The Jewish Messiah

The Vegetable Garden

EARLY THAT MORNING, Xavier awoke from the most horrible dream he’d had in months. He got up and looked out the window. It was still raining, and the first morning light was as weak and miserable as Xavier himself. He pulled on a jogging suit and went to the bathroom, where he looked at his eye in the mirror. It was bluer than the night before. What difference did it make? He had lost a testicle — a black eye was the least of his worries. He had to go back to the park.

Xavier was almost sure that Awromele was no longer lying beneath the pine tree. But the important thing was to have looked for him: the comforter’s task was to do the impossible. The important thing was to have tried everything. He would never forgive himself if he stayed in bed and waited until after school before going back to the park. The hardest thing is to forgive yourself. Other people you can forgive. After a while, you simply say, “It doesn’t matter, let bygones be bygones.” And usually it really doesn’t matter. But in your own eyes, every mistake is a fatal one, an unforgivable one. That’s why you need other people, to grant you what you can’t grant yourself: forgiveness. And that was what Xavier wanted to grant the Jews most generously: forgiveness. For all the wrongs they had committed throughout the centuries. For the guilt they had imposed on others. For the almost unforgivable guilt they had imposed upon themselves, by being born.

Xavier brushed his teeth vigorously and splashed on some aftershave. However slight the chance that he would find Awromele, he wanted to smell good for him.

The mother and Marc were still asleep. The mother was sleeping soundly. She had gone down to the kitchen again that night; the game of love had been more intense and bloodier than ever. The love game was becoming lovelier and lovelier, down there in the kitchen. First it had been only lust and infatuation, but slowly it had turned into something real, something deep and abiding. Real love. There was no longer any use denying it — the mother loved her knife.

But Xavier knew nothing about that; he had slept and dreamed of Awromele. He locked the front door behind him. He was wearing his Walkman, it was playing Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. Although his headache had not gone away and his eye was still swollen, he knew, listening to the music, that things would turn out all right for him and for Awromele. And therefore for the Jews as well.

Before he started running he said quietly: “I’m going to find you, Awromele. I’m going to find you now; there are no two ways about it, because you’re my Awromele.”

Then he ran to the park to which he had run the night before, but he ran differently now — not faster, but with more love, more tenderness. And as he did so, there beneath the pine tree, beside the mandarin-orange peels, Awromele was contracting a slight case of pneumonia. His lips were blue, his hands had turned red, but he had punished the world. He had not surrendered his pride.

Because he felt that he had punished the world enough now, he whispered, “Xavier.” He had rolled onto his side. His body was stiff and wet; his feet were numb, mud was clinging to his wounds. He had been lying in the rain for more than twelve hours, like a dead animal. He lost consciousness.

Xavier stopped on the lawn where he had stood the night before, but in the morning light he recognized everything and headed without hesitation for the bushes where he had lain with Awromele.

The Stabat Mater was blasting in his ears, driving him on. Faster than he had expected, he reached the bushes where he had sworn never to feel a thing.

He saw Awromele’s body, lying rolled up, like a fetus. The clothes were torn. The ear, topped with clotted blood like a cherry on a cake, stared at him.

“Awromele,” he said, kneeling down beside him. “Awromele.” He took his head in his hands, held it, and kissed it carefully. He sat down beside Awromele, laid his head in his lap. Awromele’s body felt so wet and cold, as though it had ceased to exist.

It couldn’t end like this; nothing could end like this. If people died like this, it was better for them never to have lived at all.

“Don’t die,” Xavier said. “Awromele, please don’t die.” He took the boy’s hair in his hands and kissed it.

Xavier remained sitting there like that for a few minutes, with Awromele’s head in his lap. He had taken off the jacket of his jogging suit and draped it over Awromele’s chest. As though he were holding a drowned man in his arms, as though he had arrived too late, hadn’t run into the surf in time — that was how he sat there. Every once in a while he asked, “Can you hear me, Awromele?”

Xavier tried to hum. Humming always soothes. He felt as though his own life had come to an end. Xavier felt numbed, far removed from everything, without hope, without faith in the future. He rocked back and forth, the way devout Jews do. “Please say you can hear me, Awromele.” As though this was all he needed to do, as though this was what comforting was all about, stroking a few hairs, wiping away a little blood, humming senselessly beneath a pine tree.

