The Boxer

by Jurek Becker

  At least it wasn’t raining. Aron looked for a soft place, not too far from the road, and lay down. He was so tired that dampness and cold could not prevent him from falling asleep. With his last thoughts he damned the circumstances. He woke up very early and felt unexpectedly well. It was, he says, as if someone had cleaned out his lungs; only his clothes were moist. The clock read four, the sun was shining, he saw several rabbits and a deer. A lake would be ideal, to wash and drink, but he didn’t find one. Birds, he says, so many birds, and yet he didn’t know the name of a single one. Aron considered how soon he could go back to the home without having to stand in front of a closed gate again. He passed his hand over his face and felt the stubble of his two-day beard. He didn’t want to appear like this to Mark and the doctors, not to mention his crumpled clothes. He ambled around the woods till seven thirty. Then he did go to the village after all. It turned out to be small, so small that he soon stood in the marketplace. He found a barber.

  Aron was the only client; he sat in front of the mirror that confirmed the necessity of his detour and said, “Haircut and a shave.”

  The barber, while he was preparing Aron, mentioned that he had never seen him before, did he have something to do with the home? Nowadays one couldn’t buy anything reasonable with money, except for a shave. Aron answered only with a yes or a no. When it was over, Aron paid and inquired where he could get something to eat.

  “You must be joking,” said the barber.

  Aron wanted to leave, but when his hand was on the door handle, he was asked if he had anything besides money to pay with.

  “Only cigarettes.”

  For five cigarettes he was given bread and a piece of cheese; he ate while he walked. By the time he had left the village behind, his hunger was stilled, at least for the moment. The road was longer than he had expected. Aron didn’t reach the gate, which was now open, until around ten. He saw something he hadn’t noticed in the dusk yesterday, that barbed wire lay on the ground all along the high walls that surrounded the home. Not too long ago it would have been fixed on top. It must have been since dismantled but not yet removed.

  Several children played in a large free space, definitely the mustering grounds. Aron stood in their vicinity and observed them; he wasn’t interested in how or what they were playing, only in their condition. The children were mostly pale and very scrawny; their eyes, Aron says, were disproportionately large. He bent down to a boy and asked, “Do you know a Mark here?”

  The boy shook his head and went on playing. Aron heard someone calling him. He looked around; his acquaintance from the previous night was waving. The man hurried closer and shook his hand. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “We’ll work things out now.”

  He guided Aron to a different barrack from yesterday’s and said that he had already been to the director of the home and had announced Aron’s visit. By the way, his name was Weber, Alois.

  The director of the home was a middle-aged doctor. From the very first moment, Aron found her disagreeable. His request was known to her and not just because of the mediation of Alois Weber. She said, “I have received a phone call from Berlin. Can you explain why your son was registered here as Mark Berger?”

  “No,” Aron said, “it must’ve been a mistake.”

  Why did you find her disagreeable?”

  “Is that important?”

  “Perhaps. And if not, explain it to me all the same.”

  “She had lipstick and painted fingernails,” says Aron.

  “Oh, my God,” I say, “millions of women go around like that. That’s not a good reason to dislike someone.”

  “Normally not,” Aron says, “but it simply didn’t fit in there. You didn’t see the children. At the very best it was tasteless.”

  How is he doing?” Aron asked.

  “Well, considering the circumstances,” said the director. “He is weak and emaciated and must stay in bed for another few weeks. Did you know that he had pneumonia?”

  “No.”

  “But it’s over. Luckily we received some medicines in the nick of time, otherwise things might have been different.”

  She walked out with Aron, crossed the square; the children took no notice of them. Aron says he thought she could have pointed to any boy at all, anyone approximately the right age, and tell him he was his, he would’ve had to believe her. She could decide who my son is.

  *Wehrkraftzersetzung, undermining of military morale; durchhalten: perseverance, Elemente: elements.

  *Work.

  2

  THE DIRECTOR SPOKE TO A NURSE who took a stool and placed it by one of the beds in the hall. “That’s him. If you need me, send for me. And please don’t be too loud,” said the director.

  Aron stood by the bed and savored the longed-for sight. Tears welled in his eyes, not just at the joy of reunion but also in shock. The face he saw, he says, looked like that of a small skull. It evaded all possible similarities with a previous appearance; the eyes were the only proof of life — alert and black. Aron immediately remembered that this was the color of his Mark’s eyes. Not to think what would have happened, he says, if they had shown him a green-eyed child. He pulled himself together and didn’t kiss Mark, he didn’t touch him, he wanted to proceed carefully and not frighten him.

  He wiped his tears away and noticed that the black eyes followed his every move, yet the head didn’t stir. He moved the chair closer, so that Mark wouldn’t lose sight of him, and sat down. He smiled for a long time while he considered what his first words should be — if it were better to start with questions or with statements — far too long, evidently, because Mark closed his eyes. Aron said, “What’s your name?”

