See Under by David Grossman (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

into thin air when so many were vanishing around us everyday, and they not even pianists. Eppes, we knew it was only an excuse on his part, because to do the trick Harotian needed a stage with a trapdoor, and in the ghetto there was only one such door—in the gallows box at the Paviak, which was our prison.”

Neigel, with half-shut eyes, says quietly, “I’m beginning to catch on now. Ah! You’re trying to arouse my pity, Scheissemeister, is that it? A kind of revenge by way of a story? What sort of childish game are you playing with me here? For your own sake, Wasserman, for your own sake, I hope I’m wrong!”

Wasserman wears a look of astonishment, but says nothing in reply. (“He hit me below the belt, the brute, and did not miss his mark! He must have possessed the spirit of prophecy to understand how ‘twould sour a children’s writer’s heart to be called ‘childish’!”)

“You keep that up,” says Neigel, “and you’ll lose your last reader.” Wasserman swallows hard and continues: “And with us in the mine were also the most beautiful woman in the world, the enchanting, lovesick Hannah Zeitrin, the admirable Aaron Marcus, a man of daring experiment and despair, and the incomparable Yedidya Munin, one in a generation, slave and master of his body, aficionado of science, a man of vision, night—”

“Just a minute, please!” Neigel raises a finger like a weary pupil who doesn’t understand what Teacher said. “What’s this new part? And what do you mean, slave and master of his body and all that, what’s going on here?”

“You are not acquainted with him, honorable Herr Neigel. Yes, he is one of the new ones, the outsiders, hee hee, but you may be sure that Mr. Munin well deserves to be counted among our friends. Yes, all his life he has made himself the vessel of his lofty aspirations, with one thought only running through the clefts of his brain. He is the bold and even desperate warrior a man should be.”

“But I don’t understand what … that is—what can he do? All the others are good at something, aren’t they?”

“Mr. Munin? Ai, a man of longings, no one ever longed as he … a man of flourishing dreams, winged as angels …” (“Ai, Shleimeleh, here I took a deep breath and imagined Zalmanson looking down at me from his heaven, the heaven of laughter and madness and falsehood and wonder, and all at once it happened: I was possessed of a new spirit, and my spirit was sweetened with all the juices of the imaginative current that began to flow in me, and for the moment I held my groundlike a tree in a storm, and I was almost uprooted, only now the turbulence of my heart was quelled and I became imbued with a new and secret joy, and I knew what I must do.”) And Anshel Wasserman continues to explain that the great Mr. Munin is the passionate hero of unspilled seed, the arch-copulator who has not touched a woman in many years, the Casanova of vain imaginings.

Neigel laughs a wild, nearly despairing laugh, and slaps his thighs. I look at Wasserman and pity him. The inner war he’s waging seems pretty transparent to me: on the one hand he has his goal, his “mission,” and every word of the story is committed to it, and on the other hand … yes, on the other hand, little Wasserman simply wants to tell a good story, the way he used to, and again see those misty eyes and the mouth open in a smile of delight; but duty calls …

“Very nice, very nice,” groans Neigel at last, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “I haven’t laughed like that in a long time,” he says. “You surprise me, Scheherazade! Now we have some Jewish pornography in our story! I guess all the things they say about you in our Greuelpro-paganda are true!”

“Herr Neigel, sir!”—Wasserman raises a hand in protest—“my story is poor indeed at present. I, too, know that. Perhaps I know it even better than you, because I glimpse the flaws you yourself are unable to see, begging your pardon. Only, you understand, in my wretched state here I am forced to present you with the first, rudimentary draft of the story. And believe me, it breaks my heart to bring such an inferior version into the world, but since I have undertaken this task, a man such as I will not run away; only, I ask you to be merciful and patient, and entrust my story to the cushions of your compassion and good-heartedness, as you would a tender babe. I promise you that you will be amply recompensed in time to come.”

“Fine,” says Neigel, careful not to start laughing again. “We will finish here today. I have a little more work to do, if you don’t mind. You may return to your room now and write. We’ll continue tomorrow. I wish you better writing in future. For your sake, Wasserman, I hope my wife was wrong.”

“Pardon,” whispers Wasserman. “Perhaps you have forgotten, sir, my part … of the bargain, that is.”

“Not today, you don’t deserve it today,” says Neigel aggressively. “As you very well know.”

(“Meaning that before me lay another evening and another day, ai,so many hours of life, and the exhausting work in the garden, of digging furrows, may the earth cover them already! And another three transports will arrive in three trains, and people will run naked through the Schlauch, and there will be more smoke, blacker than black, how will I endure it, Shleimeleh? How can a person see this and live?”)

“Good night, Herr Neigel.”

[ 4 ]

“IN THE MONTH OF APRIL of the year 1943, an old man stood at the entrance to a lepek mine in Borislav forest, and with grim determination traced a line in the dirt with his toe. This singular act was the old man’s way of challenging