The Jewish Messiah

The Terrorist in Beatrixpark

SUMMER CAME, and the Albert Heijn store where Awromele worked threw a party. The employees were allowed to bring their partners. Sales at their store in the last quarter had risen more that at any other Albert Heijn in Amsterdam. So the drinking and dancing took place at the store’s expense.

That was how Xavier first met Awromele’s colleagues. He discovered that Awromele was popular at the Middenweg store. People knew about his Jewish origins, but didn’t make a thing of it. Checkout girls with bleach-blond hair told Xavier that Awromele was an excellent colleague, and never at a loss for a joke. They thought his accent was the loveliest they’d ever heard. They didn’t mind the fact that he was more interested in men than in women. On the contrary, that made things easier.

A little before midnight, when the party had passed its high point, Xavier saw Awromele dancing with the manager. Their dancing became increasingly intimate, until Xavier could no longer tell where Awromele stopped and the manager began. Awromele kissed the manager. Again and again, as though he couldn’t get enough of his manager’s lips.

It all became a bit too much for Xavier. Feeling a fit of rage coming on, he thought, If Awromele tries to tell me again that he does this because the Jews already have such a bad name, I’ll hit him.

Xavier walked out onto the dance floor and tapped Awromele on the shoulder. But Awromele didn’t respond. He had lost himself in the manager’s mouth. He had become one with his boss, even though Awromele had never learned to dance. Xavier had — the waltz, the lambada, the tango — he’d had to learn them all back at the Gymnasium in Basel. Xavier stopped trying to get his attention. He danced with one of the checkout girls for a while. Though he tried to dance as enthusiastically and sexily as Awromele, he couldn’t concentrate on his dance partner. He kept seeing Awromele, his movements, his mouth, his lips.

Awromele was driving him crazy. And so was his own imagination. But this was no fantasy anymore. He didn’t have to imagine it, he was seeing it. Wherever he looked, he saw Awromele pressing his body against that of his manager.

It had been a long time since Xavier had seen a man as unattractive as the manager. If only he’d been a handsome man, charming and intelligent, like Xavier’s grandfather.

At last, in the men’s room, he ran into Awromele. Still in the company of the manager. Hand in hand. Xavier whispered, “Shall we go home and translate a little Mein Kampf?” But Awromele said, “No, not now, tomorrow.”

“Awromele,” Xavier said, “let’s go home. I’m not enjoying myself anymore. I can’t take this.”

Awromele only shrugged and waved his hand dismissively. “I always come back to you,” he said. “What are you worried about?”

The manager left them for a moment, to get something to drink. They were standing in front of the lavatory door now, and Awromele said: “I don’t want to disappoint him. He likes me so much, he’s crazy about me. I can’t help it, I can’t say no.”

Just then, the manager came back, without drinks. He gave Xavier a friendly nod and dragged Awromele back onto the dance floor.

Xavier stuck around for one more number. Then, bitterly and without saying goodbye to anyone, he left the party.

He walked home along Leliegracht, speaking words of encouragement to himself in Hebrew, then in Yiddish. “I should leave Awromele,” he said. “He’s no good for me. What’s the point of this? I don’t have a friend, I’m alone. I’m all alone. The comforter of the Jews has no friends. Awromele is a beast, a Jewish beast, but where does that get me? He doesn’t want to be tied down. All he wants to do is party, he has no feeling for ideals. He’s a Godless Jew. Zionism doesn’t interest him. What am I supposed to do with someone like that?”

Sunk in thought about whether or not to leave Awromele, and having arrived at Prinsengracht, he walked on, instinctively, in the direction of his school. It was a familiar route; he enjoyed walking to the Rietveld Academy. He walked like an automaton.

“No,” he told himself half an hour later. “I mustn’t leave Awromele; I have to comfort him. I have to start comforting him even better. Then he won’t need other men’s kisses. I haven’t comforted him enough; that’s why he acts like this. It’s my fault. I’ve failed, I’ve driven him into the arms of the manager. I have to offer a sacrifice, to make up for it.”

Xavier began humming quietly and walked on, pleased with his decision.

On Diepenbrockstraat, he saw a boy leaning over a moped. Something about him struck Xavier. The boy was standing under a tree with his moped; he looked as if he’d been standing there for a while. Xavier looked at him from across the street. Then he decided to cross. It was the middle of the night.

Xavier approached slowly. He was curious. He didn’t want to spend the night walking the streets alone again, not like all those other nights, in the hope that Awromele wouldn’t come home too late.

Maybe he had been concentrating too much on Awromele; maybe that was why he’d failed. There had to be more things in the world than Awromele alone.

