Abahn Sabana David (8 page)

“Yes,” says David. “A kind of smile in her eyes.”

“A dog for you to play with,” she says.

“Yes.”

“But they'll kill her,” Sabana says. “They want only guard dogs here. There are a hundred of them in the field of the dead. The princes of Staadt.”

David listens to the soft, quiet voice of Sabana. Her hands quivering.

“They eat everyday,” she says. “They sleep. They train at sunrise. Sometimes, they put them in the police tanks going to the Jewish neighborhoods. Gringo showers them with praise, throws flowers on them, gives them medals, hangs them on their collars.”

She takes a few steps toward David, then stops before reaching him. They look at one another. She says:

“Sometimes they are free, they release them, they say: ‘You are free, go kill.' When the Jews pass through the barbed wire on the other side of the field, where the ponds are, we say to them: Go kill.”

“‘You are free,'” repeats the Jew.

David rises. His eyes are flat, opaque. He searches for his gun. Sabana doesn't seem to have noticed him moving. She says:

“You are free.”

David releases his gun. He looks at Sabana, standing before him. His hands tremble. He smiles at Sabana, a tight and empty smile:

“I don't understand,” he says.

“You didn't shoot,” she says.

Silence.

In the park, that same sad howl.

“Diane,” says the Jew.

David turns to look at the Jew, then at Sabana. His gaze focuses and sharpens.

“She cries from despair,” says Sabana.

“A dog?” David asks.

“One can never know” says the Jew.

“A dog crying from despair?” David murmurs to himself.

“Who can ever know,” says Abahn.

•

S
ilence.

“What time is it?” asks David.

The voice of Abahn:

“Nearly day.”

David sits up straight, frightened. He looks toward the road for the first time. He trembles.

“No, it's still night,” says the Jew.

“There's no more shooting near the ponds,” says Sabana. “They've left again.”

“I don't understand,” David murmurs.

They are silent.

This time, in the park, a long plaintive cry. David straightens, says to the Jew:

“They're hurting Diane.”

The Jew, like him, is listening to the cry. David turns toward Abahn.

“Is she crying out because of the night? The cold?” asks Abahn.

“I don't know,” says the Jew.

“From fear, I think,” says David.

“That she'll be killed?”

“That there will be killing,” says Sabana slowly. She falls silent. She has gone back to sleep.

•

T
he silence.

Sabana leaves David, moving slowly toward the table, to the area where the Jews are. She turns back to him. She seems worried, bothered. “The Jew is going to give you his dogs. You can have them.”

David's air changes. Happiness seems to break out over him, in his eyes, mixed with the sadness.

“Diane,” says Sabana. “You could take her.”

David waves his hand to silence her.

“Diane,” she repeats, “the Jew's dog. She could be yours.”

The softness of her voice brings tears to his eyes.

“What are you doing in the house of the Jew?” she asks, “Leave though the forest.”

He shakes his head: no. He says, “Gringo would never want that.”

Silence.

“You know the forest?” asks Abahn.

“Yes,” says David. “Beyond the barbed wire.”

“Big?” Sabana asks.

“Wild,” says David.

“There are jackrabbits.”

“Yes.”

They are silent before this unchanging dream, desperate. Their eyes fixed on some indefinite point in the darkness outside.

“Who told you this?” asks Abahn.

“No one.”

He looks out at the dark park.

“
It's impossible
,” he says.

“Dogs, gassed,” says Sabana softly. “Millions of them.”

“Yes,” says David.

They look at the Jew. His eyes are closed.

“They have been in the family for a thousand years,” says Abahn. “They are part of it. Gringo will set a price.”

“How?” asks David in a child's voice.

“From the moment he kills them, he ought to explain why,” continues Abahn. “He will say: I kill them because they are worth so much.”

“Such a rich sum,” says Sabana.

Silence. The Jew has opened his eyes and is looking at David.

•

“I
t's starting
up again,” says Sabana.

Sabana can hear things that David can't.

She listens. “The bullets ricochet off the ice. They are on the other side of the park.” She listens again. David watches her. “They're gone,” she says.

“Again,” David murmurs.

“Yes.”

“I don't understand,” David says to the Jew.

Sabana goes to him, she stops just before reaching him. “You ought to do it,” she says in a low voice.

Almost imperceptibly, he recoils, never taking his eyes off her. “What?” he asks.

“Kill the dogs of the Jew.”

David doesn't move. Fear leaves him.

“You could say to Gringo: I killed the dogs of the Jew as well.”

David is still staring at Sabana. The fear builds. Like a smile. He sees the blue of her eyes fade out.

“Gringo would promote you in rank, you could leave off the work with cement, rejoin the Red Army.”

David lifts his calloused hands, he pushes the image away, he cries out.

“NO,” he bellows, his hands raised, his eyes closed against the vision of a dog, killed, executed.

Then he falls silent, his hands fall and grip the armrests of the chair.

He looks over at the Jews.

•

“H
e is
crying,” says Sabana.

The eyes of the Jew are closed.

“There's crying,” says Sabana. “Someone is crying. It's either you or him.”

She turns toward David. David doesn't understand. He passes his hand over his face, he looks at the wet hand. He doesn't understand.

Abahn, sitting next to the Jew, seems to have forgotten him.

“Or he's sleeping,” says Sabana.

She pauses, looks at the Jew.

“No. He's crying. About you. Or about nothing.” Her tone grows soft. “About nothing.”

David leans toward the Jew. His face has a pained expression. “He's not trying to protect himself.”

“No.”

Sabana and David watch the Jew. Abahn speaks without looking at him.

“He is afraid,” David murmurs.

“He didn't try to escape,” says Abahn. “He has no reason to feel fear.”

“He's exhausted.”

“No. Look at him. He's still strong, still vibrant.”

David examines the Jew with the closed eyes, discovers the strength there.

“It's true,” he murmurs.

“The life he's led ought to have prepared him for what awaits him,” says Abahn.

They are silent.

“But who is he?” David asks again.

“I don't know,” says Abahn.

“He was bored of the Jewry,” says Sabana, “of life wandering on the road. That's why he came here.”

She turns to Abahn. She says:

“That's you as well, the Jew.”

“Yes,” says Abahn. “Me too.”

All these words sink into David: he looks at the Jew, just him. Still staring at him, he says:

“Gringo said, ‘the Jew is dangerous.'”

“Yes,” says Abahn.

“Still?” asks David.

“Yes.”

David keeps looking, looking, and somehow strangely he sees, sees the danger.

“It's true,” David murmurs.

With difficulty he turns to Abahn and says:

“Gringo is afraid of him.”

“Gringo doesn't exist to the Jew.”

David remembers.

“It's true, the Jew never said anything at all about Gringo, nothing bad ever.”

Abahn smiles, is slow to respond.

“The only way Gringo exists for the Jew is that he is going to kill him.”

Fear seizes David once more. It is almost as if he is going to jump up from the chair. Neither Sabana nor Abahn notice his movements.

“Otherwise,” says Abahn, “the life of the Jew is as invisible as the life of David.”

“A mountain of pain,” says Sabana.

“A mountain of cement,” says Abahn.

“Mountains of the cement of pain,” says Sabana.

“Yes,” says Abahn, smiling, “Invisible, drowned in the Jews.”

The Jew lifts his head and looks over at David.

David notices the Jew looking at him. With a sudden start he tries to evade his gaze. He falls back into the chair. The Jew swings his gaze toward the door out to the darkened park. David calms.

•

“H
e didn't
know where to go,” says Abahn, “so he came here, to Staadt. He could have gone anywhere, but it would have been the same: other Gringos and merchant's unions and they would have wanted to kill him too. Here, there, it's all the same.”

Again David tries to rise up out of the chair. Again he fails. Again neither Sabana nor Abahn notice him.

The Jew has once again rested his head on his arms. He seems exhausted. Sabana sits at the table, leaning against him. She strokes his back, his hair, his hands, his body. Then she lets her hand drop, rests there without moving.

David sees only the Jew.

“It's been a long time since he left home,” Abahn says. “He had a wife once, children. Then one day he left.”

“Then he left the place he had gone to,” adds Sabana.

“Again and again,” says Abahn. “Left from every place.”

An anxiety builds in David's eyes.

“And once, a long time ago, he'd had a profession. He's begun, these days, to forget even what it was. He said once to someone in the village: I forget now what I once did before.”

Silence.

“He said that to you, David?” asks Sabana.

With difficulty, the word comes from David:

“Yes.”

“He also said that he studied. For a long time. In many capital cities. He said: It pleased me to study. No he's forgotten what all he studied. He said to someone in the village: I can't remember anymore what I once knew.”

“He said that to me,” says David.

The dogs howl.

The dogs howl: David turns his gaze toward the door to the darkened park.

The howling subsides.

“He said: I began to think about where I learned this word—‘Jew.'”

A shot rings out near the ponds, disrupting the Staadt night. Shots heard again from even farther off. No one hears the shot near the ponds.

“There's something written on his body,” says Sabana, “on his arms, there's something written.”

She sits up and takes his arm, folds back the sleeve of his jacket and looks at his forearm.

“It's written where the number would be.”

“Written where you arrive,” says Abahn, “in the capital of the world.”

Sabana looks at the arm.

“It's written in blue.”

“What?” asks David.

“I don't understand it,” she says. “I can't read it.”

“It's the word: NO,” says Abahn.

“When did they write it?” asks David.

“At some point during his life,” says Abahn.

“It's the same word for the Jew and for those who want to kill him,” says Sabana.

“The same,” says Abahn. “The word of the Jew and the word of those against the Jew.”

Sabana replaces the arm of the Jew and sits back, closing her eyes again, resting.

Abahn and Sabana both seem to be in the same exhausted state.

“He had these stories,” says Abahn, “a hundred of them but all the same, those of the Jews. He has barely told any of them to the people of Staadt. He told them instead about the lives of others.”

David nods.

“Before coming here the Jew was released from all parties, Gringo's and others, and all his stories were finished, he was left with only his own. The Jew couldn't stand, one more time, to be alone with his own story. So he started again. He began to become a man of Staadt.”

Abahn pauses. He speaks with a great tiredness sweeping through him, slower. He looks down at the ground. He no longer seems to be speaking to David alone.

“With forgetfulness descending everywhere, this new thing became possible—to become a man of Staadt. So he did it. Began once more to become a man of another new place.”

Abahn pauses.

“He wanted to live,” says Sabana.

“Yes,” says Abahn. “He wanted to live without working in the
banlieues
of Staadt. To exist without working at all, without any occupation but that of living, in the
banlieues
of Staadt. And he decided to do it like this from now on.”

Silence.

“Just like that? Why?” asks David.

“It was his unchangeable desire. His purest desire.”

Silence.

“That's terrible,” murmurs David. “To do nothing.”

“No,” says Abahn, looking at David. “He spoke.”

David struggles, searches in the emptiness.

“He said to us: Leave it all behind.”

David speaks but he doesn't know what he says. He trembles.

“He said: Look here, leave it all, you're building on ruins.”

In the half-light someone laughs. It's the Jew.

Joy floods David's face. He cries out, “He hears us, he laughs!”

One after the other they all start laughing with the Jew.

“He said: Enough with this foolishness. Leave the cement behind.”

“Leave the cement behind,” says the Jew.

“He said: Go hunt.”