Who Is Martha? (14 page)

How long ago that was!, Levadski thinks, the bathwater slowly getting cold and the bubbles having disappeared. Nothing is hiding my nakedness. In fact, both of his legs are blowing about like two white flags of surrender at the bottom of the tub. How long ago that was. My beautiful record player, my library yet to be collected. And the neighbor, if she really had been born during the Crimean War, would have been no less than one hundred years old the year that I moved in. It was spring. Or late fall. No, it was spring! Levadski chases away with his arm some remaining wisps of foam. It was March, a time of year filled with hope, when so many women were forced to shed tears, the old ones too. She once came up the stairs with a tear-stained face. With a tear-stained face, and looking disheveled. “Our great leader has died!” she sobbed in the stairwell. If I had not opened my door at the time and seen the old woman’s face twisted into a beaming smile, I would have taken her words as a lament from the heart. “Women are crying on the streets and tearing their hair out: what is to become of us, what is to become of us! Thrown to the dogs!”

If I had known it was
he
, thinks Levadski, letting more hot water into the bathtub, the news would have pleased me. That it was
he
who bundled us two and the whole of Chechnya into cattle cars, Levadski raises his scrawny forefinger, that it was for
him
that I bent my back like a mule at the edge of the world – Levadski wriggles into a more comfortable position in the bath – in completely hostile terrain, pure derision! If I had known at the time it was he, I would have embraced the witch in the door-frame and shed tears of joy with her. If she really was a hundred years old, then she was a few years older than I am now.

“Would you like your dentures?” Habib whispers through the slit in the door. In the background the second movement of the Ninth is budding, bees with bodies of metal plate, loaded with pollen of fine iron dust, smashed to pieces on the buds that turn into the flowers of a thorny violin shrub.

“Thank you, I bathe without my dentures.”

Habib leaves. Levadski falls asleep. He falls asleep and wakes up as an organ grinder. It is winter. Large snow-flakes are hovering around the street lamps and bare branches, a snowflake chases a matron’s behind. There is a hum in the air. His hat in front of him on the ground, Levadski starts to grind his organ. A few snowflakes hover around the emptiness in his hat. Levadski carries on grinding – the day has just begun. Soon some change is thrown into his hat. He carries on grinding, gives a nod of thanks for the coins thrown to him by strangers. The lady with the enormous behind is also a welcome sight, her beauty spot compensated for by her head, so like a bird’s. A parakeet. How charming, Levadski is pleased, and how practical: arms for grasping, a beak for pecking. A bee-eating couple walks past him, colorful like all coraciiformes. If they were not so lovable I would be compelled to compare them to gypsies, thinks Levadski. The woman promptly turns around and, on the attack, spits a curse at him: Eat and be eaten! Shove off, Levadski says to the wicked woman in his mind. Darling, what’s keeping you? her husband, who is standing a little to one side, asks in a guttural display of courtship. Brup-brup-brup, I am coming! the female calls to him. Brhxssrrhhhr! she hurls in the direction of Levadski. No understand, he retorts unmoved. You racist dog! the bee-eater hisses and turns back to her husband. Levadski carries on grinding his organ, he cranks and cranks, and then he sees that his organ is a cat he’s pulling by the tail. He carries on cranking, for he wants to earn money, after all. He tries to play
Adieu, mein kleiner Gardeoffizier
on the cat, and immediately the cat turns into his mother’s meatgrinder. But Levadski won’t be misled. He cranks and cranks. He cranks until the meatgrinder turns into a coffin, beneath the glass lid of which he recognizes his mother’s features. And still, he carries on cranking. He plays his song until he collapses.

When Habib helps him out of the cold water, Levadski is ashamed of the joy he feels at the thought of having caught a cold or even pneumonia. It would be simple if he could outsmart the cancer like that. Without any ado, without a battle. Like a lethargic woman, like an Ophelia, Levadski feels like a corpse floating in the water, when Habib, turning a blind eye, holds an outstretched bath towel before him.

