Later on, Sam took me to a small club. I was born in this city and I thought I knew it well, but the alleys we walked in were strange to me. Sam knew that part of the city better than me. I thought to myself: The old man sounds like an indifferent, polite, and swinish murderer. Maybe he's a miserable person, but I didn't say those things aloud. The ruins were restored and Sam who knew the ruins before they were restored led me on winding paths as if everything that had been built since then hadn't been built yet.
I was surprised at the audacity of our architects who, when they restored that part of the city, preserved completely what had been and as they repaired and rebuilt, they even preserved the hiding places, hidden ways, produced over many years, in alleys where you could once evade creditors, police, or disgruntled women. Sam knew the way well, and I thought that if those architects had to reconstruct a sinking ship, they'd do it by preserving the sinking, even without preserving the ship. The nightclub was dim and filthy. Women with dyed hair and puffedup hairdos sat on high stools with round, ugly backs. Ear-piercing music blasted from a jukebox. In back, past the American cigarette machine we saw a stage loaded with boards and rags, a broken straw chair stood there and next to it, on its side, an old spotlight. We drank beer, ate Greek olives. The owner was a stocky man with a mustache, who addressed Sam: Your face is familiar to me, sir, eyes like that I can't forget! Sam smiled and said in a loud voice: Ladies and gentlemen, please set your watches back four hours, the time is four-thirty in the afternoon, April fifteenth… And the bartender said with a joy kindled in him: For God's sake, I remember him, the boy who was… those eyes… and then one of the women sitting next to me said in a loud voice: I'd screw with eyes like that and be willing to die the way they die in Naples, and a woman sitting next to her said: "After you see Naples." The first one said, What does it matter before, after! And the bartender yelled: Stop blabbing, and moved to the other side of the bar, hugged Sam, and I sat there a stranger, while Sam, maybe really wasn't a stranger… He climbed onto the stage and fixed the spotlight, plugged it in an outlet hidden behind boards and heaps of paper, shut his eyes, and asked everybody to set their watches back and they did, me too. One of the women started singing in a soft, clear voice, her voice sounded as if it were composed of glass slivers, Sam moved some old rugs, a mouse darted out to the shrieks of some women, the spotlight was lit and illuminated the face of the woman singing and she sat down on the broken chair, and the other women joined in and it wasn't like a choir singing but flickers of sounds, like a vanished expanse of audio mist. I waited for the bartender to smoke a Ritesma cigarette, pour light Rhine wine, and for gleaming aluminum insignia to be emblazoned on his shoulders, but everything was now faded, part of that invented past now without real glory, I felt how hollow everything is when it's out of place or time. Everything was divided into decimal fractions, which didn't add up to any reliable equation. An old picture of a girl with stretched-out legs, and a bird sitting on her belly, was discovered on a shabby wall behind the lighted stage. Above the girl's head flew angels of a saccharine nearly wiped-out color, the legs of the singing woman spread by themselves, she wore high black boots and her thighs looked gleaming and firm, and when she spread her legs a rubber snake was discovered tied to her belt, and the snake wound into her shaved crotch, and the moment the song was especially melancholy, almost whispered, Sam crushed her groin, and the snake darted out at him and bit his hand and he stroked the woman's crotch and she kept on singing. An innocent laugh spread over her face, her eyes were wide open with a kind of intimacy, perhaps hope, she spat out the chewing gum hidden in her mouth, shut her eyes and the bartender leaned over a little, shriveled, his head turned to me, and Sam called out: Come here, and I got up, looking stupid in my own eyes, but bereft of willpower, I climbed onto the stage, I was Kramer, it took a minute, my face changed, since the eyes looking at me saw him, not me. I talked about the last defensive operation in the Alps, about poor Eva who died in the bunker, how our holy soil was defended. On my knees I sat, like a boy scolded in a classroom, nobody was amazed, the bartender didn't move from his scrunched position, the woman went on singing with yearning eyes, I was defended by a bayoneted English soldier, Sam cited the number of unemployed in Cologne, Leipzig, Hesse, and Frankfurt in 'twenty-nine.
Sam's watch was set well, fat men smoked giant cigars and drank whiskey and soda and sang a contemptible Hallelujah. We prepared a putsch, Sam directed in silence, maybe we were too drunk, earlier we had drunk seven glasses of beer, I wanted to pee, but I didn't dare get up, the woman wept, it was in 'twentyeight that she wept, and the number of unemployed was worrisome, inflation was rampant, the rubber snake dropped out. Another girl, whose name I even remember, Johanna, sang "Deutschland abet Alles" and then a fat woman got up, rolled up her dress and peed on the stage, wiped herself with a strip of old newspaper and the pee flowed on the floor, and the woman on the chair licked her lips, and Sam recited stock prices in June 'twenty-nine, the price of gas, the price of vegetables, the price of newspapers, yearnings were born and I don't know whether those were yearnings for what was or for what was after that, faces were crying for help, I stood on my knees, somebody sang: The shark has pearly teeth dear, and he shows them pearly white, just a jackknife has old MacHeath dear, and he keeps it out of sight, she yelled: He's a shark! And Sam said: Watch out for sharks! To catch a shark you have to grab him by the tail, make him lie on his back. He dies because his belly isn't connected to the walls of his body, he's got a moving belly and he sheds it, said Sam, and I muttered some of your words, Kramer, twenty-four thousand teeth every ten years. And I, I can't move, I try to understand Sam and I know, know that deep inside me I do understand him, but I'm ashamed precisely because I do understand. The bartender is now trying to return the clock to the present, outside, somebody's knocking on the window, reality penetrates inside with a wild daring and I want to get up and maybe I did, the woman comes close to him and he kisses her and then slaps Kramer and looks at him in amazement, smears his face with powder he took out of some woman's purse and my head drops, and the more I want to get up, the more I drop, and am covered with powder, spew foam, and somebody thrusts a bottle of whiskey into my mouth, and I drink, and then, I stood, me, I who once shot at low-flying planes, and I spoke about "paratroopers" brought down by the bullets of our soldiers, the heroes, when the ghetto was burning, and how nice to see you landing dead from the roofs, from the burned houses, and I shot in retrospect, according to Sam's clock, reluctantly I aimed and shot into a propaganda film of the burning ghetto shot by my father and I was ridiculous in my own eyes, a chorus of fake women sang with artificial voices the anthem of the Black Corps of paratrooper shooters, Herr Reichsfuhrer, the ghetto is no more says (inside me) SS Sturmbahnfuhrer Stroop, and my father shoots pictures of his son shooting at the "paratroopers," and then the giant fire. And how beautiful it is to photograph the lapping fire, the houses collapsing, and they're still singing, and then Sam cuts his hand deeply with a knife he found on the counter, and I understand that Boaz left him the knife he took from Rebecca who took it from the knife-sharpener in Jaffa, it's all mixed up in my brain, maybe I'm dreaming, I and Jordana in the bath, hugged by a dream girl of death, the blood flowing on Sam's hand, I hit Sam and the spotlight, it's dark and the voices fall silent all at once.