“Don’t do that,” she said. “I’m not clean. Let me cook for you. I’m not clean.”
From the next room came the sound of crying; it ruined Xavier’s concentration.
MARC DRAGGED HIMSELF across the floor to the chair where the mother had resumed her pose. She had been counting the books in the bookcase, just to kill time, but now that Marc was lying at her feet, she couldn’t ignore him any longer.
He grabbed her legs and shook them, which she found rather unpleasant.
“Do something,” he groaned, “help me. Please, help me. Do something. It hurts so bad.”
The rat poison hadn’t improved his looks; in fact, it had made him revolting, ugly.
“You ate too fast,” the mother said. “You were too greedy.”
He was short of breath; it looked like he couldn’t breathe anymore. He struggled to pull himself up to a sitting position. But he hadn’t grabbed hold of the table, he had seized the tablecloth. He pulled everything down onto the floor — the cups, the plates, the leftover cake, and the bowl of whipped cream.
The mother looked at him disapprovingly. What a mess he’d made of things. He couldn’t even bring this to a decent end.
Marc lay on the ground, the tablecloth draped halfway across his body.
For another minute or two, the room was filled with a strange panting sound, like the sound of a sick dog sneezing. Then, at last, it was still.
The mother stepped over the mess and went into the kitchen, where she picked up her lover. “Shema Yisrael,” she murmured.
She decided on her groin; she had never been taken there before. There was no one else at home but her. She could scream all she wanted.
RIKE TOOK HER little daughter into the living room and put her in front of the TV. Then she went back up to the bedroom, where Xavier was still lying on the bed. Although she hadn’t been planning to, she took off her jeans again. It had been so long since she’d had some action, she wanted a little action now, even if it was with a strange boy. She didn’t want to wait another year; she didn’t want to wait until she had the courage to invite someone else from the supermarket up for a cup of tea.
“Lie there, just like that,” Xavier said. He trotted down the stairs. He put the tea-warmers on a tray and brought them back to the bedroom. He’d made it all the way without having one of the little candles go out.
“Oh, how romantic,” the young woman said. “That’s so sweet of you.”
Xavier pushed his head between her legs again, and after a few minutes, he mumbled, “We have to wall it shut.”
“What are you mumbling about now?” she whispered. She was a little out of breath from moving her lower body up and down the whole time. She was the older; she wanted to make a good impression in bed. She wanted to show him how nice it could be.
Xavier picked up one of the tea-warmers, blew it out, ran his finger through the wax, which was still runny, and rubbed the wax on the spot where evil came from.
“Ow,” she cried. “What are you doing?”
“I’m the comforter of the Jews,” he said. “That’s why I’m walling shut the cunt.”
She sighed, she blushed. For a moment she thought she heard her daughter running down the hall, but she was still sitting in front of the TV. “You nut,” she said. “You’re so cute, you know you’re so nice.”
THE MOTHER WAS lying on the kitchen floor. The lover had taken her in the groin; there was a lot of blood coming from her groin.
If only they could see me now, she thought, if only they could see me.
She had her lover in her hand; she hadn’t put him back in the dish rack. She needed to catch her breath, but later he would take her again, and again, and again, until she couldn’t say “Shema Yisrael” anymore.
DANICA PUT SOME things into a shopping bag with a picture of Snoopy on it: a toothbrush, a pocket diary, a bar of soap. She didn’t miss her father; she didn’t miss Awromele, either; she didn’t miss anyone. Then she went outside, to the park where her tormentors often hung out after dinner, to talk about important matters.
She hoped she would meet her tormentors; without them she was all alone, because even when they weren’t there they were still there anyway. She thought about them all day, she saw them all day long, all day long she expected the boys to show up, she heard them wherever she went. It was better when they were really there; that was much easier to take.
She wandered through the park, but couldn’t find them. The park was almost deserted this evening. At last she saw a man walking alone, without a dog, without a wife, just someone taking a walk. He looked athletic.
First she followed him for a while; then she went and stood in front of him. She rested her hands on her breasts, pressed her hands against them, pushed her tongue up against her braces, looked the stranger straight in the eye, and said, “Kierkegaard.”
The man looked at her. He smiled. “How old are you?” he asked at last.
“Thirteen,” she said.
XAVIER LEFT the home of the single mother. Not until he got to the foot of the stairs, to the front door, did he realize that he had forgotten Awromele’s custard.
He didn’t go back; he ran through the streets on his way to the student hostel on Prinsengracht.
There he took off all his clothes and climbed into bed. He was still shivering. He didn’t know where the fever ended and reality began. All he knew was that he felt nothing, that he had succeeded in feeling nothing, that it was so much better not to feel a thing. All meaning was fiction, after all, the product of an overworked imagination.
The Dictatorship of the Majority
NOT FAR FROM THE BEACH, in the center of Tel Aviv, Xavier and Awromele found themselves a little apartment. It was infested with rats and cockroaches, but they were together in the Promised Land.
The authorities had welcomed them with open arms. Xavier had passed himself off as a red-blooded Zionist from old Europe. In fact, it wasn’t a matter of passing himself off. He was who he said he was, a Zionist, a man convinced that the Jews should live together in order to be comforted.
Before long, they received their Israeli passports. And, no matter to whom Awromele could not say no — and there were to be many of those, men of all ages, from every country, tourists, soldiers, journalists, Arabs — he always came back to Xavier, like a son to his mother. Sometimes it took a while, but he came back.
One morning in bed, Awromele said: “It doesn’t matter, Xavier. We don’t feel anything. That’s why we’ll always be together. Because we don’t feel a thing, only death can put an end to our togetherness. That’s why we’re able to stay together, that’s why we love each other. Other people think they feel something. Sometimes, when I can’t say no and I go with them, Xavier, I notice that they think that, and I can only despise them for that. That’s why I always come back to you, time and time again, because you’re the only one who is honest enough, like me, to admit that he doesn’t feel a thing.”
He took Xavier’s hands in his and held on to them. He fetched a pair of nail scissors from the kitchen and began cutting Xavier’s fingernails. From little finger to thumb, then the other hand, from thumb to little finger.
“That’s right,” Xavier said, “that’s why we stay together.”
“You should take better care of yourself,” Awromele said, still holding the nail scissors. “You should think about more than just your language lessons. What good is translating Mein Kampf into Yiddish if you neglect your appearance?”
“Awromele,” Xavier said, “I can’t live without you, either. Funny, isn’t it?” He pulled Awromele’s shirt up around his shoulders and kissed his nipples. Even though he knew how many others had done so before, and would do so in the years to come, he still had the feeling that he was the very first person to kiss Awromele’s nipples, the very first to smell him, the very first, except for his mother, to see him naked.