F

THE GREAT LINDEMANN

Years later, long since fully grown and each of them enmeshed in his own particular form of unhappiness, none of Arthur Friedland’s sons could recall whose idea it had actually been to go to the hypnotist that afternoon.

It was 1984, and Arthur didn’t have a job. He wrote novels that no publisher wanted to print, and stories that appeared occasionally in magazines. It was all he did, but his wife was an eye doctor, and that paid the bills.

On the way there he talked to his thirteen-year-old sons about Nietzsche and different brands of chewing gum. They argued about an animated movie that had just opened starring a robot who was also the Redeemer, they traded theories about why Yoda talked so weirdly, and wondered whether Superman was stronger than Batman. Finally they pulled up in front of a line of row houses in a street in the outer boroughs. Arthur honked the horn twice, and within seconds a front door flew open.

His oldest son, Martin, had spent the last two hours sitting at the window waiting for them, dizzy with impatience and boredom. The panes had misted over with his breath, and he’d drawn faces with his finger, some solemn, some laughing, some with their mouths screaming wide. He had wiped the glass clean again and again, watching his breath spread a fine haze back over it. The clock had ticked and ticked — what was taking them so long? A car, then another car, then yet another car, and still it wasn’t them.

Then suddenly a car pulled up and honked twice.

Martin raced down the corridor, past the room into which his mother had retreated so as not to have to see Arthur. It was fourteen years since he had tiptoed swiftly out of her life, but it still tormented her that he could exist without needing her. Martin ran down the stairs and along the main hall, then straight across the street — so fast he didn’t even see the speeding car coming at him. Brakes squealed inches away from him, but he was already in the passenger seat, hands clasped above his head, and only now did his heart let up for a moment.

“My God,” Arthur murmured.

The car that had almost killed Martin was a red VW Golf. The driver kept up a pointless honking, perhaps out of a feeling that such an incident couldn’t go unremarked. Then he stepped on the gas and drove on.

“My God,” Arthur said again.

Martin rubbed his forehead.

“How can anyone be so dumb?” asked one of the twins from the backseat.

Martin felt as if his existence had split in two. He was sitting here, but he was also lying on the asphalt, crumpled and still. His fate seemed as yet undecided, both outcomes were still possible, and for a moment he too had a twin — one there outside, slowly fading away.

“He could be dead,” the other twin said matter-of-factly.

Arthur nodded.

“But is that really true? If God still has a purpose for him? Whatever. In that case nothing can happen to him.”

“But God doesn’t have to have a purpose for him. It’s enough if He knows. If God knows he’s going to be run over, he’ll be run over. If God knows nothing’s going to happen to him, nothing will happen to him.”

“But that can’t be right. That would mean it doesn’t matter what anyone does. Daddy, where’s the mistake?”

“There is no God,” said Arthur. “That’s the mistake.”

Everyone went quiet, then Arthur started the engine and drove off. Martin felt his heartbeat slow. Another couple of minutes and he’d be able to be certain that he was still alive.

“And school?” asked Arthur. “How’s it going?”

Martin looked sideways at his father. Arthur had put on a little weight and his shock of hair, which still had no gray in it, looked, as always, as if it had never been combed. “Math is hard, I’m not sure I’m going to pass. French is still a problem. But not English anymore, thank goodness.” He spoke fast, so as to get out as many words as he could before Arthur lost interest. “I’m good at German, we’ve got a new physics teacher, chemistry is the same as usual, but during experiments …”

“Ivan,” asked Arthur, “have we got the tickets?”

“In your pocket,” one of the twins answered, so now at least Martin knew which one of them was Ivan and which one was Eric.

He eyed them in the rearview mirror. As always, something in their absolute identicalness struck him as false, exaggerated, even unnatural. And this was some years before they started dressing identically too. This phase, in which they liked people to be unable to tell them apart, would only end when they turned eighteen, a short interval during which not even they themselves were entirely sure which of them was which. Thereafter they would repeatedly be overcome by a feeling that they’d each lost themselves at some point and were now leading the other’s life, just as Martin from now on would never be able to rid himself entirely of the suspicion that he had died that afternoon on the street.

“Stop staring like a moron,” said Eric.

Martin turned around and made a grab for Eric’s ear. He almost succeeded, but his brother ducked, seized his arm, and twisted it upward with a jerk. He screamed.

Eric let go and announced cheerfully, “Now he’s crying.”

“Pig,” said Martin shakily. “Stupid pig.”

“You’re right,” said Ivan. “Now he’s crying.”

“Pig.”

“Pig yourself.”

“You’re the pig.”

“No, you are.”

At that point they ran out of things to say. Martin stared out of the window until he was sure that his tears would stop. The shop windows that lined the street gave back the reflection of the car as it passed: first shrunken, then elongated, then bent into a half-moon.

“How’s your mother?” asked Arthur.

Martin hesitated. What was he supposed to say? Arthur had asked this same question right at the beginning, seven years ago, the first time they met. His father had seemed enormously tall, but also weary and somewhat absent, as if enveloped in a fine mist. He had felt shy in front of this man, but also, in some way that he didn’t quite understand, a kind of pity.

