The Jewish Messiah

Like Hotcakes

LESS THAN FOUR WEEKS after the family talk in the sauna, Xavier’s parents split up. Without fighting, without screaming or making a scene.

One afternoon, when Xavier got home from school, his mother had disappeared, taking along her dearest, most valuable possessions. Lying on the table was a typewritten note in which she simply expressed the hope that now everyone would be happier.

That evening, the father shed a few tears.

Two days later, he told his son: “I’ve spoken to your mother. It seems best to me that the two of you stay together. You two need each other the most. And I’m out of the country so often. They need me again in Singapore — I’ll be leaving in ten days.”

To get over the divorce, his father began staying in Singapore for increasingly long periods of time, much longer than necessary. There he had himself massaged by Asians of all genders and ages. In a Buddhist magazine he read that massage frees the soul from the body, so he started saying to himself, before going to the massage parlor, “I’m going to church.”

Xavier searched the house where he was born and had lived for sixteen years to see whether the pictures of his grandfather, and the book, were still there. But his mother had taken them with her.

WITH THE HELP of her ex, the mother and Xavier found a neat apartment in another part of Basel. The kitchen had recently been refurbished and had all the amenities. To get over the divorce, she bought new towels, a famous Italian brand.

The mother and Xavier didn’t remain alone for long. After a couple of weeks, Marc, a soundman at a Swiss radio station, moved in with them.

Marc had hair down over his ears, which he tied back in a pigtail when he was working. He came from a little village in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, but had been unable to find work there. His passion was the flight simulator. His computer had a program that provided him with the illusion of piloting a Boeing 737. Every free moment he had, he spent at the computer. He never grew tired of it. Sometimes he offered Xavier a chance to fly the Boeing as well, but Xavier was not particularly interested in aircraft. Her new boyfriend’s passion, the mother felt, had a calming influence. All the more because he treated her in bed with the same tenderness, amazement, and stamina that he applied to his flight simulator.

ONE FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Xavier’s girlfriend, Bettina, said, “I feel sorry for you, about your parents’ breaking up.”

“It’s no big deal,” Xavier said. He was sitting on her bed, rubbing his hands together. “My mother has a new boyfriend, Marc. He’s nice — a little younger than my mother, but you’d never notice. And my father was away from home too much anyway.”

“I still feel sorry for you,” Bettina said. Her voice grew wistful, which her voice often did, especially when talk turned to India.

She pushed her face into Xavier’s lap, unbuttoned his cotton trousers (Xavier was allergic to wool), and provided him with his first experience with oral sex.

“I never do that kind of thing,” she said when it was over. “This is only the second time. Just so you don’t think I’m, well, you know.”

Then she told him that her family had adopted another village in India, and that donations were still welcome.

From a sense of duty, Xavier signed the papers again in triplicate, complete with his bank-account number.

“You’re a fantastic sponsor,” Bettina said. She stretched her arms lazily. Then she squeezed some toothpaste onto a toothbrush and began brushing her teeth, looking in the mirror as she did so.

“It’s nothing, really,” Xavier said. “Like you said, two glasses of wine a month, no more than that.”

“But you’re still the sweetest sponsor I’ve got,” Bettina repeated, her mouth full of foam. “I have other sponsors, but they’re not nearly as sweet as you. With you, I have the feeling that you really care about India.”

He waited until she had finished brushing, which took a long time. Bettina was a conscientious girl.

She gave him a quick goodbye peck on his freshly shaven cheek and said: “Thanks again.”

“Don’t mention it,” Xavier said.

She didn’t seem to be listening; she picked up her hole punch and filed away the papers Xavier had signed.

And so it happened that, before the age of seventeen, Xavier had adopted two villages in India.

ON A WINDY AUTUMN DAY, after Xavier had read in a local newspaper that the grant money from the city of Basel for a new Jewish community center was still missing, an article that included a brief quote from Awromele’s father, he went with Awromele to meet Mr. Schwartz.

The Yiddish lessons were coming along nicely, but Awromele had hinted a few times that it might be a good idea to take care of the circumcision first, before going any further with the Yiddish.

