The Boxer

by Jurek Becker

  Aron declined; he didn’t want to barter, he wanted to buy in the traditional way. Kenik reluctantly agreed. “But don’t blame me afterward.”

  They set out in a direction known only to Kenik. After a while he stood still and asked, “We walk and walk, and you still haven’t even told me what you need.”

  “Isn’t it irrelevant?”

  “There’s a specific place for everything.”

  “Okay then,” Aron said, “first I need some chocolate.”

  Kenik looked at him, Aron says, as if Aron had informed him that he wanted to buy a green airplane with yellow polka dots. He put his hands in his hair and whispered, “Chocolate.”

  At this stage, Aron’s patience was exhausted. The help he had secured himself proved to be more of a hindrance than anything else. “Listen, Kenik,” he said. “Either you want to help me or you don’t. I barely utter a word and you already faint from astonishment or try to convince me of the opposite. Please stop it. What’s so unusual about chocolate? Show me where I can buy some, or I’ll look on my own.”

  “Fine,” Kenik said, “I’ll be quiet. But I swear it’s just out of gratitude — I won’t react to your craziness only out of gratitude.”

  “Don’t forget it. Where can I buy chocolate?”

  “May lightning strike me,” Kenik said, “I don’t know. I must think.”

  Then it occurred to him; it was in the exact opposite direction. He guided Aron down a little road that didn’t look special at first, it gave the impression of being almost uninhabited, but this changed as soon as one looked at the entrances. The black marketers and the buyers stood in the doorways and entrances of houses; they spoke quietly and perused the passersby with alert, wary looks; hardly a house was unoccupied. Kenik grabbed Aron’s arm, stood still, and said, “Wait for me here, I’ll be right back.”

  He behaved as if Aron was a child who might be traumatized by the tension typical of these places and as if his duty was to protect him. Aron just stood there for a couple of minutes and waited, too long for the people who were in the entrance nearby; they left their post and strolled a couple of houses farther away; some left. Every idler meant potential danger; he could be an informer or a harbinger of an incumbent raid. Aron allowed himself a spiteful joke. He assumed an emphatically harmless attitude — a manner that was particularly conspicuous here — in front of the closest doorway in order to see if the buyers and dealers there behaved in the same way. The experiment succeeded; with his method he could have emptied the whole street. Yet he preferred to stop before it became self-defeating or someone beat him up. He had been the target of sufficient evil looks, he says.

  Kenik came back with a young man dressed in shabby clothes; he wore a countryman’s hat and had a shopping bag in his hand. Aron had a feeling that the young man, like himself, was not at ease in the surroundings. His face was bright red; he lowered his eyes in embarrassment when he was spoken to. “He has what you’re looking for,” Kenik said.

  “How many bars of chocolate can I buy from you?” Aron asked.

  “I have eight altogether,” the young man said so quietly one could hardly hear him.

  “Shouldn’t we get out of the street first?” Kenik said.

  In fact, they were the only ones there who formed a visible group; they went into an empty, recently cleared, doorway. Aron said, “Eight, you say. How much does one cost?”

  “It’s Dutch,” said the young man, again almost in-audibly. Aron felt sorry for him already, but this didn’t alter the fact that he wanted chocolate.

  “Dutch is very good. How much is it?”

  “Dutch isn’t good at all,” Kenik intervened. The young man cleared his throat and said, “I thought around a hundred fifty marks per bar.”

  The price sounded high to Aron, but he had no benchmark other than the old one. He looked quizzically at Kenik. He had already rolled his eyes, nodded, and said, “Come on, let’s go, he’s crazy. We’ll find others soon enough.”

  Aron didn’t know if this was honest indignation or routine business practice, Kenik was that good, and he also saw no way of finding this out without an embarrassing aside. So he said, “Leave us alone.”

  Since Aron had so obviously made it clear that he was the one in charge and not Kenik, the young man produced a bar of chocolate from his shopping bag and held it out to Aron, as if to let him check its value. “Maybe I can go down a couple of marks,” he said.

