The Jewish Messiah

Money, Respect, and Women

THE MALE NURSES didn’t have to apply much pressure to discourage Xavier from struggling, but, just to please the wounded nurse, they roughed up the patient for a minute or two before giving him a shot of sedative. It was Xavier’s second shot of sedative that day.

As he collapsed slowly, the nurses dragged him to a room where he would be given the opportunity to recover.

The nurse complained again about how he had bitten her, and showed the bite to her colleagues, who regarded it with more than professional interest. She was young and attractive, and that lent her complaint a certain added value.

Later that morning, the hospital called Awromele’s house. Rochele awakened with a start from her daydreams about the pelican, and answered the phone.

“Mama,” she yelled, “Mama, it’s the hospital.”

The rabbi’s wife, who had spent the last hour wailing by the kitchen wall, waiting for news of Awromele, tore herself away from the comfortable monotony of her indictment against God.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, this is she.”

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked. “Where is he?”

“I’ll be right there, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

She hung up. The receiver fell beside the phone, but she didn’t notice.

“Come on,” she said, taking Rochele by the hand. Then: “No, you stay here. Watch the baby.” She leaned down to kiss Rochele, but changed her mind again. “No,” she said, “we’ll drop the baby off at the neighbors’ house. You’re coming with me.”

She lifted the baby from its cradle, stuffed some diapers and baby food in a bag, and rang the neighbors’ bell.

The neighbor lady, who always slept late, opened the door in her bathrobe.

“Could you please take care of him for just a little while?” she said. “I have to go to the hospital, it’s an emergency, I’ll be right back.”

Before the neighbor could say a thing, she found herself holding the baby.

“Where’s your coat?” the rabbi’s wife shouted to Rochele. “Hurry up, get your coat and scarf.”

They ran down the steps, the mother pulling her daughter along behind. “He’s alive,” she said, “Rochele, he’s alive, he’s been saved.”

She picked up her daughter, although Rochele was actually too big for that anymore, and pressed the girl to her breast. “Awromele is alive,” she said again.

“But I knew that already,” Rochele replied. “It’s because of the pelican.”

ON THE LITTLE BED that reeked of massage oil, the rabbi, secretly and in utmost desperation, addressed himself to the Almighty. He said: “Let it happen, God, please let it come, please. It’s always come before, so why not today, of all days?”

Lucy paused. “My jaw muscles are starting to hurt,” she said. “This is better than going to the gym.”

“This is the gym,” the rabbi said. “For me, too. What did you think? That there’s some other gym I go to?”

AT THAT MOMENT, his wife was racing through the streets of Basel, holding Rochele by the hand. Her first thought had been to go by tram, but when the tram didn’t come she thought: We’ll walk, it’s not that far. They ran along in silence, mother and daughter. The rabbi’s wife’s wig was a little crooked from all the wailing and head-shaking in despair, but she didn’t care. Rochele had her coat on inside out; no one noticed that, either. They paid no attention to traffic lights at the crossings, but sometimes they had to stop for a moment anyway, and then she would say: “He’s alive, Rochele, he’s alive. It’s a miracle.”

Twenty minutes later, they arrived at the hospital.

“Awromele Michalowitz,” the rabbi’s wife said at the desk. “Quick. He was brought in today. He’s alive.”

The receptionist looked at her a little pityingly, then searched about and gave her the room number.

The rabbi’s wife dragged her daughter down the hospital corridors. Rochele dropped her scarf, but her mother didn’t notice.

They had to take the elevator, but the rabbi’s wife couldn’t wait, so they took the steps. She found room 534 and threw open the door.

A nurse was busy fixing the drip.

“Awromele,” the rabbi’s wife cried, “Awromele!”

She threw herself on the boy. “Careful for his ear,” the nurse said, but Awromele’s mother didn’t even hear her. “Ow!” Awromele shouted. Then the rabbi’s wife let go of him and simply said, “You’re alive, you’re alive.”

“That’s right, Mama,” Awromele said quietly. “Of course I’m alive. And you?”

“Look who I brought to see you,” the rabbi’s wife said. “Your sister.” She picked up Rochele and sat her down on the bed.

“Hi, Awromele,” Rochele said. “I knew everything would be okay. It’s because of the pelican.” Then she whispered in her brother’s ear, “Don’t tell anyone else, but the pelican is coming to save us.”

IN A BASEL suburb, the Egyptian awoke from a dreamless sleep, fed his dogs, and remembered that this was the day the policemen would come by for their money. Then, for just a moment, Bettina crossed his mind again, and he gently shook the half-empty box of dog food. His wife had already gone out. She hadn’t left a note.

When the moon was full, the Egyptian sometimes crawled quietly out of bed, so as not to wake his wife, and went out into their little garden with his dogs to cry with them at the moon.

