Abahn Sabana David
Page 6
David stretches out an arm and calls out:
“Sabana!”
She does not answer.
“You were sleeping,” says Abahn. “He saw your sleeping body only. He saw your hands.”
Silence. Far off in the distance the dogs howl madly.
“And now suddenly we are uncertain about the fate of David,” says Abahn.
David sits up in his chair, looks over at Sabana and opens his mouth as if to cry out. He does not.
Silence then.
The voice of Sabana:
“I’m afraid.”
“We are afraid,” says the Jew.
Sabana takes a few steps, stops by the window, turns her face toward the cold glass.
“No one but Gringo can live outside.”
“And Jeanne.”
“Yes.”
She listens. Her voice dwindles.
“The wild animals break free in the forest.” She listens. “The pools and ponds overflow.”
“It’s a profound slumber,” says Abahn, “at the end of the night.”
Their voices seem identical, slow, even. David cries out:
“Come!”
She does not hear him. He searches her face. She has turned away. She looks at the Jew.
The Jew is looking back at her.
“The Jew used to believe that success was real,” says Abahn. “Not anymore.”
David does not respond, does not acknowledge them at all.
“He thinks now that success is a failure,” says Abahn. “That the greater, more obvious success is the greater and more serious failure.”
“Strength,” says the Jew.
David, one more time, touches his gun.
“Death,” says the Jew.
David yanks his hand back as if the gun were a flame.
“I saw,” says Sabana. “I saw it.”
“Quiet,” David begs her.
“It burned your hand,” Sabana says.
•
No one speaks.
The dogs howl.
“Gringo may turn back in the cold,” says Sabana.
She leaves the window, returns to her place on the floor, leaning back against the wall.
“Sabana!” David calls out.
“I don’t hear you anymore,” she says.
“Come over.”
“She won’t come anymore,” says Abahn.
David doesn’t ask again.
“The love she had for David has, this night, turned into love for the Jew,” says Abahn.
“Shut up, you,” mutters David.
And then the voice of the Jew, breaking, muted:
“Sabana.”
And then the voice of Sabana:
“I will be killed along with the Jew.”
Silence.
“Who said that?” asks David.
“Sabana,” says Abahn.
“She’s crazy,” says David.
Again the voice of Sabana:
“Gringo will shoot from the road in front.”
David, quiet for a moment, suddenly bursts out:
“She’s crazy when she’s like this.”
No one replies. He goes on.
“She doesn’t understand anything.”
“Sabana,” says the Jew.
“She doesn’t know how to read,” says David, “she doesn’t know anything.” He addresses Sabana, “Do you know where Staadt is?”
“I don’t.”
David laughs, a short, fake laugh, and then stops sharply.
“Look,” he says. He is talking to the Jews. He speaks so quickly. “She doesn’t know how old she is, she doesn’t even know her name.”
He stops. Then speaks again, a little slower.
“She doesn’t know if she has a child.”
Sabana does not reply. David speaks directly to the Jews.
“She doesn’t know where she came from, look at her.”
He waits. Sabana has been quiet.
“Some say she’s Jewish,” says David. “That she came from far away.”
“From the German Jewry,” says the Jew. “From the town of Auschstaadt.”
David pauses. Then repeats slowly:
“Auschstaadt.”
His frenzy has dissipated.
He turns to Sabana. Fear rises in her eyes. He asks her:
“Are you from Auschstaadt?”
They all look at her. She is frozen, sitting there against the wall, in the light. The clear blue eyes are unfocused: they seek Auschstaadt.
“Auschstaadt,” she repeats.
“Yes,” says the Jew.
“Where is Auschstaadt?” asks David.
“Here,” says the Jew.
“Everywhere,” says Abahn. “Like Gringo. Like the Jew. Like David.”
“Here. Everywhere,” says the Jew.
Sabana is still thinking about Auschstaadt.
“And when?” asks David.
“Always,” says the Jew. “Right now.”
“We’re all from Auschstaadt,” says Abahn.
Silence. A new fear seems to grow in David.
“She wouldn’t be any different from the Jew if she knew something,” says Abahn.
David recoils, still looking at the form of Sabana on the ground, leaning back, as if he recognizes something evil in her. He says:
“It’s true, Gringo said she was crazy, that she makes things up.”
“What do you think?” asks Abahn.
David makes an effort to speak. The fear retreats a little. He tries to pull his thoughts together. He answers without looking up:
“I don’t know.” He smiles a tight and painful smile. “I amuse myself with her.”
Silence.
“Who is she?” demands David.
The fear has gone.
“No one knows,” says the Jew.
David and the Jew look up at one another.
•
David and the Jew are looking at each other still.
“You have to try anyway,” says the Jew to David.
David starts to attention.
“What?”
“To move toward communism,” says the Jew.
“To where?” David smiles as if it were a joke. The Jews smile too.
“To where we don’t know,” says Abahn. “You don’t know.”
