Jakob the Liar (5 page)

“Will you at least keep it to yourself?”

“You know me!” answers Kowalski, who wants to be left in peace, for the time being. The break is short, and he has enough just coping with his own emotions and with what is suddenly looming ahead of him.

Jacob picks up his bowl from the ground and walks away. He carries Kowalski’s expression with him, the face tilted to one side, the eyes fixed on a distant point that no one else can see; no war far and wide. He hears Kowalski’s lips whispering rapturously, “The Russians…” Then Jacob reaches the handcart. He adds his bowl to the others and glances back again at Kowalski, who is now fishing his spoon out of his soup. The whistle shrills, even Kowalski hears it, and a little tower of bowls is quickly erected. To Jacob it seems that all the men are looking at him strangely, differently from the day before, somehow with the secret in their eyes. Maybe it’s an illusion; in fact it must be: they can’t possibly all know about it already, but there may well be one or two who do.

I
would like, while it’s still not too late, to say a few words about how I came by my knowledge, before any suspicions arise. My principal informant is Jacob; most of what I have heard from him will turn up in this story somewhere, I can vouch for that. But I say “most,” not all; I say it deliberately, and in this case the reason is not my poor memory. After all,
I
am telling the story, not Jacob: Jacob is dead, and besides, I’m not telling his story but a story.

He told me the story, but I am talking to you. That’s a big difference, because I was there. He tried to explain how one thing followed another and that he couldn’t have acted any differently, but I want you to know that he was a hero. Not three sentences would pass his lips without his mentioning his fear, but I want you to know about his courage. About those trees, for example, about those nonexistent trees I’m looking for, that I don’t want to think about but have to, and my eyes grow moist when I do. He had no inkling of that; that’s simply and solely my concern. I can’t quite piece it all together, but there are some things that he knew nothing about, when he might have asked me how I got such ideas in my head, but somehow I feel that it is all part of it. I would like so much to tell him why I feel that, I owe him an explanation, and I think he would say I was right.

Some things I know from Mischa, but then there is a big gap for which there are simply no witnesses. I tell myself that it must have happened more or less in such and such a way, or that it would be best if it had happened in such and such a way, and then I tell it and pretend that’s how it was. And that
is
how it was; it’s not my fault that the witnesses who could confirm it can no longer be found.

For me, probability is not a determining factor; it is improbable that I of all people should still be alive. Much more important is my feeling that it could or should have happened this way, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with probability, I can vouch for that too.

I
t wasn’t at all a bad idea of Mischa’s to speak to Rosa during the ration card distribution, to pluck up his courage and ask her whether they couldn’t walk part of the way home together, and luckily she agreed. At first it was only her face that loosened his tongue — how many girls have been addressed merely because of their bright eyes! — but one thing led to another, and today about a year later, he loves all of her, just the way she is. The first steps were awkwardly silent; his head felt hollowed out. He received no help at all from her, not even an encouraging glance; she looked straight ahead shyly, apparently waiting for something important to happen. But nothing happened until they reached her front door; her mother was already standing anxiously at the window, wondering what was keeping her only daughter. With lowered eyes Rosa hurriedly said good-bye, but she must have had just enough time to hear where exactly he would be waiting for her the next day.

At any rate she did show up, much to Mischa’s relief. He reached into his pocket and gave her his first gift. It was a little book of poems and songs; by that time he knew them all by heart, and it was the only book he happened to own. Actually he had wanted to present her with an onion, if possible one with a bluish skin; right from the start he was very serious about Rosa, but the idea was too ambitious. In such a short time he was unable to find one, try as he would. At first she was a little coy about accepting the gift at all, the way unsophisticated girls often are, but then of course she did accept the book and tell him how pleased she was. At this point he introduced himself — the day before they had been too excited to get around to that — and now for the first time he heard her name: Rosa Frankfurter.

“Frankfurter?” he asked. “Are you by any chance related to that famous actor Felix Frankfurter?”

As could later be readily established by means of theater programs, this was something of an exaggeration. Frankfurter the actor never got beyond supporting roles. But Mischa, never having seen Frankfurter onstage, had not meant it ironically. He had been to the theater only once, and he knew of Felix Frankfurter only from what he had read and heard. And Rosa didn’t take it that way either. She blushingly admitted that such was indeed the case, that Frankfurter the actor was her father. They went on to chat a bit about the theater, about which he knew practically nothing, until he managed gradually with great skill to bring the conversation around to boxing, about which she in turn knew practically nothing. In this way they had a marvelous time together, and that same evening she did not resist Mischa’s first kiss on her silky hair.

