Jakob the Liar (12 page)

“That’s how it’ll be.” 

“I can hardly wait!”

Lina can hardly wait, and whenever she is in that mood she hunches her shoulders up to her ears. At last Jacob can get on with his supper, starting with the dry bread, until after some thought she frowns because she has suddenly foreseen a snag.

“But what’s going to happen about school? You’ve also told me that later on I’ll have to go to school. And if that’s true, I won’t have any time for the shop, will I?”

“School is more important,” Jacob decides. “While you’re there I’ll be able to handle the customers by myself. After school you can come and help me, if you still feel like it.”

“But I’d rather help right away!”

“What have you got against school, anyway? Has some idiot been telling you bad things about it?”

She shakes her head.

“There you are then. School is a wonderful, wonderful place, where all kinds of stupid kids go in and all kinds of clever kids come out. But if you think I like you better stupid…”

“Will Siegfried and Rafael have to go to school too?”

“Of course.”

After this reassurance there is a knock at the door. Lina jumps up to run to the door and unlock it, but Jacob holds her back and places his finger on his lips. A knock is always suspicious; not every suspicion is confirmed. It might be Kirschbaum, for instance, come to discuss Lina’s recovery, or his neighbor Horowitz to borrow a spoonful of malt coffee till the next distribution, word of honor. It may be quite an ordinary knock, we’ll soon find out, but even so there’s no need for Lina to be seen; she’s nobody else’s business. Jacob puts his arm around her shoulders, draws her to the window, points behind the bed.

“Hide behind there,” he whispers. “Don’t move till I tell you. Right?”

Right. Lina crouches down and doesn’t move, and Jacob opens the door. Who should be outside but Kowalski, standing there with his swollen face, trying to smile.

“Can’t get rid of me, can you!”

Jacob would gladly dispatch him right there at the door; tell me quickly what’s up and then good-bye. But Kowalski clearly gives the impression of having all the time in the world. Walking past Jacob, who is still holding the door handle, he sits down at the table and says: “Aren’t you going to close the door?”

Jacob closes the door rather loudly; Lina, as ordered, makes no sound. He has no choice but to sit down on the other chair, and he tries hard to look pressed for time.

“I see you’re just having supper,” Kowalski observes. “I hope I’m not disturbing you?”

“Aren’t you ever going to tell me why you’re here?”

“Is that the way to treat a guest?” Kowalski asks amiably.

“No, it isn’t. I’ll rush down and bring up some wine from the cellar!”

“Why so impatient? That always was your problem, Jacob. You weren’t pleasant enough with your customers, they often used to tell me as much while I was cutting their hair. That’s why you were getting fewer and fewer customers.”

“Thanks for the advice. But did you come here to tell me that?”

From behind the bed comes a soundless giggle, audible only to someone who knows there is another person in the room.

“Believe it or not, I’ve nothing special in mind. At home the walls are closing in on me; a man can’t spend evening after evening in the same room. I’ll go and have a chat with Jacob, I thought, he’ll be in the same boat, I thought, he’ll be glad. In the old days people used to meet after work, didn’t they? Everybody found that quite normal. Shouldn’t we gradually start getting used to something normal again?”

Before Jacob can reply that the old days were the old days and today is today, and that he wants to be left in peace and to go to bed because the work at the freight yard is getting to be too much for him, Kowalski digs into his pocket, brings out the two cigarettes, and puts them on the table, one in front of himself and one in front of Jacob, and thus momentarily silences him.

“That’s very kind of you,” says Jacob. Kowalski may believe that Jacob is referring to the visit, but Jacob is looking at the cigarettes; perhaps he actually means both.

“Besides, you’ve told me very little today,” Kowalski says after a suitable pause. “The news about the losses was pretty encouraging, but you can imagine that other things interest me just as much. And there hasn’t been a word about those today.”

