Mr. Mani (18 page)

—I know, Grandmother ... just a minute ... I know...

—I know, Grandmother ... hold on a minute ... for God's sake ... can't you listen for just once...

—Yes, Grandmother, yes. He even said it again in the same broken, embryonic German that he had learned during the six months of occupation, which were the equivalent of a few days of Berlitz lessons in Berlin. At first, Grandmother, I must admit that I was so stunned by his answer that I couldn't get a word out. I just stood there, like you, fuming and indignant. But then, Grandmother, I remembered what you taught me yourself whenever we listened to
his
speeches on the radio, that a fool is frightened by absurdity while a wise man finds something to learn from it, and so I just smiled at him, and took his dead father's passbook from my pocket, and opened it, and put my finger on the Greek word, and asked in the same easygoing German, “And have you canceled Jerusalem too, sir?” That was already too much for him. He stepped toward me clumsily with the little boy in his arms and grabbed the passbook away from me, as if now that his father had shrunk to the size of a small book he could finally free him from my clutches, looked desperately at his wife again, and then turned back to me, waved his arms in search of the German words, and said in much the same vein, “We have been in Jerusalem, but no more...” At which point, Grandmother, are you listening, I felt almost blissfully happy...

—Yes, yes ... to the point that I actually bowed my head to Citizen Mani in grateful acknowledgment, made a little circuit of the room, a kind of pantomime house search, saluted the whole family, and left at once...

—An ordinary salute, like any well-mannered policeman would give a family of law-abiding citizens...

—I was happy for two reasons, Grandmother, the first being that my intellectual diagnosis had indeed been razor-sharp, and the second, that the infection had already cured itself, so that the blue womb that we had returned to was as pure and uncontaminated as ever...

—I assumed, Grandmother, that sooner or later I would hear that nasty word from you, and I've been bracing for it for the last half-hour...

—But you know perfectly well that I'm not that type.

—Because I'm not stupid, Grandmother, I simply am not and never was, neither in your opinion nor in anyone else's...

—If that's so, we should investigate how and when I became one, but it isn't...

—But for God's sake, Grandmother, will you listen to me...

—I hear you.

—Fine. I hear you.

—Fine, go ahead...

—I'm listening.

—Yes...

—Yes...

—Yes...

—Yes...

—Can I say something now?

—Hold on there...

—All right.

—I hear you.

—Now listen carefully, Grandmother. No, just a minute. I heard you out quietly, now you hear me out and tell me if it isn't ludicrous and in poor taste to talk like that, in such biological or zoological terms, about people and even whole nations. Why, it's humiliating even for us Germans ... as if we were all different strains of dogs or monkeys. No, Grandmother, please, that was never the intention of our Daemon, because the word “race” was an allegorical reference to another, more respectable word, namely,
nature,
which is what counts, and what is nature if not character, both human and national, which can be described and changed ... Why, didn't Hider himself speak of
the danger of the Jew in each one of us?

—He did, I swear ... he did too ... in the youth movement, in Flansburg, there were those who knew his every word by heart...

—Of course ... of course he did ... which is why Citizen Mani Junior's answer made me so happy, because I understood that if that stubborn, beastly essence of Jewishness can cancel its own self, then there's hope for us too, Grandmother...

—Once more for two reasons, Grandmother. The first is that we won't have to hunt down every last Jew in order to destroy him, because each Jew will cancel himself. And the second is that, when the time comes, we'll be able to do the same thing...

—Because suppose there's another Judgment Day, Grandmother, and they'll want to make us pay like after the first war, when they caused you such aggravation. We too will be able to say then, “We were Germans but we are not anymore ... we've canceled it...”

—But hold on there, Grandmother, hold on, you're losing your temper for no good reason. You're angry and you keep calling me names as if I were attacking you personally, but I'm not that stupid and I'm not that crazy ... it's true that sometimes, I admit, I have strange ideas, but reality has always been kind enough to put them into practice for me...

