by Yoram Kaniuk
We got into a taxi and Sam wanted to sleep for an hour, paid the driver in advance, apologized to him and me, and fell asleep. I sat and pondered what I was doing with him in a taxi, at night, in the cold, and the driver talked about the weather and about the near-accident of the Swissair flight at Kennedy Airport when he went there earlier, and then Sam woke up and asked the driver if he had aftershave and Sam got aftershave from the driver and sprayed a little on his face and told him to drive home.
I took Sam to my house. He and Licinda stayed with us for three days. We looked at them yearningly. My wife hugged him, drank too much, and said: If you want, you can marry Melissa, and she passed out. We took her to the hospital and she's been there for a month. I sit at her side and ask myself, What disaster did I bring down on her and on me? and I have no answer.
Yours,
A. M. Brooks
Tape / -
Greta Garbo as Ninotchka goes into a restaurant. She says to the waiter: Give me coffee without cream. A few minutes later, the waiter comes back and says: We have no cream, Madame. Is it all right without milk?
In my reflection she is I, she's my memory, she's the fact that maybe it will finally be revealed that I had no father. Not Nehemiah, not Joseph, an impure spirit of holiness entered my mother in the river. The river is my father. Old is my mother and cruel. Samuel is my son. Where are you, dear Samuel?
Tape / -
Dear Obadiah,
Some time ago, my phone rang at home and Sam Lipp, who was on the line, informed me that he had come to town and was living in a Lebensborn inn.
The name Lebensborn naturally made me shudder. When I hung up, I said to myself: There can't be a hotel with that name in our city. I took the phone book and scanned it and to my amazement I found a hotel called Ludwigshaus-Lebensborn. I assume the name doesn't mean much to you. But Samuel wasn't so innocent. During the war, Lebensborn was a pretty shady institution, yet was maintained by the heads of the party and called "Institute for the Improvement of the Race." In fact, it was a completely establishment whorehouse led by none other than the Reichsfuhrer in person. Aryan girls and officers were brought there, mainly SS officers of impeccable race and they could copulate and create a new generation of pure Aryans. According to my father (to his credit he had total contempt for the place), those were adulterous, purely bestial encounters, and human beings, said my father, could savor there the taste of protected, and even more important, legal promiscuity. In other words: Those were establishment, organized, numbered flirtations, and women whose husbands were on the front for a long time could come there anonymously (only the authorities knew who they were) and copulate with the best of the German men. According to my father, the institution was quite varied-and here you can hear the party member speaking-but at least here, unlike Paris, there weren't naked whores on skates with naked men running after them and falling and getting up and trying to catch them. There weren't impotent old men there peeping through the cracks. It was, my father added, an institution that was basically filthy, but clean in its operation, solid, even if full of adultery they called patriotic. I didn't ask him what he thought about that last word, maybe Friedrich did.
I told Sam I was coming immediately, and he said, and I could hear his smile on the phone: Don't rush, I've got something to do in the meantime. Maybe he was trying to hint to me that old patriots were still copulating there with heavenly girls. I put on my coat and went. He was waiting for me in what remained of a splendid lobby reminiscent of the old days. The building, like our famous cathedral, had never been blown up. He asked: Did you get a letter from Mr. Brooks, my first wife's father? I answered yes, and he said: That great man! We were sitting in his room. From the window Schiller Park could be seen, I used to play there as a child. We were sipping sherry from a bottle Sam had ordered earlier. The area was familiar to me from years gone by, and it had been a long time since I had set foot in that part of the city. Sam tried to explain something to me that was hard for me to understand, he said: Once I invented setting watches backward. Then I lived in reverse time and that's how the disease of forgetting was born, that lasted four years. My key was with Ebenezer and Ebenezer's key was with me. At Kennedy Airport I exchanged the ticket because I was afraid to fly to Israel, I wanted first to be in a place where they invented the key to my reverse time, so I would come to Israel and not somebody else.
