The Jewish Messiah

The Door of Happiness

THE RABBI’S WIFE took Danica to school, and came home asking, “Did anyone call?” But Rochele, who had been told to sit beside the phone and not to move, could only shake her head. No one had called, not even the rabbi, who was out wandering the streets.

When she saw Rochele shake her head, the rabbi’s wife opened her mouth and wailed, “Awromele, where are you?”

She didn’t really believe in anything, except that she was the rabbi’s wife, and that after death worms would be her share.

Rochele was so startled by the wailing that she slipped off her chair beside the phone and hid beneath the table, where she tried to forget her mother’s desperation by concentrating on the pelican that was the Messiah. She found a pencil and a drawing pad and began making a drawing of the bird that would lift her up and take her to America and then, if she wanted, to the North Pole.

TO HIS OWN AMAZEMENT, Xavier succeeded in pushing the wheelbarrow a long way in the direction of the hospital where he’d been treated after his operation at the hands of Mr. Schwartz. He was even able to walk quickly part of the way. He was afraid that the guard would come after him and sit on him anyway, and maybe on Awromele as well. Fear gives wings to the exhausted soul.

Xavier stopped at a traffic light. The wheelbarrow slipped from his hands; everything was shaking now, his arms, his head, his legs, the whole world seemed to be shaking. He staggered and fell. He no longer had the strength to get up. First he lay still, then he began moving his lips silently, until at last you could heard him murmur, “An ambulance, please, call an ambulance.”

Because he looked so frightening, many people were afraid to stop and listen. He lay there murmuring for about five minutes, until a man stopped and bent down. The man heard the word “ambulance” and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Xavier, Xavier Radek.”

“Are you in pain?” the man asked. A seemingly silly question, perhaps, but there were a lot of people who faked it.

Xavier nodded.

In a perfume shop, the man called the emergency number.

“I am the comforter of the Jews,” Xavier had called out after him, but the man didn’t hear that.

While the man was placing his call, Xavier sat up. “Forgive me,” he said to Awromele, who was lying in the wheelbarrow like a crumpled piece of parcel post, “forgive me.” And he seized the wheelbarrow with both hands. Awromele felt so cold and looked so pale, even his lips were white. Xavier wondered whether this was what the dead looked like. Had his grandfather’s prisoners looked like this? Probably not — they had never been identified; they were ash floating in the breeze.

The shopping street was gradually becoming busier.

When Xavier’s last bit of strength left him, he let go of the wheelbarrow and slid back onto the pavement.

The charitable man had no time to wait for the ambulance. When he came back from the perfume shop, he found Xavier lying beside the wheelbarrow and said, “The ambulance is on its way.”

He paused for a moment, but Xavier didn’t reply. The man walked on. He had total confidence in the paramedical personnel of Basel.

Within ten minutes, the ambulance arrived. A man and a woman carried Awromele into the hospital on a stretcher, but when they tried to put Xavier on a stretcher he began struggling and cried out, “I’m not a shoplifter, I’m the comforter of the Jews.”

They looked at each other, raised their eyebrows, shook their heads. When Xavier shouted, “I am the comforter of the Jews,” for the second time, they decided to give him a shot of sedative.

IN THE SCHOOLYARD, the tall boy was walking around with a volume of Kierkegaard under his arm, as he did almost every day. “Here,” he said to his friends, who were walking around with him; they were inseparable. “Listen to this. ‘The door to happiness does not open in. It opens out, so there is nothing to be done about it.’ That’s what Kierkegaard wrote. Remember that. There is nothing you can do about it.”

The bell for classes had already sounded, but they had a free period. They hung around in the schoolyard, citing Kierkegaard, until they caught sight of a girl who was late for class.

They didn’t know her: she hadn’t been at their school very long and was in one of the lower classes. She was ugly, especially because of the braces she wore. But she wouldn’t have been very pretty even without the braces. Her book bag was big and bright-pink. She stuffed far too much into it, she took books to school that she wouldn’t be needing that day at all. Her hair was light-blond.

