Jakob the Liar (13 page)

Soon Herschel Schtamm appears lugging a sack, wearing the soaked fur cap under which he hides his piety, and Jacob asks him, “What was all that about, Herschel?”

“You won’t believe it, but I heard voices in that car,” Herschel says.

“Voices?”

“Voices,” says Herschel. “As true as I’m standing here, human voices.”

He may be feeling a cold shiver down his spine, especially since he is always much too hot under his fur cap. He puffs out his cheeks and nods anxiously a few times: you can imagine what that must mean. Jacob can; he reacts to Herschel’s announcement by sighing despairingly, closing his eyes, and raising his eyebrows. They are carrying on an inaudible little dialogue, and Schmidt stands beside them without understanding a single syllable.

Mischa comes up to them, sets down his bag of cement, and says quietly, “You’d better go on working, the sentry’s already looking this way.”

Suddenly Jacob is all thumbs, the bag slips from his hands, and Schmidt says in annoyance: “Watch what you’re doing!”

Jacob does have to watch himself. He feels, as he remembers later, like you do just after dreaming of happiness and quiet little places, and then someone comes and pulls away your warm blanket, and you lie there naked and trembling from the impact of cold reality.

“You’re very silent,” says Schmidt after a while.

Jacob persists in his silence; deeply distressed, he picks up the bags as they are handed to him, merely casting an occasional furtive glance at the innocuous-looking boxcar on its siding, behind whose walls human voices have been heard. Ventilation holes right up under the roof, no one is tall enough to look out, and no one is screaming, from neither inside nor outside, why isn’t anyone screaming, the bags need to be carefully stacked. Standing there reddish-brown on its siding as if forgotten, but they won’t forget it, in some ways they can be relied upon. Yesterday it wasn’t here, tomorrow it’ll be gone, just a brief stop on its way to somewhere. A car like that — loaded and unloaded and loaded by us a hundred times, crates, coal, potatoes under strict surveillance, machinery, stones, boxcars exactly like that, but this one isn’t to be touched, or they’ll shoot.

“Do you think it’s true?” asks Schmidt.

“Think what’s true?”

“About those voices.”

“Don’t ask such stupid questions. Do you think Herschel Schtamm is trying to impress us?”

“But who can possibly be inside that car?” 

“Who do you think?”

Schmidt’s mouth opens; suddenly he is seized by a dreadful suspicion. “You mean…,” he whispers.

“Yes, I do!”

“You mean, they’re still sending people to the camps?”

Unfortunately that’s how it is. Schmidt is not at home in the game of hints where certain things aren’t mentioned and yet are said. He’ll never be at home; in his heart he is and always will be an outsider. He needs to be told everything in blunt, unequivocal terms.

“No, they’re not sending anyone anymore! The war is long since over, we could all go home if we wanted to, but we don’t want to because we’re having such a good time here!” says Jacob, rolling his eyes. “Are they still sending people! Do you imagine there are none left? I’m left, you’re left, all of us here are left. Just don’t get the idea it’s as good as over!”

Schmidt interrupts the well-deserved lecture with a quick gesture, pointing outside in alarm and exclaiming: “Look! Schtamm!”

Herschel had never attracted much attention, except for his praying, which at the time he was convinced had led to the power failure. Now he’s making up for it: he is standing on the siding beside the boxcar. The sentries haven’t noticed him yet. Herschel is pressing his ear to the wall of the car and speaking: I can clearly see his lips moving, see him listening and then speaking again, our pious Herschel. His brother Roman happens to be standing next to me, his eyes like cartwheels: he makes a move to dash over to Herschel and bring him back before it’s too late. Two men have to restrain him by force, and one of them has to whisper: “Calm down, you idiot, you’ll only draw their attention to him!”

I can’t hear what Herschel is saying or what the people inside are telling him, it’s much too far away, but I can imagine it, and this is not a case of vague conjectures. The longer I think about it, the surer I am of his words, even though he never confirmed them to me.

“Hello! Can you hear me?” Herschel begins.

“We can hear you,” a voice from inside must surely answer. “Who are you?”

“I’m from the ghetto,” Herschel says. “You must hang on; only for a short time, you must hang on. The Russians have already advanced past Bezanika!”

“How do you know?” they ask from inside, all quite logical and predictable.

“You can believe me. We have a secret radio. I have to get back now!”