He started shaving, but stopped halfway through. “That’s enough shaving,” he said to his dogs. “Enough. No time today, don’t feel like it today.”

In the bedroom, he dressed and picked out a necktie. He always dressed up for the Swiss policemen — they appreciated that. They liked doing business with genteel people.

IN ANOTHER PART of the city, the rabbi yanked off his condom and soon rid himself of his sperm in Lucy’s mouth, an event that made him feel such relief that he fired off a prayer of thanks. “I thought it would never come,” he told Lucy, “I thought I was sick.” And he hugged her tightly and asked with real interest, “Where do you live, anyway?”

“Downstairs,” Lucy said, “in the basement.”

“That’s handy,” the rabbi said, dressing quickly. “So at least you don’t have to commute.”

ONCE THE NURSE had fixed the drip and left the room, the rabbi’s wife asked: “Awromele, what happened? I want you to tell us everything.”

But Awromele didn’t have the strength to tell everything. He took Rochele’s hand with a smile and said, “Xavier knows the whole story — ask Xavier.” And then he fell asleep. Still sitting on his bed, Rochele held her sick brother’s hand and said quietly to her mother: “It’s because of the pelican. The pelican is on its way.”

The rabbi’s wife said nothing, just looked sad.

Rochele said, “Mama, your wig’s on crooked.”

IN A USED MERCEDES that dated from his time at the restaurant in Rapperswil — he had remained frugal, so as not to disappoint his parents — the Egyptian drove to Jerusalem Kebabs.

He’d had too little sleep, and he mulled over what had happened last night. Make a donation to a charitable institution, that was what he needed to do, and soon. That was the only remedy he knew for depression. Giving to a good cause, supporting his brothers’ struggle for freedom.

He unlocked the door of his restaurant. The Nigerian cleaner would be coming along in an hour, a friendly kid with great teeth who wasn’t afraid of applying a little elbow grease.

The policemen would come by early in the afternoon. He hated them, really. It wasn’t enough just to give them money; you had to talk to them as well, had to remember everything, their wives’ names, their sons’ hobbies, their favorite soccer team. If it got any worse, you’d be better off becoming a social worker, instead of a dealer. It wasn’t about the money, the policemen said, it was about having a nice little talk. But it was precisely that nice little talk that the Egyptian was dreading today.

He had just poured a glass of tea and seated himself at the table in the back of the restaurant where he always sat if things were quiet when the door opened and two people came in, a man and a woman. Tourists, from the looks of them. The man had a little video camera around his neck.

“Closed,” the Egyptian called out from the back of the restaurant.

The tourists didn’t pay any attention.

They closed the door behind them and walked into the restaurant. Straight towards him.

Of course, they hadn’t understood what he said. Tourists never did.

“Closed,” the Egyptian said again. “Closed, fermé, gesloten. Chiuso.”

They didn’t turn around right away, so the Egyptian shouted, louder now, “We are closed!”

“We only want to drink something,” the man said once he was standing at the Egyptian’s table. “We’re thirsty.” He was wearing a woolen watch cap and had a slight accent that the Egyptian couldn’t quite place.

“All right, something to drink,” the Egyptian said. “Fast. Drink something fast, and then go.”

His weapon was behind the bar, a little pistol he had never used — he didn’t like violence. In films it was okay, to look at, but he preferred not to do it himself. And he hadn’t been to the movies for years. No time for that.

He thought: I’ll get my gun, that’s what it’s there for. The Egyptian didn’t like the looks of this. He had heard stories from his colleagues: the robbers didn’t look like robbers these days, sometimes they looked like backpackers, and they would get all cozy with you, and when you were least expecting it, once they’d stolen your heart, they took off with the cash register. Or with your stash.

That was why the Egyptian no longer allowed his heart to be stolen. He couldn’t afford it. A stolen heart meant a stolen cash register.

He wanted to increase his market share, but not at any price; he was careful, careful with the competition, too. He wasn’t looking for trouble.

In any case, they hadn’t come to liquidate him. If that was what they’d been planning to do, they would have done it already.

Before he could get up and move for his gun—“Drink something fast, and then go,” he had said again — the man in the watch cap pushed him back in his chair.

The Egyptian looked at him in amazement. His amazement was sincere. You always take the possibility of violence into account, but when it finally comes along, you’re surprised anyway, because it’s always different from what you expected. Despite his muscles, which were clear to see, the man in the watch cap had something feminine about him, something gentle, yes, almost courteous, even when he spoke in a commanding tone.

“Sit down,” the man said. “First we’re going to talk. Then we’ll drink something.”

The woman he had with him was not unattractive: blonde, medium stature. She was wearing a blouse and a fairly nondescript windbreaker. She nodded amiably to the Egyptian.

