by Joshua Sobol
I see, she says and looks at his penis, do you want to?
Whatever you want, he says.
How about going for a run? she suggests.
Suddenly the axes hidden under their coats come out and land on the German officer’s head, and at exactly the same moment a column of women returning from work outside the camp arrives, and they see the officer with his head split open, his face bathed in blood, and they start screaming and running in all directions—
Don’t you feel like going out for a run? she asks again, interrupting the uprising in Sobibor at the precise moment when several women faint at the sight of the officer twitching on the ground, and there’s no chance of organizing and imposing order, and his father stands there with the bloody axe and shouts: ‘Forward, comrades! For the motherland, for Stalin, forward!’
Let’s go, he says, let’s go out for a run. I haven’t had a run for two days now.
24
She rises from the carpet, light as air, opens the closet door, throws him a gray track suit made of a soft, silky synthetic material, and while she herself slips into a snow-white track suit she apologizes for not being able to provide him with running shoes big enough to fit him.
My Eccos will do the job, he reassures her and slips the huge feet he inherited from his father into the means of transportation that undefeated man taught him to value above all, in other words, shoes.
‘Shoes aren’t an article of clothing, sonny. Shoes are vehicles. Never put on shoes that you can’t set out in at any moment on a thousand kilometer march’, his father passed on to him the wisdom that had saved his life, and at this moment, as he ties the laces of his Ecco shoes—with the shock-absorbers under the ball of the foot and the heel, the soles whose angle of contact with the ground is precisely calculated, to facilitate the movement of the foot from the heel to the toe and soften as much as possible the shocks to the spinal cord with the landing of the foot on the ground, and thus to reduce to a minimum the fatigue of the body systems when running—at that moment six hundred exhausted and humiliated people break out to life and liberty with a cry of ‘Hurrah’, but the dash for the armory is cut short by a burst of machine-gun fire from the watch towers. People fall. The body of runners splits into two. One group makes for the main gate, where they kill the sentries with the guns they seized from the soldiers whose heads they smashed with their axes, and run towards the forest. Others turn left, to the fence. They cut the barbed wire and run through the minefield. And what did you do, Daddy? I attacked the officers’ barracks with a group of prisoners. One of the officers, who opened the door and came out to meet me on the steps, got it from me with an axe on the head. I grabbed his revolver, and we attacked the fence behind the barracks with axes and wire cutters. The fence is behind us, the minefield is behind us. We run forward. The fence is already a hundred meters behind us. Another hundred. Another hundred. Faster, faster! To cross the open ground. To get outside the range of the machine-gun fire. To reach the forest. Here are the first trees, but the firing goes on, Daddy, don’t stop, run, run deep into the forest. What’s that? Gunfire? No, it’s the branches breaking under the soles of our shoes, blessed art thou, Luka the shoemaker, who made these shoes, blessed art thou and blessed be thy name, because the minute you discover that your shoes aren’t up to it, will be a minute too late.
It’s all right, he reassures his father who stops for a moment between the trees, to take a breath, and turns his head to look for Luka, for Mishka. It’s all right, Daddy, I’ve got my shoes on—
Are you ready? she asks and finishes lacing her Nikes.
I’m ready, he says and ties the laces of his Eccos with a double knot.
25
They step out of the elevator into the ground floor lobby, and the dark-skinned doorman, gazing sleepily at the midnight mass being broadcast from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, stares at them in astonishment:
Now you’re going jogging? You know how cold it is outside?
We’ll heat up the night, Melissa reassures him.
Fare you well, says the doorman, and adds in concern: Your suit is cold.
You’re from Morocco, states Shakespeare.
Right! exclaims the doorman. How did you know?
By the text, says the author of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and leaves the doorman open-mouthed behind him. He opens the thick glass door for Melissa and invites her to go out into the cold with a theatrical flourish, continuing to quote the Prince of Morocco:
Farewell heat and welcome frost!
And they run out into the freezing deserted street.
Now we have to run. As fast as we can. Spilt up into small units and take different directions. The Polish Jews run in the direction of Chelm. To the area and the language they know. Us Soviets run East. The machinegun fire is behind us, getting further away all the time, giving us the exact location of the camp we’re escaping from. Fire away, bastards. All you’re doing is helping us find the right direction. The sounds of the firing grow fainter and fainter. Until silence falls.
At first the cold stings their faces and penetrates their track suits, but after fifteen minutes of running up the deserted Fifth Avenue, as they cross 40th Street, she suddenly says:
You run fast.
Should I slow down? he asks.
Are you in a hurry to get somewhere?
No, he says to her, we’re already out of the range of fire.
Then slow down a bit, she requests, without asking what fire he’s talking about.
You set the pace, he suggests, I’ll coordinate myself with you, Luka.
Luka? She’s bewildered. Who’s Luka?
Someone thanks to whom I’m here.
Thanks to him you came to New York?
Thanks to him I came into the world.
Is it your mother?
It’s someone who made my father shoes that saved his life.
Luka, she says, I love him.
So do I, he says.