  “I’ll make you an offer,” Aron said decidedly. “I’ll take all eight bars and pay eight hundred marks altogether. Deal?”

  “Fine,” the young man said immediately.

  While Aron was counting the bills Kenik said, “Good God.” The young man handed over his wares and hurriedly distanced himself. Kenik had hardly left the entrance when, beaming, he patted Aron on the shoulder and said, “Congratulations.”

  “For what?”

  “You dealt like a professional. Until the end I was afraid he would change his mind. I don’t have great experience with chocolate, none at all to be precise, but I bet we made a bargain. It probably costs twice as much today; he’s still wet behind the ears.”

  “Twice as much?”

  Aron stepped onto the street and spotted the young man, who was already some distance away. He called out, waved, and ran after him. The young man, evidently afraid that his trading partner had discovered an impropriety or felt cheated and wanted to undo the deal, or at least to lower the price, began to move faster. Aron called out several times “Please wait!” and had trouble catching up with him. When he stood before him at last, he fumbled in his bag and said, “I’ve changed my mind. Here.”

  He gave the young man three hundred marks. The young man couldn’t bring himself to thank him; he just stared at the additional money in his hand as if it contained some hidden danger. Aron went back to Kenik without turning around.

  “What did you want from him?”

  “Nothing.”

  Next, Aron wanted to buy a toy. Mark, he explains, had been born so inconveniently he had never owned a toy, except for a wooden car Aron had built for him in the ghetto, which hadn’t lasted two days. Aron had no idea what kind of toy it should be; one would have to wait for an offer. He knew only it should be suitable to play with in bed. When Kenik heard what Aron had in mind, he kept his promise not to comment. Aron looked at him and saw that it was all he could do to hold his tongue. So, a toy.

  Kenik thought for a long time before he said, “There are no toys anywhere; we might as well stay here. Wait, I’ll be right back.”

  The dealer he came back with was an old lady; Aron estimated she was over sixty. She didn’t have anything with her, not even a bag, so Aron couldn’t imagine where she kept the toy hidden.

  “You have toys to sell?”

  “Not really,” she said. “I just happened to be here. But when I heard this gentleman asking about toys, I had an idea. Naturally I don’t have anything here, it’s at home.”

  “And what, may I ask?”

  “All sorts of things,” she said, “things that children need. But they’re used.”

  “Do you live far away?” Kenik asked. “No, right around the corner.”

  They accompanied the woman. She stopped in front of her door and looked around on all sides as if she were looking for someone; she even looked into the courtyard without offering any explanation. He immediately had a hunch, Aron says. He asked Kenik to wait in front of the house. He didn’t think that a man like Kenik would make a suitable trading partner for a woman like this.

  “Feel free to come upstairs with us,” the woman said to Kenik.

  “He doesn’t want me to,” Kenik said, upset. “He’s afraid I’ll rip you off.”

  The woman smiled at Kenik’s words; apparently this was a joke, she didn’t know how to react to it. Once in her apartment, she led Aron into a room that immediately struck him as a children’s room. She explained, embarrassed, “I have two grandchildren, you know. Thank God they aren’t
here. There would have been some loud yelling when their evil grandmother sold their toys.”

  She took two stuffed toys from a shelf and said the animals were not for sale, they were needed to fall asleep. Otherwise the gentleman had free choice among the playthings in the room. It was fortunate for Mark, Aron claims, that the children weren’t present; otherwise he probably wouldn’t have bought anything. He decided in favor of the wooden construction set, several figurines of American Indians, a farm of considerable size, and finally a couple of picture books. When the toys were lying on the table, Aron asked the woman if in addition she could spare a bag; he didn’t have anything to carry them in and still had a long way to go. She didn’t have a spare bag, but she had a suitcase that was far too large. Unless he wanted to come back another time, Aron had to take it. “It’s useless; at this point we must talk about the price,” he said.

  The woman became even more embarrassed. She said she had no idea how much these things were worth.

  “You’d better name a price, you surely know better than I do.”