The boys drove her into one corner of the schoolyard, shouting at her quotes from Kierkegaard that she could only partly understand, because she was numbed with fear. She was wearing a blue skirt and suspenders.

At last the boys succeeded in driving her into a corner of the schoolyard where the teachers couldn’t see them, not even if they looked out the window.

They took her book bag away from her. They examined the books quickly and wistfully. How well they remembered having bought and read these same books themselves. Time flew, the school was a sausage factory, the office was a sausage factory, the family was a sausage factory. Hospitals were sausage factories. Train stations, airports — there one encountered sausages in transit.

After they had flipped through the books and put them back neatly in the bright pink bag, they looked in her pencil case. There wasn’t much in it — three pens, a pencil, an eraser, a protractor, a calculator.

“Kierkegaard is our hero,” the tall boy said, holding her pencil case in his hand. The case had a picture of Snoopy on it. It had been a gift back in primary school, but she still used it. She liked Snoopy.

“We read him and reread him,” the tall boy said. “We’ll keep reading him till we’re dead. Kierkegaard. Who’s your hero?”

Because the girl was mad with fear, she couldn’t answer them at first, but the boys insisted. “Tell us,” they said, “you can tell us. We can keep a secret.” After a little while she succeeded in whispering, “Papa and Mama.”

Her father was a friendly rabbi who did a bit of matchmaking in his free time. Her mother had given birth to thirteen children.

The boys were disappointed with her answer. It made them sad.

“These are the days of superficiality,” the tall boy said, after consulting with his friends in a whisper. “We live in the age of sausage. The difference between life and death has been reduced to a minimum. The dead seem alive, the living seem dead. And the people seem like sausages. This is supposed to be the best school in Basel.” He pointed to the old, slightly dilapidated building. “At this school we became acquainted with Kierkegaard; others became acquainted with Kleist, and others with Plato. And with whom have you become acquainted? Your papa and mama. That hurts us to the quick. We look at you and we see that your papa and mama are of no consequence, we see that your papa and mama are ugly people. We look at you and we see a culture in decay.”

His friends chimed in. The boy who wore his father’s raincoat went up and stood right in front of the girl. “Those who look at you,” he said solemnly, “see the end of days.”

The tall boy took the calculator out of her case. It was a simple machine, Texas Instruments. It had been passed down to Danica by Awromele.

“What is this?” the tall boy asked.

A sound came from Danica’s mouth, but it was unintelligible.

“What is this?” the tall boy asked again. “What am I holding in my hand?”

Danica was frightened, but still able to say “calculator.”

“Precisely. Very good. A calculator.” He pronounced the word emphatically, as though speaking to a deaf person. “This calculator is no good to us. It won’t help us, it won’t help you. Technology that falls into the hands of the incompetent leads to catastrophes, catastrophes lead to death, one death leads to another; death is everywhere, can’t you smell it?” He took a deep breath, stepped forward, pressed his nose against hers, and asked: “Don’t you have a nose? Are you the sausage that can only smell ketchup?”

Danica shook her head with conviction. “I can smell it,” she said quietly. “I smell death.”

“She can smell it!” the tall boy said mockingly. He looked around at his friends and said again, “She can smell it.” Then he mumbled, to no one in particular, “This is how our culture dies.” As though he were a magician who had to mumble a bit of hocus-pocus before completing his trick — because the audience expected it.

He put the calculator down carefully on the ground and looked lovingly at the girl with the braces. He was so moved by his own words that he truly believed that, when looking at this child, you could see a culture going down the tubes.

“Your heroes are your papa and your mama,” he said. “My God. Jesus Christ.”

He slammed his heel down on her calculator.

It was quiet in the schoolyard; you could hear the wind blowing through the trees, the sound of a few cars in the distance. You could hear how the calculator shattered.

Then the girl could no longer contain her tears. The four boys looked at her and her tears and were moved.

She saw her pencil case dangling from the tall boy’s hand. She had to stop crying now. That would only make things worse. That’s what her mother had always said: the weak scream and weep.