The taste of the sherry, the sight of the park, a sweet memory of my childhood, imbued in me an absurd sense that everything became real only because it was said. If he had told me the moon was a rectangle, I would have accepted it as fact, so I could also see my mother sitting on a bench in Schiller Park, reading a newspaper or a book. I heard the voices of the old people who lived in the hotel and the voices came through the walls, maybe they were singing. It was hard to hear what song they were singing. Sam was a child whose mother called him to come to her and gave him candy. And so we were able to penetrate into areas of a place whose logic was different from the logic we were used to. We didn't yet know where we were and what the date was, and we talked, each one separately, but together, about the other's childhood as if we had exchanged identities. So we dialed together and somebody picked up the phone and said Schwabe here, and I said: This is Sam Lipp, a friend of Lily Schwabe, and the old man didn't even make a sound of amazement or resentment and said Yes, and what can I do for you, and I said to him: Lily, Lily your daughter, and he said You must have the wrong number sir, these days people get a lot of wrong numbers, and after a long time when I didn't let him off the line he admitted he once had a daughter named Lily, but not anymore. I'm an old man, he added, living on a small pension, living in my own apartment, he didn't hang up, maybe he tried not to be amazed, waited and I don't know exactly what he waited for, there was no longing or acceptance in his voice, and when I hung up, Sam said: Maybe he really is the man who knows who a disaster happened to.
Later on, Sam took me to a small club. I was born in this city and I thought I knew it well, but the alleys we walked in were strange to me. Sam knew that part of the city better than me. I thought to myself: The old man sounds like an indifferent, polite, and swinish murderer. Maybe he's a miserable person, but I didn't say those things aloud. The ruins were restored and Sam who knew the ruins before they were restored led me on winding paths as if everything that had been built since then hadn't been built yet.
I was surprised at the audacity of our architects who, when they restored that part of the city, preserved completely what had been and as they repaired and rebuilt, they even preserved the hiding places, hidden ways, produced over many years, in alleys where you could once evade creditors, police, or disgruntled women. Sam knew the way well, and I thought that if those architects had to reconstruct a sinking ship, they'd do it by preserving the sinking, even without preserving the ship. The nightclub was dim and filthy. Women with dyed hair and puffedup hairdos sat on high stools with round, ugly backs. Ear-piercing music blasted from a jukebox. In back, past the American cigarette machine we saw a stage loaded with boards and rags, a broken straw chair stood there and next to it, on its side, an old spotlight. We drank beer, ate Greek olives. The owner was a stocky man with a mustache, who addressed Sam: Your face is familiar to me, sir, eyes like that I can't forget! Sam smiled and said in a loud voice: Ladies and gentlemen, please set your watches back four hours, the time is four-thirty in the afternoon, April fifteenth ... And the bartender said with a joy kindled in him: For God's sake, I remember him, the boy who was ... those eyes ... and then one of the women sitting next to me said in a loud voice: I'd screw with eyes like that and be willing to die the way they die in Naples, and a woman sitting next to her said: "After you see Naples." The first one said, What does it matter before, after! And the bartender yelled: Stop blabbing, and moved to the other side of the bar, hugged Sam, and I sat there a stranger, while Sam, maybe really wasn't a stranger ... He climbed onto the stage and fixed the spotlight, plugged it in an outlet hidden behind boards and h
eaps of paper, shut his eyes, and asked everybody to set their watches back and they did, me too. One of the women started singing in a soft, clear voice, her voice sounded as if it were composed of glass slivers, Sam moved some old rugs, a mouse darted out to the shrieks of some women, the spotlight was lit and illuminated the face of the woman singing and she sat down on the broken chair, and the other women joined in and it wasn't like a choir singing but flickers of sounds, like a vanished expanse of audio mist. I waited for the bartender to smoke a Ritesma cigarette, pour light Rhine wine, and for gleaming aluminum insignia to be emblazoned on his shoulders, but everything was now faded, part of that invented past now without real glory, I felt how hollow everything is when it's out of place or time. Everything was divided into decimal fractions, which didn't add up to any reliable equation. An old picture of a girl with stretched-out legs, and a bird sitting on her belly, was discovered on a shabby wall behind the lighted stage. Above the girl's head flew angels of a saccharine nearly wiped-out color, the legs of the singing woman spread by themselves, she wore high black boots and her thighs looked gleaming and firm, and when she spread her legs a rubber snake was discovered tied to her belt, and the snake wound into her shaved crotch, and the moment the song was especially melancholy, almost whispered, Sam crushed her groin, and the snake darted out at him and bit his hand and he stroked the woman's crotch and she kept on singing. An innocent laugh spread over her face, her eyes were wide open with a kind of intimacy, perhaps hope, she spat out the chewing gum hidden in her mouth, shut her eyes and the bartender leaned over a little, shriveled, his head turned to me, and Sam called out: Come here, and I got up, looking stupid in my own eyes, but bereft of willpower, I climbed onto the stage, I was Kramer, it took a minute, my face changed, since the eyes looking at me saw him, not me. I talked about the last defensive operation in the Alps, about poor Eva who died in the bunker, how our holy soil was defended. On my knees I sat, like a boy scolded in a classroom, nobody was amazed, the bartender didn't move from his scrunched position, the woman went on singing with yearning eyes, I was defended by a bayoneted English soldier, Sam cited the number of unemployed in Cologne, Leipzig, Hesse, and Frankfurt in 'twenty-nine.