The people locked up inside thank him, utterly bewildered; a little white dove has strayed into their darkness. What they say is of no consequence; maybe they wish him happiness and riches and a hundred and twenty years of life before they hear his footsteps moving away.

Everyone is watching spellbound as Herschel starts on his way back. Crazy fools that we are, we stand there gaping instead of getting on with our work and behaving as if everything were normal. First we keep Roman from committing a stupid blunder, then we commit one ourselves. Perhaps Herschel wouldn’t have escaped them anyway, who can tell in retrospect? In any event we do nothing to distract their attention from him. Only now does he seem to have discovered fear; so far everything has gone as if of its own volition, according to the unfathomable laws obeyed by sleepwalkers. Cover is pitifully inadequate, almost nonexistent. Herschel has good reason to be afraid. A stack of crates, another empty boxcar, otherwise nothing along his path where he would need the protection of a convoy. I see him sticking his head around the corner of the boxcar, inch by inch; with his eyes he has already reached us; I can already hear him telling us about his great journey.

So far the opposition is quiet. The sentry by the gate is standing with his back to the railway tracks; there is no sound to rouse his attention. The other two sentries have disappeared, are inside the building presumably, driven in by the rain. I see Herschel making his final preparations for the great sprint; I see him pray. Although he is still standing beside the boxcar and moving his lips, it is obvious that he is not talking to the people inside but conversing with his God. And then I turn my head toward the brick building: it has a little window in the gable. The window is open, and on the sill lies a rifle being aimed, very calmly and deliberately. I can’t make out the man behind it, it is too dark in the room; I see only two hands adjusting the aim of the barrel until they are satisfied: then they are still, as in a painting. What should I have done, I who have never been a hero, what would I have done if I were a hero — given a shout, that’s all, but what good would that have been? I don’t shout, I close my eyes, an eternity passes, Roman says to me: “Why are you closing your eyes? Look, he’s going to make it, that crazy fool!”

I don’t know why, but at this moment I think of Hannah, executed in front of a tree whose name I don’t know. I’m still thinking of her after the shot is fired, until the men around me are all talking at the same time. A single dry shot; the two hands had, as I said, plenty of time to prepare everything all the while Herschel was praying. It is a strange sound — I have never heard a single shot before, always several at a time — like a naughty child stamping its foot in a tantrum, or a toy balloon being blown up too hard and bursting, or even, since I am already indulging in images, as if God had coughed, a cough of dismissal for Herschel.

Those locked behind the reddish-brown walls of the boxcar may be asking: “Hey, you there, what’s happened?”

Herschel is lying on his stomach, across the track and between two ties. His clenched right hand has fallen into a black puddle; his face, of which at first I can see only one half, has a surprised look with its open eye. We stand silently around him; they allow us this little respite. Roman bends down to him, pulls him off the track, and turns him over on his back. Then he removes the fur cap, his fingers fumbling awkwardly with the flaps under the chin. He thrusts the cap into his pocket and walks away. For the first time in this freight yard, Herschel’s earlocks are allowed to wave freely in the wind; many of us have never seen them before, have merely been told about them. So this is what Herschel Schtamm really looks like, without disguise. For the last time his face, darkly framed by wet earth and black hair; someone has closed his eyes. I won’t lie, why should I, he was no beauty, he was very pious, wanted to pass on hope, and in so doing he died.

Unnoticed, the sentry from the gate has come up behind us; it is time to divert our thoughts, and he says: “You’ve been gawking long enough, or haven’t you ever seen a dead man before? Come on, back to work on the double!”

At the end of the day we will take him with us and bury him; that’s permitted, without its being printed in black and white in one of the many regulations; it has simply become accepted. I look once more up to the window, which is now closed again: no rifle, no hands. And no one emerges from the building, they pay no further attention to us, for them the incident is closed.

Life goes on; Schmidt and Jacob start moving the bags again. By this time Schmidt has understood enough to hold his tongue and not let on why Herschel insisted on dashing over to the boxcar although the railway man emphatically and specifically warned him earlier.