He didn’t know what to do, where to go, whom to ask for help. Xavier, who otherwise always knew what to do, who was never at a loss for words in the classroom, who had even, he felt, responded appropriately when he caught his mother in the kitchen with the knife, didn’t have a clue. All he knew was that he had run away from the boys, that he had taken a shower, and that he had arrived too late.

Xavier used the hem of his T-shirt to wipe the dirt and blood from Awromele’s forehead. “Dear Awromele,” he said, “don’t worry, I’m here now, I won’t go away again.” He didn’t dare to touch the wounds: experts would have to do that later on. He murmured, “You’re safe now, they won’t come back.”

Awromele began shivering. He wasn’t dead. His wounds were throbbing like an overheated steam turbine. But when Xavier asked him to stand up, or when he shook him gently by the leg, Awromele didn’t react. “You can’t stay here,” Xavier said. “You’ll get sick. This place will be the end of you.”

Xavier carefully lifted Awromele’s swollen left hand and laid it on his stomach. There was mud and blood sticking to it, but he didn’t dare wipe it clean. The hand looked too mangled.

“It’s me, Xavier,” he said again. He thought that if he said it often enough Awromele would finally hear. “You helped me get circumcised; we’re going to translate Mein Kampf together. We belong together, and I swear to you, I don’t feel a thing, and you don’t feel anything, either, Awromele. That’s why we belong together. Do you hear me? Awromele?”

After a few minutes had passed, when Xavier noticed that he, too, had started shivering, just like Awromele, he saw that staying in this place was not a good idea. There was no use waiting for a reply any longer. He tried to pick Awromele up. First he pulled on his legs, but the body didn’t budge. He heard a joint pop. Xavier put his hands under Awromele’s back and tried to pick him up, as though the Jew were a sack of flour, but that didn’t help, either. He tugged on his arms, to get him to sit up. Awromele didn’t move; his body was unwieldy. His back rose from the ground a little bit, just a few centimers. But when Xavier heard bones cracking again, he was so afraid of breaking anything else that he let the body fall back onto the ground. It fell like a dead thing.

Xavier knelt and murmured: “I’m sorry, Awromele, sorry. I was startled — your bones were making so much noise. That’s why I dropped you. Don’t be angry.”

He laid the swollen left hand back on Awromele’s stomach. He put his mouth up close to Awromele’s good ear. “I’m sorry,” Xavier said. Even in this condition, Xavier could see how gorgeous Awromele was. “I’ll be right back. Stay here. Wait for me.”

Xavier walked away slowly, remembering when he had run from this spot while the boys were standing around Awromele. He thought he was leaving a corpse behind. When he arrived at a path, Xavier started shouting: “Help, help, there’s been an accident.”

It had stopped raining at last, although the wind was still blowing. But it was too early for people to be out walking in the park. Even the dog owners had decided to avoid the park for the moment. No one heard him. Xavier ran through the park again, looking for help. An inexplicable rage took hold of him. He saw Awromele’s face, the swollen hand, and again, each time anew, the ear that had bled — the ear that had stared at him like a madman’s eye. An eye that seemed to demand only one thing: Why did you run away, why you? Why did you have to run away?

And for as long as the ear continued to ask Xavier that unanswerable question, he ran on through the park, screaming for help.

IN THE RESTROOM at Jerusalem Kebabs, Bettina tore open the little bag and looked at the powder for which she had paid so much. She had never done this before. She had seen it in movies, in documentaries, too, and she had read about it in books. She had been planning to do it for a long time — she wanted to experience everything. But now that the time had come, she hesitated. The hesitation was suddenly more powerful than her desire.

She remembered her father’s advice, her mother’s worries, the prayers of her grandmother who had gone to church every day until she broke her hip, and had then turned her bedroom into a chapel. The real world was suddenly a bit too real for Bettina. Yet she knew there was no going back. You can leave Ilanz for the real world, but once you’ve arrived there’s no going back to Ilanz.

In the end, she won out over her hesitation. It would be a waste of all that money — she could hardly trade it back in for kebabs. Feeling a slight aversion, she sniffed deeply, as though sampling a rare wine.