“How’s your mother?” the stranger had asked, and Martin had wondered if this really was the man he had encountered so often in his dreams, always in the same black raincoat, always faceless. But it was only that day in the ice cream parlor, as he dug around in his fruit sundae with chocolate sauce, that Martin had realized just how much he enjoyed not having a father. No shining example, no predecessor, and no burden, just a vague image of someone who might show up one day. And now this was him? His teeth weren’t exactly straight, his hair was all over the place, there was a stain on his collar, and his hands looked weathered. He was a man who could have been any other man, a man who looked just like any other man on the street, on the train, anywhere.

“Just how old are you now?”

Martin had swallowed and then said, “Seven.”

“And this is your doll?”

It took Martin a moment to realize that his father was asking about Miss Miller. He had brought her with him, as he always did; he was holding her under his arm without even thinking about it.

“So what’s she called?”

Martin told him.

“Funny name.”

Martin didn’t know how to reply. Miss Miller had always been Miss Miller, that was simply her name. He realized his nose was running. He looked around, but Mama was nowhere to be seen. She had left the ice cream parlor silently as soon as Arthur came in.

No matter how often Martin thought back to that day, and no matter how much he tried to summon up that conversation from the shadows of his memory, he always failed. The reason was that he had imagined it too often before it took place, and the things they actually said to each other soon merged into the things he’d imagined so often over the years. Had Arthur really said that he didn’t have a job and was dedicating himself to thinking about life, or was it just that later, when Martin knew more about his father, he simply attributed this answer to him as the only one that seemed to fit? And could it be that Arthur’s answer to the question of why he had walked out on him and his mother, was that anyone who gave himself over to captivity and the restricted life, to mediocrity and despair, would be incapable of helping any other human being because he would be beyond help himself, succumbing to cancer, heart disease, his life cut short, rot invading his still-breathing body? It was totally plausible that Arthur would give such an answer to a seven-year-old, but Martin didn’t really think it likely that he would have felt confident enough to ask the question in the first place.

It was three months before his father appeared again. This time he picked Martin up from home in a car with two eerily similar boys in the backseat; at first Martin thought they must be an optical illusion. In turn, the pair had looked at him with great but rapidly diminishing curiosity; they were totally focused on themselves, ensnared in the riddle of their doubleness.

“We always think exactly the same thing.”

“Even when it’s complicated stuff. Exactly the same thing.”

“When someone asks us a question, we both come up with the same answer.”

“Even when it’s the wrong one.”

Then they both laughed exactly the same laugh, and a shiver ran down Martin’s spine.

From then on, his father and his brothers picked him up regularly. They went on roller coasters, they went to aquariums with fish that were half asleep, they took walks through the woods on the edge of town, they went swimming in pools smelling of chlorine and full of screaming children and sunlight. Arthur was always credited with making an effort, but he was never fully focused on what he was doing, and even the twins made little effort to disguise the fact that they were along for the ride because they had no choice. Although this was totally clear to Martin, these were the happiest afternoons of his life. On the most recent visit, Arthur had given him a brightly colored cube, with sides you could twist in all directions, a new toy that had just come onto the market. Soon Martin was spending hours with it, he could have spent entire days, he was totally in thrall.

“Martin!”

He turned around again.

“Are you asleep?”

He wondered about trying to grab him again, but then decided it was better to leave things be. What was the point — Eric was stronger than he was.

Pity, thought Eric. He would like to have given Martin a whack on the ear, although he didn’t really have anything against him. It just made him mad that his brother was so helpless, so quiet and timid. Besides which he still blamed him for the moment seven years ago when their parents had called them into the living room one evening to tell them something important.

“Are you splitting up?” Ivan had asked.

Their parents, shocked, had shaken their heads and said, “No, no, absolutely not, no,” and Arthur had told them about Martin’s existence.

Eric was so astonished that he immediately decided to behave as if this were a big joke, but even as he tried to draw breath and laugh, Ivan, who was sitting right next to him, started to snigger, which was the way things were if you were yourself and simultaneously one half of a pair, and no thought was ever yours exclusively.

“It’s not a joke,” said Arthur.

But why not until now, was what Eric wanted to ask. Except that once again Ivan had already got out ahead of him: “Why not until now?”

Things were sometimes complicated, was Arthur’s answer.

He had cast a helpless look at their mother, but she had sat there with her arms crossed and said that even grown-ups were not always that smart.

The other boy’s mother, according to Arthur, always bad-mouthed him and didn’t want him to see his son, and he went along with that all too easily, if the truth be known, because it made things easier, and it was only recently that he’d changed his mind. And now he was off to meet Martin.

Eric had never seen their father nervous before. Who needed this Martin person, he thought, and how could Arthur have done anything so stupid to them?

Eric had known quite early on that he wanted to be different from his father. He wanted to make money, he wanted to be taken seriously, he didn’t want to be the kind of person that people secretly pitied. Which was why on the first day in his new school, he had attacked the biggest boy in his class, without any warning, of course, so surprise had given him the necessary advantage. Eric had knocked him to the ground, then knelt on him, grabbed him by the ears, and banged his head into the floor three times until he felt his resistance give way. Then, just for effect, he had landed a well-aimed blow on his nose, because a nose-bleed always made a big impression. And the big boy, for whom Eric was already feeling sorry, had burst into tears. Eric had let him get up, and the boy had groped and sniffled his way away with a reddening handkerchief pressed to his face. Since then Eric had been an object of fear for the rest of his class, and nobody noticed how anxious he was himself.

