Daniel Kehlmann - F

And yet I was confident that faith would arrive of its own accord. So many intelligent people were believers. You just had to read more, attend Mass more often, pray more. You had to practice. As soon as I believed in God, everything would fall into place, and my life would belatedly become my destiny.

I celebrated my twenty-first birthday with my fellow students Finckenstein and Kalm in a smoke-filled college bar.

“Augustine is a shrunken Aristotelian,” said Finckenstein. “He’s stuck in substance ontology, that’s why he’s been superseded!”

“Aristotle has never been superseded,” replied Kalm. “He’s the very essence of reason.”

You only ever have conversations like this when you’re a student. Finckenstein wore thick glasses, had very red cheeks, and was as meek as a child. Kalm was a sweet-natured fanatic, Thomist, and clever champion of the Inquisition. On the weekends he competed in rowing events, he was interested in model trains, and had — and this made him an object of secret envy among his colleagues — a girlfriend. In front of him lay Arthur Friedland’s book My Name Is No One . I pretended not to notice, and no one mentioned it. There was also nothing unusual about this, it was absolutely everywhere this year.

“Augustine’s theory of time goes back much further than the Aristotelian tradition,” I said. “Everyone quotes his remark that we know what time is as long as we don’t think about it. It’s beautiful, but as a theory of knowledge, it’s weak.”

“But the paradigm wasn’t the theory of knowledge,” said Kalm. “The paradigm was ontology.”

We fell silent in exhaustion. I put some money on the table and stood up.

“What’s bothering you, Friedland?”

“The passage of the years. The loss of time, the proximity of death and hell. You wouldn’t know, you’re only twenty.”

“So does hell exist?” asked Finckenstein. “What does ontology say?”

“It has to exist,” said Kalm. “But it could be empty.”

“And what happens there? Fire that hurts but does not consume, like in Dante?”

“Dante isn’t depicting hell,” said Kalm. “Dante’s depicting the truth of our existence. We really visit hell at night during those moments of truth we call nightmares. Whatever hell may be, sleep is the gateway through which it forces its entry. Everyone knows hell, because everyone is there every night. Eternal punishment is simply a dream from which there is no awakening.”

“Well then,” I said. “I’m off to sleep.”

Outside the tram had already arrived. I got in and it departed immediately, as if it had been waiting for me. I sat down.

“Excuse me,” said a thin voice. A man in rags with a straggly beard and two overflowing plastic bags was crouching in front of me. “Will you give?”

“Sorry?”

“Money,” he said. “As to the lowliest of my brothers. So to me, said the Lord.”

He held out a chapped palm. Naturally I reached into my jacket pocket, but at that same moment he knelt, then lay down on his back.

Baffled, I leaned forward. He smiled and rolled slowly, almost pleasurably, to and fro — from his left shoulder over onto his right, and then back again. I looked around. There were only a handful of people in the car, and they were all staring someplace else.

But it was my duty. Christianity demanded it. I stood up and bent over him.

“Do you need help?”

He put a hand around my ankle. His grip was astonishingly strong. The tram stopped, the doors opened, two women hastily got out, the car was now almost empty. He looked at me. His eyes were clear, sharp, and alert, not confused — more curious. A trickle of blood ran out of his nose and disappeared into the gray mat of his beard. The doors closed, the tram set off again. I tried to free my leg from his grip. But he didn’t let go.

No other fellow traveler looked my way. We were in the second car, and the driver seemed impossibly far away. The man’s free hand grabbed my other leg and hung on so tight that I could feel the fingernails. The tram stopped, the doors opened, more people got out, the tram waited for a few moments, then the doors closed, and on we went. I couldn’t get away, the man was stronger than he looked. He bared his teeth, looked questioningly into my face, and closed his eyes. I yanked on my right foot, but I couldn’t get free. He was breathing fast, and his beard quivered. He drew a sharp intake of breath, then spat. I felt something warm and soft run down my cheek. He hissed.

I kicked. He tried to straighten up, but I kicked again and he sank into the floor. My toes hurt. I grabbed one of the straps so as not to lose my balance and kicked a third time. One of his hands let go, but not the other one, a plastic bag fell over, and dozens of balls of paper rolled out: pages from newspapers, pages from books, pages from glossy magazines and advertising brochures. The other bag emitted a whimpering sound: something inside seemed to move. The tram stopped, the doors opened, I stepped on his wrist, he groaned, and then finally his left hand let go too. I leapt out and began to run.

I ran and ran. Only when I couldn’t keep going did I stop, panting, and check my watch. Ten minutes after midnight. My birthday was over.

“It wasn’t him,” said Ivan. “Definitely not.”

“Who knows.”

“It was not the devil! Even if that would suit you. You people are always looking for something to reinforce your faith. But it wasn’t him.”

We were sitting in the room that had once been Arthur’s library. The spines of books marched across the walls in rows, and the peaceful sound of a lawn mower could be heard outdoors.

“Faith isn’t that important,” I said.

“Oh.”

“The priest has the power to bind and to release. Regardless of what he himself thinks. He does not have to believe in the Sacrament for the Sacrament to exercise its power.”

“And you believe that?”

“I don’t have to believe it, it’s true regardless.”

Next year Ivan would be going to study at Oxford. Everyone knew that great things were in store for him, and nobody doubted that in ten years he’d be a famous painter. I had always felt insecure around him, always inferior, but Catholicism suddenly gave me a position, an attitude, and an argument for everything.

Ivan was getting ready to answer when the door flew open and in he came for the second time. Although I was prepared for it, the magic trick worked, and it took me a moment to get a grip on it.

“Please do not ever put this book in front of me again.” Eric threw an edition of My Name Is No One onto the table. “I won’t read it.”

“But it’s interesting,” said Ivan. “I’d really like to know what you …”

“Not interesting to me. For all I care, he can die. I don’t care what he writes.”

“Eric doesn’t mean it that way,” said Ivan. “It’s just that he’s theatrical sometimes.”

“And you?” Eric said to me. “Are you serious about all that? Praying, church, the seminary? Are you really serious? We’re Jews, you know, can you even do that?”

“We’re not Jews,” said Ivan.

“But our grandfather—”

“All the same,” said Ivan. “Unfortunately we’re neither one thing nor the other. You know that.”

“And Martin’s only doing it because he can’t find a girlfriend.”

I concentrated on breathing in and out calmly. I absolutely must not blush.

“I’m appalled by the banality of your mind,” said Ivan. “Martin is a serious person. I know it’s impossible for you to imagine, but he has faith and he wants to serve. You’ll never understand.”

Eric stared at me. “Seriously? The virgin, water into wine, the Resurrection? Really?”