It tickled. This expensive stuff, which had cost her almost as much as she earned in a month of waitressing two afternoons a week, reminded her of sneezing powder. Maybe it was sneezing powder. Maybe she’d been tricked; maybe the Egyptian had sold her something from the trick shop. Bettina’s parents had done their best to encourage their daughter’s wariness, and they had succeeded. People were waiting everywhere to cheat you; on every street corner, in every kebab shop, they waited to press counterfeit goods on trusting souls, and she was trusting, because she knew nothing about cocaine. That thought made her cry.

The torn-open sack of M&Ms was lying beside the sink; some powder still clung to the back of her left hand. “It’s sneezing powder,” she whispered, sitting on the toilet. “It’s just sneezing powder. No one takes me seriously.”

XAVIER RAN THROUGH the park and screamed: “Help, there’s been an accident! Police!” He was running in circles. He didn’t dare go too far away from Awromele. Only at the start of his fourth lap around the park did he notice the shed belonging to the Municipal Parks Service. It had once housed two men whose job it was to keep up the park, but as of late there was only one. The parks service was having trouble making ends meet. Beside the shed was a vegetable garden. In the garden Xavier saw a couple of shovels, a few bags of earth, five garbage cans, and a wheelbarrow. He stopped at the fence and stared at the wheelbarrow the way a child stares at creampuffs in a baker’s window. The wheelbarrow was rusty, but that didn’t matter. With that wheelbarrow, Xavier could roll Awromele all the way to the doctor.

Around the garden, where the park attendant grew a little parsley and chives for himself and his brother — he was still a bachelor — stood a makeshift fence. A few wooden posts and some chicken wire, that was all. An adult could step right over it.

And that is what Xavier did, without taking a running start, without climbing; he hurt himself, he scraped the inside of his thigh, but he didn’t even notice.

In the wheelbarrow was a little puddle of water and a few gardening tools. Xavier put the tools on the ground and took the wheelbarrow by the handles. They were rusty as well. Now he had to find a way out of the garden. He could climb over the fence himself, but he could never lift the wheelbarrow over it.

Xavier thought about Awromele, the way he had been lying there beneath the pine tree; he thought about the testicle in its jam jar at home, beside the collected works of Schiller. “King David,” he whispered, “give me strength, please, give me strength.”

Then he seized the wheelbarrow, rolled it straight across the chives and the parsley, and, with everything he had in him, rammed it against one of the fence posts.

The post shook, but remained firmly in place.

The park attendant had built the fence himself, tapping at the posts with a rubber hammer for a long time to force them deeply into the ground. He was fond of a job well done and took his work seriously, often remaining in the park longer than necessary. The park attendant loved the trees and bushes. And they loved him.

Xavier rolled the wheelbarrow back to the spot where he’d found it and began his second run at the fence post. “King David,” he shouted, “stand by me.” He trod the chives and the parsley underfoot, but didn’t notice: he saw neither chives nor parsley, he saw only the post. He saw Awromele.

The second collision with the post was so forceful that Xavier fell over, into the wheelbarrow. He didn’t care; he didn’t feel the scrapes and bruises. He scrambled out of the wheelbarrow and took another run at the fence. His lips murmured the name of the King as he saw his inflamed testicle before him again; he didn’t notice that he had hurt his hands, didn’t look to see whether anyone was watching, forgot that what he was doing was against the law, that he was destroying the vegetable garden of a loyal employee of the city of Basel. He was in a state of ecstasy.

He slammed the wheelbarrow against the post five times in total, until he was able to pull it out of the ground. There was nothing left of the vegetable garden; the vegetable garden had been plowed under; what the rain had not destroyed had been mashed beneath the wheel of the wheelbarrow and Xavier’s shoes.

It was fairly easy now for Xavier to push the wheelbarrow over the broken fence. He didn’t notice how heavy the thing actually was. He was not accustomed to wheelbarrows, and his only thought was to save Awromele.

Pushing the barrow, he ran to Awromele. His dearest, his very dearest, his loveliest. Running was perhaps putting it too strongly. He walked quickly: the wheelbarrow was heavy, and destroying the fence had cost him much of his strength. Occasionally the wheelbarrow slipped from his hands, the rusty handles wet with sweat.

THE EGYPTIAN KNOCKED on the restroom door. “Are you okay?” he asked. He was worried. In principle, he had nothing against overdoses. Money discriminates against no one, not even those who seek refuge in the overdose. But not in his restroom.

