The Jewish Messiah

I’m On Fire

XAVIER WALKED straddle-legged through the streets of Basel, like an animal that has been hit by a car and is dragging itself to its lair. Every once in a while, his trousers fell to his knees. Awromele hitched them up quickly, so passersby wouldn’t see the little mummy. A woman crossed to the other side hurriedly, fear in her eyes, when she saw the boys coming.

From one moment to the next, nothing is left of you but the pain. At a Biergarten, Awromele called a taxi. Under the circumstances, public transport did not seem like an option. The first cabdriver who showed up refused to take them. The second one was more tolerant. In the backseat, Awromele sang Yiddish songs to keep Xavier from losing courage. But Xavier had already lost it.

The cabdriver, a foreigner, stopped in front of Xavier’s house.

It was important that his mother not see Awromele — the time wasn’t ripe for that yet. “You go on,” Xavier whispered, “I’ll be okay.” He wormed his way out of the cab. His shame was stronger than his pain, but not much.

Only when he reached the door did he realize that his keys were in the pocket of his jeans, still hanging over a chair at Mr. Schwartz’s house.

He rang the bell. Then he was finished. He tried to sit down, but he fell, flat on his face at his own front door.

Xavier’s mother heard the bell, but she made a point of not opening the door for strangers. Just like her late husband — he had always been opposed to that, too. Right after he had started practicing as an architect, he had seen A Clockwork Orange, and had decided then and there never to open the door for strangers again. Not even in wartime. Particularly not in wartime.

Xavier tried to get to his feet a few times, but couldn’t. It felt as though a novice acupuncturist were jamming a thousand needles into Xavier’s sex organ. The paralyzed feeling grew stronger. Maybe Mr. Schwartz had accidentally severed something important.

Because Xavier had not come home for dinner as he usually did, the mother decided after a few minutes to go and see who was ringing the bell. She opened the door, but saw nothing. She was about to close it again when she noticed her son lying on the doorstep at her feet. On his back. Like an animal. The boy reminded her of an overgrown alley cat. She didn’t like alley cats.

“Xavier,” she said, “what on earth do you think you’re doing?”

Only then did she see that her son was wearing a pair of unfamiliar trousers. She couldn’t see the mummy under the trousers, which was probably just as well.

“What are you wearing?”

“I lost my pants,” Xavier whispered.

She started to bend over, to take a better look at the trousers, but caught a whiff of alcohol. She was no fool. She knew exactly what alcohol smelled like, even though she didn’t drink much herself.

“Lost your pants,” she said. “Don’t make me laugh! You didn’t go hiking in the mountains at all, you went out carousing with those so-called friends of yours. You’re a drunkard. I’m so disappointed.”

Then she closed the door and went back to the table. She had waited for Xavier before starting with dinner, but she had no intention of waiting any longer. She dished out the food and shouted, “Marc, dinner’s ready!”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Marc called from upstairs. “I’m right in the middle of a forced landing.”

Outside, on the doorstep, Xavier howled as loudly as he could: “I haven’t been drinking, Mama, help me, open the door. Please, open the door, Mama.”

A window flew open, and a woman shrieked, “Shut up, or I’ll call the police.”

Xavier stopped his howling. Now there was only the pain, the pain that kept getting worse. It felt as though the circumcision were still going on, as though Mr. Schwartz were beginning over and over again on the same operation. Like a mantra, Xavier repeated quietly, “Accept, O Lord, this humble sacrifice.”

Marc came downstairs at last. He had made it. He liked forced landings — they kept things a little exciting. Sometimes, when he was bored, Marc would throw his plane into a nosedive.

He poked his fork absentmindedly into the homemade mashed potatoes. Xavier’s mother made almost everything from scratch.

“He’s been out carousing with his friends,” Xavier’s mother said. “Now he’s lying in front of the door. But I think I’ll just let him lie there. That will teach him.”

“Who?” Marc asked.

“Xavier.”

“Oh,” Marc said, cutting off a piece of chicken. “Where did you say he was lying?”

“In front of the door. Spare the rod and spoil the child,” Xavier’s mother declared, without knowing exactly why. Ever since her husband’s death, she had grown more voluble. Sometimes, to her own surprise, she discovered that life actually appealed to her.

A man with a dog of indeterminate breed stopped to stare at Xavier.

“I live here,” Xavier said quietly, “but I lost my keys.” Then he couldn’t help it anymore, he moaned. Not the way actors moan in a pornographic film, but the moaning you hear when you walk into a hospital ward in which twelve patients are just coming out from under anesthetic.

