Jakob the Liar (8 page)

W
e’re late enough coming to Lina, inexcusably late, for she is of some importance to all this. It is she who rounds it out, if one can say such a thing. Jacob goes to her every day, but we have only come now.

Lina is eight years old, long black hair and brown eyes, just the way they should be, a strikingly beautiful child, most people say. She can look at you so that you feel like sharing your last mouthful with her, but only Jacob does that; sometimes he even gives her everything. That’s because he has never had children of his own.

For two years Lina has had no parents: they went away, they got on a freight train and went away, leaving behind their only child, alone. Barely two years ago Lina’s father was walking along the street; no one had pointed out to him that he was wearing the wrong jacket, the jacket without the yellow stars. It was early autumn, and he was walking along with nothing bad in mind; they would certainly have noticed on the job, but he never got there. Halfway to work he met a patrol; one sharp look was enough, but Nuriel didn’t know how to interpret it.

“Are you married?” one of the two men asked him.

“Yes,” Nuriel said, never suspecting what they wanted of him with their strange question.

“Where does your wife work?”

In such and such a place, Nuriel replied. So off they went with him to the factory and hauled her out of the building. The moment she saw him with the two men she noticed the bare places on the front and back of Nuriel’s jacket. She looked at him in horror, and Nuriel said to her, “I don’t know what’s going on either.”

“Your stars,” she whispered.

Nuriel looked down at his chest. Only then did he realize that this was the end, the end or shortly before it; a much lesser reason would have sufficed for the end, according to the rules of the ghetto. The men accompanied Nuriel and his wife to their home, telling them on the way what they would be allowed to take with them. Lina wasn’t playing in front of the building, neither was she in the hallway; her mother had given her strict instructions to leave their room as seldom as possible. But we can’t know, can we, what children get up to all day while their parents are at work: a fervent prayer that this one time she may have been disobedient. She wasn’t in the room either, so she couldn’t be surprised and ask what was the matter, why were Papa and Mama coming home so early, and the men would have known that Nuriel had more than a wife. They packed their few things, the two men standing beside them to make sure everything was being done correctly. Nuriel moved like a sleepwalker until his wife nudged him and told him to hurry up. Now he hurried too. He had caught her meaning: at any moment Lina might come into the room.

Going down the stairs he had seen through a landing window that Lina was playing in the yard (all this without witnesses, but perhaps that’s exactly how it was and not otherwise). She was balancing on the low wall between the two yards: God knows how many times he had forbidden her to do this, but that’s the way children are. A neighbor who happened to be on night shift that week met them on the stairs, and she heard Nuriel’s wife telling him that he shouldn’t keep looking out of the window but should watch his step or he’d fall. So he did that, he didn’t fall. Without incident they emerged into the street, and since then Lina has had no parents. Shortly afterward, a new family was allocated to the Nuriels’ room: at that time there was still a stream of new arrivals.

What to do with Lina became a problem: no one could take her in permanently, and not only because of insufficient space or lack of kindness. All it needed was a spot check: What is this child doing here? For weeks everyone waited for a search to be made for Lina: someone in some office somewhere, in going through some papers, could have noticed that instead of three Nuriels only two went on that transport, but nothing of the kind occurred. Eventually a few women in the building cleaned up the little attic, her bed was moved upstairs together with a chest of drawers containing her belongings — which of course were still there — and Lina lived on the top floor. Only a stove was lacking, but none could be found. During the coldest nights, when even two blankets were not enough, Jacob, who never had any children of his own, risked taking her secretly into his bed. The natural result of this was that she belongs to him more than to anyone else; she has had two years to twist him around her little finger, more than enough time.

Tonight is not a cold night, let alone the coldest; Herschel Schtamm has been sweating profusely all day. Lina will have to sleep alone. Jacob goes up to her room; he does this every evening. Lina is lying there with her eyes closed. Jacob knows quite well that she isn’t asleep, and she knows quite well that he knows, which results every evening in some new joke. He takes a paper bag from his pocket, in the bag is a carrot, which he puts down on the chest of drawers beside the bed, then he performs today’s joke. He blows up the paper bag and bursts it by clapping his hands, but Lina is already laughing while her eyes are still closed: something is about to happen. So what happens is the bang. Lina sits up, gives him the kiss he has earned, and insists that she is already feeling much better. She intends to get up tomorrow, this silly old whooping cough can’t last forever, but Jacob can’t make that decision himself. He puts his hand on her forehead.

“Do I still have a temperature?” Lina asks.

