—But you’re here all alone ... no one will see you ... and it’s the same Virgin as the one in the Lutheran church near our estate, even if she is so tiny...
—If you don’t want to, you don’t have to, it doesn’t matter. If you’d like, I even possess the vested authority to commandeer that little doll with her baby and make you a present of them, so that you can have them as a souvenir of this hike and this wonderful view, and even of me too perhaps, because who knows...
—What I’m saying, Grandmother, is who knows if I’ll ever come home again...
—What?
—Go on!
—What makes you so sure?
—But how? Who?
—That’s ridiculous. I’m being transferred to Germany? Who even knows that I’m on this godforsaken island?
—But what do you think? Tell me this minute...
—I want the truth, Grandmother. Was it your doing? The truth, Grandmother ... have you been meddling again?
—But what can you know about it when you don’t even understand what happened? I have to stay here ... I have to find them ... ach, damn you, why did you have to go rushing off again, Grandmother, without even asking me first...
—I’m sorry ... I’m sorry...
—The two of them ... the woman and the child...
—Playing games with Jews? Games? On the contrary, you’ll see in a minute ... just the opposite...
—But it’s not for them, it’s for us, Grandmother ... for Germany ... the Jews here, and everywhere, are simply guinea pigs on whom we can perform an experiment that we’re still afraid to perform on ourselves. They even like being experimented on, they’re so used to changing shapes and jumping from test tube to test tube. Just look at all I’ve learned these past three years, at what an expert I’ve become ... even if you don’t agree with my train of thought, you can’t accuse me, Grandmother, of superficiality. Don’t you remember how many exams I flunked in school because I refused to give superficial answers to superficial questions? Surely you don’t think that just because the idea pleased me, I let myself be innocently carried away by it, or excused myself from the necessity of checking and double-checking it to see if young Mr. Mani’s astonishing confession rang true, if it was at all plausible! I was so beside myself, Grandmother, so on fire with new questions, that that same night, when my shift at the prison was over, I climbed onto my motorcycle instead of into bed and went racing off at the crack of dawn to that house outside of Knossos, where I knocked loudly on the door. This time I didn’t wait to be let in. I climbed through a window, went right to the back room, which happened to be their bedroom, shone my flashlight on the pile of blankets under which those canceled Jews were lying, and shook them out of the last of their sleep for another interrogation, shivering from cold, the woman all soft and wild-haired in a flannel nightgown embroidered in red, and the man in the same overcoat that had been worn by his father. I could see from his calm look that he wasn’t surprised by my appearance, as if he had realized that one night was not enough to digest his confession but only to throw it back up at him...
—I thought I would search their house, Grandmother, for something Jewish that they took out at night, something that might refute his declaration, although in fact, I had no idea what anything Jewish might look like or how to go about finding it, because I was still so naive, Grandmother, that back then, in the winter of ‘41, I didn’t know what was already clear to me by the spring of ‘42, that is, that there’s nothing Jewish that a Jew can’t do without...
—I mean that a Jew’s identity, Grandmother, can exist purely in his own mind, which is why there is reason to believe it can be canceled there too...
—But that’s precisely the point ... that’s the point, O wisest and most perspicacious Grandmother, that I keep trying to get across to you, so that you’ll understand how difficult, how profound, how almost absurd is the war that the Führer has declared on them...
—No. I never said a word to Major Schmelling.
—Because I knew, Grandmother, that it was too subtle for him. Who is this Schmelling, after all? An elderly police officer of the old school who knows about Jews from the newspapers and hysterical speeches and slogans on the walls, which is why he takes them so literally, so that he thinks the world is like the Berlin Zoo, in which you can go from cage to cage comparing the animals until you find the Super-Ape ... No, I wouldn’t want to confuse him with an idea that I myself haven’t finished working out yet...
—Have I gotten to the point? Not yet ... not yet ... especially since young Mani himself only sank to the bottom of the sea some eight weeks ago ... although on the other hand...