“You know, Habib, there is everything in nature, murder, premeditated and otherwise, hunger and plenty, yet more murder of all stripes. The only thing that doesn’t exist is prejudice. I have just been thinking,” Levadski slips into the bathrobe, “that human thought has produced nothing more unnatural than prejudice.” Habib smiles out of the corner of his mouth. “I mean, of what good is it to the human species? Does it get us anywhere? No.” Habib nods. “Is there any sense in which it is a precautionary measure for survival? No, for we know the truth in our hearts.” Habib nods twice. “Prejudices don’t even have an evolutionary selective meaning. So where do they stem from?” Habib shrugs his shoulders. Levadski raps a finger on his skull. “From a sick brain, my friend. What do you think of gypsies?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you, Habib!”

“In a course I attended for hotel personnel on etiquette, how kind of you to mention it, it was recently explained to us that you can’t call gypsies ‘gypsies’ anymore. They are ‘travelers.’”

“How silly …” The bathrobe is too big or Levadski too scrawny. “How heavy the bathrobe is,” he says to Habib. Habib guides Levadski to one of the armchairs.

“Travelers or Sinti and Roma,” the butler adds with a concerned expression.

“Not everything at once, at least,” Levadski wheezes and takes a seat. “Who came up with the idea?”

“The Minister of Culture?” Habib suggests, liberating himself from Levadski’s damp claws. Levadski shakes his head.

“The purists, more likely. It’s laughable. When gypsy is actually a beautiful word.” Habib agrees with Levadski. You could hear guitar chords and the crackling of a fire at the word “gypsy.”

“The gypsies,” Levadski turns his gaze away from the mountain melting in the sun, behind which he presumes Habib is standing. “Gypsies are like coraciiformes: powerful torso, short neck, large head, beaks long and pressed flat. I mean the bird.” The mountain bows its peak. “I bet,” Levadski smiles, glancing over at the bedside table where his dentures have sunk to the bottom of the water glass, “I bet the gypsies, in the course of their cultural history, held in high esteem and imitated the order of coraciiformes, particularly the kingfisher. After all, the coraciiformes and the gypsies are the most colorful birds there are. Seven families: kingfishers, motmots, rollers, bee-eaters, hornbills, hoopoe and todies!” There are three fingers remaining on Levadski’s right hand when he counts them up. “Oh!” Levadski exclaims, “I have just thought of a comparison – the seven famous gypsy clans. Hhm. Or was it the twelve tribes of Israel?”

“I don’t know, I am from Palestine,” Habib admits.

“I don’t know my way around history either,” Levadski confesses. “One thing is certain, prejudices get in everyone’s way.” Habib gives a lively nod in agreement with Levadski. Geologically, birds have been around for longer than we have, they are more deserving of paradise than we are! Habib makes a helpless gesture with his hand. “No gray hawk says to a fire-gold three-toed kingfisher: you are too colorful for me. No!”

“No,” Habib repeats.

“He just gobbles him up in silence, for it is the hawk’s nature. His thought and action are in tune with the laws of the cosmos, my dear Habib.”

“He gobbles him up?”

“Of course, and doesn’t even say thank you. To whom and for what? Animals don’t waste unnecessary words, that’s for sure. I, for example …,” Levadski asks Habib to take a seat on the sofa, “I myself am not a bird. I would like to be one, but then I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the advantages of my bird existence. I would know how to use it, but not how to contemplate it.” Levadski leans over towards the butler sitting stiffly. “I have to admit to you, Habib, deep inside me, when I saw you, I felt a kind of uneasiness, a prejudice against your dark skin.” With a light gesture Levadski scatters ash on his head. Habib blinks in hopeful expectation that he will carry on. “You have to understand me, in the region where I’m from, you hardly see people with your skin tone. I was also not used to …”

“You should see one of the waiters in our restaurant, he’s from Ghana.
That
’s what I call black. In comparison, I’m pale as a mealworm.” Levadski laughs. “We have learned,” Habib scratches his chest through his shirt, “that Negros are now called people of color.”

“Negro is a beautiful word!” Levadski says outraged.

“You can’t say it anymore.”

“Nonsense, that would mean the negrofinch would have to be renamed colored finch, those magnificent birds. What happens to the nigrita bicolor and the gray-headed negrofinch?”

“The purists, or whatever they are called,” sighs Habib.

“Yes. The purists, those scoundrels, as if there weren’t anything better to do. Ask your colleague in the restaurant, or even better, I will ask him myself, what he thinks of the phrase ‘people of color.’”

“Better not!” Habib blinks his eyes, “it sounds so offensive.”

“Exactly, it sounds offensive.”

“I mean the question, it might upset him …” Habib clenches his lips, leaving only a small line visible.