They both sat down now, the man and the woman, across from the Egyptian. They looked around with interest, while the Egyptian did his best to remain who he was, the boss of the kebab place. The manager of a one-man business. A successful immigrant. A dealer with principles. A man who, in his happiest moments, sensed that he commanded respect.

The tourist across from him took off his woolen cap. He was bald.

Maybe they were just racists; maybe they didn’t want to steal anything, just pound him. Pound until they were satisfied, pound until they couldn’t pound anymore.

“So let’s talk,” the bald man said, after he was finished looking around.

If I jump up now, the Egyptian thought, and run to the bar, I can get my gun and shoot him. If I can remember where I put it. But he remained seated and asked: “Talk? Talk about what?”

The bald man didn’t reply, so the Egyptian said: “I’m a busy man. I don’t want to talk. I have a lot to do today.”

“Cigarette?” the bald man asked. He pulled a pack of Marlboro Lights from his inside pocket.

The Egyptian shook his head. “I have a lot to do,” he said again, “I don’t have time to talk.”

“So you mean you’ve stopped?” the bald man asked. He had long eyelashes, the Egyptian noticed, and on the right side of his forehead a birthmark, one of those fat ones.

“I don’t know you,” the Egyptian said, “and you don’t know me. You come here, I’m closed. You want to talk. That’s not good. That’s not the way you do it.” He tried to sound convincing, but he heard himself and thought his voice sounded like nothing. Like weakness, like a person who’s been tossed aside, like an inedible piece of meat.

The bald man lit a cigarette, and asked again: “You mean you’ve stopped?”

Nino wiped a few crumbs from the wooden table. He mustn’t forget to call the pest-control people. They needed to come by again; the kebabs might be only a front, but a modicum of hygiene never hurt. And he shouldn’t forget who he was, either: he was Nino; here in Basel they still called him Nino. “You people heard me,” he said, using his left hand again to wipe some imaginary crumbs onto the floor. “I don’t want to talk. I’ve got a lot to do. I manage this place. The management says: No talking. The management says: You two are going to go home now. You two are going to go drink something somewhere else.”

No one spoke. But the tourists didn’t get up, they didn’t go home — maybe they didn’t have a home — and then the bald man asked again, “Have you stopped?”

The Egyptian tugged at his necktie and scratched the back of his head. He felt hot. Why was he still alive? Three of his five brothers were already dead. Why wasn’t he dead? Why had death passed him by? Only because he was too cowardly to be a hero. If this was life, which he wasn’t so sure about anymore, then he didn’t really know what he was doing here. Trash was what it was, a filthy mess, full of bald pudenda and tourists who wouldn’t fuck off.

“Stopped what?” he asked. “I don’t know you people. You’ve made some kind of mistake. You’ve mistaken me for someone else. I don’t know who, because I don’t know very many people in this town. But I have to get on with my work. I’m the manager of this place. I’m going to call the police.” The longer he listened to himself talk, the more he sounded like an old woman. She was lying tied up on the living-room floor, but she kept protesting, just for the record.

“That’s not a bad question,” the bald man said. “Yeah, what have you stopped doing? Maybe we should ask, What haven’t you stopped doing? Maybe that’s a better question.” He looked at the woman beside him, but she didn’t seem to be listening: she was meditating, or thinking about another man, or a vacation on Malta when it hadn’t stopped raining for ten days. The Egyptian had been to Malta once. With a French woman. “So let’s ask you that,” the bald man went on. “What haven’t you stopped doing? You haven’t stopped dealing. You’re still living, so you haven’t stopped that, either. Let’s see, what else haven’t you stopped doing? What does a person like you not stop doing? What can a person like you not help doing?”

Nino looked at him, the bald man with the video camera around his neck. He rubbed his hands together; they felt dry. Then he stood up, but the bald man pushed him back in his chair rather forcefully, and the Egyptian couldn’t help thinking about his dogs. How he had fed them that morning, how he went into the garden with them sometimes to cry at the moon. He liked that. That made him happy; he would lie in the grass beside his dogs, even if it was cold out, even if it had just rained, and cry.

“Let’s talk,” the bald man said. “Let’s do it right now, because time is money, and before long it won’t be necessary anymore.”

The woman was toying with an elastic band she’d been wearing in her hair. Her hair was hanging loose now. It was kind of curly.

“There’s nothing to tell,” the Egyptian said, and he looked at them, these two people who looked like tourists. He kept looking at them, because he didn’t understand what they wanted from him. “I’m a busy man. You two have mistaken me for someone else. That’s why I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Maybe they would believe him. He could be very convincing at times — people used to tell him that.

“There’s nothing to tell,” he said again, “I’m the manager. This is my place. My falafels are famous.”