“For crying out loud, Kowalski, why do you keep badgering me? Aren’t things difficult enough? Do you have to keep harping on that? I can’t take it anymore! When I know something I’ll tell you, but surely in my own room at least you can leave me in peace!”

Kowalski nods a few times thoughtfully, rolling his cigarette between his fingers, and pushes out his lower lip, the swollen one. He has come with a suspicion that seems to contain some truth. “You know, Jacob,” he says, “I’ve noticed that you always get impatient with me. You even lose your temper when I ask you for news. You never volunteer anything, so I have to ask, and the moment I do, you get furious. I simply don’t understand it. I can’t see any logic in it. Imagine if it was the other way around, Jacob, if I had the radio and you didn’t. Wouldn’t you also be asking me then?”

“Are you mad? In front of the child!”

Jacob jumps from his chair and turns toward the window. Lina has been crouching and listening long enough, and, as agreed, she emerges from her uncomfortable hiding place; after all, in a way he did call her. She is grinning from ear to ear.

“Good God!” stammers Kowalski in a shocked voice as he claps his hands together. But no one pays any attention to him; this is a matter between Jacob and Lina. They exchange glances, Lina winks: Now you’re in trouble, I bet you weren’t counting on that! Jacob abandons his faint hope that she might not have heard anything, children are often God knows where with their thoughts, or that at least she hadn’t understood; she is a wide-awake young rascal, she winks, and everything is crystal clear. It’ll take him a good while to think his way out of this one, every day a fresh disaster, once again he can forget about listening for the rumble of cannon in the night. But night has yet to come, and Lina is still standing there, enjoying the little triumph which that fool of a Kowalski has so unthinkingly handed her. Jacob can’t take root and sweat blood and water forever; he has to give some kind of sign of life.

“Run upstairs now, Lina. I’ll be up to see you later,” says Jacob wearily.

First, though, she goes over to him and pulls down his head. Jacob thinks this is for the kiss that is part of even the briefest separation. But he can think what he likes, Lina’s mind is not on kissing, not now; she pulls down his head because his ears are attached to it, and into one of them she whispers, “So they’ve all heard it from you! You were pulling my leg!”

Then she is out of the room, Jacob and Kowalski are again seated at the table, Kowalski expecting a flood of reproaches while feeling completely innocent. For nothing would have happened if Jacob hadn’t hidden his child from him, from his best friend. And if he did have to hide her because he couldn’t be sure who was knocking at the door, he should have let her out when he saw who it was. But no, he leaves her there in her corner, probably he’s forgotten her. I ask you, how can anybody forget a child? No one’s clairvoyant, after all, and now he’s angry and about to let loose his accusations.

“A fine job you’ve made of it! It’s not enough that the whole ghetto is yacking about it, now she knows about it too!” Jacob does in fact say.

“I’m sorry, but there was no way I could have seen her. With this eye…”

Kowalski points to his eyes: Jacob can take his pick, both are orientally narrow, impressively framed in dark blue. Yes, Kowalski is pointing to his eyes, a discreet reminder of this morning’s lifesaving operation, no need to press the point; if reproaches are in order here, the question is by whom to whom. Or we can both be a bit generous and forget about what happened; it’s all water under the bridge anyway. And the ploy is successful; the eyes are superbly effective. Instantly the mood at the table changes, becomes a few degrees warmer, instantly Jacob responds to the demand made on his pity; he shifts a little closer and looks with new eyes at the damage he has caused.

“Doesn’t look too good.”