  The eyes opened immediately; he heard the answer, “Mark Berger.”

  Happily, Aron found that Mark’s answer sounded normal, not excessively weak or frail. Rather, it sounded strikingly obedient, almost military, as if Mark had been beaten into giving quick and exact answers.

  “Does something hurt?”

  “No,” in the same manner.

  “Are you scared of me?”

  “No.”

  “Were you told who I am?”

  “No.”

  “I’m your father.”

  At last not a question. At last a fact. Mark took note of this with composure. His face betrayed neither joy nor emotion.

  “Do you know your father’s name?”

  “No.”

  “If I’m your father, then you’re my …?”

  For the first time, Mark disobeyed the rules of the interrogation. He didn’t answer but shrugged. Under the little white shirt, Aron says, which until then had appeared to be lying empty on the bed, shoulders moved up and down.

  “Then you’re my son,” Aron said. “Do you understand?”

  “No.”

  For a couple of minutes it was a mystery to Aron what Mark didn’t understand about it; the director hadn’t mentioned that he was also meshugge. He said, “What don’t you understand?”

  “That word.”

  “Which word?”

  “The one you just said.”

  “Son?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s really easy,” Aron said. “I’m your father and you’re my son. Those are simply the words for it. Do you understand now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then say it again.”

  “You are my father, sir,” Mark said, “and I am your son.”

  “Right. But you mustn’t say sir to me. Say it again, You are my father.”

  “You are my father.”

  “I am your son.”

  “You are my son.”

  “No, that’s wrong,” Aron said.

  Suddenly Mark started to cry. He wasn’t sobbing, and tears didn’t stream from his eyes, rather he was whining like a spoiled child, one who thinks nothing else will get him out of an uncomfortable situation. Aron was frightened and didn’t know what he should do to soothe Mark. The nurse stood behind him and sai
d it was enough now, Mark had to sleep.

  “Leave the chair here,” Aron said. “I’ll come back later.”

  He went to the large square, sat on a bench in the sun, and looked at the children playing. Although a lot of time had passed since he had last observed children playing on a playground, and although he wasn’t in a frame of mind for comparisons, he soon thought he perceived a striking difference between the children here and the ones before. No one fought and, amazingly, the game proceeded noiselessly, almost as if it were repressed. He also noticed that most of the children played by themselves. They painted in the sand, shoveled little buckets full of sand, and kicked balls around, all in a subdued manner, without children’s habitual rush and excitement.

  Aron started making calculations about Mark. A great part of Mark’s life lay in the dark of suppositions. It was quite probable that witnesses would not be found, and Mark himself wasn’t a reliable informer — this much was clear. Only conscientious calculating remained. Assuming that Mark Berger and Mark Blank were one and the same, and Aron didn’t want to think of any other possibility, then it was certain that at age one and a half he had lost his mother, months later his father, was deposited with his neighbor, and then ended up in a camp. There he lived until the end of the war, but how? Certainly among children and women who, Aron says, had worries other than his well-being. Among people who, forced by the circumstances, stole his food and in doing so taught him to do the same — with success, as his survival proved.

  Or he lay for years in a dark corner. Sick and apathetic, provided continuously with the necessary nutrition by a well-wishing destiny. Perhaps by destiny in the form of a commiserating woman who shared her meals with him because, who knows, her own son had died, for example, or because Mark’s face reminded her of someone, Aron says, or simply because she was a great lover of children. But how could this hypothetical woman find the time to teach him everything that was known to a child his age, to explain who’s the father and who’s the son, and to whom one says sir or, simply, you? A further stroke of luck in his thought process, which was almost adventurous in Aron’s view, was that Mark could speak German in the first place. He was brought to the camp with almost no knowledge of language; all possibilities were open, his surroundings may just as well have been Hungarian or French or Polish.

  Alois Weber sat next to Aron on the bench and asked him, “How is he?”

  “He must sleep now.”

  “I’m the maid-of-all-work here,” Weber said. “When there is something to buy, or repair, or carry — the women can’t do everything on their own.”

  Aron thought that they should have hired a bigger man. “What did you do before?” He asked.

  “When before?”

  “Before you came here.”

  “I was in Dachau, not far from here.”

  “In Dachau? Wasn’t that also a camp?”

  “‘Also’ is good,” Weber said.

  “As a prisoner?”

  “You think as a prison guard?”

  “Then you’re a Jew?”

  “Do I look like one?” Weber asked. “Political.”

  A conversation followed, in the course of which Aron learned a thing or two about Weber’s past, and Weber learned this much, that Aron would be picked up in the morning and that he didn’t know where to spend the night. “If you like, you can come to my place later. There’s plenty of room and food, too. I live right over there,” Weber said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Where did you sleep last night?”