“There’s so much sorrow in an individual,” the tall boy said. “It’s inexhaustible.” He put his hand on the girl’s shoulder, and the touch startled her so badly that she took a step back.

“Listen, little girl,” he said. “Don’t be frightened. Kierkegaard once said, The door to happiness opens out. There is nothing to be done about it. But you are trying to open the door to happiness from the outside. It doesn’t work that way. That makes us sad, that causes us pain.”

His friends nodded. They loved Kierkegaard; without him they would be nothing.

“We are on the other side of the door,” the tall boy said. “And that door keeps hitting us in the face. Because you keep trying to get through.”

The tears that were running down her cheeks gave the tall boy goose pimples. He was sentimental by nature, especially in the morning.

“We’re going to put you to the test,” he said. “Because we want only the best for you, we are going to test you, and if you pass that test you will enjoy our protection for the rest of your life.”

STILL UNDER SEDATION, Xavier was carried into the hospital. A nurse recognized him right away. “It’s that boy,” she told the doctor. “You know, the one who was manhandled so terribly.”

The doctor nodded and subjected Xavier to a quick examination.

In another room, a doctor and two assistants were working on Awromele. He was suffering from hypothermia and dehydration, to say nothing of his broken hand, the many wounds on his body, and the ear that had been kicked. That ear in particular worried the doctors. They had already seen the X-rays of his broken hand; they had put it in a cast.

The nurse began disinfecting Xavier’s cuts. A sense of pride came over her, pride in the fact that this boy, who was rather famous in Basel, and certainly in medical circles, was now dependent on her care. That she was now tending to his wounds, yes, that made her feel good. This was why she had become a nurse.

“Look,” she said to the doctor, “I think he’s waking up.” Xavier’s eyelids trembled. He opened his eyes, only to close them again a few seconds later.

The doctor wasn’t paying much attention to her; he had the stethoscope in his hand and wanted to listen to Xavier’s heart.

“Maybe we should call his parents,” the nurse said. “His mother — I saw her here a few times, if I remember correctly.”

The doctor shook his head impatiently. Xavier’s eyes were open wide now, and he was asking for Awromele. When no response came, he said again, a little louder this time: “Awromele, where’s Awromele? Where’s my wheelbarrow?”

He tried to sit up, but the nurse pushed him down gently and the doctor took a step back in irritation. He couldn’t work like this. Patients had to lie still — lie still and don’t get up — that was the crux of the matter. That was the mother of all recovery.

“Your wheelbarrow isn’t here,” the nurse said. “You’re in the hospital, but you’ll be better soon.”

“My wheelbarrow,” Xavier said, “Awromele,” and with more strength than she’d expected from him, he grabbed the nurse’s arm. “Where’s Awromele?” he asked. “Where is he, what have you done with him?”

She tried to pull away diplomatically, speaking soothing words and reassuring sentences all the while. “I’m sure he’s okay. Don’t worry.”

But nothing could reassure Xavier anymore. Only the sight of Awromele.

THE RABBI WANDERED around town; he was afraid to go home. He thought about his life. His sister-in-law, with whom he’d had an affair, appeared in his thoughts; the children he had made; the God he didn’t believe in but still served, because he had no choice, because his last smidgen of social standing depended on that God, there was nowhere else for him to turn, only to God. And then his thoughts turned again to Awromele. His son’s disappearance made him feel terrible, though his wife’s sorrow made him feel every bit as bad. But he had no idea where to look for him; he had looked everywhere. He wasn’t particularly good at it, at looking for children.

Then it occurred to him that there was one place in Basel where he could still go. Besides the synagogue and his home, where his wife had called him a dirty Jew, there was still one place where he could rest his weary head.

Because the sadness overpowered him, he rang the bell.

The massages were already in progress. The massages went on around the clock. In a twenty-four-hour society, one had little choice.