For a moment, he was afraid that something had gone wrong with last month’s payment, that they hadn’t split it up correctly, and that the Swiss police had decided to take action. But he knew how the Swiss police operated — they worked in a different way. Besides, they didn’t look like this. Swiss undercover agents talked differently, too. He knew them; he knew them better than his own family.

“I sell famous falafels. So what’s to tell?”

He laughed and held up his hands. It was a good joke, too, he thought, if you stopped to think about it. When people asked him what he did, he could say that: I sell falafels.

“What is it that makes time so valuable?” the bald man asked imperturbably. “Death, that’s what makes time valuable. The faster death approaches, the more valuable time becomes. A fifteen-year-old boy thinks he’ll live forever — time isn’t valuable to him. You don’t see what we see. You don’t know what we know. Our death is fast and accurate, our death never misses the target, our death leaves no trace. Our death has to be faster than that of the enemy. Our death is faster. But let me put it differently: since we’ve been sitting here, your time has become more valuable, and we want just a little piece of that time before it becomes worthless and no one wants it anymore.”

The Egyptian shook his head and looked at the door. “I don’t understand,” he said, “I’m old — maybe I’ll live twenty, maybe thirty years, probably not — I don’t have any children. What do you people want? Money? Do you think I’m rich? Rich from what? Would I be sitting here if I was rich?” He thought about Malta again, and the French woman he’d been with there. Funny to think about that now — it had been months, maybe years since he’d last thought about it.

He laughed again, and the woman across from him looked at him in a way that gave the Egyptian an uneasy feeling. A bloated feeling, like when you’ve had too much to eat.

“Hamas,” the bald man said. “Let’s talk about Hamas. First you start talking about it, because a conversation has to start somewhere, then we’ll tell you what we have to say. Come on, talk. Talk about Hamas as though it were your grandma. Your favorite grandma, who told you all her naughty secrets.”

The woman was weaving little figures with her elastic band; she was pretty good at it. Outside, a fire engine went by, its sirens blaring.

The owner of the kebab place shrugged. “Who?” he asked. “I don’t understand. My grandma? My favorite grandma? Hamas?” He laughed. “My grandma is dead. My grandfather is, too. And my grandma didn’t have any naughty secrets — she didn’t have any secrets at all. Listen, my hair smells like frying fat, my hands are tired from slicing lamb and running the deep-fryer, I never remember a name, I don’t have any regular customers, and when I do I forget them right away. My falafels are famous, but customers can’t find me because I’ve moved so often. First I had a place over there, now I’m here. I should try advertising, but I don’t have enough money to advertise.” He moved his face closer to that of the bald man. “My heart doesn’t get stolen anymore,” said the Egyptian. “Because the people who steal your heart steal your cash register, too. My heart is locked up.”

He put his hand over his heart, and the bald man looked around wearily. Then the bald man said: “Okay, so let me tell you something. Let me tell you about your dogs. Heinrich and Günther — that’s it, isn’t it?”

The Egyptian cleared his throat, and looked at the door as if he expected the cleaner to show up, though he wouldn’t be coming for half an hour. He often came late, never early.

“That’s right,” he said, after thinking for a bit. “Günther and Heinrich. That’s what they’re called. They’re Swiss dogs, so I figured I’d give them Swiss names. You have to adapt. Which means your dogs have to adapt, too. Adapting starts with the dogs. The dogs have to speak the same language as the other dogs. You have to call them. You take them for a walk, and they run away, because they’re pigheaded, or young and frisky. Then you have to call them. Then the neighbors hear your dogs’ names. Don’t give them names that would be unwise, I always say. Don’t give them names that will give your neighbors an uneasy feeling. A bloated feeling. For Swiss dogs you have to come up with Swiss names.”

He kept talking, because as long as he talked he felt no fear. His brothers were heroes — that’s why most of them were no longer alive — but he was no hero and never had been. He had dreamed of being one. He looked at his hands again.

They didn’t seem to have any more questions, so he asked: “What can I do for you? What do you people want from me? You’re mixed up, you’ve mistaken me for someone else. In some places everybody’s Hamas, in other places everybody’s Swiss. I’m nothing.”

“There’s a lot you do for us,” the bald man said. “Enough, in any case. What seems like a little to you might be a lot to me. Every little bit helps. I collect those little bits. You love your dogs, don’t you? You’re crazy about them. That’s one way of talking to you. I can tell you about how much you love your dogs, and how unpleasant you’d find it if one day they disappeared. How you’d go to bed at night and see those two lovely dogs of yours being run through a meat grinder. About how you’d see them in your dreams, every single night; you get out of bed, again and again you hear Heinrich’s and Günther’s dying yelps wherever you go. I could talk to you like that, but I prefer not to talk to you like that. Because, actually, I find that unpleasant. I want to tell you something, and I have something to tell you. I collect, I’m a collector — that’s what I do. Some people collect pinecones, other people collect stamps, I collect information. That’s why I’m here. That’s the only reason I’m here, the two of us are here.”