The boy was wearing a jogging suit. His hair was a dark brown, almost black, and curly. Not big curls — more like Awromele’s, tight curls. He probably used fashioning gel.

The boy looked up. He saw Xavier, and went on with his moped. He was squatting down now, busy tightening something.

Xavier came a few steps closer. He cleared his throat, put his hands in his pockets. He heard the manager saying to Awromele, Do you want to come to my place, or shall we go to a hotel? His imagination: gruesome and unconquerable.

“Would you like some help?” Xavier asked.

“No,” the boy said. He barely looked up. Xavier couldn’t see what he was doing. Something with the moped, that was obvious. But he couldn’t tell exactly what — a flat tire, an empty gas tank, a greasy sparkplug.

The boy looked good. At least, what you could see of him looked good. And young.

Is this how Awromele would do it? Going up to boys in a park, or while they were fixing a tire, waiting for the bus, buying popcorn in a movie theater. The rest went automatically. The rest was not saying no, never saying no. Because the Jews had such a bad name already.

“Would you like some help?” Xavier asked again.

The boy looked up at him for a moment. Xavier saw his eyes. Lovely eyes. Big, that above all, long lashes, thick eyebrows. He saw it all, even in this light. Xavier saw everything.

“Fucking moped,” the boy said without standing up. He lay down on his back and began messing with the engine. He obviously didn’t know much about engines. The moped looked new.

Xavier was standing beside him now. He could reach out and touch him. He leaned down and put a hand on his shoulder, he smiled. He knew how to smile, how to put people at ease; he squeezed the boy’s shoulder gently.

The boy got up right away. No, he didn’t get up, he jumped up, as though he’d sat on a hornet. “Fuck off,” he said. And as he said it, he took a step back.

Xavier was still squatting down. It was a Peugeot. Xavier put his hand on the front wheel. “Nice bike,” he said. “Real nice. Peugeot.”

He repeated the name a few times, like a prayer.

“Yeah, they sure know how to put them together, don’t they?” Xavier said. “Peugeot.” He felt content. His father had once owned a car of the same make.

The boy pushed the moped off its kickstand and began walking away with it.

The moped didn’t work. It had broken down. That was all. A breakdown, in the middle of the night, on Diepenbrockstraat.

While Xavier was thinking about the boy, he saw Awromele in his mind’s eye, undressing, doing things with the manager that he should do only with Xavier. He heard him saying to the manager: “I have to do this because no one comforts me. Because I can’t say no. Because loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Xavier got up, brushed the dust and sand off his hands. He didn’t know where to go. He didn’t want to go home, Awromele’s absence would only hurt him more. If he lay in bed, he would see Awromele in the arms of the manager, he would see Awromele kissing mouths that should never have been kissed, he would see a blissful look glide across Awromele’s face, a look he hadn’t seen in real life for a long time. Awromele’s absence, that was hell.

The boy was about twenty yards away from him now. He couldn’t walk very quickly, pushing a moped like that. Maybe it was stolen; maybe that was the problem. Xavier could see how heavy the moped was, how hard it was to push along. “Hey,” he shouted.

The boy turned off into Beatrixpark. There were two fences forming a stile at the entrance, to keep bicyclists from riding through.

Xavier followed the boy. It wouldn’t have been hard to catch up with him, but he kept walking behind him at a proper distance. He didn’t want to be pushy, he just wanted to be there, in case.

Occasionally the boy turned around to look, and Xavier waved. One time he shouted, “No need to worry.”

The boy was close to one of the ponds now. Xavier knew this park; he had come here to paint a few times: King David with trees in the background, benches, a trash can. King David in the grass. King David and the roses.

The boy was no longer walking — he was running, insofar as one can run while pushing a moped.

Then the boy stopped. Xavier stopped as well. He waited to see what would happen. He wondered whether Awromele had ever followed boys with mopeds into the park at night. He was sure he hadn’t; he was the only one who would do that, for Awromele. Everything he did, he did for Awromele; after all, what did he amount to on his own?

The boy was holding his moped upright with one hand now. He turned to face Xavier, waiting for him.

“What do you want?’ the boy shouted. “Fuck off.”

Xavier didn’t know what to say to that. The boy spoke with an accent, too, but it wasn’t a German accent. Xavier couldn’t place it. Even though it was nighttime, even though he was standing close to a pond, he felt sure of himself. He knew what he was doing here; he knew why he had come here. He had to convince the boy and help him, in that order; he was good at that, at convincing people. Back at school, he had always won the class debates. Rhetoric had been his favorite subject.

“You need help,” Xavier called out. He began walking towards the boy.

The boy said nothing. He didn’t run, either; he just looked at Xavier, sizing him up.

