Arnon Grunberg - The Jewish Messiah

Young people painted runes on the boarded-up windows of Mr. Schwartz’s house, and tried to set fire to it. The concerned citizens distanced themselves from these attacks. There was no sense in comparing apples with pears.

The Committee of Vigilant Parents was set up on the night of the candlelight procession. Xavier’s mother was made an honorary member. She raced to the hospital to tell her son about it, but he was sleeping, and she couldn’t wake him.

A few days later, wearing her sunglasses, she spoke the following words during a meeting of the committee in a local park: “What has been done to me must not be done to any other mother in Basel. We have been living for ourselves, and we have stopped living for each other. That is how this horrible, this unspeakable thing could happen.”

Awromele’s father, who realized that the Jewish community had to act as well, set up the Committee of Vigilant Jews. “We tolerate no pedophiles in our midst,” he told a reporter from the local paper. “And certainly no pedophiles who attack their victims with scissors and knives. Mr. S.’s membership in the Jewish community is hereby rescinded, with retroactive effect.”

When she read about it, Bettina immediately signed up for the Committee of Vigilant Jews. Because it was so far away, solidarity with India had become a bit too theoretical for her. She felt a growing need to put her solidarity into practice.

After his first, rather meagerly attended press conference, the rabbi visited a massage parlor; God had told him to seek pleasure wherever it was to be found. In the arms of the prostitute, a lady from the town of Thun, he wept for five minutes and said at last: “I didn’t have any choice. I can’t protect Mr. Schwartz. If I did that, I would only be encouraging anti-Semitism. Then there would be no stopping it.”

The masseuse ran her hand soothingly over the rabbi’s stomach. It occurred to her that, in this room, she had seen as many men cry as come.

A PHOTOGRAPHER from a local tabloid had no trouble sneaking into the hospital where Xavier lay. Once in the boy’s room, he immediately noticed the jar with the blue testicle. “Here,” he said. “Hold this — it will make a great picture.”

Xavier held the jar containing his left testicle. He was still awfully sleepy.

That evening, the tabloid opened with a big photograph of the victim holding his own testicle.

In Basel, tempers really flared.

The photograph was sent around the world, and was later voted Photo of the Year, with the caption “Victim with Testicle.”

The deputy mayor of Basel felt the need to make the following announcement: “The citizens of this city must never forget that there are also Jews who have nothing to do with pederasty, who even condemn such practices and see them as a danger to their little community.”

At the police station, Mr. Schwartz was interrogated for hours, but all the hubbub had confused him so badly that he could only talk about Lenin and kosher cheese. A journalist from the Baseler Zeitung received a transcript of the interrogations from a friend on the force. That is how the popular press came to give Mr. Schwartz the nickname “Pedophile Lenin.”

Xavier wasn’t a Jew yet, but he was already a victim. It was a start.

ONE WEEK AFTERbeing separated from his inflamed testicle, Xavier was still the talk of the town in Basel. But Awromele didn’t talk about him, he only thought about him and wondered whether he should try to call him. It was a dilemma. Xavier had asked him never to phone, because of the situation at home.

Awromele longed to see Xavier. In Xavier he had come across something he had never found anywhere else: willpower, vision, energy, endurance.

“I miss you,” he whispered to the little scrap of paper with Xavier’s phone number on it. After he had whispered that a few times, he decided that this was an emergency: his longing had become too great. His father had told him that Xavier was in the hospital, and he had seen his picture in the paper.

The Committee of Vigilant Parents organized information meetings each evening, and was busy by day as well with the recruitment of new members.

Awromele decided that the time had come to evaluate with Xavier the events of the last few days, to hear his voice, to hold his rather large hand, to see how his circumcised penis was coming along. That circumcision, after all, had in a way been Awromele’s circumcision as well; he had arranged the whole thing, he had been there, he had held Xavier’s feet. Awromele picked up a siddur and recited the prayer for the dead. Of all the prayers he knew, that was his favorite.

When the phone rang, Xavier’s mother was examining her broken nose in a hand mirror. Not another journalist, she thought. In the last few days, she had been inundated by calls from the press, and one time she had even appeared on TV, for twenty seconds. But all the attention and sympathy had done nothing to allay her fears. On the contrary, her honorary membership in the Committee of Vigilant Parents was hard for her to bear. She couldn’t sleep at night. She was afraid that the rank and file would find out that she didn’t love her son enough. Although she believed that all parents had the right to hate their children if they liked, she realized that such feelings did not jibe with her honorary membership in the committee. She was less than wildly enthusiastic about her semi-celebrity status. She often thought: Give me anonymity, I’m just a normal woman, and that’s what I plan to stay. Fame, even local fame, did nothing but keep the pain at arm’s length.

Since the punch in the nose, she had stopped opening herself to her boyfriend. On one occasion he had caressed her between the legs. Another time he had lain atop her tenderly. But she had pushed him off. She had told herself: I’m not going to let him come right inside me, not for the time being; that will teach him.

All these things she was pondering in her heart when she heard Awromele’s voice.

“I’m a friend of Xavier’s, I’d like to visit him. Can you tell me where he is?”

The mother gave him the name of the hospital and the room number. She was pleased to hear that it wasn’t another journalist on the line.

“Thank you,” Awromele said. “I’m going to visit your son soon.”

“How nice,” the mother said. She would be going there the day after tomorrow herself.

Marc had urged her to visit Xavier more frequently. But the mother said: “It’s not good to lavish attention on him, or he’ll never become independent. He has to learn to stand on his own two feet.”

WHEN AWROMELE SAW Xavier lying in the hospital bed, he felt calm for the first time in days. He kissed him on both cheeks, and once on the lips by accident. “I’m so glad to see you,” Awromele said. “You’re looking pretty good.” Just to be safe, he had taken off his yarmulke before entering the hospital. His father always took off his yarmulke when he visited a massage parlor. Sometimes it was better to remain incognito.

Xavier tried to smile. It didn’t work; they had stopped giving him painkillers, and his member still hurt quite badly. “I missed you,” he said.

Awromele lifted the jar from the side table and took a good look at it. “So that’s the one.” He examined the amputated body part. “It’s actually only a little thing, isn’t it? When you look at it like this, I mean. It doesn’t add up to much. Is this what they call an epididymis?”

The head nurse had told Xavier what was in the jar. Whenever she came into his room, she would say: “Your testicle is famous, did you know that? You should be proud of it.” She had urged him to look at it often, in order to speed up the process of closure. Repression could be fatal, and closure had to take place quickly, or your life would be over while the closure was still going on.