The bald man stared at the Egyptian the whole time he was talking to him. The Egyptian looked him in the eye, and as he looked he thought: What can I offer this man to make him stop talking? I can’t listen to this anymore; the sound of his voice makes me sick, even sicker than that bald cunt yesterday. Maybe I’m sick, because everything makes me sick. Maybe I’ll die soon, maybe that’s not so bad, even though I’m afraid of dying, because when I die I’ll see my whole life pass by, what it was like, what it could have been like, what it should have been like, and I don’t want to see my life pass by. I can’t face it. That’s why I have to keep living, because as long as I’m alive I don’t have to look at it.

“Information, as I’m sure you know, always has something attached to it,” the bald man said. “Informants are what is attached. Maybe you’re starting to understand what I’m trying to tell you. Maybe you sensed it coming the moment we walked in here. I collect informants. I’ve collected a whole network of informants, and I take care of them, too, because you have to take care of them, the informants; otherwise they run away or forget the meaning of life. Just like women. And now that I’ve run into you, I want to add you to my collection.”

The Egyptian tried to get up, but the bald man laid his hands on his shoulders and said: “You really shouldn’t do that anymore. It’s not nice.”

The Egyptian sat down again and whispered, “I’m thirsty.”

“Get him a glass of water,” the bald man told the woman.

She went to the bar. Nino turned and watched her go. She was wearing a denim skirt. She rummaged around in the sink, rinsed a glass, and poured him some water.

He drank eagerly. When the glass was empty, the bald man said: “What do we have to offer informants? I’m sure you’d like to know. Before you can accept a proposal, of course, you have to know what it involves. What are you saying yes to? That’s the question. You’re saying yes to life, for starters; those who say yes to us are saying yes to life. One good turn deserves another. That’s our motto. I’m going to tell you everything, and I’m going to be frank — being frank is better for all of us. If you’ll be frank with me, I’ll be frank with you. And the franker we are with each other, the more useful we are to each other. We offer our informants money, respect, and women.

“Let me start with respect. I talk to you as though we’re on an equal footing — that’s respect. You’re a filthy Arab, a two-bit dealer, such a two-bit dealer that you pose no danger to the big dealers — they let you live the way other people let a fly live on a summer evening. But we act as though you’re not a filthy Arab. We act as though you weren’t some shit-fly. We forget about that — or, rather, we act as though we’ve forgotten about that — and that’s respect. Respect is a rare commodity in this day and age.”

The Egyptian looked at his hands again; in some strange way, he was glad that he’d put on a tie that morning.

“Everyone hates the Arab,” the Egyptian said slowly. “Everyone hates the Jew. Money is the only thing that doesn’t hate us.” He knew whom he was dealing with now; he had no doubt about that anymore. He wasn’t particularly quick on the uptake — he was like an elephant, slow to get rolling — but once he was rolling he moved straight ahead. He should have known. They were everywhere, even in Switzerland. He rubbed his hands together. He wanted to go home. Go to sleep. Walk his dogs. Go back to sleep.

“The second thing we offer you is money,” the bald man said. “You homed right in on that. Money isn’t everything, but it’s a lot. Money on a monthly basis, good money. Something for a rainy day, a little safety, a little security — call it whatever you want — we call it money.” For a moment, almost unnoticeably, he glanced over at the woman beside him, who was still playing with her elastic band.

“And, finally, we offer you women.”

“Women,” the Egyptian said, and he thought about his dogs again, and for a moment about his mother, too.

“One woman,” the bald man said. “The loveliest, sweetest, softest of women.”

“I’m a married man,” the Egyptian said, quietly and not very convincingly. “Are you married?”

“What do you call that?” the bald man asked. “What do you call it when a man offers another man money, women, and respect?”

The Egyptian thought about it. He scratched his cheek; he should have done a better job of shaving, this looked like hell. If his mother saw him like this, she’d laugh at him, she’d never let him enter her house again, she’d gossip about him to her friends — he would never be able to go back to Cairo, but, then, maybe he never wanted to go back, all he wanted was peace and quiet. “Friendship,” he said. “When a man offers another man money and women and respect, then those two men share a friendship. Then they’re friends.” He took a deep breath. That was it. He had spoken well. But it didn’t help.

“Exactly,” the bald man said. “Friendship. You give us information, we give you friendship.”

