The Jewish Messiah

Made for Each Other

MARC PARKED in the center of Amsterdam, along a canal. There stood his Alfa, amid all the normal cars; there stood Marc with his overnight bag, Awromele with his plastic bag, and Xavier with his rolled-up canvases.

“So here we are,” said Marc, “the center of the avant-garde,” and he locked the door. He had made good time.

Xavier and Awromele looked around. So now it was starting; here was where it began.

Talent — you either had it or you didn’t, and, standing there beside Marc’s Alfa, beside a canal that stank a little, an odor that seemed extremely authentic to Xavier, he knew for sure that he had it.

Marc offered to stay in town that night. “The three of us can find a hotel, my treat,” he said. The boys didn’t think that was necessary. They could get by on their own. Xavier told Marc that he should go back to Basel. The mother shouldn’t stay alone too long. It couldn’t be easy for her, having her son leave so suddenly.

“Yes,” Marc said, “maybe that would be better.” He pressed his stepson to his breast. He could barely let go of the boy; he kept throwing his arms around him, holding him tight, running his hands down his back, and pressing his mouth to his lips. And saying all the while: “Don’t deny your own talent, Xavier. Don’t let them take it away from you. Keep painting, no matter what happens, keep painting. And no matter what they say to you here, I believe in you.”

Xavier finally put an end to the embraces by saying, “Now we really have to get to a youth hostel — otherwise we’ll never find one.”

“I’ll tell your mother you said hello,” Marc went on. “I’ll tell her not to worry.”

For the last time, he hugged Xavier with all his might. The sorrow inside him grew, and at the same time he felt a strange excitement, as though he had history itself in his hands. He climbed back in the car and drove to Basel. All the way to the German border, he could think only of Xavier’s hypnotic gaze, his massive talent, the fact that he, Marc, had recognized that talent and awoken it with a kiss, that his career would be a glorious one, and international, that above all.

Only when he was past Cologne did he start preparing for his flight simulator.

AWROMELE AND XAVIER didn’t find a youth hostel, but they found a cheap hotel, not far from the central train station. They shared a bathroom with three English punks who drew no distinction between alcoholism and anarchy.

The drain in the hotel bathroom didn’t work well, which made the place smell of sewer. On the shelf in front of the mirror was an old razor blade with hair sticking to it.

“We won’t stay here long,” Xavier told Awromele when they were lying in their three-quarter bed at last. “Don’t worry.”

They cuddled up. Xavier put his arm over Awromele and planned to fall asleep like that. He was happy, despite the little bed and the smelly bathroom. “Together at last,” he said.

Awromele, though already half asleep, murmured: “Please don’t go feeling anything. Please feel nothing.”

The very next morning, Xavier went to the Rietveld Academy. His paintings he carried in a tube under his arm. He had said to Awromele: “Will you take care of King David? If you leave him alone in the room, someone might steal him.”

Awromele wandered through Amsterdam with King David in a plastic bag. He had taken off his yarmulke. He bought a knitting needle so he could scratch himself under the cast.

In a café across from the stock-exchange building, he struck up a conversation with an American who, after about ten minutes, asked Awromele to come up to his hotel room. Awromele turned down the offer. He was reminded of the tall boy’s words: “Loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of.” He did make out with the American a little, though, for he also remembered the gist of what the tall boy had said: language as we know it is becoming obsolete. The language of the knuckle, the shoe, and therefore also that of the tongue that makes no sound, at most a little smacking noise, that is all the language that matters now, that is the language we must speak; otherwise we will never free ourselves of ourselves.

At the end of a long kiss, when he no longer knew quite what to say but realized that it would be a good idea to slow down kissing the American, he pulled out the jar and said: “Look, this is King David.”

“King who?” asked the American, who was in Amsterdam on business.

“King David,” Awromele said.

The American took the jar, saw something blue, and asked, “What is it?”

“My friend’s testicle,” Awromele said. “His name is King David.”

The American laughed heartily at that. But when he took a better look at the jar, he grew a bit pale and asked for the bill.

Awromele went back to their hotel room. He lay down on the bed to wait for Xavier. After a while, he took Mein Kampf and a notebook out of the bag and tried to translate the next passage. “So first the struggle and then perhaps pacifism,” he translated. “Otherwise mankind will have overshot the zenith of its development, which will then result, not in the ascendancy of some ethical idea, but in barbarism, and finally in chaos.”

Awromele was getting better at capturing the author’s style. There was an awful lot you could say about this man, but he certainly could write. He went on to translate a whole section, without waiting for Xavier.

He ate the last of the cookies his mother had given him.

When Xavier came back, around dinnertime, Awromele had translated more than two full pages. He was proud of what he’d done. Xavier sat down beside him and kissed him. Awromele asked, “How did it go?”

“It went,” Xavier said. “They sort of have to get used to me, to my style of painting. And what about you, did you have a nice time?”