He didn’t want any trouble with the police. When people died in restrooms, it meant trouble. Respectable people die in bed. He himself hoped to die in bed.

Nino paid the police of Basel, but not the way he paid Hamas. Hamas he paid out of idealism and a feeling of guilt; the Swiss police he paid of necessity. When he was still living in France, people had said to him: “The Swiss police are incorruptible. Don’t go to Switzerland — stay here.” But it wasn’t as bad as all that. They weren’t incorruptible, only very expensive, ridiculously expensive, the most expensive police in Europe. Nino had never known that the police could be so expensive. And even if you did pay the police, it was better not to have corpses in the restroom at your workplace.

He knocked on the door again, a little louder this time. The more expensive the police, the more prosperous the country, and the more prosperous the country, the more expensive the women. Why didn’t he go to a less expensive country, where the police were honest enough to make do with a pittance? Ten, 20, these days sometimes even 30 percent — he barely kept anything for himself. He couldn’t stand it anymore, but where could he go? He had no choice.

“Everything okay in there?” Nino shouted.

No answer came.

“Everything okay?” he shouted again.

“No, not really,” Bettina replied, after she had blown her nose. You could tell from her voice that she had been crying. Her voice sounded weak and shaky — no longer brash and self-assured, no longer the voice of a woman who wanted to put solidarity into practice.

“Open up,” the Egyptian said, “I’ll help you.”

Two other members of the Committee of Vigilant Jews were still sitting at the bar. They had split a bag of M&Ms, then drunk two glasses of whisky. Jerusalem Kebabs wasn’t actually allowed to sell hard liquor, but to his best customers Nino sold everything under the counter. That was his way of getting back at the government, which didn’t like Egyptians, not even if their name was Nino. The government was no good; the government was no good anywhere. The policemen who came by once a month for a cup of tea felt exactly the same way. They said, “If the government gave us a decent paycheck, we wouldn’t have to do this.” “I know,” Nino would say then, “tell me about it.” And then he would pour the policemen a little more peppermint tea. He felt sorry for them. The government forced them to take money from an Egyptian who, in their heart of hearts, they despised. The government forced them to go through life as less incorruptible than they really were. All over the world, respectable people hated the government.

Bettina opened the restroom door a crack.

The Egyptian slipped inside and quickly bolted the door behind him. He could see that Bettina was nowhere near an overdose. He looked in the mirror, straightened his shirt so that the hair on his chest looked authoritative, and turned to his new customer. “What’s wrong? Why were you in here so long?”

“I don’t feel anything,” she said. Her mascara had run. “I don’t feel it at all. It’s sneezing powder.”

When that final word crossed her lips, she couldn’t help herself, she started to cry. Right there, with the Egyptian in the restroom. Her body shook.

The Egyptian stuck his tongue in her left ear: her sorrow was so huge, yet it was nothing compared with what was coming.

After he had ministered to her other ear as well, he realized that she was trouble. It was always the sorrowful women who betrayed you. Nothing was more dangerous to a man than a woman in sorrow. It seemed best to him to remind Bettina how attractive she was, how sexy he found her, even with a tear-stained face. True attractiveness cuts straight through all the tears. “Don’t cry, girlie,” he said. “This is excellent stuff. All the Jews buy from me, and Jews don’t settle for second best. You know how they are. The best of the best still isn’t good enough for them.”

Then he pressed his lips to Bettina’s, and hesitantly she began to kiss back. She had slept with eight men, but she still felt that she was inexperienced and made a lot of mistakes in bed. Foreplay still gave her nightmares.

Once the weenie was in her, though, nothing much could go wrong.

But this, this was still part of the foreplay, foreplay in a restroom.

She wanted so badly to be perfect. She thought about nothing else, only that, only her perfection and why it had remained undiscovered. She didn’t think about what she was doing here, in this restroom, or why she had joined the Committee of Vigilant Jews, why she had adopted villages in India; she didn’t even think about the sneezing powder, she only thought that she wanted to be perfect. She wanted to please men. That, in fact, was the same thing she had wanted back when she had stood on the bridge over the Rhine at Ilanz and thought about imperialism. It was in her last year of primary school that she had first thought about imperialism.