Kowalski makes a dismissive gesture: it’ll soon heal up; if Jacob wants to be conciliatory, Kowalski won’t be petty either, he’s in a generous mood. There lie the cigarettes, still cold, but Kowalski has thought of everything, even matches. As a final surprise he takes some out of his pocket and lights one on the worn striking surface: now the time has come for a smoke, brother. Come on, lean back and close your eyes, let’s not spoil the pleasure by talking, let’s take a few puffs and dream of old times, which will soon be back again. Come on, let’s think of Chaim Balabusne with his thick steel-rimmed glasses and the tiny shop where we always bought our cigarettes, or rather the tobacco to roll our own. His shop was closer to yours than mine was, and closer to mine than yours was, it was between our two shops, yet we never became real friends with him, but that was his fault. Because he wasn’t interested in pancakes and ice cream, or in a haircut or a shave. Many people said he let his red hair grow so long out of religious piety, but I know better; it was out of stinginess, nothing else. Ah well, never mind, better not speak ill of the dead. Balabusne always had a good selection — cigars, pipes, cigarette cases with little flowers, gold-tipped cigarettes for the rich — always tried to persuade us to take a more expensive brand, but we stuck with Excelsior. And the stand with the little gas flame and the cigar cutter on the counter, the brass stand he was always polishing when you went into his shop, it’s that brass stand you always remember when you think of the old days, though we only bought tobacco from him once a week at most and never used the stand.

“Are you thinking about Chaim Balabusne too?”

“Why bring up Chaim Balabusne all of a sudden?”

“No special reason. Maybe the smoking.”

“I’m not thinking of anything.”

The last pull, one more would burn the lips. The smoke has tickled the lungs gloriously and made them a little woozy, like after a few little glasses too many; the world is circling leisurely, but they are firmly seated, hands on the table. A bit of sighing, a bit of groaning, the smoke is still floating around the room. “And now let’s get to the point, Jacob,” says Kowalski. “How do things look out there? What’s the news about the Russians?”

Jacob remains calm. It was only a matter of time anyway before Kowalski brought up the real reason for his visit; the cigarette couldn’t deceive anyone. Now there’s no Lina hiding in the background, now it’s possible to speak freely, I’ve already concocted an answer for you and your kind, brace yourself. So, bring on the despairing expression, bring on the sad, drooping shoulders, now comes the last act in our question-and-answer game, Kowalski, and you won’t like it. But I can’t worry about that anymore, I’ve been doing it long enough, I’m just another tormented human being.

“I didn’t want to tell you...."

“They’re being pushed back!” cries Kowalski.

“No, no, it’s not that bad!”

“What then? For God’s sake tell me!”

“Can you imagine,” says Jacob in a low voice, offering a perfect picture of distress, “a while ago I sit down at my set and turn the knob like I always do, but not a single sound comes out. I mean, yesterday it was still working perfectly, and today it’s completely silent! It’s hopeless, my friend, a radio is a miraculous object, and now it’s broken.”

“Good God!” exclaims Kowalski in horror; for the second time tonight Kowalski exclaims, “Good God!” and even claps his hands together, probably because for him one is not possible without the other.

“I
f only we could have a smoke!” Jacob says longingly, for it is the next day, and the cigarette, the Juno without a tip, lives on only in his memory. He is standing in a boxcar, doing a 
yontev
job, a holiday job, as it may well be called, which consists of taking from us Jews the bags that we are privileged to carry today. We carry the hundred-pound bags to him across a distance of fifty yards or more; all he has to do is move them along in the freight car and stack them up neatly against the walls, hence holiday job, also because there are two of them to do it, Jacob and Leonard Schmidt. The day, incidentally, had started out surprisingly enough when we were shown what we were to do; we had looked at each other in amazement and thought, they don’t know what they want. Well over two weeks ago a whole trainload of bags of cement arrived as if they were planning to put up some buildings; we unloaded every last one and covered them with tarpaulins, and today we are suddenly told to load the bags back onto the cars. Well, it’s their business. We obediently reload the bags, just the way they want them, we lug them over to the cars, in one of which Jacob is doing his
yontev
job and saying, “If only we could have a smoke!” and Schmidt answers him, half amused: “If that’s all you’ve got to worry about, Mr. Heym…”

Leonard Schmidt. The fluke that had brought him to this ghetto transcended anything he could ever have imagined, since Schmidt could look back on a life that deserved to have continued on the other side of the fence. His presence in our midst was, for him, one of the few mysteries on this earth.

