I thought about Cervantes's sentence that the pen is the tongue of the soul. Maybe the apartment is simply the thermometer of those who live in it. The conversation, of course, slid to the Last Jew. Never for a moment did I believe that Lily didn't know that Lionel and Sam are sons of the same father, but it was strange for me to think that Lionel didn't know that and that it was so important for those concerned that he not know. Later on, when I met Sam, I understood that he had to preserve lines of defense for himself and that he never trusted anybody-except Ebenezer and Lily-fully. After more than twenty years in the United States, he still felt foreign. As in his relations with Licinda, he always had to be on guard. Lily came from the same world of which Ebenezer is the last remnant. Deep in his heart, Sam Lipp believes that Ebenezer doesn't recite the Last Jew, but that he is the Last Jew, and everything seen in his eyes, and felt, is nothing but a delusion he's willing to live in, but whose logic he doesn't have to accept. That's strategic room for maneuver, a bit mendacious, a kind of pocket pogrom and anti-pogrom he keeps with him as a guarantee for his life. Thus Sam still sells his lampshade, hates what he can't forgive himself, takes revenge on himself for being prevented from taking revenge on the world that Ebenezer maintained was annihilated.
Sam's dreams are so strong that Lily started dreaming his dreams and sometimes she wakes up at night in a cold sweat (she told Renate this as she was drinking), gets up, goes to Sam and Licinda's room, and he's lying there, his eyes wide open, shaking, even Licinda started dreaming Sam's dreams.
I said I didn't know where Ebenezer was living today, but Lily glanced at me offended, since she knew very well that I knew, and then she said in German: Watch out, Sam does dangerous things, maybe what you don't know can sometimes be good.
Lionel told me he had found material in the public library that had been copied by a scholar from Brandeis University. It was a precise account of an evening in a nightclub in London where Ebenezer performed many years ago. I came on that material, said Lionel, when I discovered that one of the laments I wrote was made into an opera and the composer, a German Jew named Weiss, found the libretto in the library. I found a few laments whose provenance I didn't know, they weren't exactly my laments, but one of them was very similar to my sixth lament, about the child who extracted gold teeth. You know the lament, he said confidently, and I did indeed remember it. The composition is called "Sources for the Burial of Moses, Story of the Golden Calf and Its Location," and the material Ebenezer recited was that composition-in addition to the other laments, including my lament-and was composed from Ebenezer's words, by Yehuda Ber Avram ben Abraham and printed in Leipzig in 1984. And the year 1984 is still very far from us, said Lionel. I told him I knew about that composition and was quite amazed by it, and Lionel said that among the papers and manila files were annals of a Crusader (I immediately verified the story) and some meeting between SS Sturmbahnfuhrer Kramer and Nehemiah Schneerson, husband of Rachel Schneerson, a meeting that was held, said Lionel, in nineteen nine. I was excited to hear these things and asked if he didn't mean Boaz, and he said: No, Nehemiah. Lionel asked if that was so important, since I looked quite excited and my face was surely beaming and I said Yes, yes. He told me: I've got a copy of this material and I'll bring it to you. We sat and drank the wine we had brought and Lily didn't talk anymore, but chain-smoked, with restrained pensiveness, and then Lionel came back and gave me a copy of the material, I glanced at it and then put it in my pocket.
In every person hides an image of a first love that may never have been. Lily was my first love, a love I didn't know. Dreams of my youth were embodied not only in the meditations of sin of Ukrainian guards, as Sam put it, but also in my own meditations. There was also a moment I still regret, a moment when I envied Lionel for robbing me of the right to love Lily and in my heart I expressed that explicitly: Our Lily! And I hated myself for that thought. Renate, who sensed something, stroked my hand and let me feel that she understood and forgave, but she wasn't willing for me to continue, and I stopped. That was a moment of wrath, like a demon that attacked, stayed in me and left immediately.
Lily, who maybe also felt it, laughed and looked at me as if to say: You're all alike! But there was also some sign of her own guilt in her smile; if you were forged of this matter, what was I forged of, she surely thought. But the moment passed. Lionel spoke excellent German, he told us about Sam's work, about his theater, and said that Sam had been working for two years on a new play based on the story of Joseph de la Rayna and that Licinda, Sam's girlfriend, was acting in that play. The premiere was tomorrow, and when he asked if we'd like to see the play, we agreed enthusiastically and arranged to meet the next day. Late at night, we went outside, Lily accompanied us, it was snowing, the wind was strong, and then the wind stopped, and Lily said: I know your books, and she linked arms with Renate, who was trembling a little from the sharp transition from warmth to cold. You're decent people, said Lily, but I'm really not at all sure it's good that you came, things aren't yet healed, got to watch out, everybody's conspiring against him, he fights me against Lionel, he's got a broken, corrupt laugh, he's always expecting the blow to land, that play… Sam Lipp isn't producing a play, he's creating the Fourth Reich. She glanced at me, smiled and didn't continue, changed the subject, and said: But it's better like this, you came, maybe it's important that we met, I have to defend Sam and Lionel, I normally don't speak German. In my childhood I sang "Spring, fields, how beautiful are the blue and copper mountains." I sang the "Niederlandisches Dankgebet, Wacht am Rhine." Yes, sometimes, between Sam's dreams, to protect him, she suddenly said in broken German, I have to dream or sing in German… and then she tore her arm out of Renate's and ran home.