—I’m getting there ... in a minute ... in a minute you’ll understand...
—Of course, Grandmother. After all, I could simply have told myself, as you keep telling me, “He’s just putting one over on you, this beastly Jew, he’s just trying to dodge his fate.” But I knew that was the easy way out, the answer you give when all you have patience for is blasting away with your schmeisser, and that, perhaps because I was helped to arrive on this island by a gentle push from above, I should first tune in to my surroundings, not for the sake of Mani Junior, but for our own sake, for the sake of Germany and the Germans, to see if one couldn’t return to the starting point and become simply human again, a new man who can cancel the scab of history that sticks to us like ugly dandruff and put the dark, moldy rooms full of worm-eaten books, the faded oil paintings, the grotesque sculptures, behind him for the sunlit aperture, Grandmother, that you see spread out before you in all its glory, chorusing away in the crickets that won’t, I’m afraid, let us hear ourselves think unless we get up and move on ... Come, Grandmother, let’s go...
—No, there’s not much more ... I promise ... I beg you...
—No, we still have time before dark ... and we’re not far from the top now ... Even if this story of mine only irritates you, the fantastic view that you’re about to see, with its radiant expanse of air and water, will reward you for all your aggravation...
—Exactly ... exactly ... you see, you do understand me, Grandmother...
—Thank you, Grandmother, thank you...
—I know...
—Of course you’ll have the right of reply...
—I promise you ... for as long as you like ... I’ll listen to you all evening...
—Yes, exactly. That’s what I told myself too, “Even if he’s trying to put one over on you, you’ll make him stick to his word,” and so my first order of business was making sure he didn’t take to the mountains, which meant that every day or two, Grandmother, I paid him a surprise visit just to check that he was still canceling away...
—At first just house visits, Grandmother, because we’re still talking about the winter and spring of ‘42 when I was at the bottom of the ladder, an ordinary guard working the night shift in that big, dry winery that Schmelling turned into a prison. As soon as my shift was over, with the first light of dawn, while my brain was still on fire with the screams of tortured suspects, I would climb on my cycle and speed off from Heraklion to Knossos along roads still silenced by the curfew, which in those days was dutifully honored by the inhabitants, to pay a call on my own private, secret suspects, who began leaving the door open for me once they realized I wasn’t going to leave them alone, so that I could step right into their bedroom without bothering them, two heaps of blankets that my flashlight played over as it looked for something Jewish whose name, shape, or nature I hadn’t the foggiest notion of. In those days I still believed that, if only it existed, it was bound to emerge from the bedclothes at night and cancel the cancellation
—No, Grandmother. Because by the early summer of ‘42 I had finally managed to persuade Schmelling to take the palace of Minos under our constabulary wing and even to maintain a small guard post there for whatever high police officials, aboveboard or undercover, wished to run their hands over the new map of Germany and delight in how big it had become by visiting us from the far
ends of the Reich. Meanwhile, promoted by Schmelling to Feldwebel, I was appointed to be our guests’ escort, and the first thing I did with them, Grandmother, was take them to the top of this hill to tell them the fabled story of our air drop and of the magnificent battles that followed. Then, when I had won their confidence and enthusiasm, I would convince them to come along with me to Knossos for a look at its ancient Labyrinth, which I tried getting them to see not just as an ancient ruin repainted to suit the whims of a fanatical British archaeologist but as a possible goal, a holy grail for all Europe, for the European of the future who will be free of fear and guilt ... and there, by the entrance to the antiquities, not far from the statue of Sir Arthur Evans, I sometimes found my citizen, my canceled ex-Jew, standing in his little shop with his child next to him as usual, busy with his herbal jars and medicinal bottles and souvenirs for the tourists, little figurines of the Minotaur and miniature earthenware urns and tiny bull-horn V’s, and since he still had his father’s concession to the site, I went and bought half-price tickets from him for my party of guests, or sometimes from his delicate young wife if he himself was inside the ruins guiding some group of Greek tourists, who, back in ‘42 or ‘43, were still coming from Athens and Salonika to vacation on this island and even giving us Germans a friendly smile, as if we were tourists like them and the rifles slung over our shoulders were for hunting in the mountains. And so