’s nice — a little younger than my mother, but you’d never notice. And my father was away from home too much anyway.”
“I still feel sorry for you,” Bettina said. Her voice grew wistful, which her voice often did, especially when talk turned to India.
She pushed her face into Xavier’s lap, unbuttoned his cotton trousers (Xavier was allergic to wool), and provided him with his first experience with oral sex.
“I never do that kind of thing,” she said when it was over. “This is only the second time. Just so you don’t think I’m, well, you know.”
Then she told him that her family had adopted another village in India, and that donations were still welcome.
From a sense of duty, Xavier signed the papers again in triplicate, complete with his bank-account number.
“You’re a fantastic sponsor,” Bettina said. She stretched her arms lazily. Then she squeezed some toothpaste onto a toothbrush and began brushing her teeth, looking in the mirror as she did so.
“It’s nothing, really,” Xavier said. “Like you said, two glasses of wine a month, no more than that.”
“But you’re still the sweetest sponsor I’ve got,” Bettina repeated, her mouth full of foam. “I have other sponsors, but they’re not nearly as sweet as you. With you, I have the feeling that you really care about India.”
He waited until she had finished brushing, which took a long time. Bettina was a conscientious girl.
She gave him a quick goodbye peck on his freshly shaven cheek and said: “Thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it,” Xavier said.
She didn’t seem to be listening; she picked up her hole punch and filed away the papers Xavier had signed.
And so it happened that, before the age of seventeen, Xavier had adopted two villages in India.
ON A WINDY AUTUMN DAY, after Xavier had read in a local newspaper that the grant money from the city of Basel for a new Jewish community center was still missing, an article that included a brief quote from Awromele’s father, he went with Awromele to meet Mr. Schwartz.
The Yiddish lessons were coming along nicely, but Awromele had hinted a few times that it might be a good idea to take care of the circumcision first, before going any further with the Yiddish.
The divorce had complicated things as well. Not that it cost Xavier much time, but he’d had to get used to the idea of seeing his father only one weekend a month, and to spending almost every evening at the table with Marc, who kept trying to talk him into trying out the flight simulator.
And then there was Bettina, whom he courted primarily in order to make his parents happy. Sometimes his mother asked, “How is Bettina doing?” But his father couldn’t even remember her name. On the phone he would occasionally mumble: “Are you still seeing that girl? What’s her name again?” His interest in his son seemed limited to a vague regret at ever having sired a child at all. But perhaps it was more a matter of melancholy than of regret.
While his parents were busy building up new lives, Xavier was thinking about the task he had assigned himself, the comforting of the Jews. The human urge is always to concretize the abstract, so what he usually ended up thinking about was Awromele — even when he was with Bettina, or eating olives on the patio at the wine bar.
Walking beside Awromele on the way to Mr. Schwartz’s house, he was happy but nervous as well. He was afraid of saying the wrong thing, or doing something that would cause him to fall from Awromele’s good graces.
It was that nervousness, that fear of failure, he realized only later, that made him feel he was experiencing life in all its terror. Comforting begins with surrender. And surrendering to life, that was what Xavier wanted to do. He, who was born for more important things than saving up for a washing machine, driving a company car, or flipping through travel-agency catalogues, decided to dedicate the rest of his life to this.
“Have you ever read Mein Kampf?” he asked Awromele.
“No, is it any good?”
“Well, good—‘good’ isn’t really the word for it.”
“So what’s it about?”
“Mein Kampf. You’ve heard of it, haven’t you? Mein Kampf!”
Xavier’s mother always referred to the man who had written that book as “You-Know-Who.” And sometimes his father did as well; when people spend a lot of time together, they often adopt each other’s habits. His mother would say, “You-Know-Who once said…” or “You-Know-Who would never have…” Fortunately, Marc had no idea who You-Know-Who referred to, or perhaps he simply didn’t care. His world was filled with the flight simulator.
“Come on,” Awromele said, “of course. Mein Kampf—so what about it?”
“Well, the thing about it,” Xavier said, still a little amazed, “the thing about it is that it’s, how shall I put it, it’s a disturbing…”
Xavier had read the book listening to klezmer music and lying on his bed. It had been tough going in parts, but he had read on, and his perseverance was rewarded. It had become increasingly compelling and exciting. In his mother’s new apartment, he’d had no trouble finding the photographs and the book, in the bottom drawer of her wardrobe, down there with the towels.
“A disturbing what?”
“A disturbing book. One of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read.”
“Is it a bestseller?”
“It was a bestseller. A huge bestseller,” Xavier said. “It sold like hotcakes, and the sales are still trickling in. It’s sold more than ten million copies worldwide.”