In the bathroom, the mother was washing her face. Her eyes were still moist; her throat was raw from screaming. She put a little Nivea on a cotton swab and rubbed it slowly across her cheeks and forehead. Tears were still running down her face. Her nose was bent, she thought — she took another look at it — really bent, and it hurt, too.
In the doctor’s waiting room, she had seen posters warning against domestic violence. Inquisitively, she had studied the pictures on those posters: a woman with a black eye, a woman missing four front teeth, a woman with burns on her arm.
There was plenty you could say about the architect, but domestic violence would never have occurred to him. Even when he took her up the anus, which had happened less and less in the last few years, he had done so hastily, that above all. She had had to do all the work, she had had to keep everything open and greased up; he had limited himself to what was strictly necessary.
The son slowly unwrapped the bandages from his organ. There were tears in his eyes as well, but they were not the product of self-pity, not the moist vestige of the eternal lament over a past gone by, a past that would never return but which had been so imperfect, so close, so fresh, and yet so dead. The nerves branching out from his crotch were stronger than his self-control. They were what made him weep.
Once the bandage had been removed, he looked at what he had looked at so often without undue interest — not like other boys his age, who could look at it for hours, ruler in hand. What he saw he did not recognize. What was lying or hanging there looked like part of an English breakfast. A black sausage, a little greasy, more dark-blue than black. The testicles were blue as well, and quite swollen. Bigger than ever, like little balloons that might burst loudly any moment.
During his admission into the covenant of the chosen, something had gone wrong. There was no denying that anymore. He had to tell Awromele, and probably Mr. Schwartz as well, in case he ever risked doing a circumcision again. A person can always learn from his mistakes.
The mother slammed the bathroom door; there was still a little Nivea on her face. She hurried down the stairs. “Look,” she shouted when she saw Marc sitting on the sofa.
He didn’t react.
“Look,” she shouted, louder now.
He took off the headphones.
“What is it, sweetheart?” Marc attached great importance to harmony, even in times of war.
“Can’t you see it?” she asked.
“What?”
“My nose.”
“What about your nose?”
“Can’t you see it? What you’ve done?”
Marc shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”
He wanted to kiss her, to press her against him, to forget everything that had happened.
“You broke it.”
“I’m sorry,” her boyfriend said again. He was generous when it came to apologies; at work he often apologized for other people’s mistakes. “I didn’t mean to do that.” He took her hand, but she yanked it away. “I don’t know what got into me,” he said. “My stomach was hurting. I really apologize.”
“It’s crooked.”
“It doesn’t look any different. I don’t see anything wrong with your nose. It’s a cute little nose you’ve got there, and it looks just like it always has.”
The mother felt the urge to punch him, to dig her nails into his face and scratch it open, but she restrained herself: single men were rare in Basel. “Take me to the hospital,” she said. “Take me there right now. My nose is broken.” She spoke excitedly, as though complaining at the cleaner’s about a spot that was still in her favorite dress.
“Maybe it’s just bruised,” Marc said. “Your nose looks fine.”
But he got up and put on his coat. It wasn’t worth making a fuss about.
Five minutes later, they were in his Alfa, on the way to the hospital. The mother looked at Marc and thought: I’m going to break you, I’m going to break you like you’ve never been broken.
She had never had thoughts like that before. It cheered her up. She had always seen herself as a victim. First as a victim of You-Know-Who, who had betrayed things so shamefully by committing suicide in his bunker, then as a victim of her husband, who was indifferent to the glorious hole the good Lord had drilled into her body. There was plenty you could say about the Russian soldiers back in ’45, but not that they were indifferent to holes like hers. And then she had become a victim of her son, who had come creeping out of that hole after twenty-four hours of pushing and suffering, and who thanked her now by going swimming with Zionists.
But that was done with; she was going to strike back. She wasn’t going to let anyone walk all over her again. She had read about it in that book, she’d heard about it from friends. Stick up for yourself, don’t let yourself be pushed in a corner, tell it like it is, say what’s on your mind. That was living.
By the time she found herself sitting in the waiting room at the emergency unit, there wasn’t much left of her need for revenge, and she felt just as passive as ever.
IN HIS BEDROOM, her child was still lying on his bed. Every now and then he took a look at his testicles. The color alone made him nauseous. Dark-blue, with a vein bulging out here and there, but the blue background made the veins look sick, porous, no longer fit to transport blood. They were going to burst. Bled to death, as the brief reports in the paper always said.
Xavier didn’t know how he was going to survive this without help from his mother or Marc. He jabbered a few words in Yiddish, the few words he could remember from Awromele’s lessons. Sometimes he stopped and whispered: “God of the Jews, do You see what they’re doing to me?”
Then he shouted for his mother again; he didn’t know that she had left the house.
He thought that the blue of his testicles would spread slowly, first to his legs, then to his stomach, and finally to his head. By that time he would be dead.
“Thirst,” he shouted, “thirst.”
AFTER AN HOUR and a half in the waiting room, Xavier’s mother was examined by a young doctor who tried to put her at ease by telling jokes. They needed to take X-rays. The X-rays confirmed her fears: “Your nose is broken,” the doctor said. He didn’t ask how it had happened; he had his suspicions, but his job was healing people; the rest he left up to the social workers.
The mother began weeping quietly. The thought that the man she had hoped to marry had already broken her nose made her despair. The architect had ignored her, had treated her like a wall unit that you couldn’t bring yourself to throw away, despite its serious defects. But ignoring was better than breaking. And what had she done to deserve this, anyway? She had spread herself open for her boyfriend, she had finally had the courage to use her fantasy. She would never open up again, at least not voluntarily; she would remain shut till the bitter end.
“Do you have to put it in a cast?” she asked. The doctor smiled. “We don’t do that with noses,” he said. “It’s a matter of taking it easy, that’s the most important thing. We can give you a nose brace, though, if you’d like. Or shall I prescribe some painkillers?”
“Yes, please,” she said.
She looked at Marc, who was playing dumb. No regrets, no pleas for forgiveness, no shock at his own wrongdoing. Only restlessness, because it was taking so long. He sat beside her motionlessly.
“Painkillers, or the nose brace?”
“Both,” she said, “please.”
“We don’t have to reset it,” the doctor said. “It’s a clean break.” Then he felt it was his duty to ask whether she had been the victim of a crime.