“Never,” says Sabana. She pauses. “She tries a little to prevent—” Sabana interrupts herself.
She is still looking out at the darkened road. “I’m afraid,” she says. “With this old—”
“To prevent what?”
“Just a little, the death, here in Staadt.”
Silence.
“He knows that?” asks Abahn, pointing to David.
“No.”
“He doesn’t know?” asks the Jew.
Sabana does not answer.
She turns toward the setting sun.
“She’s young like David,” she says. “Beautiful like David.”
The setting sun reflects in Sabana’s eyes, blue, dark.
“You live with them?”
“Yes,” she says. “I’m there with them now. They have a spare room. They took me in. I make the meals. Jeanne arranged it with the government. I work in the morning. For the moment I am there with them. Jeanne and I, we are David’s women, his wives.”
They fall silent for a long moment.
“You said something?” asks Abahn.
“No,” says Sabana.
“Then it was David?”
“No.”
David has a tender expression on his face, at once attentive and joyful.
“When he isn’t speaking, he’s dreaming that he’s speaking,” says Abahn.
“He’s in the process of speaking,” says the Jew.
“It’s true, if you go up close you can see it,” says Sabana.
“He’s listening, he’s answering,” says Abahn.
“Yes.”
Sabana leans over David. The Jew watches her.
“What did you say, Sabana?”
“Nothing.”
She rises. They look at her.
“What do you think?”
“Nothing.”
They are silent once more. David cries out suddenly. He does not wake, just cries out a little.
•
Lingering scraps of daylight, glimmers of frost in the direction Sabana points, that of the dark field of the dead.
The darkness in the park is peaceful. The dogs of the Jew howl no more. Nor those in the field of the dead.
Abahn sits on the ground across from where David is. Leaning against the wall, he is silent.
The Jew stands, paces through the rooms.
Sabana sits at the table, follows him in the half-dark with her eyes.
“There was another man,” says Sabana.
“He rests,” says the Jew.
He walks with an even step. He passes in front of Sabana and then David, then he turns and comes back, pacing across the place. Disappearing and reappearing. She addresses him, her voice sleepy:
“You said you knew David?”
“To whom did I say that?”
“It doesn’t matter to whom.”
“I said I knew him a little.” He walks past. She doesn’t see him anymore.
“You said you knew me?”
“No. I saw you once one morning when you were cleaning at the Staadt town hall.”
“You looked at me.”
“I look at everyone.”
He reappears. She is turned toward him. He does not pause.
“You didn’t say: I knew her, not him.”
“No.”
She is silent. She does not see what he is looking at, paused at the doorway to the other room.
“And to us,” she says, “to us they said, ‘Forget the Jew, forget what he said about liberty, forget his name too.’ You, you weren’t able to forget a ‘David’?”
“No.”
She somehow becomes alert again. He asks:
“You have forgotten the Jew?”
“If they ask us to, they say, ‘A Jew? Which one?’ You wouldn’t be able to say ‘A David? Which one?’”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
He is still once more. They can barely see one another. She asks:
“Were you in Gringo’s party before?”
“Yes.”
“You were a Gringo.”
“Yes.”
“And you weren’t able to say that you had never met a David?”
“No.”
She rises. She crosses the room slowly, going toward the door to the park, pauses there. She says:
“David could be killed if anyone were to find out he was friends with a Jew.” Her voice grows soft. “I want to understand this.”
He moves toward her. She sees him coming. She waits for him.
“That’s all false,” he says. “David is in no danger of death because he knew a Jew.”
He has come very close to her. She is looking at him still. She waits. Her eyes shine darkly in the reflection of frost on the grass.
“David is in danger of death because Gringo, on this night, needs someone to be in danger of death.” His voice as soft and intense as hers. “There, in Staadt, David, who knew me, who knew the Jew: he took David.”
They look at one another. They are silent. He asks:
“No one will ask me these questions, so why do I ask them of you?”
“Because it’s night,” says Sabana, and says nothing more.
She presses her forehead against the cold window, standing still.
“Leave me alone,” she says.
She turns. He is still there. She lifts her hand to her face but does not touch it. He says:
“You said because it’s night.”
She does not answer. She takes a step. She is against the body of the Jew, resting there. Her hand, still raised, touches his frozen face. She says:
“I take yours, I take the words of a Jew-dog.”
They are silent, entirely still.
“You want to live?”
He does not answer. And then:
“I want to live. I want to die.”
Sabana’s hand falls. She moves away. They are separate.
And the silence.
The dogs howl.
“You said because it’s night.”
“Yes. To dream of fear, we rise and wake up, we say that we dreamed, that it isn’t true.”
He walks away from her. He takes a step. She waits. He takes two steps. He walks. Instead of passing into the other room, he walks toward David. He turns on a lamp. He looks at David in the light.
Sabana moves. She takes a step, two steps, like him, she comes to look at David.
“Speak,” she says, “He will wake up if we are too quiet.”
