PSALM 44 (11 page)

s why (I guess) I didn
’
t set much store by that sort of thing and neither your mother nor I, as you
’
ve seen, ever concerned ourselves with forms or rituals. That
’
s why I said that you and Ilonka Kutaj pray to the same God but I
’
d like to communicate to you what I understood that to mean, even though I
’
ve already explained something about it to you when we were reading in the Bible, and even I
’
ll say once more that I don
’
t really know what your mother taught you and what kind of views about all these things you might have picked up at school (at your age I had already
—
I believe I had
—
asked myself the God question and answered it, I think, according to my own lights
—
but that
’
s not important at the moment); but look, I want to tell you
—
and this is the reason I called you here to have this conversation
—
that my God (I wanted to tell you this immediately and so that
’
s why I digressed into this vague interpretation of religion and blood, for you are after all my sole offspring, you are, I mean, of my blood, just as your own children will be . . .)
—
my God is simply the incarnation of justice and philanthropy and kindness and of hope
”
;
—
and she listened to him not knowing whether to reply or to tell him, anyway, that she felt a God inside her who was also something like that but who she wouldn
’
t have been able to define, wouldn
’
t have been able not just then but maybe would never have been able to in her life, had he not said this to her at that time:
“
. . . a God who bears that name because people gave it to him, but be that as it may, isn
’
t really anything other than a symbiosis of those principles
—
not to mention of goodness and virtue
—
that I
’
ve just listed for you; only my God is, it seems to me, more beautiful, and better (because in any event every person, every person who believes that he is a good and worthy person, has and should have his own God), and whenever I say out loud or just to myself
“
God help us
”
I am actually thinking to myself:
“
Be just,
”
“
Demonstrate love of your fellow men and women,
”
and:
“
Find hope in your own kindness and in that of your neighbors
”
;
—
and she still remembered all this too and etched it into her mind that evening, not knowing at the time whether she was constructing in herself an identical God who was nothing other than the image and incarnation of her father and his words, and it took the fact that her father never returned (the very next day he was taken away during the raid, first to Lampel
’
s cellar and from there to the Danube) for her to realize what he had wanted to say to her and what he was thinking when he spoke of
“
blood that
’
s eternal, like water, only thicker and harder to see through.
”
—
And now she suddenly understood
—
not without trepidation
—
those vague pronouncements by means of which her father had wanted to explain to her the meaning of those times in which
“
the eternity of blood and of the moment
”
could be sensed. It was this same feeling that was now permeating her to the marrow as the child sucked at her breast, clinging to her, and the moment did indeed have the density of eternity and blood; a great moment when the currents of the past, the future, and the present intersected.

“
Ž
ana,
”
she asked all at once,
“
Do you believe in God?
”
Then she was quiet because it seemed to her that
Ž
ana hadn
’
t heard. Several minutes passed before she responded:

“
How about you?
”
and then after no answer came right away:
“
Do you believe in God?
”

“
I don
’
t know,
”
Marija said.
“
Before I had the baby I didn
’
t think about it.
”

“
But now?
”

“
Now I
’
d like to believe in Him. Tonight of all nights I
’
d like to believe in God
”
; and then her father was speaking through her:
“
I mean, in
my
God.
”
Then she paused and there was a dignified silence into which that God was about to come bursting more or less embodied in the form of a newborn child:
—
“
equal parts hope, kindness, mercy, love . . .
”

“
. . . and hate,
”
Ž
ana said.

Marija hardly gave this any thought, as if simply taking the measure of the sword in the hands of that little God-fetish that she had drawn out of her own blood, and said:

“
Yes. And hate.
”

Then
Ž
ana said, as if she had seen that absurd na
ï
ve deity as it buckled under its massive sword of hope and hatred:

“
What would you say if you found that same god in the mouth (and maybe in the mind) of Dr. Nietzsche, for example? Or
Obersturmbannf
ü
hrer
Hirsch?
”

“
That
’
s impossible!
”
Marija exclaimed.
“
This is my God and my God only! No one else
’
s . . .
”
and then she thought better of it not in the sense of a correction but of a minor addendum to the same thoughts:

“
Perhaps my parents
’
too . . . and my child
’
s.
”

Then
Ž
ana said:
“
Say it again,
”
and once more Marija dug up quantities of that same clay, and almost in the same amounts, that her father had already turned over in his efforts to construct God in his own image, and to which he bowed: equal parts hope, kindness, mercy, love, and . . .
“
Hate!
”
she repeated. And
Ž
ana went even further:

