The Boxer

Also by Jurek Becker

Sleepless Days
Bronstein’s Children
Jacob the Liar

Copyright © 1976, 2011 by Hinstdorff Verlag; all rights now reside with Shurkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61145-563-2

A
FTER GIVING HIM ENOUGH TIME
to suggest it on his own, I ask Aron if he wouldn’t at least like to take a quick look at it.

“No, thank you,” he says.

To my following, surprised question for his reasons, he answers, he’s simply not interested. I don’t understand. After all, the story is about him. It’s his story. Although I know it’s a waste of time, I bring this fact to his attention. He smiles. He looks at the five green notebooks that lie between us on the table, eyes me skeptically, or with disapproval, or contempt— I am not good at interpreting facial expressions — in any case with no curiosity whatsoever, and says quietly, “I shouldn’t have told you so much.”

I think, How strange. Or isn’t it strange that he should suddenly pretend to have doubts? Now, after two years during which we spoke of nothing else, or virtually nothing else, but him? The sole purpose of our meetings was toidentify Aron Blank, or at least a significant part of him. They were like open interviews, even though I wasn’t working with a tape recorder or a notepad. Nothing happened that wasn’t perfectly clear to Aron, he wasn’t tricked or pressured. On the contrary, he knew the extent to which I depended on him and his readiness to communicate, and he never gave me a particularly hard time.

It also occurs to me that he might be afraid that, since the work, as it were, is done, my sympathy will turn into indifference. There lie the five notebooks; there won’t be a sixth. Perhaps he thinks that my interest in him will fade. No further acts of kindness, because all the previous ones implied an ulterior motive, which no longer exists. And therefore it doesn’t seem altogether impossible that our separation will guide him back to the road he was on when we first began working together. Not to spare me an embarrassing retreat, in other words, not out of generosity. Rather, I suspect, to prevent any possible distress an emotional farewell might involve. Perhaps he wants to erect a barrier before I declare all trust that has grown between us to be nothing more than part of the deal, a lubricant for his memory.

However, I won’t base my attitude on hypotheses. In the end, none of my conjectures is appropriate. In the end, Aron is simply in a bad mood — among his symptoms is an overwhelming susceptibility to mood swings. I’d sooner ask why he’s not interested.

“Think about it,” he says.

I had done that, I say, and, “I still don’t understand.”

Aron shakes his head, apparently amused, as if he can’t see how someone who professes to be intelligent can overlook such obvious motives. I’ve grown used to that attitude. He is often satisfied with hints that, combined with other gestures or with a certain way of looking at me, he thinks are informative enough. I soon learned that he found my occasional pleas for greater detail aggravating, unworthy, and foolish. So in order not to inhibit his flow of words, I would withhold my questions as often as possible, preferring to accept temporary — or for a longer stretch of time — lack of clarity, and try to fill in the ensuing gaps by deduction. But today things are different. I don’t mind insisting on explanations, we are no longer working. Today my inability to understand is, so to speak, purely personal. Nevertheless, I take pains to proceed cautiously; he mustn’t sense that anything is different than it was. I use his weapons. I tilt my head a little to one side, look at him for a long time, my questioning eyebrows raised, and my hand, which till now has been lying unnoticed on the table, is turned palm up.

This is a language Aron understands. He says reluctantly, “Why don’t you leave me alone? I’m not interested. Isn’t that enough?”

“No,” I reply. “How can that be enough? You can’t convince me that you aren’t interested in your own story.”

Another couple of strokes to his outline: as soon as Aron decides to explain something, he suddenly finds it difficult to begin. He likes to use introductory phrases, tentative approaches to the subject, he often says, “Listen” or “All right, let’s see.” He always wants his listener to understand that the explanation implies a great effort on his part, an effort he considers unnecessary, and that he nonetheless gives in only because his listener is so stubbornly insistent. Sometimes he hints that the sentences that are to follow will require complete concentration from his listener. He might say, “Pay attention.”