now I no longer had to keep a nightly eye on him, because I had him in my sights every day, my ex-Jew who had become, or so I tried convincing myself, an ordinary human being, pure unadulterated homo sapiens, at home in an ancient, blissful civilization that, free of the self-invented contamination of Jewry, had lived without guilt or fear, safely ensconced in its unfortified temple that had no protective walls, its marble steps cascading down to reddish halls in which youths and maidens walked happily behind the quiet bull. Sometimes, Grandmother, I would run into him by the huge urns where his father was bound and died, and the sight of him standing there and smiling peacefully back at me gave me no end of faith that a man could remake his own self by himself, and I must say, Grandmother, that if you’re right and he was only playing a part, he played it to the hilt, he couldn’t have looked more natural pulling that little boy after him, because he took him everywhere to keep him out of the way of my officers—who, in the gleaming leather boots they all wore, both those in black uniforms and those in civilian clothes, listened to me lecture on the ancient civilization that knew neither guilt nor fear while smiling mysteriously to themselves ... ach, those gorillas with diplomas, those supermurderers, those geniuses of destruction—the scum, the scandal of Germandom!...
—Yes, yes...
—You know, you know very well, Grandmother...
—Yes ... you know ... you know ... we all know, even those of us who think that we don’t...
—Yes!
—Yes, yes, yes! Don’t be so innocent!
—All right, I’ve calmed down.
—All right.
—I’ve calmed down.
—Fine, I beg your pardon...
—Soon ... one more minute ... here, we’re already at our last station. We have finally arrived, Grandmother, at the old Turkish guard post that has been standing here since the last century. Come see why they put it here, the vista you have of the sea ... of the sea and nothing but the sea. Yes, the Turks sat up here a hundred years ago, on the lookout for pirates ... here, have a seat, Grandmother ... please, sit down ... I’m sorry I shouted at you...
—Who am I to be blaming anyone? After all, I’m part of it myself, even if, when I first arrived on this island, I was inspired by the belief in a new way, national and individual—because my canceled Mani was just an allegory, part of a much bigger philosophy, which, by the autumn of 1943, I knew would have to be put to the test...
—I’m getting there...
—Italy fell, and the same Italians who had been semi-allies now became semi-prisoners who had to be disarmed and guarded. We suddenly felt such isolation ... and the more it grew, Grandmother, the more enemies we made, which meant we had to corral them and count them twice a day, morning and evening, to make sure we had caught them all ... except that we didn’t really believe that ourselves, which made us look for still more enemies, whom we found immediately, although since we didn’t believe that they were all there were either, we tortured them to lead us to more enemies, and so on and so forth ... And thus we were kept busy all day long, guarding and counting and hunting and searching and interrogating, which led to still more hunts and searches, so that by the time the midnight shift came on we discovered that our isolation had grown even greater and that by now we were the prisoners of our prisoners. It was at that point that we called for help. And so early last spring two experts came from Athens and at once scolded Schmelling for accumulating too many prisoners, which would never have happened if he had killed more of them and locked up less, which was why their first command was to round up all the Jews and ship them off to wherever Jews were shipped. You can imagine my shock, I who had naively thought that if the one Jew I found had been canceled all of Jewry had been canceled too, at being handed a list of still more Jews—who, it turned out, had been living all along in and around Heraklion, although some had already managed to escape...
—No, Grandmother, his name was not on the list, not because anyone higher up had accepted his cancellation, but because no one knew of his existence. His father was not a native, having been born in Jerusalem and banished to Crete by the British at the end of the last war, and since all those years he had kept his distance from other Jews, he was now beyond the pale of any non-Jewish informers. Of course, had I wanted, I could have canceled that distance and returned the Manis to the fold in no more time than it takes to write a name on a list, but precisely this, I realized, was the great test, not only for him, but for me, Grandmother, because I had to decide on the spot, all by myself, if his cancellation was real or even conceivable, not only for himself but for anyone anywhere, or if we both had simply been playing with words for three years. And without thinking twice I decided ... well, what do you think? What? Guess what I decided, Grandmother!
