The Jewish Messiah

What Does the Jew Want?

MR. SCHWARTZ LIVED in a ground-floor apartment at the edge of Basel. He was short and rather stooped. His skull shone through the little bit of hair that was left on his head. What worried Xavier most was that, as it turned out, Mr. Schwartz was practically blind. Mr. Schwartz showed his visitors into the living room and said, “Please, sit down, I have to finish this article.” Then he picked up the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and a huge magnifying glass, sighed deeply, and went back to reading the paper.

It was still early afternoon, but the curtains were closed. Though there were a few lights on, the apartment was quite dark.

As soon as they came in, something told Xavier that Mr. Schwartz found his way around this house largely by feel. The huge magnifying glass only deepened his misgivings. “Is this the guy who’s going to circumcise me?” he whispered in Awromele’s ear.

“Yes, that’s Mr. Schwartz; he said he’ll do it for a pittance because your story moved him so deeply.”

“But he’s almost blind.”

“He’s not blind, he’s visually impaired.”

“How can someone who’s visually impaired circumcise me the way it has to be done?”

Xavier had been feeling a little better, but now a new wave of nausea came rolling in.

“To circumcise a Jew, you don’t have to see well. To circumcise a Jew, all you need is neshome.”

For a moment Xavier felt like admitting that he wasn’t a Jew, not even one-eighth Jewish, not even one-sixteenth, so that it might be better for them to look for a circumciser who could see clearly, and forget about the neshome. But all he said was “What’s neshome?”

“Soul, feeling,” Awromele said. “But stop talking so loudly. Mr. Schwartz hates noise when he’s reading the paper.”

Xavier kept his mouth shut and took a good look around. He noticed that there were cheeses lying everywhere. His uneasy feeling kept growing, a feeling he couldn’t really explain. In itself, of course, there was nothing wrong with the fact that a circumciser had cheeses all over his living room. Still, Xavier would rather have seen Mr. Schwartz’s living room decorated with books, a bouquet, or a few nice paintings.

“What are all the cheeses for?” Xavier whispered.

“Mr. Schwartz imports.”

“Imports what?”

“Cheese.”

“Oh.”

“Kosher cheese.”

“I see,” Xavier said.

Everything begins and ends with longing. He who lives on longing must learn patience. Xavier had no patience.

“In fact, he’s closed down his business,” Awromele said. “These are the remainders. He still imports cheese for friends, family, and acquaintances. Kosher Emmentaler, kosher Gouda, kosher Roquefort, kosher Gorgonzola, kosher cheese spread.”

Just then Mr. Schwartz put down the paper and his magnifying glass and gave Xavier a long, hard look.

“Well,” he said. His hands trembled. He hadn’t shaved for a few days, maybe a week. His head was round, his nose was thin; he had piercing eyes.

“Well,” Mr. Schwartz said again, and then a long silence descended, a silence so silent that Xavier could hear a faucet dripping in the kitchen, a silence so long he had time to think: If I have to listen to this much longer, I’ll go mad.

Then Awromele said: “Mr. Schwartz, this is Xavier, the one I told you about.”

On the table where Mr. Schwartz had been reading the paper stood an old-fashioned pair of scales, and beside them a few pencils and a stack of wax paper.

“I could offer you something,” Mr. Schwartz said, “but I take it you’ve just had lunch, and you’re too old for a gumdrop.”

Then Mr. Schwartz stuck his hand in his pocket and popped something into his mouth that Xavier thought looked suspiciously like a gumdrop.

For a man who had lived through the Holocaust, Mr. Schwartz looked cheerful. Almost too cheerful. An ambitious comforter strives to care for the worst cases, the hopeless ones. Those who can care for themselves have little need of comfort, and Mr. Schwartz, by the looks of things, was one of those.

“No, thank you,” Awromele said. “You don’t have to offer us anything, you’ve already done enough for me and my parents. Mr. Schwartz, do you remember me telling you last time about Xavier? His parents are assimilated, they don’t take part in anything, they haven’t even had him circumcised.”

At the word “circumcised,” Mr. Schwartz’s eyes began to sparkle.

“Ah yes, I remember now. Poor boy. But it’s not too late, it’s never too late for a circumcision. If you’re in good health you can have yourself circumcised at eighty, no problem. I once heard about a man in Minsk, a traveling salesman, who decided at the age of ninety-two to have himself circumcised. He said: I’m a yid, I don’t want to go into the world of the future uncircumcised. He had been circumcised for one day, the bandages were still on, when he died.”

“What a wonderful story,” Awromele said.

Xavier crossed his legs. Most of the blue dye had been washed from his hair; all that was left was a bluish shadow on the back of his head. He didn’t think Mr. Schwartz’s story was wonderful at all, more like extremely depressing.

“Yes,” Mr. Schwartz said, “it’s a wonderful story. In Minsk people called it a miracle, because if they’d circumcised him two days later it would have been too late. What’s your name, son?”

“Xavier.”

“Xavier what?”

“Xavier Radek.”

Mr. Schwartz’s eyes began sparkling again. “Were your parents communists?”

“No,” Xavier said, “just liberal.”

“Always liberal?”

“Always liberal.”

“I was a communist,” Mr. Schwartz said, “but I saw the light in time, and then I started importing dairy products, kosher dairy products. Would you like to taste some?”

Xavier hesitated. He had the feeling there was someone else in the house, someone who was hiding. The next thing that occurred to him was that he really did want to taste everything that was kosher, or that had gone through the hands of the people he was going to comfort like no one had ever comforted before. None of which detracted from the fact that he had no desire to eat a piece of cheese right now. Less than half an hour earlier he had been vomiting into a Basel gutter.

