Jakob the Liar

by Jurek Becker

  Lina seems to be impressed by Rafael’s reasoning; at least she is silent, without tears, Jacob hopes. And he doesn’t alter his opinion; she is a clever girl, anyone can make mistakes. The excitement in the basement may have been responsible for the misunderstanding, or such flights of fancy are simply beyond a child of Lina’s age. Jacob’s hand is on the door handle again; you should intervene, console and explain, they might — God forbid — come to blows. You could go in quite innocently, Hello Lina, hello Rafael, nice of you to come and see her, how’s your mother? Then the conversation will automatically turn to the argument, which will be recounted by both parties, Calm down, children; let’s hear you each in turn. Then you will undoubtedly come up with conciliatory words that will make what is unclear appear in a fresh light, Not a reason in the world, children, to be angry with each other; things actually look thus and so. And in the end it’ll all be settled to everyone’s satisfaction. So Jacob is about to plunge into the fray when he hears Rafael’s peaceable voice: “If your uncle happens to tell you another story, ask him to think up something better than that nonsense. That princess just had a huge fart in her head.”

  Jacob never gets to intervene; the door opens and, with his usual luck with doors, it opens outward and provides a hiding place. Rafael is off to more rewarding pastimes; no doubt he is going to look for Siegfried and report. He can be heard running down the stairs and whistling, he is whistling “Oranges and Lemons,” and he goes on whistling as Lina shouts the meager remainder of the story after him: “But she did have that disease! And the garden boy got her the cotton! And that made her well again, and they got married!”

  She has said everything, although to closed ears; down on the ground floor the little tune dies away, the front door clicks shut, and up in the attic a long, disappointed tongue is stuck out, and the attic door is slammed, with Jacob outside the door as at the beginning. Doubts arise as to whether the two bonus hours will be well spent with Lina after this. He tells me that although it was quite amusing, listening to those two children, he suddenly lost all desire to go in; he suddenly felt worn out. He would rather keep the two hours for himself after all. And he asks whether he is boring me with such details, if so I only have to tell him.

  I tell him, “No.”

  Jacob goes for a walk with his two hours; there are other places to relax besides cramped rooms or with children one has grown fond of. He still feels the urge to take a stroll, despite the searchlight and the military office. To take a stroll in a little town from which in your whole life you have never been farther away than a week; the sunshine is pleasant on your path, as pleasant as the memories that are after all the true reason for your having left the house, memories to which every second street builds a bridge, as we know. Around one corner, then another, and there you are in front of the building where it was so often decided how good your next winter would be, for here lived none other than Aaron Ehrlicher, the potato merchant. Much depended on the prices set by him: the price of potato pancakes and with that the volume of business. Ehrlicher could never be persuaded to bargain, so-and-so much and not a penny less, if you think that’s too high, Mr. Heym, you’re welcome to look around to see whether you can get potatoes cheaper somewhere else. If you do, please be kind enough to let me know, I’d like to buy there too. Never, ever did he consent to bargain, and once Jacob said to him, “Mr. Ehrlicher, you don’t deal in potatoes, you just sell potatoes.” Only in fun, of course, but Ehrlicher didn’t burst out laughing. And it was hard to tell whether he was a poor soul, a humble tradesman, like yourself, or a businessman of a higher category. His wife used to wear a fine, brown fur piece, and his children were plump and round and stuck-up, yet his office smelled moldy; it was small and shabby and consisted of a table, a chair, and blank walls. He would gesture at all this with a sigh and ask, “How can I afford to reduce my prices?”

  Now there are strangers living there, you turn the page of Aaron Ehrlicher and walk on, two free hours are a long time, head for Libauer-Gasse and stop in front of Number 38. There is no building you walk to as often as this one, when you’re out for a stroll, none that you stand outside for so long, and there are good reasons for this. The fact that you even go into the dark inner courtyard … it all has its reasons; suspicious eyes inspect you through the windows, what is a stranger doing in their courtyard, but you aren’t that much of a stranger here.