  Aron gave her five hundred marks and a bar of chocolate, whereby he was firmly convinced that she would have taken three hundred, perhaps even two hundred. The woman helped him pack the toys in the suitcase.

  “You are definitely a good person.”

  “Then again, not so good,” Aron said and thought her judgment was influenced by the price he paid; at a higher one she would have been even more effusive. Seconds later he was obliged to check himself; the woman’s train of thought had veered in a different direction. “Whoever buys toys at a time like this must be a good person,” she said.

  Aron took his suitcase and said good-bye. To Kenik he said, “And now I need a bicycle.”

  “A bicycle?”

  “A bicycle.”

  “He wants to finish me off,” Kenik whispered.

  First of all, before even considering a bicycle, he pointed out to Aron that it could be attributed only to astonishing gullibility, if not to stupidity verging on naïveté, if someone seriously believed he could get through the black market unscathed with a suitcase that size. And, second, it had occurred to him in the meantime that their shopping would be much more efficient if Aron made a list of all the things he was looking for, then went home and left it up to him, Kenik. “It has to be more convenient for you,” he said. “Besides, we’d save time and nerves.”

  Aron declined, particularly since he wasn’t looking for anything else except the bicycle, but the argument about the suitcase made perfect sense. He was prepared to give up on further support from Kenik; somewhere, he hoped, he would find the bicycle, for a lot of money, sinfully earned and easily given out.

  “Fine,” he said. “First I’ll bring the suitcase home. You don’t have to go with me any farther, you’ve helped me enough.”

  “Why are you angry all of a sudden?”

  “I’m angry?”

  All at once it occurred to Kenik that he had something urgent to do. He said, “Let me suggest something else. I’ll run my errand while you go home and wait for me. In an hour I’ll be there and we’ll go buy a bicycle together.”

  Aron agreed and carried the suitcase containing the toys and chocolate home. He made himself a snack and looked at the picture books. Less than an hour later Kenik came with the bicycle; that was to be expected.

  3

  MARK’S MOVE WENT ACCORDING TO PLAN. Rescue delivered him punctually on Aron’s doorstep, where Tennen-baum’s car and chauffeur were waiting. They drove out to the home together. Mark had memorized his lessons: the name Arno, the familiar form of address, and the relationship between father and son. He didn’t confuse things anymore. Aron found that, though he was far from recovered, his condition had notably improved and he looked less apathetic than he had a few weeks before, more alert, more like a normal child.

  “How long will he have to stay in bed?”

  The doctor declared that he couldn’t say for sure, all he knew was that proper nutrition was more important than medicine. Mark would survive in any case, though whether or not he would be released without irreversible damage depended primarily on his nutrition.

  “Anything specific?”

  “Nothing specific. Everything that is good and expensive.”

  Calories, said the doctor, vitamins until they come out his ears. Mark would probably have some stomach problems, but that was nothing to worry about. “Fatten him up. If another doctor tells you something different, don’t believe him. Believe me,” he said.

  Till then, Aron’s job at Tennenbaum’s was nothing more than a stopgap measure, killing time; now it gained sense and purpose: the lavish salary that in the past month had procured unimportant comforts, or had served as a tranquilizing hoard, could now be used to heal Mark. Aron invested some of his money in groceries, vegetables, cheese, candies, juices, sausage, cookies; however, it wasn’t a big part, he earned much more, he says, than what Mark could eat. Kenik helped him with the shopping. Aron wrote his shopping list on a piece of paper and sent Kenik out. At first Kenik refused. “If you absolutely have to eat tomatoes in the middle of winter, then go look for them yourself,” he said. But when he learned whose health was at stake, his resistance crumbled and he was of great help; he knew the sources like no one else. He made his own suggestions about how to enrich Mark’s meal plan and occasionally would come back from his raids with delicacies that weren’t on the shopping list. “What do you think? He’ll definitely like this,” he would say.