The divorce had complicated things as well. Not that it cost Xavier much time, but he’d had to get used to the idea of seeing his father only one weekend a month, and to spending almost every evening at the table with Marc, who kept trying to talk him into trying out the flight simulator.

And then there was Bettina, whom he courted primarily in order to make his parents happy. Sometimes his mother asked, “How is Bettina doing?” But his father couldn’t even remember her name. On the phone he would occasionally mumble: “Are you still seeing that girl? What’s her name again?” His interest in his son seemed limited to a vague regret at ever having sired a child at all. But perhaps it was more a matter of melancholy than of regret.

While his parents were busy building up new lives, Xavier was thinking about the task he had assigned himself, the comforting of the Jews. The human urge is always to concretize the abstract, so what he usually ended up thinking about was Awromele — even when he was with Bettina, or eating olives on the patio at the wine bar.

Walking beside Awromele on the way to Mr. Schwartz’s house, he was happy but nervous as well. He was afraid of saying the wrong thing, or doing something that would cause him to fall from Awromele’s good graces.

It was that nervousness, that fear of failure, he realized only later, that made him feel he was experiencing life in all its terror. Comforting begins with surrender. And surrendering to life, that was what Xavier wanted to do. He, who was born for more important things than saving up for a washing machine, driving a company car, or flipping through travel-agency catalogues, decided to dedicate the rest of his life to this.

“Have you ever read Mein Kampf?” he asked Awromele.

“No, is it any good?”

“Well, good—‘good’ isn’t really the word for it.”

“So what’s it about?”

“Mein Kampf. You’ve heard of it, haven’t you? Mein Kampf!”

Xavier’s mother always referred to the man who had written that book as “You-Know-Who.” And sometimes his father did as well; when people spend a lot of time together, they often adopt each other’s habits. His mother would say, “You-Know-Who once said…” or “You-Know-Who would never have…” Fortunately, Marc had no idea who You-Know-Who referred to, or perhaps he simply didn’t care. His world was filled with the flight simulator.

“Come on,” Awromele said, “of course. Mein Kampf—so what about it?”

“Well, the thing about it,” Xavier said, still a little amazed, “the thing about it is that it’s, how shall I put it, it’s a disturbing…”

Xavier had read the book listening to klezmer music and lying on his bed. It had been tough going in parts, but he had read on, and his perseverance was rewarded. It had become increasingly compelling and exciting. In his mother’s new apartment, he’d had no trouble finding the photographs and the book, in the bottom drawer of her wardrobe, down there with the towels.

“A disturbing what?”

“A disturbing book. One of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read.”

“Is it a bestseller?”

“It was a bestseller. A huge bestseller,” Xavier said. “It sold like hotcakes, and the sales are still trickling in. It’s sold more than ten million copies worldwide.”

“Ten million. Does it have pictures?”

“No, it doesn’t have any pictures. Some editions have a picture of You-Know-Who on the flap, but that’s all.”

Awromele thought about it. “It’s not a bad title. If it had been called Mein Hund or Mein Weib it would never have sold anywhere near that. Mein Haus would have been rotten marketing, too. Has it been translated into Yiddish?”

“Into Yiddish? Not that I know of,” Xavier said. “It’s been translated into all the major languages: English, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, you name it. But I don’t think there’s been a Yiddish translation. And it’s a huge book. He plugged away at it — he didn’t mess around.”

“Anti-Semitism, that’s what it is,” Awromele said. “You have writers who want to be published everywhere except in Israel.” Awromele looked a little flushed. “Maybe that’s what we should do,” he said. “You could learn Yiddish that way, and when we’re finished we’ll have something we can sell to a publisher. If the publisher plays his cards right, we’ll sell a few thousand copies. Then we can go to a whorehouse together.”

Xavier stopped in his tracks. “What did you say?”

“An enthusiastic publisher should have no problem selling ten thousand copies of Mein Kampf in Yiddish. Any collector would buy it. Even if you can’t read it, even if you don’t understand Yiddish, you’d still want to have it. We’ll do a nice cover and put in a couple of pictures, so it will appeal to the goyim, too. I’ve got a nose for business. What about the copyrights — have they expired? Or is it one of those families that makes things complicated?”

