by Jurek Becker
Jacob has drawn his ration, as they put it; he is looking for Mischa, who was far ahead of him in the line. Noon would be such a good opportunity for a private word with him, a little correction that does nothing to alter the actual facts. Mischa is nowhere to be seen; it is a large area, and the men have spread out with their bowls. The break is too short for a long search. Jacob sits down on a crate and swallows his hot soup. He’s only human, his thoughts roam far away from the bowl, what’s going to happen and how long will it take, and then what. The sun is shining on him, and no one is casting a shadow. Then Kowalski arrives.
Kowalski arrives.
“Is there a spot of room for me here too?” asks Kowalski.
He sits down beside Jacob and begins to spoon up his soup. Kowalski is marvelous. He thinks he is a real fox of a fellow who knows all the ins and outs, yet his expression can conceal nothing; it tells all. You only have to be slightly acquainted with him to know what he’s going to say before he has even opened his mouth. His words are always merely the confirmation of long-held assumptions, if you’re only slightly acquainted with him. At the freight yard everyone is slightly acquainted with Kowalski, and Jacob has known him since they were at school together. Here, in these grim times, they have rather lost sight of each other, which is easy enough to explain. Neither of them is one of the big fellows; a crate doesn’t get any lighter when the one at the other end is an old friend, so their estrangement is simply due to circumstances. And otherwise there is virtually no opportunity. Two people get thrown together, or they don’t. Jacob and Kowalski hardly ever did, and now here comes Kowalski with his bowl, saying, “Is there room for me here too?” and sits down beside Jacob and starts to eat.
Kowalski had been Jacob’s most frequent customer. Not his best, his most frequent. Every day, just before seven, the shop bell would tinkle and, sure enough, there was Kowalski. He would sit down in his usual place and eat potato pancakes until the sight made you dizzy. Never fewer than four or five, usually followed by a little glass from under the counter, since Jacob didn’t have a license for schnapps. Most shopkeepers would have been ecstatic over such a customer, but not Jacob, for Kowalski never paid, not a penny, not once. Being schoolmates wasn’t the reason for Jacob’s generosity — what kind of a reason would that be? — and generosity simply didn’t enter into it. In a stupid moment one tipsy evening they had made a bargain. Kowalski’s barber shop was only a few doors away; they met almost every day anyway, and the bargain had seemed advantageous to both of them. You don’t pay at my place, and I don’t pay at yours. Later they both regretted it, but a bargain is a bargain, and one man alone can’t ruin another man. Not that they didn’t try.
At first, potato pancakes were Kowalski’s favorite dish, a fact that probably accounted in part for his proposing the deal, but that soon changed. After a while he grew sick and tired of them, and the only reason he went on eating four at a time was that, out of habit,
Jacob set them down in front of him without a word. Much more important to him by this time was the little drink that followed.
Jacob, on the other hand, suffered at first from the inescapable fact that, although a fellow can eat potato pancakes every day, he can’t have his hair cut every day. After much thought Jacob hit on the idea of going regularly for a shave. He even sacrificed his sparse little beard, although he felt bad about that. His best times were the summers; fortunately Kowalski’s stomach could not tolerate ice cream, and for a while Jacob was the only beneficiary of their bargain. However, as time passed his ambition subsided; other worries were really more important. He let his beard grow again, and the whole thing quietly petered out except for an occasional flare-up.
But that’s old history. Kowalski is sitting beside him, spooning up his soup — how much longer in silence? — a single suppressed question imprinted in red spots on his gaunt cheeks. Jacob stares into his empty bowl, thinking. Perhaps it’s only a coincidence; funny coincidences do happen. How are you? would sound idiotic, he thinks. He carefully licks his spoon clean and puts it in his pocket. There’s no reason to get up yet; they still have a few minutes left on their break. The last men in line are just getting their soup. Putting his bowl aside he leans back, props himself on his hands, tilts his head back, and closes his eyes: to be a sentry for a few moments and enjoy the sun.
