“Ten million. Does it have pictures?”
“No, it doesn’t have any pictures. Some editions have a picture of You-Know-Who on the flap, but that’s all.”
Awromele thought about it. “It’s not a bad title. If it had been called Mein Hund or Mein Weib it would never have sold anywhere near that. Mein Haus would have been rotten marketing, too. Has it been translated into Yiddish?”
“Into Yiddish? Not that I know of,” Xavier said. “It’s been translated into all the major languages: English, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, you name it. But I don’t think there’s been a Yiddish translation. And it’s a huge book. He plugged away at it — he didn’t mess around.”
“Anti-Semitism, that’s what it is,” Awromele said. “You have writers who want to be published everywhere except in Israel.” Awromele looked a little flushed. “Maybe that’s what we should do,” he said. “You could learn Yiddish that way, and when we’re finished we’ll have something we can sell to a publisher. If the publisher plays his cards right, we’ll sell a few thousand copies. Then we can go to a whorehouse together.”
Xavier stopped in his tracks. “What did you say?”
“An enthusiastic publisher should have no problem selling ten thousand copies of Mein Kampf in Yiddish. Any collector would buy it. Even if you can’t read it, even if you don’t understand Yiddish, you’d still want to have it. We’ll do a nice cover and put in a couple of pictures, so it will appeal to the goyim, too. I’ve got a nose for business. What about the copyrights — have they expired? Or is it one of those families that makes things complicated?”
Xavier hadn’t moved. The nauseous feeling had come back.
“No, the heirs to the You-Know-Who estate are all dead.”
“That’s great.”
“But that bit about having a nose for business, you shouldn’t say that. That’s anti-Semitic. Besides that, it’s not idiomatic. You can say that you have a good nose for business, you can say that. Even better is to say that you have good business instincts.”
Awromele wanted to walk on. But Xavier was still rooted to the spot. “And what you said after that.”
“What did I say after that?”
“About what you wanted to do with the money.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not really serious?”
“You mean from the sales of our Yiddish Mein Kampf? Of course I’m serious.”
Xavier had to stay calm now, that was the most important thing. Businesslike and calm. He had to act reasonably, in a fashion worthy of a comforter. Some people comforted a prodigal son, others comforted a whole family, maybe there were even people who comforted a street or a neighborhood, but he’d taken it upon himself to comfort an entire people. That brought certain responsibilities with it. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to translate the book into Yiddish. Like I said, the sales are still trickling in. It’s a good idea in itself to acquaint the Jews, open-mindedly and without historical prejudices, with the ideas of You-Know-Who. There’s a lot more to it than you might think. Fascinating bits about Vienna, about painting, about freedom of the press, the state, the social-democratic tradition. But I meant what you said after that. That you wanted to spend the royalties on…on something as fleeting as pleasure. Not even pleasure. Lust, the lowest kind of lust a man can have. A person can have. And then not just any person — a person like you, a special person. You don’t really mean that?”
Awromele shook his head. “I don’t think about things like that as much as you do, and I’m not worried about low lusts or high lusts. The only thing I think about is increasing the total quantity of enjoyment. People need to enjoy themselves. There are thirteen of us at home, and I’m talking only about my brothers and sisters. That teaches you to be practical.”
“But you’re one of the chosen people,” Xavier said, and his voice cracked.
“Leave it up to me,” Awromel said. “Keep your shirt on. If we sell five thousand copies, we’ll take the girls along on a trip, not a long one, maybe just for a day at the Bodensee. Maybe go up into the mountains and rent a hut. Like the goyim do.”
“Don’t destroy me, Awromele,” Xavier said quietly. “Please, Awromele, don’t destroy me.”
“I’m not destroying you, I’m taking you along to Mr. Schwartz, who is going to circumcise you for next to nothing, and who is also willing to trumpet it around that your parents were too lax to do that at the moment prescribed by law. So stop accusing me of things, you sound like my mother. Nobody is destroying you.”
“Have you ever been…?”
“What?”
“Have you ever been…?” Xavier asked, and his voice crackled like the sound from an old radio. “Have you?”
“Have I ever been what? Stop driving me nuts. One day you can’t wait to get circumcised, the next day you’re talking about the books of You-Know-Who, like I don’t have anything better to do than think about how many books You-Know-Who sold in which year, and all the stuff he has in his bookcase. I have enough problems with my father. My father is an autistic rabbi. So what does your father do?”
“Didn’t I tell you? My father is an architect.”
“So there you go. What about your grandfather?”
“Grandfather? What grandfather?”
“What grandfather? How many grandfathers do you have? Your mother’s father, let’s start with him.”
“He’s dead.”
“But what did he do?”
Only then did Xavier notice the little freckles on Awromele’s nose. He stared at those freckles, and his stomach started hurting.
“So?”
“I never met him.”
“But that doesn’t mean you don’t know what he did.”
“I can’t remember.”
All Xavier could see were the freckles on Awromele’s nose. Such friendly, kindhearted freckles.
“You can’t remember? How can you not remember that?”
“He mowed lawns. Now I remember. In Poland. For rich Jews. He mowed their lawns.”
It was out before Xavier knew it. The subconscious is an ample but inflammable container.
“That’s impossible.”
Xavier’s stomach was hurting even worse.
“In Poland all the Jews were as poor as church mice, they didn’t have lawns. The rich Jews were in Germany. Don’t worry, you can tell me — I told you about my father.”
For a split second Xavier felt the urge to tell Awromele everything, the whole story, but he realized that that would be his undoing. He was no hero yet, he couldn’t allow himself to go down in flames. “He cut off the dead leaves, he cut the grass a little, he did all kinds of things, like I said. He also watched over the animals.”
“Oh, he was a shepherd,” Awromele said.
“Yes, that’s right. A shepherd.”
“I didn’t know they had those in Poland. Funny.”
“He watched over the animals. So they wouldn’t run away and do crazy things.”
“I didn’t know animals could do crazy things. Were these circus animals?”
“No, not circus animals. Cows, goats, lambs, all kinds of things. He didn’t care what kind, he loved animals in general.”
“Most of the Jews I know don’t like animals, and most animals don’t like Jews, either. My father always says a dog and a Jew, they don’t go together. I used to have goldfish, but my father flushed them down the toilet. Jews and fish — I guess they don’t go together, either. He must have been a special kind of guy, that grandfather of yours.”
“Yes, he certainly was,” Xavier said. He was feeling a bit better now, but still a little weak. It seemed wise to change the subject. He remembered what Awromele had said a few minutes earlier, and that memory produced a stabbing pain in his chest that was only bearable when he bent over. That way he still felt the pain, but it wasn’t as unbearable as before.