“Okay, Mom,” Xavier said.
“It shouldn’t be any problem,” said Marc. “Should it, Xavier? I mean, you feel great, don’t you? The rest will come by itself.”
“The most important thing,” the mother said, “is that you go back to school as soon as possible and make up for lost time. The Committee of Vigilant Parents has asked if you could come to their meeting tomorrow, to talk about your experiences. I told them you would, but after that it’s going to be homework, homework, and more homework.”
“I think I’ll go to bed early,” Xavier said. He kissed his mother and thanked her for the apple pie.
“I’ll tuck him in,” Marc said.
The mother sat downstairs and listened to the sounds that accompanied the tucking in. She thought about the committee. Every once in a while, she stuck her little finger dreamily into the bowl of whipped cream and licked it clean. After she had done that four times, she made a decision. All is lost, she said to herself. I’m depressed. I should start taking pills to make me feel happy. I don’t have all that much to complain about. After all, I still have all my teeth.
THE COMMITTEE of Vigilant Parents met in an art gallery. More than forty parents had shown up to hear Xavier Radek talk about his experiences. There were also a few singles who didn’t have children yet but wanted to do a little preventive listening.
Xavier felt uncomfortable. He was going to have to talk about how Mr. Schwartz had molested him, and he didn’t want to do that. First of all, because it wasn’t true, and he was fond of the truth. Second, because he wanted to comfort Mr. Schwartz. Not that Mr. Schwartz was particularly close to his heart — Awromele was the one who was particularly close to his heart — but Mr. Schwartz happened to belong to the people he’d decided to comfort.
Besides, it would hurt his mother badly to hear that her child had let himself be circumcised by a myopic Jew. She might not live through that. The Committee of Vigilant Parents played an important role in her life. And after a confession like that, she could no longer be a part of the committee, especially not an honorary member. Xavier didn’t have much choice.
In the end, he decided to strike a happy medium. He would have to say something about being molested, but he would also say a few good and friendly things about Mr. Schwartz.
The owner of the gallery introduced him and called him a “beacon of courage” and a “symbol of optimism.” Then it was his turn to speak. He climbed onto the podium, ran his hand through his hair, and told the concerned parents: “My name, as you probably know, is Xavier Radek. It was a little over a month ago that Mr. S. took me into his care, but…”
He held his breath for an instant and looked around at the concerned parents, to let his words sink in. “…but he did it lovingly.”
He took a sip of water and looked at the tense faces all around. The concerned parents did not look particularly pretty in this light. Decrepit, actually, even though most of them were barely middle-aged.
“Bah,” a woman in the front row shouted, “bah! How can you molest someone lovingly? I don’t call what he did taking you into his care, I call that abuse.” This encouraged other members of the audience to murmur in disapproval as well. A woman at the back shouted: “How can someone do such a thing? That’s what I want to know!” And she added, “I’m here tonight as a mother and a grandmother, and I want you to tell me how someone can do that.”
A man said: “And we’re all here tonight as children, too. Let’s not forget that. Some of us may even have been molested as children.”
The woman with the loud voice interrupted him: “No! I’m not a molested child, and I never have been. I’m here tonight as a mother and a grandmother. I have six grandchildren, and none of them have been molested, either. At least not yet.”
The owner of the gallery intervened. “It’s not time for questions from the public. I hope we can talk calmly and with dignity about these matters, but for the moment let’s listen to our guest tonight, Xavier Radek.”
Xavier pinched himself in the arm and ran his hand through his hair again. He felt flushed. “What he did cannot be dismissed lightly,” he said. “But he acted in good faith. His love has no future, but, then, what love does? Who among us today can truly say, ‘My love has a future’?”
Xavier was warming to his subject; he lost himself in his words, the same way he had lost himself in an idea not so long ago.
Someone shouted, “So what about it, what about that love?”
But Xavier didn’t respond. He could no longer tell whether he was talking about his grandfather or about Mr. Schwartz, or about Awromele; all he knew was that he had hit his stride at last.
Loud shouts of “Boo!” came from the crowd. At the back of the gallery, where the people were standing shoulder to shoulder, Xavier saw Awromele and the rabbi.
Xavier remained silent for a few seconds. The man who had shouted that they were all children, perhaps even molested children, now shouted: “Let the boy talk. We can all learn from what he’s been through.” The booing stopped. There were young people in the audience, too, probably students. They were taking notes.
“Christianity speaks of forgiveness and love,” Xavier said. “We must not only forgive our molesters, we must also offer them our love.”
Someone threw something at him. The murmuring grew louder and more disapproving than ever.
Xavier pinched himself in the arm again, but it didn’t help. He shouldn’t have come here. He couldn’t talk about his experiences, at least not yet — maybe later, when he was older and Mr. Schwartz was no longer alive.
“I can’t go on,” Xavier said. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”
The concerned parents were stunned. They had been expecting alarming details, confessions that hadn’t made the media. They had hoped for words of advice, tips on how to prevent such things.
A few seconds later, the stunned silence made way for hesitant applause. The applause grew louder, and the man who had just shouted, “Let the boy talk,” now shouted: “We’re caught like rats in a trap. We’ve all been conditioned to consume, that’s why they molest our children. Once they’ve tried everything else, they think: Let’s try a child. We’re caught like rats in a trap.”
A few concerned parents cheered in agreement, but most of them seemed to feel that the comparison with rats was tasteless.
The loud booing began again. It appeared that the Committee of Vigilant Parents was about to dissolve in internal conflicts.
Xavier took advantage of the confusion to make his way to the exit, straight through the crowd of concerned parents. He slipped past his mother and a few of her lady friends, women whom he had once been required to call “auntie.” Waiting at the door was a photographer who shouted: “Where’s your testicle? Don’t you have it with you?”
“It’s at home,” he whispered.
Then Awromele grabbed Xavier’s arm and pulled him outside. He wasn’t wearing his yarmulke — he was incognito again.
Out in the street, Xavier saw that the man Awromele had with him wasn’t the rabbi. “This is the publisher I told you about,” Awromele said.
Xavier shook the publisher’s hand, and the publisher said, “Congratulations, that was very nice.” Xavier was exhausted from all the commotion, the attention, the interest in an event about which he could remember very little. What he remembered most was the smell of sour cream.
“Xavier,” someone shouted. “Xavier.” It was his mother; she seemed relieved to have found him. As an honorary member of the committee, she had duties to fulfill. “There’s someone here who wants your autograph.”
Standing beside her was a pregnant woman — a mere girl, really. She was holding a photocopy of the folder with which the Committee of Vigilant Parents had announced its formation. She held it up in front of Xavier’s eyes.