The man with the dog looked at Xavier — without fear, but also without much interest. He looked at him the way you might look at a new work of art in a local park and think: I’ve seen worse.

In the living room, the mother dished herself a second helping. Marc didn’t eat enough, she felt, and she hadn’t gone to all the trouble of making mashed potatoes just to have them wasted. “He needs to learn a lesson,” she said. “Let him lie there for a couple of hours. Let him come to his senses. Later on, he’ll thank me for it.”

“He’s a good-looking boy,” Marc said, pouring a little more mineral water for himself and his girlfriend.

“Who?”

“Xavier.”

“Oh.”

“He looks like President Kennedy in his younger years, but with different hair.”

“Well,” Xavier’s mother said, “I’ve never noticed that.” Only a few minutes ago, her son had reminded her of an abandoned alley cat, and President Kennedy definitely had never reminded anyone of an abandoned alley cat, not even in his younger years.

Marc started reading the label on the bottle of mineral water. “Did you know that tap water is actually a lot better for you?” he asked.

“No,” the mother said, “I didn’t know that. And it’s not true, either.”

Outside, the man with the dog continued to stare at Xavier. The dog did its duty, and took a long time doing so. Old dogs resemble old people in that respect.

Xavier should have been able to smell it — it took place less than ten feet from his head — but the stink couldn’t reach him anymore. He mumbled, “Help me, please, help me.” Not too loudly — he was afraid the neighbors would call the police.

“So you live here?” the man asked, once the dog was finished. “I live here, too. I’ve never seen you around.”

Xavier thought his balls and his sex organ were going to explode, that little pieces of flesh would go flying past his ears, and that the rest of him would then explode as well. All that would be left was a hundred thousand pieces of flesh, flying into the air higher and higher.

“I walk past here every night,” the man said, “with Lou.” He scratched the dog’s head.

Xavier moaned, almost inaudibly, but the street was quiet, and Lou’s master could hear Xavier’s moan quite clearly. “You wouldn’t say so from the looks of him,” the man said, “but when this dog was young he took part in more than forty dog shows. Lots of honorable mentions. A couple of times he even won third prize.” The man petted the dog, which had grown too old to be eligible for honorary mentions.

“Please, help me,” Xavier was finally able to utter. “Please, won’t you please help me?”

The man looked at him in surprise — as though he only realized now what Xavier had been saying all this time.

He pulled a one-franc piece out of his pocket and set it carefully beside Xavier’s head. Then he walked on. He was pleased with himself. It was important never to lose the capacity to pick a fellow human in need out of the crowd. Helping people out a little, striking up a conversation where other people only maintained a moody silence, that was charity.

After the man turned the corner, he suddenly regretted not having given the young transient two francs, but he was too embarrassed to walk all the way back for the sake of that second franc.

“It’s not just carousing with his friends over the weekend,” the mother was saying in the living room. “I could overlook that. It’s much more. Did you know that he’s joined a Zionist youth people’s club? They sent him a letter asking him to pay his annual contribution. I intercepted it.”

They were having dessert. Yogurt with fresh fruit.

“What kind of youth club?”

“A Zionist one.”

“Jesus,” Marc said. “But, still, he’s a special boy. You shouldn’t forget that. Well groomed. Always friendly. Never grumpy. And it can’t be easy for him, suddenly having a stepfather who’s not that much older than he is.”

The mother was a bit startled by the word “stepfather.” It was a word she had always avoided.

“Yeah, yeah,” the mother said. She ate her yogurt quickly. Marc wasn’t much help, she had started noticing. He was there, but not really. Yet she had no intention of letting it go at that — she’d let too many things go for too long. The books she’d bought were full of practical tips, and she had decided to involve Marc more in her life, not to bottle things up, but to talk to him more. To struggle against what made her suffer. Suffering existed, you had to acknowledge that. That was the first step.

Prompted by one book in particular, which she was actually a bit embarrassed to own, she had decided to take the initiative in bed for a change. The book said it was important from time to time to change the location where the initiative was taken. In principle, any location was suitable for taking the initiative. You simply had to use your imagination. Xavier’s mother felt that she had left her imagination unused for too long. She had to let her fantasy come barging in, like a family member showing up unexpectedly from Australia.

“Before we go to bed, I’ll let him into the house,” she said. “Staying out all night is too much, especially at this time of year. But a couple of hours on the doorstep, for a boy his age, that only builds character.”

“He’s a sensitive boy,” Marc said. He put on a pair of headphones to listen to some jazz. He often listened to jazz while operating the flight simulator.

