“Emmentaler,” Mr. Schwartz said, looking melancholy, as though there were some kind of link between Emmentaler and sadness.
The kosher Emmentaler tasted like normal Emmentaler, only a bit more like plastic.
“Take the other slice, too,” Mr. Schwartz said. “Awromele has tasted my cheese before.” Xavier put the second slice in his mouth. He chewed. He couldn’t taste anything anymore; he chewed, swallowed, and chewed, but the lump of cheese in his mouth only seemed to become bigger.
“You like that, don’t you?” Mr. Schwartz said. Then he wiped his hand on his trousers and, for a few seconds, seemed to forget that he had visitors.
The cheese slicer still in his left hand, he stood frozen in the middle of his living room, as though he had heard a strange noise, or was trying to remember the name of a friend from the 1950s.
After a few seconds, Mr. Schwartz began singing a song. Neither the words nor the melody was familiar to Xavier. Awromele hummed along, and Mr. Schwartz kept time with the cheese slicer. Not wildly — it was barely noticeable.
A tabby-and-white cat came in from another room. It sat and cleaned its paws beside Mr. Schwartz’s feet.
Xavier looked at Awromele, but he had his eyes closed. The house smelled of sour cream. We all strive after the good, but how does one recognize it?
The singing didn’t stop, it faded slowly, it grew softer and softer, for a moment it died out, then Mr. Schwartz started in on a new verse. But at last it was over, and Mr. Schwartz asked: “How much would you like to take home with you? One ounce, or two?” The cat was still cleaning itself. Xavier said: “No, thank you.” A few months from now he would turn seventeen. He had to be quick about it.
Mr. Schwartz took a few steps forward, until he was standing right in front of Xavier. Xavier had the impression that the curtains in this room hadn’t been opened for months. “What does the Jew want?” Mr. Schwartz asked.
Xavier realized that the question was addressed to him. A difficult question. Had his grandfather asked questions like that? Not all questions led to the same answers.
“What does the Jew want?” Mr. Schwartz asked again. “The Jew wants a little house without too many mice, a toilet you can sit on for hours without hurting your back, a wife who can find her own way to the baker and the butcher shop and come home on her own, a wife who knows that time and money — like her husband’s life — are not endless, a landlord who understands if your rent is a month, or two months, late, and a Christmas tree. If you’re a Jew like me, that is. Because when I was your age I worshiped Lenin, but I also worshiped the Christmas tree just as deeply and passionately. Then I abandoned Lenin, and a little later the Christmas tree as well. The portraits, the collected works, and the angels and glass balls left my home, and I became a mohel. Do you know what a mohel is? A circumciser. You are going to be my last circumcision, my boy. One last time I will show what I’m capable of, and then it will be over, I will have done what I had to do, then I will wait patiently for what He has planned for me. Do you know how many circumcisions I have performed in my life? Just guess.”
He may be almost blind, Xavier thought, but he knows what he wants.
“An awful lot, I bet, Mr. Schwartz,” Xavier replied.
“More than five hundred. I still have all my instruments stored neatly in the closet. Now I know what I’ve been saving them for — for you. How old are you?”
“Almost seventeen,” Xavier said.
“Before you know it, you’ll be thirty-four. I’m afraid I won’t be around to see that,” Mr. Schwartz said. “Not unless a miracle happens. And then you will have been circumcised half your life, and the other half uncircumcised, and then you’ll have to ask yourself: Which half was the best? Today you don’t know what you’ll say then, my boy. Maybe the first half will have been better, maybe they will both have been just as bad. That’s often the way things go in the life of a Jew. The first half of his life is miserable, the second half is even worse. But maybe you’ll get lucky, boy. You don’t know right now, but maybe you’ll say: Yes, that circumcision put me back on the right path. And then you’ll think of me, then you’ll think of Mr. Schwartz. Circumciser. Importer of kosher cheeses. Ex-communist. Lover of Christmas trees. Tenor. A tenor, too, yes, you heard me right. I used to sing. In a mixed chorus.”
Mr. Schwartz went back to his desk, sat down, and picked up a pencil. He gave Xavier a full minute to think about what he had said. But all Xavier could think was: I hope they’re not all like this one.
Then Mr. Schwartz said, “I’m going to give you three ounces to take with you, so your parents can taste my Emmentaler, too.”
He found a knife, cut off a piece of cheese, and laid it on the scales.
“Almost four ounces,” Mr. Schwartz said, peering intensely at the scales through his magnifying glass, “but I’m going to give you my special price.”
He wrapped the cheese in wax paper, folded an old newspaper around that, and then fastened the whole thing tightly with a rubber band. He wrote out the bill on a scrap of wrapping paper. These rituals, all together, took about fifteen minutes.
Mr. Schwartz showed the boys to the door. In the vestibule he said, “One week from today, I’ll be ready for my last circumcision.”
Before opening the front door, he peered cautiously through the peephole. Then he said, “The coast is clear.”
Injustice Spares No Man
IN HER BEDROOM, which had gradually been transformed into a filing cabinet full of information about Indian villages, sponsors, hydroelectric plants, and reports from the World Bank, Bettina said, “We’re no good for each other.”
Xavier looked at her, speechless. He had never looked at it that way.
“I’m involved with India, and these days with women’s studies, too. I don’t know what you’re involved with, but every time we see each other it’s rush, rush, rush.”
Xavier had just taken off his shoes and socks, and now he began playing with his socks. It had never occurred to him that it could go any other way. Rush, rush, rush had always seemed like the right tempo to him.
“We can still be friends,” she said.
He thought about his parents and about his mother’s new boyfriend. His father spent more time these days in Singapore than he did in Basel. Now that he was no longer married — or at least no longer living in the same house as his wife, for the official divorce was still a long way off — he was able to live by different standards, and he frequented massage parlors in Basel as well. He had always had a weak spot for older women, but these days he tended more towards the transsexual. Xavier had heard that it was mostly Asians who worked there, of both sexes.
Xavier’s mother had once asked the architect, “Is there someone else in your life?” And he had replied, “No, no one. I just need time for myself.”
And there was, indeed, no one in his life. Masseurs are no one. Invisible hands, invisible mouths that show up for a moment, then disappear again into the darkness.
“If you don’t want to be friends,” Bettina said, “or if you think we should leave each other alone for a while, I can understand that. It’s not easy.”
Xavier was still fiddling with his socks. He decided to put them on again.
“I bought a present for you,” Bettina said. It was a book, lying ready on her desk. She had prepared this farewell beforehand, it seemed, as though it were an aid campaign for a little Indian community.