Mr. Mani

by A. B. Yehoshua

  —I knew you would say that.

  —I knew you would say that ... I give up...

  —But it was just the opposite ... just the opposite, Grandmother ... listen ... if he himself had stayed behind, that could only mean that he had faith and confidence in what he had done ... that much is undeniable ... we had both passed the test, he had passed mine and I had passed his...

  —I saluted him again and returned to Knossos, which was completely dark by then. I looked up at the sky full of stars and thought of that night three years ago, back in ‘41, after I had come floating down from the sky like Daedalus in Gustav Koch’s myth, and then I stepped into the little guard post near Mani’s store not far from the bust of Sir Arthur Evans and telephoned Schmelling, who was very upset about the disappointing number of Jews rounded up so far. “It can’t be,” he kept telling me, “there must be more of them, there has to be, you simply haven’t looked hard enough.” and so I said, “I’ve found all the Jews I can, but is it all right with you if I arrest a citizen who helped a Jewish mother and her child escape to the mountains,” and he said, “Of course, of course, bring him in,” and so I went back to the house, wondering if Mani Junior still was there or had taken to his heels too, and there he was behind the curtains, which were drawn because of the blackout, faithful less to his promise to me, Grandmother, than to the insidious idea that had gripped him in a vise, which is why I startled him so by coming back to tell him that he was under arrest for helping Jews escape, for that and nothing else. He began protesting and putting up such a fight that I had to fire at the walls to calm him down, after which I handcuffed him, sat him in the sidecar of my cycle, and sped back along the empty roads to reunite him with his imprisoned brethren whom he thought he had renounced ... But now look, Grandmother, look over there to the west, how quick and subtle the sunset is...

  —Exactly. That’s the surprise I promised you ... you see, you needn’t have worried...

  —Well, then, don’t. In the end he was thrown into that dry winery with all the other Jews who had been brought from all over the island—and since there weren’t enough of them to suit the experts from Athens, our addlebrained Schmelling decided to add four hundred Greek prisoners, and since that still proved too little, he also threw in three hundred of our ex-Italian friends, who were now simply so many detained nuisances. On the sixth of June there were whispered rumors about a big enemy landing in France, and so we moved as quickly as we could and loaded all the deportees that same day on a small ship that was commandeered in Heraklion harbor. We clamped a curfew on the city to keep people away from the pier, but even then, when the deportees were marched from the prison, the rooftops and terraces were so lined with onlookers that we were ordered to fire in the air. And I, Grandmother, the birth-and-identity specialist, seeing how worried everyone was that the ship might be waylaid on its way to Greece, suggested to Schmelling and his officers that we change its name and give it a new identity. I even found an appropriate one in the books you sent me, Danae, which was the name of the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos. Old Koch would have been proud of me! And indeed, the sailors painted over the old name, and that evening the ship set sail for Santorini. It didn’t get far, however, before a British bomber flying innocently overhead noticed an unfamiliar vessel and sank it not far from the point where our sun is about to disappear...

  —Citizen Mani was on it too. Where else could he have been? He went down with the ship.

  —Just once. Very briefly, as he was standing in line for his supper. I promised to have him freed if he told me where his wife and child were, but he wouldn’t answer me, and I had no time to determine if this meant he had abandoned the logic that had spun the two of us around in its closed circle, or if, on the contrary, he had realized that this logic meant not only freeing him, but arresting his wife and child and sending them off with the other deportees...

  —Of course.

  —Of course. Why not? I was perfectly serious...

  —Why not? It was only natural, wasn’t it?

  —If you, for instance, just for the sake of the argument, had been born a Jew...

  —Now don’t get angry...

  —I’m sorry.

  —All right ... all right...

  —Right, we’ll start back down soon, Grandmother. As I told you when we started out, the twilight here is very short, not at all like in Germany...

  —That was the end of it, Grandmother. This happened two months ago, and since then we’ve opened a new corral that’s filled up amazingly quickly, even though there’s not a Jew left on the island—except, of course, for that woman and her child, whom I would gladly hunt down in the mountains if we weren’t forbidden to leave the town limits of Heraklion, so that all I can do is come up here every evening before dark, to this old Turkish guard post, and look to see if they haven’t snuck back home ... if the lights aren’t on in their house again...

  —The woman?

  —What makes you ask?

  —But I already described her...

  —I’d say average height ... nice-looking ... what more can one say?

  —Why do you ask?

  —No, no one in particular ... maybe...

  —Maybe ... but why do you ask?

  —At first I did think there was something ... in the expression or the smile ... maybe some old photograph we had at home ... but little by little the resemblance seemed to fade...

  —Not of Mother ... not of her ... of you, actually, Grandmother ... a very old photograph...

  —I’ll go on lying in wait for her here. Perhaps I’ll catch her and her little boy after all ... because the thought that we’ll soon have to leave this place for the swamps and the fog again, and that they will continue to look out at this brilliant bay through these ancient, enchanting olive trees—that thought so aggravates me, Grandmother, that I’m ready to go on sitting here forever until I lay my hands on them.