In Jacob’s head, self-reproaches follow one upon the other; the part he has played in this drama is frighteningly clear. You construct some scanty consolation for yourself; you visualize a huge scale with two trays, on one you place Herschel while on the other you pile up all the hope you have been spreading among the people. Which side will go down? The problem is, you don’t know how much hope weighs, and no one is going to tell you. You must find the formula by yourself and complete the calculation alone. But you calculate in vain, the problems mount. Here’s another: who can divulge to you how much harm was prevented by your inventions? Ten disasters or twenty or only a single one? What has been prevented will remain hidden from you forever. Only the one you caused is visible: there it lies beside the tracks in the rain.

Even later, during the lunch break, Jacob hasn’t come one bit closer to the solution of the problem with all its unknown factors. He sits apart as he swallows his soup; today everyone leaves everyone else in peace. He has avoided Roman Schtamm. Roman hasn’t sought him out; only beside the cart where the empty tin bowls are always deposited do they find themselves suddenly face-to-face. They look each other in the eye, especially Roman. Jacob tells me, “He looked at me as if I had shot his brother.”

T
he evenings belong to Lina.

A long time ago, Jacob stopped with her in the corridor outside his door and said: “Listen carefully, Lina, so that, if anything should happen, you’ll be able to find the key to my room” is what he said. “Here behind the doorframe is a little hole in the wall, see? I’ll put the key in here now, then wedge this stone in front of it. It’s quite easy to remove — if you stand on tiptoe you’ll be tall enough. Try.” Lina tried; she stretched up her arm, removed the stone, barely managed to grasp the key, and held it out proudly to Jacob. “Wonderful,” Jacob said. “Remember the place carefully. I don’t really know why, but maybe someday it’ll be important. And one more thing — never tell anyone about this place.”

By now Lina no longer has to stand on tiptoe; for two years she has been tirelessly growing up toward the little hole behind the doorframe. If anything should happen, Jacob had said; today something had happened. Lina retrieves the key, unlocks the door, and stands with bated breath in the empty room. She is a bit nervous, but that will pass; if Jacob comes in unexpectedly she’ll simply tell him she’s tidying up. The motives driving her are adventurous, he would hardly approve of them, and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

In her path lie two obstacles, she is under no illusions: the first is the hiding place, still unknown; the second is that she doesn’t know what a radio looks like. Hiding places are not unlimited in this room; in a few minutes it could be turned upside down. The second obstacle seems much more difficult to her. There are all kinds of things that Jacob has explained to her. She would have no difficulty, for instance, in describing a bus, although she has never been face-to-face with one; she could talk about bananas, airplanes, teddy bears that start to growl when you lay them on their backs. During the recent power failure, Jacob even traced with her the highly mysterious path traveled by the light from the coal mine to the little bulb under the ceiling, but not a single word has he ever uttered about a radio. There are a few scanty clues: everyone is talking about it, it is forbidden to own one, it reveals things not known before, it is small enough to be easily hidden.

“Will you show me your radio tomorrow?” she’d asked him the previous evening, when he came up to the attic to see her after Kowalski’s futile visit.

“No,” he said.

“And the day after tomorrow?”

“No!”

“And the day after the day after tomorrow?” 

“No, I said! And that’s enough!”

Even her normally infallible look of wide-eyed entreaty had no effect; Jacob didn’t even notice it. Hence her new attempt after a resentful pause: “Are you ever going to show it to me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

 “Because.”

“Will you at least tell me what it looks like?” she asked then, her plan already half-formed in her mind. But he refused to answer this either, so her half-formed plan became a whole one.

In a nutshell: Lina must look for an object of which all she knows is that Jacob keeps it hidden away, an object without color, shape, or weight, the only good thing being that Jacob can’t have that many unfamiliar objects in his room. The first one she finds and has never seen before can confidently be assumed to be called a radio.

Lina starts with the obvious hiding places: under the bed, on top of the cupboard, in the table drawer. Quite possibly a radio is too big to fit into a table drawer — perhaps anyone watching would laugh out loud to see Lina looking in there for a radio. But it’s not her fault that Jacob remains so obstinately silent, and besides, no one is watching. It’s not in the drawer; there’s nothing in it. All she finds under the bed and on top of the cupboard is dust. All that’s left is the inside of the cupboard; there’s no other hiding place. The cupboard has two doors, one at the top and one at the bottom. She can forget about the top one; behind it are the two soup plates and two flat plates, the two cups of which one lost its handle when Lina dropped it on the floor while doing the dishes, also a knife and two spoons, the ever-empty sugar jar, and behind all that the food, when there is any. Behind this door Lina is at home; she often sets the table, serves the meal, and clears it away. She can forget about that one, but her project must not fail for want of thoroughness. She looks: the four plates, two cups, sugar jar, knife and spoons, plus some bread and a small bag of dried beans, no surprises.

Now for the bottom door. Lina hesitates: her fingers are already around the key and can’t make up their mind. If what she is looking for isn’t in there, then it’s nowhere. So far she’d never had any reason to look inside. “That’s where I keep my stuff,” Jacob had said. Nothing could sound more harmless. His stuff: only now is it clear what is concealed behind two such innocent words.

There is a limit to her hesitation, and Lina finally opens up; outside in the corridor footsteps hurry by. Locking the door won’t do: if Jacob comes he won’t ask what she’s doing here, he’ll ask why she has locked herself in, and there’s no answer for that. Lina takes everything out: a pair of trousers and a shirt, a needle and thread, a saucepan — why isn’t that in the top section? — a box of nails and screws, an empty picture frame, the book about Africa. She allows herself a brief pause; the book has more to offer than the words and letters to which Jacob has recently been attaching such strange importance. The pictures do deserve a few moments’ attention, regardless. The woman with those amazingly long breasts, so flat and dried-up looking, and the ring stuck through her nose — Jacob has promised to explain the meaning of that later. The naked men who have painted their faces all over, carry long spears, and on their heads wear enormous structures of feathers, hair, and ribbons. Or the skinny children, with round, protruding stomachs, animals with horns and stripes and endless noses and even longer necks: all this can certainly cause delay, but not enough to make one forget one’s real purpose.

Lina crawls waist deep into the cupboard; a final obstacle is removed, a modest pile of underwear with a green towel on top, and then…. The path has been cleared to that as yet unseen object, a proud smile of triumph, there it stands, inconspicuously in the corner, mysterious and forbidden. She brings it out to the light, some delicate latticework, a little knob, glass, and round; she places it reverently on the table and sits down facing it. Now something will happen. His stuff, Jacob had said; while she is staring at it the minutes tick away: what will be revealed now that she didn’t know before? Does this thing speak like an ordinary person, or does it deliver up its secrets in some other way, in some miraculous way? After a prolonged, expectant silence, Lina realizes that, left to itself, it will reveal nothing, it must be made to speak; maybe she just has to ask it something. If so, then not, she hopes, by means of some prearranged formula like with Ali Baba outside the cave of Sesame.

“What is my name?” Lina starts off with the simplest words she can think of, but already this seems to be too much for the thing. Lina allows it plenty of time, in vain. Her disappointment makes way for the thought that she has to ask for something unknown, for something she doesn’t already know — after all, she does know her own name. “How much is thirty times two million?” she asks. When this evokes no reply either, she takes a new approach; she remembers the light that can be switched on and off according to one’s fancy. Perhaps this thing can be switched on in the same way, let’s try the little knob. It’s rusted, can hardly be moved; after much effort, just a tiny squeak, and already her fingers are sore. At that moment Jacob appears in the doorway and asks, as predicted: “What are you doing here?”

“I,” says Lina, “I wanted …” she says, having to recover from the shock, “I wanted to tidy up your room. Don’t you remember?”

Jacob remembers; he looks at the Sodom and Gomorrah in front of the cupboard, then back at Lina, who had wanted to tidy up; before he can open his mouth she knows it won’t be all that bad. “But I hope you haven’t finished yet?” asks Jacob.

Of course she hasn’t finished yet, she’s only just begun. She jumps up and stuffs saucepan and book and underwear back into the cupboard, so quickly that his eyes can scarcely follow her. Next, the picture frame, in her haste the nails fall out of the box, in no time they’re gathered up, then come the needle and thread, where are the needle and thread, she’ll find them next time, the cupboard door is slammed shut, and already the mess is forgotten. Only that thing remains on the table. He has seen it anyway; there stands his only secret, and he is still not giving vent to his anger.

“You’re not cross with me, are you?”

“No, no!”

Jacob takes off his jacket, then washes the dirt from the freight yard off his hands. Lina grows uneasy: the thing is standing there being ignored.

“And what did you really mean to do here?”

“Nothing. I was tidying up,” she says, knowing that it’s hopeless.

“What were you looking for?”