Kowalski stops eating; through his closed eyes Jacob can hear that his bowl is not yet empty; he hasn’t scraped the bottom yet. So Jacob can hear that Kowalski is looking at him. It can’t go on much longer; Kowalski just has to figure out how to begin.
“Any news?” he asks casually.
When Jacob looks at him he starts eating again, the ulterior motive still on his cheeks but his innocent eyes fixed on the soup. It sounds as if you’ve just entered his barbershop, sat down on the only chair facing the only mirror, while he shakes the black hairs of the previous customer from the cape and ties it around you — as always, much too tight. “Any news?” Mundek’s son has won his first court case; it looks as if he’s going to do well, but that’s no longer news, Hübscher was talking about it yesterday. But what you don’t know yet: Kvart’s wife has left him, no one knows where she’s gone, but then no normal person can get along with Kvart. It sounds so familiar that Jacob feels tempted to say: “Not as short in the back as last time, please.”
“Well?” Kowalski asks, his eyes threatening to drown in the soup.
“What do you mean, news?” says Jacob. “Why ask me?”
Kowalski raises his face toward Jacob, that fox’s face that is like an open book. He turns it toward Jacob with an expression of mild reproach, of some understanding of Jacob’s caution, and the implication that in this particular case caution might well be considered misplaced.
“Jacob! … Aren’t we old friends?”
“What’s that got to do with it?” says Jacob. He’s not sure whether his attempt to play dumb is convincing; after all, Kowalski has known him a long time. And he can imagine that basically it doesn’t much matter whether he’s convincing or not: if Kowalski knows something, no acting talent in the world is going to help. If Kowalski knows something, he won’t let go; he can hound you almost to death.
Moving a little closer, Kowalski lets his spoon float in the soup and grabs Jacob’s arm with his free hand to prevent him getting away.
“All right then, let’s speak plainly.” Lowering his voice to the level at which secrets are discussed, he whispers, “Is it true about the Russians?”
Jacob is shocked at the tone. Not at the whispering: people whisper on all sorts of occasions, that doesn’t frighten him. He is shocked at the seriousness; he can see that it’s not going to be a picnic, nothing to be taken lightly; he is shocked at the quaver in Kowalski’s voice. It holds an expectation that will not tolerate ridicule; certainty is demanded here. A man is asking — a man who wants only this one question answered, and there’s no escape — just this one question, nothing else, for all time. And yet Jacob makes one last, vain attempt.
“About what Russians?”
“About what Russians! Do you have to insult me like that, Jacob? Have I ever done you any harm? Remember, Jacob, remember who’s sitting beside you! The whole world knows he has a radio, and to me, his only, his best friend, he refuses to tell anything!”
“The whole world knows?”
Kowalski backs down. “Not exactly the whole world, but one or two people do know about it. Has someone told me, or do I have second sight?”
In Jacob’s head, one annoyance displaces the other. Kowalski is upstaged by Mischa: that blabbermouth is going to land him in an impossible situation. Suddenly it is no longer necessary to take Mischa aside for a correction — totally superfluous. The fire can no longer be contained — who knows how many others would now have to be taken aside! And even if he were to try his best with every single one of them, try with the patience of an angel to explain to each individual the crazy route by which the glorious news has fluttered into the ghetto,
into their very ears, what else could they do but not believe him, with all due respect and much sympathy for his situation? Or does anyone seriously believe that Kowalski could afford to be fobbed off with a story so manifestly full of holes?
“Well?”
“It’s true about the Russians,” says Jacob. “And now stop bothering me.”
“Are they twelve miles from Bezanika?” Jacob rolls his eyes and says, “Yes!”