You don’t know what you did to me, she says. All the time I’m in the belly of the mountain. Inside the tunnels of the mine. I can’t find my way out.
Maybe it’s the roundness of the space surrounding you like half a globe, he says.
No, she says, it’s the lake.
Ah, you’re still with the lake …
I can see it, she says. The color of Bordeaux soup. In the air there isn’t even the faintest movement to disrupt the absolute stillness freezing the surface of the water.
Exactly, he confirms.
Take me further, she says.
You advance slowly, along a narrow path, which slopes slightly upwards and curves at the corner of the left wall of the space, goes round the lake and leads to a tunnel that leads into the hall of the fingers, if you’re following me—
I can see every detail, she whispers, panting from the run: You have an awfully long breath. You talk as if you’re not running.
Are we running? he asks. I never noticed.
Don’t be mean, she says. Take me further.
Where are we? he asks.
In the hall of the fingers, she reminds him.
Its name on the map is Ignatius Cavern, he says, but I call it the hall of the fingers. The name of the hall of love and creation too is actually Karol Cavern. But everything in the world can have many different names, depending on your point of view, one man calls a certain woman ‘my wife’, another calls her ‘my mother’ and a third ‘my lover’.
Let’s get back to Ignatius Cavern, she says. Why did you call it the hall of the fingers?
Because it’s a fan of five narrow paths stretching over a deep chasm, which start out from a crescent and end in a single track that disappears into a dark winding tunnel.
A threatening place, she remarks.
Threatening and dangerous, he agrees. It’s almost like walking a tightrope. Especially when you have to cross one of those narrow paths with the help of the infrared lamp on your forehead and infra-glasses.
&
nbsp; How deep is the chasm underneath you? she wants to know.
Between eighty and a hundred meters.
How do you know?
Ten times four square divided by two equals eighty.
What’s that?
Something I dimly remember from high school, he tells her. But maybe I’m wrong.
You’re talking to me in Chinese, she laughs.
Halfway across I dislodged a stone with my foot and the thud reached me after four or five seconds.
Scary, she says.
Very scary, he hops over a pothole in the pavement.
What gives you the strength to go on?
Luka, he says.
What do you mean? she asks.
We understand the beginning only when we reach the end, he says.
Don’t try to be clever.
I’m not being clever. You’re told that as soon as you arrive at the right place you’ll know it’s the right place, and then you’ll also know what to do next.
You’re arrived at the right place, she whispers.
The only thing that counts here is patience. A lot of patience. Sometimes you have to wait for hours before you take a step. Or make a movement. You have to be able to lie behind a bush for hours without moving a finger. If you don’t have patience—
I do, she reassures him. I could lie with you for hours.
And so could I with you, he says, but we’re running.
It’s good for me, she pants. Running with you is so good for me.
And for me with you too, he says.
You take my pace into consideration, she says.
I’m half a step behind you, he says.
I feel it. You don’t put pressure on me. You’re not in competition with me.
Who needs competition, he says.
Men, she says.
I’m not a man, he says.
Yes, I saw, she laughs.
Seriously, he says. I’m an error of nature. I should have been born a woman.
You’re making fun of me, she says.
Not at all, he says and hears the neighbor women, sitting and drinking tea with his mother at a soft twilight hour. A red sun dips into the narrow strip of sea visible between the mountains, and he tries unsuccessfully to transmit to the paper with his paintbrush the sense of beauty that overwhelms him, or perhaps it’s the promise of happiness, and then he hears behind his back Ceska saying to his mother, that boy should have been born a girl. He’s so gentle, she adds, and his mother sighs: Yes, sometimes I fear that he’s too gentle for life.
But you’re laughing, she protests.
I remembered something, he says. Once I was in Paris. Before I returned to my country, I went to buy a dress for my mother, and I tried it on to see how it would look on my mother.
Is she as big as you? she asks in surprise.
I’m not big, he says.
You’re big, she says. You don’t know how big you are.
My mother wasn’t big, he says. She was a small woman.
So why did you try on the dress? she asks.
For fun, he says. For a laugh. I came out of the changing booth wearing the dress, and all the sales girls gathered round and started shrieking like a flock of parrots escaped from the zoo.
Go back to that moment, she says.
I’m there, he says. Completely.
Why did you put on the dress you bought for your mother?
Her question casts him back suddenly to that night in Nice, when they impersonated workers in the French Electric Corporation. To the moment when it seemed to him that he saw a shadow slipping out of the room. Someone escaped through the window, he says to the Alsatian. Impossible, says the Alsatian. They told us there were eight people here. But I saw someone, he insists. You’re mistaken, states the Alsatian. In any case, we’re getting into the van and getting out of here as quick as we can. Jonas and Yadanuga back up the Alsatian, and a few years later it costs Jonas his life, and you too, Shakespeare, almost pay with your life, in the running duel in the desert. The craziest marathon of your life.
A penny for your thoughts, she says.
What? he wakes up.
I asked you why you put on the dress you wanted to buy for your mother.
Because the night before we eliminated a few terrorists, he says.