Born in 1895, in the town of Brandenburg, the son of a wealthy father and a monarchist mother, attended an excellent high school in Berlin where his father had moved two years after Leonard’s birth for business reasons (acquisition of a textile factory); joined the army immediately on completing school, Flanders offensive, Verdun, occupation of the Crimea and later Champagne when the army was short of men: such was Schmidt’s war. Then he received an honorable discharge from the defeated army as a proud lieutenant decorated for bravery in the face of the enemy and whatever else, and he turned his attention to his future career. University was the next step, as was expected of privileged sons: studying law first in Heidelberg and then in Berlin. The results couldn’t have been better, passed all his exams with flying colors, most of them even with honors. Three obligatory years of clerking, then the professional card
LEONARD SCHMIDT, ESQ
., and finally the longed-for moment, the opening of his own law practice in the best part of town. Good clients were quick to show up; his father’s connections more or less propelled them there. Soon he had to engage two juniors for the less important cases, and he made a name for himself ten times as fast as many another lawyer. A love match, two beautiful fair-haired daughters, the world respectfully doffed its hat to him every day, until an envious fellow member of the bar association conceived the fateful idea of looking into his family tree, then chopping away at it and allowing everything to reach its disastrous conclusion. His wife, his two daughters, and his bank account made it safely to Switzerland because good friends had warned him, but he himself was too late. He was still busy settling his most urgent affairs when there came a peremptory knock at his door.

In Schmidt’s mind the whole thing persists like some idiotic joke; perhaps he’ll wake up one morning to find clients once more sitting in his waiting room. He had been well on the way to becoming a German nationalist. But they didn’t let him, they knocked on his door and told him not to make a fuss while the maid stood looking horrified between the white-shrouded, plush-covered armchairs. They brought him here because his great-grandfather attended the synagogue and his parents had been stupid enough to have him circumcised, although by now they had forgotten why. Joke or no joke, he suffers doubly and triply. In the first few days, when he was still a newcomer, he told me his life story, and added miserably, “Can you understand that?”

And a short time later — it was possible, insofar as one thought about him at all, to imagine that he was gradually getting used to life in the ghetto — he turns up at the freight yard, and what we see makes our hearts stand still. On his shirt is a pin from which hangs a small object, black and white, that on closer inspection proves to be an Iron Cross. “Have some sense!” someone tells him. “Take that cross off and hide it or they’ll shoot you down like a mad dog!” But Schmidt turns away and starts working as if nothing were wrong. We all give him a wide berth, no one wants to be involved, he’s beyond help, and from a safe distance we don’t take our eyes off him. It is a good hour before a sentry notices the enormity, swallows a few times, stands mutely before Schmidt, and Schmidt stands pale faced before him. After an eternity the sentry turns on his heel; it really looks as if he had been rendered speechless. He goes into the redbrick building, returns immediately with his superior, and points at Schmidt, the only person to have resumed work. The superior beckons Schmidt over; no one will give two cents for his life now. The superior bends down to the pin and carefully inspects the object like a watchmaker examining a tiny damaged part.

“Where did you get that?” he asks.

“Verdun,” says Schmidt in a shaky voice.

“We can’t have that here. It’s against regulations,” says the superior. He removes the decoration from Schmidt’s chest, puts it in his pocket, doesn’t make a note of any name, doesn’t shoot any malefactor. Treats the incident like a nice diversion that will cause general mirth in the bar that night. He returns cheerfully to the brick building, the sentry has his eyes elsewhere again, nothing more is said about it, Schmidt has had his fun and we have had our spectacle. Thus, not long after arriving, he achieved an odd notoriety; so much for the life story of Leonard Schmidt.

“Never in my life have I had anything to do with a court case,” says Jacob.

“I see,” says Schmidt.