—Right you are! A most accurate guess, although I didn’t do it for the reasons you think I did, that is, out of sheer innocent stupidity, but on the contrary, after profound meditation, and especially, in loyalty to you, Grandmother, and in the spirit of our conversations on those winter evenings back in ‘39, when I was studying for my history and literature finals and you knew that the war was on its way. You asked me then to pray to the God you no longer believed in that the havoc and destruction wreaked by Germany should lead to a better future—which was why, accompanied by a soldier I took along to guard my clarity of mind, I went straight to Mani Junior, because I knew that many of the names on the list had already made themselves scarce. And it was a good thing that I got there when I did, because the mule was already tethered behind the house, loaded with sacks that no doubt contained flour and sugar and spices, which meant that he too had heard the rumors about the list in my possession and was preparing to take off. He was caught in the act, pale and bewildered, and so I said to him, “Mr. Citizen Mani, I’ve come to tell you that you needn’t worry or run away, because you’ve canceled yourself and now you’re null and void and nothing but a man, a pure homo sapiens living in the ruins of the ancient civilization of Knossos, which wouldn’t have known a Jew if it saw one, because the Jews hadn’t invented themselves yet. And now,” I said to him, “is the ultimate test to find out if you believe in me as I have believed in you...”
—Aha ... it’s about time you paid me a compliment. So you do admit it, you admit that you see my point...
—Thank you, Grandmother, thank you.
—I’m listening, of course I am...
—Well, he listened to me very carefully, even though, after three years of occupation, his German was no better than before, a bloodless excuse for a language, and exchanged looks and whispers with his wif
e, who, three years after the night on which I saw her for the first time, still seemed the same age as me. She gave him a wise, thoughtful nod, and he went over and unloaded the mule, which I killed at once with a single bullet to relieve him of the need for any second thoughts. Then I said good-bye to them both and rode off to ferret out of their holes all the other Jews who either couldn’t or didn’t want to cancel themselves...
—By then there weren’t many of them left ... we had gotten off to a late start ... by deportation day, the entire island had yielded only two hundred seventy of them...
—I’m almost done ... in a minute, Grandmother, I’ll be done ... why, you’re as eager to get to the end as a small child...
—Of course I had my doubts. Let me say once more that I’ve never been naive. In fact, the following night, which was the night of May 20, the third anniversary of my jump, I returned. I found a free moment amid the bedlam of registering all the prisoners, jumped on my trusty old cycle, which was old and scarred by now, and raced off to see him, even though this meant taking my life in my hands on the roads between the villages, because a special east wind had carried the smell of German blood from the steppes of Russia, and like a subtle spice it had put some backbone in the Cretans and a new impudence in their eyes. But that didn’t stop me, because I had to know if he had stayed behind and trusted me as I had trusted him, if he really believed his own words about canceling his superfluous non-essence. When I got there I almost jumped for joy, because there was light behind the lowered curtains. And yet when I knocked on the door and entered the house, which I had gotten to know every detail of over the years, I could tell at once from the restless motion of his hands as he rose to greet me that something had happened, or was missing, and at once the thought crossed my mind that the woman and child had been spirited off to the mountains, which made me so mad that I pointed my schmeisser at his stomach, intending to kill him with a single long burst. But just then he let out a bitter cry in the shadows, and, grabbing hold of the barrel of the schmeisser to deflect it, he blurted out the plea, the explanation, the rebuke, that it was precisely the mutual trust and understanding between us that had made him send the child away with its mother, since he could not possibly demand of his son, who was too young to cancel himself, what he was able to demand of his own self, so that for the time being the boy had to remain an uncanceled Jewish child...
Mr. Mani Page 15
