Then Xavier looked at the stone he was still clenching and saw that there was hair sticking to it. Hair and scalp, an indistinct but sticky substance. He kissed the stone, petted the boy’s cheek.
He let go of the boy’s head, got up, walked to the fence beside the pond. He could step over it without difficulty. He was still holding the stone, as if it were a little daughter’s hand, like a proud father out walking with his daughter for the first time, right after she’s learned to walk.
The water was cold, but not as cold as he’d thought. The ducks quacked. On the other side, he saw two geese as well. He squatted down to wash his chest. He was dirty, from the mud, from the sweat. He remained sitting there like that, up to his chin in the pond. He looked over his shoulder. He could see the boy lying on the shore, the terrorist; he could barely see him. All pain was communication; if it didn’t hurt it wasn’t communicating, and then nothing had been said, nothing had been stated, nothing had stuck. The painless was frivolous, at the very best.
Xavier raised his hand to his cheek. His cheek was bleeding. He didn’t need a mirror to tell. He could feel it. They came swimming over to him, the ducks; they were curious.
“Hello, ducks,” Xavier said.
There was already a glimmer of light in the east. He had to go home, he had to get home fast, wash up, wash his clothes, wait for Awromele.
He dropped the stone into the water, with regret, full of sadness, the way you leave a loved one without being able to imagine what life will be like without her. He climbed onto the shore.
The ducks quacked as he went, as though they had grown accustomed to his presence, as though they couldn’t get along without him.
For a moment, he stopped and looked at the boy lying in the mud, close to the fence around the pond. Xavier pulled up the zipper on the boy’s jogging suit. “So you don’t get cold,” he said. “But cold is communication, too; the cold talks to you, the cold sings its song as well, lovelier than we humans ever could.”
AT THE AIRPORT in Zürich, a young woman with blond curls checked in for a flight to Tel Aviv. At the counter in the duty-free shop, where she wanted to buy some chocolate for her mother, she searched the pockets of her jacket for change and found a tooth. She took it out of her pocket and looked at it, pensively but also a bit distraught. It had been months since she’d seen the tooth; she had forgotten it was in her jacket pocket all that time.
“Oh, forget it,” she said.
For a single second, it was as though the entire airport at Zürich smelled of dog and of desert. Then she put the tooth back in her pocket and walked on, with no Swiss chocolate for her mother, to the gate.
Where Evil Grows
WHEN HE GOT HOME, Xavier took a shower. He cleaned his cheek; it didn’t look good, bloody and inflamed, someone had really taken a bite out of it. In the bathroom, he filled a bucket with soapy water and put his clothes in it. He threw his shoes away. They were almost two years old anyway.
Awromele still hadn’t come home, but Xavier couldn’t worry about that. He climbed into bed naked and pulled the covers up around him. There was no way he could get warm. Sleep wouldn’t come, either. He was delirious; he dreamed, he awoke with a start, called for his mother, then for God, then Awromele. He thought about his grandfather, about You-Know-Who; he took King David out of the cupboard, laid him beside him in bed, and looked at him as though seeing him for the first time.
When he heard the clock of the old West Church strike seven, he sat straight up in bed. He rocked his upper body rhythmically back and forth, the way devout Jews do when praying, and thought about the boy with the moped. At last he had beaten his imagination, shut it up for good, crushed it beneath his heel. He was no longer thinking about Awromele, about what he was doing, or could be doing; he thought about the boy with the moped, the terrorist in the park for whom he had sung a song of love. People still couldn’t understand how beautiful that was, the song that had been sung there, in the middle of the night. Only the ducks had heard. But someday people would understand; someday the world would see that only pain is communication. Human beings wanted to communicate, again and again. Even the saint on his desert pillar wants that — that’s why he sits on his pillar, to talk to it, to tell it everything, even if it remains silent, to love the pillar and be loved by it in return. Without the pillar, he would go mad.
But all painless conversation, all chitchat that doesn’t even scratch the surface, is a diversion, fluff, oil that polishes the surface until it shines but finally ruins it. Talking makes us forget we’re alive, makes us wonder whether life even exists, whether there is even anything like life, whether this isn’t a form of death that we have collectively overestimated.
Xavier was still rocking back and forth. He weighed his thoughts, arranged and rearranged them, and saw the boy in the park.
Awromele came home at eight-thirty. He smelled of cigarettes and manager.
“What happened to you?” Awromele asked. He pointed at Xavier’s cheek.
“Oh, nothing,” Xavier said. “I was bitten.”
“Bitten — you’re right about that. How did that happen?” He ran his hand over Xavier’s hair. He looked at the wound. Awromele couldn’t stand the sight of blood.
“I got bitten because I was talking to someone. I had a good conversation, finally, I have to admit.”
Awromele wasn’t listening closely; he took off his clothes and crawled into bed with Xavier.
“Shouldn’t you take a shower?” Xavier asked.
“Later,” Awromele said. “Not now. I’m tired. I love you.”
Xavier pulled Awromele up against him, as close as he could. “I made a sacrifice,” he said. “All true communication requires a sacrifice. If you want to help someone escape his loneliness, you have to make a sacrifice, you have to break down the walls.”
“What kind of sacrifice?” asked Awromele, who already had his eyes closed.
“A sacrifice for you,” Xavier said. “Only for you. To comfort you.”
“What kind of sacrifice?” Awromele asked again. The pressure of Xavier’s body had given him an erection. He opened his eyes again.
“A sacrifice,” Xavier repeated. “I made contact with the enemy.”
“What enemy?”
“Your enemy.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Awromele said. “I don’t have any enemies.”
“Everyone has enemies,” Xavier whispered in Awromele’s good ear. “Everyone. You just have to recognize them, that’s all. You have to say hello to them, know where they live; you need their phone number so you can call them. Their first and last names. Their ZIP code. Life is struggle, nothing more.”
“Don’t make any more sacrifices for me,” Awromele said. He was awfully tired; he couldn’t focus well on the conversation. He had spent half the night listening to the manager, who had poured out his heart to him in bed. Awromele was in the process of dropping off into a just and healing slumber.
“So how was your evening?” asked Xavier, who couldn’t sleep anyway. He wanted to be close to Awromele, in whatever way he could.
“Oh, all right,” Awromele murmured. “I couldn’t say no again. I hope I learn someday.” He looked at Xavier’s cheek, and just before falling asleep he said, “We need to get you to a doctor with that cheek.” Then he rolled over.