Arnon Grunberg - The Jewish Messiah

“Your wheelbarrow isn’t here,” the nurse said. “You’re in the hospital, but you’ll be better soon.”

“My wheelbarrow,” Xavier said, “Awromele,” and with more strength than she’d expected from him, he grabbed the nurse’s arm. “Where’s Awromele?” he asked. “Where is he, what have you done with him?”

She tried to pull away diplomatically, speaking soothing words and reassuring sentences all the while. “I’m sure he’s okay. Don’t worry.”

But nothing could reassure Xavier anymore. Only the sight of Awromele.

THE RABBI WANDERED around town; he was afraid to go home. He thought about his life. His sister-in-law, with whom he’d had an affair, appeared in his thoughts; the children he had made; the God he didn’t believe in but still served, because he had no choice, because his last smidgen of social standing depended on that God, there was nowhere else for him to turn, only to God. And then his thoughts turned again to Awromele. His son’s disappearance made him feel terrible, though his wife’s sorrow made him feel every bit as bad. But he had no idea where to look for him; he had looked everywhere. He wasn’t particularly good at it, at looking for children.

Then it occurred to him that there was one place in Basel where he could still go. Besides the synagogue and his home, where his wife had called him a dirty Jew, there was still one place where he could rest his weary head.

Because the sadness overpowered him, he rang the bell.

The massages were already in progress. The massages went on around the clock. In a twenty-four-hour society, one had little choice.

The transsexuals were busy this morning. They were women on top, men down below. The rabbi liked that. Somehow, in the arms of a transsexual, he didn’t feel so guilty. As though he were being kneaded by a mermaid.

“I need a really stiff massage today,” he told his Asian transsexual. “My son has fallen into the hands of the anti-Semite.”

“Whose hands?” the transsexual asked as she did her slow striptease.

“The anti-Semite’s,” the rabbi said.

A bottle of body lotion was taken down off the shelf. The rabbi asked, “What’s your name again?”

“Lucy,” the transsexual said.

“Lucy,” said the rabbi, and he told her his life story. It was an awfully sad story, and Lucy listened patiently. Halfway through the story, she realized exactly why the rabbi was so crazy about her.

AS THE MOTHER PACED the living room, wondering where her son could be, Marc tried to convince her that someday Xavier would be a famous painter. “Just look,” he said, “can’t you see that? Those colors, that control over the brush.” He pointed to one of the paintings of the mother holding King David. “We have a genius in the house.”

The mother looked at the painting, but couldn’t see anything in it. Particularly not herself. The testicle in the jar — that had turned out well, she thought. “Let’s wait and see,” she said, putting on the table a bowl of yogurt for her boyfriend. “Where do you suppose he’s gone? Back to those Zionists again? This is the end of the line. First he comes home with a black eye, then he runs off at the crack of dawn without saying anything.”

ROCHELE WAS STILL under the table in the living room, thinking about the pelican that would lift her up and take her along. The drawing pad lay closed in her lap. The longer she stayed under the table, the more convinced she became that the Messiah was a pelican. She had seen pictures of pelicans. And a nature film, too. She talked to the pelican; she begged him to come and get her and take her to the Eskimos. “Pelican, come to me,” she said in a whisper. “You know where I live, don’t you? You’ve been watching me for a long time, right? You’ve been circling above my head for years, haven’t you?”

While her mother was in the kitchen, sunk in a prayer in which she barely believed but which was better than nothing, and while her father was spreading the panorama of his life before the transsexual, Rochele was addressing the pelican.

In the little room at the massage parlor, the bottle of body lotion was almost empty now, but the story was long and doleful. Occasionally the rabbi stopped his narrative to say: “Massage me right. The anti-Semite has hold of my eldest son. Please me, while it’s still possible.”

And then Lucy would say, “Yes, yes, of course.”

WHEN HIS QUESTIONS received no answers, only reassuring words, and Xavier could put up with reassurances no longer, he grabbed the nurse’s arm again. She had already had to pull away from him a few times and hoped the doctor would finally come to her assistance. He could calm the rebellious patient, with a second shot of sedative if need be. At first she’d been proud to be treating the famous Xavier Radek, but now she was getting fed up with him.

At that very moment, the patient bit her on the arm.

She screamed. She looked at her arm, saw the blood, and screamed again. “Look,” she said to the doctor, “look at what he did.”

Xavier jumped off the table and ran out of the room and down the corridor, shouting: “Awromele, Awromele, where are you? I’ll never leave you alone again. Where are you?”

People leapt out of his way, some of them doctors and nurses who had dealt with things like this before. A pair of underpants was all he had on, and although the mud had been washed from his body the cuts and scrapes were still clearly visible. A mad dog strikes fear into those who see it.

“Well,” said the doctor who was treating Awromele, “I think we’ve dealt with the most serious things now.” The hand was in a cast, the cuts had been disinfected; the only thing the doctor was worried about was the ear. But the true extent of the damage would not show up until later.

“We’ll keep him under observation for a couple of nights,” the doctor said. “He has a slight case of pneumonia, but he can recover from that at home. Has anyone been in touch with his parents?”

The nurse shook her head. In the corridor, Xavier screamed: “Awromele, I won’t leave you alone now, I’ll never leave you alone again. Can you hear me? Where are you?”

For a moment, Awromele thought he was back in the park, lying beneath the pine tree. He didn’t reply to his friend’s shouts; he lay still, without making a sound. His friend had to be punished, not only because he had run away and left him behind with the boys, but above all because he seemed to have committed the greatest crime a person could commit: loving Awromele, dreaming of Awromele.

Awromele opened his eyes and saw the fresh face of a student nurse. Realizing that he was no longer in the park, he shouted, “Xavier!”

The nurse looked at the doctor and smiled, pleased that the patient was at least capable of something. Beside the bed hung a bag of fluid that was dripping into his arm through a needle.

“Xavier,” Awromele shouted, “here I am.”

“Take it easy,” the doctor said, “save your strength. Don’t get so wound up.”

Xavier had heard Awromele’s shout, but didn’t know which room it came from. Down the hall he saw four male nurses heading towards him. Obviously, they were not planning to put up with any monkey business. Behind them came the nurse whom he’d bitten on the arm. “There he is,” she cried, “that’s him. He’s dangerous. He’s out of his mind.”

Xavier opened the door to the room from which he thought Awromele’s voice had come. But there was a woman in there, in the pangs of childbirth.

The next door opened onto an empty room.

The four male nurses were almost upon him. They had been called in from the hospital’s psychiatric ward. They were experienced in dealing with rebellious patients who needed to be protected from themselves.