Jakob the Liar

by Jurek Becker

  “What news do you mean?”

  “That Hardtloff is dead.”

  “Did you care about him?” comes a mocking voice.

  “Not about him,” says Jacob, “but about Kirschbaum.”

  Reluctantly they must agree, it’s not easy, a convincing correlation that most of them understand without any further explanation. The way things are, a Jewish doctor is not likely to survive his Aryan patient for long, in this particular case not at all. “Who’s Kirschbaum?” someone asks; it’s impossible to know everyone. It is explained to him: a leading light, at one time a famous heart specialist, here Jacob’s neighbor, was picked up and taken away to cure Hardtloff. Now belatedly a quiet grieving for the professor; the ten minutes pass without questions or reports of successes. Jacob could have wished for a different distraction. He feels an urge to dispense some sort of consolation, one can’t let them sit there hungry like that. The old story about the secret German plans that fell into Russian hands in the fortress of Tobolin flashes across his mind. But the Whistle preserves him from this folly by putting an end in the usual way to the midday meal that today was so singularly lacking in flavor.

  Thus in spite of Hardtloff’s death the day passes dismally, and continues to do so. In the midst of work a tank wagon appears, drawn by two scrawny horses; the sight is familiar, as is the rattling that can be heard a long way off. On an average it turns up once every three months, less often in summer, somewhat more often in winter, when the ground is frozen, but always on a Monday. Its visit has to do with the little German hut with the heart in the door: for three months the hut can manage without it, but no longer than that, or it will overflow.

  The wagon is driven by a farmer from somewhere in the surrounding countryside; no one knows how he came by this honor. We can’t stand him. On his first visit the Germans forbade him to talk to any of us, and he strictly obeys this rule. At first, long before Jacob’s radio, we tried to coax a word out of him, we didn’t know ourselves what kind of a word, any tiny detail from the outside. There would have been no danger, but he would sit there with compressed lips, not saying a word and squinting over at the distant sentries. He probably feared for his head or his manure. Or he is anti-Semitic, or quite simply an idiot.

  He stops his wagon behind the outhouse. A German comes out of the brick building and walks in among the men, who all pretend to be terribly busy as soon as the hateful rattling is heard. The job for which four men are now to be picked is no easier than lugging crates; afterward you stink to high heaven and can’t wash till you get home.

  “You, you, you, and you,” says the German.

  Schmidt, Jacob, and two strangers grit their teeth as they walk behind the outhouse and begin the filthy job. They take the two shovels and the two buckets hanging from the side of the wagon, and Jacob and the lawyer lift the cover off the pit. They proceed to shovel the muck into the buckets, which the other two empty into the tank. Schmidt’s disgusted expression doesn’t help matters. It’ll take about three hours, and at halftime they switch, shovels for buckets.

  “Have you ever done this before?” asks Schmidt.

  “Twice.”

  “I never have.”

  The farmer is seated on the wagon with his back to them. He takes a little parcel out of his pocket, waxed paper, unwraps it, bread and bacon. The sun low, the world well forgotten, he enjoys his noon or evening meal, Jacob’s eyes fill with tears.

  The older of the two bucket carriers begs the farmer for a mouthful, with a muttered explanation as to what happened to his lunch, just a little piece of bread, we won’t even mention bacon. The farmer seems undecided; as Jacob shovels he observes the farmer’s oafish eyes raking the yard for watchers, of whom none is interested in the proceedings behind the outhouse.

  “Don’t be scared,” says our man. “You don’t have to speak to us. Just drop a piece of bread, you know, by mistake. No one can blame you for that. I’ll pick it up so no one’ll notice…. Do you hear? No one, not even you, will notice it!”

  “Could you eat in this stench?” Schmidt asks.

  “Yes,” says Jacob.

  The farmer puts his hand in his pocket again, brings out the waxed paper, carefully wraps up what’s left of the bread and bacon, and stows it away. Either he has had enough, or he really has lost his appetite. Just an ample gulp from his canteen, and he wipes his mouth with his dirty sleeve.