Of course, she wanted something in return for that pleasing. She wanted to be adored, and not by one man, but by all men. Was that asking too much, was that really asking too much? After all she had done for India and the Jews?

She felt the Egyptian’s hands running over her, the way her own hands tested fruit in the produce section at the supermarket, in search of the best of the lot. Adore me, she thought, adore me. I want to drive you crazy. I can drive you crazy — yes, I can.

“I’M COMING!” Xavier shouted to the sky, the trees, and the clouds. He had taken off his T-shirt and wrapped it around his right hand. He’d had to bandage the cut on his right palm; otherwise he couldn’t push the wheelbarrow. Now he was running bare-chested through the cold park. His jacket was still draped over Awromele. “I’m coming, Awromele,” he shouted. “I’m almost there.”

Two passersby with their pets saw Xavier limping along half naked behind the wheelbarrow. They stayed out of his way. Avoid eye contact, that’s the only way to prevent incidents. That was what they had been taught, the lesson they put into practice.

A lady out walking her two little dogs thought about calling the police, but after looking at her watch she realized that she had no time for that this morning. It would have to wait until tomorrow. She had an appointment at the swimming pool with a friend. But what if children were to see this, what would they think? She didn’t know what offended her most, the wheelbarrow or the bare chest. Energy and initiative, that was what the world lacked, in both politics and business; everywhere you went, you came across the same spinelessness.

Xavier saw no passersby. He missed Awromele; he saw Awromele before him. He missed him now truly, the boy, the handsomest boy he knew. That missing had felt different before today. Voluntary, that’s how it had felt. Now it was mandatory, he couldn’t do anything about it, the missing tormented him now.

Despite the T-shirt, the cut on his hand was bleeding more heavily and leaving spots on his clothing. Obviously, he wasn’t used to hard physical labor, but what was a cut on the hand compared with the missing like a buzzing in his ears? A buzzing that wouldn’t stop, a swarm of infuriated bees that followed him, that’s what it was like.

NINO SHUDDERED in excitement. He pressed Bettina against the wall of the restroom, put his hand on her leg, and slowly slid it upwards. Bettina pushed his hand away; she wanted to please, but strategic refusal was a part of that pleasing. She was wearing a little yellow skirt with black stripes that went well with her jacket.

The hand she had pushed away came back to her leg and crawled up it again, like a big hairy insect.

“Nino,” she said. “Nino.” She pushed the hand to one side, but she felt herself growing weaker. She had always been drawn to the exotic. The naughty. And this was naughty, even naughtier than joining the Committee of Vigilant Jews.

Nino tugged on her underpants, tried to rip them apart, pulled on the elastic band, then on the cotton, but the cloth was too sturdy, too sturdy for his old hands. Then he tried to pull down the black underpants at a single tug, but wasn’t able to do that, either. Bettina had to help him. And she did, she couldn’t bear his fumbling any longer. She took it personally. If she had been more seductive, if she had been more in control of the foreplay, he wouldn’t have to be dilly-dallying around like that, this old man with his greasy hair and his fat belly. The coitus wasn’t the problem, but everything up to that point it made her flesh crawl.

The kebab king’s hands trembled, he felt himself growing weak and dizzy, and at the same time, and this surprised him, he felt more manly than he had in a long time. He had forgotten about the money that didn’t discriminate, he had forgotten his wife who did discriminate, the restaurant in Rapperswil, Hamas and the other designated charities that he tried to support as much as he could, even though he had enough problems of his own with the Swiss police, who detested the government as much as he did. He was with Bettina, with this little Jewess. Now just a few more fantasies — sexual arousal couldn’t thrive without that. A few tender memories, cheap pictures he remembered from long ago, then he would no longer be alone, at last.

She stepped out of her underpants. She did something wrong. Whenever she undressed in the presence of a man, she thought: I’m doing something wrong. She couldn’t help it — it happened automatically.