“Oh!” says Levadski putting a hand to his brow, “that is true. We don’t need to ask, do we Habib, since as human beings we already know the answer.” Habib nods, relieved. Levadski continues: “Your colleague from the restaurant, did he have color poured on him? No. Is he green, red, yellow or blue? No. He is plain and simply black.”

“Yes,” Habib nods, “he is black.”

“That’s why,” Levadski folds his hands as if in conclusion, “the word negro, black person if you like, is more apt. I would like to know since when has Latin been abolished? Has it been abolished?”

“Not as far as I know!” Habib shakes his head.

“Perhaps everything is a question of familiarization. Just as I have grown accustomed to your exotic face, I will one day no longer be offended by the word ‘colored.’ That’s fine. It’s just the bogus shame and trepidation of the purist crowd that galls me. Do you understand me, Habib?” Habib understands Levadski. He is impatiently sliding around on the sofa. “Perhaps the battle against prejudices is begun on the level of vocabulary and only afterwards on all other fronts?” Levadski looks through Habib and closes one eye. “You probably also have prejudices against us in your homeland, don’t you, Habib?” That we are white, gluttons, and above all, that we have good doctors and achieve a ripe old age?” Habib smiles.

“White and gluttonous is just an image, like black and sand-covered. And old age – my grandmother also lived to a ripe old age,” Habib grins more broadly, “but only because she didn’t have any decent doctors.”

2

Zimmer / Room 202–235

S
TRANGE BOY, NOW HE IS SITTING IN MY SUITE AND IRON
ing my shirts, polishing my spare pair of shoes … Levadski presses the familiar elevator button which instantly turns into a coral colored square devil’s eye. “Greetings from hell” is what Levadski christens the button. His thoughts drift to the butler again. Which newspaper would I like to read, he asked. He would iron it for me, too! The elevator door opens, a couple, locking hands, staggers past Levadski, exuding a faint smell of fish.

Levadski gets into the elevator, his stomach rumbling. Today he would manage to make it to the buffet breakfast in time. He pulls his magnifying glass from his pocket and looks at his watch. His watch says a quarter to one. “Oh!” says Levadski, startled. Beside him hovers the hair-less skull of a gentleman who doesn’t appear to be much younger, but is at least eight inches taller than Levadski.

“Good morning,” says the stranger. Levadski returns the greeting by smiling weakly and pointing at his watch. “I didn’t want to give you a fright,” the elegant gentleman says, passing his stick back and forth between his hands.

“Where are you going?”

“To breakfast.”

“Then let’s get moving. Just one floor.”

“I should really tackle it on foot,” says Levadski.

“Witzturn,” the stranger introduces himself. Levadski shakes his hand and gives his name. “Go ahead, Mr. Levadski,” Mr. Witzturn says when the elevator door opens, “youth first!”

“After you, dear sir.” With the silver handle of his stick, Levadski signals at a small party of hotel guests who are waiting in front of the elevator door. But Mr. Witzturn wouldn’t dream of conceding.

“I am standing my ground,” he says to those waiting. The door slowly closes.

“Excuse me,” Mr. Witzturn says, turning to Levadski, who is in a huff, “I feel that I am in the right, as I am the older of the two of us.”

“Your feelings deceive you,” Levadski mumbles.

“My feelings can’t deceive me,” Mr. Witzturn growls, wetting his finger and smoothing down his right eyebrow in the mirror.

A pretty boy, thinks Levadski, as smooth as an egg. How old can he be? Eighty, eighty-five at the most!

“That I don’t have any wrinkles in my face can be explained by cortisone,” Mr. Witzturn explained.

While Levadski tries to remember in what connection he has heard the word cortisone before, the elevator door opens again. “Third floor,” Mr. Witzturn says indifferently. “What I actually wanted to do was have breakfast.”

“Then let’s go!” Levadski tries to hit G with the handle of his stick. After missing several times he finally succeeds.

“Bravo!” Mr. Witzturn says in praise and unsarcastically, and suggests stepping out of the elevator at the same time.

Behind the opening door a tastefully dressed lady with a poodle in her arms stands waiting, its white locks accentuating the pallor of her complexion. If it were black, she would be really elegant, twitches in Levadski’s head.

“I will count, one …” Mr. Witzturn counts, “and then we will step out into the open at the same time, two, three!”