The dishwasher was filled. Out on the doorstep, Xavier’s moaning subsided, until it stopped altogether.

A few times, Xavier thought that Awromele was standing beside him, speaking excitedly in Yiddish, but it was only a car driving by. A couple of times, he also thought that his grandfather was standing beside him, screaming that his grandson was a real man. Xavier’s pain was no longer limited to his sex organ: it had spread to his legs, his shoulders, his stomach, even to his feet. He wanted to shout, “Mama, open the door,” but he had no strength left. Besides, he knew it was no use. Once his mother set her mind to something, she never relented. After that, he couldn’t think about anything anymore, not even about his grandfather or the Jews he was going to comfort, only about the pain.

THE KITCHEN WAS TIDY. The mother wondered whether she should open the door for her son, or take the initiative first. She decided on the latter. The night was still young. She took off her dress and her panties and tied on her apron, the one she’d bought one lovely spring day in Milan, back when her ex-husband was still alive. Then she went looking for the right shoes; it took her five minutes, but she finally found a nice pair. She let her hair down. It wasn’t like when she was younger — it had grown thinner in places, a bit straggly in others; these days she had it dyed regularly at one of the best hairdressers’ in Basel — but it was still worth looking at, that hair of hers.

She went into the living room. Marc was sitting in a leather easy chair with his headphones on, his eyes closed.

She really had left her imagination unused for too long. A pity, that, but no use crying over spilled milk.

Marc opened his eyes for a moment, then closed them again.

Out on the street, a man and wife walked by, arm in arm. Xavier didn’t try to catch their attention. It wouldn’t help anyway, he just had to wait.

The mother walked over and stood in front of Marc, took his hand, and laid it on her stomach. Marc pulled his hand back and tapped on his headphones.

Music stands at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of the arts, they say.

Slowly, the mother began lifting her apron. Her thighs became visible, then the rest. She took the headphones off of Marc’s head as elegantly as she could while holding the apron up with one hand.

“Look,” she said.

Marc looked.

It wasn’t good to think about life too long; otherwise it stopped making any sense at all.

“I’m hot,” the mother said. “I’m awfully hot.”

She pulled the apron up even farther.

Her legs weren’t what they’d been. When she was a teenager, her legs had been pillars, but for a woman her age, her legs still got a lot of looks.

She was wearing a pink bra. Nothing obtrusive, rather modest.

“I’m so damned hot,” the mother said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this hot.”

Marc nodded, as though he understood completely, as though he was feeling awfully hot himself, then asked, “Shall I pour you a little apple juice, then, love?”

“I’m on fire,” the mother went on, ignoring his question. “Can’t you see it? I’m on fire inside. I’ve been on fire for years, but no one ever noticed, because I’m so good at soaking raisins.”

“Is there something you’d like to talk about?” Marc asked, after running the back of his hand thoughtfully over his cheek a few times.

She had tried to mourn for her late husband, but it hadn’t worked. Where other people had sadness, she had nothing. A hole.

She took Marc’s hand again and pressed it against her stomach, still holding up her Italian apron with one hand.

She loved ironing; she even ironed handkerchiefs and underpants. It made her feel calm and contented. But that was behind her now, all that ironing. Time left its mark without mercy, but if you used your fantasy you could forget about it; if you used your fantasy you could forget about everything. She had read that somewhere; she wouldn’t forget that anymore; she would think about that as she lay on her stomach and the man-beast reared over her.

“I was the woman who soaked raisins,” she said, “but look who I am now.” And she moved Marc’s hand down slowly.

He tried to yank it away, but she held on. She felt a strange kind of strength, unlike anything she’d felt for a long time. A little struggle was going on between her and her boyfriend. He was trying to get away, but she wouldn’t let him.

“Don’t you know how I’m burning up inside?” the mother asked. “Don’t you know that? No one knows that.”

“I ate something that didn’t agree with me,” Marc said.

She turned around and bent over, still holding up her apron. “I’m open all the way for you,” she said, bending over like that. “Can’t you see? I’m open for you.” Her voice sounded like it was coming from a tomb.

Marc thought about what to do. He felt compassion for this woman, who had, through circumstances he could no longer clearly recall, become his girlfriend. He put his hand on her back and caressed her absentmindedly, while she went on spreading herself wide open for him. After she had given birth to Xavier, they’d had to sew her wound shut — the baby had torn her open. Now Xavier was lying out on the street. At last the mother was able to forget him for a time — the childbirth, the sewing shut, the worries, the pressure, the shrieking. A child was like an intruder. The third person who makes a crowd.