  For a pack of cigarettes per week, Aron could leave his bicycle with the Stationmaster. He rode out with his packages almost every day, at least at the beginning, he says. At the home they must have thought he was a millionaire.

  * * *

  And Paula?”

  Paula’s time was much more restricted; during the week she was tied up at Rescue. Aron was certain she would go with him to see Mark the first Sunday. “I still haven’t said a word to him about you. It’ll be an exciting moment,” he said.

  Much to his disappointment, she didn’t seem at all excited at the idea of her first meeting with Mark. On the contrary, he found that she looked rather glum. To be on the safe side he asked her, “You are coming with me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Aron was puzzled; it made him angry that she should pretend not to know whether she wanted to keep such an important appointment, her head full of mystifying scruples. Her reasons, he says, were bound to be petty and, in his opinion, without substance. Perhaps that was precisely why he loved her, he suspected a particular kind of sensitivity behind all this insecurity. Yet her behavior this time really got on his nerves. Only later did he realize that his reasoning was based on the wrong assumption. His thinking had been more or less along these lines: if a father is happy to have found his long-lost son, how can the mother not be happy? It wasn’t her fault if he thought that way.

  But at the time he had lost patience with her and saw no reason to conceal his anger. “Have it your way,” he said, “go ahead and stay home. There’s just one thing I don’t understand. Even if you don’t care about him, why can’t you do me at least this one small favor? Is it because it’s a long walk from the station to the home?”

  He posed this hurtful question on a Saturday; they didn’t talk to each other until Monday. Then he asked, “Can you at least give me an explanation?”

  “I’m a little scared.”

  “Of what? That he won’t like you?”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Of what then?”

  Paula didn’t explain; she just put her hand on Aron’s arm, smiled, and said, “Of nothing. I’m a silly goose, of course I’ll come with you. I’m sorry.”

  The following Sunday they took the train out to the home. Aron had promised her a nice hour-long walk from the station to the home. It suddenly occurred to him that they had never gone anywhere together, not even out of th
e house. He had the feeling that he had come a long way with Paula at his side, but strangely it became clear to him only now that all his movements involving her ended within the walls of his apartment. Paula said that so many trees made her dizzy.

  “You should see them when they’re green.”

  She acted as if the road were going through a museum, as if she were parading past an endless row of extraordinary treasures, which is apparently how she categorized every second bush and every third tree, and the blackbirds, too. She was extremely reserved, held Aron’s hand, only now and again would cry out, “Look over there!”

  Aron’s pleasure in the surroundings was worn-out because he had seen them so often, but he was delighted by Paula’s joy and spent his time thinking. It’s always been that way with him, he says, his mind works best while walking. But now don’t immediately say you want to go for a walk with me.

  He started to brood over what Paula could have meant when she said she was scared to meet Mark. Her only hint, that it wasn’t for fear of being disliked by Mark, seemed credible to Aron; otherwise, he was sure, she would have easily admitted it. She probably had the opposite fear, he thought, the fear of being horrified by the way Mark looked and of not being able to cover it up sufficiently, so that Mark, seeing the expression on her face, would be frightened and Aron, hurt. Yet he dismissed this thought too; she was unlikely to have such a fear, he told himself, which was inhuman somehow, she was too clever and sensitive. Besides, during her work with Rescue she had certainly been confronted by similar experiences. But what kind of fear was it then? The only explanation Aron could think of was not only uncomfortable but, the more he thought about it, even alarming: Paula was afraid of getting too involved in his affairs. Her behavior, he thought, was noncommittal — in spite of all apparent trust, she always kept her options open. The most obvious of these was that Paula still kept her own apartment, didn’t in fact use it, just owned it, why? Surely not to waste extra money in the form of rent, surely not to challenge Aron, or to threaten him. She didn’t give up the apartment, Aron told himself, because the apartment was an escape route from which she found it rash to part. Till then, Paula’s affection had been limited to one man. Yet a man and a child were incomparably more people than just the one man. If a woman came into the picture, the scene would look distinctly like a family, overpoweringly so in Paula’s eyes, hence the fear.