—No, I'm not pulling your leg, heavens, no. Far from it, I'm simply telling you my story in proper sequence, and who knows, it may cause you pleasure in the end ... perhaps even joy ... because wait, I haven't come to the last surprise yet...

—In a minute ... I'm getting to it ... but first let's walk a few more meters to that big white box over there, in those trees up ahead of us ... over there, do you see it?

—Yes, over there ... that white box ... which is ... come on, Grandmother, guess...

—Never mind, just say the first thing that comes to mind...

—A mailbox? That's a good one, ha ha ... No, Grandmother, who would come all the way up here to mail a letter? It's got to be something else...

—But here, Grandmother, take a look: it's simply a miniature little church, a pocket church, with a glass wall, and a tiny little altar behind it, and a teeny dish of oil for the dead, and a little doll of the Virgin holding her baby Savior who's no bigger than a needle. The Greeks put these sweet little churches everywhere, Grandmother, to prevent travelers and passersby who are in a state of ecstasy from the sun, or the sea, or the sky, from backsliding to the paganism of the ancients and going down on their knees, God forbid, before trees and stones. It keeps them honest and faithful to the religion of their forefathers ... but don't look at me, Grandmother, look at the sky, because now begins its grand moment, just look at it blushing for you...

—If you're tired again, we can sit for a while on this bench. It's here for the faithful. Would you like to pray a little?

—But you're here all alone ... no one will see you ... and it's the same Virgin as the one in the Lutheran church near our estate, even if she is so tiny...

—If you don't want to, you don't have to, it doesn't matter. If you'd like, I even possess the vested authority to commandeer that little doll with her baby and make you a present of them, so that you can have them as a souvenir of this hike and this wonderful view, and even of me too perhaps, because who knows...

—What I'm saying, Grandmother, is who knows if I'll ever come home again...

—What?

—Go on!

—What makes you so sure?

—But how? Who?

—That's ridiculous.
I'm
being transferred to Germany? Who even knows that I'm on this godforsaken island?

—But what do you think? Tell me this minute...

—I want the truth, Grandmother. Was it your doing? The truth, Grandmother ... have you been meddling again?

—But what can you know about it when you don't even understand what happened? I have to stay here ... I have to find them ... ach, damn you, why did you have to go rushing off again, Grandmother, without even asking me first...

—I'm sorry ... I'm sorry...

—The two of them ... the woman and the child...

—Playing games with Jews? Games? On the contrary, you'll see in a minute ... just the opposite...

—But it's not for them, it's for us, Grandmother ... for Germany ... the Jews here, and everywhere, are simply guinea pigs on whom we can perform an experiment that we're still afraid to perform on ourselves. They even like being experimented on, they're so used to changing shapes and jumping from test tube to test tube. Just look at all I've learned these past three years, at what an expert I've become ... even if you don't agree with my train of thought, you can't accuse me, Grandmother, of superficiality. Don't you remember how many exams I flunked in school because I refused to give superficial answers to superficial questions? Surely you don't think that just because the idea pleased me, I let myself be innocently carried away by it, or excused myself from the necessity of checking and double-checking it to see if young Mr. Mani's astonishing confession rang true, if it was at all plausible! I was so beside myself, Grandmother, so on fire with new questions, that that same night, when my shift at the prison was over, I climbed onto my motorcycle instead of into bed and went racing off at the crack of dawn to that house outside of Knossos, where I knocked loudly on the door. This time I didn't wait to be let in. I climbed through a window, went right to the back room, which happened to be their bedroom, shone my flashlight on the pile of blankets under which those canceled Jews were lying, and shook them out of the last of their sleep for another interrogation, shivering from cold, the woman all soft and wild-haired in a flannel nightgown embroidered in red, and the man in the same overcoat that had been worn by his father. I could see from his calm look that he wasn't surprised by my appearance, as if he had realized that one night was not enough to digest his confession but only to throw it back up at him...