The Jew speaks, slowly, always with the same soft tones. “He is in the Staadt Real Estate Society?”
“Yes, in that society. He is twenty-five. He’s married to Jeanne. A laborer. He loves nothing but the forest and dogs.”
She pauses, turns toward him.
“Speak. I will answer you.”
They look at each other.
“You alone know?”
“Yes. He doesn’t know.”
“Supposedly he is honest, hardworking.”
“Yes. They believe that of him. He believes it too.”
A glimmer passes across the eyes of the Jew.
“You said the forest and dogs?”
“Dogs.”
“He told me that at the café. He said, ‘I know how to speak Portuguese and how to speak with dogs.’”
•
They are apart from each other. Again the Jew walks through the house.
Sabana sits at the table, away from him, away from David, next to Abahn. She waits. Listens: someone walking. Is it the steps of the Jew she hears? Yes, those. He passes before her.
“That one they sent to Prague,” she says.
He stops. She gestures to David.
He walks again. Paces. She calls to him from where she sits, always with the same voice.
“You have been to all the capitals in the world?”
“Yes, all of them.”
“The capital is everywhere.”
“Yes.”
A dull snapping sound co
mes from far off in the distance, from Staadt.
“The cold,” she says.
“Yes.”
He walks. He watches David. He asks, “He is in favor of the death of Jews?”
“He doesn’t say anything about that,” says Sabana.
He walks. She no longer follows with her eyes.
“You had a job once, a wife, some children? There, where you had been, you had the right to live and to die?”
“Yes.”
“You fled? You left all that?”
“Yes. A long time ago.”
“You said one day to someone in Staadt: ‘I was hopeless, desperate.’”
“Yes.”
“After you had again left the place you had been?”
“Yes.”
“Always pursued? Killed?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“And for that they are killing you again?”
A painful smile drags across the face of the Jew.
“Yes.”
“Desperation,” repeats Sabana.
She falls silent. And then:
“And since you came to Staadt?”
“It’s been bearable.”
“Bearable even with the danger?”
“Yes.”
He paces still. She watches him.
“Where you’re always about to leave?”
“Wherever you are, I think, you are on your way.”
Silence.
“I’m cold,” says Sabana. “Afraid.”
“We are afraid,” says the Jew.
“Of death.”
“Of life.”
Silence. The Jew walks. Paces.
And then, while walking, right here, he calls out to David.
“David. David.”
First quietly, and then louder and louder, he calls to David.
David sleeps. His lips are gently parted. His face captured in the lamp light turned on by the Jew.
“David.”
He sleeps.
“David.”
The Jews stops, waits. He sleeps still. The Jews begins pacing once more.
Sabana is silent.
“David. David.”
Again he stops, the Jew. He stands still. Sabana struggles to discern him in the half-lit room. She hesitates, waiting. He paces away and then back. Sabana’s eyes are two gray slashes devoid of light. He paces. He calls out. He stops again. They wait.
“David.”
They wait. The cold grows in their hearts, in their wakes, a frozen climax. David’s voice rises up in the silence.
“Yes, I hear you. What?”
His voice is quiet, peaceful.
The Jew has stopped. They hear a dull cry. It is not David. Another cry. The dogs howl out in response. The howling dies down. The silence freezes over, muffles it. The silence drags forth a sob from David’s chest. Sabana’s face contorts in pain. She says:
“It looks like he’s suffering.”
“Who?” asks the Jew.
She moves. She rises up and goes to the window. She passes by the Jew, she does not look at him, she is at the window, facing the empty street, lingering there.
•
The only sound is David’s breathing, which occasionally stops as if bumping up against some barrier, and then begins again, longer, deeper.
“He’s dreaming,” says Sabana.
“Of what?”
“Cement. And dogs.”
The Jew draws close to David. Sabana goes with him. They watch David.
“A thousand years?” the Jew says to David.
The hands of David flutter lightly.
“A thousand years,” repeats David.
He sleeps.
His hands fall back to his body. The effort of articulating the words makes them tremble.
He is sleeping. He sleeps. His hands, his wounded hands, rest again on the arms of the chair. The eyes of the Jew are focused on the sleeping hands.
“A thousand thousand years?” the Jew continues.
It seems that David will speak.
No.
“A thousand thousand years?” continues the Jew.
A light tremor passes through David’s body.
“A thousand thousand years,” repeats David.
David’s breath grows faster. Then stops. He does not take another.
The silence grows. It blinds. It sharpens to a peak. Spreads out. Spreads to the chink in the wall of slumber, a dull stone, a clamor, brief and strange.
David has cried out.
Having cried out, David thrashes in sleep, he lifts his head, his eyes open, he sees nothing, his head falls back, he speaks:
“Leave me alone,” he begs.
In the silence that follows comes Sabana’s rough voice:
“David.”
And the voice of the Jew, the same:
“David.”
Silence.