The bald man stuck out his hand and the Egyptian took it, but didn’t let go of it again. “Listen,” he said, “I know who you people are — you don’t have to tell me. I know already. I’ve heard about you; I’ve had friends who worked for you. They died, but that’s not the point — anyone can make a mistake. I’d be pleased to be your friend. I’m a businessman, after all, I have no opinions, I hate opinions, they get me nowhere. What’s an opinion? No idea. I don’t read the papers. I work hard, no time for the newspaper, All I know is that everyone hates us, that everyone hates me. Even the flowers, even the plants hate me — when I bring them home they die — and the trees hate me, too — when I go for a walk in the park they hit me in the face with their leaves. Everything that lives and grows and blossoms hates me. That’s why I can’t afford to have an opinion. I’d be pleased to be your friend, but you know how they are. If they find out they’ll slit my throat. They’re excitable. You people know how that is.” Then he turned to the woman, like a lawyer starting in on his final plea. “A throat is cut before you know it. And I’m a married man. I don’t want to end up like that. Not like the others. I don’t want to end up like that — believe me, I don’t deserve that. My wife doesn’t deserve it, either. She’s a good woman. In her way.”

“And your two dogs,” the bald man interrupted, “Günther and Heinrich, don’t forget them. You not only have a wife, you also have two dogs. They need you, the dogs need you. No one refuses my friendship. No one says to me: I don’t care about that friendship of yours.”

The bald man yanked his hand out of the Egyptian’s grasp.

The Egyptian had the feeling that all was lost. That he would be better off saying yes, just to have it over and done with.

Briefly, for a fraction of a second, the bald man laid his hand on that of the woman beside him. She stopped playing with the elastic band. The bald man waited for the Egyptian to say something, but he was silent. He was thinking about his dogs, his house, his wife, his life; again he had the feeling that he had lost himself somewhere, the way you lose a wallet with precious photos and think, even years afterwards, God, what a pity about that wallet. He was afraid, because he’d heard the stories. He dreaded what was coming, but he had been dreading that for a long time, for years.

“Don’t you think she’s lovely?” the bald man asked.

The Egyptian looked at the woman, at her dark-blond, slightly curly hair, her blue eyes, her blouse, the swell of her breasts. He nodded.

“She truly is lovely,” the bald man said. “She’s the loveliest.”

The Egyptian shook his head slowly. “I’d like to,” he said. “I don’t even know your name, but I’d really like to. But it’s impossible. I don’t want to end up like that — I’m too old to end up like that. I have nothing valuable to offer you; I don’t know anything. I know nothing. No one takes me seriously, that’s why I don’t know anything.”

The bald man got up, walked to the door, and locked it. Then he went to the bar and searched around amid the pile of tapes and CDs beside the little stereo. The Egyptian looked questioningly at the woman across from him, and she smiled at him.

“Beethoven? Do you like that?” the bald man asked.

“I enjoy classical music,” the Egyptian said. “I lived in France for many years. Worked in France for many years. I’m familiar with French cuisine, and that’s where I first heard classical music. I speak French. A little. French is classical, too.”

The bald man put on a piano concerto by Beethoven and sat back down at the table. “Look at her,” the bald man said. “Look at her, my friend. I brought her along for you. As a token of friendship. As the start of something beautiful. Look at her.”

The Egyptian looked, but he was afraid, and tired — that, too — and he was also worried about his dogs. Who would go with them into the garden at night to cry at the moon if he wasn’t around?

The woman with the dark-blond hair began unbuttoning her white blouse.

“You people will leave my dogs alone?” he asked.

“Of course,” the bald man said. “Of course we’ll leave them alone. What have your dogs ever done to us?”

“When business is good,” the Egyptian said, “I donate money to Hamas, because I suffer from depressions, actually, and giving money helps. I opened an account for them here in Switzerland. Every good cause needs a Swiss account. I used to give a lot of money to my parents, but it wasn’t enough. They’re doing good things in Palestine, Hamas is. That’s why. They’re not corrupt, they believe in something. I don’t, I can’t help you people, I don’t believe in anything, that’s why I’m depressive, that’s why my head hurts. It pounds, it pounds all day long. I take pills for it, but the pounding doesn’t stop. You two are representatives of the Zionist entity; you must believe in something, but I don’t. That’s why my head pounds.”

And while he spoke, he stared at the woman’s lovely breasts.

“Put your hand on them,” the bald man said. “Touch her tits, touch them, that’s what tits are for, that’s what they’re made for, to be touched, to be sucked. Tits make you forget everything. The left one will make you forget that you’re a filthy Arab, the right one will take care of the shit-fly you’ve become. The shit-fly that feeds on the excrement of others. You don’t have to think about any of that anymore. You’re with us now. Love has come home. You have come home.”

The Egyptian reached out his hand and put it on the woman’s right breast. She smiled, but said nothing. He felt how warm she was. He touched her nipple, he thought about other nipples, and then again only about this nipple, which was different from all the others.

“Is she a whore?” he whispered.