The Jew smiles, at David, at everyone.
“You have to try not to create it,” says the Jew.
Unthinking, David strokes his gun. Having found it again, he yanks his hand back as if burned.
“To arrive in the forest,” says Abahn.
“Wild,” says the Jew.
“The forest,” David repeats.
They fall silent. David is still looking at them. They look elsewhere.
“You came to destroy our unity,” says David. His voice is dull, flat. Trembling.
“Yes.”
“To divide? Sow dissent in our unity?”
“Yes,” says the Jew.
“To sow dissent in our spirit?”
“Yes.”
“To what end?” asks David.
“No one knows,” says the Jew.
“To break, to shatter,” says Sabana.
“Where?” asks David.
“To Sabana,” says the Jew.
Silence. David fights against sleep.
“It would be normal to kill you, to hunt you like a pest.”
“Yes,” says the Jew.
Silence.
Sabana looks through the dark window.
David stands up.
Sabana and David can hear what the Jews do not hear, see what the Jews do not see.
“We walk by the ponds,” says Sabana.
“There’s a light!” David calls out.
She turns back to the window, the darkened park, the field of the dead.
“There’s a light out in the field,” says David.
Sabana peers out, listening. “I saw it,” she says calmly. “It’s not there anymore.”
&n
bsp; He turns to her. She is still there, at the window, looking out at the field.
“I’m afraid,” says David. “Come over here.”
“No.”
He collapses back into his chair. He closes his eyes. With all his strength he tries to fall asleep again. He calls out to Sabana. He tells her to come back to him, he says he doesn’t understand.
She does not answer.
He calls again, weaker. Then he calls to her no more.
She turns toward him, sleep is overcoming him, his arms again on the armrests, his face fallen. She leaves the window, goes to his side, she takes his hand, sits next to him.
“Don’t fall asleep,” says Sabana.
“No,” says David.
•
Sabana stays with David.
“Don’t fall asleep,” she says.
“No,” says David.
She holds his hand in her own. She says:
“The light in the field wasn’t real. Your hands are so cold.”
He does not answer.
“You’re less afraid,” she says.
He turns an inquiring look upon her.
“I think so,” he says.
The Jews are at the table, in the same position. Heads resting back against the wall, they are silent. The Jew looks at Sabana, her blue eyes, dark, blue, fixed upon David.
“You must not be afraid,” she says to David.
“No.”
There is a look of complete confidence on David’s face. She takes his hand, she studies it.
“Your hands are so heavy,” she says. “It’s the cement.”
“It set,” he says.
“You work so much,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He pauses before answering:
“I don’t know.”
Silence.
Sabana holds David’s hand in hers and looks toward the road. She speaks, her voice even and low:
“Tonight, in the frost and ice, in the desolate cold, there is Jeanne, out in the cold desolation.”
“Jeanne?” asks David. “Where?”
He almost cries it out. His voice sounds dull, broken.
“I’m not sure,” says Sabana. “You forgot,” she says to the Jew, “we’re afraid for Jeanne, night and day.”
“Why?” asks David.
Sabana doesn’t answer David. She speaks to the Jew. “She works against Gringo, she’s trying to subvert him, she’s trying day after day.”
David pulls his hand from Sabana.
“That’s not true!” he cries.
Sabana does not answer. Her gaze is fixed, her voice broken, like David’s.
“She thinks she can. She’s crazy.”
Silence.
“When Jeanne gave her report tonight, I wasn’t sleeping,” says Sabana. She gestures at David. “David was sleeping. But I heard. Gringo told her to write down ‘criminal lies,’ but she wrote ‘criminal liberties.’ Gringo wanted her to say ‘in service of the great power of the merchants,’ but she wrote ‘the ideological aberration.’ Gringo cried out. Jeanne said she went to wake up David to ask him what the Jew said in the café, and after she wrote exactly what David said. Gringo laughed. He told Jeanne not to treat him like a child. Then Jeanne wrote the word, ‘liberty.’”
Sabana leaves David’s side and walks over to the door that opens onto the darkened park.
“Jeanne doesn’t know that I know,” she says, turning toward David. “You didn’t know.”
“No,” says David. He waits. The intensity of his waiting slowly shows in his face.
“You don’t know anything?” she asks.
“A little. I came to know,” he admits. “Gringo did say once that Jeanne was useless, a wreck.”
Silence.
“Jeanne is young, like David,” says Sabana. “She is the same age as him. Beautiful like him.” She looks at the Jew. “And one day they will kill her like they will kill you.”
“Shut up!” cries David.
Sabana turns to the darkened park.
“We live together,” she says. “We are both David’s wives.”
A sob bursts from her chest. She presses her palms against the cold glass of the window. Then presses them to her forehead.
A racket bursts out in the part of Staadt beyond the darkened park.
“There’s shooting!” cries David. “Near the ponds!”
Sabana does not move. David’s face has again taken on the expression of a child.