“I met an American who wanted to take me back to his hotel room,” Awromele said. He was relieved that he had made acquaintance with someone so quickly. In Basel he was seen as a withdrawn boy; he could also be boisterous and tell a lot of jokes, but he’d had almost no real friends. “And I did some translating. Listen to this,” he said. “‘He who wishes to live must therefore struggle, and he who does not wish to struggle eternally in this world will not be able to go on living.’” Awromele closed the notebook. “That’s what my mother always says, too.”

“What do you mean?” Xavier asked.

“Well, just what I said. My mother always says that you have to fight in this life. You have to stay quiet, but while you’re being quiet you have to fight.”

“No, I meant about that American?”

“Oh, him.”

“Yeah, what was that all about?”

“Like I told you. He asked me, Do you want to go back to my hotel? He said: You feel like going with me? It’s just around the corner.”

“And you could understand what he said?”

“He spoke English.”

“Since when do you speak English? I’ve never heard you speak English. I thought you spoke only Yiddish, Hebrew, and German.”

“My English isn’t perfect, but I understood what he was saying. It’s easier for me than French.”

Xavier picked up King David and put him carefully on the top shelf of the cupboard. It was a narrow cupboard. Fortunately, they hadn’t brought along a lot of clothes.

“How did you start talking to him, anyway?” Xavier asked, looking closely at King David. He had the feeling that King David had shrunk, and changed color slightly as well. “Did you touch him or something?” Xavier asked. “Or worse than that? People don’t make proposals like that otherwise.”

“I didn’t do anything, I just talked to him.”

Xavier threw Awromele back on the bed, sat on top of him, and squeezed his throat. “What did you do with that American? I want to know. What did you do with him?” Xavier saw the hairy hand of an American plucking at Awromele’s body, and the thought took his breath away. He was a reasonable person, but the hairy hand of the American turned Xavier into a cornered rat.

“Tell me,” Xavier shouted, and squeezed Awromele’s throat even harder. “Tell me, what went on?”

The Englishmen, who had gone to bed only a couple of hours before, pounded on the wall with their shoes. They liked noise, but not when they were sleeping.

“Nothing,” Awromele said in a squeaky voice. “Nothing at all, sweetest, believe me.”

“What do you mean, nothing?” Xavier asked. “Why did that American ask you to go with him if nothing happened? If all you did was talk to him? Something more than that must have happened, and I want to know what.”

“I made out with him a little,” Awromele said. “That’s all.”

Then Xavier boxed Awromele’s ear. It was the second time he had done that to Awromele.

Awromele looked at Xavier in amazement, though he wasn’t really shocked. When Xavier had climbed on top of him and squeezed his throat, he had known that anything could happen. He thought about the tall boy again, about his own head, which had been used as a soccer ball.

Xavier himself was horrified at what he’d done. He was afraid of losing Awromele, and he started petting and caressing him, and kissing him on the ear that he had just hit.

“That was my bad ear,” Awromele said. “That wasn’t very smart of you.”

“I’m so sorry,” Xavier said. “I feel so terrible.” And he caressed the ear and the red spots on Awromele’s throat.

“I only kissed the American,” Awromele said, “after he asked me up to his room. I only did it to be polite. I didn’t want to disappoint him. My mother says we Jews already have such a bad name, that’s why we need to say yes to most things. He looked so sad. I can’t say no to someone who looks so sad.”

“Was it nice?”

“What do you mean?” Awromele asked. “Nice?”

“Did you feel anything?”

“No, of course not. I did it because I couldn’t say no.”

Xavier stopped petting him; he stopped kissing him, too. He just sat on Awromele and said, “So I’m not really that special, that’s what it comes down to.”

He climbed off of Awromele and slid from the bed.

Awromele lay quietly on the brown bedspread, rubbing his neck, which was still red from the force of Xavier’s hands.

“What you do with me you can actually do with anyone,” Xavier said.

“No,” Awromele said, “you’re something special. But loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“What do you mean, loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of? Are you lonely? I’ve come all the way to this city with you. You couldn’t wait any longer, it had to happen right away, at a moment’s notice. I give up everything — my life, my mother, my school, my city, my language, my upbringing — I give it all up for you. I’m pleased to do that, it’s not that, because I want to comfort you. Like no one has ever comforted a Jew before. But then, the very first day we arrive in this strange city, you say, Loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“But it isn’t anything to be ashamed of, is it?” Awromele said. “They told me that, and I thought, Yeah, they’re right.”

“Who told you that?”

“The boys in the park, those four boys.”

When Xavier heard that, he was so angry and so sorrowful that he tore one of his paintings into little pieces. He couldn’t understand why Awromele would listen to boys who had beaten up on him, and not to him, the comforter of the Jews.

“Why are you doing that?” Awromele asked. “What good is that going to do? Those are your paintings, you worked so hard on them. Don’t do that, please. It makes me sad.” He clung to Xavier like a little monkey, but Xavier knocked him away.

“I’m doing it,” Xavier said, “because you attach more value to boys who beat you up than you do to me. I call that sick.”