  “Asshole” is what he has to hear, but not even this filthy epithet makes him come alive.

  Shortly before it’s time to switch, Schmidt slows down noticeably in his shoveling. Finally he stops entirely, claiming that he can’t go on, that everything is turning before his eyes, black spots. Sweating, he leans against the back wall of the outhouse.

  “It’s because you haven’t had any food,” says Jacob.

  That’s no help to Schmidt; big drops of sweat run down his face; he tries to throw up, but nothing comes. Jacob fills a bucket in his place, the carriers are forced to wait, not a long-term solution.

  “You have to keep going,” Jacob says.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” gasps Schmidt, leaning back and very pale.

  “Either you keep going now, or you might as well just lie down and die,” says Jacob.

  This appeals even less to Lawyer Schmidt. He picks up his shovel again and on unsteady legs starts filling the waiting bucket. He groans; it looks like a desperate effort doomed, one fears, to failure. The shovel pokes around on the surface, not going as deep as it should, so that it is pulled out of the muck only half full, more work for Jacob.

  “By the way, I’ve heard something from your Mr. Churchill,” says Jacob, in an undertone so that the farmer can’t understand anything no matter how hard he tries.

  “From Winston Churchill?” says Schmidt, weakly yet with audible interest.

  “He has a cold.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “No, no, just an ordinary cold. He sneezed through half the interview.”

  “A whole interview?”

  “A short one.”

  “And what did he say?”

  Jacob indicates that this is not a suitable place for a chat: those sentries over there, at the moment they are concerned with other things, but in three hours one of them is sure to come over and check, and by that time the pit must be empty. So a report only if it can be camouflaged with work. Schmidt sees the point, his grip on the shovel grows firmer by necessity, the drops on his forehead remain the same, What did Churchill say?

  Jacob tells him; the cellar conversation between the reporter and the British prime minister is still in his memory, although no longer quite so fresh. The situation on the eastern front, without naming any towns, in any case desperate for the Germans, those were his own words, a great colorful bouquet of good prospects. And Mr. Churchill can well afford an opinion, wouldn’t you say, from his vantage point? Of course, there are still some problems here and there — I ask you, in what kind of a war does everything go without a hitch?

  And there are also differences between Schmidt and Lina, considerable ones, that must be taken into account. You aren’t sitting with a little girl in a dusky basement, for fun, as it were, or for love; you are standing in the sunshine with the highly educated Schmidt, every word must be weighed, in three hours the pit must be empty of muck.

  On the morning of this day, which has been earmarked for the advance on the district town of Pry — the Russians won’t quite reach it but will come a good deal closer to it, Jacob has decided — on the morning of this promising day Mischa while on his way to work notices an agitated little group standing in the street. They point first in one direction and then another, two of them are talking excitedly, the others are listening in dismay. Mischa is not going to walk past without finding out what’s going on. Then he hears the name of a street, Franziskaner; Mischa grabs the man nearest him by the arm, pulls him out of the hubbub, and insists he tell him for heaven’s sake what’s happening in Franziskaner-Strasse. He i
s quickly told, A disaster has overtaken it, the people living in that street are being lined up in rows of three. A house-to-house search is under way, they have just got as far as Number 10, in a few hours there won’t be a soul left living there, off to camp or God knows where. “And the Russians are said to have already taken Tobolin,” the man says.

  Mischa dashes off. The fate of Franziskaner-Strasse affects him more than in a general way, for that street is a very special one: Rosa lives in it. The man said they had just reached Number 10, which means only a few minutes ago, normally by this hour Rosa is already at the factory. Mischa blames himself for not having simply made her stay with him every night, especially last night. He will go to her factory, the sentry at the gate won’t let him in, but he can hang about close by. Until they come off work, Mischa himself will be a sentry, because Rosa must be prevented from going home. He hopes to God he won’t have to spend the entire day watching an empty factory; if Rosa left home on time, she must be in there, that’s his only hope. Mischa runs, why so fast, he doesn’t know himself, Rosa won’t be coming off work for a long time, he runs.