For it all came down to determination, he knew that already. Whether it was the teachers, or other pupils, or even his parents, they were all divided within themselves, all torn, all halfhearted. None of them could stand up against someone who had a goal and really went after it. That was as sure as sure could be, as sure as five times two equals ten, or that we’re all surrounded by ghosts whose shapes are visible only occasionally in the twilight.

“I’ve made a wrong turn,” said Arthur.

“Not again,” said Eric.

“It’s just a trick,” said Ivan. “Because you don’t want to go.”

“Of course I don’t want to go. But it’s not a trick.”

Arthur steered to the curb and got out. Warm summer air streamed into the car, other cars raced past, and there was a smell of gasoline. On the street he asked people for directions; an old lady waved him off, a boy on roller skates didn’t even stop, a man wearing a large hat pointed left then right, up and down. For a while Arthur spoke to a young woman. She tilted her head, Arthur smiled, she pointed somewhere, Arthur nodded and said something, she laughed, then she said something while he laughed, then they said goodbye, and as she moved past him she touched his shoulder. He got back into the car, still smiling.

“Did she explain it to you?” asked Ivan.

“She wasn’t from around here. But the man before her knew the answer.”

He made a couple of turns, then they were at the entrance to a parking garage. Eric stared anxiously into the darkness. He would never be able to tell anyone how much he hated every tunnel, every cavernous opening, every closed space. But apparently Ivan knew it anyway, just as it always happened to Eric too that he found himself thinking his twin brother’s thoughts instead of his own, and words surfaced in his mind that he didn’t know. It also happened frequently that when he woke up, he remembered strangely Technicolor dreams — Ivan’s dreams were brighter than his own, somehow more all-encompassing, and the air in them seemed fresher. And yet they could still hide things from each other. Eric had never understood why Ivan was afraid of dogs when dogs really were among the most harmless of creatures; he didn’t understand why Ivan liked talking to blondes more than brunettes, and it was a mystery to him why the old paintings that just bored him in museums awakened such complicated feelings in his brother.

They got out. Long fluorescent bulbs gave off a wan light. Eric crossed his arms and stared at the ground.

“You don’t believe in hypnosis?” asked Ivan.

“I believe people can persuade each other of anything,” said Arthur.

They got into the elevator, the doors closed, and Eric fought to control his panic. What if the cable broke? Such a thing had happened before, it would happen again, so why not here? The elevator finally stopped, the doors opened, and they walked toward the theater. The Great Lindemann, it said on a banner. Master of Hypnosis. Afternoon Performance. There was a poster showing an unprepossessing man with glasses, obviously trying to look forbidding and penetrating at the same time. There were shadows across his face, the lighting was theatrical, it was a terrible photo. Lindemann, it said to one side, will teach you to fear your dreams.

A young man yawned as he checked their tickets. They had good seats, close to the front, in the third row. The orchestra was almost full, but there was no one up in any of the circles. Ivan looked up at the heavily decorated ceiling and wondered how anyone could paint that. The artist had used skilled trompe l’oeil effects to conjure up a nonexistent barrel vault. How did you draw this when you wanted to show that there really was both no second space there and simply the illusion of one? There was nothing about it in any book.

No one to help you. No book, no teacher. You had to figure out everything important for yourself, and if you didn’t, you had failed your life’s purpose. Ivan often wondered how people with no particular gifts put up with their existence. He saw that his mother wished some other life for herself and that his father was always somewhere else in his thoughts. He saw that his schoolteachers were sad little souls, and naturally he knew about the apparitions that tormented Eric. Whenever he got caught up in one of Eric’s dreams, he found himself in a dark, sticky place where no one would want to be. He also saw Martin, who was too weak and spent too much time alone with his mother. Ivan sighed. Hypnotism didn’t interest him, he’d rather have been at home again, so that he could draw. Just keep drawing until you finally get better at it, that was all that counted, it was the only thing he wanted.

The light dimmed and the murmur of conversation died away. The curtain opened. Lindemann was standing on the stage.

He was plump and had a bald spot that was made all the more noticeable by the few sparse hairs combed over the nakedness of his skull, and he was wearing black horn-rimmed glasses. His suit was gray, and there was a little green handkerchief in the breast pocket. Without preamble, without so much as a bow, he softly began to speak.

Hypnosis, he said, was not the same as sleep, but rather a state of inner wakefulness, not submission, but self-empowerment. The audience would witness astonishing things today, but nobody need have cause for concern, for nobody could knowingly be hypnotized against their will, and nobody could be made to perform some act that in the depths of their soul they were not ready to perform. He then paused for a moment, and smiled as if he’d just delivered some rather abstruse joke.

A narrow set of steps led down from the stage into the audience. Lindemann descended them, touched his glasses, looked around, and walked up the center aisle. Obviously he was now deciding which people to take back up onto the stage. Ivan, Eric, and Martin lowered their heads.

“Don’t worry,” said Arthur. “He only takes grown-ups.”

“So maybe it’ll be you.”

“It doesn’t work on me.”

