The Jewish Messiah

Without a Flashlight

ONCE AWROMELE REALIZED that Xavier was no longer there, that he hadn’t hidden behind a tree, he could have struggled to his feet and dragged himself home. But the only protest he could think of against the treatment he’d been given, against the friendship the boys’ feet had offered him, was not to get up, to remain lying there where he lay.

Awromele rolled onto his side and pulled his legs up. The movement caused him pain. He didn’t dare look at his left hand. He didn’t dare look at anything. He felt bad enough already.

Every once in a while he screamed, but his cries were no longer high and penetrating, not like when Xavier had been lying between his legs. It was a powerless hollering, to which the passersby paid no heed.

While Xavier was warming up in the shower, examining his body, and coming to the conclusion that he would not be able to use his blackened eye for a while — he didn’t dare dab at his eyebrow again, it had felt like sponge cake — he thought about Awromele. His dearest, that’s what he should call him: of all the Jews Xavier would comfort, Awromele was the one dearest to him.

A comforter is not supposed to run away; a comforter should protect. If he had been able to think clearly, he would definitely have stayed in the park, he would have thrown himself on Awromele like a bodyguard on his president. But he had not thought clearly, and now it was too late.

Maybe, Xavier thought, maybe the boys only wanted to talk to Awromele; maybe I was the one they were after. Maybe they just offered him a cigarette and asked him a few questions about the Day of Atonement. Jews were no longer in fashion, but you always had young people who didn’t quite keep up with fashion. Yet this thought, too, failed to ease his mind.

Xavier had run away, that’s what he had done, run away just as he had brought Awromele into his life: on impulse, without thinking about the consequences. But if he had let himself be kicked to death, the Jews would someday have no comforter. He had saved his own skin in order to protect them later, twice over.

Xavier dried himself quickly and, after he had put on his underpants, mustered up enough courage to look at himself in the mirror. His one eye had indeed turned blue, almost black, and his eyebrow looked torn. He dripped some iodine onto the eyebrow and took two aspirins, he hesitated for a moment, then popped a third one into his mouth.

As he dressed, he thought about Awromele. He hid his soiled clothing under his bed.

In the kitchen, the mother was breading a third schnitzel. She heard her son coming down the stairs and couldn’t repress her feeling of disgust. “Dinner is almost ready,” she shouted.

Xavier went into the kitchen. The mother had the schnitzel in her hand, already breaded, now to be fried. In fact, cooking disgusted her as well.

“I have to go out for a minute,” Xavier said. “Marc’s not back yet anyway.” He wanted to protect the mother from unpleasant discoveries. Only when he had truly become a comforter would he tell her everything. He would rock her in his arms, the way he would one day rock the Jews.

The mother dropped the schnitzel into the pan; the fat hissed and spattered. She looked at her son and saw his black eye.

“What happened to you?” she asked, picking up an oven mitt. “Did you get in a fight?”

“A little accident,” Xavier said. “Nothing to worry about. I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Don’t be gone too long,” she said. “We’re going to eat soon.”

She spoke mechanically, like a machine. She looked at the lettuce, which she had washed three times already. She was afraid of accidentally eating little insects.

THE ROUTE BACK to the park Xavier took running as well. It was dark. The aspirin hadn’t helped his headache, which had been located only behind his eyes at first but had now spread to the rest of his head as well.

With every yard he ran, his melancholy grew. When he arrived at the park, he went looking for the place where they’d lain beneath the pine tree, but couldn’t find it. He remembered where they had stood when Awromele suddenly took off running, but not where they had run to.

It had all happened so quickly. The way two bottles of wine will usher in forgetfulness, he could no longer remember what had happened between the moment Awromele had run from him and the punch in the eye. Maybe you could get drunk on sperm as well if you kept it in your mouth long enough.

He shouted his friend’s name. There was no one walking in the park anymore; the only sound was the wind, and distant noises from the street.

In the study at his home, the tall boy who had mistaken Awromele’s head for a football was reading Kierkegaard. He was holding a pencil and marking certain passages.

“Awromele,” Xavier shouted, “where are you?” Just as loudly as Awromele had shouted Xavier’s name only half an hour earlier.

In his mind’s eye, Xavier saw a dead Awromele, a corpse, cold and stiff and cleaned by the funeral attendants, but he suppressed his fear by telling himself: Of course, he’s gone home already, he’s probably sitting at the dinner table with his twelve brothers and sisters, he’s probably forgotten everything that happened in the park by now. I’m getting all worked up about nothing.

