The Jewish Messiah

Greetings from Anne Frank

HIS HANDS WERE black with mud, as though he’d been working in the garden, and there was blood on his wrists. His jacket was wrinkled, his shirt torn, he hadn’t bathed in two days. He had delivered an ultimatum to the world, then withdrawn to his bunker. There were people who had not understood him, allies who had abandoned him. NATO had its armies on immediate standby, ready to finish the job and lop off the head of the Jewish-Palestinian serpent in the Middle East. But they wanted to give diplomacy one final chance, to prevent unnecessary bloodshed.

Friends had stopped calling him; business contacts with whom he had been on intimate terms for years no longer answered his calls and letters. Yet there were exceptions, people who understood what he was doing, and who supported him.

Even the Jewish people, whom he had hoped to comfort as no other people had ever been comforted before, whom he had served, for whom he had lived, had turned against him, because they were afraid of dying. Fear did not bring out the best in people. Fortunately, there were still a few courageous individuals who said: “This is how King David wanted it. Redemption is now at hand. Those who are willing to heal themselves will now be healed by King David.”

Awromele’s body, wrapped in a blanket, he dragged behind him. Awromele had refused to listen to him; he had been unable to say no, he still couldn’t. He had gone out into the street.

“They won’t hurt me,” Awromele had said. “They won’t even recognize me. I’ll come back, you know that, I always come back. We don’t feel anything, that’s why I can come back to you, that’s why I’m safe with you. And you’re safe with me.” Then he had kissed Xavier and gone out the door. In his hand he’d had a shopping bag from the supermarket chain he had once worked for.

It had taken the army three hours to free Awromele. They had been forced to wrench his remains by force from the hands of a furious crowd. At the back of the crowd there had been an old, bald man and a woman with gray curls — she was old, too. They had once worked together. They glanced at each other, but they said nothing. In the pocket of her jeans the woman felt the tooth she had carried around with her for years, like a talisman. They saw Awromele’s mutilated corpse, then parted ways without a word. And, for the first time in years, the woman smelled the smell she had never forgotten, the smell of dog and desert.

THE FOREIGN PRESS spoke of a revolution. International observers reported that ha-Radek had lost control over his people. That was an exaggeration: the wish was father to the thought. The fear of dying had made some people hysterical, that’s all it was, hysteria. Lynching was a distraction. It provided temporary relief; lynching was their aspirin. The crowd had poked out Awromele’s eyes, cut off his hands, beaten him with shovels and garden implements, even after he was dead.

When Xavier got to his desk, he stopped. He let go of the blanket. This was how the secret-service men had brought Awromele to him. In an old gray blanket.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t look in it,” they had said.

He only shook his head. He had not opened the blanket with Awromele in it, which was now lying at his feet. He had made a peeping sound when he breathed, like an asthma sufferer; the ventilation in the bunker didn’t work well, or at least not well enough. Then he had said, “Go. I need to think.”

The security men had left. Every civil servant who still supported his democratically elected leader was needed out on the street.

Only when they had pulled the door closed behind them did he bend down.

“Awromele,” he said, “Awromele.” He pulled open the blanket. He tried to wipe the mud and the clotted blood from Awromele’s forehead. But it was hopeless, it only made things worse.

He had no idea how long he had been in the bunker. He knew that the ultimatum he had issued would expire within a few hours; he knew that the stale air tickled his throat unpleasantly, that the dust brought on fits of coughing that sometimes lasted for five minutes. But he also knew that he could not give up, not now, now that he had finally started taking the comforting seriously.

The dogs barked; they came running up to him. Xavier petted them. He had named them Saul and Jacob. There wasn’t enough water for the dogs; their tongues were hanging from their mouths. Crazed with thirst, they jumped up against him, but he pushed them away. “Go on,” he said, “I’ll come to you in a minute.”

He wanted to be alone with Awromele.

But he had already been alone with Awromele for hours. His sense of time had abandoned him.

That same morning, he had phoned the leaders of Colombia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Mexico, Cambodia, and Kazakhstan, his most faithful allies. Each and every one of them had received unconventional weapons from ha-Radek. His final allies — there weren’t many of them, but there were enough. A common enemy, that was all you needed to form an alliance.