“Maybe just a little, if my thermometer is working properly.”

She picks up the carrot, asks him what that actually means, a temperature, and starts to eat.

“I’ll explain that some other time,” says Jacob. “Has the professor been to see you today?” No, not yet, but he said yesterday that there was some improvement, and Jacob shouldn’t always put her off with “some other time”: he still has to explain to her about gas masks, epidemics, balloons, martial law, she’s forgotten what else, and now he also owes her about temperatures.

Jacob lets her talk; she seems quite cheerful. Perhaps he thinks a bit wistfully of the three cigarettes the carrot cost him; he must get the next one more cheaply. In the end everything turns into pure conversation, of which Lina is a master; she must have been born with that gift.

“How’s work going?” she asks.

“Couldn’t be better,” replies Jacob. “Nice of you to ask.” “Was it also so hot where you were today? Here it was frightfully hot.”

“Not too bad.”

“So what did you do today? Did you ride the locomotive again?” 

“What gave you that idea?”

“The other day you rode it as far as Rudpol and back again — don’t you remember?”

“Oh yes, of course. But not today, the locomotive has been out of commission for the last few days.” 

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s lost a wheel, and there aren’t any new ones.”

“What a shame. How’s Mischa, by the way? He hasn’t been to see me for ages.”

“He’s very busy. But I’m glad you reminded me; he sends you his love.”

“Thank you,” says Lina. “Give him mine too.”

“I will.”

It could go on like this for hours, via twenty carrots. It doesn’t matter what they chat about; they keep talking until the door opens, until Kirschbaum comes in.

If I hadn’t made up my mind from the start to deal with something else, I would tell Kirschbaume story. Maybe I will someday, the temptation is great, although we only met briefly two or three times, and he never even knew my name. I really only know him from Jacob’s sparse comments; he mentioned Kirschbaum almost marginally, but he made me curious. Kirschbaum plays no major role in this particular context: the main thing is that he cured Lina. Years ago Kirschbaum was a celebrity, nothing like Rosa’s father, but a genuine, bona fide celebrity heaped with honors, head of a Kraków hospital, in great demand as a heart specialist; lectures at universities all over the world, fluent in French, Spanish, and German, said to have been in intermittent correspondence with Albert Schweitzer. Anyone wanting to be cured by him had to go to a good deal of trouble; to this day he continues to exude the dignity of an eminent personage, with no effort on his part. His suits do, too: made of the best English cloth, a little worn at elbows and knees, but they’re still beautifully cut; all of them dark in color as an effective contrast to his snow-white hair.

Kirschbaum has never given a thought to being a Jew; his father before him was a surgeon. What does it mean, of Jewish origin? They force you to be a Jew while you yourself have no idea what it really is.

Now he is surrounded only by Jews, for the first time in his life nothing but Jews. He has racked his brains about them, wanting to find out what it is that they all have in common, in vain. They have nothing recognizably in common, and he most certainly nothing with them.

For most of them he is something of a wizard. Kirschbaum doesn’t feel comfortable with that; he’d prefer warmth to respect. He tries to adjust but goes about it awkwardly, while everyone expects something special from him, and he is so totally lacking in the humor that might help.

He comes into the attic bringing a pot of soup for Lina, his step as springy as a thirty-year-old’s; the tennis club has kept him young.

“Good evening, everyone,” he says.

“Good evening, Professor.”

Jacob gets up from the bed, making room for Kirschbaum, who wants to listen to Lina’s chest. She is already taking off her nightgown. The soup is still too hot; she is always examined first. Jacob goes to the window, which is open, a little attic window, yet from it one can see half the town. Perhaps a sunset, the buildings gray and gold, and much peace. The Russians will march along all the streets, not omitting a single one, those damned stars will be removed from the doors and leave behind light patches, like ugly pictures that have hung too long on the wall and go to their well-deserved end on the rubbish heap. At last he has, like the others, a little time for rosy thoughts, as if it were Kowalski who had reported the miracle. Somewhere down there the future lies hidden: no more great adventures; let the younger generation plunge into those. No doubt the shop will need a new coat of paint, perhaps a few new tables as well. He might even get a license to serve schnapps, something that would have been virtually impossible for him before. A place for Lina could be fixed up in the storage room; he just hopes no distant relatives will come barging in wanting to take her away. Only her parents can have her, but who knows whether they are still alive? Next year she’ll start school: ridiculous, a young lady of nine in the lowest grade. The lowest grade will be full of overgrown children; perhaps someone will come up with an idea so they won’t have to waste too much time. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to teach her a few things in advance, at least reading and a bit of arithmetic — why hadn’t he ever thought of that before? But first she must get well.

