Marek Hlasko - Killing the Second Dog

Robert was a fanatic when it came to theater. In the slammer he always performed for other inmates. He had fixed rates for his artistic services: one cigarette for the Macbeth monologue, which begins, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,” if delivered in Polish, two if in English. The balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet belonged to the cheaper classical repertoire: one smoke for the two of us, since I played Juliet. These were the more expensive pieces. The modern stuff I did alone and for much lower rates. Robert never attempted anything contemporary; he was a priest of High Art. I remember how once he and a smuggler, who in his youth had been a member of an amateur theater company in Cairo, came to blows while playing Faust together; or rather how Robert started beating the other guy for overacting his role and being too theatrical. When we finally managed to pull them apart, Robert continued to upbraid him, screaming that while on stage an actor should tie the wings of his soul. I was much more modest than Robert; I usually acted out scenes from movies. My greatest success was impersonating Goofy. Naturally, I had more cigarettes than Robert, so he would smoke mine and bitch about the degeneration of public taste and the stupidity of films.

Robert had come to Israel from Poland. His big wish was to create Art. He found employment in a Tel Aviv theater, but they fired him almost immediately because he quarreled ceaselessly with all the actors, criticizing them for following the Stanislavski method, which he found loathsome; this was rather strange since he admired both Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg. He made such a nuisance of himself and got on everybody’s nerves so much they gladly got rid of him at the first opportunity. He then convinced two con men to start a cabaret show, but the first night they had succeeded in insulting everybody: religious zealots and agnostics, fresh immigrants and native Israelis, the press, the army, and God knows who else. The two con men grabbed a taxi and left Tel Aviv right after the performance, pocketing the night’s take and leaving Robert alone to face three trials, including one for not paying for the building they had rented for the show. This was how he ended up in jail. He wrote to his erstwhile partners, begging them to help get him out, but they ignored his pleas. He began counseling other inmates, explaining the niceties of the law to them. I met him soon after, sitting on his cot, fat and grubby, giving legal advice to a blind man.

“Okay, tell me what happened,” Robert asked him.

“Well, I kind of felt a hankering,” the blind man answered.

“A hankering to screw your own daughter?”

“I just wanted to help her fasten her bra,” the blind man explained. “She asked me to.”

“How often did that happen?”

“Well, now and again.”

“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Robert told the blind man cheerfully. “All you have to do is tell the judge you didn’t see who you were screwing. You’re blind, aren’t you?”

All the inmates roared with laughter, while the blind man burst into tears. Then Robert met a guy who could make puppets, and so — still in the slammer — they started preparing a puppet show together. When Robert was released, he somehow raised the cash to bail out the puppet-maker. The two of them visited me in the hotel where I was staying and turned my room into their workshop. They even made me help them. We worked on those puppets for three weeks, eating only one meal a day: hummus, which the puppet-maker got at an Arab restaurant a block away. When the puppets were finished, Robert persuaded the owner of a semi truck to drive them around; the truck owner became their new partner. They gave two shows in kibbutzim close to the Syrian border; during the third show, devout Jews overturned the semi, burned all the puppets, then chased Robert and his pals for half a mile, showering curses on their heads and spitting on them. The owner of the semi brought charges against Robert, who got locked up again.

I was in bad shape then, too. I couldn’t obtain a work permit, but I managed to land a job on a building site in Bat-Yam, and I worked there for a while. One day I slipped and broke my arm, however; a compound fracture. The doctor who set my arm said I would have to wear a cast for six weeks. I didn’t have any money for food, and I was really down. An asthmatic burglar staying in the same hotel lent me money for the rent and food. He was a nice guy, born in one of the Arab countries; spoke French like a born Parisian and was rather proud of it. He hated General De Gaulle; said he looked like a sideshow barker and would ruin France. He used to rage that De Gaulle had never been to the front and had cribbed his book on the need for mechanization of the French army from General Guderian; that he had spent the whole war in London spouting drivel over the radio while he should have been fighting the Germans. The burglar went under the nickname of De Gaulle.

Soon afterward the real De Gaulle put down the paratroopers’ rebellion, while the “De Gaulle” I knew was arrested for having robbed the cash register at a kosher co-op. A few days later the cops arrested me: some squealer must have told them De Gaulle had given me money. That’s how all three of us found ourselves in the Jaffa tank: De Gaulle, Robert, and me. One day I was about to be taken to the examining magistrate, and a guard wanted to handcuff me.

“Come on,” I said. “I don’t need those. I’ll go quietly without the bracelets.”

“It’s an order,” the guard said.

“Nothing doing,” I said. “I don’t care.”

He tried to grab my hand, but I pushed him away. So he went back to the guardroom and I heard him ask the sergeant what he should do.

“You’ve got to answer violence with violence,” the sergeant told him, though I never learned what violence he meant. They came back and beat me unconscious. As soon as I opened my eyes, Robert said, “I have a great idea.”

“You’re not the only one,” I said. “Every hustler in this jail has a great idea.”

“I’ve figured out what to do with you.”

“Yeah? What?”

“Thanks to you, we’ll both be rich!”

“Nobody’s ever become rich thanks to me except for one Hungarian. I got hit by a car and the insurance was paid to him because his name was similar to mine. I never found him.”

“He disappeared into the whirlpool of life,” Robert said. “But your money won’t bring him luck. He’ll slip on a banana peel one day coming down the stairs and become a pathetic invalid. He’ll sing on street corners and some day you’ll pass by and throw him a penny. He’ll recognize you, but you won’t recognize him. And then he’ll suffer even more.”

“Maybe so.”

“You held yourself nicely in the fight.”

“Then how come I’ve got these on?” I asked, lifting my hands to show him the handcuffs.

“You kept your head high and proud,” he said. “I thought to myself that’s how Fabrice del Dongo must have looked on his way to the execution.”

“I didn’t keep it high very long. As you probably noticed, they mainly kicked me in the ass.”

“How can Jews act like that?” a pimp complained in a bitter voice. He was handcuffed to Robert; our conversation was taking place in the back of a police van on our way to the magistrate’s office. “Jews, who for so long have been beaten themselves. A man comes here out of idealistic reasons, full of enthusiasm and the best intentions, and before he’s even had a chance to look around, the police grab him. And this is the Jewish state we’ve been waiting for for two thousand years.”

“Well?” Robert asked me. “What do you say?”

“What do you want me to do?”