Jakob the Liar

by Jurek Becker

  Jacob deserves our sympathy. He should have a well-equipped office, a headquarters with three secretaries, better still with five, a few contacts in all the important capitals who punctually and reliably relay every little detail they have managed to ferret out to headquarters, where secretaries are slaving away at sorting the details, scanning all the leading newspapers, listening to all the radio stations, and extracting from all this a summary that they submit to Jacob as the person ultimately responsible. Only then could he truthfully answer roughly a third of the questions — to the extent that newspapers and radio stations and contacts are to be trusted.

  A newspaper is tucked into the Whistle’s pocket. The Whistle emerges from the redbrick building and, dragging his wooden leg, walks past the freight cars and right through all the Jews, who are not even aware of what is limping past them. Why care about newspapers? We have Jacob. Only Jacob sees and cares, the magnifying glass in his eye is glued to the precious object in the railway man’s pocket, some pieces of paper containing truthful or fabricated reports of actual events — at any rate, infinitely more valuable than a nonexistent radio. Respite for his exhausted powers of invention, if he could bring off a bold exchange of ownership.

  Beyond the last track the Whistle reaches his goal, a wooden outhouse for Germans only: it says so on the door, right under the little heart-shaped opening they carved into it, as is the custom in their own country, I imagine.

  Jacob refuses to be distracted by his job with Kowalski and keeps one eye firmly on the outhouse. If the newspaper is intact so far, as appears to be the case, and the railway man is not too wasteful, there should be some left over. If the railway man isn’t stingy, he should leave some of it behind. He mustn’t be wasteful, he mustn’t be stingy, there’s no way of knowing one way or the other; when Jacob gets a chance, he will go and take what’s left. Yet whatever the chance, it would inevitably mean risking his life. What business has a Jew using a German outhouse? For you, my brothers, I’ll risk life and limb. I don’t intend to steal potatoes like Mischa, who is a more practical type and thinks realistically; if all goes well I’ll carry off a few ounces of news and turn them into a ton of hope for you. If my mother had endowed me with a smarter brain, gifted with as much imagination as Sholem Aleichem — what am I saying, half that much would be enough — I wouldn’t need to resort to such petty theft. I could dream up ten times as much as they can write in their newspapers, and better too. But I can’t, I can’t, I am so empty it almost frightens me. I’ll do it for you, my brothers, for you and for myself; I’ll do it for myself too, for one thing is certain: I can’t survive as an individual, only together with you. That’s what a liar looks like from behind. I’ll go into their outhouse and take what’s left, hoping there is something left.

  At last the Whistle emerges into God’s sunshine, takes a few deep breaths, and lights a cigarette, for which in that wind he needs four matches. He takes enough time for Jacob to want to throttle him, but the pocket, the all-important pocket, is empty. What were newspapers like in the old days? Ours usually had eight pages, four sheets; let’s assume his also had four, that’s a reasonable assumption. You tear one sheet in half, then once again, then a third time, that means per page — let’s see — eight small pieces per page. You can also tear it four times, but then the pieces turn out rather small, so let’s stay with three times; after all, he has plenty of paper. Four sheets times eight, that makes thirty-two pieces, no healthy person needs that many; you tear up only one page and put the others aside for reading. But even if he has torn them all up, there’s bound to be something left over, unless in his ignorance he has tossed the remainder down the hole.

  “What do you keep mumbling about?” Kowalski asks. “Me, mumbling?” says Jacob.

  “All the time. Four and sixteen should make so-and-so much — what are you figuring out?”

  The Whistle at last disappears into the brick building. Jacob looks at the sentries: one is standing by the gate, looking bored; another is sitting on the footboard of a freight car, reassuringly far away; the third is nowhere in sight, presumably he’s inside the building or hiding somewhere in order to take a nap since nothing ever happens. And there are no more than three.

  “Go on working and don’t turn around to look at me,” Jacob says.

  “Why?” asks Kowalski. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m going to use their outhouse.”

  Kowalski, astonishment in his face, stops working: Next thing you know, this lunatic will be going into the redbrick building for schnapps and tobacco, trying to borrow money from a sentry, and they’ll put him up against the wall for that just as they will for what he’s about to do now.

  “Are you crazy? Can’t you wait till soup time and then go behind the fence?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  Jacob ducks and runs off like a professional; the stacked crates shield him almost all the way from eyes in the brick building, except for the last few feet, but they’re part of it and he manages them too. Jacob closes the outhouse door behind him. Not a word about the smell or the graffiti on the walls: beside the hole lies the rich booty. But first a glance out through the little heart: no one has noticed anything; in the freight yard framed by a heart everything looks normal. The booty consists of the expected remainder, the German has not been wasteful, there are a good number of neatly torn squares of paper, as if cut with a knife, and under the squares a double sheet, intact. Jacob stuffs the squares under his shirt, as flat as he can so they won’t rustle while he is working, better on his back than on his stomach. The double page is worth nothing, or rather, it is worth something: four pages, filled from top to bottom with death notices bordered in black, gratifying in one way but short on information. Killed in action … killed in action … We’ll leave those behind, we don’t want to carry around any ballast; they’re not hard to memorize, four pages of the dead, let the next visitor enjoy them too. But we’d better not linger, as if we were in our own outhouse, we won’t risk spending too much time in here, we want to return to work, we’re impatient to get it over with. Then we’ll go to our unobserved room, free our back of its burden, and play our new radio. And tomorrow you can come again and ask as long as the supply lasts.

