The punching bag, which the architect had originally bought for his son, hung unattended. The neighbor lady explained in detail how she had found the architect. “You never know what’s going to kill a person. My husband and I know so many joggers who have dropped dead on the spot. That’s why we take the car wherever we go.”
Xavier went to his room. It had been stripped: only a bed, a desk, and a stereo system were still in it.
He sat down on his old bed and thought of Awromele.
Now he was completely alone with his mother and his mother’s new boyfriend.
And with his grandfather. He had entered him. He had taken possession of him.
Accept, O Lord, This Humble Sacrifice
MR. SCHWARTZ’S BED had not been made for a long time, and had not been cleaned for even longer. The sheets had probably once been blue.
This was how an old man lived if he no longer had a wife, or had never had one to start with. The neglect came creeping in, every week a bit more, every month a little of the illusion of cleanliness lost.
On the yellowed wall, Xavier saw a lighter rectangle where something had once hung.
“Do you know what I used to have hanging there?” Mr. Schwartz asked. “A portrait of Lenin. I’ve never felt the urge to paint over it. A waste of money.”
This was the day for which Mr. Schwartz had been saving his instruments, ever since he’d officially stopped working.
“Besides,” he said, “you need something to remind you of the past; otherwise you start questioning your own sanity.”
Other old men sometimes went out to eat in a cafeteria or a soup kitchen, where they were welcome after a lifetime of hard work, or went to buy a paper at the newsstand. They could dress up a little to draw a smile from a waitress, freshen up for a friendly conversation with the owner of the newsstand. Mr. Schwartz subscribed to the daily news, and ate his meals in his kitchen. He could remain unfreshened; the world would never notice.
A cave, that’s what his home felt like, even more than the first time Xavier had visited it. A cave in which a dying animal had holed up, knowing full well how gruesome it must look to those who had no clue about dying, who knew about it only by hearsay.
Awromele was sitting on a little stepladder beside the dresser. He had asked whether he could sit in, or whether Xavier would prefer to be alone at the moment itself. Xavier had said that he would greatly appreciate Awromele’s presence. That he would need him, particularly during and after the procedure.
“Sure, why not,” Awromele said. “When my little brothers were circumcised, I was there, too. I stood right up close and watched the whole thing. I thought it was wonderful. Disgusting, but wonderful. Until my mother pulled me away.”
Lust has a bad name. Perhaps Xavier and Awromele could rehabilitate lust. The way Xavier hoped on his own to rid the Jews of their bad name.
Lust and suffering, those were the main ingredients of life. The rest was detail, subset, delusion.
Even Mr. Schwartz’s bedroom smelled, of sour cream. Mr. Schwartz had set up a reading lamp beside his bed. He was pottering about nervously, as though inspecting his stock of cheese. His instruments were laid out on a handkerchief.
“Six years ago,” he said, “was the last time I did this. I remember it well, six years ago. In August. It was a swelteringly hot day. There was no one else in town to do it, so they came to me. Always babies, if you know what I mean — you’re my first adult — but the principle remains the same. I was a specialist, and once you become a specialist you never forget how to do it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an eighty-year-old man or an eight-day-old baby, it’s all a matter of technique. I’ll be right back. Remain seated.”
Xavier wasn’t sitting down, and he didn’t feel like sitting down. Never before had he been so conscious of what was between his legs.
He was, he had to admit, frightened. Frightened of pain, infections, complications. Of decisions he would later regret. The way some people regretted their whole lives, but steeled themselves and went on watering the plants.
In a little basket on the windowsill lay three rotten apples. Mr. Schwartz obviously couldn’t see them anymore. But couldn’t he smell them?
Xavier had no qualms about losing a piece of foreskin. That loss, after all, would grant him admission to an exclusive confederation.
His grandfather had also belonged to an exclusive confederation. It wasn’t good to go through life as an outsider. It was important not to. At some point you had to go looking for your partners in adversity. During the last telephone conversation Xavier had had with his father, the architect had said, “They say that in Russia you need money or connections to get anything done, but Switzerland is no different.” A striking statement, coming from the architect. Now his father could make no statements about the forthcoming circumcision, and Xavier regretted that. He had dreamed of walking up to his father, circumcised but chipper as ever, and saying: “Look! Take a good look, Dad. Notice anything different?” Then he would wave his penis around and ask his father, “You see it now?”
If his mother heard about the circumcision, she would go crazy. She had kept her feelings under control till now, but she wouldn’t be able to take this. Sooner or later he would have to tell her. First he would let her get used to the idea. Bit by bit, step by step. The way you teach a child to walk.
At the library, Xavier had leafed through a medical encyclopedia to find out about the risks. Going for a ride in a car had its attendant risks as well, but in a car you could at least wear a safety belt.
You had to convince yourself. You had to tell yourself that it had to be this way and no other. People who couldn’t do that had friends to do it for them, or social workers.
That weekend, Xavier had taken a good look at himself in the mirror. He didn’t look bad, there was no denying that, but after a while he began seeing someone else. A man wearing a cap, boots, holding a dog on a short leash. Xavier liked uniforms. And, in theory, he was not void of a certain degree of cruelty, although it hadn’t expressed itself in practice yet. At nursery school he had once pulled a little girl’s hair, hard — she’d had long black hair — but you couldn’t call that cruelty. At least, not unusual cruelty. Given, he watched the violence in films and on television with a businesslike, almost eager interest, but watching was largely passive.
Cruelty had to come from somewhere; perhaps it sprang up, the way rivers did. High in the mountains. At the foot of a glacier.
“Show me,” Awromele said.
“What?”
“While it’s still there. I want to see it.”
“You mean…?”
“Yeah.”
“The thing he’s going to take away?”
“Yeah.”
“But why, why now?”
“Because afterwards it will be too late.”
“I’d rather not. If you don’t mind.”
“I’ve never seen an uncircumcised one. Except for my brothers, when they were eight days old, but that doesn’t count. In films you sometimes see them uncircumcised, but mostly circumcised.”
“I never really noticed,” Xavier said. “I don’t watch films like that much.”
“It’s not easy to find an uncircumcised one.”