“Bettina,” the Egyptian whispered. “Bettina, baby.” He sounded hoarse; this was the voice of a man who had forgotten everything. He was no longer the Egyptian standing in front of his refrigerator, realizing that he had lost everything, including himself. He was no longer the boy who went back to Cairo and whose mother received him mockingly with the words “Is that all you brought with you? Is that it, is that all you’re willing to give your parents, or did you bring something else? He calls himself Nino, do you hear that? Because he’s supposed to be Italian. Nino, and he waits on rich Swiss people in Rapperswil. Are there really rich people in Rapperswil? I don’t even know where that is, Rapperswil. Does it actually exist? Your brothers bring more with them when they come home, they bring substantial sums, and you, just look at that miserable little stack of bills. A dog would be ashamed to drag home something like that.” And she threw the banknotes in the air like confetti.

None of that existed anymore. He was no longer a dog, and he didn’t have to be ashamed like a dog anymore, either. He was a man, and, like a man, he pulled up Bettina’s little yellow skirt.

He stared at her crotch. The skirt slipped from his hands, and he took a step backwards.

“What’s wrong?” Bettina asked.

The Egyptian shook his head.

“Is there something wrong?” she asked. “Tell, me, please. You can tell me anything.”

There was nothing she hadn’t heard before. She was ready for anything, she was strong, a woman of the world, a man-eater. And she was bad, terribly bad. But that’s the way she wanted to be, the way she had to be.

Nino shook his head in disgust.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Bettina said.

He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and turned his head away.

She looked at herself, lifted up her skirt, but couldn’t see anything different. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Please, tell me.”

“You’re bald,” the Egyptian said, his head still turned away.

She looked at herself again, longer and better this time.

“I shaved myself,” Bettina said at last. “Like a little girl, don’t you think?” She laughed the most seductive laugh ever. She had practiced it in the mirror, as far back as Ilanz, laughing, looking, moving, running her hands through her hair, all of it in front of her bedroom mirror, for the men of the future.

“You like it, don’t you?” she asked when she was done laughing.

He shook his head again. His mood had crumbled, and he felt like a dog again. The dog always came back, always at the moment when he was least wanted.

“It’s horrible,” he said, and he smiled because it was unpleasant to say that to a young woman. “It’s unnatural.”

“What?” she asked. “Nino, what’s unnatural?” She lifted her skirt again, as though she wanted to show him how cute it was: all you had to do was get used to it, like a new dress, and after a while you’d start seeing how cute it was.

“Have you got some kind of a problem?” he asked.

“No. Do you?” She’d had men with sexual problems before. She was used to it. She solved them, those problems. They went away. She had known a man once who told her, “I had sexual problems all my life, until I met you.”

The Egyptian no longer had his head turned; he was looking at her, straight in the eye. Problems, what was she talking about? Who did she think he was?

“Your cunt is a baby cunt,” the Egyptian said.

Bettina looked at him, puzzled. She felt like kissing him, but she was afraid that might not be a good idea. Instead, she said, “It’s awfully wet.” She had read that in Cosmopolitan, that you should say that, to make an impression on the man you wanted to please.

“Like a little kid’s,” the Egyptian said. He didn’t have children — they hadn’t been able. He had two dogs, he and his wife from Rapperswil. First they’d had one dog, and when that turned out okay, they bought a second one. He turned around and started washing his hands.

“Everyone does this,” Bettina said. “All the magazines say so. Bald is in fashion, and it’s hygienic, too. When you have to wash up, you can get to everything. There’s nothing to get in the way.”

Again she laughed her most seductive laugh. She widened her eyes, as wide as she could, she tried every trick in the book, but Nino wasn’t looking at her, he was washing his hands carefully with soap and thinking about the money he had brought home to his parents. The money he was supposed to be ashamed of, because there was so little of it. His father was dead now, his mother was ill; he didn’t have to be ashamed of his money anymore; he earned so much he could even donate to Hamas. But the shame had remained, the shame conquered all. This Jewess’s cunt reminded him of chicken cutlets in the supermarket, chicken cutlets on special.

“You make me horny, Nino.”

He didn’t like meat from the supermarket; he bought everything from the Islamic butcher. Not because he was religious, but from force of habit.

Bettina searched for words that would drive him crazy, this man in his white shirt, with all that hair on his chest, his thick eyebrows, this man who smelled of sweat and fried falafel balls. She wanted him, without knowing why. There was no reason for it. There was only that desperate longing of hers. “I haven’t felt like this for a long time; I’ve never felt like this, Nino,” she said, “so excited, so wet.”