  Jacob looks outside once more to see whether the coast is clear. It’s not clear at all, far from it, the way back is strewn with mines: a soldier is walking toward the outhouse, purposefully one might say. His fingers are already fumbling with his belt buckle; in his mind’s eye he is already sitting down and feeling better. It’s too late for anyone to leave the outhouse without his noticing. What do you do now? Jacob’s knees remind him emphatically that he is no longer young, no matter how speedily he covered the ground to get here; one always finds this out too late. The door can’t be fastened, some idiot has ripped off the loop for the hook; if you try to keep it closed, one shove of the shoulder and the man will be inside and gape and do God knows what to you. Theoretically we should keep a cool head, remain calm, the advantage of surprise is on our side, and he still has eight whole steps to go. The planks of the back wall will take at least five minutes and make far too much noise, five steps to go, and all that’s left for you is the little oval hole, down into their crap. To which you can’t bring yourself, though you’re skinny enough.

  The soldier opens the door, which offers no resistance; to his dismay he sees before him an opened double sheet of newspaper, trembling moderately, although at such an embarrassing moment this doesn’t particularly strike him.

  “Oh, excuse me!” he says, quickly closing the door, without having seen the disintegrating Jewish shoes beneath the newspaper or the want of a display of lowered trousers that would have rounded out the picture, a maneuver, however, for which the head had been not cool enough and the time too short. Perhaps just as well, too much camouflage can be damaging too, the main things being that the soldier has shut the door devoid of any suspicion: he prepares for a brief wait, his belt is already looped over his arm, an
d he walks up and down, that being less uncomfortable than standing.

  For how long a wait should Jacob prepare? Over the edge of the newspaper and through the little heart he sees the gray uniform walking up and down. The only thing that can help now is a miracle, any old miracle will do, no need to cudgel the brain; true miracles are not calculable. There are at most two more minutes for the unexpected to materialize, and if it fails to do so, and there’s no reason to expect otherwise, then the proverbial last hour will look this ridiculous.

  “Hurry up, comrade. I’ve got the trots,” he hears the soldier pleading.

  The squares of paper on his back are beginning to stick; they will have to be dried before use, if by some miracle everything turns out well. And Jacob tells me that suddenly he is tired, suddenly fear and hope slip away, everything becomes strangely heavy and light at the same time, his legs, his eyelids, his hands, from which the four pages of heroes fallen for the Fatherland slide to the ground.

  “Did you hear that Marotzke’s got another furlough? Smells fishy to me! He must know some people right at the top, eh? He’s always going off, while guys like us have to wait and wait and hang around with these garlic eaters.”

  My God, garlic, if a fellow could have just one clove, spread very thin on warm bread. You idiot, you think some Schulz or Müller is in the outhouse, someone who’s no friend of Marotzke’s, which is true enough, in a way, whoever Marotzke is. Jacob leans back against the back wall and closes his eyes; if they expect some heroic resistance from him, they can wait a long time, he is beyond that. It’s up to the comrade outside; he has to keep the action going. He’s welcome to leave or stay. Tormented by stomach cramps he can fling open the door, gasp, and shoot; the man he hits will not be taken by surprise. What follows is his business.

  Who could possibly suspect that the miracle is already in the works, the rough outline already designed? There is still Kowalski, Kowalski with two horrified eyes in his head, he knows what’s going on, he’s aware of the situation. He sees the soldier in dire need and the door still presenting a barrier; he knows who’s inside and can’t be set free without his help, assuming he hasn’t already died of fear. Salvation lies in distracting the German, not merely by throwing a pebble against the wall to make him turn around to see who threw it: something has to happen that requires his immediate intervention. The first thing that comes to mind is the stack of crates, some six feet high and rather wobbly. If two crates are pulled out from below, the stack will cease to stand there all proud and ready for transport, its balance will be destroyed, and that could provide a fine distraction. But what will happen to the numskull who is responsible for such clumsiness, what will happen to Jacob if there is no clumsy oaf far and wide, what are forty years of friendship worth? Calculations facing Kowalski.

  Jacob hears a low rumbling in the distance, the ears can’t be closed as the eyes can, then he hears military boots hurrying away. Reason enough to open the eyes wide again: that’s exactly what a miracle sounds like. Arms and legs reassuringly regain their former weight; things are on the move again. The glance through the heart tells him that the coast looks clear; the Jews visible through the opening in the door have paused in their work and are all staring in one direction, toward the spot where the miracle is presumably happening.

