Arnon Grunberg - The Jewish Messiah

But the Egyptian didn’t get up yet; his legs were like jelly; everything about him was like jelly. He had once wanted to be a pianist, a concert pianist.

“Are you a Jewess?” he asked.

She nodded. Like him, she was half naked, but she still had her shoes on — she was wearing tennis shoes. A thought flashed through his mind: She’s stoned. And so is the bald guy. They’re both stoned out of their minds.

The Egyptian smiled politely, but uncomfortably, too, because he was half naked. “I have lots of Jewish customers,” he said. “Friendly people, good customers, we don’t talk about politics. I never talk about politics.”

Then he looked at the video camera. “I can’t do it,” he said. “Not with a man around. I have to be alone. Can’t you go away?”

“No,” the bald man said. “Later on, yes. I have to be there the first time. The first time, I have to film it. I keep the film, because sometimes the informant forgets what the purpose of his life is all about, and then we show him the film. That refreshes his memory. Soon the purpose of your life will be on videotape. Then you can never forget it. Even if you go senile, the purpose of your life will have been documented. That is happiness: being able to watch the purpose of your life on video.”

The Egyptian struggled to his feet. She unbuttoned his pants, and they fell down around his ankles.

“Is this your job?” the Egyptian asked, looking straight in the lens. “Is this what you do every day, again and again, and the next day, too?”

The bald man laughed — heartily, for the first time. “This is my job. It’s not pleasant. But it’s part of my work. Don’t worry, it’s nothing personal. I am the eye that sees nothing. If everything goes well, no one sees a thing. By the way, I’m divorced.”

“What?” The Egyptian suddenly thought about the strange birthmark on the bald man’s head.

She had his penis in her hand.

“You asked whether I was married,” the bald man said, “a few minutes ago. Remember? Well, I’m divorced.”

“You’re pretty excited,” the woman said. “I can tell that I’m making you horny. You make me horny, too. You’re cute. Different from the others. You don’t smell like frying fat — that’s not true. You smell a little like dogs, and a little like the desert.” She giggled for a moment; maybe it wasn’t a giggle, maybe she’d choked on something.

It grew quiet; everyone was listening to Beethoven. The woman was rolling the Egyptian’s penis between her hands.

“Does he always film you?” the Egyptian asked.

“He has to film me,” she said. “It’s for our country, it’s for the safety of the citizens of our country. Only in this way can there ever be peace.”

“Are you stoned?” the Egyptian asked.

She stopped kneading, looked at him. “Sometimes,” she said. “Not now. I like to be, though. When the time is right.”

“They say,” the Egyptian said, and the words seemed like dry, stale bread sticking to his molars, “they say that XTC makes everything very intense, too intense for words. I’ve never tried it, I don’t know, but that’s what they say.”

She held his penis tenderly in her hand and looked at her informant. “Actually, I like women,” she said. “I also like men, okay, but I like women more. And sometimes when I’m with a woman for my own pleasure — because when I’m with a woman it’s always for my pleasure — I take XTC. It’s intense, yes, that’s right, it’s intense.” She nodded and went on kneading. For the moment they both seemed to have forgotten about the man with the video camera.

“This may not be as intense,” the Egyptian said, “but it’s intense enough for me. If it were any more intense, my heart couldn’t take it. I have a weak heart — that’s why it’s locked up.”

There he stood with his old body, his fat belly, the hair that grew like weeds in the most unexpected places: on his back, his upper arms, the backs of his hands, at his ankles, on his toes. But what the bald man had said was right, he was in the process of forgetting all the rest; it hadn’t succeeded quite yet, but he was in the process. This was his forgetting, it had started, it was in her tit, in the representative of the Zionist entity, in her predilection for women, her desire for XTC, in the routine way she introduced informants to the purpose of life. She would numb him, she would redeem him, she would show him the deeper meaning of all this.

The woman bent down and began lightly kissing the Egyptian’s partially stiff penis. Then the Egyptian looked at the camera again.

“So this is how you get by,” he said to the bald man. He suddenly felt proud, no longer wounded; or, rather, he was so wounded that it no longer mattered. “This is your job. You go home tonight, and what do you say then? ‘I filmed.’ Is that what you say? ‘I filmed another one’?”

But right away he thought: What am I going to say when I get home tonight, what am I going to say when I talk to my mother? Every day that she lives on, she acquires more venom. She’ll laugh at me. Even if I don’t tell her, she’ll still laugh at me, because she hears everything in my voice. And I always hear her laughing, wherever I go, whoever I’m with, I hear her laughing. Only when I cry with my dogs at the moon, that’s the only time she isn’t there.

“This is how everyone gets by,” the bald man said. “Just relax and enjoy it. That’s what you need to do: enjoy, and forget the rest. That’s why we’re here.”

The Egyptian leaned down and kissed the woman. On her cheeks, her nose, then on her lips, too.

“Are you a whore?” he asked. “Are you a Jewish whore?”

“I work for the state,” she said, petting his penis. “I like my work, because it’s essential. Whores don’t like their work — they hate it, they despise it, they don’t like their customers. If I didn’t do this work, there would be no more state. Our state is a dream, but it can be your dream, too. That’s why I love my work. But I love you, too, because you smell of dog and of desert, and that’s why I’m not a whore. I can smell that — I smell that you’re different from the rest. I’m a civil servant, I’m part of a collective. From now on, you’re part of that collective, too. When you’re part of a collective, individual wishes and desires no longer count. The collective frees you of needless feelings.”

The Egyptian looked at her and couldn’t help it, he said, “You’re beautiful, yes, you’re beautiful, but you have no future, what you do has no future.” He wondered: How many years’ difference is there between us? What age was I when she was born? He tried to figure it out, but it didn’t work, it made him dizzy, all those calculations.

“So what does have a future?” the bald man asked from behind his video camera.

“My dogs,” the Egyptian replied after he’d thought about it for a few seconds, and now he turned his body towards the camera as well. The woman had to let go of his penis. “If you people look at this later on,” he said, “whoever sees this later on, remember this: your country has no future, my country has no future, the future is for the dogs. Remember that, whoever sees this later on, and don’t laugh at me. As I am now, you will be, too, and then you won’t want people to laugh at you, either. So don’t laugh at me, there’s nothing for you to laugh at.”

I’m in league with the enemy, so I’m already dead, he thought. It’s only a matter of time, of minutes, maybe seconds even. I’m like the chicken running around after its head has been cut off.

The last echo of life was lust. The lust that was registered in the bald man’s video camera, in order to remind the informant of the purpose of life.