“What I’d really like to know…” Xavier said.

“Would you like to taste some?”

Mr. Schwartz stood up from the table. From a bookcase he pulled out a piece of cheese, and quickly cut off two slices with a cheese slicer. He held them out on the palm of his hand, like sacramental wafers.

“Are you going to taste some,” Mr. Schwartz asked, “or did I cut off two slices for nothing?”

Xavier took a piece of cheese and stuffed it hastily in his mouth. Even though he hadn’t been brought up to be religious, he felt as if he was devouring the body of Christ. He knew that this people had little to do with Christ, but what else could you compare it to? Kosher cheese, the body of Christ. The longer he thought about it, the stronger the resemblance.

“Emmentaler,” Mr. Schwartz said, looking melancholy, as though there were some kind of link between Emmentaler and sadness.

The kosher Emmentaler tasted like normal Emmentaler, only a bit more like plastic.

“Take the other slice, too,” Mr. Schwartz said. “Awromele has tasted my cheese before.” Xavier put the second slice in his mouth. He chewed. He couldn’t taste anything anymore; he chewed, swallowed, and chewed, but the lump of cheese in his mouth only seemed to become bigger.

“You like that, don’t you?” Mr. Schwartz said. Then he wiped his hand on his trousers and, for a few seconds, seemed to forget that he had visitors.

The cheese slicer still in his left hand, he stood frozen in the middle of his living room, as though he had heard a strange noise, or was trying to remember the name of a friend from the 1950s.

After a few seconds, Mr. Schwartz began singing a song. Neither the words nor the melody was familiar to Xavier. Awromele hummed along, and Mr. Schwartz kept time with the cheese slicer. Not wildly — it was barely noticeable.

A tabby-and-white cat came in from another room. It sat and cleaned its paws beside Mr. Schwartz’s feet.

Xavier looked at Awromele, but he had his eyes closed. The house smelled of sour cream. We all strive after the good, but how does one recognize it?

The singing didn’t stop, it faded slowly, it grew softer and softer, for a moment it died out, then Mr. Schwartz started in on a new verse. But at last it was over, and Mr. Schwartz asked: “How much would you like to take home with you? One ounce, or two?” The cat was still cleaning itself. Xavier said: “No, thank you.” A few months from now he would turn seventeen. He had to be quick about it.

Mr. Schwartz took a few steps forward, until he was standing right in front of Xavier. Xavier had the impression that the curtains in this room hadn’t been opened for months. “What does the Jew want?” Mr. Schwartz asked.

Xavier realized that the question was addressed to him. A difficult question. Had his grandfather asked questions like that? Not all questions led to the same answers.

“What does the Jew want?” Mr. Schwartz asked again. “The Jew wants a little house without too many mice, a toilet you can sit on for hours without hurting your back, a wife who can find her own way to the baker and the butcher shop and come home on her own, a wife who knows that time and money — like her husband’s life — are not endless, a landlord who understands if your rent is a month, or two months, late, and a Christmas tree. If you’re a Jew like me, that is. Because when I was your age I worshiped Lenin, but I also worshiped the Christmas tree just as deeply and passionately. Then I abandoned Lenin, and a little later the Christmas tree as well. The portraits, the collected works, and the angels and glass balls left my home, and I became a mohel. Do you know what a mohel is? A circumciser. You are going to be my last circumcision, my boy. One last time I will show what I’m capable of, and then it will be over, I will have done what I had to do, then I will wait patiently for what He has planned for me. Do you know how many circumcisions I have performed in my life? Just guess.”

He may be almost blind, Xavier thought, but he knows what he wants.

“An awful lot, I bet, Mr. Schwartz,” Xavier replied.

“More than five hundred. I still have all my instruments stored neatly in the closet. Now I know what I’ve been saving them for — for you. How old are you?”

“Almost seventeen,” Xavier said.

“Before you know it, you’ll be thirty-four. I’m afraid I won’t be around to see that,” Mr. Schwartz said. “Not unless a miracle happens. And then you will have been circumcised half your life, and the other half uncircumcised, and then you’ll have to ask yourself: Which half was the best? Today you don’t know what you’ll say then, my boy. Maybe the first half will have been better, maybe they will both have been just as bad. That’s often the way things go in the life of a Jew. The first half of his life is miserable, the second half is even worse. But maybe you’ll get lucky, boy. You don’t know right now, but maybe you’ll say: Yes, that circumcision put me back on the right path. And then you’ll think of me, then you’ll think of Mr. Schwartz. Circumciser. Importer of kosher cheeses. Ex-communist. Lover of Christmas trees. Tenor. A tenor, too, yes, you heard me right. I used to sing. In a mixed chorus.”

Mr. Schwartz went back to his desk, sat down, and picked up a pencil. He gave Xavier a full minute to think about what he had said. But all Xavier could think was: I hope they’re not all like this one.

Then Mr. Schwartz said, “I’m going to give you three ounces to take with you, so your parents can taste my Emmentaler, too.”

He found a knife, cut off a piece of cheese, and laid it on the scales.

“Almost four ounces,” Mr. Schwartz said, peering intensely at the scales through his magnifying glass, “but I’m going to give you my special price.”

He wrapped the cheese in wax paper, folded an old newspaper around that, and then fastened the whole thing tightly with a rubber band. He wrote out the bill on a scrap of wrapping paper. These rituals, all together, took about fifteen minutes.

Mr. Schwartz showed the boys to the door. In the vestibule he said, “One week from today, I’ll be ready for my last circumcision.”

Before opening the front door, he peered cautiously through the peephole. Then he said, “The coast is clear.”