They were about to see something big, said Lindemann. Anyone who didn’t want to participate mustn’t worry, he wouldn’t come too close, the person would be excused. He reached the last row, ran back surprisingly nimbly, and jumped up onto the stage. For starters, he said, something light, just a joke, a little something. Everyone in the first row, please come up here!

A murmur ran through the theater.

Yes, said Lindemann, the first row. All of you. Please be quick!

“What does he do if someone says no?” whispered Martin. “If someone just stays in his seat, then what?”

Everyone in the first row stood up. They whispered to one another and looked around unwillingly, but they obeyed and climbed up onto the stage.

“Stand in a line,” Lindemann ordered. “And hold hands.”

Hesitantly, they did so.

No one was to let go of anyone else, said Lindemann as he walked along the line, no one would want to, so no one would do it, and because no one would want to, no one would be able to, and because no one would be able to, it wouldn’t be wrong to declare that everyone was literally sticking to one another. As he was talking, he reached out here and there to touch people’s hands. Tight, he said, hold hands tight, really tight, nobody step out of the line, nobody let go, really tight, indissoluble. Anyone who wanted to should try and see what happened now.

Nobody let go. Lindemann turned to the audience, and there was some timid applause. Ivan leaned forward to get a better look at the people onstage. They looked uncertain, absentminded, somehow frozen. A little man was clenching his jaws, the hands of a lady with hair pulled into a bun were shaking, as if she wanted to tear free but was finding that her neighbor’s grip, just like her own, was too strong.

He would count to three, said Lindemann, then everyone’s hands would let go. “So one. And two. And …,” he slowly lifted his hand. “Three!” and snapped his fingers.

Uncertainly, almost unwillingly, they let go, looking at their hands in embarrassment.

“Now go sit down again quick,” said Lindemann. “Down. Quick. Quick.” He clapped his hands.

The woman with the bun was pale and swayed as she walked. Lindemann took her gently by the elbow, led her to the steps, and spoke to her quietly. When he let go, she was more sure-footed, went down the steps, and reached her seat.

That had been a little experiment, said Lindemann, an opening trick. Now for something serious. He went to the front of the stage, took off his glasses, and squinted with his eyes scrunched up. “The gentleman in front over there in the pullover and the gentleman right behind him, and you, young lady, please come up.”

Smiling awkwardly, the trio climbed onto the stage. The woman waved at someone, Lindemann shook his head in reproof, and she stopped. He positioned himself next to the first of them, a tall, heavyset man with a beard, and held his hand in front of the man’s eyes. He spoke into his ear for a while, then suddenly called, “Sleep!” The man fell over, Lindemann caught him and laid him down on the floor. Then he stepped over to the woman next to him and the same thing happened. And then again with the other man. They all lay there motionless.

“And now be happy!”

He must explain, he said. Lindemann turned toward the audience, removed his horn-rims, pulled the green handkerchief out of his breast pocket, and began to polish them. They were all only too familiar, were they not, with the stupid suggestions that mediocre hypnotists — pretentious and untalented incompetents of the sort you encounter by the dozen in any profession — love to instill in their guinea pigs: freezing cold or boiling heat, bodily stiffness, sensations of flying or falling, not to mention the universally beloved forgetting of your own name. He paused and stared thoughtfully into the air. It was hot in here, wasn’t it? Terribly hot. So what could be going on? He mopped his brow. Such idiocies were familiar to everyone and he would skip them without further ado. My God, wasn’t it hot!

Ivan pushed his wet hair back off his forehead. The heat seemed to be rising off the floor in waves, the air was damp. Eric’s face was all shiny too. Programs were flapping the air all over the audience.

But something could surely be done to fix it, said Lindemann. Not to worry, the theater had capable technicians. Someone would turn on the excellent air-conditioning at any moment. In fact, it had already been done. Up here you could already hear the humming of the machinery. You could feel the rush of air. He turned up his collar. But now it really was blowing terribly. The equipment was astonishingly powerful. He blew on his hands and shifted from foot to foot. It was cold in here, very cold, really very, very cold indeed.

“What’s going on?” said Arthur.

“Haven’t you noticed?” whispered Ivan. His breath was rising in clouds, his feet had turned numb, and he was having trouble inhaling. Martin’s teeth were chattering. Eric sneezed.

“No,” said Arthur.

“Nothing?”

“I told you, it doesn’t work on me.”

But that was not enough, said Lindemann. Over. The end. As he’d already said, he didn’t want to waste anyone’s time with such tricks. Now he was going to get to something interesting without any further delay, namely, the direct manipulation of the powers of the mind. The lady and the gentleman here on the floor had already been following his instructions for some time. They were happy. Right here and now, in full view of everyone, they were experiencing the happiest moments of their lives. “Sit up!”

Awkwardly, they hauled themselves up into a sitting position.

“Now look,” said Lindemann to the woman in the middle.

She opened her eyes. Her bosom rose and fell. There was something unusual about the way she was breathing and the way her eyes moved. Ivan didn’t really understand it, but he recognized something large and complex. He noticed a woman in the row in front of him turning her eyes away from the stage. The man next to her shook his head indignantly.

“Eyes closed,” said Lindemann.

The eyes of the woman on the stage closed immediately. Her mouth was open, a thin stream of saliva was running out of it, and her cheeks shone in the spotlights.