The leader of Hamas, he was among them, too. He had assured Xavier that the nuclear weapons given to his movement, which were now aimed at London, would be used at the appointed hour. Ha-Radek had had to do a lot of talking, but he’d finally convinced the leader that they had a common enemy, that they could not go on maintaining the status quo forever, no matter how agreeable that status quo was to some.

He dragged Awromele’s body over to a round table with a CD player on it. The music soothed him — Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Orff. Always the same music, day and night, the same music, so he wouldn’t have to hear the buzzing, the buzzing in his ears.

“Dearest,” he said, “we’re alone now. We’re alone at last. It was about time. You don’t have to tell me that you couldn’t say no. I know that, I know it so well. The way people know that truth is pain. But some of them don’t want to know that, some of them can’t accept it — that’s what’s driving them mad. They don’t understand that pain is relief. That’s why you should have stayed inside, here with me, in the bunker. Look what they’ve done to you. Now you can’t say yes anymore, either.”

He opened a cupboard. There were baby clothes in it. Awromele had hoped to adopt a baby, a little Vietnamese girl, a baby no one else wanted. But the crisis got in the way. The ultimatum. The baby had never arrived, because of the international boycott — which hadn’t helped, of course. It had at best made a few people extremely rich within a very short period.

He bent down, took Awromele’s head in his hands, and pressed it against him. The head that had been beaten with garden utensils so long that you could no longer tell the back from the front. The crowd had tried to set fire to Awromele. The fire had been put out, but the head was charred black.

“I don’t feel a thing, Awromele,” he said. “Nothing, just like I promised. You don’t have to be afraid.”

He kissed the head, tasted the blood, the burned skin, the shoes that had stepped on it, he tasted the earth, in the end, that was all he tasted: earth.

“Awromele,” he said, “you taught me that loneliness was nothing to be ashamed of. Now I will teach others that as well. It has never been something to be ashamed of. And it never will be anything to be ashamed of.”

IN HER BERLIN APARTMENT, Bettina was packing a little suitcase. Everone had been advised to take along warm clothes to the air-raid shelter.

Bettina had been a junkie for ten years. Then she had kicked the habit. She had moved to Berlin and married a Turk. But they had never been able to have children. They had tried everything, absolutely everything, but it didn’t work.

She slammed down the lid of her suitcase. “Come on,” she said to the Turk. “Let’s go, let’s get there before the crowd does.”

KING DAVID WAS standing beside the CD player. The light in the bunker was unpleasant, too bright in some places, too dim in others.

On the side of a nuclear weapon in the Negev Desert, ha-Radek had had them paint the words “Greetings from Anne Frank.” It was pointed at the old West Church in the Venice of the North. On another weapon he’d had painted, “And from Margot, too.” That one was aimed at Merwedeplein.

Colombia had Spain and Portugal covered; those missiles had the names of various tin and gold mines painted on them. Hamas would see to London and its surroundings. Turkey had the Balkans and Southern Germany, Mexico had the United States, and Cambodia was homing in on France. And ha-Radek himself had two missiles pointed at Switzerland. “Thanks for throwing open the borders,” those missiles said.

He glanced at his watch. The top brass had never left his side, the deserters had come from the lower ranks. The fools, the scaredy-cats, the ignoramuses, who finally knew nothing at all about beauty, and therefore nothing about politics, either.

ROCHELE, who had married a puppeteer and had two children, was standing in her apartment in Basel. She refused to go to the shelter. “What good will that do us?” she had told her husband. “We’ll only end up eating each other.”

She had dressed her daughters in their prettiest outfits, their princess dresses. Then she had made crepes for everyone, and chocolate milk, not from a package but with real cocoa. She was holding the younger girl in her arms.

“Where is everyone?” the child asked.

“Everyone is at home,” Rochele said.

“Why?”

“Because this is an important day,” Rochele said. “Today the pelican is coming. Do you know what a pelican is? It’s a tropical bird. That’s why everyone is at home, so they can see the pelican.”

“Let’s go to the shelter now,” the puppeteer said.

She shook her head.

“We’re staying here,” she replied. “Come on,” she told her children. “Finish your chocolate milk.”

She sat down on the floor beside her children. There was a game of Copy Cat spread out on the rug.