Then Xavier stopped in his tracks. Something had occurred to him. “Are you Palestinian?”

There was no reply. The boy stood there, his head slightly bowed, holding his moped with one hand. He was wearing a pendant; something glistened there, just beneath his Adam’s apple.

“Come on,” Xavier said, “tell me the truth. Are you Palestinian?”

Xavier had never met one before, but sometimes he thought he recognized one, in the subway, in front of a department store, on the beach on a Sunday afternoon. The enemies of the people he must comfort.

The boy turned around, took a few steps with his moped. On the back of his jogging suit was a number: 78.

Xavier caught up with the boy. He couldn’t move very fast. There was gravel here, which made it even harder to push the moped. The gravel had just been laid. The moped looked like it was sinking up to its wheels. Like in quicksand.

The boy stopped again, panting.

Xavier walked around and stopped in front of him. He held out his hand to him. This was how Awromele did it, making contact, kissing, not too much talking. There was nothing to say. Not in language the way people had known it until now. The old, accursed, impotent language that pointed only to death, every paragraph, every word, every comma, death.

“My name’s Xavier.” He placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The same shoulder he had touched before.

The boy didn’t move. He simply looked at Xavier. Tense, threatening, but curious as well.

This world was a world of eternal struggle, You-Know-Who had seen that quite clearly.

He wants me, Xavier thought. He wants me, the way I want him. He desires me. That’s what we were made for, to long for each other, only for that, again and again, without end, till the end of time, till it doesn’t matter anymore.

“You’re pretty,” Xavier said. “You’re a pretty Palestinian.”

He waited for a reaction, still with his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Only now did he notice that the boy was trembling.

“Or are you something different? You can tell me what you are. Or are you just pretty? That’s okay, too. Just being pretty is the best.”

The boy pushed him away. With both hands. His moped fell against Xavier.

Xavier cursed. His right leg hurt — his ankle. The moped was lying on his foot like a corpse.

Xavier rubbed the painful places.

The boy started backing away, leaving his moped, leaving Xavier, backing towards the pond. Dignified, like an actor who doesn’t want to turn his back on his beloved audience, who keeps waving and bowing until the final applause has died out.

“Come on,” Xavier shouted, and went after him. When he started walking, he noticed how badly his leg hurt, but he kept walking faster. As though he was in a hurry, as though every minute mattered, as though he couldn’t wait a moment longer.

When you were made for each other, it was wrong to walk right past each other. It was wrong to let each other go when you desired each other the way the boy and Xavier did.

Then the boy could go no farther. He was standing in the grass at the edge of the pond. In the distance, on the gravel, lay the moped.

The rain had turned the ground to mush.

Xavier suddenly thought about his grandfather, his mother. He should call her again soon; he should paint her again sometime as well. But she was in Basel, and he was in Amsterdam. He thought about Mr. Schwartz, and then about Awromele. And the whole time he was thinking about all this, he was walking towards the boy, who stood with his back to the fence beside the pond.

Mothers came here with their baby carriages. They would stop for a few minutes at the pond, to feed the ducks. With a moldy piece of cake. Wasted minutes. Xavier had watched them, had compared them with the mother in Basel. He grabbed the boy by his upper arm, the way you might grab a schoolboy, strict but with the best of intentions. The boy didn’t seem to be resisting, as though he couldn’t, or didn’t dare to, or didn’t want to.

Xavier pushed the boy onto the ground, in the mud. He lay down on top of him. As if he were an air mattress. “Do you long for me?” he asked quietly. “Do you long for me the way I long for you? You can tell me, you can tell me anything now. It doesn’t matter who you are; it doesn’t matter, do you hear me? To me you’re just the prettiest Palestinian, and that’s what you’ll always be.”

Once more there was only the look in the boy’s eyes, a questioning, suspicious look. Xavier moved his face closer to him — he wanted to whisper something in his ear.

“Hey, fuck off!” the boy shouted. He pushed Xavier’s head away, poked him in the right eye with his fingers.

The pain enraged Xavier. He seized the boy’s head and started kissing him.

Xavier heard ducks while he was kissing, he heard them quack; he was surprised that the ducks weren’t sleeping. Maybe they had woken the ducks?

The kissing soothed him; he could think clearly again, for the first time since he’d seen Awromele dancing with the manager.

Xavier grabbed the front of the boy’s jacket, pulled open the zipper. He wasn’t wearing anything under it. That’s why he was trembling — he wasn’t dressed warmly enough. He didn’t have enough clothes. That was it. A runaway, a thief.

