Abahn Sabana David (9 page)

“Go hunt,” says the Jew.

“It's he who spoke to me in the forest,” cries David. “About the jackrabbits. He said, keep going, they're beyond the barbed wire.”

“Beyond it,” says the Jew.

“He spoke of the light in the forest,” says David, remembering, speaking slower now, “of summer also.”

“Summer,” says the Jew.

Silence.

The broken voice of the Jew then rises:

“David's summer.”

Someone is shooting near the ponds.

They speak no more. David listens and trembles. Sabana, sitting next to the Jew, also listens. Her voice then rises:

“What is Gringo waiting for?”

The shots cease.

•

A
bahn is
speaking to David, still overcome by exhaustion. “First he forgets what work he did. Then he forgets about money. Then he forgets what he learned. Finally, at the end, he forgets his wife, his children. He said, ‘I couldn't lie in front of them the way I could when I was away from them.' Is that what he told you, David?”

“Yes.”

“And he left so his children would also leave, later on.”

“Then he left again and again,” says Sabana.

“Yes,” Abahn says. “Again.”

“He lingered among the Jews, burned Jews and gassed Jews, with or without God.”

“Yes,” says Abahn. “He was searching.”

“It's Staadt where he will die,” says Sabana, “in the penal colony on the road to the Jewish capital.”

Silence. Abahn does not continue. David waits.

The silence hovers between them. Abahn closes his eyes. He seems exhausted. David realizes he is lonely, alone, broken down.

Then Abahn continues:

“I know nothing of life.”

Silence. No motion at all on David's smooth and pale face.

“I don't know anything about my life any more,” says Abahn. “I will die without knowing.”

David says:

“It doesn't matter.”

“Nothing,” says Abahn. “In the end: nothing.”

“Me either,” says David. “I don't know anything either.”

“No, you don't.”

“No.”

•

A
bahn speaks
to the Jew in a slow and even voice. “It's because you came here that we understand a little more. We know some names, some dates.”

“Yes,” says David.

“You came here one night. You walked the village all that night and all the morning that followed. People met you. They remembered. You smiled.” He pauses. “It was the morning of the second day that Gringo recognized you.”

He pauses.

“Yes,” says David.

“Gringo said, ‘No talking to the traitor, no going to see him, no looking at him. He was in the Party and he betrayed it.'” Abahn looks at the Jew. “Did you know that Gringo recognized you?”

Abahn answers for the Jew, saying to David:

“He knew. He knew that whenever he went out that he would be recognized.”

Far off, on the field of the dead, the dogs cry out, howling.

“You bought this house, a bed, a table, chairs. You stayed here for many days. You burned things, the papers—only after you had started preparations to leave. But it was already too late. Gringo had already alerted the workers of Staadt to your presence.”

He pauses. Says:

“In your life, you kept only guard dogs.” Turning to David, he says, “Why?”

“He played with them in the evening.”

“The dogs didn't know,” Abahn says.

“No.”

“They didn't know that he is Jewish. Neither did you, David?”

“No,” says David.

Silence.

“Many days passed,” says Abahn. “Many weeks. Many months. The autumn.”

Silence once more. David waits, sitting up in his chair, his eyes tense.

“Afterward, a long time after, Gringo said to you, ‘You're talking to the traitor? You're listening to what the Jew says? You don't know what he did?' You said you didn't know. Gringo was amazed. He said, ‘How? Everyone knows. He questions the Party line on the Soviet concentration camps. You don't know this?'”

Abahn's voice cracks in places. He gasps for air. He breathes with difficulty.

“You didn't understand what Gringo said to you. That the Jew was what he still is: any Jew.”

“Yes.”

Abahn gasps for air. There is nearly no air.

“You spoke with him again. Against Gringo's orders, you kept speaking with the Jew because the Jew had dogs.”

“No!” cries David.

“And that was forbidden also.”

David nods weakly.

Abahn wants to speak more. He struggles to get there, he gets it out quickly because once more he can, he gives it to David in clear phrases.

“You didn't covet the Jew's dogs. You just wanted to speak to someone who had dogs.”

David nods.

“Afterward, a while after, Gringo spoke of making the Jew disappear, you thought then for a moment, you might have his dogs.”

David nods yes.

Abahn stops talking to David and starts talking about him instead.

“Right after Gringo's order David went to the café with the Jew, just like before. It was that very night in the café that the Jew spoke to him about freedom. He said, ‘Your wounded hands are your own hands, David.'”

David nods. Abahn gulps air and continues, talking faster.

“The Jew said, ‘In their suffering and their joy, in their madness and their love, in their freedom these hands are your hands, no other's, the hands of David.'” He pauses. “It's because he said these things that the Jew will be killed.”

A sob heaves in David's chest.

It's a brief, isolated sob, broken, quick.

Abahn speaks again, more hurried:

“You didn't understand what the Jew meant.”

David does not react.

“You repeated it without knowing what it was you were repeating. You told Gringo. Gringo said, ‘YOU LACK AN EDUCATION IN POLITICS. WE WILL KILL THE JEW AND THEN YOU WILL UNDERSTAND.' It was Jeanne who reported this.”

David folds over himself violently, his arms wrapping under his legs. He trembles then as if he were going to break. His face contorts like a drowning man's.

“I haven't taught you anything,” says Abahn. “
You knew everything
.”

David doesn't answer him, doesn't hear him.

Abahn falls silent.

David cries out something like, “I never had a dog.”

He heard his own cry.

He lingers, rising toward this cry, in the position of someone crying out still. He rises, searching the air for this cry, searching and finding tears.

David doesn't know he is crying. His tears fall.

Within the tears one hears the names of Sabana and the Jew.

Sabana rises. She stands behind the windows looking out toward the darkened park, the field of the dead. She looks at nothing else.

The Jew lifts his head. He heard the voice of Sabana:

“I will be killed along with the Jew.”

The Jew looks past her toward the darkened park.

The shooting out near the ponds has broken out again.

•

T
he shooting
stops.

David's tears flow more slowly, coursing.

David seems preyed upon by a terrible dream. His head thrashes, shakes no. His hands seek out things no one else but he can see. His face seems to be speaking, answering something.

Then his tears trickle off. Then the movements of his face and eyes calm as well. The dream drifts off.

He seems to see no more. He releases his legs, turns his face back to the light, rests back against the chair, limp, completely spent.

The silence. They are all silent. The Jew looks at David. Sabana and Abahn seem not to notice.

The shooting begins again.

The deafening sound of bullets cracking out from their shells. David listens to them in seeming distress. He moves no more than Sabana or the Jews.

Diane howls to death.

The cracking of bullets continues at irregular intervals. Some shots closer in the park. No one in the house of Abahn seems to pay any attention to the shooting in the park.

“He arrives.”

Abahn and Sabana both turn to the one who has spoken: David.

The shooting gets closer, Diane still howling to death. A funereal moan cuts across the night of Staadt.

And then:

“If someone is killed, then run off through the other door.”

The voice of the Jew.

“Release the dogs, go by the ponds.”

Again, the Jew.

David turns his head. He has heard.

Slowly, he gathers his strength, he tries to pull himself up out of the chair. He falls back. He does not move.

The shooting gets closer and closer to the house of Abahn.

David, once more, makes an attempt. He grabs hold of the armrests with his hands, swollen by the work with cement, and lifts up his body.

He stands.

He finds himself upright once more in the room. He does not move. He looks at the Jew. His hands are hanging, swollen. He listens to Gringo's shots over the ice of the pond. He alone knows what those shots mean.

“He's the only one armed. It's the same gun firing.”

Another shot, the dogs howling.

“Go,” says the Jew, “do whatever you have to.” He pauses. “By any means, try to live.”

“Yes,” David says to the Jew.

David closes his eyes, tries to separate Gringo's shots from the howling of the dogs, he tries to calculate the distance, plan out the course.

“He is shooting in the direction of the field.” He opens his eyes, looks at the Jew. “Talk to me.”

“If you succeed and live,” says the Jew, “tell this story.”

“Yes.”

“Tell it. To everyone. Without distrust. Look around you. Closely. All this is destroyed.”

“Yes.”

Silence. Diane is no longer howling. There's no shooting anymore, either. David listens.

“He is still coming. We have five minutes.”

David hasn't taken his eyes off the Jew; all the while he has been listening to the turmoil of the Staadt night.

“He shoots because he is afraid,” says David.

“Yes.”

“He should be alone,” says David. “There's no group. He made it up to make us believe he was busy. For me to be left alone with you, with a gun and the Jew.”

“Yes.”

The dogs, once more, howl.

“Leave your work,” says the Jew. “It's difficult to do, but try.”

“Yes.”

“And your fear. And your hunger.”

“Yes.”

Silence. Gringo approaches without firing.

“Don't be alone,” says the Jew. “That's what I'm telling you. Leave that behind too.”

David does not answer.

“I don't speak to you in your position but to myself if I were David. Not otherwise. You, do what you like. Go back to Gringo if that's your plan.”

Silence.

Suddenly a shot rings out quite close to the house.

“I told you this in the forest,” says the Jew.

“Yes,” says David. “It feels far.”

“Far off, through the place of Jews.”

A shot hits the outside wall of the house.

Sabana and the Jew seem neither to have heard nor understood.

“He's walking in front of the windows,” says David. “Flatten yourself against the wall.”

The Jew does not move. Neither does Sabana.

“I can't see anything anymore,” cries out David. “I can't see the Jew.”

Someone walks on the road a few meters in front of the house.

David says:

“He's here.”

•

A
nd now,
the first cry through the howling of the dogs.

“David!”

“There is the brother, the ape,” says Abahn.

Sabana turns to look toward the road.

Abahn and David turn that way, too.

The Jew stops looking at David, he turns toward the darkened park.

They stay like that, as they are, scattered throughout the room, unmoving. Sabana next to the Jew, behind the bare windows. They all have the same expression of rapt attention.

The fear grows no more.

“David!”

The voice is getting closer. Still, that long howling of dogs in the park. The shooting has stopped.

“Three minutes,” says David.

“It's daybreak,” says Sabana.

Beyond the road, toward the barbed wire, flush with the sky, with the growing light, still dark.

They talk, first one, then the others.

“He isn't shooting through the windows.”

“He isn't shooting.”

The howls of the dogs die down.

“He's out there. He's watching us. He isn't shooting.”

“This is the lost time,” says Abahn. “The dead time.”

Some steps on the road.

“He's leaving.”

More steps.

“He's coming back.”

“What's he looking for? The house of the Jew?”

The steps approach once more but this time more sure. The steps come all the way to the door.

“He hasn't fired the gun,” David says.

He listens. Says:

“He's afraid.”

“Of you,” says Abahn. “Of David.”

Someone calls out.

“David!”

David takes a step toward the door. He stops. He says slowly, sharply, “I HAVE NOT KILLED THE JEW.”

Silence on the other side of the door. There is no response to what David said. David starts up again:

“YOU SAW THROUGH THE WINDOW THAT THE JEW STILL LIVES.”

Silence on the other side of the door. No one responds to what David said.

There is a cry:

“There's no point in hiding! We saw you!”

David doesn't understand.

Silence.

David takes another step toward the door.

Silence still.