Marguerite Duras - Abahn Sabana David

“You don’t know what to do with yourself anymore, do you? So you came here?”

“Maybe at first. But then I found Staadt.”

“Like any other place?”

“No.”

They fall silent. David sleeps.

Sabana points at him, says to the Jew, “They all sleep.”

They look at each other. Still silent. She waits. He asks:

“Who are you?”

She hesitates. She looks at David.

“There’s nothing here,” he says. “I am not part of Gringo’s party.”

She is perched on the edge of the chair, waiting. She asks:

“Are you an enemy?”

“Yes.”

“What did you want?”

“I don’t know what I wanted anymore.”

They look at each other in silence for a drawn-out moment.

“Who are you?” he asks again.

He waits. Her eyes narrow, searching. Her face is unreadable. She opens her eyes and says:

“I don’t know.”

The Jew slumps forward over the table. He rests his head in his arms. He stays like that without moving. She asks:

“You didn’t want anything?”

“I didn’t want anything. I wanted everything.”

Silence.

“And tonight?”

“Everything. Nothing.”

“Still?”

“Yes.”

His face can no longer be seen.

“One day you came to David’s workshop. You waited until the workday was finished. It was David who saw you. He asked you, ‘Are you Abahn?’ You said yes. He asked you, ‘What do you want?’ You said ‘I wanted to talk to someone.’ He said, ‘Who?’ You didn’t answer. You just looked at him. He said, ‘Are you looking for David? That’s me.’ You said yes. He asked, ‘Why?’ You said, ‘Because you addressed me.’”

The Jew is silent.

“You remember.”

“Yes.”

“That’s when all this started.”

He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t move.

“I’m telling you, I’m explaining it to you, aren’t you listening?”

He isn’t listening.

Sabana, at full attention, watches him.

•

The night deepens. And the cold.

Someone has come in, a tall man, thin, graying at the temples.

Sabana watches him enter. The man smiles at Sabana. She does not smile back. He says:

“I was passing by.”

They look at each other. He looks away, sits down next to David, away from the Jew.

“Close the door. It’s dark, it’s cold out.”

He goes to close the door, comes nearer to her. He gestures toward the frost-covered road beyond the uncurtained windows. Then toward the Jew.

“I was passing by. I saw someone crying. I came.”

The deep blue gaze of Sabana now fixed on the newcomer.

“Who are you?”

“They call me Abahn.”

“His name is also Abahn, but we call him the Jew. Gringo had a meeting this evening. We’re guarding this one until he comes. He said he’ll come at daybreak.”

“Before the light?”

Sabana doesn’t respond immediately. Then:

“Yes.”

Abahn has noticed that David is asleep.

“That’s David,” Sabana says, “the stonemason. I’m Sabana. We’re from the village of Staadt. From Gringo’s party.”

She turns then, gestures toward the Jew, resting his head on the table.

“I don’t think he’s crying.”

Abahn looks at the Jew.

“He is crying.”

She looks then at the one who is crying. Then the one who is speaking.

“He can’t be crying, he wants to live.”

“He’s not crying for himself,” says Abahn. “It’s an empathy for others that forces him to cry. It’s too much for him to bear alone. He has more than enough desire for himself to live, it’s for others that he can’t live.”

She looks at him with interest, his white hands, his smile.

“Who are you to know all this?”

“A Jew.”

She studies his smiling face, his hands, his manner, for a long time.

“You’re not from around here.”

“No.”

She turns away from the night and the cold. “We call him Abahn the Jew, Abahn the Dog.”

“The Jew, also? And the Dog?”

“Yes.”

“And the other Jews here? You call them that, too?”

“Yes.”

“And the dogs?”

“We call them Jews. And where you come from?”

“There as well.”

Her gaze returns to Abahn.

“Are you an enemy?”

“Yes.”

“Of Gringo only?”

“No.”

She does not move at all for a moment, her eyes open, vacant. Then she waves a hand once more at the one who is crying.

“We don’t know anymore whether he is himself. An enemy, too. He’s not from this place after all.

“We don’t know where he comes from.

“He’ll be dead at daybreak.”

Silence. She continues:

“They don’t kill them every single time.”

In the shadows her blue eyes train themselves on Abahn.

“There are no gas chambers here.”

He answers slowly, his gaze frozen.

“There aren’t. There never have been.”

“No.”

“There aren’t any anywhere anymore.”

“No, there aren’t any anymore.”

“Nowhere,” says Abahn.

Sabana’s gaze empties out once more. He says:

“Nowhere.” He looks at her, says again, “Nowhere.”

“No.”

She is quiet again. Then she gestures in the direction of the road, at something no one else can see. Her voice is flat, her stare vacant.

“The ones they leave alive are sent to the salt mines in the North,” she pauses.

“The ones they kill they bury at the edge of the field—” she gestures off. “That way.”

“Under the barbed wire.”

“Yes. No one knows that.”

He does not answer.

“It’s barren, no farming there. The merchants and tradesmen gave it to Gringo after the war for his parties.”

He has not taken his eyes off of her. He asks:

“There aren’t any more parties?”

“The last ones were deserted. It’s been a long time since then.”

“The young people don’t come anymore?”

She doesn’t know, it appears. She is distracted.

“I think so, I don’t really know.”

Her stare is always empty, her voice always flat.

“You could kill them one by one,” she says slowly, “in the Nazi gas chambers.”

“Yes. But not anymore. There aren’t any chambers anymore. Anywhere.”

“No. No, here you get the labor camp or a quick death.”

“Yes.”

Her blue eyes slash always in the direction of the road. She says:

“It wasn’t these Jews here in those gas chambers.”

“No, it was others.”

“Others,” she pauses, “but the same name: Jews.”

“Yes. We wanted that.”

She asks nothing more.

He looks at the bare walls, the white road white with frost, the darkened park beyond.

“It was his house,” he says.

“Yes. And there’s a park. There. And in the park there are dogs.”

Her gaze comes back to the space in front of them.

She gestures toward the back of the house that opens onto the park. “There’s this room that looks out on the park, the other you came from. If you try to run away, I’ll call out to David. David will wake up and he’ll kill you.”

He smiles. She says:

“That’s the way, here in Gringo’s houses in Staadt. They shoot, they kill. Unless we tell them that they don’t have the right, then they don’t have the right. Before it would take a little longer.”

“And whose territory are we in now?”

“The one who is the strongest. During the night that would be Gringo.”

“And in the day it’s the merchants.”

“Yes,” she says. “Before, a long time before Gringo.”

Abahn gets up, he walks back and forth across the room, going and coming, and then he sits near the Jew, on the opposite side of the table from him. She joins them. She sits with them. They look at the Jew. She talks, is quiet some more, talks again.