Abahn rises. He turns to face the dark road, his back turned to them. He says:
“And now falls the night.”
•
The Jew walks away from Sabana and David. He once more resumes his pacing through the house.
The wide stride of the Jew appears and disappears from the gaze of Sabana and Abahn.
Eyes closed, the Jew walks and talks to David.
“A thousand years? That’s it? And it goes on?”
He speaks loudly. His voice echoes off the walls. Sabana stands looking out the window at the darkened park.
“A thousand years? A thousand years and it goes on?”
The peals of his voice resound from the walls.
“A thousand years more?”
Sabana looks away from the park, the dark ground, the earth, when the Jew cries out.
“David,” cries the Jew. “David, David!”
He stops.
Abahn comes over as well.
“David,” says Abahn.
Abahn does not cry out. Sabana returns. She sees that Abahn is talking to her. Sabana’s blue gaze rests on Abahn.
Looking at Abahn, Sabana speaks to David. “David,” she says, “The Jew is speaking to you?”
“Yes,” says Abahn.
Sabana leaves the Jews and walks toward David. The Jews follow behind, allow her to approach alone. They linger behind her.
It is she who interrupts his reverie. She grabs hold of him, her hands on his shoulders. “Wake up, David. The Jew wants to talk to you.”
David’s head sags back and falls into sleep.
“David, the Jew wants to talk to you.”
“No,” says David, in his sleep.
Sabana releases his shoulders. She cradles his head. The hands of Sabana on David’s head.
“The Jew is going to die, he wants to talk to you.”
“No,” says David, in his sleep.
She holds the head of David in her hands.
“He is going to die, he wants to talk to you.”
She speaks in even tones.
David does not respond. He opens his eyes with a blank stare.
“You said a thousand years, why?” asks Sabana.
David answers:
“A thousand years.”
She loosens her grip. She releases David’s head.
She has released the head of David.
The head stays up. The eyes remain open.
Sabana turns, walks away.
Abahn and the Jew talk to David.
“You said cement, ice, wind, a thousand years?”
“A thousand years,” David repeats.
“You said cement, fear, cement, fear, fear, cement, a thousand years? A thousand more years?”
David’s eyes lift toward Abahn. Their color, David’s eyes, is light blue, blue mixed with white.
Abahn draws close to David. The Jew is behind him.
Sabana stands over the Jew, next to him. Abahn and the Jew speak again to the sleeping David.
“You said a thousand years not hearing?”
“A thousand yea
rs not seeing?”
“A thousand years,” David repeats.
“A thousand years the brain of an ape?”
David’s blue eyes turn in the direction of the voice. He does not recognize it.
“A thousand years the ape Gringo?”
“A thousand years a killer? An ape killer?”
They do not say more. David’s eyes are still open in the direction of the voice.
“David, you’re David,” It is the broken voice of the Jew.
“The hunter,” says Abahn.
“The hunter,” David repeats.
They fall silent. It must be this silence that then reveals an unease in David’s fixed gaze. He has a stunned air about him, his stare questioning. He strains toward the voice. He sleeps, he says:
“The dogs.”
Sabana takes a step toward the Jew. She does not take her eyes away from the darkened park.
It is Abahn who speaks to David. “You labor in the workshop of the merchants? You’re twenty-five years old? Your wife is Jeanne?”
David responds in the same tone Abahn used, slowly and clearly:
“The dogs.”
“You’re a mason? You make cement? You work with the Portuguese? The Portuguese?”
“The dogs,” says David.
He struggles against sleep. He articulates his words with difficulty. He finally makes a sentence.
“I want the dogs of the Jew.”
He looks toward the rest of them with growing alarm. His gaze is clear and focused. One could say his stubbornness surprises him. He says again:
“I want the dogs.”
He is quiet. He seems about to speak. He does not speak. He holds his head up. His eyes are open. He looks at Abahn with a questioning look.
The silence is unpierced. Then Abahn speaks.
“You’ve given the Jew to Gringo.”
He answers without doubt in a simple, clear way. His response springs forth from sleep.
“Yes.”
His eyes questioning still.
“The dogs.”
He struggles visibly against immense fatigue. His eyes questioning still.
“Yes,” says Abahn. “You gave up the Jew in order to have his dogs.”
“Yes.”
The softness of his voices is penetrating. Gratitude in his eyes.
“Listen,” says Abahn. “David spoke. David said, ‘I gave up the Jew in order to have his dogs.’”
“Yes,” says David.
He is talking to Abahn without looking at him. Abahn looks deep into his eyes.
Sabana slumps against the body of the Jew. She continues to gaze out at the darkened park. The Jew is looking at David.
“David said, ‘I repeated what the Jew said in the café,’” says Abahn. “‘Gringo asked me and I repeated it. Gringo said that I had to make the connection and that it wasn’t what the Jew said in the café, but a different thing. A simpler thing: that the Jew said one thing in the café but meant another.’”
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