In my house, about fifty meters away from that room, two hundred typed pages were lying on the table. Everything was ready there for me to continue my investigation, but now I learned things I had never realized, things the files I had examined and the tapes I had listened to hadn't taught me at all, like Menahem my son I didn't write my poem either, the German wrote it, I listen to the conversation between the two men, how close they are to one another… still groping, as if that was a postponed lifeor-death meeting, and in the end I was the messenger boy. I looked at Renate's eyes. They were damp but she wasn't crying. I saw in her eyes a spark of understanding, as if she were saying to me, Look, Henkin, how they're playing, how they're trying to touch one another, their eagerness to play a game considerably obscures their ability to triumph over one another, there's no need to play now, Ebenezer, said the German, I shouldn't have given a sign, I would have found you.
I needed a sign, said Ebenezer and poured himself another glass. They drank, and then Ebenezer smiled: The daughters! You don't remember things, said the German, everything was internal signs, what do you remember? You remember only your knowledge, so you didn't have to make an effort, Secret Charity is also a memory you learned from somebody else, you don't even remember who you are!
That's right, said Ebenezer. I'm a man without qualities, that's what they said at the institute.
The German wanted to say something but stopped himself more for us than for Ebenezer. He drank another glass and groped for Ebenezer's hand. I was searching for you, said the writer.
He was searching, said Renate and my wife opened her eyes wide and looked at her with a sympathetic smile. He asked and investigated said Renate, they didn't know, even in the Foreign Ministry they didn't know.
Ebenezer is a small person in Israel, said Ebenezer and shut his eyes to remember who he was, ID number 454322, no papers, only the health service and an election stub. The number there like a number on the arm. One number more, that's all.
Ebenezer was silent and looked at him, he tried to imagine his mother Rebecca. He couldn't remember, he tried.
And the son?
Here Ebenezer woke up, an echo of personal memory struck him, he said: Ask Henkin.
I was silent and looked at my wife. A stub of a smile hung on her lips, but even if she was thinking of Boaz Schneerson, she didn't say a thing.
And then the German said: When was that? 'Forty-six?
And Ebenezer who had almost shut his eyes, opened them wide and said: I don't remember, tell me, tell me why you were searching for me today, why did I want to see you. Before, when I wanted to recite, why did you stop me? You want to tell me something about me, about yourself, tell, what I remember I say, but I don't have a personal memory and what I do have is worthless anyway!
Yes, said the German, now more for us than for Ebenezer, who was listening intensely, it was in 'forty-six. I was living in Zeeland then, in a little village, about an hour from Copenhagen, I rented a neglected old schoolhouse among estates and farms, I renovated it a little, and in the big room next to the giant window, looking at the beautiful monochromatic landscape, I sat and wrote. In my youth I learned Scandinavian languages. My mother was of Danish extraction, I didn't want to live in Germany then. One day I had to go to Copenhagen to buy writing supplies and a coat for the approaching winter. I had practically no money and I saved on the trip, but I had no choice. I walked in the street whose name I don't remember today and a young man came to me, about seventeen years old, and introduced himself as Samuel Lipker the impresario, as he said, he spoke German to me and was the first man who knew as soon as he saw me that I was German. He said he was an American of Norwegian extraction who had been imprisoned in a Jewish concentration camp. I looked at him. He had eyes that were both awful and beautiful, enveloped by violet eyebrows, green mixed with gold, in his look you could perceive a bold Satanism but also some softness, he measured his words carefully, and something in the way he stood made you uneasy. He talked as if he were telling a secret: If you want to see a performance of a tremendous artist, a reincarnation of the magician Houdini, who was also, as you know, a Jew, come this evening to the Blue Lizards Club, and you won't be sorry. Then he smiled at me pleasantly, the smile of an accomplice in crime and said, So see you, Hans. I said to him, My name isn't Hans, and I started talking Danish to him but he laughed and said: Hans Kramer, SS. Dening. I know you, you've all got a fried smell of God in your pocket, and all the time he smiled at me, See you, Hans, and went off. A lot of swindlers were hanging out in Europe at that time, selling churches, nonexistent cities, whatnot, the boy was a broken vessel but his German made me curious, the page he gave me and that I held in my hand said in a broken language that Ebenezer the Great is the Last Jew, scion of a family of rabbis descending from the Prophet Jeremiah and today he is the human calculator who can't be beaten or defied. That evening, said the mimeographed sheet, the Last Jew would perform in the Blue Lizards Club and everybody who came would leave intoxicated.
I bought what I came to buy, it was raining again, I walked in the rain and I thought: I'll go back to the village, the train leaves in about an hour, I'll go back and write, every minute's a waste. But a cold wind was blowing and I went into a small restaurant, ate something, and then didn't find a bus and I got into a cab and when I wanted to say: Take me to the railroad station, I saw a glowing sign in the distance: Jesus is the Messiah! I said to the driver: The Blue Lizards Club, and I dozed off.
I went down a few dark steps and entered a roofed internal yard. A short man in a suit smelling of garlic mixed with kerosene asked me for the price of admission.
Ebenezer now got up from the chair, went to the window and looked outside. His body was trembling. In the window the moon started setting. A pale glow rose from the street lamps along the old enclosure of the port. The writer took a sip of vodka, munched a few peanuts, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin stuck in a charmingly beautiful wooden triangle, and continued.
The dank hall was quite big and humming with people. I sat in the last row as if I had learned their theory of safety from the Jews. Always be close to an escape route. Two shabby musicians sat on the little stage and played. They played Hasidic tunes and their eyes were shut, and I wasn't sure they knew where they were, I thought at the time about what the English had said about Wagner, that his music was probably nicer on the ear when it wasn't heard. The tunes were shrill, not precise, without pain or laughter. Maybe there was some point to that revolting playing. A waiter wearing an apron came to me and even though I hadn't ordered anything, he served me a double shot of aquavit and when I finished drinking the aquavit two glasses of beer were brought to my table, along with a few pickles and herring with some small onions and a pinch of cheese in a copper bowl that wasn't especially clean.
Now that fellow I had met in the street climbed onto the stage, in the same clothes, and shouted Heil! And the people laughed and applauded flaccidly as if they only put their hands together and their laugh was also definite but blurred. The musicians flowed to the back of the stage and fell asleep sitting up and I felt some fraternity in the hall, as if everybody knew each other from time immemorial and I was the only stranger there. My being German filled me with dread. I looked behind, the doorway was close by. The man at the entrance stood there, didn't look at the stage, but at the ceiling, I looked at the ceiling and saw silvery cigarette packs pasted to it. I thought about German soldiers who had spent time here and that only increased my uneasiness, the fellow smiled, I looked back at him when there was a hush in the hall, he said: I'm Lipker, remember? Danny from America. Ebenezer and I are glad to return to beautiful Copenhagen. Some of you suffer from ailurophobia, fear of cats, or androphobia, fear of men, or optophobia, fear of opening one's eyes, or some suffer from the typical American disease, archinutirophobia, fear of getting peanut butter stuck on the palate, or even who suffer from phobophobia, fear of fear, all those, said Samuel Lipker with a smile, are requested to leave now and you'll get your money back.