She listens. “The bullets ricochet off the ice. They are on the other side of the park.” She listens again. David watches her. “They’re gone,” she says.
“Again,” David murmurs.
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand,” David says to the Jew.
Sabana goes to him, she stops just before reaching him. “You ought to do it,” she says in a low voice.
Almost imperceptibly, he recoils, never taking his eyes off her. “What?” he asks.
“Kill the dogs of the Jew.”
David doesn’t move. Fear leaves him.
“You could say to Gringo: I killed the dogs of the Jew as well.”
David is still staring at Sabana. The fear builds. Like a smile. He sees the blue of her eyes fade out.
“Gringo would promote you in rank, you could leave off the work with cement, rejoin the Red Army.”
David lifts his calloused hands, he pushes the image away, he cries out.
“NO,” he bellows, his hands raised, his eyes closed against the vision of a dog, killed, executed.
Then he falls silent, his hands fall and grip the armrests of the chair.
He looks over at the Jews.
•
“He is crying,” says Sabana.
The eyes of the Jew are closed.
“There’s crying,” says Sabana. “Someone is crying. It’s either you or him.”
She turns toward David. David doesn’t understand. He passes his hand over his face, he looks at the wet hand. He doesn’t understand.
Abahn, sitting next to the Jew, seems to have forgotten him.
“Or he’s sleeping,” says Sabana.
She pauses, looks at the Jew.
“No. He’s crying. About you. Or about nothing.” Her tone grows soft. “About nothing.”
David leans toward the Jew. His face has a pained expression. “He’s not trying to protect himself.”
“No.”
Sabana and David watch the Jew. Abahn speaks without looking at him.
“He is afraid,” David murmurs.
“He didn’t try to escape,” says Abahn. “He has no reason to feel fear.”
“He’s exhausted.”
“No. Look at him. He’s still strong, still vibrant.”
David examines the Jew with the closed eyes, discovers the strength there.
“It’s true,” he murmurs.
“The life he’s led ought to have prepared him for what awaits him,” says Abahn.
They are silent.
“But who is he?” David asks again.
“I don’t know,” says Abahn.
“He was bored of the Jewry,” says Sabana, “of life wandering on the road. That’s why he came here.”
She turns to Abahn. She says:
“That’s you as well, the Jew.”
“Yes,” says Abahn. “Me too.”
All these words sink into David: he looks at the Jew, just him. Still staring at him, he says:
“Gringo said, ‘the Jew is dangerous.’”
“Yes,” says Abahn.
“Still?” asks David.
“Yes.”
David keeps looking, looking, and somehow strangely he sees, sees the danger.
“It’s true,” David murmurs.
With difficulty he turns to Abahn and says:
“Gringo is afraid of him.”
“Gringo doesn’t exist to the Jew.”
David remembers.
“It’s true, the Jew never said anything at all about Gringo, nothing bad ever.”
Abahn smiles, is slow to respond.
“The only way Gringo exists for the Jew is that he is going to kill him.”
Fear seizes David once more. It is almost as if he is going to jump up from the chair. Neither Sabana nor Abahn notice his movements.
“Otherwise,” says Abahn, “the life of the Jew is as invisible as the life of David.”
“A mountain of pain,” says Sabana.
“A mountain of cement,” says Abahn.
“Mountains of the cement of pain,” says Sabana.
“Yes,” says Abahn, smiling, “Invisible, drowned in the Jews.”
The Jew lifts his head and looks over at David.
David notices the Jew looking at him. With a sudden start he tries to evade his gaze. He falls back into the chair. The Jew swings his gaze toward the door out to the darkened park. David calms.
•
“He didn’t know where to go,” says Abahn, “so he came here, to Staadt. He could have gone anywhere, but it would have been the same: other Gringos and merchant’s unions and they would have wanted to kill him too. Here, there, it’s all the same.”
Again David tries to rise up out of the chair. Again he fails. Again neither Sabana nor Abahn notice him.
The Jew has once again rested his head on his arms. He seems exhausted. Sabana sits at the table, leaning against him. She strokes his back, his hair, his hands, his body. Then she lets her hand drop, rests there without moving.
David sees only the Jew.
“It’s been a long time since he left home,” Abahn says. “He had a wife once, children. Then one day he left.”
“Then he left the place he had gone to,” adds Sabana.
“Again and again,” says Abahn. “Left from every place.”
An anxiety builds in David’s eyes.
“And once, a long time ago, he’d had a profession. He’s begun, these days, to forget even what it was. He said once to someone in the village: I forget now what I once did before.”
Silence.
“He said that to you, David?” asks Sabana.
With difficulty, the word comes from David:
“Yes.”
“He also said that he studied. For a long time. In many capital cities. He said: It pleased me to study. No he’s forgotten what all he studied. He said to someone in the village: I can’t remember anymore what I once knew.”
“He said that to me,” says David.
The dogs howl.
The dogs howl: David turns his gaze toward the door to the darkened park.
The howling subsides.
