In the silence David cries out. “The dogs!” he calls out in his sleep.
The dogs howl in the dark expanse. A single howl.
“Gringo,” says Sabana.
She doesn’t move, she doesn’t take her eyes off the Jew.
The dogs fall silent.
David falls back into his fitful sleep.
“They bark at night whenever someone passes by,” says Abahn.
“No,” says Sabana, “they mark the passage of Gringo.”
She listens intently in the direction of the pathway outside. The Jews are not paying attention.
“He’s looking at you,” she says.
She is listening with her eyes closed.
“He’s alone.”
She listens again in the direction of the road. The Jews are not paying attention.
“He was alone. He’s gone now.”
Silence anew.
“Maybe it was someone else,” says Abahn. “Or it was nothing.”
“In Staadt,” Sabana says, “we recognize every sound. Even Gringo walking past. He came to see.”
•
“Is that all there was to read?” asks Abahn.
The Jew takes some time to respond. “There were some other things about the working conditions.”
They are silent, the three of them, standing apart from one another, unmoving.
“The dogs aren’t barking anymore,” says Sabana.
“We could read,” says the Jew.
“Someone could talk,” says Abahn.
“Or cry,” says Sabana, “for the dogs.”
“They are on the table, under the scorched pages,” says the Jew.
They are, all three of them, caught in the same languor.
“The Realtors Society,” begins Abahn.
He stops. Begins again:
“The Realtors Society was created for three industries. It grew from strong investments. A pharmaceutical company, French. A German company, cellulose. And an American company, tungsten.”
He pauses. Silence.
“Go on,” says the Jew.
“Yes, go on.”
Abahn goes on, with a growing languor:
“The payout, at this level of investment is a strong 52 percent. The legal percentage of payout has been fixed at 27 percent, the legal fees comprise the 25 percent remaining.”
He pauses. Sabana says:
“I knew about the pharmaceutical company.”
“Keep going,” says the Jew.
“The Realtors Society,” continues Abahn, “was built on top of the old cemetery in Staadt. Permits to build were given in four days. The commissioners and three municipal councilmembers were able to raise three and a half million. At this level that sum has tripled.”
He pauses.
“And,” says the Jew.
“The Portuguese,” Abahn continues, “the Portuguese and others paid the syndicate’s tariffs. They were not given the right to vote. They had no right to strike. The foreigners are 70 percent of the workforce, so the company is immune to strike.”
He stops. Closes his eyes.
The Jew says nothing more.
“The most recent contract provides for 12 percent overtime pay past 40 hours, but it has not been honored.”
Pauses.
“The value of untaxed products has already increased 10 percent. For the non-foreign worker the increase is already resolved.”
He pauses.
Abahn pauses and then begins again. His voice is weak:
“So the single major policy issue is the sliding scale of the minimum wage.”
He stops.
•
Abahn still sits at the table as if he were reading from the charred papers.
The Jew takes some steps and then sits against the door to the darkened park. He stays there, on the ground, his head turned toward Sabana, his eyes closed.
Sabana makes the same effort. She rises. She walks with purpose. She turns toward the Jew. She listens. She stands there, near to him, she studies him. She says:
“Turn on the lights. I can’t see you.”
He does not move. Neither does Abahn.
Sabana turns and switches on the light next to the Jews.
She looks from one to the other in the shadowy light that falls across their faces and closed eyes. Then she sees only the Jew. Says:
“I’m looking. I see you.”
Abahn.
“He isn’t thinking anymore.”
The Jew’s eyes are closed. She says:
“No. That’s not right.”
The Jew opens his eyes.
“You’re afraid,” cries Sabana. “Where were you?”
“Here, in front of you,” Abahn says.
“Not him,” she gestures at the other. “Not him.”
The Jew and Sabana regard each other. A tight smile spreads across the Jew’s face.
“One day I’m going to kill myself,” says the Jew.
Sabana’s intense gaze flares blue and then fades.
“It’s for that reason exactly that they want to kill you.”
“Yes,” says Abahn.
Sabana sits next to the Jew. She stays there, next to him, quiet, her eyes open.
They are silent. Both fallen against the walls, looking at nothing.
“The Jews still cannot escape madness and sorrow,” says Abahn.
He pauses. He speaks with concerted effort:
“Sometimes it’s so difficult for them to live.”
Silence.
“Before, the Jew was so sure,” says Abahn.
“Of what?”
“He was with Gringo’s Party.”
“Communist.”
“No. With Gringo.”
She struggles to speak clearly the same way Abahn had:
“And now? He’s what?”
Abahn does not respond right away.
“If he’s anything, he’s a communist,” she says.
Abahn rises, rests his back against the wall that opens to the park. He feels apart from the others. Sabana hears him from across that distance.