The Egyptian dried his hands. A dog, his mother was right. Look, look at him standing here in the restroom at his kebab place. No, less than a dog; a dog would be shamed by this; a dog had its own bowl, knew what loyalty came from. His dogs knew that, but did he? What did he know, anyway?

He looked at the young woman and shook his head. “Chicken cunt,” he said quietly, hanging the towel back on its hook.

“What do you mean?” Bettina asked. “You don’t think it’s nice? That doesn’t matter. Once you’re in it, you don’t see it anymore. Everyone at the gym has it like this, but it grows back. It’s blond when it grows back, dark-blond. Kind of like my hair, but then a little darker.”

“Ugly things discriminate against me,” Nino said, leaning back against the little sink. “You understand? Ugly things discriminate against respectable people. Ugly things discriminate against you, too, because deep down inside you’re a respectable person.”

“You’re right,” she said. “But shall we do it now?”

“Your cunt is ugly,” Nino said, and his words made him even sadder than he already was. “Your cunt discriminates against me.”

The Egyptian was disappointed. Disappointment was a cumulative thing: each new one breathed life into the old. He had been robbed of his masculinity, his pride, his dignity. He had been robbed of his pride long ago, but now it was happening again. He didn’t want a baby cunt, he wanted a woman’s cunt, a real one. Although he had his doubts about that now as well. He had been in so many cunts, and it hadn’t helped a bit.

Bettina started crying, but she didn’t give up. “This is in,” she said. “All my girlfriends wear it like this. And their boyfriends are happy about it. Just try it. Once you’re in there, you won’t notice it all.” She felt like a saleslady chasing a customer around with something off the back shelf.

She took a step forward, and, as much as it frightened her, as scared as she was of doing something wrong, she did it. She put her hand on the Egyptian’s crotch. She mustn’t be left alone. The Egyptian couldn’t ditch her now; she didn’t want to stay behind alone in this restroom. Anything, but not to stay behind here. Not to be left alone like this, like a wet rag that wasn’t worth the trouble to wring out. As seductively as possible, she said, “My pussy doesn’t discriminate against anyone.” “My pussy”—she’d read that somewhere, too. That it helped to say “my pussy” during love play. When it came to love play, what hadn’t she read? She’d read everything, even though the magazines all contradicted each other.

The Egyptian raised his big hands to emphasize his words. “Ugly things discriminate,” he said. “Everyone hates the Arabs, everyone hates the Jews. I hate the Jews, I hate the Arabs. But I’m Nino from Rapperswil. You understand what I’m trying to say? The only one who doesn’t discriminate is money. You understand that, girlie? No, you don’t know about that. You couldn’t know about that yet. But money loves everyone. The one thing that Allah, Jesus, the Almighty, and whatever else their names are promised to people but never gave them, money gives them: love. You’re still young, you don’t know about the way people look at you when they hate you, the women who look at you and don’t like you because you’re an Arab. Money is the only one who always likes you. Money doesn’t have an accent and doesn’t hear accents, because money doesn’t have ears. Your cunt…” The Egyptian choked back a little excess spittle; he was getting wound up. The sadness was growing inside him, turning everything gray, his business, women, the Palestinians, even his two dogs.

“Somebody has to speak the truth. I’m telling you the truth, I get sick when I look at you. With no hair.” He pointed at her skirt.

This wasn’t the moment for her to start crying again, and she didn’t. She concentrated, she tried to remember the bits of advice she’d read, bits of advice with which she had won victories in the past.

“Shall I…?” she asked. She couldn’t speak the words, but she made movements with her lips that made her meaning clear.

The Egyptian pushed her hand from his crotch. He shook his head.

“Is there something else you want? Tell me what you want. I’ll do anything.” And as she said this, she saw herself standing on the bridge over the Rhine in Ilanz once more.

Nino shook his head again. “Leave me alone,” he said. “Just forget it. Would you like something to drink? A cola? I’ll get you a cola. Get dressed, then we’ll drink a cola together. Let’s just forget about it. Bald cunt, no bald cunt, you’re alone, I’m alone. That’s all that matters, that’s why I’m going to treat you to a cola, a nice cold cola, courtesy of the house.”

He unlocked the door and left Bettina alone in the restroom.