Alas, said Lindemann, nothing lasted forever, and the best things always ended first. Life could seem immense and miraculous now, but the truth was that nothing lasted, everything rotted away, everything died, without exception. One almost always repressed that fact. But not now, no, not at this particular moment. “Now you know it.”

The bearded man groaned. The woman slowly sank backward and held her hands over her eyes. The other man sobbed quietly.

But, said Lindemann, one could still feel cheerful. Life being a short day between two endlessly long nights, one should enjoy the bright moments even more and dance for as long as the sun still shone. He clapped his hands.

Obediently this trio stood up. Lindemann clapped the beat, slowly at first, then faster. They leapt like marionettes, throwing their limbs this way and that, and spun their heads. There was absolute silence, no one coughed, no one cleared their throat, the audience seemed transfixed by horror. The only sound was the stamping and panting coming from the stage, and the creaking of the boards.

“Now lie down again,” said Lindemann. “And dream!”

Two of them immediately sank to the floor, while the man furthest to the left still remained standing, and seemed to grope with his hands — but then his knees also buckled, and he stopped moving. Lindemann bent down and looked at him closely. Then he turned to face the audience.

He said he now wanted to conduct a difficult experiment. Only a handful of practitioners could pull it off, it required the highest skills. “Dream deeply. Deeply, deeper than ever. Dream a new life. Be children, learn, grow up, fight, suffer, and hope, win and lose, love and lose again, grow old, grow weak, grow frail, and then die, it all goes so fast, and when I tell you, open your eyes and none of it will have happened.”

He folded his hands and stood there silent for a long moment.

This experiment, he finally said, didn’t always work. Certain subjects woke up and had experienced nothing. Others, by contrast, begged him to erase their memories of the dream because the experience was too disturbing, in order to regain the ability to trust both time and reality. He checked the time. But meantime, in order to occupy themselves while they were waiting, a couple of simple things perhaps? Any children in the audience? He went up on tiptoe. That boy there in the fifth row, the little girl on the end, and this boy in the third row, the one who’s the spitting image of the boy right next to him. Come up!

Ivan looked to the right, then the left, and behind him. Then he pointed to himself questioningly.

“Yes,” said Lindemann. “You.”

“But you said he only calls grown-ups onto the stage,” whispered Ivan.

“Well, I was wrong.”

Ivan felt the blood rush into his face. His heart pounded. The other two children were already on their way to the stage. Lindemann fixed him with his eyes.

“Just stay where you are,” said Arthur. “He can’t order you around.”

Ivan slowly got to his feet. He looked around. Everyone was looking at him, everyone in the auditorium, every single person in the entire theater. No, Arthur was wrong, there was no way to refuse, it was, after all, a hypno-show, and whoever had come had to take part. He heard Arthur say something else, but he didn’t understand it, his heart was thumping too loudly, and he was already starting toward the stage. He pushed past the knees of the people in the seats and went up the center aisle.

How bright it was up here. The spotlights were unexpectedly powerful and the people in the audience mere outlines. The three grown-ups were lying motionless, no sign of life, no sign of breath. Ivan looked out into the orchestra but couldn’t locate Arthur or his brothers. Lindemann was already right there in front of him, down on one knee, pushing him back a step very carefully, as if he were a fragile piece of furniture, and looking into his face.

“We’re going to do it,” he said softly.

Up close, Lindemann looked older. There were furrows around his mouth and eyes, and his makeup was sloppy. Anyone painting his portrait would have had to concentrate on the eyes, deep-set and hooded behind the horn-rims: restless, unreadable eyes, giving the lie to the cliché that hypnotists stared so intensely that a subject would lose himself in their gaze. In addition, he smelled of peppermint.

“What’s your name?” he asked in a slightly louder voice.

Ivan swallowed and told him.

“Relax, Ivan,” said Lindemann, his voice now loud enough to carry to the people in the front few rows. “Fold your hands, Ivan. Clasp your fingers.”

Ivan did so, wondering how anyone was supposed to relax on a stage in front of so many people. Lindemann couldn’t mean it seriously; he was just saying it to confuse him.

“That’s right.” Lindemann was now addressing all three children, loud enough to be heard anywhere in the theater. “Absolutely quiet, absolutely relaxed, but you can no longer separate your hands. They’re stuck to each other, you can’t do it.”

But it wasn’t true! Ivan could easily have separated his hands, he felt no resistance and no blockage. But he didn’t feel like blaming Lindemann. He just wanted it to be over.

Lindemann talked and talked. The word relax kept being repeated, and he kept saying something about listening and obeying. Maybe it was working with the other two, but it was having no effect on Ivan. He felt no different than before, there was absolutely no question of a trance. It was just that his nose itched. And he needed to go to the toilet.

“Try,” said Lindemann to the boy next to Ivan. “You can’t let go, you can’t, try, you won’t be able to.”

Ivan heard a deep rumbling noise; it took him a few moments to realize that it was laughter. The audience was laughing at them. But not at me, thought Ivan, he must have noticed that it’s not working on me, that’s why he’s not asking me questions.

“Lift your right foot,” said Lindemann. “All three of you. Now.”

