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

and blamed Jewish traitors for the fact that ten thousand Polish officers had been taken prisoner in battle with the Russians near Smolensk, and this was such a pack of vicious lies that I said to myself, Otto Brig, I said, fifty years ago you had a lot more gumption, you weren’t afraid of anything, there was no corner of the world you couldn’t reach when someone needed help—Armenia, the Ganges after the floods, even the moon with the Indians, and what about that old man Beethoven, who lost his hearing, and Galileo, with all his problems, you flew everywhere with the band, and suddenly, as I thought about the band, bozhe shivante! The blood ran through myveins again, like Jesse Owens at the Olympics, vroom! And quietly I said to myself, We have to do something, because who else but the Children of the Heart can save the world when the world starts going crazy, and who else has so much experience on the job, eh? Because if we don’t start doing something at a time like this, then I say we’re not worth a whole lot more than the paper we’re written on, we’re nothing but a bunch of pathetic literary characters, weaklings that go wherever you take us. No, Otto Brig! (that’s what I said to myself), no no no! We have to do something! We will band together again and fight the most important war of all! And though at the time I didn’t know what kind of war it would be yet, I burst out with: ‘Is the heart willing?’ And I answered, ‘The heart is willing!’ ‘Come what may?’ and I answered, ‘Come what may!’ This had been our rallying cry fifty years ago, and back in those days when I wanted to call the band together for a new mission I would start drawing chalk hearts on all the trees and fences to let everyone know, and now the time had come to draw new hearts, and so, with this in mind, I arrived at the Paviak just when they opened the front gate and kicked out an old Jew who rolled all the way over to me, smiled a calm, nearly toothless smile, and asked me if I had a cigarette for him.” (About Otto’s first encounter with YEDIDYA MUNIN [q.v.].) Fried: “While we’re on the subject of those early days, to tell the truth, Otto went through some pretty awful changes. It was hard to look at him. He seemed to be running a high fever. His face glowed. He was always busy and talking to himself, always running. Always. He left me in charge of the zoo while he spent the day combing the ghetto, in and out with his special permits, searching the streets, the jails, the insane asylums, the Juvenile Criminal Institute …” Otto: “You probably thought I was a little sick in the head, eh, Fried?” Fried: “I sure did. You should have seen yourself then! And once we woke up in the morning and saw”—Paula: “a huge heart drawn in chalk on the oak tree in our yard.” Fried: “And on all the benches in the Lane of Eternal youth, and on the wrinkled body of the baby elephant.” Paula: “Fried was terribly dejected, and so was I, sure. It broke my heart to see our Otto acting so strangely. And the worst part was that he wouldn’t tell us what was bothering him. He just kept saying that he intended to fight, and mama droga, was I scared!” Otto: “You probably thought I meant to fight with guns, eh?” Paula: “What else was there to think? Sure that’s what I thought! How could I know?And afterward the zoo started to fill up with this bunch of loonies, it got pretty scary with things going on like that poor woman, the one who had to wander naked at night near the cages of the carnivores [see under: ZEITRIN, HANNAH], or the little biograph with the stinky briefcase, who was kind of a curie, only he kept getting under my skin and becoming more and more like me [see under: ZEIDMAN, MALKIEL], and even you, begging your pardon, Mr. Marcus [see under: FEELINGS], analyzing our emotions and what we felt all day, not to mention that poor thing, the one who had such a strange smell [see under: MUNIN, YEDIDYA] you couldn’t stand to be anywhere near him!” Fried: “Ach, it was disgusting! I decided to put an end to it, and went up and asked him, as a doctor, of course, what that smell was, and why he walked in that peculiar way, and the old rascal shamelessly dropped his trousers in the middle of the zoo and showed me a kind of cloth pouch with belts and buckles and the devil knows what.” Munin: “I have balls like ostrich eggs, Pan Doctor, all because of my ART [q.v.], about which Pan Otto has probably told you, and it hurts, sir, but then of course it has to hurt! One must always suffer for art. And we must endure great affliction for the ‘Lord’s redemption in the twinkling of an eye,’ it’s always like that with us Jews; for us there are no miraculous shortcuts, our prophets had none either, and just as Hosea the prophet was forced to live his life with, forgive me, a whore, and have three children by her in order to fulfill his divine destiny, his ‘art,’ so I, your honor, tirelessly rub my little ram’s horn, rub it but never blow it! God help me if I blew it! For then all would be lost! All my travail will have been in vain! And if you say to me, Ashes in your mouth, worm, how dare you compare yourself to the prophet Hosea, I will tell you this, that the Baal Shem Tov bequeathed unto us his teaching that the Lord, blessed be He, wants us to worship Him in