Then the haggling started. I was the payment, so they didn't ask me. Lionel said something about the possibility that Sam would live with me, and he said: Lily will be a mother to you, and Sam said, Mother? An ad for a fucking cigarette will be a mother to me? I've got enough dead mothers and fathers, and Lionel said: You've got a dead mother and two dead fathers, you'll have a new father and mother and I'm still not mentioned by name. Renate, nobody talks directly to me or with me, doesn't ask anything, but I deserve it, why did I come here? They were discussing payment and I'm hanging in front of them on a hook, unkosher meat in a Jewish market. They have to triumph over one another in a defeat that will of course be all mine and mine alone, I was silent, Renate, I was silent and suddenly had an appetite and I tasted the dishes Lionel ordered and that I couldn't eat before. Lionel talked about the fact that I wouldn't have children, the level of the execution of the castration had been so high that for a moment, I felt how all the children I was supposed to give birth to flowed out of me and died on my lips, and I felt blood between my lips and I licked them and they didn't know what I was doing with my lips, and Sam said: She's trying to be sexy like Hedy Lamarr. What children? asked Sam, and Lionel said: She won't give birth to children who will later have to defend the lost homeland of lampshades, and Sam said: There was no lampshade, and Lionel said: There were, but not yours, and then he laughed, and the singer was also offended, she turned her face away and sang in another direction, and a drunken sailor hit a whore, who dropped onto the floor. There was a thud, the bored pianist burst out laughing and played more excitedly, and the waiters ran and brought drinks and food and I was sold there, a few kilograms of Lily, a few liters of Lily juice is there juice of Lily? I was silent there. No Ingrid Bergman sat on the balcony of Cafe Glacier with yearning eyes and a great melancholy love for Charles Boyer. In the end, I was miserable German mincemeat, good for swindling themselves that I was somebody else, I shot them at low-flying airplanes.
And that's how he bought a German streetwalker, Renate. I should have been more than I was or perhaps less, maybe an amorous girl, weeping after the death of the Fuhrer in the bunker, something made me transparent, bereft of location and caught in a maze, they talked about some life in America, about me, about Sam, about me and Lionel, and I wanted to shout, What about me, and they knew, the two of them, that I wasn't important anymore, not out of wickedness, out of love that the two of them even then had to share, and I didn't yet understand what glowing hell I now got myself into, go home I said to myself, buy yourself a poor little husband, cook potatoes for him, let him flourish on the holy ground where you were born and where you'll be buried, but I couldn't, I was born in the air, and above, above everything, faced off, like two knights, my two men fought a desperate war for the heart of an imaginary aristocrat, who no longer lives in a nonpalace where the big, splendid and superfluous duel was held. I wanted to say, You're in love with a shadow, but I knew not to talk, maybe I really was somebody and didn't know it.
I disguised myself as an abandoned queen, I was to them what they wanted me to be. Later a past will be created and I'll be able to make a defense pact with it, for war or peace, I was packed, virginal, an invisible blood flowed from my lips, I gave myself to them and they were genuine lovers, so dreadful, so innocent, Jews trying to buy their dream in a world that wiped them out. Maybe I was what was necessary, everything was a provocation against the world, I was pathetic, possible, and eagle-y.
I applauded the fat singer who tried to thank me so much she almost stumbled. The contempt on her face wasn't hidden by the smile she wanted to direct at Lionel's pocket, which was supposed to be opened for her. The lights of a motorboat looked like embers in the fog. Outside, Ebenezer looked for his dear one. I thought, Could I ever have saved Samuel?
I knew I could save Lionel. But Sam and I were too alike. I, the Ukrainian guard, and the German who hugged him and killed his mother, all of us were too alike. A whore broke a bottle on the table next to us and with the broken bottle, she threatened the drunken sailor with tattooed writing on his hands and he tried to burn her nipple with a cigarette. And that's how that preserved moment was born when we all fought to make each other lose. Our lost honor. I'm trying to describe to you, Renate, a lost moment of anguish and bliss.
Did I have permission to warn them that underneath the mantle of serious transparent and beautified merrymaking, I'm a hard woman?
When we went outside we saw Sam get the money from the maitre d', maybe we were ashamed, to a certain extent we were also a little proud. The maitre d' smiled obediently and gave Sam (Samuel) the money. I think he swindled him, but Sam didn't haggle. It was too late now to go back to the starting point.
And we walked along the boulevard. Love and hostility in equal parts, I thought, where will I get the strength to cope with these two Jews, with a man who buried his mother and father and sells them to every soldier, and Lionel, forty-five years old, seeking himself in sewer images. When we came to the hotel we were so tired that even the dark contemptuous look of the old woman at the reception desk had no effect on us. We couldn't talk anymore. Between me and Lionel was a lust that could be smashed with an ax, I hugged Lionel, he smiled at me, shut his eyes, like a licentious sailor he put his hand on my crotch, turned his eyes to Sam, and fell asleep. Sam fixed his eyes on Lionel's hand and very slowly shut his eyes, then I fell asleep too. The next day, we went to Cologne. Lionel said: What's this about converting to Judaism? We made a deal, you don't have to involve God in such a matter, but I said to him: I have to cut myself off, I want a circumcision, and Sam didn't say a thing but murmured thanks to me for knowing how to kill my parents and not only my children.
I improved my English, which had become an obsession for me. I bought dictionaries, I learned words by heart. Everything had to be formulated correctly, so I would have to cope with Lionel in his and Melissa's words, to understand him in his own words. And the rest you know, somebody remained behind, I don't know that Lily, drawn on a faded ad for Ritesma cigarettes they don't smoke anymore in your country…