“And now?” she repeats.
The Jew smiles, makes a little gesture.
“Nothing more?” she demands.
“No,” says Abahn. “Something else. But he doesn’t know what.”
“I knew it,” says Sabana.
Abahn slides down the wall and lands once more on the floor. He is still a little apart from Sabana and the Jew but like them he is on the ground, fallen.
Sabana’s hand lifts and brushes across the eyes of the Jew.
“You’ve gone blind.”
“Yes,” says Abahn.
“You’ve become deaf.”
“Yes.”
The hand rests on the closed eyes.
“Like David,” says Sabana.
The hand falls back.
•
She does it. With great difficulty, she gets up and moves away from the Jew.
She stands facing him.
She turns from him toward David, but her eyes stay fixed on the Jew.
Then she turns toward David, pauses there, turned toward him. Finally, her eyes unlatch from the gaze of the Jew.
All falls still.
Sabana’s body seems to tremble between turning to David and turning back to the Jew.
Then, suddenly, she chooses. She moves slowly toward David. Pauses. Moves. Comes close to David, studying him.
His breath is long and even. He sleeps a deep sleep. She watches him.
She does it.
Slowly, she cradles David’s head in her hands and lifts it.
“Wake up, David. The Jews are talking.”
“No,” David mutters in his sleep.
She leans closer and forces a light tone into her voice. “David, the Jews are talking.”
“What?” David asks.
His eyes are still closed.
“What?” he asks.
He opens his eyes. He looks over at the
Jews sitting on the floor. He seems to recognize them. And remember them. They do not return his gaze.
For a moment it seems David is resting.
“They are not trying to escape?” he asks.
“No.”
She fixes her attention on him. “You slept well.”
David doesn’t answer.
“What time is it?” he asks.
“Night,” Sabana says.
David glances repeatedly toward the darkened park where the dogs are.
“And Gringo?”
“He passed by,” she says. “He’ll come back later.”
“Their meeting is still going on?”
David is stunned.
“Why so long?”
“I don’t know,” Sabana says.
“He told me at the beginning of the night,” says David.
He looks over at the Jews.
“This whole time there’s only been one Jew,” he says.
“Gringo sent the second while you were asleep.”
David gets up. He stretches his arms, grimaces, looks at his hands, flexes them. He doesn’t feel well. Suddenly he freezes. He has thought of something.
“The second Jew. Are they going to kill him too?”
“I don’t know.”
“Whether they kill him,” David smiles, “or only the first one, it’s all the same to them.”
“Yes,” says Sabana.
The Jews have raised their eyes. They do not look at David, they look toward the darkened park. They are silent.
“Do they know each other?” asks David.
“I don’t think so.”
Abahn smiles at Sabana. David sees the smile.
“Look, they’re smiling,” says David.
She does not respond.
“Why are they smiling?” he asks.
She does not answer.
“At the moment of death,” he adds.
David seems uncertain. He is about to smile as well, but does not. It is as if he is intimidated. He ought to see that she has not responded. He says:
“You woke me up, you told me, ‘the Jew is talking.’”
He points at the Jew and says:
“He’s laughing.”
The Jew’s eyes are closed. His face is expressionless.
“He was talking,” says Sabana. “He was talking about killing himself. That’s why he was laughing.”
David is still frozen in place. He points at the Jew and says again:
“He’s laughing.”
“A person might laugh if he’s some hours from death,” says Sabana.
They look at the Jew. His eyes are fixed on the darkened park and it seems he might be laughing.
“He was laughing,” David says. “I see him laughing.”
David, still frozen, is completely fixated on the Jew.
“Maybe he’s really asleep,” David mumbles.
“No,” says Sabana.
“Maybe he’s afraid,” says David.
“He didn’t try to run away,” Abahn points out.
David starts in surprise. His eyes shift to the new person, Abahn, and then back to the Jew.
Sabana says, “He said, ‘I want to live, I want to die.’”
“Maybe he doesn’t care which,” David says.
“Maybe.”
Sabana leaves David. She walks toward the back of the room and sits down against a wall. David finds himself alone in the light.
Silence.
No one speaks.
David waits. There is an obvious awkwardness.
“I don’t understand,” David says. “You told me the Jew was speaking to me.”
“You can’t force him to say more,” says Sabana.
David addresses Abahn. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Nothing. Something else. Otherwise. Somewhere else.’”
David looks from one Jew the other, and then at Sabana. He wants to laugh. He says:
“You woke me up for this?”
No one answers him. He sees the Jew looking at him. He starts. The Jew is not looking at him anymore. The Jew closes his eyes. For the first time it seems a great effort for David to speak.
“Who is he?” David asks.
“I don’t know him,” says Abahn.