Sam's watch was set well, fat men smoked giant cigars and drank whiskey and soda and sang a contemptible Hallelujah. We prepared a putsch, Sam directed in silence, maybe we were too drunk, earlier we had drunk seven glasses of beer, I wanted to pee, but I didn't dare get up, the woman wept, it was in 'twentyeight that she wept, and the number of unemployed was worrisome, inflation was rampant, the rubber snake dropped out. Another girl, whose name I even remember, Johanna, sang "Deutschland abet Alles" and then a fat woman got up, rolled up her dress and peed on the stage, wiped herself with a strip of old newspaper and the pee flowed on the floor, and the woman on the chair licked her lips, and Sam recited stock prices in June 'twenty-nine, the price of gas, the price of vegetables, the price of newspapers, yearnings were born and I don't know whether those were yearnings for what was or for what was after that, faces were crying for help, I stood on my knees, somebody sang: The shark has pearly teeth dear, and he shows them pearly white, just a jackknife has old MacHeath dear, and he keeps it out of sight, she yelled: He's a shark! And Sam said: Watch out for sharks! To catch a shark you have to grab him by the tail, make him lie on his back. He dies because his belly isn't connected to the walls of his body, he's got a moving belly and he sheds it, said Sam, and I muttered some of your words, Kramer, twenty-four thousand teeth every ten years. And I, I can't move, I try to understand Sam and I know, know that deep inside me I do understand him, but I'm ashamed precisely because I do understand. The bartender is now trying to return the clock to the present, outside, somebody's knocking on the window, reality penetrates inside with a wild daring and I want to get up and maybe I did, the woman comes close to him and he kisses her and then slaps Kramer and looks at him in amazement, smears his face with powder he took out of some woman's purse and my head drops, and the more I want to get up, the more I drop, and am covered with powder, spew foam, and somebody thrusts a bottle of whiskey into my mouth, and I drink, and then, I stood, me, I who once shot at low-flying planes, and I spoke about "paratroopers" brought down by the bullets of our soldiers, the heroes, when the ghetto was burning, and how nice to see you landing dead from the roofs, from the burned houses, and I shot in retrospect, according to Sam's clock, reluctantly I aimed and shot into a propaganda film of the burning ghetto shot by my father and I was ridiculous in my own eyes, a chorus of fake women sang with artificial voices the anthem of the Black Corps of paratrooper shooters, Herr Reichsfuhrer, the ghetto is no more says (inside me) SS Sturmbahnfuhrer Stroop, and my father shoots pictures of his son shooting at the "paratroopers," and then the giant fire. And how beautiful it is to photograph the lapping fire, the houses collapsing, and they're still singing, and then Sam cuts his hand deeply with a knife he found on the counter, and I understand that Boaz left him the knife he took from Rebecca who took it from the knife-sharpener in Jaffa, it's all mixed up in my brain, maybe I'm dreaming, I and Jordana in the bath, hugged by a dream girl of death, the blood flowing on Sam's hand, I hit Sam and the spotlight, it's dark and the voices fall silent all at once.
