Xavier heard ducks while he was kissing, he heard them quack; he was surprised that the ducks weren’t sleeping. Maybe they had woken the ducks?
The kissing soothed him; he could think clearly again, for the first time since he’d seen Awromele dancing with the manager.
Xavier grabbed the front of the boy’s jacket, pulled open the zipper. He wasn’t wearing anything under it. That’s why he was trembling — he wasn’t dressed warmly enough. He didn’t have enough clothes. That was it. A runaway, a thief.
“Do you want to be comforted?” Xavier asked, holding the boy firmly to the ground. “Isn’t there anyone to comfort you? Are you a foreigner?”
The boy tried to pull on Xavier’s hair, but Xavier moved up to sit on his arms. He rocked back and forth on his knees until the boy started screaming. Xavier took hold of the pendant and turned it around. An animal — a camel, a dromedary, a hippo perhaps. He couldn’t see what it was supposed to be.
“I’m Awromele Michalowitz’s friend,” Xavier said, still holding the pendant. “I saw you with your moped. I figured you could use some help. I figured you need me; that’s why I ran after you. That’s all. You don’t have to be afraid.”
The boy tried to free himself. But where could he go? His moped was broken.
Xavier pressed his lips against the boy’s lips. He succeeded, despite the struggling and the screams — the boy screamed in a language Xavier didn’t recognize — in sticking his tongue into the boy’s mouth. Everything was right, everything fit together, everything was made for each other. Everything tasted so familiar, strangely enough, so safe.
Xavier caressed the boy’s hair, kissed his nose, his lips, his cheeks. Not hard, closer to gently, tenderly, and with concentration. He kissed the boy’s stomach; it was dark in the park, but the streetlights farther down made it light enough for Xavier to see that little hairs were growing out of the boy’s navel, soft black hairs.
He paid no attention to the boy’s struggle. He had to comfort now, tonight; otherwise he would lose Awromele.
At last there was no more struggling, no more pushing and pulling; the boy grew quiet. He liked it, he wanted to be comforted, the way all people wanted to be comforted. Wanted to be understood, to be discovered. Maybe there was no difference between comforting and not being able to say no; maybe, once you added it all up, it all came down to the same thing.
Xavier licked the boy’s nipples, and when he’d had enough of that he leaned down over his face again. He felt content. Almost happy.
At that moment, at that happy, perfect moment, the boy raised his head and bit Xavier on the cheek. So hard that Xavier screamed. But the boy didn’t let go.
Xavier pulled on the boy’s hair, but that didn’t help, either. The boy had sunk his teeth into Xavier’s cheek and wasn’t about to let go; he was like a mad dog; it seemed he wanted to rip flesh from bone. He bit in mortal fear, he bit like a woman.
Xavier yanked the pendant from around his neck. Nothing helped; the boy sank his teeth in farther, he wasn’t letting go.
In the mud, Xavier’s hand came across a stone — not a particularly big one, a little one. With the boy’s teeth still in his cheek, he grabbed the stone and brought it down once, hard, on the boy’s head.
Then the boy finally let go.
The boy’s head fell back onto the ground. He lay there, exhausted, but looking pleased as well. Although the light was dim, Xavier could see blood on the boy’s mouth. That’s how hard he’d bitten. He had sunk his teeth all the way in. For no reason, without pity.
Xavier bent down over the boy. He had wanted to comfort him; of all the people in the Jerusalem of the North, he had been looking for this boy, this lovely boy who had been standing with a moped in the middle of the night on Diepenbrockstraat.
He touched the boy’s cheek, but the boy didn’t respond; the boy was very quiet now. In his hand, Xavier still held the stone. It wasn’t a big one — half the size of his hand, maybe a little bigger. Children had played with it; they had left the stone lying here; they had been planning to build something with it, but then they’d had to go home to eat.
“You’re a foreigner, aren’t you?” Xavier said. “You’re not from around here. You’re from somewhere else. But I come from somewhere else, too, did you know that? I’m from Basel, Basel on the Rhine. Do you know that place? What’s your name, anyway?”
The boy didn’t answer. He looked at Xavier as though he was off his rocker. A retard, a runaway from an asylum, out in the middle of the night with a stolen moped. Someone who didn’t even know his own name. Someone who had forgotten to take his pills, a boy who was nothing without his medicine.
But because of the intensity of his gaze, the color of his eyes, all Xavier could think was: You’re so pretty. And because he thought the boy was so pretty, he petted his head carefully.
Xavier stopped for a moment. He panted, noticing how the pain in his cheek was gradually spreading across his whole face.
“You’re a terrorist,” Xavier said. “Isn’t that it? Are you a terrorist? Or are you only friends with the terrorists?”
Then Xavier had no choice but to kiss the boy again. “Sweet boy,” he said. “Pretty boy. It doesn’t matter. When I was a baby, my mother mixed rat poison into my milk, because sick little animals have to be bitten to death. But she didn’t do it — that’s why I love her even more than before, because I didn’t know about that before. About the sick little animals and what she did to the milk. Do you love me like that, too? Why don’t you talk to me?”
He shook the boy. The pendant Xavier had yanked off was lying in the mud beside his head. Xavier glanced at it: yes, it was obviously a camel or a dromedary. Strange that a boy would wear an animal around his neck — it was what you’d expect from a schoolgirl, saving plates with pictures of bunny rabbits on them. Plates that would never be eaten from, because they were too pretty. Plates that would always stay in the cupboard and be looked at on rare occasions. Only looked at.
“Little terrorist,” Xavier said to the boy. “Wake up, pretty little terrorist, say something. I want to hear your voice.”
Xavier sat down cross-legged beside the boy. He was muddy anyway, it didn’t matter where he sat.
He took the boy’s head in his hands; he rocked it, wiped the moisture from the boy’s forehead. It was sweating, the head was. Xavier said: “I came here to comfort you, even though you’re a terrorist, even though I knew you were a terrorist when I saw you standing beside the moped. I could tell right away — I recognized you — but terrorists need comfort, too. I saw you, and I knew you were looking for me, pretty boy, the same way I’d been looking for you, all those nights when I walked through Amsterdam because I couldn’t go home, because I can’t sleep when my friend’s not there. I go crazy when he’s not there, and he’s almost never there, because he can’t say no. That’s why I was looking for you, from the first moment I got here. Because I wanted to tell you this: suffering is the emergency exit of beauty. That’s what I’ve been wanting to tell you, for so long, as long as you’ve existed. You don’t have to be afraid, little terrorist of mine, because morality is what protects the strong and destroys the weak. That’s why beauty is all there is. That’s why every judgment is a matter of beauty, and that’s why I’m looking for the emergency exit. I know what I’ve done, you don’t have to tell me, I know everything, but I did it to comfort the Jews. What I did to you, too, I did in order to comfort them. I hit you on the head with a rock, but that’s the only way to speak, sweet boy. Because the stone speaks on my behalf. Much better than I ever could. He tells you what’s inside me, what needs to come out, about the things for which no words exist, and even if they did you wouldn’t understand me. That’s why I speak with a stone. All pain is communication, you understand? And all communication is pain. Words as we know them are superfluous. What I am doing now is superfluous. The stone speaks, the stone sings, the stone has sung a song of love; every time he hit you on the head he was declaring his love. Did you hear it, pretty boy? Did you feel it? It was a lovelier song than I could ever have sung for you. I can’t sing — I’m not a stone.”