“I don’t know,” says Sabana.
“His life is invisible,” says Abahn.
Silence.
“Who are you?” Sabana asks the Jew.
The Jew shakes his head.
“He has no more courage,” says David.
“Yes,” says Abahn. “His strength is still there. Still present.”
David studies the Jew who is smiling, his eyes closed, and realizes the strength within him.
“It’s true,” says David.
“It’s just momentary. It will pass,” says Sabana.
“The dead of the night,” says Abahn.
The Jew rises, takes a few steps, slowly, distracted it seems, his shadow falling over David, he turns toward the door to the darkened park. Pauses there.
“He wants to live,” says Sabana. “And he won’t make the effort to do so.”
Silence.
David leans forward out of the light.
“He wants to live in the banlieues of Staadt without working,” Abahn says slowly. “To live without work at all, without any occupation, to live like that in the banlieues of Staadt.”
“Without any work at all,” murmurs David.
David looks again at the Jew. He wants to say something. He says nothing. He stares with a tangible intensity at the back of the Jew.
“One night,” says Sabana, “I wasn’t here, where was I? Just hanging about? You were going to the café, you and the Jew, he was telling you a little bit about his situation.”
David’s face grows pale.
“I didn’t listen,” says David. “I didn’t understand.”
“None of it?” Sabana asks.
“He must have heard some of it,” comments Abahn.
David thinks for a while.
“Something about freedom,” says David at last. “Something about liberty.”
He thinks again.
“About despair,” says David. He seems confused, intimidated. He smiles. “Then I slept.”
They are silent. Abahn gestures toward the Jew.
“He’s unsure now. That’s what I think.”
David thinks.
“It’s completely normal for Gringo to kill him.”
“Normal,” says Abahn.
David lowers his voice a little:
“He’s Gringo’s enemy.”
“He’s a different kind of man,” says Abahn. “He’s a communist who believes that communism is impossible. And Gringo thinks it is.”
David smiles as if at a joke. He hesitates.
“Yes, definitely,” he says.
“Which?” Abahn asks.
David stops smiling. He looks toward Sabana. He wants her help. She is silent.
“You don’t know,” says Abahn. “We don’t know.”
They are silent. Again Abahn gestures toward the Jew:
“He doesn’t think it’s worth the trouble to kill Gringo.”
“He thinks Gringo is dead,” says Sabana.
“What? How?” cries David.
No one answers him.
“It’s completely normal that Gringo would kill him,” says David again, his voice trembling.
“Yes. Gringo,” says Sabana.
David stares at Sabana in terror, seized by brutal shock.
He waits. Sabana says no more. His terror grows.
“The life of the Jew is unseeable, invisible.” says Abahn. “Like the life of David.”
His terror grows still. Silence falls.
“Before, the Jew was so sure. Like Gringo is now,” says Sabana.
“Of what?”
“Of what we would find after the wait. And of where only the wait could lead.”
“And when the Jew was very young,” asks
Sabana, “did he believe as Gringo does now?”
“Yes,” says Abahn. “He came to this conclusion after a number of years.”
“I don’t understand,” says David.
“For a long time. Gringo. A long time, you understand.”
David does not answer.
“We believed in the wait, logical and unending. Now we believe it’s useless,” says Abahn.
David thinks on this. He searches the faces around him. “What happened?” he wants to know.
“Patience became our goal.”
David shakes his head brusquely, grabs his gun, releases it as if were aflame: it’s the Jew who has spoken. His voice is soft.
“I found this patience,” says Sabana.
David’s glare shifts abruptly to Sabana.
“Patience burned your hand,” she adds.
Silence.
“It’s possible we were wrong,” says Abahn.
“Yes,” agrees the Jew. “Possible. Always possible.”
•
The Jew returns slowly to his place. He sits on the ground, leans back against the wall. A tight smile spreads across his face. He says:
“It’s been a while.”
He closes his eyes.
Sabana turns to the window that looks out onto the road. She hears the baying dogs out on the field of the dead.
“David I see outside,” she says. “I see that if we open up then the cold comes in. You, you see David in David.”
“Yes,” says the Jew.
“David, you’re David,” murmurs David.
He looks at them, an unanswered question hovering. He tries to figure out what he said.
“He saw that you were young,” says Abahn. “He saw you as a child. He wanted to know your name. He’s crying. He has seen evil.”
“He cried,” murmured David.
“Yes. Now he sees you better.”
Silence, all at once and deep. The dogs bark no more. No one breathes.
“How does he see me?” mutters David.
The Jew opens his eyes and looks at David. David and the Jew look at each other for the first time.
“I want to kill you,” says the Jew.
His voice cracks. Love, once again, comes into the voice of the Jew.
Abahn Sabana David Page 5