Xavier hadn’t moved. The nauseous feeling had come back.

“No, the heirs to the You-Know-Who estate are all dead.”

“That’s great.”

“But that bit about having a nose for business, you shouldn’t say that. That’s anti-Semitic. Besides that, it’s not idiomatic. You can say that you have a good nose for business, you can say that. Even better is to say that you have good business instincts.”

Awromele wanted to walk on. But Xavier was still rooted to the spot. “And what you said after that.”

“What did I say after that?”

“About what you wanted to do with the money.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not really serious?”

“You mean from the sales of our Yiddish Mein Kampf? Of course I’m serious.”

Xavier had to stay calm now, that was the most important thing. Businesslike and calm. He had to act reasonably, in a fashion worthy of a comforter. Some people comforted a prodigal son, others comforted a whole family, maybe there were even people who comforted a street or a neighborhood, but he’d taken it upon himself to comfort an entire people. That brought certain responsibilities with it. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to translate the book into Yiddish. Like I said, the sales are still trickling in. It’s a good idea in itself to acquaint the Jews, open-mindedly and without historical prejudices, with the ideas of You-Know-Who. There’s a lot more to it than you might think. Fascinating bits about Vienna, about painting, about freedom of the press, the state, the social-democratic tradition. But I meant what you said after that. That you wanted to spend the royalties on…on something as fleeting as pleasure. Not even pleasure. Lust, the lowest kind of lust a man can have. A person can have. And then not just any person — a person like you, a special person. You don’t really mean that?”

Awromele shook his head. “I don’t think about things like that as much as you do, and I’m not worried about low lusts or high lusts. The only thing I think about is increasing the total quantity of enjoyment. People need to enjoy themselves. There are thirteen of us at home, and I’m talking only about my brothers and sisters. That teaches you to be practical.”

“But you’re one of the chosen people,” Xavier said, and his voice cracked.

“Leave it up to me,” Awromel said. “Keep your shirt on. If we sell five thousand copies, we’ll take the girls along on a trip, not a long one, maybe just for a day at the Bodensee. Maybe go up into the mountains and rent a hut. Like the goyim do.”

“Don’t destroy me, Awromele,” Xavier said quietly. “Please, Awromele, don’t destroy me.”

“I’m not destroying you, I’m taking you along to Mr. Schwartz, who is going to circumcise you for next to nothing, and who is also willing to trumpet it around that your parents were too lax to do that at the moment prescribed by law. So stop accusing me of things, you sound like my mother. Nobody is destroying you.”

“Have you ever been…?”

“What?”

“Have you ever been…?” Xavier asked, and his voice crackled like the sound from an old radio. “Have you?”

“Have I ever been what? Stop driving me nuts. One day you can’t wait to get circumcised, the next day you’re talking about the books of You-Know-Who, like I don’t have anything better to do than think about how many books You-Know-Who sold in which year, and all the stuff he has in his bookcase. I have enough problems with my father. My father is an autistic rabbi. So what does your father do?”

“Didn’t I tell you? My father is an architect.”

“So there you go. What about your grandfather?”

“Grandfather? What grandfather?”

“What grandfather? How many grandfathers do you have? Your mother’s father, let’s start with him.”

“He’s dead.”

“But what did he do?”

Only then did Xavier notice the little freckles on Awromele’s nose. He stared at those freckles, and his stomach started hurting.

“So?”

“I never met him.”

“But that doesn’t mean you don’t know what he did.”

“I can’t remember.”

All Xavier could see were the freckles on Awromele’s nose. Such friendly, kindhearted freckles.

“You can’t remember? How can you not remember that?”

“He mowed lawns. Now I remember. In Poland. For rich Jews. He mowed their lawns.”

It was out before Xavier knew it. The subconscious is an ample but inflammable container.

“That’s impossible.”

Xavier’s stomach was hurting even worse.

“In Poland all the Jews were as poor as church mice, they didn’t have lawns. The rich Jews were in Germany. Don’t worry, you can tell me — I told you about my father.”