“Well, now I can tell you,” says Kirschbaum. “Things looked rather bad for this young lady. But when young ladies do as they are told it is usually possible to achieve something. We have pretty well repaired the damage. Take a deep breath and hold it!”

In the cupboard, right at the bottom, is an old book, a travel description of Africa or America that would do quite nicely for learning to read; it even has a few illustrations. Somehow the idea must be made appealing to her, for if she doesn’t feel like it, you can talk until you’re blue in the face. As soon as it’s possible I’ll adopt her, after searching for her parents first of course, without her knowing about it. They say adoption is not so simple; there are a whole lot of formalities and authorities if someone at an advanced age comes by a child. The Germans have their share of responsibility, and the Russians have theirs; who has the greater? I’ll tell her that we’re finished now with forever telling fairy tales, that there’s more to life than princes and witches and magicians and robbers; reality looks quite different, you’re old enough now, this is an
A
. She is bound to ask what that means, an
A
, she will want to know what it’s for, she has a very practical mind, at her age questions are half of life. He can see difficult times ahead. As a child she is already eight years old, and as a father I am barely two.

Kirschbaum is holding the stethoscope to her chest and listening intently. Suddenly he registers mock surprise, looks at Lina with wide eyes, and asks: “Dear me, what have we here? Do I hear some whistling in there?”

Lina throws an amused glance at Jacob, who doesn’t stop; he didn’t realize he’d started, but now he carries on, not wanting to spoil Kirschbaum's meager joke, and Lina laughs at the silly professor who hasn’t understood that the whistling comes not from her chest but from Uncle Jacob.

W
hy, one wonders, did anyone say that coming events cast their shadows before them? Far and wide no shadows, a few uneventful days pass, uneventful for the historian. No new decrees, nothing visibly happening, nothing you can put your finger on, nothing that would seem to indicate change. Some say they have noticed that the Germans have become more restrained; some say that, because nothing at all is happening, it is the calm before the storm. But I say the calm before the storm is a lie, that nothing at all is a lie, the storm, or part of it, is already there: the whispering in the rooms, the fears and speculations, the hopes and prayers. The great day of the prophets has arrived. When people argue, they argue about plans: mine is better than yours. They have all packed their belongings, all are aware of the inconceivable. Anyone who is not must be a hermit. Not everyone knows the source of the report, the ghetto is too big for that, but the Russians are on everybody’s mind. Old debts raise their heads again, diffidently the debtors are reminded, daughters turn into brides, weddings are planned for the week before New Year’s, people have gone stark staring mad, suicide figures have dropped to zero.

Anyone executed now, so shortly before the end, will have suddenly lost a future. For heaven’s sake, give no cause now for Majdanek or Auschwitz (if causes can be said to have any meaning); use caution, Jews, the utmost caution, and make no thoughtless move.

Two parties soon form and divide every building — not every one is Jacob’s friend — two parties without statutes but with weighty arguments and a platform and the art of persuasion. One group is feverish for news: what happened last night, how high are the losses on each side? No report is so trivial that one conclusion or another can’t be drawn from it. And the others, Frankfurter’s party, have heard enough; for them this radio is a source of constant danger, and it would be so easy for Jacob to put their fears to rest. I hear their misgivings at the freight yard and on the way home and in the building. In your naïveté you’ll be the death of us all, they warn; the Germans are not deaf or blind. And the ghetto regulations are not merely suggestions for good behavior; it says right there in black and white what it means to listen to a radio, as well as what happens to those who know that someone is listening and who don’t report it. So calm down and wait quietly in your corner. When the Russians show up they’ll show up; no amount of talking will get them here. And above all stop talking about that wretched radio, about that potential cause of a thousand deaths; the sooner it’s destroyed the better.

That’s the situation, so not everyone is Jacob’s friend, but he is not aware of this, nor has he any way of finding out.

Those who crowd around him, those greedy for news, the hundred Kowalskis, they’ll be sure not to tell him because Jacob might have second thoughts, change his mind, and suddenly decide to say nothing; they’d rather say nothing themselves. And the admonishers would be the last to tell him. They’re not going to send any warning delegation to him, that would be far too risky. They give Jacob a wide berth: no one must be able to testify that they’d been seen in his company.

The earlocked Herschel Schtamm, for example, is one of the others, those who don’t want to hear and see anymore and don’t wish to be accessories. At the freight yard, when, our hands held to our mouths, we evaluate the latest Russian successes, fresh from Jacob’s lips, he moves a few steps away, but not too far, still within earshot I’d say. As long as it’s not a conversation in which he is seen to be involved: that’s obviously what he is worried about. Herschel’s gaze wanders aimlessly over the tracks, or lands on one of us with disapproving severity, yet it is quite possible that under the sweat-inducing fur hat he pricks up his ears like a rabbit.

The power failure that turns Jacob’s radio for days into a life-threatening dust gatherer is, Herschel feels, his personal achievement. Not that he makes any such claim in public: Herschel is not given to boasting, but we heard about this from his twin brother Roman, who spends every evening and every morning in the same room with him and every night in the same bed. He must know, after all. When we ask Herschel how he brought off such a feat — cutting off the power in several streets for several days isn’t exactly child’s play — a benign expression spreads over his face, almost a smile as after surviving a great ordeal, but he refuses to say a word.

And then we ask, “How was it, Roman? How did he manage it?” The last few minutes before going to bed, Roman tells us, are filled with prayer, quietly in a corner, an old habit established well before the radio. Roman waits patiently in bed until their shared blanket can be drawn over their heads. He has long ceased urging Herschel to hurry up and come to bed, having been enlightened as to the incompatibility of prayer and haste. He disregards the monotonous murmuring, the chanting; to listen would be a waste of time since Roman doesn’t understand a word of Hebrew. But recently some familiar sounds have been penetrating his ear. Ever since Herschel has had concrete petitions to send up to God, no longer the usual pious stuff about protecting and making everything turn out for the best, he resorts more and more often to the vernacular. In a fragmentary way, Roman can now listen to what is preoccupying and tormenting his brother: nothing extraordinary — if he were to pray himself, he wouldn’t have anything very different to say. Night after night God is informed about hunger, about the fear of deportation or being beaten by sentries, all of which cannot possibly be happening with His approval; would He please see what could be done about this, soon, if possible, it is urgent, and could He also give a sign that one has been heard? The sign is slow to appear, a test of constancy passed with flying colors by Herschel: each succeeding day has been scanned in vain for some modifying intervention. Until at last it did appear, that longed-for sign, unheralded like all divine action and so potent that any word of doubt could not but die away on the lips of even the most hardened unbeliever.

That night Herschel’s topic was the radio, at present the most overriding of all worries. He explains to God in minute detail the incalculable consequences that will result if thoughtlessness and carelessness allow the gossips to overlook a German ear and, before you know it, it’s happened: the gossips are called to account, in line with the present law, together with their silent accessories. And it will be claimed that we are all accessories, that the news has not circumvented a single person, and actually they will be right. Besides, it need not even be a German ear that happens to be nearby; there are also camouflaged German ears, and only You know how many informers are at large among us. Or someone wants to save his own skin and betrays on his own initiative the existence of the radio. There are scoundrels everywhere, You know that too; without Your consent they would not be in this world. Don’t permit the great disaster to overwhelm us, so close to the end, seeing that all these years You have held Your sheltering hand over us and saved us from the worst. For Your own sake, don’t permit it. Don’t let the Germans find out anything about the radio; You know what they are capable of. Or better still, if I may make a suggestion, destroy that cursed radio; that would be the most satisfactory solution.

At this point the lightbulb below the ceiling suddenly begins to flicker. At first Herschel ignores it, but then he looks up with wide eyes: in a flash the significance of this is revealed to him. God has granted his request, his prayers have not been in vain; at the appropriate moment He sends His sign, the acknowledgment of receipt, truly a sign that could not be more practical: this proves He is God! Without power the radio will be doomed to shut up; the more ardently Herschel prays, the more the light flickers. “Don’t stop now!” Roman spurs him on, but there’s no need for him to say it, Herschel knows what is at stake: advice from scoffers is not asked for when bliss beckons as a reward. Fervently he exploits his contact until the crowning success: the light finally goes out, the ultimate word has been spoken. Herschel rushes to the window and scans the other side of the street: not a single curtain shows a glimmer of light, not even in Jacob Heym’s building. We have silenced you, my friend, heavenly silence will reign, take your terrible box and give it to the devil; it’s of no further use to you. And don’t imagine that the power, the loss of which you innocently assume to be a breakdown, will be restored tomorrow: short circuits instigated by the Supreme Being take their time.

Proud and moderately happy, as far as circumstances permit, Herschel, his day’s labors over, goes to bed and serenely accepts Roman’s congratulations.