Ivan saw the other two lift their feet. He could feel all eyes on him. He was sweating. So what could he do? He lifted his foot. Now they’d all think he was hypnotized.

“Forget your name,” said Lindemann to him.

He could feel the anger rising in him. It was all becoming truly stupid. If the man asked him again, he’d show him up in front of everyone.

“Say it!”

Ivan cleared his throat.

“You can’t, you’ve forgotten it, you can’t. What’s your name?”

The problem was the situation, it was so horribly bright and also really hard to stand on one leg in front of all those people, it took all your concentration to keep your balance. It wasn’t his memory that was letting him down, it was his voice. It stuck in his throat and wouldn’t come out. Whatever anyone asked him now, he’d have to stay silent.

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen,” he heard himself say. So by sheer will he could do it.

“What’s your mother’s name?”

“Katharina.”

“Your father?”

“Arthur.”

“Is that the gentleman down there?”

“Yes.”

“And what’s your name?”

He said nothing.

“You don’t know it?”

Of course he knew it. He could feel the contours of his name; he knew where it was in his memory; he felt it, but it seemed to him that the person this name belonged to was not the person Lindemann was asking, so none of this really hung together, and it was completely irrelevant when set against the fact that he was on one leg on a stage with an itchy nose, his hands squeezed together, and he needed to go to the toilet. And then the name came back to him again, Ivan of course, Ivan, he drew breath and opened his mouth …

“And you?” Lindemann asked the boy next to him. “Do you know your name?”

Now I’ve got it, Ivan wanted to shout, now I can say it! But he stayed silent, it was a relief that the whole thing was no longer about him. He heard Lindemann ask the other two something, he heard them answer, he heard the audience laugh and clap. He felt drops of sweat running down his forehead, but he couldn’t wipe them away, it would have been embarrassing to move his hands now when they all thought he was in a trance.

“It’s already over,” said Lindemann. “Not so bad, was it? Separate your hands, stand on both legs, you know your names again. It’s over. Wake up. It’s over.”

Ivan lowered his foot. Of course it was easy, he could have done it the whole time.

“It’s okay,” said Lindemann softly, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s over.”

Ivan went down the steps behind the other two. He would have liked to ask them what it had been like for them, what they’d seen and thought, how it felt to be genuinely hypnotized. But he was already back in the third row, people made room for him, he pushed past their knees, and dropped into his seat. He let out a breath.

“How was it?” whispered Martin.

Ivan shrugged.

“Do you remember, or have you forgotten it all?”

Ivan wanted to answer that of course he hadn’t forgotten anything and that the whole thing had been a silly trick, but then he realized that the people in the rows in front of them had turned around. They weren’t looking at the stage, they were looking at him. He glanced around. The whole theater was looking at him. Lindemann had lied. It wasn’t over.

“Is that him?” asked Lindemann.

Ivan stared up at the stage.

“Your father. Is that him?”

Ivan looked at Arthur, looked at Lindemann, looked back at Arthur. Then he nodded.

“Would you like to join me, Arthur?”

Arthur shook his head.

“You think you don’t want to. But you do. Believe me.”

Arthur laughed.

“It doesn’t hurt, it isn’t dangerous, you might even like it. Give us the pleasure.”

Arthur shook his head.

“Not at all curious?”

“It doesn’t work on me,” called Arthur.

“Perhaps not. Maybe that’s right, it can happen. All the more reason for you to come up here.”

“Take someone else.”

“But I want you.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what I want. Because you believe you don’t want to.”

Arthur shook his head.

“Come!”

“Go on,” whispered Eric.

“They’re all looking at us,” whispered Ivan.

“So what?” said Arthur. “Let them look. Why do children find everything embarrassing?”

“Let’s all say it together!” called Lindemann. “Send him up here to me, show him, clap if you think he should come. Clap loud!”

Wild applause erupted, with stamping of feet and calling, as if nothing were more important to everyone than getting Lindemann’s wish granted, as if none of them could imagine anything more satisfying than seeing Arthur up on stage. The noise achieved a crescendo as more and more voices joined in: people were clapping and yelling. Arthur didn’t budge.

“Please!” cried Eric.

“Please go,” said Martin. “Please!”

“Only for you,” said Arthur, and got to his feet. He worked his way through the howling crowd to the center aisle, walked to the steps, and climbed them. Lindemann made a rapid gesture and the racket ceased.

“You’re going to have bad luck with me,” said Arthur.

“Possibly.”

“It really doesn’t work.”

“That nice boy. That was your son?”

“I’m sorry. I’m the wrong person. You want someone who feels awkward at first, and then chats with you and tells you things about himself, so that you can turn him into a joke and make everyone laugh. Why don’t we skip all that? You can’t hypnotize me. I know how it works. A little pressure, a little curiosity, the need to belong, the fear of doing something wrong. But not with me.”

Lindemann said nothing. The lenses of his glasses glinted under the spotlights.

“Can they hear us?” Arthur pointed to the three motionless bodies.

“They’re busy with other things.”

“And that’s what you’d like to do with me too? Give me another life?”