How had she lived all those years without using her fantasy? Whole decades suddenly seemed fruitless to her, as though she had gone through a long hibernation. Her marriage had been nothing but hibernation. Her pregnancy, more hibernation. Her sex life, hibernation again. Holidays, hibernation on the beach. Christmas Eve, hibernation under the tree.

“Let’s go to the bedroom,” Marc said.

“No, here,” she said. “Here. I’m on fire.” She was still bent over in front of him, her voice still sounding like it was coming from the tomb.

The book had given her an idea, and more than just an idea. A longing had been awakened in her, so huge that it was almost frightening. But when you used your imagination, there was nothing to be afraid of. That’s what the book said: “The imagination establishes its own limits; don’t be afraid to surrender to them.”

She stood up, turned around, shook her head so that her hair, or so she thought, flew out in all directions. She took Marc’s face in both hands and bit him passionately on the lip. Marc submitted to the kiss as docilely as he could.

She took off her apron and threw it on the floor. There she stood, in only shoes and a bra. High heels and a white buckle. No panties. No more panties, never again. She was breathing heavily.

Somewhere, Marc felt affection for this woman. He couldn’t deny that. An affection that disturbed him. But it was no more than the echo of affection, and a distorted echo at that. Not much more than a buzzing.

She licked her lips demonstratively, for her fantasy said she should. “Here,” she said, “you can do whatever you want with me. I’m good for more than soaking raisins, I’m good at other things, too. Extinguish me, because I’m on fire. Tear me apart.”

He took a good look at her face. Her legs, with the veins running down them; her stomach, not too wrinkled yet, but already a little wrinkled. It didn’t matter. He felt affection for this woman. That was what mattered. They had found each other, even though the consequences of that finding left him disappointed. He didn’t want a woman on fire. Putting out fires was too much work for him. He wanted to be left alone.

“Do it,” she said.

“Let’s go to the bedroom,” he replied calmly. “My stomach hurts a little, but we can lie in each other’s arms. Wouldn’t you like that? Just cuddle a little bit?” He was no monster.

She took off her bra. After a few weeks of breastfeeding, she hadn’t been able to stand it and had switched to the bottle. She ran her hands over her breasts.

Marc was feeling increasingly uncomfortable. He was willing to do things for others, certainly for the woman he lived with, but there were limits. You couldn’t force a person.

“Use your fantasy,” she said, taking a step forward. She brought her face down close to his, ready to kiss him again, ready to bite his lip. “Use your fantasy for once.” That’s what the book had said: “Use not only your own fantasy, but let him use his as well.”

Without thinking about it, without actually even realizing it, Marc hit her on the nose as hard as he could.

The mother staggered, took a few steps back. She was bleeding.

The apron, the one from the department store in Milan, was lying on the floor.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Marc said when he saw the blood flowing from her nose. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

She pressed her arm against her nose and looked at him. She wasn’t sure whether or not to be angry; spontaneity wasn’t her strong suit. Only then did she feel the pain. She ran upstairs. Halfway up the stairs, she kicked off her shoes. She threw herself onto the bed. A peeping sound was coming from her mouth, and the blood kept dripping from her nose.

She felt more than the pain in her nose, she felt something else, something you could express only by screaming. And that is exactly what she did.

She screamed so loudly that her son, lying on the doorstep, heard her. Lying there, racked with pain, he found it only logical that the rest of world should be racked with pain as well, and so he didn’t think about it much.

Marc found a rag in the kitchen and tried to wipe the blood off the carpet. It didn’t work. Nothing to do about it. Then he picked up the bra and the apron and hung them over a chair. Remembering that his stepson was still lying outside on the doorstep, he opened the door and said to Xavier: “Come on in. Your mother’s in a bit of a state today.”

It took Xavier a few seconds to realize that he was now allowed to enter his own house. He crawled across the threshold, and cried out briefly in pain. But his cry was drowned out by his mother’s screams.

“Shall I get you an aspirin?” asked Marc, whose mind was on something else. He wasn’t just sorry about having given Xavier’s mother a bloody nose; there were more things he regretted now.

Xavier was lying half naked in the doorway.

His mother’s hibernation had ended, that much was certain. She had awakened with a scream.

In the kitchen, Marc filled a glass with water.

Between two stabs of pain, Xavier realized that he needed to look at the little mummy between his legs. He had to unwrap the bandages. In order to stop the pain, he needed to know what it looked like down there between his legs.

Now there was one thing Xavier knew for sure. He knew which part of the body it was that caused a Jew the most pain.