“Thank you,” Xavier said. Despite the pain, he pulled Awromele down close and kissed him three times on the cheek and then, quickly, once on the lips and on the nose. Awromele was the sweetest Jew Xavier had ever met. If his grandfather had been able to meet Awromele, history would have looked very different indeed.
“How long do you have to stay here?” Awromele asked. He took a good look around. The hospital had put Xavier in a room of his own because of all the journalists, city officials, and representatives of the Committee of Vigilant Parents.
“For a little while, I think,” Xavier said. “The pain is going away, but slowly.”
“I’ve got good news for you,” Awromele said. “I’ve found a publisher. He’s enthusiastic.”
“About what?” Xavier asked.
“What do you think? About our Yiddish translation of Mein Kampf. He thinks the time is ripe for it, but he says we’ll have to aim for the high end of the market. He thinks it’s a book for the highly educated, which means it can be a fairly expensive edition.”
“Highly educated?”
“Don’t ask me how high,” Awromele said, sounding a bit rankled. “The man I talked to, he’s never read the original, but he said he could tell that it was a book for a literate audience. The high end of the market is still a growth market, he said. The time is ripe for a Yiddish translation of Mein Kampf.”
“We’re in luck,” Xavier said. But he didn’t succeed in looking happy.
“I wrote it all down for you,” Awromele said. “I knew it would cheer you up.” He pulled a notepad out of his pocket and began leafing through it. “Here we go. He says the time is ripe. Or did I already say that? That we shouldn’t wait too long. Before long no one will remember who Hitler was.”
Xavier moaned loudly. It gave Awromele the feeling that his friend was being circumcised all over again.
“Don’t mention that name,” Xavier said. “You have to say You-Know-Who. Just like we’re not supposed to say God’s name, let alone write it down, it’s the same thing with You-Know-Who.”
Awromele was immersed in his notepad. He wasn’t really listening to what Xavier said. “The publisher says we’re entering an era void of taboos, and that it would be good to grab one of the final taboos by the scruff of the neck. He wants to lighten up the book a little, with artwork from the period itself. But nothing abstract. Just so you can see what it’s supposed to be saying. He’s thinking about a first run of ten thousand. Great as a handout for doctors, judges, historians, linguists, journalists. Maybe the book clubs will pick it up, too — that’s what he says.” Awromele peered closely at his notepad; he was having trouble reading his own handwriting. “What’s this?” he mumbled. “Christmas hampers. Oh yeah, that was another idea. To include the book in Christmas hampers. What do you think?”
But at that point Xavier wasn’t thinking anything. He was having a pain attack. When it was over, he said, “I’m very pleased, Awromele, but what kind of a man is he?”
“Who?”
“The publisher.”
“The publisher? He has a background in TV. He used to make clips for music programs, things like that, but he wants to do something different. He’s very successful. But I have to go home now — they’re waiting for me for dinner.”
“What about Mr. Schwartz?” Xavier asked.
“He’s in prison,” Awromele said. “What, don’t you read the paper?”
“Couldn’t we do something nice for him?” Xavier asked. When he was a little boy, his mother had always told him: “Forget the nasty things and remember all the nice things. That’s the secret of being cheerful.” The thought of Mr. Schwartz in prison made Xavier nauseous. He grabbed Awromele’s hand. “Don’t go away,” he said. “Stay for just a little while.”
“As soon as you’re back on your feet again, we’ll go visit Mr. Schwartz,” Awromele said. He leaned over and kissed the patient at various spots on his person. Then he hurried home, where he locked himself in his room and sat on his bed for forty-five minutes. Longing cuts you off from others. The more you long for someone else, the more cut off you become. Awromele realized that. If you wanted to free yourself from your isolation, you had to stop longing. But no matter how hard he tried, it didn’t work.
When evening came, Xavier took the jar off the side table and clutched it in his arms. He started talking to the testicle. He said: “You are my rod and my staff, you have to help me.”
When people answer a cry for help, it’s almost always a disappointment. Compared with that, the testicle’s silence was a miracle of hope and optimism.
Xavier decided that his severed body part should have a name. That would really speed up the closure. It’s easier to say goodbye to things with a name than it is to say goodbye to the nameless.
“I’m going to call you King David,” Xavier said to the blue testicle. “King David was the King of the Jews, and someday you will be, too.”
He clutched the jar tightly to his chest, fearing that King David would be taken away from him, and closed his eyes.
A Source of Inspiration
THE DAY XAVIER was released from the hospital, he found two newspaper reporters and eight photographers waiting for him at the exit. All eight photographers asked him to hold up the jar with the testicle in it. Despite his handicap, Xavier had remained a cheerful fellow, and didn’t like to disappoint people. So he did what they asked. “Just one more close-up,” shouted a bearded photographer. He came closer and said, “Hold the jar up to your cheek.”
Xavier did that as well, and the photographer said, “All right, that’s great, fantastic.”
Then Marc came up and piloted the boy through the crowd to his Alfa Romeo. The mother had stayed at home, to welcome the boy with her homemade apple pie. “We’re back!” Marc shouted from the vestibule. The whole way home, he had made tender little noises at his stepson. He trundled him into the living room, where the mother was waiting.
She hugged her son. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked.
She cut him a big piece of apple pie — the last few weeks had been difficult for him — and said, “You still smell like a hospital ward.”
Marc stuck his nose down the back of the boy’s collar. “No,” he said, “he doesn’t smell like a hospital. He smells good.”
“It’s still warm,” the mother said. She pointed at the pie.
Xavier had put King David on the table. King David stood there valiantly, beside the thermos full of coffee.
The mother had whipped the cream herself. She didn’t like whipped cream from a can.
The three of them ate with gusto. The mother was an excellent baker.
“You’ve lost something,” Marc said after he had finished his pie. “But you’ve gained something as well. You’ve made friends.” And he picked up the jar to take a better look at the testicle.
“Marc, put that down,” the mother said. “It’s dirty.”
“It looks like it’s still alive,” Marc said, putting down the jar. “It looks like it’s taken on a life of its own, like it’s started a new life.”
“Could be,” Xavier said. He was thinking about Mr. Schwartz. He was disturbed that the popular press kept referring to the cheese dealer as the Pedophile Lenin. Xavier had hoped to save and comfort the Jews, but so far he’d mostly seen to it that they ended up in prison. The thought chastened him.
“If you can’t…” the mother said, and sighed deeply. “If you don’t function normally down there anymore, I want you to tell me. Then we can go to the doctor. The surgeon said we shouldn’t wait. That’s the best chance we have that it will all turn out all right.”