“Do you want to be comforted?” Xavier asked, holding the boy firmly to the ground. “Isn’t there anyone to comfort you? Are you a foreigner?”

The boy tried to pull on Xavier’s hair, but Xavier moved up to sit on his arms. He rocked back and forth on his knees until the boy started screaming. Xavier took hold of the pendant and turned it around. An animal — a camel, a dromedary, a hippo perhaps. He couldn’t see what it was supposed to be.

“I’m Awromele Michalowitz’s friend,” Xavier said, still holding the pendant. “I saw you with your moped. I figured you could use some help. I figured you need me; that’s why I ran after you. That’s all. You don’t have to be afraid.”

The boy tried to free himself. But where could he go? His moped was broken.

Xavier pressed his lips against the boy’s lips. He succeeded, despite the struggling and the screams — the boy screamed in a language Xavier didn’t recognize — in sticking his tongue into the boy’s mouth. Everything was right, everything fit together, everything was made for each other. Everything tasted so familiar, strangely enough, so safe.

Xavier caressed the boy’s hair, kissed his nose, his lips, his cheeks. Not hard, closer to gently, tenderly, and with concentration. He kissed the boy’s stomach; it was dark in the park, but the streetlights farther down made it light enough for Xavier to see that little hairs were growing out of the boy’s navel, soft black hairs.

He paid no attention to the boy’s struggle. He had to comfort now, tonight; otherwise he would lose Awromele.

At last there was no more struggling, no more pushing and pulling; the boy grew quiet. He liked it, he wanted to be comforted, the way all people wanted to be comforted. Wanted to be understood, to be discovered. Maybe there was no difference between comforting and not being able to say no; maybe, once you added it all up, it all came down to the same thing.

Xavier licked the boy’s nipples, and when he’d had enough of that he leaned down over his face again. He felt content. Almost happy.

At that moment, at that happy, perfect moment, the boy raised his head and bit Xavier on the cheek. So hard that Xavier screamed. But the boy didn’t let go.

Xavier pulled on the boy’s hair, but that didn’t help, either. The boy had sunk his teeth into Xavier’s cheek and wasn’t about to let go; he was like a mad dog; it seemed he wanted to rip flesh from bone. He bit in mortal fear, he bit like a woman.

Xavier yanked the pendant from around his neck. Nothing helped; the boy sank his teeth in farther, he wasn’t letting go.

In the mud, Xavier’s hand came across a stone — not a particularly big one, a little one. With the boy’s teeth still in his cheek, he grabbed the stone and brought it down once, hard, on the boy’s head.

Then the boy finally let go.

The boy’s head fell back onto the ground. He lay there, exhausted, but looking pleased as well. Although the light was dim, Xavier could see blood on the boy’s mouth. That’s how hard he’d bitten. He had sunk his teeth all the way in. For no reason, without pity.

Xavier bent down over the boy. He had wanted to comfort him; of all the people in the Jerusalem of the North, he had been looking for this boy, this lovely boy who had been standing with a moped in the middle of the night on Diepenbrockstraat.

He touched the boy’s cheek, but the boy didn’t respond; the boy was very quiet now. In his hand, Xavier still held the stone. It wasn’t a big one — half the size of his hand, maybe a little bigger. Children had played with it; they had left the stone lying here; they had been planning to build something with it, but then they’d had to go home to eat.

“You’re a foreigner, aren’t you?” Xavier said. “You’re not from around here. You’re from somewhere else. But I come from somewhere else, too, did you know that? I’m from Basel, Basel on the Rhine. Do you know that place? What’s your name, anyway?”

The boy didn’t answer. He looked at Xavier as though he was off his rocker. A retard, a runaway from an asylum, out in the middle of the night with a stolen moped. Someone who didn’t even know his own name. Someone who had forgotten to take his pills, a boy who was nothing without his medicine.

But because of the intensity of his gaze, the color of his eyes, all Xavier could think was: You’re so pretty. And because he thought the boy was so pretty, he petted his head carefully.

Xavier stopped for a moment. He panted, noticing how the pain in his cheek was gradually spreading across his whole face.

“You’re a terrorist,” Xavier said. “Isn’t that it? Are you a terrorist? Or are you only friends with the terrorists?”

Then Xavier had no choice but to kiss the boy again. “Sweet boy,” he said. “Pretty boy. It doesn’t matter. When I was a baby, my mother mixed rat poison into my milk, because sick little animals have to be bitten to death. But she didn’t do it — that’s why I love her even more than before, because I didn’t know about that before. About the sick little animals and what she did to the milk. Do you love me like that, too? Why don’t you talk to me?”