The transsexuals were busy this morning. They were women on top, men down below. The rabbi liked that. Somehow, in the arms of a transsexual, he didn’t feel so guilty. As though he were being kneaded by a mermaid.

“I need a really stiff massage today,” he told his Asian transsexual. “My son has fallen into the hands of the anti-Semite.”

“Whose hands?” the transsexual asked as she did her slow striptease.

“The anti-Semite’s,” the rabbi said.

A bottle of body lotion was taken down off the shelf. The rabbi asked, “What’s your name again?”

“Lucy,” the transsexual said.

“Lucy,” said the rabbi, and he told her his life story. It was an awfully sad story, and Lucy listened patiently. Halfway through the story, she realized exactly why the rabbi was so crazy about her.

AS THE MOTHER PACED the living room, wondering where her son could be, Marc tried to convince her that someday Xavier would be a famous painter. “Just look,” he said, “can’t you see that? Those colors, that control over the brush.” He pointed to one of the paintings of the mother holding King David. “We have a genius in the house.”

The mother looked at the painting, but couldn’t see anything in it. Particularly not herself. The testicle in the jar — that had turned out well, she thought. “Let’s wait and see,” she said, putting on the table a bowl of yogurt for her boyfriend. “Where do you suppose he’s gone? Back to those Zionists again? This is the end of the line. First he comes home with a black eye, then he runs off at the crack of dawn without saying anything.”

ROCHELE WAS STILL under the table in the living room, thinking about the pelican that would lift her up and take her along. The drawing pad lay closed in her lap. The longer she stayed under the table, the more convinced she became that the Messiah was a pelican. She had seen pictures of pelicans. And a nature film, too. She talked to the pelican; she begged him to come and get her and take her to the Eskimos. “Pelican, come to me,” she said in a whisper. “You know where I live, don’t you? You’ve been watching me for a long time, right? You’ve been circling above my head for years, haven’t you?”

While her mother was in the kitchen, sunk in a prayer in which she barely believed but which was better than nothing, and while her father was spreading the panorama of his life before the transsexual, Rochele was addressing the pelican.

In the little room at the massage parlor, the bottle of body lotion was almost empty now, but the story was long and doleful. Occasionally the rabbi stopped his narrative to say: “Massage me right. The anti-Semite has hold of my eldest son. Please me, while it’s still possible.”

And then Lucy would say, “Yes, yes, of course.”

WHEN HIS QUESTIONS received no answers, only reassuring words, and Xavier could put up with reassurances no longer, he grabbed the nurse’s arm again. She had already had to pull away from him a few times and hoped the doctor would finally come to her assistance. He could calm the rebellious patient, with a second shot of sedative if need be. At first she’d been proud to be treating the famous Xavier Radek, but now she was getting fed up with him.

At that very moment, the patient bit her on the arm.

She screamed. She looked at her arm, saw the blood, and screamed again. “Look,” she said to the doctor, “look at what he did.”

Xavier jumped off the table and ran out of the room and down the corridor, shouting: “Awromele, Awromele, where are you? I’ll never leave you alone again. Where are you?”

People leapt out of his way, some of them doctors and nurses who had dealt with things like this before. A pair of underpants was all he had on, and although the mud had been washed from his body the cuts and scrapes were still clearly visible. A mad dog strikes fear into those who see it.

“Well,” said the doctor who was treating Awromele, “I think we’ve dealt with the most serious things now.” The hand was in a cast, the cuts had been disinfected; the only thing the doctor was worried about was the ear. But the true extent of the damage would not show up until later.

“We’ll keep him under observation for a couple of nights,” the doctor said. “He has a slight case of pneumonia, but he can recover from that at home. Has anyone been in touch with his parents?”

The nurse shook her head. In the corridor, Xavier screamed: “Awromele, I won’t leave you alone now, I’ll never leave you alone again. Can you hear me? Where are you?”

For a moment, Awromele thought he was back in the park, lying beneath the pine tree. He didn’t reply to his friend’s shouts; he lay still, without making a sound. His friend had to be punished, not only because he had run away and left him behind with the boys, but above all because he seemed to have committed the greatest crime a person could commit: loving Awromele, dreaming of Awromele.