  On the third floor, behind the door on the left of the corridor, is where, to put it grandly, you gambled away or won your life’s happiness: at the crucial moment you couldn’t make up your mind, and to this day you don’t know how good or bad that was. Josefa Litwin asked you point-blank what your intentions were, and you couldn’t think of anything better to do than cast your eyes down and stammer that you needed a bit more time to think about it.

  A magnificent woman, if eyes are any judge. You saw her for the first time in the train and instantly you thought, Boyoboy! She was wearing a green velvet dress with a white lace collar, and a hat the size of an open umbrella. And she was at most in her mid-thirties and thus exactly right for the forty-year-old you were then, right as far as age was concerned. But there in the compartment you never dreamed that sitting opposite you was the greatest problem of your next few years. You just gaped at her, so you tell me, like a young idiot; she may not even have noticed. Coincidence or not, when you got off the train together and there was no porter in sight, she asked whether you would mind carrying her heavy suitcase, she lived only a few streets further on, at Number 38 Libauer-Gasse. But she didn’t ask as if you were a man of inferior position, although even then you wouldn’t have refused; she was helpless and smiled and asked you a favor in her capacity as a weak woman. In your capacity as a gentleman. Delighted you said: “What a question!” Snatched up her suitcase as if you were afraid a porter might yet turn up and hurried after her as far as Number 38, as far as her own front door. There you set down the suitcase, and for a few seconds you smiled at each other in embarrassment. Then she thanked you nicely and said good-bye. And you stood there thinking, Too bad.

  A few weeks later, and that was certainly a coincidence, she appeared in your shop one afternoon accompanied by a man. You recognized her at once, and quite unjustifiably felt annoyed about the man, but then you were pleased because she recognized you too. You didn’t exchange a word, and the two of them had lemonade and raspberry ice cream. You observed them and couldn’t make out their relationship, and why should you?

  But when she came back the very next day, this time alone, you knew that was no coincidence. For the first time you were glad your shop was empty; apart from her, there was no other customer in the place — and the very next day! You sat down beside her, you chatted and introduced yourselves; she was the widow of a watchmaker who had been dead four years. It goes without saying that you didn’t allow her to pay for her ice cream; she was to consider herself your guest, today and as often as she liked. The man yesterday was mentioned as a casual acquaintance, he was no reason for you not to meet often, and there was no other reason either. So the next day in the shop, once again in the shop, then in another restaurant, in a neutral location so to speak, an innocent little dance. Then soon in your flat. Meanwhile, you had found out about her modest but by no means straitened circumstances, and that she had no children. Finally at Number 38 too. A cup of tea and some little homemade cakes, in the air a hint of delicate, flowery perfume; you spoke of mutual attraction, from the first moment really, and then another cup of tea, and there were more cakes in the kitchen.

  That was an evening such as no poet ever described, my God, and a night, my God, ah well. What can one say, this story isn’t about Jacob and Josefa, soon this page must be turned too. Just this: four whole years were the result, four years of living together as man and wife, though they never actually moved in together, though one subject was always avoided: rabbi or civil ceremony. Most carefully by Jacob, probably. There was ample opportunity to explore one another, Josefa’s glitter w
asn’t always gold, some less precious metals were worked in with it. Sometimes Jacob found her domineering, sometimes too talkative, sometimes an indifferent housewife, and she in turn found the occasional flaw in him, without any of this immediately leading to a breakup. Quite the contrary, they got along very nicely together, and Jacob was beginning to think that things could go on like this indefinitely. But when she suddenly — what am I saying, suddenly! — suggested it might be better if she moved in with him and she could help in the shop, he was afraid he would become his own employee, and he replied, “We’ll discuss that later.”

  Very well, later, Josefa was in no hurry, or so it seemed. Until, as noted, that particular evening came along, the one at Number 38 Libauer-Gasse, when Jacob gambled away or won his life’s happiness, who knows? He arrived as usual and, as usual, took off his shoes and put his feet up on the sofa. Josefa stood at the window with her back to him.