  “In the woods.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  Aron went back to Mark. The chair was still there; he sat down without asking the nurse. Mark looked like he was asleep, but Aron had barely sat down when he opened his eyes and even turned his head a little in his direction. Aron felt that Mark was smiling at him in a barely perceptible way.

  “You are my father,” Mark said, “and I am your son.”

  Aron’s tears immediately began to flow again. Mark hadn’t slept for one second, but, like his father outside, he had made calculations. He had arrived at the right result and had understood the lesson. Aron was filled with pride. From Mark’s behavior he deduced an uncommon intelligence — in spite of all the neglect — and a gift for analysis, and the rare ambition of not being satisfied with approximations. The tears were collected in a handkerchief; then Aron risked his first kiss, which Mark registered with astonishment.

  Mark’s performance increased Aron’s desire for conversation wherein, he says, the content was less important than the pure joy of hearing Mark’s voice. “What can you remember?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know that you were in a camp?”

  “Yes, in a concentration camp.”

  “Did you run around there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who gave you food?”

  “The woman.”

  “Which woman? What was her name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was her name Mrs. Fisch?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did she live in the same barrack as you?”

  “Yes. We slept in the same bed.”

  “Was she old?”

  “No, she was beautiful.”

  Aron thought it was strange that Mark knew abstract words such as “old” and “beautiful” while he didn’t know such an easy one as “son.” At the same time he felt pleased with himself because he had succeeded, armed with nothing but a little experience, in deducing that this woman, Mark’s savior, existed. Like an astronomer who works out the existence of a distant celestial body, he says, without seeing it, only on the basis of its effects.

  Aron resolved to change the subject. Furthermore, he decided on the spot that the exchange should be final; he didn’t want to speak about the camp with Mark ever again. He said, “Now I’d like to introduce myself. Because it’s rather funny that you don’t even know your father’s name. My name is Arno Blank.”

  Iinterrupt Aron to ask why he had never wanted to speak to Mark about the camp again. Not because I consider his resolution absurd, I say, rather because I can think of several reasons. Aron looks at me for a long time without answering; then he declares that it is enough for today, he’s tired now.

  However, the expression on his face betrays what he thinks: He who asks such questions can’t do much with answers.

  It is as hard for me now as it was the first day to come to terms with the fact that time and again I will have to rely on suppositions. Unless I discover a cleverer method, or find something that, to Aron’s ears, sounds less crass than a question. Half a day is lost, but we’re not in a hurry, no one is pressuring us.

  Mark was encouraged to repeat the name several times so that he would get used to its strange melody. He didn’t notice the difference between their last names, it didn’t mean anything to him. Aron began a series of bewildering explanations — father, marriage, registry office — yet he stopped as soon as he noticed that Mark could keep his eyes open only with great effort. The last piece of information he gave Mark was that the name Berger had been a mistake, caused by a hearing defect or carelessness of the person who wrote it.

  “So what’s your name?”

  “My name is Mark Blank.”

  “Very good.”

  Then the director appeared and said that Mark had to be treated, medicine, food, and sleep. Aron walked out with her. He had intended to talk with Mark a couple of hours later but she said, “That’s enough for today. You can’t imagine how much such a conversation strains him in his condition.”

  “Perhaps you think,” Aron said, “that it’s better for him to see nothing but the ceiling all day? He has almost forgotten how to speak.”

  “Dear Mr. Blank,” the director said, “I’m afraid you are confused. We have taken over the task of making your son better, not of entertaining him. Or should we assign someone to do nothing but converse with the children all day?”


  “Of course you should!” Aron shouted. He went away angrily, without a specific direction. When he turned around he saw her, puzzled, looking after him. He went back, no longer in a rush and not to excuse himself for his lapse.

  She even smiled. “Did you forget something?” she asked.

  “Yes. I want you to change the name in the papers. His name isn’t Berger.”

  “I’ve already seen to that,” she said.

  Aron had barely stepped into Alois Weber’s barrack when he wanted to go out again, he was so shocked. But this would have offended his host. He felt as if he were back, he says; except for a living room, nothing had changed. The well-known smell, thirty or more three-storied bunk beds with rotting straw, and Weber, as if he were joking, said, “Make yourself at home.”

  “For God’s sake,” Aron said, “how can you live here?

  “What do you mean ‘can,’“ Weber said. “I have to. Maybe I’m not as sensitive as you are. You had trouble?”

  Aron told of his troubles. “But the nursing is really good,” Weber said, “as far as I can judge. The nurses are patient and friendly, the medicine comes from America, and the food is plentiful. What more do you want?”

  The barrack made Aron restless; Mark and the woman may have slept in one of the beds. He sat on one of two chairs. Weber had achieved a certain degree of luxury, a cupboard, a table, a radio, a standard lamp, an alarm clock, and a palm tree in a bucket. The invitation to spend the night could only mean that Aron should use one of the many empty bunk beds; he asked himself if the woods weren’t preferable.