  Outside the building, a gray brick garment factory, the world looks quite normal. Mischa stands on the opposite side of the street; no one else is about. He is prepared for a long day, but it proves to be much shorter than expected. A Jewish girl emerges from the factory, and Mischa wonders why she is coming out during working hours; she strolls aimlessly across the roadway, past him. Mischa stands there hesitating until she has almost reached the next corner, then follows her. She soon notices it, coquettishly turns her head, once, then again; a blue-eyed, broad-shouldered young man is, after all, a rarity in the ghetto, and in broad daylight at that. She slows down at once, she has no objection to being overtaken, and that finally happens too; just past the corner he is standing beside her.

  “Excuse me,” says Mischa. “Do you work in that factory?”

  “Yes,” she says with a smile.

  “Do you happen to know whether Rosa Frankfurter is still in there?”

  She considers this for a few seconds before saying: “You’re Mischa, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he replies. “Is she inside?”

  “She left a few minutes ago. She was told she could go home today.”

  “How many is that, a few minutes?” his voice already shrill. “How many, exactly?”

  “Ten, maybe,” she answers, surprised at his sudden agitation.

  Again he rushes off, feverishly calculating that he can make it if ten minutes is correct. From here to Franziskaner-Strasse would take Rosa almost half an hour, more if she’s not hurrying, and she’s not likely to be. They told her she could go home, without giving any reason, the bastards, so there’s no need to hurry. All at once Mischa turns on his heel, dashes back the same way, an oversight must be corrected, an unforgivable one. The girl is slowly coming toward him and smiles again.

  “Did they send you home too?” he calls out while still some distance away.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t go home! Hide somewhere!”

  He hears her calling after him: “But why?”

  “Because Franziskaner-Strasse is being deported!”

  “But I don’t live there, I live in Sagorsker-Strasse!”

  This awkward exchange costs him far too much time. So Sagorsker-Strasse too. He has told her all he knows; she can draw her own conclusions and save her life or not. If she’s smart, she’ll stand outside the factory and tell each of the women being sent home, “Don’t go home, hide somewhere, never mind where you live!” All this is going through his head long after he has started running again, to catch up with Rosa, and that Franziskaner- and Sagorsker-Strasse don’t even meet: between them is Blumenbinder-Gasse, which doesn’t have many houses, mostly open storage places that are not being used these days, except for a few. And beyond each new corner he looks for Rosa. Maybe she isn’t even taking the shortest route, maybe she’s going for a stroll in this nice weather and wants to make the most of the unexpected free day. If she is really taking her time, he can’t fail to reach Franziskaner-Strasse ahead of her, and he could occupy one end and intercept her. But only one end, Franziskaner-Strasse has two ends, which of those ends do you propose to occupy, and at this hour you won’t find anyone to help you at any price. For a moment, a new glimmer of hope flares up: Mischa is banking on Rosa’s instinct for self-preservation. Regardless of which end she appears at, she will see what’s happening to her street. Perhaps she’ll turn around then, run to his building, stay hidden in the courtyard, and wait until he arrives in the evening with the key. But Mischa doesn’t rely too heavily on that, he knows her too well, his crazy Rosa won’t be able to banish her love for her father and mother from her head, all that useless girlish stuff. The best she’ll be able to manage at that sight will be a hesitation, then she’ll burst into tears and run straight into her doom, to where her parents are, who can well do without her, and all this won’t help a soul.

  All calculations come to an end when at last he sees her in a long, straight street. In Argentinische-Allee, whose linden trees have been carefully chopped down, close to the ground, resulting in a wide, clear vista. The street is virtually empty; he recognizes her rustcolored dress when it is still only a dot, then her blue headscarf, her walk — slow, as he had foreseen. What luck, Mischa thinks.