W
hen Mischa arrives, Felix Frankfurter is sitting at the table playing a game of checkers with his daughter. He is a big man, tall and gaunt; Mischa described his appearance to me with loving detail. What was once a massive corpulence has left the old man’s skin in folds, which is greatly emphasized by the clothes he is wearing, which date from considerably stouter times. Photos prove that some years ago man and skin formed a well-balanced entity: Frankfurter had pressed a weighty album on Mischa during his very first visit, for he couldn’t possibly allow the unfavorable impression, of which he was fully aware, to remain. Around his neck a scarf, artistically yet casually arranged with one end in front and one on his back, and in his mouth a pipe, a meerschaum that has long since forgotten the taste of tobacco.

He is seated at the table with his daughter; the game looks hopeless for Rosa. Mrs. Frankfurter is sitting with them, paying no attention to the game. She is altering one of her husband’s shirts, making it smaller and perhaps dreaming of some quiet happiness. When Mischa arrives, Rosa has just been grumbling that the game with her father is so boring because he takes ages to contemplate each move, and he has been trying to explain to her that it is better to win one game in two hours than lose five in the same amount of time.

“But why are you taking so long now?” she had asked. “You’re ahead anyway.”

“I’m not ahead ‘anyway,’ “ he had answered. “I’m ahead because I give each move so much thought.”

She had made an impatient gesture; any pleasure in the game was now gone. Only obedience keeps her from sweeping the pieces from the board, plus the fact that Mischa hasn’t yet arrived, but at that moment there is a knock at the door. She hurries to open it, and Mischa comes in. Greetings are exchanged, Mr. Frankfurter offers Mischa a chair, Mischa sits down. Rosa quickly clears away the board and pieces before Mischa can take over her losing game. Many a time he has taken her place, looked for a way out, and in the end had to give up and ask for a return match. Frankfurter would agree, and then they would both sit there lost in thought, and suddenly it was so late that Mischa would have to leave before Rosa could spend any time with him.

“Have you been playing?” asks Mischa. “So who won today?”

“Who do you think?” says Rosa, making it sound like a reproach. Mr. Frankfurter draws on his meerschaum pipe, as content as circumstances permit, and winks at Mischa. “She plays faster than she thinks. But I'll bet you’ve noticed that yourself on other occasions, right?”

Mischa disregards the little joke. Today he is not coming empty-handed; he is merely wondering how to convey the news with the greatest possible effect, for there’s nothing Frankfurter enjoys more than a story that ends with a punch line. When he talks about the theater, where, if one is to believe him, the wildest things have happened, every step, every glance he describes carries some special implication: someone falls down or makes a fool of himself or messes up the performance or doesn’t understand why the others are laughing. If that weren’t so, Frankfurter probably feels, there would be no point in telling the anecdote in the first place.

“What can one offer a guest these days?” Frankfurter says to his silent wife. And then to Mischa: “What can one offer a guest apart from one’s daughter?”

He smiles, having brought off his little joke, then draws on his pipe again. Anyone can draw on an empty pipe, nothing to it, but not the way Frankfurter does. Included in his performance are the enjoyment, the pleasurable richness of the smoke. Someone not looking too closely might be tempted to wave the smoke away.

There is a thoughtful silence. Any moment now Mr. Frankfurter will tell a story, one of his anecdotes at the end of which he puts on such a display of mirth that he slaps his thigh: for instance, the one about the actor Strelezki, otherwise said to have been a divine Othello, whose false teeth fell out just as he was bending over Desdemona to strangle her. Rosa lays her fingers on Mischa’s hands, her mother goes on making the shirt smaller, Frankfurter is rubbing his knees, perhaps he’s not in the mood today, and here comes Mischa with such good news, still wondering how best to tell them, as if pondering a checkers move.

“Have you heard the latest?” Rosa asks him suddenly.