—I thought I would search their house, Grandmother, for something Jewish that they took out at night, something that might refute his declaration, although in fact, I had no idea what anything Jewish might look like or how to go about finding it, because I was still so naive, Grandmother, that back then, in the winter of ‘41, I didn't know what was already clear to me by the spring of ‘42, that is, that there's nothing Jewish that a Jew can't do without...

—I mean that a Jew's identity, Grandmother, can exist purely in his own mind, which is why there is reason to believe it can be canceled there too...

—But that's precisely the point ... that's the point, O wisest and most perspicacious Grandmother, that I keep trying to get across to you, so that you'll understand how difficult, how profound, how almost absurd is the war that the Führer has declared on them...

—No. I never said a word to Major Schmelling.

—Because I knew, Grandmother, that it was too subtle for him. Who is this Schmelling, after all? An elderly police officer of the old school who knows about Jews from the newspapers and hysterical speeches and slogans on the walls, which is why he takes them so literally, so that he thinks the world is like the Berlin Zoo, in which you can go
from cage to
cage comparing the animals until you find the Super-Ape ... No, I wouldn't want to confuse him with an idea that I myself haven't finished working out yet...

—Have I gotten to the point? Not yet ... not yet ... especially since young Mani himself only sank to the bottom of the sea some eight weeks ago ... although on the other hand...

—I'm getting there ... in a minute ... in a minute you'll understand...

—Of course, Grandmother. After all, I could simply have told myself, as you keep telling me, “He's just putting one over on you, this beastly Jew, he's just trying to dodge his fate.” But I knew that was the easy way out, the answer you give when all you have patience for is blasting away with your schmeisser, and that, perhaps because I was helped to arrive on this island by a gentle push from above, I should first tune in to my surroundings, not for the sake of Mani Junior, but for our own sake, for the sake of Germany and the Germans, to see if one couldn't return to the starting point and become
simply human again,
a new man who can cancel the scab of history that sticks to us like ugly dandruff and put the dark, moldy rooms full of worm-eaten books, the faded oil paintings, the grotesque sculptures, behind him for the sunlit aperture, Grandmother, that you see spread out before you in all its glory, chorusing away in the crickets that won't, I'm afraid, let us hear ourselves think unless we get up and move on ... Come, Grandmother, let's go...

—No, there's not much more ... I promise ... I beg you...

—No, we still have time before dark ... and we're not far from the top now ... Even if this story of mine only irritates you, the fantastic view that you're about to see, with its radiant expanse of air and water, will reward you for all your aggravation...

—Exactly ... exactly ... you see, you do understand me, Grandmother...

—Thank you, Grandmother, thank you...

—I know...

—Of course you'll have the right of reply...

—I promise you ... for as long as you like ... I'll listen to you all evening...

—Yes, exactly. That's what I told myself too, “Even if he's trying to put one over on you, you'll make him stick to his word,” and so my first order of business was making sure he didn't take to the mountains, which meant that every day or two, Grandmother, I paid him a surprise visit just to check that he was still canceling away...

—At first just house visits, Grandmother, because we're still talking about the winter and spring of ‘42 when I was at the bottom of the ladder, an ordinary guard working the night shift in that big, dry winery that Schmelling turned into a prison. As soon as my shift was over, with the first light of dawn, while my brain was still on fire with the screams of tortured suspects, I would climb on my cycle and speed off from Heraklion to Knossos along roads still silenced by the curfew, which in those days was dutifully honored by the inhabitants, to pay a call on my own private, secret suspects, who began leaving the door open for me once they realized I wasn't going to leave them alone, so that I could step right into their bedroom without bothering them, two heaps of blankets that my flashlight played over as it looked for something Jewish whose name, shape, or nature I hadn't the foggiest notion of. In those days I still believed that, if only it existed, it was bound to emerge from the bedclothes at night
and cancel the cancellation