  Kowalski has successfully penetrated the stack of crates. His strength was only just sufficient, and one crate fell on his head. The soldier rushes blindly from the outhouse into the trap and flings himself upon the bait, Kowalski. It may be said that rarely has sleight of hand been more successfully performed. Although the blows find their mark — the crate falling on his head was nothing in comparison — Kowalski merely whimpers as he tries to protect his face with his hands and apologizes profusely for his unforgivable blunder.

  The rest of us stand as if rooted to the spot and grind our teeth; one man beside me claims he saw Kowalski toppling the stack deliberately. The soldier goes on punching and beating, Marotzke has been granted a furlough again and he hasn’t; maybe he is genuinely outraged over such clumsiness, but suddenly he stops in the midst of his task. Something is moving inside him, not pity and not exhaustion: it is his diarrhea demanding its rights, as is plain for all to see. He grimaces and runs in long strides to the outhouse that has meanwhile been vacated for his benefit, or rather, first he calls out: “I want to see it all stacked up again when I come out, got it?” Only then does he perform his long leaps, which, in spite of everything, look very comical. The matter permits no delay: now he would insist that any newspaper reader vacate the position, immediately, instantly, otherwise there’ll be a minor disaster. But he can save himself the trouble: he flings open the door onto an empty latrine. The minor disaster was prevented in the very nick of time.

  Not one of us looking on dares help Kowalski or comfort him. The place is for work, not for comforting. He wipes the blood from his face and tests his teeth, which are still there except for one; all things considered, it could have turned out considerably worse. The pain will pass, Jacob has been preserved for us, after the war we’ll present him with his own private outhouse where he can sit for hours to his heart’s content and think about his good friend Kowalski. The man so miraculously rescued comes around what remains of the stack of crates, behind Kowalski, who is still feeling himself all over. Jacob plucks up the courage to face him, for Kowalski must not find out the true reason for the daring expedition. He of all people; he has deserved not to be bothered with this reason; for him it must remain an inexplicable whim of Jacob’s, a whim that came within a hair of costing him his life.

  “Thank you,” Jacob says in an emotional voice. Emotional is the right word, emotional for the first time in forty years; you don’t have your life saved every day, and then by someone you have known for such a long time and of whom, to be quite honest, you wouldn’t have expected it.

  Kowalski doesn’t deign to glance at him; getting up with a groan he sets to work on the crates, which had better be stacked up before the soldier returns from his urgent business and checks to see how much his word is worth here. They could all still be standing in neat rows, like the few teeth in Kowalski’s mouth, if Jacob were a normal person, if he hadn’t yielded so irresponsibly to some wondrous yearning for which others must pay bitterly.

  Jacob makes his hands fly: one crate by Kowalski is matched by three of his, which in Kowalski’s case is due partly to the question of guilt, partly to fury, and no doubt also to pain. “Did you at least have a good shit?” Kowalski inquires, making an effort not to shout. “Have a look at my face, have a good look. I bet it’s quite a sight! It wasn’t him, it was you! But why am I getting excited? The main thing is you had a high-class shit, that’s all that matters. There’s just one thing I’ll swear, Heym: just try that again! Go ahead, try it, then you’ll find out who helps you!”

  Jacob takes shelter behind his work; Kowalski is right, of course, from his point of view. The words that would calm him down Jacob mustn’t say, and any others would lead to a new outburst. Later, Kowalski, when all this is behind us, when we two are sitting quietly over a glass of schnapps, when the pancakes are sizzling in the pan, then I’ll tell you everything. At our leisure, Kowalski, you’ll hear the whole truth; we’ll laugh and shake our heads to think how crazy the times once were. You’ll ask why I didn’t tell you right away, tell you, at least, my best friend, and I’ll answer that I couldn’t because you would have told all the others, and they would have taken me for one of those thousands of liars and rumormongers and would have been without hope again. And then you’ll put your hand on my arm, because maybe you’ll have understood, and you’ll say, “Come, Jacob my friend, let’s have another vodka.”

  When, after quite some time, the outhouse door opens again, the stack of crates rears up proudly, as if no one had ever brought about its collapse. The soldier strolls over, his hands clasped behind his back, uniform all adjusted; he has been expected. Not exactly with longing, merely to have the matter finally o
ver and done with. But the way he approaches and then stops and holds his head, his whole manner, is enough to make one uneasy, for he looks more benign than critical. Somehow he is looking at the world with different eyes; how a few good minutes can change a person. The crates, he’s completely forgotten about the crates, he has eyes only for Kowalski’s swollen face, which for the time being is red but on which one can already divine blue and green and purple, and the soldier looks concerned. If Jacob can trust his eyes, he looks concerned. What’s one to make of that? Without a word he turns around and walks away. Jacob is thinking, Lucky he didn’t discover his soft heart until now and wasn’t a good person from the beginning or he would never have dashed away from the outhouse door; he would have stayed there and very soon his goodness of heart would have undergone much too severe a test.

  In passing, the comrade drops two cigarettes, Junos, without tips. He drops them either by mistake or on purpose, a question that will never be resolved, any more than his motives, assuming it was deliberate. Anyway the cigarettes belong to Kowalski; he has paid for them, after all.