Now he does begin to raise his voice, but she finds the question too silly for words: he’s sitting in front of the thing, asking in pretended innocence what she has been looking for, and to that we refuse to give the obvious reply.

“What’s the lamp doing here?”

“What lamp?”

“This one. Do you see any other?”

When Lina remains silent and wide eyed, staring at the alleged lamp, and the wide eyes gradually fill with tears, Jacob draws her close and asks in a much gentler voice: “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

He pulls her onto his knee; she doesn’t often cry. Who is to know what’s going on in a little mind like that, a mind that has all day to brood alone? “Come on, tell me what’s the matter. Does it have anything to do with the lamp?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen it before?”

“No.”

“Would you like me to explain how it works?”

Lina stops her tears: after all, Jacob can’t be blamed for her mistake, and besides, tomorrow is another day, somehow she’ll find the hiding place that she overlooked today. She attends to eyes and nose with her sleeve, which is not quite adequate: Jacob’s handkerchief hurries to her aid.

“Would you like me to explain?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then. This thing is a kerosene lamp. In the old days all the lamps were like this, before there was any electric light. This is where you pour in the kerosene, into this little bowl. This is the wick, it sucks up the kerosene, and only its tip sticks out. It can be made longer or shorter, with this knob here. You hold a match to the wick, and then the room is lighted up.”

“Could you do it for me?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have any kerosene.”

Lina slips off Jacob’s knee; she picks up the lamp in both hands and looks at it from all sides: so that’s why it was no use waiting for an answer. At home, in the Nuriel family, there had been no kerosene lamp and no radio; mistakes arise from lack of experience. After one last look she puts the thing back in the cupboard. Order is completely restored, also with Lina. She even discovers a funny side to her unsuccessful voyage of discovery.

“Do you know what I thought it was?”

“Well?”

“But you won’t laugh at me?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I thought it was your radio.”

Jacob smiles; he remembers how, as a very little boy, he had believed an old woman who lived next door, a hunchback, to be a witch, a similar mistaken conclusion; but soon his smile gradually fades. Lina was looking for the radio, she admits that. It wouldn’t have been a bad idea to leave her to her belief: what difference does it make to a lamp to be taken for a radio? He would have sworn her to secrecy: Now at last you’ve found it, now you know what it looks like, now not another word about it, above all not to strangers. And for weeks there would have been peace for him, at least at home. But he had let the opportunity slip by; Lina hadn’t betrayed herself until it was too late, and he hadn’t had enough presence of mind to size up the situation in the room and the lamp on the table and the significance of her tears. Any minute now she will ask, All right, so that was a lamp, now where’s the radio? Any minute now, or in an hour, or tomorrow at the latest, she’s already itching with impatience. Telling her it’s broken won’t satisfy her, Then show me the broken one, and unfortunately he’s not one of those who can answer awkward questions with the occasional slap. There is still, of course, one way out, a very simple one: Jacob could claim to have burned it, a damaged radio, if found, being no less dangerous than an intact one.

He could say that, then he’d be happily rid of the radio, for Lina and all the world, but it so happens that the day just past at the freight yard also plays a certain role. The dead Herschel Schtamm, his brother Roman with the tormenting gaze, the unknown people locked up on the siding: they all have a right to speak before the radio is finally destroyed. And the individual Jews who arrived hopefully in the early morning with their questions and left again in dismay, without the news to which they are entitled. By this time they will already be home, relatives and friends will be knocking on their doors, what’s the latest news at the freight yard? Nothing, they’ll be told, the radio says nothing anymore, it’s broken, yesterday it was still working, and today not a sound. The relatives and friends leave, spread the latest news throughout all the buildings and streets, which soon will once again seem as wretched as they did before that night when the searchlight picked up Jacob about seven-thirty on the Kurländischer Damm. There’s a lot to be considered before making frivolous decisions, before buying the peace that is no peace.

“Will you show me the radio now?”

“I already said no yesterday. Has anything changed since then?”

“I’ll find it anyway,” says Lina. 

“Then go on looking.”

“Want to bet that I’ll find it?”

She is switching to open attack, let her search rather than ask questions, Jacob is not going to talk her out of the next radio she finds. And the radio that she’ll never find will for the time being be saved from the fire, for many reasons, the first being Herschel of the earlocks: that very morning, as he lay in the rain between the railway ties, he had as good as repaired it.