  Within a short distance of her he stops running and follows her quietly for a few steps. Rosa is looking at the fine old gables in this once-prosperous merchants’ area; Rosa is out for a stroll. His last thoughts before making himself known are that his behavior must seem perfectly natural: he happens to be on his way to her home because he has heard that the factory has given her the day off. Nothing about great anxiety, not a word about the fate of Franziskaner-Strasse, that would only remind her of her love for her parents.

  He intends to put his hands over her eyes from behind and in a disguised voice ask her to guess who it is; that would be a harmless enough way to begin. He notices that his hands are sticky with sweat, his face too; he wipes it dry with his sleeve and says with forced casualness, “Fancy meeting you here!”

  She quickly turns around, startled at first, then smiles, the prettiest girls smile at Mischa. “What are you doing here?” she asks.

  “And what are you doing here?”

  “I’m on my way home,” she says. “Just imagine, I was at the factory less than an hour and I was allowed to leave!”

  “Why?”

  “No idea. They simply told me I could go home. A few others too, but not everyone.”

  “The same thing happened to me,” Mischa says. “Have you got the day off too? The whole day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wonderful!”

  She links her arm through his; a solitary passer-by looks in wonderment at young love.

  “We’ll go to my room,” says Mischa.

  “But how do you happen to be here of all places?”

  “Because I wanted to fetch you from the factory. When they gave me the day off, I thought maybe they’d let you off today too.”

  “You’re a clever one.”

  “But you had just left. A girl told me so, a cute-looking girl with red hair.”

  “That was Larissa,” she says.

  They go to his place, in no hurry, for the direction doesn’t worry him, Franziskaner-Strasse being off to the left. Rosa tells him about Larissa, that she had sometimes spoken to Larissa about Mischa, Rosa hopes he doesn’t mind, they sew at the same table, and the day is long. Larissa is still water that runs deep, one mustn’t be deceived by her dreamy eyes. For instance, she also has a boyfriend, his name is Neidorf, Josef, she calls him Jossele, he works in a tool factory, Mischa wouldn’t know him. They live in the same building, Larissa has a mother and two grown-up brothers, and a funny thing happened with the two brothers. They once gave Josef Neidorf a beating when they caught him with their sister in the attic, doing what, do you suppose? Necking and kissing, of course, but Lar
issa let them have it all right. Meanwhile they’ve calmed down; they realize she is no longer a child; Jossele is sometimes even allowed to visit her at home, just for a chat of course. And abruptly, in the midst of her flow of talk, Rosa stops and asks: “Why on earth would they suddenly give us a whole day off?”

  “How should I know?”

  “But there must be a reason.”

  He shrugs, he had hoped she wouldn’t bring up the subject. He can’t give her an answer, but she’s right, it is strange.

  “I wonder if it has anything to do with the Russians,” she says.

  “With the Russians?”

  “I mean, if they feel that the game is up and they want to try and make themselves popular while there’s still time,” says Rosa. “Don’t you see? Thinking ahead.”

  “Maybe,” says Mischa, having no better explanation to offer.

  So on they stroll toward his place, Rosa chattering away as never before, out of sheer lightheartedness. Mischa lets her chatter on without interruption; she has much more to talk about than just Larissa: Klara and Annette and above all Nina are having affairs, and what affairs! Furthermore, her father is at last beginning to have some tentative thoughts about the future. Two evenings ago he placed a curious piece of paper on the table, says Rosa. On it, divided into three groups, were theatrical roles corresponding to his ideas of what he hopes one day to perform, God willing; the theater management has denied them to him long enough. Rosa doesn’t know the details, she doesn’t understand enough about the theater for that, but there were at least twenty.

  At the front door an unpleasant thought strikes Mischa: no work means no midday meal today. He asks Rosa whether she happens to have her ration card with her. Sorry, she’s left it at home; wouldn’t you know it, he thinks. Should she quickly go and get it; No, she shouldn’t. He gives her the key, he’ll follow in a few minutes, and goes off with his own ration card.