“What are you afraid of?” asks the Jew.
David does not answer. He stares at the Jew. His gaze wavers.
Sabana returns to David’s side.
•
Again the cry of a dog. In the field. A strange cry, a strangled bark, a whine.
“Diane,” says David.
“You were still sleeping?” Sabana asks.
David sits up with difficulty.
“I heard you from far off,” he says to her, “as if you were on the other side of the park.”
“With the dogs.”
He listens.
“Diane. It’s Diane.” He starts as if seeing Sabana for the first time by his side. “Oh, there you are.”
“She is dreaming, the dogs are dreaming,” Sabana says.
“No,” says David.
“Or Gringo is trying to kill her.”
David starts and then suddenly calms.
“No. No.”
“They didn’t say anything about killing the dogs,” says Sabana.
“No,” says David.
Sabana turns from David. She goes to the door opening out onto the park. She looks out into the darkness. The cries cease.
“This dog of the Jew’s, Diane,” she murmurs, “has love in her voice.”
“Yes,” says David. “A kind of smile in her eyes.”
“A dog for you to play with,” she says.
“Yes.”
“But they’ll kill her,” Sabana says. “They want only guard dogs here. There are a hundred of them in the field of the dead. The princes of Staadt.”
David listens to the soft, quiet voice of Sabana. Her hands quivering.
“They eat everyday,” she says. “They sleep. They train at sunrise. Sometimes, they put them in the police tanks going to the Jewish neighborhoods. Gringo showers them with praise, throws flowers on them, gives them medals, hangs them on their collars.”
She takes a few steps toward David, then stops before reaching him. They look at one another. She says:
“Sometimes they are free, they release them, they say: ‘You are free, go kill.’ When the Jews pass through the barbed wire on the other side of the field, where the ponds are, we say to them: Go kill.”
“‘You are free,’” repeats the Jew.
David rises. His eyes are flat, opaque. He searches for his gun. Sabana doesn’t seem to have noticed him moving. She says:
“You are free.”
David releases his gun. He looks at Sabana, standing before him. His hands tremble. He smiles at Sabana, a tight and empty smile:
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“You didn’t shoot,” she says.
Silence.
In the park, that same sad howl.
“Diane,” says the Jew.
David turns to look at the Jew, then at Sabana. His gaze focuses and sharpens.
“She cries from despair,” says Sabana.
“A dog?” David asks.
“One can never know” says the Jew.
“A dog crying from despair?” David murmurs to himself.
“Who can ever know,” says Abahn.
•
Silence.
“What time is it?” asks David.
The voice of Abahn:
“Nearly day.”
David sits up straight, frightened. He looks toward the road for the first time. He trembles.
“No, it’s still night,” says the Jew.
“There’s no more shoot
ing near the ponds,” says Sabana. “They’ve left again.”
“I don’t understand,” David murmurs.
They are silent.
This time, in the park, a long plaintive cry. David straightens, says to the Jew:
“They’re hurting Diane.”
The Jew, like him, is listening to the cry. David turns toward Abahn.
“Is she crying out because of the night? The cold?” asks Abahn.
“I don’t know,” says the Jew.
“From fear, I think,” says David.
“That she’ll be killed?”
“That there will be killing,” says Sabana slowly. She falls silent. She has gone back to sleep.
•
The silence.
Sabana leaves David, moving slowly toward the table, to the area where the Jews are. She turns back to him. She seems worried, bothered. “The Jew is going to give you his dogs. You can have them.”
David’s air changes. Happiness seems to break out over him, in his eyes, mixed with the sadness.
“Diane,” says Sabana. “You could take her.”
David waves his hand to silence her.
“Diane,” she repeats, “the Jew’s dog. She could be yours.”
The softness of her voice brings tears to his eyes.
“What are you doing in the house of the Jew?” she asks, “Leave though the forest.”
He shakes his head: no. He says, “Gringo would never want that.”
Silence.
“You know the forest?” asks Abahn.
“Yes,” says David. “Beyond the barbed wire.”
“Big?” Sabana asks.
“Wild,” says David.
“There are jackrabbits.”
“Yes.”
They are silent before this unchanging dream, desperate. Their eyes fixed on some indefinite point in the darkness outside.
“Who told you this?” asks Abahn.
“No one.”
He looks out at the dark park.
“It’s impossible,” he says.
“Dogs, gassed,” says Sabana softly. “Millions of them.”
“Yes,” says David.
They look at the Jew. His eyes are closed.
“They have been in the family for a thousand years,” says Abahn. “They are part of it. Gringo will set a price.”
“How?” asks David in a child’s voice.
“From the moment he kills them, he ought to explain why,” continues Abahn. “He will say: I kill them because they are worth so much.”
“Such a rich sum,” says Sabana.
Silence. The Jew has opened his eyes and is looking at David.
•
“It’s starting up again,” says Sabana.
Sabana can hear things that David can’t.