Xavier walked across a lawn he had crossed when he was running after Awromele, but halfway to the other side he could no longer remember whether it was the right lawn. There were so many lawns in this park. His eyes were smarting. The bruised one, and the other one, too.

He stepped in a pile of dog shit, or maybe a molehill — he didn’t see it, it didn’t interest him anymore, either. He slipped, fell to the ground, got up, ran on, and shouted again, as loudly as he could, “Awromele.”

In the kitchen, the mother was putting three schnitzels on a platter. Marc had come home; he was upstairs, at the computer, taking off in a737. His mouth was hanging open in concentration.

AWROMELE DREAMED. Images blurred together, he heard snatches of conversation, but wasn’t sure whether they were real or whether he making them up on the spot. The blood that had come out of his ear was clotting. His left hand had stopped swelling, but he couldn’t move it anymore. He had to let the hand dangle, the fingers — the whole arm, really. The slightest movement caused him pain, but he didn’t have enough energy to worry about that. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t worrying about anything at all. He wanted to disappear, to dissolve, to become one with the mandarin-orange peels and the empty Coke bottle.

The cut on his ear was slowly turning into a black scab. He was dreaming, he was sure of that now, about the cleanser his mother used to scrub the sink, or, rather, about the way that cleanser smelled, and then about a field trip he had taken in the school bus, long ago. They had gone to visit a rabbi who some people said could heal people.

Xavier walked into the bushes. He was afraid that a late passerby or a policeman would mistake him for a rapist. He had the feeling that he had ruined everything. Without Awromele, all was lost. Stupid of him to have left home without a flashlight, stupid to have run away. And why? Simply because of a stupid punch in the eye. He was furious with himself; he tolerated no faults in himself, strove for perfection in everything, but above all in his relationship with Jews.

He squatted down beside a bush; he couldn’t go on. All the running and searching had exhausted him. His head had become a zooming bumblebee he wished he could swat and kill.

Nausea grew inside him. Still, he shouted one last time, very loudly: “Awromele, where are you!” His eyes were watering so badly that even if it had been daylight he couldn’t have seen a thing. But he didn’t cry.

Awromele was not far away, fifteen or twenty yards at most. Awromele dreamed that someone was calling his name, but because he wasn’t sleeping, only trying to forget the pain and humiliation, he realized after a few seconds that someone really was calling his name. It wasn’t a dream, it was real, like the pain in his ear. His ear felt as though it were being sawed off. He’d never known ears could hurt like that.

Awromele knew who was calling him; he recognized the voice. That voice was one he would always recognize.

For a moment he felt the urge to cry out, for a moment he felt an intense joy, for a moment he felt like shouting: “I’m over here, Xavier! Help me!”

But he stopped himself. He was not going to move. He would remain lying there without a sound. He would punish the one who had betrayed him. His pride was stronger than his desire. This was the only meaningful protest against a world that had given him something he did not deserve, and which it was therefore right for him to spurn. His parents would be worried, but he didn’t care; they needed to be punished as well.

Barely twenty yards away, Xavier vomited until his stomach was empty. He threw up all over his shoes, and got a little on his trousers as well, but he couldn’t see that; it was too dark to see.

After he had thrown up everything he had in him, he walked home. For the first time in his life, he suffered. At last he was up to his bellybutton in the pool of suffering, and all the future he could see promised more of the same. It tasted the way the last bits of vomit in his mouth had tasted, so bitter that it hurt his throat.

THE MOTHER AND MARC had finished their schnitzels. The boy’s schnitzel was growing cold on its plate.

Xavier came in, washed his hands, rinsed his mouth, and sat down at the table.

“What happened to you?” Marc asked. He looked at Xavier’s eye. Then he got up and laid a hand on Xavier’s shoulder, to give the boy some support. Xavier began eating, reluctantly. The meat was gristly.

“Isn’t your schnitzel cold?” Marc asked, after glancing at the mother and returning to his seat. He looked at the mother like that more often lately, as though to make sure he wasn’t going too far.

“No, it’s fine,” Xavier said. He choked down the meat, bite by bite. He did it for the mother, who had spent all that time over a hot stove.

“Come on,” Marc said, looking at the mother again, “we’ll heat up that schnitzel, it will only take a minute.”

“It’s fine like this,” Xavier repeated. He gagged, and hoped that no one noticed.

