He locked himself in his room and put on a record of klezmer music. Occasionally, while listening to the melancholy sound of the violins, he uttered an almost animal cry. His parents heard the music and the animal cries, came upstairs, and stood listening at the door of their only son’s room.
“This isn’t normal,” his father said after a while.
Another terrible cry sounded behind the door.
“No,” the mother said. “This is not normal.” She knocked quietly on the door, but the son didn’t hear her.
Because Xavier’s parents were fairly passive, they remained standing there aghast for a few seconds, then went back downstairs.
Xavier turned up the volume on his stereo system, filling the house with klezmer music.
“I am a Jew,” Xavier shouted in his room. His happiness was what one might call orgiastic.
Downstairs, in the living room, his parents were sitting stiffly at the coffee table.
“Let him get it out of his system,” his father said. “It’s his age.” He leafed through his address book, looking for the phone number of a psychologist he knew.
“Maybe we should buy medicine for him,” his wife said.
The architect slammed shut his address book. “This is all because of your father,” he said quietly. “Couldn’t he have simply been a follower, like any other respectable person? Why did he have to go marching out in front with that big, fanatical nose of his?” Xavier’s mother winced and went to the kitchen.
One floor above, Xavier fell onto his bed. He buried his face in the pillows and fell asleep. Happiness had worn him out.
STARTING THAT VERY afternoon, the architect did his best to talk to his son man to man — no longer just as a father, as an institute of learning, but also as a friend. For starters, whenever he ran into Xavier in the living room at night, or in the bathroom in the morning, he gave him a jovial whack.
Xavier almost always shouted, “Hey, you’re hurting me!”
“Come on, buddy,” the father said. “A little roughhousing never hurt. You’re a man.” And he would push his son against the wall and playfully rub up against him.
The architect bought a punching bag, in the conviction that an adolescent needed to vent his aggression. But he himself was the only one who used the punching bag. He played with the punching bag so much his wife couldn’t take it any longer and said, “If you have too much energy, why don’t you join a rowing club, like any other respectable person?”
The architect stopped pummeling the bag for a moment, looked at his wife disapprovingly, and said: “That’s great, coming from you. What did your father do with his surplus energy? Okay, tell me, what did he do with it? Too bad they didn’t buy him a punching bag — it would have saved us a lot of trouble.”
His wife shook her head and went off to soak some raisins. There was nothing that helped her forget she was alive like baking apple pies and marble cake.
The punching bag clearly wasn’t the answer, so the architect asked his son to go along with him on a business trip: in Singapore, he was going to build the offices of a big pharmaceutical company. But Xavier said he’d rather stay at home.
One evening, over dinner, the architect realized just how fruitless his attempts to make friends with his son had been. Looking up from his plate, Xavier said, “They’re hushing it up for political reasons, but research in Africa has shown that circumcised men have eighty percent less chance of getting AIDS.”
“In Africa,” was all his mother said.
Nine days after their talk on the patio at the Drei Könige am Rhein Hotel, when Xavier had still heard nothing from Awromele, he called him up.
“It’s me,” he said, after he finally got Awromele on the phone.
The line sounded dead.
“It’s me,” he said again. “Xavier Radek, I took your picture.”
There was still no reply.
“Hello!” he shouted. “Awromele, is that you?”
Finally, Xavier heard something. “Am I speaking with the uncircumcised Jew?” he heard.
They’re on to me, he thought, afraid he was going to faint. He had counted on their catching on to him someday, but not so soon. He cleared his throat. “How are you?”
In a strange voice, Awromele asked, “Am I speaking with the Assimilated One?”
“Is this supposed to be a joke?” Xavier asked.
“I was trying to be funny, I’m sorry. I have no sense of humor.”
To his relief, Awromele’s voice sounded normal now.
“It was a good joke. One of your best.”
“I have no sense of humor; I’m sorry.”
“No need to be sorry. What you don’t have you can always acquire.”
“Listen, I’ve found someone for you.”
Xavier started relaxing, yet he still wasn’t completely sure of Awromele’s friendship.
“Did you hear me?” Awromele asked. “I said I’ve got someone for you.”
“I hear you very clearly,” Xavier said, “as though you were standing next to me.”
“Someone who will do it for forty francs. That’s as cheap as it gets. That’s a gift from the Almighty.”
“Someone who will do what?”
“What do you think?”
Again Xavier had the creepy feeling that they were on to him, that he was being put to the test, the way God regularly put His people to the test.
“You mean, what we were talking about at the Drei Könige am Rhein?”
“What’s the name of that place again?”
“Drei Könige am Rhein.”
“Yeah, that’s it. Circumcision. You have any idea how much that usually costs?”
When Xavier heard the word “circumcision” he flinched, as though someone had laid a whip across his back.
“How much that usually costs? No idea.”
Maybe the situation wasn’t as dire as he’d thought. Xavier was glad he had called Awromele at a moment when his parents weren’t home. It was important to not make his parents any unhappier than they already were. Sooner or later they would follow him. In the long run, his parents would become Jews as well, but the time wasn’t ripe to confront them with that.
“An adult male, like you,” Awromele said.
“So?”
“How much do you think that usually costs? Guess.”
“No idea. I really have no idea.”
Awromele sounded like he was talking about the price of a haircut.
“A lot, let me tell you. We’re not talking about a baby here, or a house-cat; we’re talking about an invasive procedure, the kind the insurance doesn’t cover. You can’t really call it a medical necessity. But I’ve found someone who will do it almost for free, because your story touched his heart.”
“My story?”
“That your parents are so assimilated that they didn’t want to have you circumcised, that you don’t know anything, but that you want to learn. I told Mr. Schwartz all about it.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Forty francs, and I’ll do the aftercare.”
“What do you mean, aftercare?”
“For if it gets infected.”
“Oh. Is there a big chance of that? Did you get an infection?”
“Big, big? What, do I sound like an expert? You think I arrange illegal circumcisions every day?”
“What’s so illegal about my circumcision?” But Xavier heard his mother at the front door and said, “I have to go now.”
“Mr. Schwartz wants to meet you.”
His mother came hurrying up the steps, as much as his mother ever hurried.
“I have to go, I’ll call you later.”
“Mr. Schwartz wants to meet you; your story touched his heart.”
“Some other time,” Xavier said. Then he hung up. His mother was standing before him. She was panting.