He shook the boy. The pendant Xavier had yanked off was lying in the mud beside his head. Xavier glanced at it: yes, it was obviously a camel or a dromedary. Strange that a boy would wear an animal around his neck — it was what you’d expect from a schoolgirl, saving plates with pictures of bunny rabbits on them. Plates that would never be eaten from, because they were too pretty. Plates that would always stay in the cupboard and be looked at on rare occasions. Only looked at.

“Little terrorist,” Xavier said to the boy. “Wake up, pretty little terrorist, say something. I want to hear your voice.”

Xavier sat down cross-legged beside the boy. He was muddy anyway, it didn’t matter where he sat.

He took the boy’s head in his hands; he rocked it, wiped the moisture from the boy’s forehead. It was sweating, the head was. Xavier said: “I came here to comfort you, even though you’re a terrorist, even though I knew you were a terrorist when I saw you standing beside the moped. I could tell right away — I recognized you — but terrorists need comfort, too. I saw you, and I knew you were looking for me, pretty boy, the same way I’d been looking for you, all those nights when I walked through Amsterdam because I couldn’t go home, because I can’t sleep when my friend’s not there. I go crazy when he’s not there, and he’s almost never there, because he can’t say no. That’s why I was looking for you, from the first moment I got here. Because I wanted to tell you this: suffering is the emergency exit of beauty. That’s what I’ve been wanting to tell you, for so long, as long as you’ve existed. You don’t have to be afraid, little terrorist of mine, because morality is what protects the strong and destroys the weak. That’s why beauty is all there is. That’s why every judgment is a matter of beauty, and that’s why I’m looking for the emergency exit. I know what I’ve done, you don’t have to tell me, I know everything, but I did it to comfort the Jews. What I did to you, too, I did in order to comfort them. I hit you on the head with a rock, but that’s the only way to speak, sweet boy. Because the stone speaks on my behalf. Much better than I ever could. He tells you what’s inside me, what needs to come out, about the things for which no words exist, and even if they did you wouldn’t understand me. That’s why I speak with a stone. All pain is communication, you understand? And all communication is pain. Words as we know them are superfluous. What I am doing now is superfluous. The stone speaks, the stone sings, the stone has sung a song of love; every time he hit you on the head he was declaring his love. Did you hear it, pretty boy? Did you feel it? It was a lovelier song than I could ever have sung for you. I can’t sing — I’m not a stone.”

Then Xavier looked at the stone he was still clenching and saw that there was hair sticking to it. Hair and scalp, an indistinct but sticky substance. He kissed the stone, petted the boy’s cheek.

He let go of the boy’s head, got up, walked to the fence beside the pond. He could step over it without difficulty. He was still holding the stone, as if it were a little daughter’s hand, like a proud father out walking with his daughter for the first time, right after she’s learned to walk.

The water was cold, but not as cold as he’d thought. The ducks quacked. On the other side, he saw two geese as well. He squatted down to wash his chest. He was dirty, from the mud, from the sweat. He remained sitting there like that, up to his chin in the pond. He looked over his shoulder. He could see the boy lying on the shore, the terrorist; he could barely see him. All pain was communication; if it didn’t hurt it wasn’t communicating, and then nothing had been said, nothing had been stated, nothing had stuck. The painless was frivolous, at the very best.

Xavier raised his hand to his cheek. His cheek was bleeding. He didn’t need a mirror to tell. He could feel it. They came swimming over to him, the ducks; they were curious.

“Hello, ducks,” Xavier said.

There was already a glimmer of light in the east. He had to go home, he had to get home fast, wash up, wash his clothes, wait for Awromele.

He dropped the stone into the water, with regret, full of sadness, the way you leave a loved one without being able to imagine what life will be like without her. He climbed onto the shore.

The ducks quacked as he went, as though they had grown accustomed to his presence, as though they couldn’t get along without him.

For a moment, he stopped and looked at the boy lying in the mud, close to the fence around the pond. Xavier pulled up the zipper on the boy’s jogging suit. “So you don’t get cold,” he said. “But cold is communication, too; the cold talks to you, the cold sings its song as well, lovelier than we humans ever could.”

AT THE AIRPORT in Zürich, a young woman with blond curls checked in for a flight to Tel Aviv. At the counter in the duty-free shop, where she wanted to buy some chocolate for her mother, she searched the pockets of her jacket for change and found a tooth. She took it out of her pocket and looked at it, pensively but also a bit distraught. It had been months since she’d seen the tooth; she had forgotten it was in her jacket pocket all that time.

“Oh, forget it,” she said.

For a single second, it was as though the entire airport at Zürich smelled of dog and of desert. Then she put the tooth back in her pocket and walked on, with no Swiss chocolate for her mother, to the gate.