  —Why?

  —When?

  —What are you talking about?

  —Since when?

  —But since when? Who told you?

  —I’m fighting for Germany right here ... that is, until the English come...

  —How? Since when?

  —Tomorrow?

  —What are you talking about?

  —No transfer order will ever get here...

  —I don’t get it ... what order?

  —But how can that be? Who gave it to you?

  —But whose signature is on it? Who had the authority to sign it?

  —Let me see it. I don’t believe you...

  —You went all the way to the top, didn’t you? All the way ... but why didn’t you ask me first? Ach, what have I ever done to you, Grandmother, to make you keep meddling in my destiny?

  —But I don’t understand whom it’s meant for. Whom do you intend to show it to?

  —Let me see it, I don’t believe you...

  —Show it to me ... it can’t be...

  —No, there’s enough light...

  —But let me see it. What are you afraid of?

  —His own signature is on it? It’s impossible ... you’re out of your mind, Grandmother ... you went to him? I don’t believe it...

  —What does the name of Sauchon have to do with it?

  —I don’t wish to make a mockery of anything.

  —But how? How, Grandmother? I give up ... you didn’t understand my story ... you missed the whole point ... why, it’s just the opposite ... all along what I’ve been talking about is our freedom. We can’t go on hunting down every one of them until the end of history ... we have to let them cancel themselves ... my one worry is for our poor Germany ... for our despairing Führer ... for the future...

  —You musn’t say that ... it isn’t true...

  —No, now I understand. You want me to be killed in a final, lost battle for Germany ... just like you sent Egon to his death in the first war ... I was right after all ... you still don’t accept my existence! I thought you had
come to see me because you loved me, I thought you might even stay with me here, but now I see that you’ve come to take me away ... it’s out of the question ... I don’t agree to it ... I won’t go ... no, Grandmother, don’t show it to anyone ... don’t give anyone that order ... I beg you, don’t give it to anyone...

  —But what honor? For the love of God, what honor? Whose honor?

  —No, I will not give it back to you ... not until you promise me to destroy it ... it’s a poindess, an unacceptable piece of paper...

  —In that case I’ll tear it myself ... you can have his signature back, and I’ll tear the rest and scatter it to the winds...

  —I will too dare ... I won’t give it back ... I won’t ... I swear to you by all that’s holy, I’ve seen the dead and I don’t want to join them ... you can’t decide that for me ... you have no right to ... you have no right ... you didn’t kill God to take His place ... you’re not Zeus’s great-grandson Minos...

  —Then I’ll give up both the name and the honor. I was born as a compensation that didn’t compensate anyone. As far as you’re concerned, Creation itself was a mistake ... the whole world is a mistake ... deep down you’re one of them ... your despair comes from the same place...

  —I don’t want any part of the estate ... I don’t want a single speck of it ... because I don’t want any part of the insane suicide that the Führer is planning. I’m staying here, and I’m not leaving this island until the English come. No, Grandmother, you are not Minos, the great-grandson of Zeus ... you can’t judge me ... you have no right to...

  —No, listen ... listen...

  —Yes, listen, you must, it’s from the Homer you yourself sent me...

  —No, wait, here, listen ... how beautiful The Odyssey is... There I saw Minos, great-grandson of Zeus,/ In his hand a golden scepter, as he sat speaking to the dead,/ And they gathered round him, the destiny-decreeing governor of their fate,/ They who sat and stood in the dwellings of broad-gated Hades...

  Biographical

  Supplements

  EGON BRUNER The news that his grandmother’s plane had crashed into the sea took a few days to reach Corporal Egon Bruner, who grieved greatly for the old woman, both because he had been deeply attached to her in his fashion and because their farewell had been traumatic for them both. Nevertheless, Egon felt certain that he had been right to tear up the transfer order.

  Despite the increase in Greek partisan attacks on the German army in Crete, Egon remained determined to discover the village or monastery in which Mrs. Mani and her child were hiding, but he searched in vain. In October, in response to a British breakthrough, he was transferred with his unit to northern Italy, and from there, via Austria, to the raging Eastern Front. In January 1945, in the midst of a particularly hard winter, he was stationed in an abandoned manor house not far from the Polish town of Oświ[ecedil]cim., where he served as a medic in a support unit for the garrison of a nearby concentration camp. In February 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Russians, who held him until January 1946. Upon his release, he returned to his grandparents’ estate, which, in the postwar confusion, he took possession of as if it were his own. However, when the family attorney returned from a prolonged internment in a prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia and opened the Sauchons’ will, it came to light that Egon was mentioned there as no more than a possible heir, nor was anything said about his being the admiral’s son. Consequently, several nephews of his father laid claim to the property on the grounds that Egon had failed to prove his right to the title. Not wanting to reopen the episode of his “desertion” during the invasion of Crete, especially because he feared revealing the purpose of his grandmother’s trip to the island, Egon agreed to an out-of-court settlement that deprived him of the estate’s northeast quadrant.