The mother thought: I’ll smack him over the head with a frying pan. I should have done that a long time ago. Long ago. When he was still a child. That would have saved me a lot of grief. One solid blow with a frying pan, that would be enough. She looked at the wooden bowl, purchased in Pisa, that still held a few leaves of lettuce. She restrained herself.

“Buddy,” Marc said, “who did this to you?”

His mouth full of meat, Xavier said, “No one.”

Marc wanted to know everything. When you love someone well, you want to know everything. “Who hit you? You can tell me, and your mother, too. We can keep a secret.”

The mother looked at her boyfriend. Despite her self-control, she felt herself growing livid. She said: “Did you know that he broke my nose, Xavier? You didn’t know that, did you? Yes, Marc broke my nose. I don’t hold it against him. Do you think my nose looks any different?”

There was no reaction. Xavier chewed on his gristly schnitzel. Marc was blushing, but no one noticed. The mother took a deep breath before going on: “The doctor says it will heal slowly. Well, I’m in no hurry. But before we start fussing over your eye, I thought I should just let you know.”

She had said nothing about it until now, about the incident with her nose. She had found it too embarrassing, a boyfriend who broke your nose, and a boyfriend like Marc, a namby-pamby like him. But now she poured out her feelings. It didn’t make much of a difference. She felt no different from the way she had before she said it. Filthy, that was it, filthy through and through.

“I can’t see anything, Mama,” Xavier said. “Really, I can’t. You look beautiful. Much better than you did a couple of weeks ago. Don’t you think so, Marc?”

Marc smiled shyly. He played with his silverware. As a boy, he had done a lot of magic tricks. He had also been quite good at juggling. But that was all behind him now, now that he had discovered the flight simulator.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean anything bad by it,” Xavier said. “Did you, Marc? You didn’t mean anything bad by it?”

“No,” Marc said. “I really didn’t mean anything bad by it.”

The mother ran her fingers over her nose. Even as she did, she was ashamed of the gesture, and dished the last few leaves of lettuce onto her plate. She had made the salad dressing herself; she hated dressing from a jar or a tube, no matter how much work it was for her to make it herself.

“It has to heal slowly,” the mother said. “Well, then, we’ll just have to wait, won’t we?” She began chewing on her lettuce.

Marc rested his head on Xavier’s shoulder. He felt an overwhelming need for warmth, but not from the mother. Not all human warmth is equally welcome. “It was an accident,” he said, his head still on Xavier’s shoulder. “I would never do it again. I was confused about my sexual identity; that’s why it happened. Now I’ve found my sexual identity. Now something like that could never happen.”

Xavier gently pushed Marc’s head away. He thought about Awromele, wondering where he was now and whether Awromele would ever want to see him again. For the second time in his life, he felt suffering. It changed the world, made everything dull, reeked of death.

“I’m a sensual woman,” the mother said with a bitter little smile. “But my sensuality wasn’t appreciated. You can’t force sensuality on anyone, it’s take-it-or-leave-it. Now I’m sensual for myself, and I’m not missing a thing.” She looked triumphant. Victorious.

“You mustn’t say that, Mama,” Xavier said. “You really mustn’t say that. I’m sure there are people who appreciate your sensuality. Papa, for example — he stayed with you all those years, didn’t he? Men like sensual women. You just have to give them time.”

The mother laughed in a way that frightened Xavier.

“I gave him time,” the mother said. “And Marc, too, all the time in the world. And what did he do with it?” She looked at her boyfriend. “He played with the flight simulator.” Again she laughed. Not long, and not cheerfully, either.

Marc bowed his head. “I hadn’t found my sexual identity yet. The thing is — not just with sexual identity, with all kinds of identity — you’re not born with it, you have to find it gradually.”

Xavier was feeling increasingly ill, the headache had not gone away, and Marc’s words were only making it worse.

“I’ll paint you again real soon,” Xavier said. “Mama, are you listening? I’ll paint you again real soon. And this time I’ll paint you as a sensual woman.”

Marc went to stand behind his stepson and massaged the boy’s shoulders. One hand slid into Xavier’s shirt.

“You’re tickling me,” Xavier said, but Marc pretended not to hear. Xavier didn’t dare repeat it — he was afraid of drawing his mother’s attention to something to which she would be better off not paying attention.

