They saw Bronya the Beautiful bleeding. The apple (as I understood) had dropped out of her mouth. She stood naked and the apple was supposed to look amusing in her mouth, and the shot was supposed to pass by her upstretched hand, but Hans Taufer missed. What amazed Ebenezer, as he told me later, when he quoted the story from Samuel who saw it along with him, was that after the shooting Bronya was still standing, even though she was surely already dead. A soldier started photographing her, bent over and photographed her from below, an officer named Kassinpoppinger who once called me "a dark and handsome man," photographed her from the top of the window where he had climbed earlier, Samuel told Ebenezer: She's disguised with blood, and Ebenezer remembered those words as "Jewish knowledge," a wise saying about the disguise of blood, she couldn't even die as a human being but had to stop time and drop very slowly, permeate with dread the brains of sergeants who fucked her from behind. She stood, Ebenezer told me, as if the officer who photographed her from on high was a magnet pulling her up, as a kind of revolt against the law of gravity of the earth, as if it wasn't possible for her to fall. And only after she froze in her death did she land and disappear from the eyes of the two observers, Samuel smiled wickedly and said: Bronya the Beautiful. He loved her. He didn't want to waste tears where the death of Bronya the Beautiful was a technical error of a German soldier who, despite everything known about him, was liable to miss his aim, a disaster happened, Ebenezer thought then (and Samuel remembered and told him), and Samuel doesn't know who the disaster happened to.
And then Ebenezer took Samuel to our alcove and showed him our birds, the boxes that were almost done, the grandfather clock, the frames, and for the first time since the boy Samuel had come to the camp, he said to Ebenezer (who told me), he felt life inside him, something dim bubbled up in him, agitation over Bronya's death and joy over the possible flight of wonderful wooden birds, as if he understood for the first time, he said, that there was something in imagination to fly away from here, and that there was someplace to fly to, that is another realm, beyond the fences. In other words: hope, the last thing somebody could have expressed, was starting to bubble up in him.
Ebenezer now said: He loved her. And they were shooting pictures all the time. I recall, that was scary, how much they shot pictures of her dead, and Samuel loved her. She loved him, too. Wildness, real wildness and joy. The soldiers and guards also loved Samuel. He had demonic eyes, like a phony gold ring. When he saw a phony ring he'd get excited and angry. As if he were looking in a mirror. Like a panther he'd stride there, bury and burn corpses, and seek in the bodies and find gold teeth or diamonds in rectums. Even there he bought and sold! As he did with me after the war when he dragged me to nightclubs and would sell my memory… When he got to the camp, maybe a few months afterward, maybe not there but in Birkenau, he saw his parents. They were naked. He never saw his parents naked and he was scared. He couldn't believe he'd see them naked. Their nakedness was too deep a betrayal. They were glazed and always dressed, impermeable, not connected to their bodies, to toilets, to jokes, to sleeping together, he thought they slept like two glass statues. On his father's face was a frozen smile as if a split second before his death he still thought, Ah, what a stupid joke! And so Samuel turned into a cat of corpses. Between his dead father's testicles he found a diamond. That was a strange gift of a strict father. Samuel knew how to plot, to walk between the drops, and the guards loved to touch him, he didn't care. Until he saw my birds. Sometimes they did things to him, he didn't see and he didn't hear. So they didn't kill him because of their rage, as usual, didn't crush him with an ax as they did to one child I saw, after they abused him.
Ebenezer stopped all at once, looked at the German who sat with his glasses still on his nose and the papers in front of him on his lap. The German wanted to continue, now he'd have to finish. He smiled at Ebenezer as if he were giving him a grade, as if he loved how Ebenezer filled in the crossword for him with a small square of knowledge, of words, and he continued…
… Samuel found one of his mother's dresses under the ass of a Polish guard. The guard was sitting in an armchair in the yard, next to the gate to the latrines and fucking a little girl who looked like a skeleton. Then he got up and Samuel slipped away, cut out a strip of fabric from the dress, and hid the fabric in his pocket. I loved-or perhaps the word "love" doesn't suit this journal-I sympathized with the way Samuel knew how to play the poor Jew and the soldiers loved the game, too. He knew you had to live another day. Another day, another two days, and that's how he got to the end. Chaos reigned. The radio didn't tell us the truth until the last moment. Documents had to be destroyed, burned, purged, and suddenly everything was over. So it wasn't Samuel's humble and disciplined attitude that saved him, but the disorder that ruled during the destruction of the camp. But when he did play it was a beautiful game. I loved to see his downcast look, his eyes running around like the eyes of a trapped mouse. No, he wasn't afraid, he wanted them to think he was afraid, it was just as amusing as the small and doleful choir in torn shoes that came from the eastern front to entertain us and the people in it stood shocked, split, hungry, and tried to make us laugh, and they dropped to the ground out of fatigue and hunger and Samuel stood there, I saw him, and peeped at them. He examined their acting ability, that beautiful bastard…
Germanwriter, who had stood and read for some time now, fell asleep, knocking his head on the paper. I thought of Samuel Lipker looking for diamonds in rectums. The writer's glasses dropped off and fell to the floor. Fortunately for him the lenses were plastic. The light in the room was soft, and outside laborers were heard on their way to work. A car passed by in the empty street and made noise. Ebenezer gave me a long and vital look, as if he never slept, Renate wanted to go to her husband but couldn't. Ebenezer said: Poor Henkin! Samuel the great actor! Came to you and shuffled the cards for you, played your son, I wanted daughters from the German and you'll ask him for him. Samuel's not a bad man, just amoral, born without a mother and an evil grandmother raised him. I know her, she's my mother. The German's journal makes me laugh. Only a journal like that can make a man like me laugh.
No Samuel came to me, I said, tired, and part of me was already asleep. Did Boaz come to me? Ebenezer looked at me a long time and turned his face away, maybe I really did hurt him. Renate asked: Was there really a commander named Kramer?
He knew a little bit about the poem of wood, said Ebenezer, your husband is a good writer, maybe too good. What in fact happened to us, I met him years ago, didn't I?
Years ago, mumbled the German either asleep or terrified and then he stirred suddenly, with a kind of sharp and panicky waking, picked up his glasses, stretched his slightly crumpled clothes. He said: So many things ago!
What things? Ebenezer looked amused again. A puppet acts, I thought to myself. A person who builds gardens in the dark. An enormous need to know who he was stirs in me and gives no signs. He said: We sat and talked, I remember. I remember, more and more I remember who I am and why I am. And so the knowledge was forgotten and that's good. A human being will come from me yet. You wrote to me. Then the contact was broken. The scholars who studied me at the institute told me, He writes, he writes, and what did you write? A fictional journal. Listen, don't make me what I'm not. And we searched for one another, why? Can I know? You should know. Or Henkin who Samuel came to and stole his daughter-in-law Noga from him. Mrs. Henkin, I wanted to tell you words of an old man who loved only one woman in his life, you're a very handsome woman!