In the kitchen, he poured a cola, and a glass of peppermint tea for himself. In his mind’s eye, he kept seeing the bald pudenda. He stared into space and murmured curses in his mother tongue, addressed to the Westerners, the decadence that was spreading like the plague, and finally to himself. Then he went back to the bar. The two men from the committee were still sitting there. Instead of looking for Awromele, they were carrying on a conversation about apartheid.

Bettina locked the restroom door again, picked up her underpants, and sniffed at them. She didn’t understand this — it was the fashion. Fashion had betrayed her, so it couldn’t be trusted, either. What was so ugly about it? How could something like this make you sick, something so nice, something any healthy man would want to have?

Bettina sat down on the toilet seat. She was falling apart. So this was what was behind that desire to please, to please everyone she met. She sprinkled the rest of the powder into her hand and swallowed it. Then she rinsed her mouth with water, as though she’d just been to the dentist.

Someone knocked on the door. She didn’t open it. She pressed her hands against her ears. There was no difference between everyone and no one. No one adored her, not even the man from the kebab place. No one wanted to discover her, no one wanted to gobble her up. Nothing would remain of her but the gifts that she had offered men and that they had been unable to accept.

Bettina pressed her hands against her ears even harder, so hard that it hurt. What a humiliation — an Egyptian with a beer belly thought her bare cunt wasn’t worth the trouble. She washed her face. She decided that her misery had to do with the way she smelled. She was sure about that now, and that came as a relief. She no longer had to wonder where the misery came from, not like before. Once you knew where misery came from, you could do something about it.

There was no need for anyone to stink, not in this day and age. Before you knew it, she would drive that Egyptian crazy as he’d never been driven crazy before. But first she had to go to the doctor, as soon as possible.

She sat down beside the other members of the Committee of Vigilant Jews. The Egyptian put the glass of cola down in front of her and whispered in her ear: “You’re still young; you’ll get married, you’ll have children, that’s how things go. But you shouldn’t shave yourself. The Creator gave us hair. And everything we have, we have for a reason.” And then he said, a little louder now: “Women shave themselves too much, and what do they get for it? Rashes. I used to have a beard, I used to have bad skin. Now I don’t have bad skin anymore, so I don’t really need the beard. My skin is old, but it’s not bad. My wife wants me to go along to the cosmetologist — she says there are little black spots on my nose and cheeks — but I’m not going to any beautician. Women are always seeing little black spots, because they have nothing better to do. I’m going to close the place. So drink up and go home.”

The two members of the committee nodded groggily. There was still a little whisky in their glasses. It was too late — or, rather, too early — to go by the rabbi’s house and inform him of their findings. They could do that tomorrow, once they’d caught up on some sleep. The Egyptian clutched Bettina’s head to his chest; he didn’t want to disappoint his customers.

When he let go, Bettina finished what was in her glass. She was falling apart — she had already fallen apart — so she needed to go to bed. First get some sleep, then go to the doctor.

The Egyptian looked at her and felt bad. She was still so young. He whispered: “I have responsibilities of my own, you understand? I have my responsibilities — I’m a married man, I run this place — but someone has to tell you. You shave yourself in places where a razor has no business going.”

She stared at him, at this man, this foreigner. No one had every talked to her like this before — you didn’t say things like that. What did he know about the laws of the razor? The razor could go wherever it liked.

Without a word, she got up and walked out of the kebab place. She was a wreck, a wreck from the provinces. Everything she had promised herself seemed ridiculous now. Going to the doctor, driving the Egyptian crazy, India, women’s studies, an active role in the Committee of Vigilant Jews — she wasn’t even Jewish.

She walked down the street amid the first commuters of the day. At a tram stop she paused for a minute; she still had a strange taste in her mouth.

The Egyptian showed his last customers to the door. He opened his refrigerator and looked at his stock, back behind the bottle of condensed milk. He thought about Bettina, and decided to make an extra contribution to Hamas. They could use it.

The guilt was more than he could take. He had already lost so much — money, women, kebab places, business partners, brothers, himself. As he stood in front of the fridge, it seemed to him as though all he had lost was himself. “Father,” he said, “listen. Only money gives us love, only money.” He clenched his fist, punched the refrigerator, hurt his hand, then punched the refrigerator again.

Worse than the guilt was the shame. The shame remained; it didn’t run away from the money that flowed to the family members of freedom fighters. It was always there, just like his mother.