“She loves her country,” the bald man said, glancing at the woman as though to make sure he’d expressed himself well, had not passed along information that would afterwards prove inaccurate. “Her fatherland. And you?” The bald man took his video camera out of its case. “Do you love your fatherland?”

The woman got up and stood in front of the Egyptian. She took his hand and moved it over her bare upper body.

“What about you?” the bald man asked again as he turned on the video camera, which made a zooming sound before he pointed it at the two of them. The recording had begun.

“What about me?” the Egyptian asked. She was loosening his tie. Truly lovely she was, beautiful the way people in movies were beautiful, voluptuous, overwhelming — a machine, really, but a luscious machine, cold and hot at the same time.

“Do you love your fatherland?” the bald man asked as he started filming.

“I don’t know,” said the Egyptian, whose shirt was now being unbuttoned and pulled off. “I can’t lose my heart anymore. Not to people, not to countries. My heart is locked up. I have two dogs. That’s enough.” He took a deep breath. The woman’s hand was taking his breath away, and making him nervous — that, too. That hand was now moving across his stomach, his chest. Her nails — they were painted, pink — he looked at them the way you look at an unfamiliar creature crawling up your bare leg. You’re curious, and just a little frightened, too, because it’s bigger than you thought.

“Is she a Jewess?” the Egyptian whispered.

“Ask her,” the bald man said. “Go ahead, you can ask her. You can talk to her. Maybe we should turn on some more lights — it’s kind of dark in here.”

He went to the bar. The Egyptian looked at him and said, “The switches are down there, on the right.”

The bald man leaned down. The little restaurant was flooded with light; the only time it was ever this light was when the Nigerian cleaner came to mop the floor. He wondered where the cleaner could be. What time was it, anyway?

The woman took off the Egyptian’s shoes. He submitted, passive and mute. She pulled his socks off, too. Dark-blue socks. He sat there bare-chested, but didn’t feel the draft. Lust is a strange animal. The animal was stronger than the fear, it made the Egyptian greedy. He was lost anyway — what difference did it make? Cold consolation is better than no consolation at all. He wanted so badly to feel like a man.

The bald man sat back down where he’d been sitting the whole time.

“Do we have to do this?” the Egyptian asked. “Do we have to film this?” He felt a hand on his crotch.

There was no reply. The bald man filmed on as though he hadn’t heard a thing, and in the background the piano concerto by Beethoven sounded sadder all the time. The Egyptian tried to concentrate on the music. His days in France — that’s what the music reminded him of.

“Get up,” the woman said, “so I can take off your pants.”

Her voice sounded pleasant. Gentle and helpful, the voice of a nurse, an experienced nurse, the voice of someone to whom you can surrender, someone you can trust, because you figure she knows what she’s doing.

But the Egyptian didn’t get up yet; his legs were like jelly; everything about him was like jelly. He had once wanted to be a pianist, a concert pianist.

“Are you a Jewess?” he asked.

She nodded. Like him, she was half naked, but she still had her shoes on — she was wearing tennis shoes. A thought flashed through his mind: She’s stoned. And so is the bald guy. They’re both stoned out of their minds.

The Egyptian smiled politely, but uncomfortably, too, because he was half naked. “I have lots of Jewish customers,” he said. “Friendly people, good customers, we don’t talk about politics. I never talk about politics.”

Then he looked at the video camera. “I can’t do it,” he said. “Not with a man around. I have to be alone. Can’t you go away?”

“No,” the bald man said. “Later on, yes. I have to be there the first time. The first time, I have to film it. I keep the film, because sometimes the informant forgets what the purpose of his life is all about, and then we show him the film. That refreshes his memory. Soon the purpose of your life will be on videotape. Then you can never forget it. Even if you go senile, the purpose of your life will have been documented. That is happiness: being able to watch the purpose of your life on video.”

The Egyptian struggled to his feet. She unbuttoned his pants, and they fell down around his ankles.

“Is this your job?” the Egyptian asked, looking straight in the lens. “Is this what you do every day, again and again, and the next day, too?”

The bald man laughed — heartily, for the first time. “This is my job. It’s not pleasant. But it’s part of my work. Don’t worry, it’s nothing personal. I am the eye that sees nothing. If everything goes well, no one sees a thing. By the way, I’m divorced.”

“What?” The Egyptian suddenly thought about the strange birthmark on the bald man’s head.

She had his penis in her hand.

“You asked whether I was married,” the bald man said, “a few minutes ago. Remember? Well, I’m divorced.”

“You’re pretty excited,” the woman said. “I can tell that I’m making you horny. You make me horny, too. You’re cute. Different from the others. You don’t smell like frying fat — that’s not true. You smell a little like dogs, and a little like the desert.” She giggled for a moment; maybe it wasn’t a giggle, maybe she’d choked on something.