  Meanwhile, he had begun studying at the University of Hamburg. At first he thought of majoring in ancient Greek history, but classical Greek proved too hard for him and he switched to twentieth-century history. In the 1950s he taught history at a high school not far from his estate, and being a bachelor, he had plenty of time for his political activities in the Liberal Party. His relations with his mother and stepbrother were correct but little more than that.

  In the 1960s, when the Social-Democrats came to power in Germany with Liberal backing, Egon was appointed to direct the Goethe Institute, in Athens. It took a few months for him to gather the courage to visit Crete—where, concerned he might be recognized, he went about with a beard and dark sunglasses. But no one recognized him, not even the proprietress of the grocery store in Heraklion where he had bought tobacco during his three years on the island. He was able to establish that the Mani house in Knossos was lived in by an unfamiliar Greek family, but he did not dare approach and ask about its former inhabitants. Eventually, he rented a motorcycle and took to roaming the mountainous back roads of the island, knocking on the doors of little monasteries and asking about the Jewish woman and her son. He was unable to come up with any information, however, except for the standard assurance that there were no Jews left in Crete, because they all had gone down with the Danae. It surprised Egon Bruner that no one sounded at all sorry about it.

  Egon visited Crete several more times during his term at the Goethe Institute in Athens, and once, in 1963, he even continued on from there to Israel, where he spent an interesting week as a guest of the Goethe Institute in Tel Aviv. One day, while waiting there in the office, it occurred to him to ask his colleague’s secretary to look up the name Mani in the telephone book. When asked by her how to spell it, he confessed to having no idea, and so she gave him a list with all the possible variations; yet seeing how long it was, and that it included families from all over the country and even one Arab, Egon Bruner gave up and did not pursue the matter further.

  After the generals’ coup in Greece, Egon Bruner returned to Germany, but in 1973 he went abroad again to direct the Goethe Institute in Istanbul. Subsequently, he left his work and retired to his small estate in northern Germany. Although occasionally he took part in the Jewish- and Israeli-German dialogues that were organized by the Liberal Party-sponsored Baumen Institute, he reacted with distaste to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and discontinued his participation in these meetings.

  ANDREA SAUCHON The old woman was so shocked and upset by Egon’s tearing up of his transfer order on the hilltop in the Cretan twilight that for a moment she literally lost the power of speech. Even when she regained it, her indignation and sorrow were such that she resolved not to say another word to her grandson until she had thought the matter over. They descended the hill slowly. Although it was clear to her that she had failed miserably in Egon’s education, she could not put her finger on what went wrong or what lapse in Egon’s moral code could explain (if indeed there was any explanation) his behavior over the past three years in Crete. When they reached the army base after a slow hour’s walk, dusk was already falling and an impatient Bruno Schmelling was waiting worriedly for them. At once he informed them of the banquet he was giving in honor of Admiral Sauchon’s wife, but to his astonishment, Frau Sauchon begged off, pleading a headache and the need to rest up for her trip home. Schmelling turned red and was mortified. The meal, which he had prepared himself, meant a great deal to him, yet the old lady stubbornly stuck to her guns despite all his remonstrances.

  Andrea Sauchon could not fall asleep that night. At first she was kept awake by her grandson’s pacing outside her locked door, and later, by the premonition that she would never see her native land again and would die on her way back to it.

  It was with this feeling that she ate the breakfast that Egon, who had spent a sleepless night too, brought to her room in the morning. He managed to address her in a way that did not demand any answers, and although she was willing by how to talk to him, she could not think of a way to break her silence. And so at 7 A.M. Egon brought her, still not talking, to her light plane, which took off at once for Athens. Near the island of Phorus it was detected by two patrolling British
Spitfires that sought at once to intercept such easy prey. Sighting them, the pilot called to Andrea Sauchon, who, unlike him, was not wearing a parachute, “I’m sorry to inform you, meine Frau, that you must prepare for the worst.” “That’s exactly what I have been doing for the last seventy-four years,” was her answer. In another moment she was astonished to see the face of a young British pilot looking down at her. For a split second, before his machine gun opened fire, he reminded her of Egon.

  THIRD CONVERSATION

  Jerusalem, Palestine

  7 A.M Wednesday, April 10, 1918

  The Conversation Partners

  LIEUTENANT IVOR STEPHEN HOROWITZ Born in Manchester, England, in 1897. His father, Joseph Horowitz, immigrated with his family from Russia at the age of fourteen and went into the textile business. His mother Diana, née Elias, was born in Manchester to a Jewish family that came to England from Algeria in the early nineteenth century. At first Ivor attended a local grammar school, but he did so well in his studies that his parents transferred him to a prestigious public school in Derbyshire, not far from Manchester. Upon graduating in 1913, he was admitted to King’s College, Cambridge, where he began to read law and English literature. After a year of debating between the two he decided, in consultation with his parents, to study law.

  Ivor Horowitz was not immediately mobilized when war broke out in August 1914. During his second year in Cambridge, however, he was asked to report for his physical, and at the start of his third year, in October 1915, he was called up. After basic training in southern England, he shipped out with his regiment to France.