Startled, Mischa looks from one to the other; he gives up his search and is surprised that Mrs. Frankfurter doesn’t even look up from the shirt. They already know, yet he hasn’t noticed till now that they know. He is surprised to find that everything in the room looks just as it did on his last visit. He is amazed at the speed: it was only this morning that he heard it from Jacob, and now it’s already here at the Frankfurters, by way of who knows how many intermediaries. But strangest of all is that Rosa should wait till now to bring up the subject. She can’t have forgotten it and only just remembered it: impossible. Something’s wrong — maybe they have a reason not to believe it.

“You already know?”

“They were talking about it at work today,” says Rosa. “And you’re not glad?”

“Glad?” says Mr. Frankfurter. “We’re supposed to be glad? What are we supposed to be glad about, my boy, eh? Before, they could have been glad about it, gathered all the relatives together, got drunk, but today there are a few little things that have changed. In my opinion, it’s all a big calamity, my lad, almost a disaster for those people, and you’re asking why I’m not glad?”

Mischa instantly realizes that they are talking about something quite different, the only explanation for their mood. Otherwise Frankfurter has taken leave of his senses and doesn’t know what he’s saying.

“It will be hard to bring up a child,” says Mrs. Frankfurter between two stitches.

The first clue. Renewed astonishment in Mischa’s eyes: they are talking about some child, so news doesn’t travel all that quickly. Apparently two crazy people have brought a child into this world, without having heard the news — in normal ghetto times, certainly a subject for discussion. But as of yesterday the times are no longer normal, a different wind is blowing, we can tell you about things that will make you forget child and husband and wife and eating and drinking: as of yesterday, tomorrow will be another day.

Now Rosa is surprised: first she is surprised, then she smiles at Mischa’s expression.

“So you really don’t know about it yet,” she says. “But that’s what he’s like. He can’t stand it if other people know more than he does. He’s such a know-it-all, while the truth is he doesn’t know anything. A child has been born in Witebsker-Strasse. Actually there were twins, but one of them died almost at once. Last night. When all this is over they intend to have the boy registered under the name of Abraham.”

“When all this is over,” says Frankfurter. He lays his pipe on the table, gets up, and starts to pace the room, head bowed, hands behind his back. His disapproving glances are directed at Mischa — surely the boy isn’t grinning? They take everything so lightly, including Rosa; perhaps they are too young to grasp it. They speak of the future as if it were a weekend that can’t fail to arrive — the whole family goes off to the country with a picnic basket, rain or shine. “When all this is over the child will have died and the parents will have died. All of us will have died, that’s when this will be over.”

Frankfurter has finished his pacing and sits down again.

“I think David sounds nicer,” says Mrs. Frankfurter gently.

“Dovidl… Do you remember? That’s what Annette’s son was called. Abraham sounds so terribly old, not at all like a child. Yet it’s only for children that names are important. Later, by the time they’re grown up, names don’t matter so much anymore.”

Rosa tends to favor Jan or Roman; she feels it’s time to get away from the traditional names. When it’s no longer necessary to wear the yellow star, why not choose different names? Frankfurter shakes his head over such women’s talk, and suddenly Mischa wishes he had arrived at this moment instead of earlier, blurting it out the moment he arrived. For if he starts telling them now, they will feel just as he did in his error: Why did he wait till now to tell us? He can’t have forgotten it! He’s been sitting and sitting while they talk themselves ever deeper into their gloomy mood. Either he doesn’t tell them till tomorrow and then pretends that it’s the latest news, or he’ll have to think up some story to explain why he’s telling them only now and not as soon as the door was opened. He decides on today. It’ll be a little extra punch line for Frankfurter. Mischa gets up, affects reluctance, even he doesn’t know whether it’s simulated or real, looks diffidently at Frankfurter, who is already wondering about the lengthy prelude, and formally requests the hand of his daughter.

Rosa discovers something on her fingernail that claims her undivided attention, something so important that her face turns fiery red: they have never exchanged so much as a syllable about it, which, of course, is really the way it should be. Mrs. Frankfurter bends lower over the shirt, which is nowhere near small enough yet, most of the work being required by the collar because of the great importance of a perfect fit. Mischa relishes his inspiration, successful or otherwise; Frankfurter is taken aback and is about to say something. It is his turn to speak, since a polite question deserves an answer, and, no matter how out of place the question may seem at first, Frankfurter’s answer will build a bridge to the great news, and this will at the same time explain why Mischa waited until now to tell them. That is Mischa’s plan, devised in extreme haste and not so bad at that; Felix Frankfurter will build a bridge, it’s his turn, they are all waiting for his answer.