Ivan wondered how his father was managing to let them all understand every word he said. He had no microphone and he was speaking softly, yet he was completely audible. He stood there calmly as if he were alone with the hypnotist and allowed to ask whatever he wanted. Nor did he seem to be absentminded anymore. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

Lindemann, on the contrary, looked unsure of himself for the first time. He was still smiling, but frown lines had appeared on his forehead. Gingerly he took off his glasses, put them on again, took them off once more, folded them up, and pushed them into his breast pocket behind the green handkerchief. He raised his right hand and held it over Arthur’s forehead.

“Look at my hand.”

Arthur smiled.

The sound of giggling spread through the audience. Lindemann grimaced for a moment. “Look at my hand, look at it, look at my hand. Just my hand, nothing else, just at my hand.”

“I don’t notice anything.”

“Nor should you.” Lindemann sounded agitated. “Just look! Look at my hand, my hand, nothing else.”

“You’re focusing my consciousness on itself, aren’t you? That’s the trick. My attention is focused on my own attention. A slipknot, and suddenly, it’s impossible …”

“Are those your sons down there?”

“Yes.”

“What are their names?”

“Ivan, Eric, and Martin.”

“Ivan and Eric?”

“The Knights of the Round Table.”

“Tell us about yourself.”

Arthur said nothing.

“Tell us about yourself,” Lindemann said again. “We’re all friends here.”

“There’s not much to say.”

“What a pity. How sad, if true.”

Lindemann lowered his hand, bent forward, and looked at Arthur in the face. Everything was very quiet, the only sound was a faint hiss, perhaps from the air-conditioning, perhaps from the electrical current to the spotlights. Lindemann took a step back, a board creaked, one of the sleeping bodies groaned.

“What do you do for a living?”

Arthur said nothing.

“Or don’t you have a job?”

“I write.”

“Books?”

“If what I write got printed, they’d be books.”

“Rejections?”

“A few.”

“That’s bad.”

“No, it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t bother you at all?”

“I’m not that ambitious.”

“Really?”

Arthur said nothing.

“You don’t look as if you’d settle for a little. You might want to believe that of yourself, but actually you don’t. What do you really want? We’re all friends here. What do you want?”

“To get away.”

“From here?”

“From everywhere.”

“From home?”

“From everywhere.”

“It doesn’t sound as if you’re happy.”

“Who’s happy?”

“Please answer.”

“No.”

“Not happy?”

“No.”

“Say that again.”

“I’m not happy.”

“Why do you stick it out?”

“What else is there to do?”

“Run?”

“You can’t just keep running.”

“Why not?”

Arthur didn’t reply.

“And your children? Do you love them?”

“You have to.”

“Right. You have to. All of them equally?”

“Ivan more.”

“Why?”

“He’s more like me.”

“And your wife? We’re all friends here.”

“She likes me.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“She earns money for us, she takes care of everything, where would I be without her?”

“Free perhaps?”

Arthur said nothing.

“What do you think of me? You didn’t want to come up onto the stage, and now you’re standing here. You thought it wouldn’t work on you. What do you think now? For example, of me?”

“A little man. Insecure about everything, which is why you are what you are. Because without all this here, you’d be nothing. Because you stutter whenever you’re not up here.”

Lindemann was silent for a while, as if giving the audience the chance to laugh, but there wasn’t a sound. His face looked white and waxy; Arthur stood very straight, his arms by his sides, stock-still.

“And your work? Your writing? Arthur, what is it with all that?”

“Not important.”

“Why not?”

“A hobby. No reason to fuss about it.”

“It doesn’t bother you that your work doesn’t get published?”

“No.”

“That you aren’t any good? It doesn’t bother you?”

Arthur took a small step back.

“You think you have no ambition? But maybe it would be better if you did, Arthur. Maybe ambition would be an improvement, maybe you should be good, maybe you should admit to yourself that you want to be good, maybe you should make the effort, maybe you should work at it, maybe you should change your life. Change everything. Change everything, Arthur. What do you think?”

Arthur said nothing.

Lindemann moved even closer to him, went up on tiptoe and put his face close to Arthur’s. “This superiority. Why make the effort, is what you’ve always thought, isn’t it? But now? Now that your youth is over, now that everything you do carries weight, now that there’s no time to be casual anymore, what now? Life is over very quickly, Arthur. And it gets squandered even more quickly. What needs to happen? Where do you want to go?”

“Away.”

“From here?”

“From everywhere.”

“Then listen to me.” Lindemann put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “This is an order, and you’re going to follow it because you want to follow it, and you want to because I’m ordering you, and I’m ordering you because you want me to give the order. Starting today, you’re going to make an effort. No matter what it costs. Repeat!”

“No matter what it costs.”

“Starting today.”

“Starting today,” said Arthur. “No matter what it costs.”

“With everything you’ve got.”

“No matter what it costs.”

“And what just happened here shouldn’t bother you. You can think back on it quite cheerfully. Repeat.”

“Cheerfully.”

“And it really isn’t important. It’s all a game, Arthur, just fun. A way to pass the time on an afternoon. Just like your writing. Like everything people do. I’m going to clap my hands three times, then you can go and sit down.”

Lindemann clapped his hands: once, twice, three times. There was no sign of any change in Arthur. He stood just as he had before, back straight, his neck tilted slightly backward. There wasn’t a sound to be heard. Hesitantly, he turned around and went down the steps. Gradually timid applause broke out here and there, but once Arthur had reached his seat, it crescendoed into a thunder. Lindemann bowed and pointed to Arthur. Arthur imitated him with an empty smile and bowed back.