“
And fear!
”

“
So be it,
”
Marija said.
“
Is that your God too? Tell me!
”

“
No!
”
Ž
ana said.
“
No, thank you.
”
Then she added:
“
That God is too much
in my own image
. Do you get it? In my own image.
”

“
The God of hope and love,
”
Marija said.
“
So what would you want Him to be like?
”

“
Like nothing at all!
”
Ž
ana said.
“
I want hope and love
—
without God! Without having to pray or to thank anyone . . . and god cannot be made in my image. Because then it might also resemble Dr. Nietzsche. Or Hirsch. Thanks but no thanks.
”

“
All right,
”
Marija said.
“
My God
’
s name is Jan. My child.
”

“
Tr
è
s raisonnable Dieu
!
”
Ž
ana said.
“
Let us pray!
”

But even before her thoughts could lift her entirely into the future and she could look out over that narrow strip of no-man
’
s-land, for those few hours, even before she noticed the stench of decaying organic matter, she had a presentiment of
—
almost failing to believe it, for in her thoughts she was already far off into the future
—
the presence of Polja
’
s corpse. And it drew her back, even if she wasn
’
t fully aware of it, far back to her very origins, so to speak; at any rate, it brought her back from that future into which her thoughts were already marching, with one foot across the thick line of no-man
’
s-land.

What brought her back was hardly the smell, but rather a sensation of decay, a kind of fluid trembling, maybe simply the realization that there was a dead body in the room. And she remembered that old man, long ago, on the Danube.

“
Pardon me, pardon me,
”
whispered the old man, leaning or actually lying with his full weight on the elderly woman who was staring blankly ahead in the direction of the green peeling fence. And Marija remembered this: she came back from the Danube and found no one, and it was all clear to her. She took several dresses and a photo album; she even took a bundle of greeting cards and love letters and went dazedly into the street, heading to Aunt Lela
’
s house, and she paid no attention to anyone or anything, not to the police or to the corpses in the snow, but she just walked on with the small cardboard suitcase in her hands that were turning blue; and then she went into Aunt Lela
’
s place and placed her suitcase on the table, opened the spring locks and gave Auntie the album, subsequently catching a glimpse of Mr. Rozenberg
fils
, who
—
if her mind wasn
’
t playing tricks on her
—
she had seen in the line-up at the Danube.

When she came in, Aunt Lela said:

“
Solomon, don
’
t
”
; and when he went on as if he hadn
’
t heard her:
“
For God
’
s sake, Solomon!
”
but he continued talking with his eyes staring out vacantly and Marija still had the impression that someone else was listening to everything he was saying and not she, although almost all of what she was hearing she had seen herself a few hours earlier at the Danube: she had stood close to the younger Mr. Rozenberg. At least it seemed that way to her. In formations four across, like when they
’
d stand in line for the showers during a summer heat wave. The trucks kept on arriving. When the line in front of her moved forward a step or two, someone shoved her from behind and she came right up against the green peeling barrier.
“
It was their turn to take off their clothes.
”
Mr. Rozenberg continued.
“
The turn of that old man and woman. Naked and wrinkled examples of
Homo sapiens
with sagging breasts and skin that was swollen and blue from age and cold. In this condition, without the clothing or the jewelry by which
Homo sapiens
differentiates itself from the other, less highly evolved species of animals, the whole cohort was after all elemental and antediluvian, with only the occasional gold tooth in a jaw or (less commonly) a few earrings standing as a kind of secret sign of civilization, but these weren
’
t items of enough consequence to be capable of creating any significant distinction between species or individuals, because with work the human hand can become so refined (it suffices to call to mind Thorvaldsen
’
s
Christus
, Leonardo
’
s
Mona Lisa
, and countless violin virtuosos of whom there are, proverbially, many among the Jews) that it, which is to say
“
the human hand,
”
is in a position to erase this difference wielding nothing more than an ordinary knife, but that isn
’
t what I was talking about, it was those old people (I think they were the Bems, pharmacists, you must
’
ve known them) . . .
”
and Marija remembered the old man whispering,
“
Pardon me, pardon me,
”
like an over-cranked old street organ and she remembered the way a strong bittersweet smell like a corpse
’
s spread around him, and then the voice of Mr. Rozenberg edged back into her mind, himself talking like an old man in whom every thought was now reconciled to the thought of death but who was himself incapable of grasping whence the
organic
resistance in him was coming, that thing which
biologically
could make no peace with death but rather resisted and grasped and emitted foul odors and juices the way that some animals give off poisonous scents when they
’
re in danger,
“
as if in him had awakened some embryonic animal that was taking over both mind and man, and his
“
Pardon me
”
wasn
’
t really an expression of apology and shame but more fundamentally a desperate expression of dissatisfaction aimed at that animal which had been awakened; for when the mind is reconciled to death and has accepted nothingness, then the utterly exposed and abandoned animal begins by way of an intricate and almost mathematical inversion to fight for its survival and for its right to live (by its own means, of course), and it starts to dominate because the mind has capitulated to death, again according to its own logic that is not the logic of the animal: the animal doesn
’
t know about the complicated laws of probability and death doesn
’
t bear consideration
—
the animal just wants to live, and that
’
s it
”
; and right then Marija grasped why it is that around the old man a bittersweet stench of animal and excrement was floating, and then once more she caught the voice of a soldier:

