Xavier was sent home the same day he’d been brought into the hospital. The goodwill he had accumulated as a victim of Pedophile Lenin he had squandered by biting the attractive nurse on the arm.
The rumor of Xavier’s actions had spread throughout the hospital. “You see it happening all around you,” a neurologist said in the cafeteria as he wolfed down a bowl of granola. “The victims start resembling the culprits. You see it with the Jews, you see it with the pedophiles — lots of pedophiles were once abused themselves. And now look at that boy; he’s barely recovered from being molested, and he attacks a nurse. If I went back to college now, I wouldn’t study medicine. The more you help people, the more they hate you.”
His colleagues nodded in agreement.
WHEN HE GOT HOME, Xavier was received in silence by his mother, who later served him his dinner in silence as well. Even when Marc said, “Say something to your son, none of this is very easy for him; you can tell that by looking at him,” all the mother said was “So why don’t you talk to him, if you’re so fond of him?”
After dinner, Xavier said he was tired and wanted to go to bed, but while his mother was doing the dishes he secretly called Awromele at the hospital. The rabbi’s wife was still at his bedside — she paid no attention to visiting hours — but Xavier and Awromele were still able to exchange a few words.
“Maybe you should try painting your mother again,” Marc said after Xavier had hung up. “She doesn’t show it much, but she really enjoys being painted.”
Xavier was actually too tired, but he set up his easel anyway. When the mother sat down at the table, as she always did, to drink a cup of tea, he said: “Here, hold the jar with my testicle in it. Then I’ll make a nice painting of you.”
The mother let him force King David on her, and said, “No more than thirty minutes, I need to go to bed.”
While Marc watched in admiration, Xavier painted with broad, restless strokes. Maybe it was Marc’s admiration, or maybe it was the serene manner in which the mother sat there with the testicle in her hand, but Xavier felt the artist in himself even stronger than before.
“Were you off with your Zionists again?” the mother asked after twenty minutes had gone by.
“I was in the hospital, Mama. You remember, don’t you?”
She nodded, as though to make clear that she was not about to be fooled. She seemed to be deep in thought.
“Are you going to paint me with the knife now?” she asked.
Xavier was startled, but didn’t show it. “What knife?”
“You know very well what knife,” the mother said.
He went into the kitchen, found the bread knife, and handed it to the mother. She put the jar with the testicle on the table and held the knife up proudly.
Xavier began painting.
“This is my lover,” she said to Marc. “Look at my lover.” But Marc pretended not to be listening. He said to Xavier: “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to go to the art academy? Autodidacts always have a little catching up to do. Maybe Paris would be a good place for you. Or Amsterdam. I’ve heard good things about the academy in Amsterdam, from a colleague of mine. The avant-garde of the future is gathering there. There the artist is his own work of art. The Venice of the North is what they call it. I wish I could go with you. But I could take you there anyway, in the Alfa.”
Xavier painted on and thought about Awromele, how he had been lying beside the mandarin-orange peels in the park.
The silence that followed lasted a few minutes, until the mother said: “The Venice of the South has been overrun by the Japanese. I was there with my late husband — not an Italian in sight. Asians everywhere.”
She looked at her son. “Don’t forget to paint my lover,” she said. “You promised.” And she held the knife up even more proudly. “He’s very faithful, and brimming with love.”
She uses that to cut my bread, too, Xavier thought. But he painted on. Even though he felt exhausted and feverish, it didn’t matter to him. An artist has no need for sleep.
When the painting was finished, he showed it to the mother. Her only remark was “Reasonable,” but Marc said he had outdone himself again.
In bed that evening, Xavier decided: I’m going to the Venice of the North, and I’m taking Awromele with me. We’ll be alone there. And once we’re alone, the comforting can begin.
ONE WEEK LATER, after Awromele was healing well enough to satisfy the family doctor—“The bruises will go away by themselves,” he said, the ear was the only thing that still worried him a bit — and after the rabbi had forgotten his oath not to think about transsexuals until the moon was full, Xavier told Awromele of his plan to go to the Venice of the North and enter the art academy there.
“Will you go with me?” Xavier asked.
“But what about translating Mein Kampf into Yiddish?”
“We can translate Mein Kampf in the Venice of the North as well. We don’t have to stay in Basel to do that.”
A tram rattled past; they were sitting on the patio of the wine bar that Xavier had avoided at first, because of the gossip it might cause at school. Since he had achieved fame as the victim of Pedophile Lenin, though, he no longer lived in fear of gossip. He had become unassailable — there was already so much gossip circulating about him.
Xavier was holding the forbidden book in his lap.
“Listen to this,” he said. “This is really fascinating.”
“You have to sit on my right side,” Awromele said. “That’s my bad ear.”
Xavier got up and moved to Awromele’s right side. They’d never talked about what had happened in the park. Xavier had always meant to bring it up, but didn’t know what to say.
“Listen,” he said. “How about this: ‘The part played by Jewry in prostitution, and even more in the trade in young girls, can be seen more clearly in Vienna than in any other Western European city, with the exception perhaps of the ports of southern France.’”
“It’s a fascinating book,” Awromele said. “It’s got pace, it’s got momentum, it’s full of humor, and I think the writer has a story to tell. We’ve struck gold.”
“I think so, too,” Xavier said. “So why don’t we go on translating in Amsterdam? It’s an international city, and they say it’s the place to be for the pure avant-garde.”
“But what about your school?”
“Oh,” Xavier said. “My school? From now on, you’re my school. I’ve learned more from you in a few months that in five years of Gymnasium. At first I thought I’d comfort you people with a novel. But now I think I can comfort you even better with a translation and paintings.”
Awromele thought about it. He’d never really understood what Xavier meant with this “comforting” stuff. He still didn’t.
They kissed. Xavier laid his hand on the back of Awromele’s neck and whispered: “Do you know that I still don’t feel a thing? Nothing at all? I couldn’t if I wanted to. I’m keeping my promise.”
“Me, neither,” Awromele said. “That’s what binds us. That’s our covenant.”
A few people from Xavier’s school came and sat on the patio. They stared at him, but he ignored them.
Awromele sipped at his tea. You could still see what a beating he’d taken in the park, but Xavier had grown so accustomed to the bruises and scrapes that he no longer noticed them.
“I’ve never been to the Venice of the North,” Awromele said.
“Neither have I,” Xavier said. “But that doesn’t matter. Apparently, the art academy there stimulates the artist’s inner development.”