So, great astonishment on Frankfurter’s part, incredulity in his expression; he has just been drawing on his pipe and has forgotten to blow out the smoke. The father who would give his only daughter to no one but Mischa, loving him as he does like his own son, the man of hard facts who is nobody’s fool, is staggered. “He’s gone mad,” he whispers. “Suffering has confused him. It’s these cursed times when perfectly normal desires sound monstrous. Why don’t
you
say something?”

But Mrs. Frankfurter won’t say anything. A few tears drop soundlessly onto the shirt; she doesn’t know what to say, all important questions having invariably been decided by her husband.

Felix Frankfurter resumes his pacing, inner turmoil, and Mischa looks as hopeful as if the next words could only be “Take her and be happy.”

“We are in the ghetto, Mischa, don’t you know that? We can’t do what we want because they do what they want with us. Should I ask you what security you can offer, since she is my only daughter? Should I ask you where you intend to find a place to live? Should I tell you what kind of a dowry Rosa will receive from me? Surely that must interest you? Or should I give you some advice on how to conduct a happy marriage and then go to the rabbi and ask when it would suit him best to perform the
khasene?
You’d be better off racking your brain for a place to hide when they come for you.”

Mischa remains confidently silent; that still wasn’t an answer, after all.

“Just listen to that! His ship has foundered, he’s swimming in the middle of the ocean, not a soul in sight to help him. And he’s wondering whether he’d rather spend the evening at a concert or the opera!”

His arms sink to his sides; Frankfurter has said all that was to be said, even throwing in a little allegory at the end. No one need be clearer than that.

But Mischa is not impressed. On the contrary, everything has gone just as he hoped. No help in sight, that’s the kind of phrase Mischa has been waiting for — soon you’ll all know the real situation. It does make sense to speak of the future, Mischa isn’t an idiot after all, of course he knows where we are, of course he knows that one can’t get married until — and that’s the real issue — until the Russians arrive.

Mischa to me: “So I simply told them (that was his word: simply) that the Russians were twelve miles from Bezanika. You see, it wasn’t just a piece of news: now it was also an argument. I had imagined they would be thrilled — you don’t hear that kind of news every day. But Rosa didn’t throw her arms around my neck, far from it; she looked at her father almost in alarm, and he looked at me. For a long time he didn’t say a word, just looked at me, so that I began to get nervous. My first thought was, Maybe they need time to grasp it, judging by the way the old man was looking at me, but then I realized it wasn’t time they needed but certainty. After all, the same thing had happened to me: I too had thought that Jacob was just trying to divert my attention from the carload of potatoes, and I went on thinking this till he told me the whole truth, how he had found out. News like that without a source simply isn’t worth anything, it’s no more than a rumor. So I was about to open my mouth and dispel their doubts, but then I decided to wait. Let them ask, I thought: if you have to squeeze something out of another person, you can absorb it better than if he tells it to you on his own and all in one piece. And that’s exactly the way it happened.”

So, an endless silence, the needle paused in the middle of a stitch, Rosa’s hot breath, Frankfurter’s eyes, and Mischa standing there in the spotlight, the audience hanging on his lips.

“Do you know what you’re saying?” says Frankfurter. “That’s not something to joke about.”

“You don’t need to tell me that,” says Mischa. “I heard it from Heym.”

“From Jacob Heym?”

“Yes.”

“And he? Where did he hear it?”

Mischa smiles weakly, pretends to be embarrassed, shrugs his shoulders unhappily, which they won’t accept. Somewhere there was a promise. That he is not going to keep it is another matter, but the promise was made, and he would like at least to be forced to break it, he would like to have done his utmost: in my place you wouldn’t have acted any differently.

“Where did he hear it?”

“I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone,” says Mischa, actually quite prepared to do so, but obviously not prepared enough, at least not obviously enough for Felix Frankfurter. This is not the time to note nuances in a voice; Frankfurter takes two or three quick steps and gives Mischa a slap, a cross between a stage slap and a genuine one, but more likely genuine, for it contains indignation: we’re not talking here to pass the time.