“Who’s going to start?” Rochele asked. Then she looked at her younger daughter, in her party dress.

“Little princess,” Rochele said. “Come over here and sit with me. That’s what Mama likes.”

THE MOTHER HAD locked the door of her room. The nursing home had been evacuated; they had knocked on her door a few times, but in all the panic and commotion they had left her behind.

Although she had only been allowed to eat with plastic cutlery all those years, she had still succeeded in getting her hands on a bread knife, which she’d hidden beneath the sink in the bathroom. Long, long ago, when she had first come to this place.

Now she was crawling around in the bathroom, rooting around amid the old towels and dust, until she found the bread knife at last.

“There you are,” she said, sitting on the floor. “My most faithful sweet-heart. My lover.” She looked at the knife. “You’re so handsome,” she said. “You’re from Italy. You’re the prettiest object on this earth. Now I’ve found you, now I’ll never let you go again. Because the knife is warmer than a person.”

She didn’t undress. She couldn’t stand to see herself naked anymore; she couldn’t bear to look in the mirror.

Her lover took her with her clothes on, again and again, each time in a different place, at first only in the leg, then in the chest, gently still, and finally in the stomach, hard, with all the strength and love the mother had in her.

DANICA WAS STANDING before her collection of Snoopy things. She couldn’t decide what to take with her. Everyone had left the house, but she had stayed with her mother. Someone had to stay with her. Danica had decided that she would be the one to do that. Something that couldn’t break, and that wasn’t too big, either — that was what she should take to the shelter. But what? There were so many things in her collection that couldn’t break and that weren’t too big, either.

She had already decided once, and walked away, but she wasn’t satisfied with what she’d chosen, and so she came back. Besides, her mother was still in the bathroom, freshening up.

HE HAD CALLED his dogs; he had petted them, scratched them behind the ears, held their muzzles up to his face, tasted the dried slobber around their mouths. “Saul,” he had said, “Jacob. You’re so thirsty, so terribly thirsty.”

Then he shot them. He had fired at least five times: because he wasn’t a practiced marksman, a few of the shots had missed. He had cut his index finger on the gun.

Then he knelt down beside Awromele, with the translation of the bestseller by You-Know-Who. The work was almost finished. The notebooks, the notes, the footnotes in a separate folder, the things they weren’t sure about, the construction for which they had not been able to find the right words. He had it all with him, held it all in his hands.

“The best way,” he whispered, “to say nothing is not to be silent, but to speak, so I’m going to read to you from our book, the book we translated, because we belonged together. We always did, and now more than ever. I can’t say the prayer for the dead for you, Awromele. The words won’t leave my lips. But I miss you already. I miss you so badly.”

He buried his face in the formless mass, all that was left of Awromele’s body.

“This is the only prayer I’ll say for you,” he said. Then he opened the manuscript. He saw Awromele’s handwriting, and began reading aloud from the Yiddish translation of the Book of Books. Occasionally he stopped, opened his mouth wide, and howled at the ceiling like a crazed animal.

“Dos lebn wos a jid firt afn kerper foen andere meloeches oen felker, iz di sibe foen a tipisjer ejgnsjaft, wos hot gebracht Sjopenhoiern tsoem friër dermontn sroiszog, az der jid iz der ‘groiser maister foen lign.’ Dem jidns lebnsbadingoengen tswingen im tsoe ot dem lign, oen take tsoe a basjtendikn lign, poenkt azoi wi di lebsnbadingoengen foen mentsjn in kalte raionen tswingen zej tsoe trogn wareme malboesjiem.”*

THEN THE PHONE RANG.

THE TALL BOY, who had become a tall man, had loaded his family, his wife and children, into the jeep. “We’re going into the mountains,” he’d said. “We’ll be safe there.” He had brought along enough food for a month. Cans, cheese, freeze-dried food. Things that couldn’t spoil.

He was already sitting at the wheel when he realized that he hadn’t told his mistress about it, hadn’t said goodbye to her. That wasn’t nice. He suddenly longed for her so badly. He wanted to see her one last time, even if only for a moment, even if it was only for five minutes.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “I forgot something.”

He left the door of the jeep open and began walking hurriedly towards his mistress’s house.

“Don’t take too long,” his wife shouted after him. “Don’t leave us waiting here too long.”