I’m not surprised, she says.
At what? he wonders.
Suddenly you looked as hard and sharp as a German decapitation axe, she says.
A German decapitation axe? He puzzles over the strange image.
Yes, she says. German executioners in the middle ages had an instrument like that.
The middle ages are now, he says. The old gods are taking their revenge. Barbarity is coming back in a big way.
A combination of barbarity and religion, she says. I experience it every day.
The streets of this city remind me exactly of the tunnels of that abandoned mine in the Austrian alps.
So don’t leave me alone, she requests.
Sorry, he says, I didn’t realize I was putting on speed.
You sure were, she pants. I thought you were about to take off and fly.
Why didn’t you say anything?
I was curious to see how fast you could run, she confesses. You run as if all the devils in hell are after you.
It won’t happen again, he promises.
Do you know where we are? she asks.
Yes, he says. We’re on the way to Executioner’s Square.
Executioner’s Square? she wonders.
Do you want to go there? he asks.
Yes, she says.
OK, he says, you’re my navigator. What’s this?
They enter an area illuminated by thousands of neon lights.
I’m damned if I know where we are.
Look up, he says.
She raises her eyes to the winter night sky studded with billions of stars.
Now look ahead. What do you see?
A big empty parking lot stretches out in front of them, illuminated in a cold neon light.
What am I supposed to see? she asks.
Do you see elongated shapes lined up in a row on the ground?
What are they? she asks.
Fighter planes, he says.
OK, she says in a half question, willing to go along with the story he’s telling.
A full squadron of state of the art Super Phantoms, equipped with extra-large drop tanks to lengthen the flight range, and armed with miniaturized nuclear bombs weighing a quarter ton each. Can you see them?
I see exactly what you see, she encourages him to continue his story.
Each plane carries ten such bombs under each wing.
Exactly, she confirms, ten bombs under each wing.
Can you hear the music? he asks.
Yes, she says. What is it?
He wants to tell her that it’s Beethoven’s Ninth, playing from some window open to the night, but he hears the novice-scriptwriter Tyrell’s voice explaining that it’s the Air Force band conducted by Ziko Graciani playing a selection of marches.
Just a minute, she stops him, who’s Psycho Greatshiani when he’s at home? And he tells her about the great conductor whose band accompanies the best of our aviators on their way to their planes before particularly dramatic missions, like the one in which they are about to take part. He asks her if she doesn’t want to change her mind, and she assures him that she’s with him through fire and water, and they pass together before the reviewing stand, leading behind them the men of the legendary Squadron 505, and opposite the stand he commands his men ‘Mark time’, and they jog a little on the spot, because when your body is so hot you shouldn’t come to a full stop, and the Commander of the Air Force and the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister approach them at a quick march, with the old Prime Minister hurrying ahead, his white mane waving in the wind like two flames on either side of his large head, and the Commander of the Air Force and the Chief-of-Staff can hardly keep up with the brisk strides of the sho
rt, resolute man, who when he reaches them asks them hurriedly in his clipped, metallic voice how they feel as they set out on their mission, and Melissa declares:
This is the mission I’ve been dreaming of since I was a child!
Is the mission clear to you? the Prime Minister asks her in the voice of a man of iron.
Yes! answers Melissa. To destroy the forces of evil in the world!
Excellent! The Prime Minister gives her a mighty comradely slap on the shoulder. Go in strength and bring us salvation!
Ziko Graciani gives his band a sign and to the blare of the trumpets playing the ‘Ode to Joy’, the pilots and navigators climb into their cockpits, close the canopies, Hanina presses the ignition button, and the air of the vast subterranean hall vibrates with the thunder of the engines of the thirty-two Phantoms, which pair off and move slowly along the underground runway carved out of the belly of the mountain. Hanina pulls a lever, and the heavily laden Phantom leaps forward with a terrible roar, accelerates and shoots out of the bowels of the mountain through its gaping maw, which spits into the air one after the other sixteen pairs of mighty steel birds, which climb into the sky and rip it to shreds in a storm of thunder.
And then there’s silence. An ocean of silence. And into this cosmic silence, in the middle of the blue sky thirty-two tiny dots advance in four arrowheads. Below them lies the Mediterranean, a basin of solid glass between the yellow of the African deserts and the green of the forests of Europe. Above the boot of Italy they veer right, and start flying over land. The green of the forests turns to the grayish olive green of the olive groves of Umbria and Tuscany, and it grows darker and darker, turning into a poisonous green with shades of black. Blacker and blacker.
Now they’re above Germany. And here’s Munich. And in the heart of the city a vast square, black with hundreds of thousands of black uniforms and black boots. An open black Mercedes approaches a stage crowned with flagpoles as tall as skyscrapers, flying red flags emblazoned with huge black swastikas. A man dressed in a black uniform with a little black moustache under his nose stands in the black Mercedes and raises his arm in a salute to the crowd that cheers him like one man from a single hoarse throat, and the cheer rises above the city buildings and reaches the ears of the pilot, who smiles a small smile under his helmet and asks his navigator over the radio: