Abahn Sabana David (3 page)

The sun sets.

“Who knows?” says Abahn. “Suddenly out of the blue, one Jew too many?”

“Killed?”

“Yes.”

“The one who upset the merchants?”

“No, because the merchants agreed.”

“Who?”

“The one who agitated the other Jews,” says Abahn.

She wants no more to account for death.

“We speak without understanding,” she says. “It's so difficult to understand.”

“Yes,” says the Jew.

Abahn walks over to stand next to her. She notices him suddenly.

“Why did you come?”

“I saw someone crying.”

“A Jew.”

“Yes. I know them.”

“Racists are executed here.”

The blue eyes darken.

“I'm a racist,” says Abahn.

They do not take their eyes from one another.

“You're Abahn the Jew, Abahn the dog?”

“Yes, that's me as well. Didn't you recognize me?”

“Yes.” She looks from one to the other. “You're the one who will not be killed.”

“Perhaps.”

“The one who speaks?”

“I speak for the Jew.”

“The one who sees? The one who will speak?”

“Yes.”

“To whom?”

“To those who see and understand.”

Sabana turns toward David, his eyes closed. She gestures. “And to him as well? The deaf and dumb? And to apes?”

“Them too, yes,” says the Jew.

“Ha!” An explosion of silent laughter mars Sabana's face.

“We will seek their ears,” says Abahn.

“Their eyes,” says the Jew.

“To understand them,” says Abahn.

“Their conversation,” says the Jew.

Silence.

She looks at them, first one, then the other, then at David. “And the others who are yet to arrive, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” says the Jew.

“The night is long,” says Abahn. “Long and empty.”

She turns in the direction of the road. “And where did you both come from?”

“From everywhere,” says the Jew.

She takes one step toward the door that leads out to the park. She stops. A last light slides down the walls and goes out.

“They kill them quickly, usually,” she says. “Earlier in the night, on that meadow over there, not indoors. Each time they say: this will be the last one. Yet they always come back, again and again, so it seems.”

“Yes.”

Silence.

They all look at one another.

“You came to destroy our unity.”

“Yes.”

“To introduce disorder and disharmony.”

“Yes.”

“Division, trouble in our unity?”

“Yes.”

She pauses, their eyes always on her. Her returning gaze is vacant, empty.

“To divide and destroy?”

“Yes,” says the Jew.

“And replace it with what?”

“With nothing.”

All at once she moves as if disappearing, as if dying. Her voice quavers as she asks:

“Who has spoken?”

“Me,” says the Jew.

She rises.

She looks at David.

•

“J
eanne is
at the meeting,” she says.

“With Gringo?”

“Yes.”

“Gringo is at the meeting?” asks the Jew.

She does not answer right away. “I don't know.”

“Jeanne is out in the streets, in the meetings, in the streets,” says the Jew. “With Gringo.”

“Yes.”

She is not looking at anyone anymore. She looks out at the darkened street.

“Jeanne is out tonight,” she says.

“Tonight there's the ice and the desolation,” says Abahn.

“Jeanne is out in the ice and desolation,” says the Jew.

Sabana's eyes grow wide.

“We're always afraid,” says Sabana. “We never know what Jeanne does when night falls.”

“You never know exactly where she is?”

“Never,” says Sabana. She pauses. “She tries a little to prevent—” Sabana interrupts herself.

She is still looking out at the darkened road. “I'm afraid,” she says. “With this old—”

“To prevent what?”

“Just a little, the death, here in Staadt.”

Silence.

“He knows that?” asks Abahn, pointing to David.

“No.”

“He doesn't know?” asks the Jew.

Sabana does not answer.

She turns toward the setting sun.

“She's young like David,” she says. “Beautiful like David.”

The setting sun reflects in Sabana's eyes, blue, dark.

“You live with them?”

“Yes,” she says. “I'm there with them now. They have a spare room. They took me in. I make the meals. Jeanne arranged it with the government. I work in the morning. For the moment I am there with them. Jeanne and I, we are David's women, his wives.”

They fall silent for a long moment.

“You said something?” asks Abahn.

“No,” says Sabana.

“Then it was David?”

“No.”

David has a tender expression on his face, at once attentive and joyful.

“When he isn't speaking, he's dreaming that he's speaking,” says Abahn.

“He's in the process of speaking,” says the Jew.

“It's true, if you go up close you can see it,” says Sabana.

“He's listening, he's answering,” says Abahn.

“Yes.”

Sabana leans over David. The Jew watches her.

“What did you say, Sabana?”

“Nothing.”

She rises. They look at her.

“What do you think?”

“Nothing.”

They are silent once more. David cries out suddenly. He does not wake, just cries out a little.

•

L
ingering scraps
of daylight, glimmers of frost in the direction Sabana points, that of the dark field of the dead.

The darkness in the park is peaceful. The dogs of the Jew howl no more. Nor those in the field of the dead.

Abahn sits on the ground across from where David is. Leaning against the wall, he is silent.

The Jew stands, paces through the rooms.

Sabana sits at the table, follows him in the half-dark with her eyes.

“There was another man,” says Sabana.

“He rests,” says the Jew.

He walks with an even step. He passes in front of Sabana and then David, then he turns and comes back, pacing across the place. Disappearing and reappearing. She addresses him, her voice sleepy:

“You said you knew David?”

“To whom did I say that?”

“It doesn't matter to whom.”

“I said I knew him a little.” He walks past. She doesn't see him anymore.

“You said you knew me?”

“No. I saw you once one morning when you were cleaning at the Staadt town hall.”

“You looked at me.”

“I look at everyone.”

He reappears. She is turned toward him. He does not pause.

“You didn't say: I knew her, not him.”

“No.”

She is silent. She does not see what he is looking at, paused at the doorway to the other room.

“And to us,” she says, “to us they said, ‘Forget the Jew, forget what he said about liberty, forget his name too.' You, you weren't able to forget a ‘David'?”

“No.”

She somehow becomes alert again. He asks:

“You have forgotten the Jew?”

“If they ask us to, they say, ‘A Jew? Which one?' You wouldn't be able to say ‘A David? Which one?'”

“I wouldn't say that.”

He is still once more. They can barely see one another. She asks:

“Were you in Gringo's party before?”

“Yes.”

“You were a Gringo.”

“Yes.”

“And you weren't able to say that you had never met a David?”

“No.”

She rises. She crosses the room slowly, going toward the door to the park, pauses there. She says:

“David could be killed if anyone were to find out he was friends with a Jew.” Her voice grows soft. “I want to understand this.”

He moves toward her. She sees him coming. She waits for him.

“That's all false,” he says. “David is in no danger of death because he knew a Jew.”

He has come very close to her. She is looking at him still. She waits. Her eyes shine darkly in the reflection of frost on the grass.

“David is in danger of death because Gringo, on this night, needs someone to be in danger of death.” His voice as soft and intense as hers. “There, in Staadt, David, who knew me, who knew the Jew: he took David.”

They look at one another. They are silent. He asks:

“No one will ask me these questions, so why do I ask them of you?”

“Because it's night,” says Sabana, and says nothing more.

She presses her forehead against the cold window, standing still.

“Leave me alone,” she says.

She turns. He is still there. She lifts her hand to her face but does not touch it. He says:

“You said because it's night.”

She does not answer. She takes a step. She is against the body of the Jew, resting there. Her hand, still raised, touches his frozen face. She says:

“I take yours, I take the words of a Jew-dog.”

They are silent, entirely still.

“You want to live?”

He does not answer. And then:

“I want to live. I want to die.”

Sabana's hand falls. She moves away. They are separate.

And the silence.

The dogs howl.

“You said because it's night.”

“Yes. To dream of fear, we rise and wake up, we say that we dreamed, that it isn't true.”

He walks away from her. He takes a step. She waits. He takes two steps. He walks. Instead of passing into the other room, he walks toward David. He turns on a lamp. He looks at David in the light.

Sabana moves. She takes a step, two steps, like him, she comes to look at David.

“Speak,” she says, “He will wake up if we are too quiet.”

The Jew speaks, slowly, always with the same soft tones. “He is in the Staadt Real Estate Society?”

“Yes, in that society. He is twenty-five. He's married to Jeanne. A laborer. He loves nothing but the forest and dogs.”

She pauses, turns toward him.

“Speak. I will answer you.”

They look at each other.

“You alone know?”

“Yes. He doesn't know.”

“Supposedly he is honest, hardworking.”

“Yes. They believe that of him. He believes it too.”

A glimmer passes across the eyes of the Jew.

“You said the forest and dogs?”

“Dogs.”

“He told me that at the café. He said, ‘I know how to speak Portuguese and how to speak with dogs.'”

•

T
hey are
apart from each other. Again the Jew walks through the house.

Sabana sits at the table, away from him, away from David, next to Abahn. She waits. Listens: someone walking. Is it the steps of the Jew she hears? Yes, those. He passes before her.

“That one they sent to Prague,” she says.

He stops. She gestures to David.

He walks again. Paces. She calls to him from where she sits, always with the same voice.

“You have been to all the capitals in the world?”

“Yes, all of them.”

“The capital is everywhere.”

“Yes.”

A dull snapping sound comes from far off in the distance, from Staadt.

“The cold,” she says.

“Yes.”

He walks. He watches David. He asks, “He is in favor of the death of Jews?”

“He doesn't say anything about that,” says Sabana.

He walks. She no longer follows with her eyes.

“You had a job once, a wife, some children? There, where you had been, you had the right to live and to die?”

“Yes.”

“You fled? You left all that?”

“Yes. A long time ago.”

“You said one day to someone in Staadt: ‘I was hopeless, desperate.'”

“Yes.”

“After you had again left the place you had been?”

“Yes.”

“Always pursued? Killed?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“And for that they are killing you again?”

A painful smile drags across the face of the Jew.

“Yes.”

“Desperation,” repeats Sabana.

She falls silent. And then:

“And since you came to Staadt?”

“It's been bearable.”

“Bearable even with the danger?”

“Yes.”

He paces still. She watches him.

“Where you're always about to leave?”

“Wherever you are, I think, you are on your way.”

Silence.

“I'm cold,” says Sabana. “Afraid.”

“We are afraid,” says the Jew.

“Of death.”

“Of life.”

Silence. The Jew walks. Paces.

And then, while walking, right here, he calls out to David.

“David. David.”

First quietly, and then louder and louder, he calls to David.

David sleeps. His lips are gently parted. His face captured in the lamp light turned on by the Jew.

“David.”

He sleeps.

“David.”

The Jews stops, waits. He sleeps still. The Jews begins pacing once more.

Sabana is silent.

“David. David.”

Again he stops, the Jew. He stands still. Sabana struggles to discern him in the half-lit room. She hesitates, waiting. He paces away and then back. Sabana's eyes are two gray slashes devoid of light. He paces. He calls out. He stops again. They wait.

“David.”

They wait. The cold grows in their hearts, in their wakes, a frozen climax. David's voice rises up in the silence.

“Yes, I hear you. What?”

His voice is quiet, peaceful.

The Jew has stopped. They hear a dull cry. It is not David. Another cry. The dogs howl out in response. The howling dies down. The silence freezes over, muffles it. The silence drags forth a sob from David's chest. Sabana's face contorts in pain. She says: