Jakob the Liar (10 page)

A
nd the resistance, I will be asked: Where is the resistance? Could it be that the heroes are gathering in the shoe factory or in the freight yard, at least a few? Is it possible that at the ghetto’s southern limits, which are the least clearly defined and hence the hardest to keep under surveillance, dark passages have been discovered through which weapons can be smuggled into the ghetto? Or are there in this wretched town only hands that do exactly what Hardtloff and his sentries demand of them?

Condemn them, go ahead and condemn us; those were the only hands there were. Not a single righteous shot was fired, law and order were strictly maintained, there was never a trace of resistance. I suppose I should say that I believe there was no resistance. I am not omniscient, but I base this assertion on what is called probability bordering on certainty. Had there been anything of the kind, I would have been bound to notice it.

I would have participated, I can swear to that; they need only have asked me, if only for Hannah’s sake. Unfortunately I am not one of those rare individuals who raises the battle cry; I cannot inspire others, but I would have participated. And not only myself: why didn’t the man emerge who could cry, “Follow me!”? The last few hundred miles would not necessarily have been so long and so hard. The worst that could have happened to us would have been a meaningful death.

I can tell you that I have since read with awe about Warsaw and Buchenwald — another world, but comparable. I have read much about heroism, probably too much, I have been gripped by senseless envy, but I don’t ask anyone to believe me. Be that as it may, we remained passive until the last second, and there’s nothing I can do about it now. I am not unaware that an oppressed people can only be truly liberated if it contributes toward its liberation, if it goes at least a little bit of the way to meet the Messiah. We did not do this, I did not take a single step, I learned the rules by heart and adhered strictly to them, and only asked poor Jacob from time to time what new reports had come in. I will probably never come to terms with this; I haven’t deserved any better. My whole thing about the trees no doubt has something to do with it; as well as my fatal sentimentality and the generosity of my tear ducts. Where I was, there was no resistance.

T
hey say that what is good for your enemies is bad for you. I don’t intend to argue about this; anyway, it only makes sense with concrete examples, such as the one I now have, but I don’t want to argue about it. My example is the electric current. Jacob doesn’t mind in the least doing without it; in fact he manages splendidly without it. Doing without? No one would ever have thought how good no electricity can be. Apart from the Russians and good health for Lina, there is nothing Jacob wishes for as much as no electricity. But Jacob is only one, and we are many. We want electricity. We are at the mercy of our imaginations: if not our saviors, then let it at least be electric current.

The Germans, to return to the example, also want electricity, and not only because at the military office they are ruining their eyes with candlelight. The fine-tuned plans have been thrown into disarray; not a chair, not a sideboard leaves the furniture factory, there are no pliers or hammers or screws coming out of the tool factory, no shoes, no trousers: the Jews are sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Two groups of hurriedly assembled electricians swarm out in search of the damage, double rations of bread and cigarettes, day and night they test fuses and whatever else can be tested, dig up streets, expose cables, accompanied by our good wishes. After five fruitless days Hardtloff has them shot; there is talk of sabotage, which is sheer madness. The electricians were all in one way or another Jacob’s customers and had a personal interest in eliminating the problem. They are executed in the square in front of the military office. Anyone is free to watch: Let this be a warning and do what is demanded of you.

Then a German special detachment arrives on a truck, like men from Mars. Equipped like deep-sea divers, they are seen to laugh and relish their importance: We’ll take care of it all right, let’s see what’s stumped these Jewish bunglers. Two days, and the trouble spot is exposed: a swarm of rats has been gnawing at a cable and succumbed to their greed. A new cable is lowered into the ground, and once again there are chairs, shoes, pliers, screws, Jacob’s radio.

W
e want to know whether it is true that they intended to sell us for ransom. If so, where’s the money? We want to know whether it is a fact that a Jewish state is to be founded. If so, when? If not, who is obstructing it? Above all we want to know what’s taking the Russians so long. For three weeks you’ve been making our mouths water the way you never managed to do with your pancakes. Tell us how they are breaking through the front, what tactics they are employing, whether they are treating prisoners as prisoners or as convicts, whether the Japanese are being a big nuisance to them in the east, whether the Americans can’t at least relieve them of that burden if they aren’t landing in Europe. And we also want to know what kind of a career Jan Kiepura is having, how he’s getting along in America. By this time a whole lot of news must have accumulated. Fair enough, so they won’t broadcast a special news summary for us, they’ve no idea how we’ve been suffering from the power failure, but there are a few things one could find out about other than the latest news. Please don’t leave out anything, do you hear, nothing, please.

Jacob deserves our sympathy. He should have a well-equipped office, a headquarters with three secretaries, better still with five, a few contacts in all the important capitals who punctually and reliably relay every little detail they have managed to ferret out to headquarters, where secretaries are slaving away at sorting the details, scanning all the leading newspapers, listening to all the radio stations, and extracting from all this a summary that they submit to Jacob as the person ultimately responsible. Only then could he truthfully answer roughly a third of the questions — to the extent that newspapers and radio stations and contacts are to be trusted.

A
newspaper is tucked into the Whistle’s pocket. The Whistle emerges from the redbrick building and, dragging his wooden leg, walks past the freight cars and right through all the Jews, who are not even aware of what is limping past them. Why care about newspapers? We have Jacob. Only Jacob sees and cares, the magnifying glass in his eye is glued to the precious object in the railway man’s pocket, some pieces of paper containing truthful or fabricated reports of actual events — at any rate, infinitely more valuable than a nonexistent radio. Respite for his exhausted powers of invention, if he could bring off a bold exchange of ownership.

Beyond the last track the Whistle reaches his goal, a wooden outhouse for Germans only: it says so on the door, right under the little heart-shaped opening they carved into it, as is the custom in their own country, I imagine.

Jacob refuses to be distracted by his job with Kowalski and keeps one eye firmly on the outhouse. If the newspaper is intact so far, as appears to be the case, and the railway man is not too wasteful, there should be some left over. If the railway man isn’t stingy, he should leave some of it behind. He mustn’t be wasteful, he mustn’t be stingy, there’s no way of knowing one way or the other; when Jacob gets a chance, he will go and take what’s left. Yet whatever the chance, it would inevitably mean risking his life. What business has a Jew using a German outhouse? For you, my brothers, I’ll risk life and limb. I don’t intend to steal potatoes like Mischa, who is a more practical type and thinks realistically; if all goes well I’ll carry off a few ounces of news and turn them into a ton of hope for you. If my mother had endowed me with a smarter brain, gifted with as much imagination as Sholem Aleichem — what am I saying, half that much would be enough — I wouldn’t need to resort to such petty theft. I could dream up ten times as much as they can write in their newspapers, and better too. But I can’t, I can’t, I am so empty it almost frightens me. I’ll do it for you, my brothers, for you and for myself; I’ll do it for myself too, for one thing is certain: I can’t survive as an individual, only together with you. That’s what a liar looks like from behind. I’ll go into their outhouse and take what’s left, hoping there is something left.

At last the Whistle emerges into God’s sunshine, takes a few deep breaths, and lights a cigarette, for which in that wind he needs four matches. He takes enough time for Jacob to want to throttle him, but the pocket, the all-important pocket, is empty. What were newspapers like in the old days? Ours usually had eight pages, four sheets; let’s assume his also had four, that’s a reasonable assumption. You tear one sheet in half, then once again, then a third time, that means per page — let’s see — eight small pieces per page. You can also tear it four times, but then the pieces turn out rather small, so let’s stay with three times; after all, he has plenty of paper. Four sheets times eight, that makes thirty-two pieces, no healthy person needs that many; you tear up only one page and put the others aside for reading. But even if he has torn them all up, there’s bound to be something left over, unless in his ignorance he has tossed the remainder down the hole.

“What do you keep mumbling about?” Kowalski asks. “Me, mumbling?” says Jacob.

“All the time. Four and sixteen should make so-and-so much — what are you figuring out?”

The Whistle at last disappears into the brick building. Jacob looks at the sentries: one is standing by the gate, looking bored; another is sitting on the footboard of a freight car, reassuringly far away; the third is nowhere in sight, presumably he’s inside the building or hiding somewhere in order to take a nap since nothing ever happens. And there are no more than three.

“Go on working and don’t turn around to look at me,” Jacob says.

“Why?” asks Kowalski. “What’s going on?” 

“I’m going to use their outhouse.”

Kowalski, astonishment in his face, stops working: Next thing you know, this lunatic will be going into the redbrick building for schnapps and tobacco, trying to borrow money from a sentry, and they’ll put him up against the wall for that just as they will for what he’s about to do now.

“Are you crazy? Can’t you wait till soup time and then go behind the fence?”

“No, I can’t.”

Jacob ducks and runs off like a professional; the stacked crates shield him almost all the way from eyes in the brick building, except for the last few feet, but they’re part of it and he manages them too. Jacob closes the outhouse door behind him. Not a word about the smell or the graffiti on the walls: beside the hole lies the rich booty. But first a glance out through the little heart: no one has noticed anything; in the freight yard framed by a heart everything looks normal. The booty consists of the expected remainder, the German has not been wasteful, there are a good number of neatly torn squares of paper, as if cut with a knife, and under the squares a double sheet, intact. Jacob stuffs the squares under his shirt, as flat as he can so they won’t rustle while he is working, better on his back than on his stomach. The double page is worth nothing, or rather, it
is
worth something: four pages, filled from top to bottom with death notices bordered in black, gratifying in one way but short on information. Killed in action … killed in action … We’ll leave those behind, we don’t want to carry around any ballast; they’re not hard to memorize, four pages of the dead, let the next visitor enjoy them too. But we’d better not linger, as if we were in our own outhouse, we won’t risk spending too much time in here, we want to return to work, we’re impatient to get it over with. Then we’ll go to our unobserved room, free our back of its burden, and play our new radio. And tomorrow you can come again and ask as long as the supply lasts.

Jacob looks outside once more to see whether the coast is clear. It’s not clear at all, far from it, the way back is strewn with mines: a soldier is walking toward the outhouse, purposefully one might say. His fingers are already fumbling with his belt buckle; in his mind’s eye he is already sitting down and feeling better. It’s too late for anyone to leave the outhouse without his noticing. What do you do now? Jacob’s knees remind him emphatically that he is no longer young, no matter how speedily he covered the ground to get here; one always finds this out too late. The door can’t be fastened, some idiot has ripped off the loop for the hook; if you try to keep it closed, one shove of the shoulder and the man will be inside and gape and do God knows what to you. Theoretically we should keep a cool head, remain calm, the advantage of surprise is on our side, and he still has eight whole steps to go. The planks of the back wall will take at least five minutes and make far too much noise, five steps to go, and all that’s left for you is the little oval hole, down into their crap. To which you can’t bring yourself, though you’re skinny enough.

The soldier opens the door, which offers no resistance; to his dismay he sees before him an opened double sheet of newspaper, trembling moderately, although at such an embarrassing moment this doesn’t particularly strike him.

“Oh, excuse me!” he says, quickly closing the door, without having seen the disintegrating Jewish shoes beneath the newspaper or the want of a display of lowered trousers that would have rounded out the picture, a maneuver, however, for which the head had been not cool enough and the time too short. Perhaps just as well, too much camouflage can be damaging too, the main things being that the soldier has shut the door devoid of any suspicion: he prepares for a brief wait, his belt is already looped over his arm, and he walks up and down, that being less uncomfortable than standing.

For how long a wait should Jacob prepare? Over the edge of the newspaper and through the little heart he sees the gray uniform walking up and down. The only thing that can help now is a miracle, any old miracle will do, no need to cudgel the brain; true miracles are not calculable. There are at most two more minutes for the unexpected to materialize, and if it fails to do so, and there’s no reason to expect otherwise, then the proverbial last hour will look this ridiculous.

“Hurry up, comrade. I’ve got the trots,” he hears the soldier pleading.

The squares of paper on his back are beginning to stick; they will have to be dried before use, if by some miracle everything turns out well. And Jacob tells me that suddenly he is tired, suddenly fear and hope slip away, everything becomes strangely heavy and light at the same time, his legs, his eyelids, his hands, from which the four pages of heroes fallen for the Fatherland slide to the ground.

“Did you hear that Marotzke’s got another furlough? Smells fishy to me! He must know some people right at the top, eh? He’s always going off, while guys like us have to wait and wait and hang around with these garlic eaters.”

My God, garlic, if a fellow could have just one clove, spread very thin on warm bread. You idiot, you think some Schulz or Müller is in the outhouse, someone who’s no friend of Marotzke’s, which is true enough, in a way, whoever Marotzke is. Jacob leans back against the back wall and closes his eyes; if they expect some heroic resistance from him, they can wait a long time, he is beyond that. It’s up to the comrade outside; he has to keep the action going. He’s welcome to leave or stay. Tormented by stomach cramps he can fling open the door, gasp, and shoot; the man he hits will not be taken by surprise. What follows is his business.