This time, Aron says, “Listen. You claim that you wrote my story, and I claim that you’re mistaken, that it’s not my story. At best, it’s something you think is my story.”

“What do you mean — at best?” I ask.

He says, “Don’t look so hurt. I’m not blaming you. I knew it from the very first.”

This said, he is now someone who has performed an uncomfortable duty. He stands up, his hands in his pockets. He walks to the window and looks at the chestnut tree that has grown so thick it blocks the view and darkens the room. A few seconds later he adds, “There’s no other way.”

“What did you know from the very first?” I ask.

“That what I tell you is one thing,” he says, “and what you write is something else. Again, I’m not accusing you of anything. I understand there’s a mechanism from which you can’t defend yourself.”

“So, you do understand that.”

“Or had you meant to be perfectly satisfied only with what you heard from me?”

A brainteaser that requires no answer, one of his rhetorical questions. My comprehensible no would only annoy him. As a reward for my self-restrain the goes into greater detail: of course I hadn’t meant that, I had meant something completely different. I had wanted to improve him, to make him publishable, to use him as raw material. From the beginning I had had my own ideas about a story, and then I had made choices. I had taken what I found useful and listened politely to the rest. And even what I had chosen had become different, nothing remained as it was. Why? Because we had always been interpreting — incoherently he uses the plural, confusing me. Because we had felt that damned urge to seek a hidden meaning behind everything. Because we had been suspicious of every harmless thing, as if in reality it served as a disguise for God knows what. Yes sir, says Aron, sitting down again and answering the further questions in my eyes, he had known that very well andhad participated nonetheless, out of pure egoism. I mustn’t believe that it was only about me. Or did I think he was a Samaritan, who sits down and does a two-year-long favor? Of course, our conversations had been useful for him, too; of course, he had been happy that someone had finally come to listen to everything he had to say. Aron claims that those who only brood and never talk about it will eventually suffocate. He has told me so much about himself, he was amazed he had played a role in so many different situations. Often the question came to mind: Had that really been he? Then, painstakingly, he’d have to explain to himself: Yes, it had been he— who else? — no one else was there. And over time, as the essential was gradually revealed, things became a little easier for him, knowing this should reassure me. In reality, he hadn’t done me a favor, I’d done him one — he had fewer headaches, he hoped I wouldn’t be getting them now.

“That’s a pretty strong statement,” I say when he stops to catch his breath, “almost outrageous.”

“What?”

I knock on the notebooks and say, “You talk about them asif you had read every word. Maybe you’re right about some things, but isn’t it rash to attack me with a thousand hypotheses and act as if they were facts? Don’t you want to make the slight effort, and read?”

Aron leans back in his chair and repeatedly breaks out into smiles that are not his usual sad or thoughtful ones, but rather cunning and unconditional. One could say that Aron’s whole face lights up. He even twinkles, and I will soon know why It’s as if he’s worked out a painless method that will finally shut me up.

Very well, he says, for the fun of it let’s assume what he had said was total nonsense, from start to finish, as I would have it. Let us assume that in writing everything down I had kept to his exact words; my notebooks couldjust as well be his notebooks. If so, and therein lies his own story, why should heread it? He knows it inside out, and a purely literary interest, as I well know, doesnot exist.

I find nothing convincing to refute this, not right now anyway, but for Aron I have not been humbled enough. In these cases he is merciless. He takes the last card he has up his sleeve, and his eyes reveal that he considers it his ace of spades. Or do I want him to read the story so that he can later say how satisfied he is with me? That wouldn’t work for different reasons. First, he isn’t an expert on the written word, more a layman who tends to pass coarse judgments; and, second, he isn’t a controller. Therefore I should think long and hard about exactly what it is I want from him. Evidently I had subconsciously wanted him to authorize my writing, but he warned me away from that — if we should start we would never finish. And that couldn’t possibly be what I wanted.