He gets to his feet: that’s how they sour one’s joy, yet Kowalski is as entitled to it as all the rest of them. He would give anything for Kowalski to have been spotted by the sentry on the Kurländischer Damm, Kowalski or anyone else. What on earth made him go there? All good citizens are in bed, but at that dark hour he has to roam the streets because the walls of his room are closing in on him, because once again Piwowa and Rosenblatt have become unbearable, because a stroll after work seems to bring a strange, faint whiff of normal times. A stroll in a town you know, have known since they used to sit you up in your baby carnage with a pillow at your back. The buildings tell you about almost forgotten trifles: over there you once fell down and sprained your left ankle, at this corner you finally told Gideon the truth to his face, in that building there was once a fire in the middle of winter. A longed-for whiff of normal times, that’s what he had promised himself; he hadn’t been able to enjoy it for long, and now this.
“Will you at least keep it to yourself?”
“You know me!” answers Kowalski, who wants to be left in peace, for the time being. The break is short, and he has enough just coping with his own emotions and with what is suddenly looming ahead of him.
Jacob picks up his bowl from the ground and walks away. He carries Kowalski’s expression with him, the face tilted to one side, the eyes fixed on a distant point that no one else can see; no war far and wide. He hears Kowalski’s lips whispering rapturously, “The Russians…” Then Jacob reaches the handcart. He adds his bowl to the others and glances back again at Kowalski, who is now fishing his spoon out of his soup. The whistle shrills, even Kowalski hears it, and a little tower of bowls is quickly erected. To Jacob it seems that all the men are looking at him strangely, differently from the day before, somehow with the secret in their eyes. Maybe it’s an illusion; in fact it must be: they can’t possibly all know about it already, but there may well be one or two who do.
I would like, while it’s still not too late, to say a few words about how I came by my knowledge, before any suspicions arise. My principal informant is Jacob; most of what I have heard from him will turn up in this story somewhere, I can vouch for that. But I say “most,” not all; I say it deliberately, and in this case the reason is not my poor memory. After all, I am telling the story, not Jacob: Jacob is dead, and besides, I’m not telling his story but a story.
He told me the story, but I am talking to you. That’s a big difference, because I was there. He tried to explain how one thing followed another and that he couldn’t have acted any differently, but I want you to know that he was a hero. Not three sentences would pass his lips without his mentioning his fear, but I want you to know about his courage. About those trees, for example, about those nonexistent trees I’m looking for, that I don’t want to think about but have to, and my eyes grow moist when I do. He had no inkling of that; that’s simply and solely my concern. I can’t quite piece it all together, but there are some things that he knew nothing about, when he might have asked me how I got such ideas in my head, but somehow I feel that it is all part of it. I would like so much to tell him why I feel that, I owe him an explanation, and I think he would say I was right.
Some things I know from Mischa, but then there is a big gap for which there are simply no witnesses. I tell myself that it must have happened more or less in such and such a way, or that it would be best if it had happened in such and such a way, and then I tell it and pretend that’s how it was. And that is how it was; it’s not my fault that the witnesses who could confirm it can no longer be found.
For me, probability is not a determining factor; it is improbable that I of all people should still be alive. Much more important is my feeling that it could or should have happened this way, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with probability, I can vouch for that too.
It wasn’t at all a bad idea of Mischa’s to speak to Rosa during the ration card distribution, to pluck up his courage and ask her whether they couldn’t walk part of the way home together, and luckily she agreed. At first it was only her face that loosened his tongue — how many girls have been addressed merely because of their bright eyes! — but one thing led to another, and today about a year later, he loves all of her, just the way she is. The first steps were awkwardly silent; his head felt hollowed out. He received no help at all from her, not even an encouraging glance; she looked straight ahead shyly, apparently waiting for something important to happen. But nothing happened until they reached her front door; her mother was already standing anxiously at the window, wondering what was keeping her only daughter. With lowered eyes Rosa hurriedly said good-bye, but she must have had just enough time to hear where exactly he would be waiting for her the next day.
