“I’ll have to talk to my parents about it.”
“And what if they say no?”
Awromele shrugged. “Then I’ll go anyway,” he said. “What about you, have you told your mother yet?”
“I’ll do that the night before I leave,” Xavier said. “Otherwise she’ll worry too much.”
“Okay,” Awromele said. Good thing that they’d had Xavier circumcised already: that would be one less thing to do in the Venice of the North. Awromele didn’t know any circumcisers there; in fact, he didn’t know anyone there at all. He thought about Mr. Schwartz, and felt sad.
Xavier said, “You’re my dearest, my very dearest.”
Awromele smiled and looked at Xavier as though he were a gift from God. “You know,” he said, laying his hand on Xavier’s thigh, “did you know that the surest way to say nothing is to speak?” He began caressing Xavier’s leg.
“What do you mean?” Xavier asked.
“I heard that somewhere,” Awromele said. “I don’t remember where it was, but when you want to say something you should do it with your feet, or with your hands.”
Awromele pressed his lips to Xavier’s and kissed him. This would never have happened if they hadn’t circumcised him. That alone was enough to justify the circumcision, and Mr. Schwartz’s suffering. Awromele kissed him with all the strength he had in him. It made a noise, but because Awromele was partially deaf he couldn’t hear it. He kissed the way you can kiss only when you’re not sure about the other person, when you don’t have him yet, when you feel that you might lose the other person any moment.
Two girls who had come out onto the patio were looking at them. They had once been in the same class as Xavier. That their former classmate did it with men was one thing, but that he did it with a man who was also a devout Jew was more than they could fathom.
“I don’t get it,” one of them said, not very quietly.
“My father says that our morals are decaying,” her girlfriend said.
They turned around and looked at the boys. Nothing was more wonderful than looking at filth. It made you feel so clean.
Xavier wrapped the book in a plastic bag and handed it to Awromele. “Take it with you,” he said. “Then you can work on it a bit. At your house, no one will notice a book like that.”
AFTER AWROMELE TOLD them at the dinner table that night that he had lost his heart to Xavier and planned to go traveling with him, the rabbi couldn’t eat another bite. His son’s announcement made him feel like vomiting; his wife’s eyes filled with tears, and red blotches appeared on her hands; and Awromele’s brothers and sisters all began shouting at the same time and throwing food at each other. Danica was the only one who didn’t shout. She didn’t throw food at anyone, either. She sat quietly with Snoopy in her lap and ran her tongue across the inside of her braces.
The rabbi pounded on the table, as he often did, but this time he pounded so hard that his whole family fell silent. Even the baby in the other room stopped crying. “Listen,” the rabbi said, “Hitler tried to destroy us, but if you go to Amsterdam with this boy you’ll be doing the same thing, you’ll destroy your family. There will be nothing left of us.”
Awromele tried to say something, but the rabbi pounded on the table again. “Listen,” he said, “let me finish. Everyone loses his heart sometimes; God gave us a heart so that we could lose it. And everyone loses his heart sometimes to a man — that can happen. And what can happen does happen, but when it happens, God help us, on a given day, when you can’t do anything about it, then you keep it a secret. You resolve it discreetly, and you don’t go trotting off to Amsterdam with that man and leave your parents to be the laughing stock of the entire Jewish community in Basel. And if the Jewish community in Basel knows about it, then within two days they’ll know about it in Zürich as well, and then there’s no life for us here. Then I can start all over somewhere else. Be discreet, Awromele, be discreet. Isn’t that what I’ve always tried to teach you? Look for pleasure, but look for it discreetly. Because only discreet pleasure remains; only discreet pleasure has the right to exist.”
“That’s enough of that!” the rabbi’s wife shouted. “I don’t have to listen to this. I don’t want my children listening to this. This is slander, Asher. This is scandalous, what you’re preaching here. How can you say things like that? Awromele, don’t listen to your father. Your father is a cheating fraud and he always has been — listen to me. This boy is no good for you. This boy will drag you down into misery, this boy attracts misfortune, this boy lets himself be circumcised at an age when respectable men are already circumcised, this boy saw to it that Mr. Schwartz ended up in prison. What am I saying? This boy saw to it that Mr. Schwartz is no longer alive. This boy is not one of us; my feelings don’t deceive me; this boy is bad. If you absolutely have to run away with a boy, then I can’t stop you, but find a nice, decent boy who you can adopt children with, because I know you, Awromele, you’re my son, one day you’ll want to have children, and maybe later you’ll change your mind, maybe later you’ll suddenly want a woman. That happens sometimes. But if you change your mind, don’t wait too long. Do it while you still have all your teeth. If you go to Amsterdam with that boy, you won’t be able to do that anymore, you’ll never be able to change your mind, because I’m telling you: you’ll never be able to escape this boy. He’ll never let you go. He’s after your money.”
“But I don’t have any money,” Awromele said without raising his voice, “and I’m going with him, Mama. I want to be with him. He’s going to the Venice of the North, and I have to go along. Where he goes, I’ll go; where he dies, I’ll die.”
“Awromele,” the rabbi shouted, “it’s because the anti-Semite got hold of you — you’re all confused.”
“I’m not confused,” Awromele said. “There’s nothing else I can do. I’m actually thinking more clearly than ever.”
“That’s because you don’t have any experience in life,” the rabbi’s wife said. “Later, you’ll be sorry.”
“I will not allow you to go,” the rabbi said. “As long as I live in this house, as long as I am a rabbi in Basel, as long as I am your father, you will not see that boy again. I’m going to lock you up.”
Awromele stood up from the table. “I don’t feel anything,” he said, “but I’m going now, I’m leaving tonight, and I won’t let you stop me. Because I don’t feel anything, I’ll never feel anything again. I won’t let you lock me up. Lock yourselves up if you want. That’s the only way you two know how to avoid trouble. Lock yourselves up, bolt all the doors, shut the windows — and look what it’s brought you, look at what you’ve become. Despicable, that’s the only word for it. You two talk all day, all you do is talk, you don’t produce anything — okay, children who do the same thing you do — you don’t produce anything, only words, misleading words. Words that come from your mouths are dead words. The language of the future is the language of the shoe, of the knee, of the hand, of the whip. That is communication, honest communication.”
“You’re not going!” the rabbi shouted. “You’re not leaving this house, or you’re no son of mine. We’ll sit shiva for you. And if you stay, the two of us will go out on the town, the way we used to.”
“Stop it!” the rabbi’s wife shouted. “Don’t say things like that; you going there is bad enough already. How can you drag your children along to a den of thieves like that?”
“But, sweetheart,” the rabbi said, “sweetheart, darling, my dearest wife, I do it for you, I go there out of respect for you, respect and love. When I’m there, I’m close to you; I’m never that close to you anywhere else. I need the masseuse in order to love you more. To come closer to you, I need a mediator, the way the Christians need a mediator to come closer to God. The Christians have never understood that, but Jesus is the masseur of God.”