The next day I woke up with a sharp headache between my eyes. The phone didn't stop ringing. The morning newspapers were hidden by Renate and our cleaning woman under the closets. Sam came to breakfast, jolly. The call from Mr. Schwabe was one of the only ones that felt strange and I said to Renate, Answer that call, and she picked up the phone and gave it right to me and I heard the strident, furious voice of the man even before I put it to my ear. He yelled and I held the phone away while, in my other hand, I held a cup of miracle juice Renate concocted to cure my nausea. He yelled: That man of yours, sir, came to my house, or perhaps you don't know, if I hadn't known you were an honorable man I would have honored you with a duel worthy of the name, and you wouldn't have been left with one ear to cure and even your nostrils would disappear along with what wraps them. I was smoking a pipe, suddenly there was a knock on the door, I opened it, and he stood, he stood there, you hear me? He stood there and smiled, pushed me into a chair and picked up the phone, you hear? And he dialed, I heard distant voices in the receiver, I was scared, and he said into the phone: Talk to Himmler, and he gave me the phone. I heard shouts from the other end, what happened? What happened? She shouted there and I said: Schwabe here, and she said: Who? And I said Schwabe of Badenstrasse and my pipe fell down, it fell down, the pipe, and she said: You're Schwabe of Badenstrasse, where's Sam, I said to her: I'm here and Sam is standing next to me, you listening? And Sam pushed me and yelled: Talk to her! And I'm an old man, what could I do, I said Who is this? And she said Lily! What Lily, I said to her, what joke is this, and she said, A really bad joke, maybe she wept, and who is she, if she's Lily where was she all these years? And then Greta came in, she takes care of me and I love her, she fixes everything, sews, she said: What's happening? And she looked at that man with a hatred I didn't find where to search for it inside me, and Lily says What? What? Is this Schwabe and I yelled: American filth, shit of American soldiers, you left a father in prison, took me years to crawl here, I found your stinking stockings in the empty house, and she laughed, she laughed then too, and the old woman said: Enough, you'll get a stroke, and the phone went dead and that Sam counts out marks for the call, gives them to Greta and she took them, why shouldn't she, but the heart is shaking with shame and even more, I'm furious, eighty-one years old, what do they want, and from me, and I hear Sam or what's-his-name, laughing or yelling and Greta isn't scared of him, no, she's not scared, her they measured for a uniform of real Junkers, her they didn't take out of that music and the pop and the long hair, and Sam told her, Tell how many Reichsmarks you got, those Reichsmarks were brought to you by Jews, and Greta sneered: The Reichsmarks are better from your hand than from anybody else, and he told her the Jews were coming back, and she said, There was no Lily, as if he had asked
, but she asked from inside me, And tonight, when she has no teeth in her mouth, and that made the swinish clown laugh, and then he took out a pack of lewd cards from Frankfurt, or Japan, showed me, and said: You see, here's Lily with Jews! You want to buy the pictures? And I, what can I do and even Greta was now yelling with shame, and I explain to him: I'm an old retired soldier, living on a small pension, what do you want from me, and I get mad: Lily? Where was Lily? And he said I came back home, Father, and kisses me, that filth, you hear?
I hear, I told him, and I drink another cup Renate gave me and my head is bursting. And he yells into the receiver, an old man with manly telephone power, I think for no good reason you were waiting for me, that Sam tells me, you sat in pajamas and waited, and I say: I wasn't waiting, I'm cheating death, I don't sleep at night because eighty-one-year-olds die at night, and he says, Waiting for death? Germans die standing up, sir, he told me, the filth, at three in the morning, nineteen seventythree, and he tells me: Your daughter is a whore of Jews, and I yell: I don't have a daughter because I really don't, and he says a mothball of a woman and I remember every word, mothball of a woman, with a pedigreed womb, sing! He orders me and pushes Greta into the armchair where she was sitting and can't get into any deeper, and that friend of yours, tells me Take the cards, and hits me and kisses Greta on her toothless mouth and goes ...