At any rate she did show up, much to Mischa’s relief. He reached into his pocket and gave her his first gift. It was a little book of poems and songs; by that time he knew them all by heart, and it was the only book he happened to own. Actually he had wanted to present her with an onion, if possible one with a bluish skin; right from the start he was very serious about Rosa, but the idea was too ambitious. In such a short time he was unable to find one, try as he would. At first she was a little coy about accepting the gift at all, the way unsophisticated girls often are, but then of course she did accept the book and tell him how pleased she was. At this point he introduced himself — the day before they had been too excited to get around to that — and now for the first time he heard her name: Rosa Frankfurter.
“Frankfurter?” he asked. “Are you by any chance related to that famous actor Felix Frankfurter?”
As could later be readily established by means of theater programs, this was something of an exaggeration. Frankfurter the actor never got beyond supporting roles. But Mischa, never having seen Frankfurter onstage, had not meant it ironically. He had been to the theater only once, and he knew of Felix Frankfurter only from what he had read and heard. And Rosa didn’t take it that way either. She blushingly admitted that such was indeed the case, that Frankfurter the actor was her father. They went on to chat a bit about the theater, about which he knew practically nothing, until he managed gradually with great skill to bring the conversation around to boxing, about which she in turn knew practically nothing. In this way they had a marvelous time together, and that same evening she did not resist Mischa’s first kiss on her silky hair.
When Mischa arrives, Felix Frankfurter is sitting at the table playing a game of checkers with his daughter. He is a big man, tall and gaunt; Mischa described his appearance to me with loving detail. What was once a massive corpulence has left the old man’s skin in folds, which is greatly emphasized by the clothes he is wearing, which date from considerably stouter times. Photos prove that some years ago man and skin formed a well-balanced entity: Frankfurter had pressed a weighty album on Mischa during his very first visit, for he couldn’t possibly allow the unfavorable impression, of which he was fully aware, to remain. Around his neck a scarf, artistically yet casually arranged with one end in front and one on his back, and in his mouth a pipe, a meerschaum that has long since forgotten the taste of tobacco.
He is seated at the table with his daughter; the game looks hopeless for Rosa. Mrs. Frankfurter is sitting with them, paying no attention to the game. She is altering one of her husband’s shirts, making it smaller and perhaps dreaming of some quiet happiness. When Mischa arrives, Rosa has just been grumbling that the game with her father is so boring because he takes ages to contemplate each move, and he has been trying to explain to her that it is better to win one game in two hours than lose fiv
e in the same amount of time.
“But why are you taking so long now?” she had asked. “You’re ahead anyway.”
“I’m not ahead ‘anyway,’ “ he had answered. “I’m ahead because I give each move so much thought.”
She had made an impatient gesture; any pleasure in the game was now gone. Only obedience keeps her from sweeping the pieces from the board, plus the fact that Mischa hasn’t yet arrived, but at that moment there is a knock at the door. She hurries to open it, and Mischa comes in. Greetings are exchanged, Mr. Frankfurter offers Mischa a chair, Mischa sits down. Rosa quickly clears away the board and pieces before Mischa can take over her losing game. Many a time he has taken her place, looked for a way out, and in the end had to give up and ask for a return match. Frankfurter would agree, and then they would both sit there lost in thought, and suddenly it was so late that Mischa would have to leave before Rosa could spend any time with him.
“Have you been playing?” asks Mischa. “So who won today?”
“Who do you think?” says Rosa, making it sound like a reproach. Mr. Frankfurter draws on his meerschaum pipe, as content as circumstances permit, and winks at Mischa. “She plays faster than she thinks. But I'll bet you’ve noticed that yourself on other occasions, right?”
Mischa disregards the little joke. Today he is not coming empty-handed; he is merely wondering how to convey the news with the greatest possible effect, for there’s nothing Frankfurter enjoys more than a story that ends with a punch line. When he talks about the theater, where, if one is to believe him, the wildest things have happened, every step, every glance he describes carries some special implication: someone falls down or makes a fool of himself or messes up the performance or doesn’t understand why the others are laughing. If that weren’t so, Frankfurter probably feels, there would be no point in telling the anecdote in the first place.