  “What’s the matter with you today?” Jacob asked her. “No tea?”

  Josefa didn’t turn around at once, but soon. With a forbidding expression she sat down, not beside him on the sofa but in the armchair opposite.

  “Jacob Heym, I have to talk to you.”

  “Go ahead,” he said, prepared for quite a lot but not for what came now.

  “Do you know Avrom Minsen?”

  “Should I know him?”

  “Avrom Minsch is the man I came into your shop with on that very first day, if you happen to remember.”

  “I remember all right. You told me at the time that he was a casual acquaintance.”

  “This morning Avrom Minsch asked me to marry him.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “Jacob, this is serious! It’s time you made up your mind!”

  “Who, me?”

  “Stop trying to be funny, Jacob. I’m now thirty-eight. I can’t go on living like this forever. He plans to join his brother in America, and he asked me whether I would go with him as his wife.”

  What was Jacob supposed to answer? He didn’t care for a pistol being held to his head, even less for the fact that Avrom Minsch had been kept a secret from him until this minute. No one proposes marriage to a casual acquaintance; for this purpose one must be more than slightly acquainted with her, and for four years he had imagined that Josefa and he knew each other inside out. The fact that Josefa was now offering him first refusal, as it were, could not dispel Jacob’s disappointment, far from it. Silently he put on his shoes again, carefully avoided meeting her eyes until he reached the door, then by the open door said awkwardly, “I need some time to think about it.”

  One thinks about it and thinks about it, and to this very day is still thinking about it; even two bonus hours aren’t long enough. A helpful person opens his window and calls softly across the courtyard, “Hey there!”

  Jacob is startled and sees the moon coming up over the roof. He asks: “What is it?”

  “You don’t live here, do you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s way past seven.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jacob pulls himself together, not stopping as he walks home, while further memory-fraught buildings are ignored: it’s already way past seven.

  Lina is already in bed, and he has to explain why he is so late coming home from work: because there was much more to be loaded than usual. She chats away, not about personal worries such as fairy tales or tiresomely suspicious neighbors’ sons, and Jacob can’t very well ask. She knows how strenuous the days at the freight yard are, and now this extra work, he mustn’t stay too long, just give her a quick kiss and go down to his room, love is entirely mutual.

  Jacob leaves her, with a conscience that could be clearer. On the stairs he plans to make it up to Lina, tomorrow or quite soon. At his own table, meanwhile, as he is about to start on his supper of bread and malt coffee, he is not dissatisfied with the day just past, all in all: at the freight yard the Jews had been modest in their demands, the battle of the Rudna was still having its effects; then the bonus of two nostalgic hours, a diverting little fairy tale at the attic door, a less diverting Aaron Ehrlicher, but then Josefa. Josefa still there, between the few mouthfuls, between the sips, you simply can’t get rid of the woman, what would have become of us two charmers if at Number 38 I had… ? Impossible to say, yet the question asked a thousand times over almost answers itself: a life halfway between heaven and hell, in other words, a perfectly ordinary life. How could it have turned out differently, and in what way, from those four familiar years? Years filled with variety, quarrels and misunderstandings, with moodiness, good times and some measure of contentment. And with a secret not discovered till the very last day. You simply can’t get this woman out of your head, until there’s a knock at the door.

  There is a knock, and Jacob is tempted to call out immediately: “Come in, Kowalski!” That is to say, not exactly tempted, he merely assumes, but then he no longer assumes because it had been past seven over an hour ago, so it must be well past eight now, and even Kowalski isn’t that crazy. Jacob calls out: “Come in!”

  Professor Kirschbaum is honoring Jacob at his supper, he trusts he’s not disturbing him, no not at all, won’t he please be seated, to what do we owe this rare pleasure?

  Kirschbaum sits down, delays the start of the conversation with many and diverse looks, and succeeds in gaining Jacob’s concerned attention, except that Jacob doesn’t know for what.