For a split second Xavier felt the urge to tell Awromele everything, the whole story, but he realized that that would be his undoing. He was no hero yet, he couldn’t allow himself to go down in flames. “He cut off the dead leaves, he cut the grass a little, he did all kinds of things, like I said. He also watched over the animals.”

“Oh, he was a shepherd,” Awromele said.

“Yes, that’s right. A shepherd.”

“I didn’t know they had those in Poland. Funny.”

“He watched over the animals. So they wouldn’t run away and do crazy things.”

“I didn’t know animals could do crazy things. Were these circus animals?”

“No, not circus animals. Cows, goats, lambs, all kinds of things. He didn’t care what kind, he loved animals in general.”

“Most of the Jews I know don’t like animals, and most animals don’t like Jews, either. My father always says a dog and a Jew, they don’t go together. I used to have goldfish, but my father flushed them down the toilet. Jews and fish — I guess they don’t go together, either. He must have been a special kind of guy, that grandfather of yours.”

“Yes, he certainly was,” Xavier said. He was feeling a bit better now, but still a little weak. It seemed wise to change the subject. He remembered what Awromele had said a few minutes earlier, and that memory produced a stabbing pain in his chest that was only bearable when he bent over. That way he still felt the pain, but it wasn’t as unbearable as before.

“Awromele,” he said, bending over like that, “please tell me the truth. I have to know.”

“What do you have to know?”

“Have you ever been with a woman who accepted money from you, and credit cards?”

“Money, yes. Credit cards, no. I don’t go to women like that. And I can barely hear you when you’re bent over like that. Stand up straight. What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s nothing,” Xavier said. “It’ll go away. But what do you mean, ‘yes’? What do you mean by that? Explain to me what ‘yes’ means.”

“Yes, what does that mean?” Awromele said. “In principle, it can mean all kinds of things, but in this case it means ‘yes.’ Just ‘yes.’ Let’s not go on about it or we’ll be standing here all night. That would be stupid, because Mr. Schwartz is waiting for us, and I don’t want to be late. He’s an old man.”

Xavier began moaning softly, the way he’d seen men do before the Wailing Wall, on TV.

“And your father?” Xavier asked with the last ounce of strength he had left.

“My father?”

“Does your father go, too?”

“To women who accept money and credit cards?”

“Yes.”

“My father. Listen. He knows a lot about the Torah for someone who’s autistic, and he’s read a lot of the Gemara, considering that he’s extremely excitable. But what he really knows about best are the whores of Basel. He knows them all, their first names, their surnames, their professional names, where they live, the kind of cars they drive, where they go swimming, their favorite foods — sometimes he even visits their parents. Whores’ parents are often sympathetic, warmhearted people. And he brings them presents on their birthdays. As far as that goes, he’s a walking encyclopedia, but you see that pretty often with autistic people, you know what I mean? That they know an awful lot about just one thing, and that they can repeat by heart. It’s pretty amazing. I could never do it, but when you’re autistic, it seems, there’s nothing to it.”

“But you’re a devout Jew, an Orthodox Jew. And so is your father. The two of you are…”

Xavier didn’t know what he wanted to say, or, rather, he knew but he was afraid he was going to start saying terrible things. When he finally realized that it was best to be silent, Xavier felt like grabbing hold of Awromele’s legs. But he didn’t dare to do that, either.

“Pull yourself together,” said Awromele, who could see that Xavier was feeling poorly. “You haven’t even been circumcised yet and we’re already getting this. This is going to be great. A circumcision at your age isn’t just a matter of circumcising, a little disinfectant, and then you’re back out on the street. Are you all right?”

“No,” Xavier said. “I’m not all right. I’m not all right at all.”

There was not much left of the easy-mannered young man who had once been so interested in steam engines and who, when the moment was right, never lacked for an appropriate quote from Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, or Hegel. He had never read more of those thinkers than a few isolated quotes, but that was enough for his purposes.

“Listen,” Awromele said, “I don’t know where you’ve been all this time, and maybe there are devout Jews who don’t go to the whorehouse, maybe there are people like that walking around, but I sure don’t know them. Where are devout Jews supposed to go? To the beach? To the disco? You want them to join a volleyball club? Are you nuts or something?”

Xavier’s moaning grew louder. “So what about God?”