That was what was so wonderful about his métier, said Lindemann when the noise had finally died down. One never knew what the day would bring, one could never foresee the demands that would be made on one. But now finally for the high point, the star turn. With a light touch on her cheek he woke the sleeping woman and asked what she had experienced.

She sat up, but after a few sentences the excitement took her breath away. She panted, sobbed, gasped for air. In tears, she described a life as a farmer’s wife in the Caucasus, and a hard childhood in the winter cold, she spoke about her brothers and sisters, her father and mother, her husband, the animals, and the snow.

“Can we go?” whispered Ivan.

“Yes, please,” said Eric.

“Why?”

“Please,” said Martin. “Please, let’s go! Please.”

As they stood up, there was the sound of snickering in the audience. Eric clenched his fists and said to himself that he was only imagining it, while Martin understood for the very first time that people could be mean-spirited and spiteful, taking malicious pleasure in things for no reason at all. They could also be spontaneously good, friendly, and supportive, and both these qualities could exist simultaneously in the same person. But above all, people were dangerous. This realization would stay with him permanently, bound up forever with a memory of Lindemann’s face looking down from the stage at their departure, as he polished his glasses with the green handkerchief. At the very moment Martin, bringing up the rear, was leaving the theater, he caught Lindemann’s expression: eyebrows arched, smiling, wet tongue peeping from a corner of his mouth. Then there was a little click and the door closed behind him.

The whole way home, Arthur beat time on the steering wheel and whistled. Martin sat very straight next to him, while Ivan stared out of one window and Eric out of the other. Twice Arthur asked what on earth had upset them, why they’d wanted to leave, and why in the world children found everything so embarrassing, but when no one replied, he just said there were some things he’d never understand. That woman, he cried, that idiotic story about the Russian farm, all laid on far too thick, obviously she worked in cahoots with the hypnotist, childishly easy to see through, who would believe stuff like that! He turned on the radio, then turned it off again, then on again, and then, not very long afterward, off again.

“Did you know,” he asked, “that the condor flies higher than any other birds?”

“No,” said Eric. “I didn’t know.”

“So high that sometimes it’s no longer visible from the ground. As high as a plane. Sometimes so high, that the distance above it is shorter than the distance below.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Ivan. “Above it to where?”

“You know, above it!” Arthur rubbed his forehead. For a few seconds he steered with his eyes closed.

“I don’t understand,” said Martin.

“What’s there to understand? I’d rather you tell me about school and how it’s going, you never say anything.”

“Everything’s fine,” said Martin quietly.

“No problems, no difficulties?”

“No.”

Arthur played with the radio again. “So!” he cried. “Out!”

Martin, Eric, and Ivan looked at one another in surprise. Only now did they realize that they were in front of Martin’s house.

Martin got out.

“Us too?” asked Ivan.

“Of course.”

The twins got out rather hesitantly; only Arthur remained sitting where he was. Eric looked down at his shoes. An ant was following a crack in the asphalt, and a gray beetle was crossing its path. Tread on the beetle, said a voice in his head, tread on it, quick — tread on the beetle and then maybe everything will still be all right. He lifted his foot, but then set it down again and spared the beetle’s life.

Arthur wound down the car window. “All my sons.” He laughed, wound the window back up, and put his foot on the gas.

The three of them watched the car drive off, getting smaller until it disappeared around the corner. For a while, nobody said anything.

“How do we get out of here?” Ivan asked finally.

“Five streets over there’s a bus,” said Martin. “After seven stops you change to another bus, then it’s three stops, then you can switch to the subway.”

“Can we come in with you?” asked Eric.

Martin shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Mama’s a bit funny about that sort of thing.”

“We’re your brothers.”

“Exactly.”

But when they rang the doorbell anyway, Martin’s mother came to grips with the situation surprisingly quickly. It was unbelievable, she kept saying, impossible to take in, like two peas in a pod. She gave the twins Coca-Cola and a plateful of sugary gummy bears, which they ate so as not to be rude, and of course she allowed Ivan to use the phone to call home.

After that they went to Martin’s room and he got out the little air gun that Arthur had given him just a few months before and that he kept well hidden from his mother. The three of them positioned themselves at the window and took turns aiming at the tree that was slowly disappearing in the darkness on the edge of the street. Eric scored twice on the trunk and twice just leaves, Ivan hit the trunk twice but no leaves. Martin hit one leaf but not the trunk, and gradually they began to feel that they were related, and realized what it meant to be brothers.

And a car was already pulling up with a sharp honking of its horn to summon Eric and Ivan down the stairs and into the street. When their mother asked them what had happened and where their father was, they didn’t know how to answer her. It wasn’t until a telegram arrived from Arthur shortly after midnight that she got the two of them out of bed and made them tell her all about it.

Arthur had taken his passport and all the money in their joint account. There were only two sentences in the telegram: First, he was fine, no need for concern. Second, they shouldn’t wait for him, he wouldn’t be coming back for a long time. And in fact none of his sons set eyes on him again until they were grown up. But the following years did see the publication of the books that made Arthur Friedland’s name famous.