Awromele opened his eyes and saw the fresh face of a student nurse. Realizing that he was no longer in the park, he shouted, “Xavier!”

The nurse looked at the doctor and smiled, pleased that the patient was at least capable of something. Beside the bed hung a bag of fluid that was dripping into his arm through a needle.

“Xavier,” Awromele shouted, “here I am.”

“Take it easy,” the doctor said, “save your strength. Don’t get so wound up.”

Xavier had heard Awromele’s shout, but didn’t know which room it came from. Down the hall he saw four male nurses heading towards him. Obviously, they were not planning to put up with any monkey business. Behind them came the nurse whom he’d bitten on the arm. “There he is,” she cried, “that’s him. He’s dangerous. He’s out of his mind.”

Xavier opened the door to the room from which he thought Awromele’s voice had come. But there was a woman in there, in the pangs of childbirth.

The next door opened onto an empty room.

The four male nurses were almost upon him. They had been called in from the hospital’s psychiatric ward. They were experienced in dealing with rebellious patients who needed to be protected from themselves.

“Grab him,” the nurse he had bitten shouted. “He bit me on the arm. Grab him, before he bites someone else.”

Xavier opened a third door.

“Save your strength,” he heard the doctor say to Awromele. “Don’t get so wound up, you’re still very weak.”

Despite the bandage around Awromele’s head, Xavier recognized him immediately. “Awromele,” Xavier cried. “Here I am. I don’t feel anything, do you hear me? I don’t feel a thing. I’ll never feel a thing, I promise. I’ll never feel anything again.”

He tried to get to the bed where Awromele was lying, but the four male nurses got to him first. They threw themselves on him and applied pressure to his throat, to discourage him from struggling.

“THIS IS THE DOOR to happiness,” the tall boy said to Danica. “Now you know how the door opens.”

The girl was kneeling in front of him, in a corner of the schoolyard with trees all around and bushes on which cheerful berries hung in spring. The girl gagged. The braces got in the way, but she probably would have gagged even without the braces.

The tall boy said: “This is pleasure. Do you understand?” The gagging was an integral part of the pleasure. Where pleasure begins for one, gagging begins for the other. Danica couldn’t reply. “You can tell me later,” the boy said. “Remember the question and take your time thinking about the answer.”

The tall boy’s friends watched with interest. Soon it would be their turn.

“You have passed the test,” the tall boy said, and laid his hand paternally on the girl’s head. “From now on, you’ll enjoy our protection. You are ugly. That’s a euphemism; you are hideous. Yet we still love you. Anyone can love the lovely — there’s no trick to that. But to love the monster, that is man’s true challenge. That is what we understand Kierkegaard to say. Love the monster, then the monster will come to love you. We have given you love, we will give you our sex, so that you can do something in return. Real love is in the giving.”

Then he took the girl by the ears and moved her head back and forth as though it were a machine. It couldn’t take too long — the free period was almost over, and his friends still had to have their turns.

The Snoopy pencil case was lying on the ground beside Danica. She had put her hand on the pencil case while her head was being moved back and forth. She didn’t taste anything anymore, she didn’t feel much anymore, at most the pain in her ears, which felt as if they were being torn off her head, and the feeling that she was going to vomit, that she would vomit as soon as they took that thing out of her mouth.

She wouldn’t let them take her pencil case. Her pencil case had to be protected. They could do anything to her as long as they stayed away from her pencil case, because Snoopy understood her, Snoopy was her friend.

IN HER ROOM, Bettina was arranging papers and other documentation in a new ring binder. She had stayed home sick from school, and wanted to use the day to straighten up her files. Along with her parents and a few close relatives, she had recently adopted a third village in India.

As she looked through the account book in which she had entered the expenditures and revenues for aid to India, she could not help feeling a certain satisfaction. She was finally able to forget the Egyptian.

She was young still, but her life had already made a difference.