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

to retreat and harden like lead. “Do you hear what you’re saying? I offer you life, more than that—a good life! Here!” To which Wasserman, in a tone of fearful, stubborn apology: “Many thanks, only I cannot. A whim of mine, begging your pardon, not worth the mention, your honor. Begging your pardon.”

(“Oi, you should have seen the look he gave me, this Esau, like daggers! He has eyes, keinahora! They leave you timorous and ashamed because the seven deadly sins in your heart have been exposed! A look that says, Well, I know who and what people are! And because even you are a human being, you are a criminal with no alternative but to commit crimes, et! I tell you, Shleimeleh, the man knows one thing about mankind, but this bit of knowledge outweighs every science, and with it he takes the measure of the world!”)

For just then—and it’s high time, too—Neigel will say quietly (his eyes on Wasserman, like a snake transfixing the mouse it is about to swallow): “Is the heart willing?”

And Anshel Wasserman answers, unthinking: “The heart is willing!”

And then silence.

(“It was as though my entire being had shriveled up and disappeared from sight like paper catching fire, and I felt a sharp stinging, and drooped as if beheaded, heaven forbid. Ai, Shleimeleh, if I live and die seven times, if I tell this story to the unhearing world a thousand times, I will never forget the moment Neigel uttered the secret password of the Children of the Heart.”)

And Neigel in the same barely audible whisper: “Come what may?” And the Jew, with a deep, weak sigh: “Come what may.”

And why is this so unusual? thinks Wasserman, who is shivering all over, and trying to persuade himself that he is unstirred. “Every meeting between two people is a wonder and a mystery, for even a man and his beloved, even if they are man and wife and have lived in partnershipfor many years, nu, yes, still, how rarely do they meet, while he and I here—remarkable!” But there is not a drop of blood in his body, and Neigel, too, is very pale. They both look hollow. As if everything inside them has been sucked out and spilled into the veins of a new, transparent embryo made entirely of the supplications and fervor and anxiety of two who briefly glimpsed each other over the trenches.

Neigel’s face is sharp. There is a kind of defeat and startling frailty in the great wilderness. He can barely find his voice. He sputters a few times before he can bring himself to tell Wasserman heavily, hoarsely, that back home in Fissan, his village at the foot of the Zugspitze in Bavaria, he used to read the stories of Wasserman-Scheherazade; that he remembers most of the adventures in the series; that when he was eight years old he named his beloved dog Otto after the leader of the Children of the Heart; that he and his brother Heinz—“Were raised you might say on those stories of yours! They were our primers, together with the New Testament, that is!”

Okay, this sounds a bit farfetched, so Neigel will now add, “Of course, we were given other books, too,” quickly appending, “Karl May’s books, for instance, and others I can’t remember offhand. My father wanted to make sure we read. He would have preferred for us to read the New Testament, of course, ah, he had great plans for us, but the pastor persuaded him to let us read your stories too. They appeared in a magazine called My Native Land! I can remember exactly how it looked, I even remember how it smelled, I swear. It arrived at the church once a week, and Pastor Knaupf would lend it out to me and Heinz on Sunday. I believe he used to read the magazines too, because once I heard him tell Father that your stories were reminiscent of the Old Testament.” His face is redder than ever, with embarrassment perhaps for having let his feelings go to such an extent, but these feelings doubtless issue from inner depths where an SS officer’s rules of conduct diminish in influence, and Neigel exclaims, “Listen, Scheherazade, I can see it all! It seems like only yesterday! The town, Pastor Knaupf, who had a telescope and used to gaze at the stars, not to mention some quite different things, they say, and—really! Once my father whittled the Zugspitze in wood! The tavernkeeper in Fissan bought it from him, and it’s there in the tavern to this very day; strange, isn’t it, my father dead and gone but that piece of wood still there … yes, and most of all I remember your stories, I really do remember them, and just toprove it—” (Yes yes! Wasserman and I shout in unison; do it quickly, we beg him silently, prove it now, ply us with names, details, facts. Facts! I rasp, give me facts, Neigel! It’s a rickety building we’ve erected here, a frail fetus of fiction, a weak blue baby that has to be rubbed with devotion, nu, lie to me, Neigel, lie like an expert with charm and grace, because I’m willing to believe you, I’m willing to forget myself and be half deceived, I want to believe that such a thing is possible, so on with it, Herr Neigel, schnell!)

And Neigel conjures the ghost of “that boy, their leader, Otto was his name. I named my beloved dog after him. And the blonde, Otto’s girlfriend, the one with the braid, what was her name—no, don’t tell me—Paula, right?” And Wasserman says, gently, drowsily, “Excellent, Commander, and almost perfectly correct! Only Paula was not Otto’s girlfriend, she was—” And Neigel smacks his forehead: “Oh, of course! How silly! Paula was Otto’s sister! Now it’s coming back to me: the other one was in love with Paula, the one who could make friends with animals and knew how to cure them. Wait a minute—and he could talk