Awromele picked up the knitting needle and began scratching himself under the cast. “What are you so worked up about, anyway?” he asked. “What in the world are we talking about here? You leave me alone because you want to go to the art academy so badly, and instead of being happy that someone’s interested in me, you start ranting and raving. Don’t do that. I’m here with you. I’m here, aren’t I?”

Xavier didn’t know what to say to that. He looked at Awromele. Again he saw the hand of the American. His fantasy was more powerful than his love. He didn’t notice anything of that love now. He felt only hatred, a dull, monotonous hatred.

He no longer felt like telling Awromele what had happened during his visit to the Rietveld Academy. The strange way the receptionist had looked at him, the long talk with the professor who had recommended the preliminary course, and then added: “But think about it for a while. Not everyone belongs at this school.”

Xavier wanted to get out of the hotel room and go into town; he needed to be alone, to think.

“We agreed,” Awromele said, getting up, “that we weren’t going to feel anything. We have to stay a little independent, that was the agreement.”

Xavier didn’t know what to say to that, either. Little was left of his hopeful expectations from the day before, when they had sat together in the car. He wondered, could this be suffering?

At the same time, he sensed lust. He longed to touch Awromele, to throw him down on the bed again, not to squeeze his throat this time but to ride him like a horse, to go into him like no American would ever go into Awromele, no matter how sad he looked or how hairy his hands were.

“No, we’re not going to feel anything,” Xavier said. “I promise, I swear. Nothing, absolutely nothing.” And he kissed Awromele, pushed him down on the bed.

“Be careful of my hand,” was all Awromele said.

The Englishmen were pounding on the wall even harder.

When Awromele was down to only his shirt, and all Xavier had on were his trousers, an intense melancholy came over Xavier, insatiable, such sadness. That sadness told him, You don’t mean anything to him.

He let go of Awromele, pulled on his sweater, and walked out of the hotel. Awromele shouted after him: “We weren’t going to feel anything. That was the agreement, that’s what you promised. Not feel a thing. Never feel anything. Don’t stop in the middle of it.”

Xavier had truly intended not to feel a thing. He had been willing to swear that he, just as Awromele had said, was incapable of feeling a thing, but apparently he was feeling something now anyway.

He wandered through the city. After twenty minutes, he thought about going back to Awromele, to tell him how much he loved him, but he shoved the idea aside. A little later he thought, Maybe I should put an end to it. But instead, he bought a bicycle from a junkie.

As he cycled along, he began seeing the beauty of the city he had known till then only from Marc’s stories and from guidebooks. He started feeling better; there was nothing for him to get wound up about. Maybe Awromele was only trying to make him jealous, maybe he was testing him. Awromele was probably still a little confused from the beating he’d taken in the park. What he had taken was actually a bit worse than the beating itself. Little wonder, then, that, in his confused state, he had made out with some dirty American. Besides, he had only just started going out without his yarmulke, and that couldn’t be easy for him, either.

This line of reasoning came as a reassurance to Xavier.

After he rode around for an hour on his new bike, he remembered the task he had assigned himself. Now that he was here, there could be no more excuses.

At a late-night shop, he bought a bunch of tulips, to surprise Awromele.

Xavier found his friend sitting cross-legged on the bed, busy translating Mein Kampf again.

He handed him the tulips and said: “I also bought a bike for us. Do you want to see it?”

“Yes,” Awromele said.

When they were out on the street and Xavier saw Awromele beaming as he looked at the bike, he fell in love all over again. Xavier thought: We fit each other, we were made for each other. We belong together.

THE MOTHER HAD remained lying on the kitchen floor for a good eight hours. She had slept, daydreamed, thought without being able to say exactly what she’d thought about. At last she got up and made some tea.

She did a little shopping. At the greengrocer’s, she talked to the owner’s son. He, too, was a member of the Committee of Vigilant Parents, even though he was nowhere near having children yet. He had joined out of solidarity with his loyal customer. After he had read in the paper about the horrors that had taken place, he’d told himself, I have to do something. Joining the Committee of Vigilant Parents seemed to him like the first step.

While she was counting out her change, the mother said to him, “Did you know that I wanted to poison him?”

“No,” the greengrocer’s son said. “Who, if you don’t mind my asking? Pedophile Lenin? Well, I can imagine that.”

“No, my son,” the mother said, “when he was just a baby.” And she laughed the way she had once laughed at celebrations and cocktail parties. Charmingly, seductively, yet still with a certain distance. In fact, she couldn’t laugh at all, she didn’t see anything to laugh about.

The young man gave her a plastic bag for her groceries. He watched her go. That woman must be having a hard time, but she fought back bravely. Always cheerful, always time for a little chat.

The mother headed home, but — as though pulled along by invisible threads, as she would later describe it — she felt compelled to enter a supermarket.

The manager of the supermarket referred her to a shop that specialized in pest control.

In front of that shop, the mother stood wavering for a quarter of an hour.

Then she walked home. She was going to fix a vegetable quiche.