They make an easy day of it, picking up each bag together after we have lifted it onto the edge of the car, then hoisting it with a “One, two!” onto the right spot. Even the rain doesn’t bother them since their boxcar has a roof. In the brief intervals that occur they lean against the wall, wipe from their brows the sweat that has inexplicably appeared there, and chat just like in peacetime. When Kowalski or the Schtamms or Mischa pantingly unload their bags, look at them enviously, and snidely remark that if they don’t watch out they’ll work themselves to death, they smile. “Don’t worry about us!”

“Actually, I once was a witness,” says Jacob.

“I see.”

“But not in court. Only in the office of the district attorney who was handling the case.”

“What case?”

“It had to do with whether Kowalski owed money to Porfir the usurer or not. Porfir had miraculously mislaid the promissory note, and I merely had to testify that Kowalski had paid him back the money.”

“Were you actually there at the time?” asks Schmidt. 

“Oh no! But Kowalski had already explained the whole thing to me in detail.”

“But if you were not there and thus knew the facts merely from hearsay, you should not have appeared as a witness at all. How could you be certain that Kowalski had actually returned the money? I don’t wish to insinuate anything, but after all, it is conceivable, isn’t it, that Kowalski might have lied to you so that you would testify in his favor?”

“I don’t think so,” Jacob says without hesitation. “He has many faults, nobody knows them as well as I do, but he’s not a liar. He told me right away that he hadn’t paid Porfir back. Where would he have got the money?”

“And although you knew that, you testified before the district attorney that he had paid it back in your presence?”

“Naturally!”

“Well, it’s hardly that natural, is it, Mr. Heym?” Schmidt says with a smile; he is undoubtedly wondering about the remarkable notions of justice harbored by these quaint people to whom he is supposed to belong.

“Anyway, it helped quite a bit,” Jacob went on, bringing his story to a close. “That cutthroat Porfir had no luck with his accusation. His money was gone, but what am I saying,
his
money! Over the years he had gradually managed to fleece every one of us small businessmen. Thirty percent interest, can you believe it? The whole street broke into cheers as Porfir and Kowalski came out of the courthouse after the verdict, Porfir seething with rage and Kowalski beaming with joy!”

Kowalski of the many-hued eyes tips his bag onto the floor of the car; with half an ear he has caught something about Kowalski beaming with joy, and he asks, “What kind of stories are you telling about me?”

“That old business of Porfir’s mislaid promissory note.”

“Don’t believe a word he says,” Kowalski tells Schmidt. “He gives me a bad name whenever he gets a chance.”

Kowalski pads back for the next bag, drenched to the skin, after giving Jacob a come-off-it look. Schmidt and Jacob, both comfortably dry, also make some effort — without chatting, for a change — to see how many bags will fit into one car. Until the next little interruption, until Schmidt remembers something important, until he asks: “I hope you don’t mind my curiosity, Mr. Heym, but what has Mr. Churchill to say about the present situation?”

“Who?”

“Winston Churchill, the British prime minister.” “I have no idea what he has to say. Haven’t you heard? My radio’s on the blink.”

“You must be joking!”

“What do you take me for?” Jacob says seriously.

Schmidt seems stunned and looks narrowly at Jacob, just like the others he’d had to tell that very morning, with drooping shoulders and despairing voice, the only real news of the day. Schmidt, who is a bit stuck up and whom some wit has dubbed Leonard Assimilinski, this same Schmidt seems to feel a stab to the heart like all the others; suddenly he is no different from the rest.

“How did it happen?” he asks in a low voice.

The answer to this question had been reworded that morning; there hadn’t been time to present it to each one as it had been handed to Kowalski, wrapped in tissue paper. Jacob had to settle for some major deletions. How did it happen? “How do you think? The way a radio like that goes on the blink, that’s how. Yesterday it was still working, and today it isn’t.”

