Arnon Grunberg - The Jewish Messiah

Out in the street, Xavier saw that the man Awromele had with him wasn’t the rabbi. “This is the publisher I told you about,” Awromele said.

Xavier shook the publisher’s hand, and the publisher said, “Congratulations, that was very nice.” Xavier was exhausted from all the commotion, the attention, the interest in an event about which he could remember very little. What he remembered most was the smell of sour cream.

“Xavier,” someone shouted. “Xavier.” It was his mother; she seemed relieved to have found him. As an honorary member of the committee, she had duties to fulfill. “There’s someone here who wants your autograph.”

Standing beside her was a pregnant woman — a mere girl, really. She was holding a photocopy of the folder with which the Committee of Vigilant Parents had announced its formation. She held it up in front of Xavier’s eyes.

“Would you write, ‘For Nina, please be careful’?” the pregnant woman asked. She looked at him expectantly. She said, “You’re a source of inspiration for all future victims.”

Xavier smiled amiably. “I’m pleased to hear that,” he said.

He played the part of the shy young man, because that role fit him well. He borrowed a pen and wrote in block letters: FOR NINA, PLEASE BE CAREFUL.

“She’s still in my stomach,” the woman said. “But she already needs all the help she can get.”

THE COMMITTEEof Vigilant Parents continued to organize information meetings, but they decided not to invite too many victims anymore; they decided to put more emphasis on prevention and education.

Xavier returned to his schoolwork, to make up for lost time, and his gait gradually became less splayed. The wound was healing. Whenever he sat on the toilet, Xavier looked at it and was glad to be alive. Despite his rather unpleasant experience on Mr. Schwartz’s bed, he couldn’t help being glad.

The mother made attempts not to feel her pain, but the more frequent and concentrated her attempts were, the more pain she felt.

Awromele crawled into bed with his clothes on and smoked a cigarette, half under the blankets to keep the smoke from spreading, and thought about love. He never used to think about love. He had been happier then.

Mr. Schwartz was in prison, and in the process of losing his mind. During his moments of clarity, he felt so miserable that all he could do was pound his head rhythmically against the wall. As he did so, he cried quietly for help in the six languages he spoke. It was better for him, perhaps, that no one heard his quiet cries, and help never arrived.

ONE EVENING, two weeks after being released from the hospital, Xavier was sitting at the dining-room table, learning his Latin vocabulary. The mother was out playing bridge with her friends; Marc was lying on the couch, listening to jazz. When the CD was over, he took off the headphones and asked, “Shall I make some tea for you?”

Xavier shook his head.

“Something else?”

“No,” Xavier said. “Thank you.”

Marc came and sat at the table. “I’m not bothering you, am I?”

“No,” Xavier said.

Marc rolled up the sleeves of his sweater, the way he always did in the broadcasting studio, and laid his hand on the boy’s hand.

“You know that I love your mother very much?”

Xavier nodded.

“Of course, there have been some problems, but I love her.”

Xavier nodded again. He had closed the book of Latin words. On one of the pages, in pencil, he had absentmindedly scribbled “Awromele.”

“Your mother is a fantastic woman — sweet, gentle, calm — and she always thinks about others before thinking about herself. As far as that goes, she’s a real example to me.”

King David was on a shelf in the bookcase, beside the collected works of Schiller. The mother had thought that was a good place for the testicle, central but not too prominent. The girls from her bridge club had all held the jar admiringly, and one of them had even asked, “Would you take my picture with it?”

Xavier looked at King David. He had become used to having only one testicle. When he got up in the morning, the first thing he did was go to the living room to say hello to King David. It had become a ritual, he couldn’t do without it.

“But do you know who I really love?”

“No,” Xavier said.

“Come on, think. You mean you really don’t know?”

Xavier thought about Awromele, about his kisses, his lips, which had closed around Xavier’s member not long before Mr. Schwartz had taken the knife to it. Stupid of him not to have enjoyed it, stupid of him to have let it go by so casually, like a snow flurry in winter. In fact, he could barely remember it. He was a happy person, but real happiness, persistent happiness, was something you overlooked; it seemed to leave nothing behind, except for the feeling that you had forgotten something important.

“I love you,” Marc said. “The one I really love is you. Haven’t you ever noticed?”

Xavier looked at his stepfather. Love was something he didn’t know how to cope with. Fortunately, his parents had never smothered him in it. Gradually, he had started realizing why he’d been able to go through life so free of worries: it was because he had lived without love.

“Not really,” Xavier was tempted to say, but he thought that wasn’t nice — he was afraid to disappoint Marc — so he said, “Yeah, a little. I suspected something like that.”

“You know,” Marc said, “I didn’t really want to tell you. But now that we’re sitting here anyway, now that we understand each other so well, I might as well be honest, so you don’t have to find out later. You’re the real reason why I stay with your mother. I mean, of course, she’s a fantastic person and I wish all my friends could have a wife like her, but you’re the reason I’m still here.”

There had been an article in the paper that evening about the Committee of Vigilant Jews. The committee was warning against certain tendencies in society that were becoming more pronounced all the time. The article had not come as a disappointment to Xavier. The more such tendencies there were, the more there was for him to comfort.

“Are you listening?” Marc asked.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want to force myself on you. If I’m forcing myself on you, I want you to tell me.”

“You’re not forcing yourself on me,” Xavier said.

“I’ve been hesitating for a long time about whether or not to tell your mother. Finally, I’ve decided that it’s better to tell her. I mean, we’re all grown-ups, right?”

Xavier nodded thoughtfully.

“The truth doesn’t hurt that much once you’re grown up, once you’re emotionally grown up. The secrets are what hurt, the misunderstandings, all the lies. If you do your best to understand each other, to take each other’s wishes into account, then you can live together without a problem. I read once in a science magazine that the truth only hurts when you have a narcissistic disorder. I don’t think your mother has a narcissistic disorder.”

“No,” Xavier said, “there’s nothing wrong with my mother.”

“I don’t have a narcissistic disorder, either,” Marc went on. “That’s why the truth has never hurt me. I can deal with the truth just fine. So, when she comes home later on, I’m going to talk to her. Then I’ll tell her the truth. But I wanted you to know first.”

“That’s nice of you,” Xavier said. He opened his book of Latin words. What might Awromele be doing right now?

Marc laid his hand on Xavier’s arm and kept it there. “I want you to know,” he said, “that you never have to respond to my feelings — never — if you don’t feel anything for me. But if you do, and, I don’t know, if you should feel something for me, something animal, as it were, then there’s no need for you to be ashamed.”