“IT’S TIME,” said the voice on the phone, which he, for a fraction of a second, didn’t quite recognize.

He tilted his head to hold the receiver against his shoulder, and picked up King David. In the white light, the testicle looked bluer than ever.

“Yes,” he said.

The conversation didn’t take long. It didn’t have to take long.

He hung up. “Redeemer,” he whispered to King David. “Redeemer.”

He carried the King over to Awromele’s body, and knelt down with the King beside the translated manuscript by You-Know-Who.

“Listen,” he said, “here it is. ‘A person can easily change languages, that is, he can use another language; but in his new language he will continue to express his old thoughts, his character will not be changed. The clearest demonstration of this can be seen in the Jew, who can speak thousands of languages yet always remains the same Jew.’”

A few minutes to go. He closed the book. The notebooks, the sheets covered in footnotes, he put away.

“I’m going to tell you a fairy tale, Awromele,” he said. “A bedtime story.” He held one of his beloved’s hands, half charred, a hand attached to the arm only by a single strand of flesh.

“My grandfather,” he said, “worked in a place they called ‘the anus of the world.’ And as you know, Awromele, the good comes from the anus. Do you hear me? Just tell me if you can’t hear me. This is your good ear, isn’t it? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. But the anus is everywhere. Wherever you go, it’s there. Whatever direction you start walking, whatever street you turn into, everywhere you go, you run into the anus of the world. It’s always there, everywhere, you can smell it, you can feel it, you can see it. But it’s nothing to be ashamed of, Awromele. Just like loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of. And you don’t have to be afraid. Suffering is the emergency exit of beauty, and we took that emergency exit. We have to learn to speak the language of the future. The language you taught me, Awromele.”

Like a dog, he licked the black, clotted blood from Awromele’s face. “Is this it?” he asked. “Is this the meaning of pain?”

DANICA RAN DOWN the deserted street with her Snoopy pajamas in a plastic bag. Her mother was still in the bathroom. She was putting on her wig.

“WHY AREN’T WE in the shelter?” Rochele’s elder daughter asked.

“Because we’re fine right here,” Rochele said. “Come on, I’ll make some more chocolate milk for the two of you.”

“When’s the pelican coming?” the younger girl asked. She was too tired; she’d been whining for a while.

“In just a little bit,” Rochele said. “When you see him, I want you to shout, Pelican, look at me. You have to stamp your feet on the floor and shout, Pelican, look at me.”

Then Rochele’s two daughters stamped their feet and shouted, “Pelican, look at me!”

HE WAS LYING on Awromele’s body, on what was left of Awromele. The corpses of his dogs were lying a few yards away.

It stank inside the bunker. It stank of old blood, rotting flesh. Almost nothing was working anymore, not even the ventilation. He remembered the teeth of the Armenian who had watched over the synagogue in Basel: he remembered the lunch he’d eaten at Awromele’s house; he remembered happiness. It broke him.

“Awromele,” he whispered, holding his friend’s head, a head that was gradually coming loose from the body. Nothing was attached anymore. Awromele had been brought to him as a collection of loose parts. A collection of flesh and bones, wrapped in an old blanket.

“Do you hear the music, Beethoven, Awromele? Everything else has fallen silent, no pleas, no complaints, no declarations of love in which no one believes anymore. Only he speaks. Can you hear it?”

He got up. He was holding the head loosely in his arms; it had no color anymore, it was pure black, from the back, from the front, from the side. He carried it to the table, and sat down beside King David.

He held the head in his lap, rocked it back and forth like a baby that needs to go to sleep. That’s how much he loved this head, even now that it was only a head, without a front or a back, without eyes or ears, a head like a soccer ball.

He had Awromele’s head on his knees, held it with both hands. He hummed for a few moments. Then he stopped and said: “I came to comfort. But the only comfort you people have is destruction.”

He held up the head, pressed it against him, planted hundreds of little kisses on the burned crust. “Awromele,” he said. “Are you listening? Our only comfort is destruction.”

“THERE’S THE PELICAN,” Rochele said. She was standing at the window with her younger daughter on her arm. The little girl’s mouth was brown from the chocolate milk.

“There’s the pelican. You can see him now.”