“
This one here reeks of cholera.
”

And she saw the soldier, acting with cynical courtliness, almost like a servant, help the old man out of his greasy trousers, his old-fashioned black vest and his shirt with its stiff, starched collar. All that was visible of the old man were the whites of his eyes, as he whispered
“
Pardon me, pardon me,
”
as if he were saying
“
Lama
,
lama
. . .
”
and she heard that
lama
fade more and more as the old man moved away from the group, off to the left a bit, wobbly on his feet and still leaning on the old woman; then Marija steeled herself to hear the volley but when she didn
’
t hear anything she opened her eyes once more and looked left, over to where the voice had died out, and she saw him stoop down, naked, into the snow and understood why he had left the group; the old man was squatting in the snow, with only his head and blue shoulders visible.

“
What do you think?
”
a youngish soldier asked.
“
Will his mama clean him up when he
’
s emptied himself out? Wipe him off all nice with a lump of snow? That would be fucking hilarious.
”

“
I bet she won
’
t,
”
said a mustachioed one, sticking out his hand. The first soldier shifted his rifle and was about to offer his hand too, but at the last moment he pulled it back:

“
Your hands are all Jewed up,
”
he said.
“
But all right: I
’
ll bet
this
that she
will
,
”
and Marija saw against the backdrop of grubby snow the yellowish metal begin to swing around his hand, hanging from something that she had no way of seeing but knew was a chain, the way that she knew, so to speak, without looking, that the swinging piece of metal was a watch.

And she will always remember this: someone else in her watching all of it (she had slowly sunk into sleepy lethargy and barely even felt the cold anymore): just a few meters in front of her a young woman emerged out of the line-up, almost immediately followed by the dark swirl of a young girl
’
s hair; then she saw the woman bending over the girl and removing her woolen sweater over her curls that bounced and swayed momentarily, and then the white sweater flying in a short arc onto the pile, on top of the old man
’
s black pants and waistcoat and then a light blue dress of poplin, and then the slow descent of stockings and the sliding of petite shoes down from the top of the pile, followed by the woman
’
s trembling as she took the little girl into her arms as if hiding her own nakedness. Lastly the woman lifted up her own reddish-blue foot out of the snow with a slow, hesitating movement, but before she could take a step she turned around as if she were standing on a rotating stage and, still keeping the child pressed tightly against her and sheltering and protecting it with her hands, she said in a voice that sounded dead but did not tremble:
“
Please, when . . . our turn. My little girl . . . catching cold,
”
after which the soldiers exchanged two or three glances and Marija saw a malicious clean-shaven soldier bow down so far he almost touched the snow and her bluish feet with his forehead and heard him hiss:

“
You
’
ll get there in time, I beg you to be patient. In just a bit there
’
ll be kike
tea
, a ton of
tea
. The entire Danube, if you will
”
; then the polyphonic explosion of the suppressed laughter of soldiers and then the sting of those mouths split wide with laughter on the woman
’
s face from which was peeling layer after layer of reddish-blue and pale green color, and then once more the woman
’
s slow turn and step across the snow as if on a rotating set. And just then, at Aunt Lela
’
s house, listening to the whispering and almost uninflected voice of Mr. Rozenberg
fils
, Marija began to understand everything and to see it all, even those things that had happened ten meters out in front of her, hidden on the other side of the green peeling barrier:

Beyond, at a distance of two or three meters from the cabins, a hole had been smashed in the ice and a plank thrown across it (a plank that was really an old diving board); every now and then a man in civilian clothes (the former lifeguard from the beach) shoved the corpses under the ice with a large gaff, whenever the hole would get clogged; yes, Marija even saw what she was now hearing told for the first time by Mr. Rozenberg: she experienced even that
—
perhaps because she knew Kenjeri.

