Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
The taste of the sherry, the sight of the park, a sweet
memory of my childhood, imbued in me an absurd sense that
everything became real only because it was said. If he had told
me the moon was a rectangle, I would have accepted it as fact,
so I could also see my mother sitting on a bench in Schiller
Park, reading a newspaper or a book. I heard the voices of the
old people who lived in the hotel and the voices came through
the walls, maybe they were singing. It was hard to hear what
song they were singing. Sam was a child whose mother called
him to come to her and gave him candy. And so we were able to
penetrate into areas of a place whose logic was different from
the logic we were used to. We didn't yet know where we were
and what the date was, and we talked, each one separately, but
together, about the other's childhood as if we had exchanged
identities. So we dialed together and somebody picked up the
phone and said Schwabe here, and I said: This is Sam Lipp, a
friend of Lily Schwabe, and the old man didn't even make a
sound of amazement or resentment and said Yes, and what can
I do for you, and I said to him: Lily, Lily your daughter, and he
said You must have the wrong number sir, these days people get
a lot of wrong numbers, and after a long time when I didn't let
him off the line he admitted he once had a daughter named
Lily, but not anymore. I'm an old man, he added, living on a
small pension, living in my own apartment, he didn't hang up,
maybe he tried not to be amazed, waited and I don't know exactly what he waited for, there was no longing or acceptance in
his voice, and when I hung up, Sam said: Maybe he really is the
man who knows who a disaster happened to.
Later on, Sam took me to a small club. I was born in this city
and I thought I knew it well, but the alleys we walked in were
strange to me. Sam knew that part of the city better than me.
I thought to myself: The old man sounds like an indifferent,
polite, and swinish murderer. Maybe he's a miserable person,
but I didn't say those things aloud. The ruins were restored and Sam who knew the ruins before they were restored led me on
winding paths as if everything that had been built since then
hadn't been built yet.
I was surprised at the audacity of our architects who, when
they restored that part of the city, preserved completely what
had been and as they repaired and rebuilt, they even preserved
the hiding places, hidden ways, produced over many years, in
alleys where you could once evade creditors, police, or disgruntled women. Sam knew the way well, and I thought that if
those architects had to reconstruct a sinking ship, they'd do it by
preserving the sinking, even without preserving the ship. The
nightclub was dim and filthy. Women with dyed hair and puffedup hairdos sat on high stools with round, ugly backs. Ear-piercing
music blasted from a jukebox. In back, past the American
cigarette machine we saw a stage loaded with boards and rags,
a broken straw chair stood there and next to it, on its side, an
old spotlight. We drank beer, ate Greek olives. The owner was
a stocky man with a mustache, who addressed Sam: Your face is
familiar to me, sir, eyes like that I can't forget! Sam smiled
and said in a loud voice: Ladies and gentlemen, please set your
watches back four hours, the time is four-thirty in the afternoon, April fifteenth ... And the bartender said with a joy
kindled in him: For God's sake, I remember him, the boy who
was ... those eyes ... and then one of the women sitting next
to me said in a loud voice: I'd screw with eyes like that and be
willing to die the way they die in Naples, and a woman sitting
next to her said: "After you see Naples." The first one said,
What does it matter before, after! And the bartender yelled:
Stop blabbing, and moved to the other side of the bar, hugged
Sam, and I sat there a stranger, while Sam, maybe really wasn't
a stranger ... He climbed onto the stage and fixed the spotlight, plugged it in an outlet hidden behind boards and heaps of
paper, shut his eyes, and asked everybody to set their watches
back and they did, me too. One of the women started singing in
a soft, clear voice, her voice sounded as if it were composed of
glass slivers, Sam moved some old rugs, a mouse darted out to the shrieks of some women, the spotlight was lit and illuminated the face of the woman singing and she sat down on the
broken chair, and the other women joined in and it wasn't like
a choir singing but flickers of sounds, like a vanished expanse of
audio mist. I waited for the bartender to smoke a Ritesma cigarette, pour light Rhine wine, and for gleaming aluminum insignia to be emblazoned on his shoulders, but everything was now
faded, part of that invented past now without real glory, I felt
how hollow everything is when it's out of place or time. Everything was divided into decimal fractions, which didn't add up to
any reliable equation. An old picture of a girl with stretched-out
legs, and a bird sitting on her belly, was discovered on a shabby
wall behind the lighted stage. Above the girl's head flew angels
of a saccharine nearly wiped-out color, the legs of the singing
woman spread by themselves, she wore high black boots and her
thighs looked gleaming and firm, and when she spread her legs
a rubber snake was discovered tied to her belt, and the snake
wound into her shaved crotch, and the moment the song was especially melancholy, almost whispered, Sam crushed her groin,
and the snake darted out at him and bit his hand and he stroked
the woman's crotch and she kept on singing. An innocent laugh
spread over her face, her eyes were wide open with a kind of intimacy, perhaps hope, she spat out the chewing gum hidden in
her mouth, shut her eyes and the bartender leaned over a little,
shriveled, his head turned to me, and Sam called out: Come
here, and I got up, looking stupid in my own eyes, but bereft of
willpower, I climbed onto the stage, I was Kramer, it took a
minute, my face changed, since the eyes looking at me saw him,
not me. I talked about the last defensive operation in the Alps,
about poor Eva who died in the bunker, how our holy soil was
defended. On my knees I sat, like a boy scolded in a classroom,
nobody was amazed, the bartender didn't move from his
scrunched position, the woman went on singing with yearning
eyes, I was defended by a bayoneted English soldier, Sam cited
the number of unemployed in Cologne, Leipzig, Hesse, and
Frankfurt in 'twenty-nine.
Sam's watch was set well, fat men smoked giant cigars and
drank whiskey and soda and sang a contemptible Hallelujah. We
prepared a putsch, Sam directed in silence, maybe we were too
drunk, earlier we had drunk seven glasses of beer, I wanted to
pee, but I didn't dare get up, the woman wept, it was in 'twentyeight that she wept, and the number of unemployed was worrisome, inflation was rampant, the rubber snake dropped out.
Another girl, whose name I even remember, Johanna, sang
"Deutschland abet Alles" and then a fat woman got up, rolled up
her dress and peed on the stage, wiped herself with a strip of old
newspaper and the pee flowed on the floor, and the woman on
the chair licked her lips, and Sam recited stock prices in June
'twenty-nine, the price of gas, the price of vegetables, the price
of newspapers, yearnings were born and I don't know whether
those were yearnings for what was or for what was after that,
faces were crying for help, I stood on my knees, somebody sang:
The shark has pearly teeth dear, and he shows them pearly white,
just a jackknife has old MacHeath dear, and he keeps it out of
sight, she yelled: He's a shark! And Sam said: Watch out for
sharks! To catch a shark you have to grab him by the tail, make
him lie on his back. He dies because his belly isn't connected to
the walls of his body, he's got a moving belly and he sheds it, said
Sam, and I muttered some of your words, Kramer, twenty-four
thousand teeth every ten years. And I, I can't move, I try to understand Sam and I know, know that deep inside me I do understand him, but I'm ashamed precisely because I do understand.
The bartender is now trying to return the clock to the present,
outside, somebody's knocking on the window, reality penetrates
inside with a wild daring and I want to get up and maybe I did,
the woman comes close to him and he kisses her and then slaps
Kramer and looks at him in amazement, smears his face with
powder he took out of some woman's purse and my head drops,
and the more I want to get up, the more I drop, and am covered
with powder, spew foam, and somebody thrusts a bottle of whiskey into my mouth, and I drink, and then, I stood, me, I who
once shot at low-flying planes, and I spoke about "paratroopers" brought down by the bullets of our soldiers, the heroes, when the
ghetto was burning, and how nice to see you landing dead from
the roofs, from the burned houses, and I shot in retrospect, according to Sam's clock, reluctantly I aimed and shot into a propaganda film of the burning ghetto shot by my father and I was
ridiculous in my own eyes, a chorus of fake women sang with artificial voices the anthem of the Black Corps of paratrooper shooters, Herr Reichsfuhrer, the ghetto is no more says (inside me) SS
Sturmbahnfuhrer Stroop, and my father shoots pictures of his son
shooting at the "paratroopers," and then the giant fire. And how
beautiful it is to photograph the lapping fire, the houses collapsing, and they're still singing, and then Sam cuts his hand deeply
with a knife he found on the counter, and I understand that Boaz
left him the knife he took from Rebecca who took it from the
knife-sharpener in Jaffa, it's all mixed up in my brain, maybe I'm
dreaming, I and Jordana in the bath, hugged by a dream girl of
death, the blood flowing on Sam's hand, I hit Sam and the spotlight, it's dark and the voices fall silent all at once.
The next day I woke up with a sharp headache between my
eyes. The phone didn't stop ringing. The morning newspapers
were hidden by Renate and our cleaning woman under the closets. Sam came to breakfast, jolly. The call from Mr. Schwabe
was one of the only ones that felt strange and I said to Renate,
Answer that call, and she picked up the phone and gave it right
to me and I heard the strident, furious voice of the man even
before I put it to my ear. He yelled and I held the phone away
while, in my other hand, I held a cup of miracle juice Renate
concocted to cure my nausea. He yelled: That man of yours, sir,
came to my house, or perhaps you don't know, if I hadn't known
you were an honorable man I would have honored you with a
duel worthy of the name, and you wouldn't have been left with
one ear to cure and even your nostrils would disappear along
with what wraps them. I was smoking a pipe, suddenly there
was a knock on the door, I opened it, and he stood, he stood
there, you hear me? He stood there and smiled, pushed me into
a chair and picked up the phone, you hear? And he dialed, I heard distant voices in the receiver, I was scared, and he said
into the phone: Talk to Himmler, and he gave me the phone. I
heard shouts from the other end, what happened? What happened? She shouted there and I said: Schwabe here, and she
said: Who? And I said Schwabe of Badenstrasse and my pipe fell
down, it fell down, the pipe, and she said: You're Schwabe of
Badenstrasse, where's Sam, I said to her: I'm here and Sam is
standing next to me, you listening? And Sam pushed me and
yelled: Talk to her! And I'm an old man, what could I do, I said
Who is this? And she said Lily! What Lily, I said to her, what
joke is this, and she said, A really bad joke, maybe she wept, and
who is she, if she's Lily where was she all these years? And then
Greta came in, she takes care of me and I love her, she fixes
everything, sews, she said: What's happening? And she looked
at that man with a hatred I didn't find where to search for it
inside me, and Lily says What? What? Is this Schwabe and I
yelled: American filth, shit of American soldiers, you left a father in prison, took me years to crawl here, I found your stinking stockings in the empty house, and she laughed, she laughed
then too, and the old woman said: Enough, you'll get a stroke,
and the phone went dead and that Sam counts out marks for
the call, gives them to Greta and she took them, why shouldn't
she, but the heart is shaking with shame and even more, I'm
furious, eighty-one years old, what do they want, and from me,
and I hear Sam or what's-his-name, laughing or yelling and Greta
isn't scared of him, no, she's not scared, her they measured for
a uniform of real Junkers, her they didn't take out of that music
and the pop and the long hair, and Sam told her, Tell how many
Reichsmarks you got, those Reichsmarks were brought to you by
Jews, and Greta sneered: The Reichsmarks are better from your
hand than from anybody else, and he told her the Jews were
coming back, and she said, There was no Lily, as if he had
asked, but she asked from inside me, And tonight, when she has
no teeth in her mouth, and that made the swinish clown laugh,
and then he took out a pack of lewd cards from Frankfurt, or
Japan, showed me, and said: You see, here's Lily with Jews! You want to buy the pictures? And I, what can I do and even Greta
was now yelling with shame, and I explain to him: I'm an old
retired soldier, living on a small pension, what do you want from
me, and I get mad: Lily? Where was Lily? And he said I came
back home, Father, and kisses me, that filth, you hear?
I hear, I told him, and I drink another cup Renate gave me
and my head is bursting. And he yells into the receiver, an old
man with manly telephone power, I think for no good reason
you were waiting for me, that Sam tells me, you sat in pajamas
and waited, and I say: I wasn't waiting, I'm cheating death, I
don't sleep at night because eighty-one-year-olds die at night,
and he says, Waiting for death? Germans die standing up, sir, he
told me, the filth, at three in the morning, nineteen seventythree, and he tells me: Your daughter is a whore of Jews, and I
yell: I don't have a daughter because I really don't, and he says a
mothball of a woman and I remember every word, mothball of a
woman, with a pedigreed womb, sing! He orders me and pushes
Greta into the armchair where she was sitting and can't get into
any deeper, and that friend of yours, tells me Take the cards, and
hits me and kisses Greta on her toothless mouth and goes ...