“Stop asking me questions you already know the answers to. My father claims that he found a passage in the Kabbalah in which the Almighty gives His blessings to rabbis who pay for it. I admit, it’s a passage you can interpret in two ways, maybe even three, but my father’s sure that his interpretation is the right one. I don’t know what kind of God you’ve got in mind, but the Almighty wants to see joy grow on this earth. Which is why the rabbi is allowed to visit whores as long as it increases his joy. Because, if the rabbi’s joy increases, the world’s joy does, too; the mathematics you can do for yourself. Of course he’s not allowed to go every day — that’s a different story. No one is allowed to do everything every day, because then there would be no difference between one day and the next, and that would be boring. Imagine if we couldn’t tell the difference between young and old, sweet and tasty, Tuesday and Thursday, dirty and ugly. That would be a disaster. The Almighty gave us the ability to tell the difference, in order to increase the total quantity of joy in this world. But that’s too complicated for right now. Exactly how God wants to see the joy distributed, opinions differ on that. And of course the rabbi isn’t supposed to go home and tell his wife how his joy has increased, because, even if you increase your own joy as much as possible, you have to be careful not to decrease the joy of others. That’s why God wants us to do some things in the dark, and other things in broad daylight.”

Xavier felt like he was being drawn and quartered. “And what about the Holocaust?”

“Listen,” said Awromele, who was becoming really irritated now. “I’ll be the first to admit that the Almighty has faults of His own, and it’s a good thing, too. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to stand Him. Do you know anybody who doesn’t have any faults? But in principle He’s a reasonable, right-thinking entity who wants the best for us and who wants nothing more than to see joy increase on earth, like I’ve explained to you now about a hundred times. And that’s why He’s given us all kinds of instruments to use, and we can’t refuse to use them, because then He would be really pissed off.”

“But we have to conquer our instincts, Awromele. We have to overcome them, we have to subdue them; otherwise we’re lost.” Xavier was almost unable to speak. Just as in the sauna, he was having visions, and, just as in the sauna, he was unable to make sense of those visions.

“No,” Awromele said, “you’re wrong there. That’s what creates all the misunderstandings. God wants us to listen to our instincts, not overcome them. He wants us to hear the lovely music those instincts make, even lovelier than Mozart or Beethoven. But most people don’t know that, because they never listen to that music, even though they have the radio turned on all day. Just try listening closely to your instincts; a world will open up to you. God didn’t give us something just to have us subdue it. Ideas like that really make Him angry.”

Xavier listened to his instincts. But he didn’t hear much, and what he heard wasn’t at all what he wanted to hear.

Awromele did a little jig. “Jews and dancing,” he said, “they don’t go together, either, but that’s a different story. And Jews and figure skating, they don’t go together at all. Listen, what you need to do is learn to sing along with your instincts. Because that’s the only way to fill up the void a little.”

At that moment, the instincts were telling Xavier the most horrible things. That he should cover Awromele with kisses from head to toe, then throttle him slowly. He couldn’t keep listening to his instincts; if he did, he would go crazy.

A God who wanted the joy on this earth to increase — you’d have to be Jewish to come up with that. A God like that really wasn’t any God at all, more like an amusement-park ride.

“I’m not religious,” Xavier said. “I’m assimilated, as you know, and I’m not feeling too hot. I can’t even think anymore.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Awromele, who clearly had no intention of getting into a theological squabble. “As long as you spread a little joy on this earth, then He’s satisfied. And so am I.”

Xavier staggered over to the gutter and threw up his lunch.

Awromele came up behind him, patted him on the shoulder, and asked: “Are you okay? Are you feeling better now?”

“No,” Xavier said, “I’m feeling worse than ever.” He grabbed hold of Awromele’s right leg with both hands and looked up at him. The way Isaac looked at his father raising the knife. The way the ram must have looked when it was sacrificed.

“So you’re saying we need to spread joy on this earth?” Xavier asked.

“That’s right,” Awromele said. “That’s exactly what we need to do. And we shouldn’t put off doing that too long. Because the Almighty hates dawdlers.”

Then Xavier’s breakfast hit the gutter as well.