Who could possibly suspect that the miracle is already in the works, the rough outline already designed? There is still Kowalski, Kowalski with two horrified eyes in his head, he knows what’s going on, he’s aware of the situation. He sees the soldier in dire need and the door still presenting a barrier; he knows who’s inside and can’t be set free without his help, assuming he hasn’t already died of fear. Salvation lies in distracting the German, not merely by throwing a pebble against the wall to make him turn around to see who threw it: something has to happen that requires his immediate intervention. The first thing that comes to mind is the stack of crates, some six feet high and rather wobbly. If two crates are pulled out from below, the stack will cease to stand there all proud and ready for transport, its balance will be destroyed, and that could provide a fine distraction. But what will happen to the numskull who is responsible for such clumsiness, what will happen to Jacob if there is no clumsy oaf far and wide, what are forty years of friendship worth? Calculations facing Kowalski.

Jacob hears a low rumbling in the distance, the ears can’t be closed as the eyes can, then he hears military boots hurrying away. Reason enough to open the eyes wide again: that’s exactly what a miracle sounds like. Arms and legs reassuringly regain their former weight; things are on the move again. The glance through the heart tells him that the coast looks clear; the Jews visible through the opening in the door have paused in their work and are all staring in one direction, toward the spot where the miracle is presumably happening.

Kowalski has successfully penetrated the stack of crates. His strength was only just sufficient, and one crate fell on his head. The soldier rushes blindly from the outhouse into the trap and flings himself upon the bait, Kowalski. It may be said that rarely has sleight of hand been more successfully performed. Although the blows find their mark — the crate falling on his head was nothing in comparison — Kowalski merely whimpers as he tries to protect his face with his hands and apologizes profusely for his unforgivable blunder.

The rest of us stand as if rooted to the spot and grind our teeth; one man beside me claims he saw Kowalski toppling the stack deliberately. The soldier goes on punching and beating, Marotzke has been granted a furlough again and he hasn’t; maybe he is genuinely outraged over such clumsiness, but suddenly he stops in the midst of his task. Something is moving inside him, not pity and not exhaustion: it is his diarrhea demanding its rights, as is plain for all to see. He grimaces and runs in long strides to the outhouse that has meanwhile been vacated for his benefit, or rather, first he calls out: “I want to see it all stacked up again when I come out, got it?” Only then does he perform his long leaps, which, in spite of everything, look very comical. The matter permits no delay: now he would insist that any newspaper reader vacate the position, immediately, instantly, otherwise there’ll be a minor disaster. But he can save himself the trouble: he flings open the door onto an empty latrine. The minor disaster was prevented in the very nick of time.

Not one of us looking on dares help Kowalski or comfort him. The place is for work, not for comforting. He wipes the blood from his face and tests his teeth, which are still there except for one; all things considered, it could have turned out considerably worse. The pain will pass, Jacob has been preserved for us, after the war we’ll present him with his own private outhouse where he can sit for hours to his heart’s content and think about his good friend Kowalski. The man so miraculously rescued comes around what remains of the stack of crates, behind Kowalski, who is still feeling himself all over. Jacob plucks up the courage to face him, for Kowalski must not find out the true reason for the daring expedition. He of all people; he has deserved not to be bothered with this reason; for him it must remain an inexplicable whim of Jacob’s, a whim that came within a hair of costing him his life.

“Thank you,” Jacob says in an emotional voice.
Emotional
is the right word, emotional for the first time in forty years; you don’t have your life saved every day, and then by someone you have known for such a long time and of whom, to be quite honest, you wouldn’t have expected it.

Kowalski doesn’t deign to glance at him; getting up with a groan he sets to work on the crates, which had better be stacked up before the soldier returns from his urgent business and checks to see how much his word is worth here. They could all still be standing in neat rows, like the few teeth in Kowalski’s mouth, if Jacob were a normal person, if he hadn’t yielded so irresponsibly to some wondrous yearning for which others must pay bitterly.

Jacob makes his hands fly: one crate by Kowalski is matched by three of his, which in Kowalski’s case is due partly to the question of guilt, partly to fury, and no doubt also to pain. “Did you at least have a good shit?” Kowalski inquires, making an effort not to shout. “Have a look at my face, have a good look. I bet it’s quite a sight! It wasn’t him, it was you! But why am I getting excited? The main thing is you had a high-class shit, that’s all that matters. There’s just one thing I’ll swear, Heym: just try that again! Go ahead, try it, then you’ll find out who helps you!”