It grew quiet; everyone was listening to Beethoven. The woman was rolling the Egyptian’s penis between her hands.

“Does he always film you?” the Egyptian asked.

“He has to film me,” she said. “It’s for our country, it’s for the safety of the citizens of our country. Only in this way can there ever be peace.”

“Are you stoned?” the Egyptian asked.

She stopped kneading, looked at him. “Sometimes,” she said. “Not now. I like to be, though. When the time is right.”

“They say,” the Egyptian said, and the words seemed like dry, stale bread sticking to his molars, “they say that XTC makes everything very intense, too intense for words. I’ve never tried it, I don’t know, but that’s what they say.”

She held his penis tenderly in her hand and looked at her informant. “Actually, I like women,” she said. “I also like men, okay, but I like women more. And sometimes when I’m with a woman for my own pleasure — because when I’m with a woman it’s always for my pleasure — I take XTC. It’s intense, yes, that’s right, it’s intense.” She nodded and went on kneading. For the moment they both seemed to have forgotten about the man with the video camera.

“This may not be as intense,” the Egyptian said, “but it’s intense enough for me. If it were any more intense, my heart couldn’t take it. I have a weak heart — that’s why it’s locked up.”

There he stood with his old body, his fat belly, the hair that grew like weeds in the most unexpected places: on his back, his upper arms, the backs of his hands, at his ankles, on his toes. But what the bald man had said was right, he was in the process of forgetting all the rest; it hadn’t succeeded quite yet, but he was in the process. This was his forgetting, it had started, it was in her tit, in the representative of the Zionist entity, in her predilection for women, her desire for XTC, in the routine way she introduced informants to the purpose of life. She would numb him, she would redeem him, she would show him the deeper meaning of all this.

The woman bent down and began lightly kissing the Egyptian’s partially stiff penis. Then the Egyptian looked at the camera again.

“So this is how you get by,” he said to the bald man. He suddenly felt proud, no longer wounded; or, rather, he was so wounded that it no longer mattered. “This is your job. You go home tonight, and what do you say then? ‘I filmed.’ Is that what you say? ‘I filmed another one’?”

But right away he thought: What am I going to say when I get home tonight, what am I going to say when I talk to my mother? Every day that she lives on, she acquires more venom. She’ll laugh at me. Even if I don’t tell her, she’ll still laugh at me, because she hears everything in my voice. And I always hear her laughing, wherever I go, whoever I’m with, I hear her laughing. Only when I cry with my dogs at the moon, that’s the only time she isn’t there.

“This is how everyone gets by,” the bald man said. “Just relax and enjoy it. That’s what you need to do: enjoy, and forget the rest. That’s why we’re here.”

The Egyptian leaned down and kissed the woman. On her cheeks, her nose, then on her lips, too.

“Are you a whore?” he asked. “Are you a Jewish whore?”

“I work for the state,” she said, petting his penis. “I like my work, because it’s essential. Whores don’t like their work — they hate it, they despise it, they don’t like their customers. If I didn’t do this work, there would be no more state. Our state is a dream, but it can be your dream, too. That’s why I love my work. But I love you, too, because you smell of dog and of desert, and that’s why I’m not a whore. I can smell that — I smell that you’re different from the rest. I’m a civil servant, I’m part of a collective. From now on, you’re part of that collective, too. When you’re part of a collective, individual wishes and desires no longer count. The collective frees you of needless feelings.”

The Egyptian looked at her and couldn’t help it, he said, “You’re beautiful, yes, you’re beautiful, but you have no future, what you do has no future.” He wondered: How many years’ difference is there between us? What age was I when she was born? He tried to figure it out, but it didn’t work, it made him dizzy, all those calculations.

“So what does have a future?” the bald man asked from behind his video camera.

“My dogs,” the Egyptian replied after he’d thought about it for a few seconds, and now he turned his body towards the camera as well. The woman had to let go of his penis. “If you people look at this later on,” he said, “whoever sees this later on, remember this: your country has no future, my country has no future, the future is for the dogs. Remember that, whoever sees this later on, and don’t laugh at me. As I am now, you will be, too, and then you won’t want people to laugh at you, either. So don’t laugh at me, there’s nothing for you to laugh at.”

I’m in league with the enemy, so I’m already dead, he thought. It’s only a matter of time, of minutes, maybe seconds even. I’m like the chicken running around after its head has been cut off.

The last echo of life was lust. The lust that was registered in the bald man’s video camera, in order to remind the informant of the purpose of life.

That was why the Egyptian threw himself on the woman, on the table. And while she stuffed his old, partially stiff member into herself, and kissed him and told him how nice he smelled, of desert and of dog, the Egyptian heard in the distance the piano concerto by Beethoven.