“Your son,” Marc said, “is a gifted artist. Right now we’re the only ones who know it, but soon the whole world will know.” He pressed his crotch against the back of Xavier’s chair. “This boy,” Marc said to the mother, “this boy has something rare. The fire of art is burning inside him. I have an eye for that, because when you work in radio you see fire like that passing by every once in a while. Not often, it’s rare, but every once in a while you see it shuffling past, and that is also a wonderful moment. I am so grateful that you have given me the opportunity to spend my days close to this fire.” Then Marc bent over and planted two little kisses on the top of Xavier’s head, so the mother wouldn’t see how his face was twisted with desire.

That’s what happens when you find your sexual identity. You become a predator, the world becomes your hunting grounds, and when you don’t have the world you can always prey on your family.

The mother didn’t look at Marc. He left her cold. Everything left her cold.

Marc remained standing like that for at least two minutes; he kissed the top of Xavier’s head again; he was acquiring a taste for it. Then the mother finally came up with something to say: “Didn’t the two of you think the schnitzel was a little tough? Maybe I should try another butcher. This one has started looking at me so strangely, ever since he heard that I’m an honorary member of the Committee of Vigilant Parents.”

Xavier tore himself away and stood up. “You’re very sensual,” he said. “Don’t ever forget that. Of all the mothers I know, you’re the most sensual.”

“I know,” she said as she piled up the dishes. “I’m also much more sensual than the girls at your school, a lot more sensual than that Bettina. I always have been. But the world was never interested.”

In the kitchen, she put the dishes in the sink, and because she couldn’t help herself she took the bread knife from the dish rack and looked at it, the way — in a different world — she might have looked at a man: With love. With desire. With passion.

In the park, the cold was settling deeper and deeper into Awromele’s bones. He began shivering, and regretted having wanted to punish the traitor he loved so much, regretted not having replied when Xavier had called his name. That was why he shouted now, “Xavier!”

But Xavier was no longer in the park; he was in the living room, waiting for the mother to come back from the kitchen so he could say good night to her. There was a thin string of gristle between his front teeth, and he plucked at his with his nails. He was feeling dizzy. He hadn’t been able to finish his schnitzel, but fortunately the mother hadn’t said anything about it.

“Should we put a little ice on that eye of yours?” Marc asked.

Xavier shook his head. He looked at the bookcase, and prayed silently to King David. “King, dear King, please let me find Awromele, let us be together again. Dear King, please.”

When the mother came back into the room, he stopped praying and said: “I’m going to bed, I’m exhausted. I had a rough day at school.”

The mother stared at the hem of his trousers. “What are those spots on your pants?” she asked. “Did you soil yourself again?”

Xavier looked at his trousers. “I was walking in the park,” he said. “The grass was wet.”

“You’re going to the dogs,” the mother said. “Don’t forget, Xavier, that you have only one testicle. You will always have to do your very best, because other men have two.” She smiled, and for a moment she looked truly sad. Then she looked at King David, up there beside Schiller, and all her sadness disappeared. She caught herself feeling sorry that her son hadn’t lost both his testicles in the hospital. That would have taught him a lesson; then he would have been another person, once and for all. Failing to experience enough loss in your life turns you into a swine.

“I’ll never forget that, Mama,” Xavier said. “And I’ll never let myself go to the dogs, either. I know that I have only one testicle, and that’s why I’ll always do my very best.”

“Some people,” the mother said, “have only one kidney, and they have to be very careful with that kidney, because if they lose it they don’t have anything left. You’re down by a point, Xavier, and you’ll never catch up.” She said it dreamily. Xavier kissed his mother good night and went to his room.

SITTING ON THE BED in his well-furnished room — a little TV, a bookcase, a fan, a jar of paper clips in all different colors — the tall boy took off his shoes and said to himself, “Man can no longer speak with his lips, but he has learned to talk with his feet.” The thought satisfied him. He took off his sock and rubbed his right foot until it grew warm. “Speak, feet,” he said. “Speak. I’m all ears.”

He squatted down to hear what his feet had to say, and as he did that he was filled with the awareness of finitude, of absolute finitude, not only his own, but of everything. He could almost smell the finitude; he could, if he was very still, hear the finitude creeping up on him. The realization of that made his life grander, and important. For a single moment, he believed he could take on the world, squatting there beside his bed and listening to the language of the future, the language of feet.

Xavier crawled into bed naked, laid a hand on his sex in order to hasten sleep, and decided not to think about Awromele. Otherwise it would become an obsession.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, Marc was helping the mother with the dishes. As he dried a plate, he said to her, “It’s good for our relationship to be able to sort of chitchat.”