  “Can you not imagine why I have come to see you, Mr. Heym?”

  His first thought: “Is it about Lina? Is she worse again?”

  “I am not here about Lina. To come straight to the point: I am here to speak to you about your radio set.”

  What a disappointment, what a shock, for a few hours the monster had been blissfully forgotten: now the battle of the Rudna will have to be dug up again. For your fellow citizens you are no longer a human being but the owner of the radio, the two being mutually exclusive, as has been clear for some time, and here it comes again. The right to the normal conversations of the old days has been forfeited. About the weather, or back pain, for which Kirschbaum would be an ideal conversation partner, or gossip about mutual acquaintances. There is no talk of important nothings when you’re around — you with your treasure are too good for that.

  “You also want to hear the news,” says Jacob, more as a statement. Now he has Kirschbaum on his back too; never mind, one more or less.

  “I do not wish to hear any news,” Kirschbaum says, however. “I am here to express my disapproval. I should have done so long ago.”

  “Disapproval?”

  “I do not know, my dear Mr. Heym, what motives led you to spread the information in question. But I find it difficult to imagine that you have given proper consideration to the danger to which you are thereby exposing us.”

  Not news but disapproval, the ideas people have! No question, Kirschbaum is a very strange man. Do you, Professor, have to ruin my evening, my hard-earned free time? Do you have to make holier-than-thou speeches about matters over which my conscience was already struggling when for you my radio was an object hidden under seven seals? Do you have to tell me? Instead of patting me on the back and saying, Well done Mr. Heym, carry on, there is no medicine people need as much as hope. Or rather, not coming at all, for we learned long ago not to expect a pat on the back, yet here you come knocking at my door, damn you, and interfering and trying to teach me how to survive. And to top it all off I have to look interested because your concern is a thoroughly worthy one, because someday I may need you again for Lina, and I must also provide you with some good reasons for my action, although I can think of nothing that concerns you less. Just so that, after lengthy explanations, your learned lips are able to say: I see, yes of course, I understand.

  “I need not tell you where we are living, my dear Mr. Heym,” says Kirschbaum.

  “No, you need not,” says Jacob.

  “And yet it seems to me essential. What would happen, for example, if this informat
ion were to come to the ears of the German gestapo? Have you thought of that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I find that impossible to believe. Otherwise you would have acted differently.”

  “I see,” says Jacob. “Would I.”

  Jacob gets up to take a walk, not the first one today, past table and bed and cupboard and Kirschbaum; his fury, since it cannot be put into words, has moved into his legs. But not all his fury, the room is too small for that; there remains for his voice an unmistakable residue that momentarily nettles Kirschbaum. When Jacob says, “Have you ever once seen their eyes when they beg me for news?

  No? And do you know how badly they need some good news? Do you know that?”

  “I can well imagine. Furthermore, I do not doubt that you are motivated by the best intentions. Nevertheless, I must —”

  “Oh, you make me sick with your ‘nevertheless’! Isn’t it enough for you that we have almost nothing to eat, that in winter one in five of us freezes to death, that every day half a street gets taken away in transports? All that still isn’t enough? And when I try to make use of the very last possibility that keeps them from just lying down and dying — with words, do you understand? I try to do that with words! Because that’s all I have! — then you come and tell me it’s prohibited!”

  Oddly enough it is at this moment that Jacob thinks of a cigarette, so he tells me, of an untipped Juno. What Kirschbaum is thinking of is anybody’s guess: whatever it is, he reaches into the pocket of his worn double-breasted suit and, hard though it is to believe, at this very moment pulls out a packet of cigarettes. And matches, and asks Jacob, with surprising politeness considering that barely concluded tirade: “Care for one?”

  A question, that’s how civilized people behave, a tactful example perhaps, a good one, perhaps also a sign of some slight doubts arising, or neither. Silently they smoke and smooth their furrowed brows, whatever the explanation.