Reactions had been mixed; some cursed an unjust God, others prayed to Him, and some consoled themselves with the thought that radio and Russians were two entirely different things. One man had wept like a child, his tears blending with the raindrops running down his cheeks. One of them said: “Let’s hope that isn’t a bad omen.”

Jacob couldn’t say yes and couldn’t say no; he had to leave them to their minor anguish rather than expose them to the whole truth. Neither has he any words of comfort now to whisper to the disconsolate Schmidt. His store of comfort is exhausted. At this point we should remind ourselves briefly that Jacob is just as much in need of consolation as all the other poor souls around him, just as cut off from all further supply of news, that he is tormented by the same hopes. Only a freak coincidence has turned an equal person into a special person and prevented him thus far from laying all his cards on the table. But only thus far: today I have let you glance up my sleeve, you have seen how empty it is, there is no trump card inside. Now we are all equally informed, there is no difference between us anymore, except for your belief that I was once a special person.

“There’s nothing to be done, Mr. Schmidt. We have to carry on. Right now in fact!”

Across the freight yard, through the rain that has abated somewhat, booms an unfamiliar voice, “Keep your hands off that!”

Jacob and Schmidt hurry to the door to see what is happening outside. Herschel Schtamm, one of the twins, is standing on the siding beside an ordinary-looking boxcar that is still closed. Thinking no doubt that this was the next one to be loaded, he hears the unfamiliar voice that can mean only him, and he snatches his hand away from the bolt, which he was just about to raise. The only remarkable thing about the incident so far is the voice, but it is indeed very remarkable: it is the Whistle’s, hence unfamiliar. The Whistle in his railway man’s uniform advances, as quickly as his wooden leg allows, on Herschel Schtamm, who backs away in fear. The Whistle stops beside the boxcar and checks the bolt, which is still firmly closed.

“Didn’t you hear before? This car is not to be touched, goddammit!”

“Yessir!” says Herschel Schtamm.

Then the Whistle turns toward all the Jews, who have paused in their work to enjoy the thrill of a totally new sound. Raising his voice, he turns toward them and shouts, “Have you all got it into your heads now, you scumbags? This car is not to be touched! Next time there will be a bullet!”

So that’s what his voice sounds like, not a very impressive premiere I’d say, a weak baritone I’d say, the tone leaves a lot to be desired. The Whistle stalks back to the brick building, Herschel Schtamm resumes work as fast as he can so as to get out of the limelight, and we do the same. The incident, which wasn’t a genuine one, has come to its temporary conclusion.

“What kind of a boxcar do you suppose that is?” asks Schmidt.

“How should I know?” Jacob replies.

“Mr. Schtamm can count himself lucky to have got away with it. Actually the sentry did order us this morning to leave that boxcar alone. You must have heard that too.”

“Yes, of course.”

“So why did he go over there?”

“How in the world am I supposed to know!”

Schmidt has no instinct for when a conversation has come to an end. He expresses his views on the advisability of strictly obeying orders, on the increased chances of survival resulting from such adherence, then delivers a brief lecture on the factual legal situation deriving from the present power configuration. Jacob listens with only half an ear. Frankly, he doesn’t find Schmidt particularly likable; without ever actually saying so, Schmidt considers himself superior and more intelligent and more cultured — he probably wouldn’t have had the slightest objection to the Germans’ establishing the ghetto at all if they hadn’t picked on him to be put in it. When he makes an effort to gloss over social differences, which he usually does, the impression is inescapable that he is pretending: Look how nice of me, I’m just behaving as if we were all of the same kind. The differences are there, he can’t fight them: if only in the way he looks at a person or speaks or eats or talks about the Germans or the past, but above all in the way he thinks. One can’t choose one’s fellow sufferers, and a fellow sufferer he undoubtedly is; he trembles no differently from anyone else for his portion of life — well, yes, a bit differently perhaps, in his special way, a way that our kind don’t happen to find all that pleasant.