“He said: I began to think about where I learned this word—‘Jew.’”
A shot rings out near the ponds, disrupting the Staadt night. Shots heard again from even farther off. No one hears the shot near the ponds.
“There’s something written on his body,” says Sabana, “on his arms, there’s something written.”
She sits up and takes his arm, folds back the sleeve of his jacket and looks at his forearm.
“It’s written where the number would be.”
“Written where you arrive,” says Abahn, “in the capital of the world.”
Sabana looks at the arm.
“It’s written in blue.”
“What?” asks David.
“I don’t understand it,” she says. “I can’t read it.”
“It’s the word: NO,” says Abahn.
“When did they write it?” asks David.
“At some point during his life,” says Abahn.
“It’s the same word for the Jew and for those who want to kill him,” says Sabana.
“The same,” says Abahn. “The word of the Jew and the word of those against the Jew.”
Sabana replaces the arm of the Jew and sits back, closing her eyes again, resting.
Abahn and Sabana both seem to be in the same exhausted state.
“He had these stories,” says Abahn, “a hundred of them but all the same, those of the Jews. He has barely told any of them to the people of Staadt. He told them instead about the lives of others.”
David nods.
“Before coming here the Jew was released from all parties, Gringo’s and others, and all his stories were finished, he was left with only his own. The Jew couldn’t stand, one more time, to be alone with his own story. So he started again. He began to become a man of Staadt.”
Abahn pauses. He speaks wit
h a great tiredness sweeping through him, slower. He looks down at the ground. He no longer seems to be speaking to David alone.
“With forgetfulness descending everywhere, this new thing became possible—to become a man of Staadt. So he did it. Began once more to become a man of another new place.”
Abahn pauses.
“He wanted to live,” says Sabana.
“Yes,” says Abahn. “He wanted to live without working in the banlieues of Staadt. To exist without working at all, without any occupation but that of living, in the banlieues of Staadt. And he decided to do it like this from now on.”
Silence.
“Just like that? Why?” asks David.
“It was his unchangeable desire. His purest desire.”
Silence.
“That’s terrible,” murmurs David. “To do nothing.”
“No,” says Abahn, looking at David. “He spoke.”
David struggles, searches in the emptiness.
“He said to us: Leave it all behind.”
David speaks but he doesn’t know what he says. He trembles.
“He said: Look here, leave it all, you’re building on ruins.”
In the half-light someone laughs. It’s the Jew.
Joy floods David’s face. He cries out, “He hears us, he laughs!”
One after the other they all start laughing with the Jew.
“He said: Enough with this foolishness. Leave the cement behind.”
“Leave the cement behind,” says the Jew.
“He said: Go hunt.”
“Go hunt,” says the Jew.
“It’s he who spoke to me in the forest,” cries David. “About the jackrabbits. He said, keep going, they’re beyond the barbed wire.”
“Beyond it,” says the Jew.
“He spoke of the light in the forest,” says David, remembering, speaking slower now, “of summer also.”
“Summer,” says the Jew.
Silence.
The broken voice of the Jew then rises:
“David’s summer.”
Someone is shooting near the ponds.
They speak no more. David listens and trembles. Sabana, sitting next to the Jew, also listens. Her voice then rises:
“What is Gringo waiting for?”
The shots cease.
•
Abahn is speaking to David, still overcome by exhaustion. “First he forgets what work he did. Then he forgets about money. Then he forgets what he learned. Finally, at the end, he forgets his wife, his children. He said, ‘I couldn’t lie in front of them the way I could when I was away from them.’ Is that what he told you, David?”
“Yes.”
“And he left so his children would also leave, later on.”
“Then he left again and again,” says Sabana.
“Yes,” Abahn says. “Again.”
“He lingered among the Jews, burned Jews and gassed Jews, with or without God.”
“Yes,” says Abahn. “He was searching.”
“It’s Staadt where he will die,” says Sabana, “in the penal colony on the road to the Jewish capital.”
Silence. Abahn does not continue. David waits.
The silence hovers between them. Abahn closes his eyes. He seems exhausted. David realizes he is lonely, alone, broken down.
Then Abahn continues:
“I know nothing of life.”
Silence. No motion at all on David’s smooth and pale face.
“I don’t know anything about my life any more,” says Abahn. “I will die without knowing.”
David says:
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Nothing,” says Abahn. “In the end: nothing.”
“Me either,” says David. “I don’t know anything either.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No.”
•
Abahn speaks to the Jew in a slow and even voice. “It’s because you came here that we understand a little more. We know some names, some dates.”
“Yes,” says David.
“You came here one night. You walked the village all that night and all the morning that followed. People met you. They remembered. You smiled.” He pauses. “It was the morning of the second day that Gringo recognized you.”
He pauses.
“Yes,” says David.
“Gringo said, ‘No talking to the traitor, no going to see him, no looking at him. He was in the Party and he betrayed it.’” Abahn looks at the Jew. “Did you know that Gringo recognized you?”
Abahn answers for the Jew, saying to David:
“He knew. He knew that whenever he went out that he would be recognized.”
Far off, on the field of the dead, the dogs cry out, howling.
“You bought this house, a bed, a table, chairs. You stayed here for many days. You burned things, the papers—only after you had started preparations to leave. But it was already too late. Gringo had already alerted the workers of Staadt to your presence.”
He pauses. Says:
“In your life, you kept only guard dogs.” Turning to David, he says, “Why?”
“He played with them in the evening.”
“The dogs didn’t know,” Abahn says.
“No.”
“They didn’t know that he is Jewish. Neither did you, David?”
“No,” says David.
Silence.
“Many days passed,” says Abahn. “Many weeks. Many months. The autumn.”
Silence once more. David waits, sitting up in his chair, his eyes tense.
“Afterward, a long time after, Gringo said to you, ‘You’re talking to the traitor? You’re listening to what the Jew says? You don’t know what he did?’ You said you didn’t know. Gringo was amazed. He said, ‘How? Everyone knows. He questions the Party line on the Soviet concentration camps. You don’t know this?’”
Abahn’s voice cracks in places. He gasps for air. He breathes with difficulty.
“You didn’t understand what Gringo said to you. That the Jew was what he still is: any Jew.”
“Yes.”
Abahn gasps for air. There is nearly no air.
“You spoke with him again. Against Gringo’s orders, you kept speaking with the Jew because the Jew had dogs.”
“No!” cries David.
“And that was forbidden also.”
David nods weakly.
Abahn wants to speak more. He struggles to get there, he gets it out quickly because once more he can, he gives it to David in clear phrases.
“You didn’t covet the Jew’s dogs. You just wanted to speak to someone who had dogs.”
David nods.
“Afterward, a while after, Gringo spoke of making the Jew disappear, you thought then for a moment, you might have his dogs.”
David nods yes.
Abahn stops talking to David and starts talking about him instead.
“Right after Gringo’s order David went to the café with the Jew, just like before. It was that very night in the café that the Jew spoke to him about freedom. He said, ‘Your wounded hands are your own hands, David.’”
David nods. Abahn gulps air and continues, talking faster.
“The Jew said, ‘In their suffering and their joy, in their madness and their love, in their freedom these hands are your hands, no other’s, the hands of David.’” He pauses. “It’s because he said these things that the Jew will be killed.”
A sob heaves in David’s chest.
It’s a brief, isolated sob, broken, quick.
Abahn speaks again, more hurried:
“You didn’t understand what the Jew meant.”
David does not react.
“You repeated it without knowing what it was you were repeating. You told Gringo. Gringo said, ‘YOU LACK AN EDUCATION IN POLITICS. WE WILL KILL THE JEW AND THEN YOU WILL UNDERSTAND.’ It was Jeanne who reported this.”
David folds over himself violently, his arms wrapping under his legs. He trembles then as if he
were going to break. His face contorts like a drowning man’s.
“I haven’t taught you anything,” says Abahn. “You knew everything.”
David doesn’t answer him, doesn’t hear him.
Abahn falls silent.
David cries out something like, “I never had a dog.”
He heard his own cry.
He lingers, rising toward this cry, in the position of someone crying out still. He rises, searching the air for this cry, searching and finding tears.
David doesn’t know he is crying. His tears fall.
Within the tears one hears the names of Sabana and the Jew.
Sabana rises. She stands behind the windows looking out toward the darkened park, the field of the dead. She looks at nothing else.
The Jew lifts his head. He heard the voice of Sabana:
“I will be killed along with the Jew.”
The Jew looks past her toward the darkened park.
The shooting out near the ponds has broken out again.
•
The shooting stops.
David’s tears flow more slowly, coursing.
David seems preyed upon by a terrible dream. His head thrashes, shakes no. His hands seek out things no one else but he can see. His face seems to be speaking, answering something.
Then his tears trickle off. Then the movements of his face and eyes calm as well. The dream drifts off.
He seems to see no more. He releases his legs, turns his face back to the light, rests back against the chair, limp, completely spent.
The silence. They are all silent. The Jew looks at David. Sabana and Abahn seem not to notice.
The shooting begins again.
The deafening sound of bullets cracking out from their shells. David listens to them in seeming distress. He moves no more than Sabana or the Jews.
Diane howls to death.
The cracking of bullets continues at irregular intervals. Some shots closer in the park. No one in the house of Abahn seems to pay any attention to the shooting in the park.
“He arrives.”
Abahn and Sabana both turn to the one who has spoken: David.
The shooting gets closer, Diane still howling to death. A funereal moan cuts across the night of Staadt.
And then:
“If someone is killed, then run off through the other door.”
The voice of the Jew.
“Release the dogs, go by the ponds.”
Again, the Jew.
David turns his head. He has heard.
Slowly, he gathers his strength, he tries to pull himself up out of the chair. He falls back. He does not move.
Abahn Sabana David Page 7