“
Do you know Kenjeri?
”
Mr. Rozenberg asked, not looking at Aunt Lela or at Marija or at anyone living but rather at someplace on the ice-sheeted windowpane and on the broken icy surface of the Danube.
“
Everyone in this district knew him: the community knacker, Kenjeri. I don
’
t actually know his first name. He went by his surname. Well, this old Kenjeri has become head honcho over there. You understand: the man
’
s vocation was a handy one
”
—
and Marija recalled his wolflike jaws and his dirty yellow teeth like a horse
’
s and his sparse moustache and bristly beard and the lit cigarette sticking to his lips while he said to her mother:
“
What
’
re you gonna do? Business is business
”
(that happened two or three years ago): Dingo hadn
’
t come home all morning and at noon, just as they were sitting down to lunch, they heard him whining and her mother said:
“
That
’
s Dingo!
”
and she stood up so she could see what it was and then appearing in their door was that set of wolf
’
s lips, a cigarette butt on the lower one, saying:
“
You should watch him better,
”
and what
’
s more:
“
You have to pay the fine,
”
and right after that were the dirty yellow teeth like a horse
’
s and his saying
“
business is business
”
; thus Marija was able to see all of the things that the younger Mr. Rozenberg had seen after he
’
d already moved beyond the green peeling fence and she could now imagine almost as well as he that face with the bristly beard as Kenjeri pushed a woman
’
s neck into the snow with his heavy boot (and Marija thought that that was the very same woman who had gotten undressed after the old man) and she could see, in the spot where there had once been a face (a face that she could no longer remember), a monstrous stain of concentrated terror, there where before there had been eyes and the lines of a face petrified by cold as when bronze gives off a green patina through its creases; and Marija could remember everything as if she
’
d experienced it herself: how the boy (judging by his wolfish jaws, the son of that same crook) held the nearly dead woman by the legs and the way the woman writhed like a slaughtered hen when the teeth of the saw tore into the flesh on her side and the way Kenjeri went
“
prrrr
”
and then snapped at his son,
“
Steady, you moron!
”
and the way his son clenched his teeth and tightened his grip on the woman
’
s legs and then Kenjeri pulling the saw back a bit and pushing it forward and then drawing the serrated tool back forcefully toward himself when the steel found its way down between two vertebrae in her backbone and how, with streams of blood gushing and flooding out into the snow on both sides, the saw began to squish and slip on intestines and flesh. Then, the man snapping at his son once more,
“
Forget the bitch. I guess her legs won
’
t be running off without her head,
”
and the younger Kenjeri still squeezing the woman
’
s legs and his body twitching and shaking and his father staring at him in amazement, showing his dirty horselike teeth afresh and in protest:
“
What
’
s wrong with you, you idiot? Is it that you aren
’
t used to blood, or do you actually feel sorry for that whore?
”
And how he pushed his boy with the handle of the saw and how the boy abruptly dropped the woman
’
s legs and tumbled over into the snow and rolled over onto his belly and submerged his big curly head in the white and bloody snowy mush; then the Kenjeri talking while the boy shook with sobs:
“
Let
’
s get these here ready and then we
’
ll talk,
”
and then to placate, to instruct,
“
it
’
s easier to saw than to bust up ice,
”
then the kid slowly, indifferently, getting to his feet without raising his head (just excremental snow in his dark hair), then his wiping his nose with the back of his hand and again picking up the legs of their latest victim, gnashing his teeth with the strain, while his father took hold once more of his tool after having taken the preliminary step of pushing the sundered body through the hole and under the ice; Marija even heard the melody that the wind brought from the left bank of the Danube and she felt each revolution of the gramophone disk leaving behind bloody bites on her body from the steel needle: the
“
Blue Danube
”
waltz was still fashionable at that time; and then all of a sudden Aunt Lela was standing in front of Mr. Rozenberg and making him snap out of it by yelling into his face: