Arnon Grunberg - The Jewish Messiah

“We’re not interrupting you, I hope?” the tallest boy asked.

Their faces were shining with joy. They radiated vitality.

Xavier shook his head slowly, and stepped back a few more inches.

Now the boys took a step forward. The hijinks they had witnessed had given them new energy. They were feeling reborn. They wanted to get closer to Xavier.

“We don’t want to interrupt anyone,” the tall boy said. His friends nodded. The tallest one spat on the ground, and one of his friends, who had borrowed his father’s blue raincoat that morning, pulled the belt a little tighter.

“If we’re bothering you, just tell us,” the tallest of them said. And he spat on the ground again.

They were smoking, all four of them. They smoked and they looked. They were well dressed for boys their age. A little too primly, perhaps, but these boys liked to dress well. They were not afraid of work; what they wanted was eternal friendship, a house, a child, and a wife, no more than that, perhaps a car or two. One for shopping, the other for longer distances. Everything they wanted could be achieved, if only one worked hard enough; that was why they dressed so neatly when they went for walks in the park.

“We said hi,” the tallest boy said. “We don’t say hi to just anyone.”

“We don’t say hi to almost anyone,” said the boy in the blue raincoat, inhaling greedily. Never had a cigarette tasted so good to him.

“Hi,” Xavier said. More to himself than to the boys. It dawned on him how wonderful Awromele’s mouth had tasted. Bettina’s mouth had always had something dry and cheesy about it, as though the drought of the subcontinent had stuck in her craw. He noticed how special the sperm of the Jew tasted when one let it melt on one’s tongue. Melting was perhaps the wrong word — sperm didn’t melt. It wasn’t ice cream, more like a little bonbon.

“We want to talk to you guys,” the tallest boy said. He tossed his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it. “At least, if you want to talk to us. Would you like that, to talk to us? Are you two guys a little lonely?”

The other boys tossed their cigarettes on the ground now as well.

On the ground, Awromele was busy pulling up his pants.

Xavier looked at Awromele, at his legs, his hands, his pretty hair, and all he could think about was that one desire: to forget everything. That was the best he could hope for. To lie between Awromele’s legs and forget everything.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” the tallest one said, “being lonely. It happens to the best of us. The important thing is how you deal with it, what you make of it. There are so many ways to be lonely.” He sniffed; the cold air was making his nose run, and he didn’t have a handkerchief.

The other boys chimed in. “We’re all lonely sometimes,” said a smaller boy, whose voice was still changing. And the boy in the blue raincoat said, “Come on, let’s shoot the breeze a little, no obligations.” He made little jabbing moves, like a boxer. His friends pounded him on the back till he choked.

“Would you guys mind going away?” Xavier asked. His voice sounded timid, but he knew what he was asking. His voice at this moment sounded like that of his father, the architect, who preferred to be silent and used his voice primarily for handing out orders. Always remain polite: your subordinate is a person, too.

“That’s not very nice,” the boy in the blue raincoat said, looking around at his friends as though trying to assay the degree of Xavier’s unniceness.

“We don’t appreciate that,” the tallest boy said. “We come here to offer our friendship, and the only thing you can do is ask whether we’ll go away? We’re just as fond of these bushes as you guys are. No, that is really not nice, the way you’re treating us.”

At that same moment, the tallest boy lashed out. He hit Xavier in the eye. Unexpectedly, and not very expertly.

The tall boy was furious. The senseless suffering of others filled him with hatred. To him, the time seemed ripe for meting out blows.

Xavier staggered but didn’t fall. He stood bent over, holding on to a branch. First there had been only amazement, then shock. The pain came only later, the pain skipped along behind.

“We came here to talk to you,” the tallest boy said. “But then you guys have to let us talk. A good conversation is a two-way street.” He rubbed his hand. The punch had hurt him. It was never pleasant to have to punch someone in the eye.

Xavier saw that Awromele was still lying on the ground, trying now to fasten his trousers. The boys approached slowly, like a bride and groom coming down the aisle. Then Xavier did what he should have done before, long before, maybe even at the moment Marc had moved in with him and his mother: he started running. Away from the boys, away from here. Away from everything.

He ran as fast as he had when chasing Awromele, but this time he didn’t shout that it was all a misunderstanding. Xavier ran without a word.

He could still hear how Awromele had screamed, how he’d screamed when Xavier was lying between his legs, high and loud, as though he would never stop screaming. As though, for the rest of his life, this was how we would approach the world: by screaming. Xavier ran, propelled now not by a fantasy, but by the only thing stronger than fantasy: fear.

Two of the boys started after Xavier, but the tallest one said: “Let him go. We still have this one to talk to.”

Awromele had buttoned his pants by now, but he still lay shivering on the ground, waiting for what was on its way. The thing that was usually on its way was sorrow. Indefinable, and for no clear reason. But now something else was on its way, something stronger than sorrow, with clear boundaries, with a precise time limit, something about which you could say: It lasted from four-oh-five to four-oh-nine.

“Why do you scream so weird?” the tallest boy asked.

The four boys were standing around Awromele, and seeing this peculiar figure lying on the ground added to their joy: His gym socks with their mud spots, his torn and spattered shirt, his excessively long hair, his too-pale skin. His youth. Talking to older people is nice as well, but talking to young people is much more pleasant; young people are less set in their ways.

So familiar but so horribly strange — that’s the way Awromele lay there on the ground. But to their questions there was no reply.

Awromele tried to get up. They used their feet to push him back onto the spot where he had lain with Xavier on top of him.

“Are you sick in the head?” the tallest one asked. “Is that what it is? Are you sick in the head, is that why you scream so weird? Don’t be afraid, you can tell us.”

His voice sounded gentle, as though the idea of Awromele’s being sick in the head made him feel melancholy. And that was true. So many people were sick in the head. And people who were sick in the head were pathetic.

A strange excitement took hold of the boys, the excitement of life itself, the excitement that accompanies the crossing into borderlands. What stopped here, and what began? Where would it go wrong, how far could you go before breaking something, which branches would hold your weight, which others would snap and break?

“Spit it out,” the boy with the wobbly voice said. “Are you sick in the head? Do you want us to help you?”

Awromele had no answer to their questions.

“Loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of,” the tallest one said, and spat in Awromele’s face.

Then the other boys began spitting on Awromele as well, in his face but also on the rest of him. They gathered spittle in their mouths and spat without pause, like people with a task to perform.

Then they started laughing. Quietly and shyly, later loudly and with abandon. They felt free; their unbearable lives seemed bearable for the moment, although they couldn’t have told anyone what was so unbearable. Probably that one thought in particular, the one they couldn’t shake: That life could be different. That they were missing the best of it. That they had already missed the best of it.