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

to them, too, right? Alfred? Was that his name? No? Wait, no, let me think. Fried was his name! Yes. I remember everything now. Everything. Albert Fried, and he loved Paula, but he never told her. See, Scheherazade? I remember everything! Everything!” And his face gleams with perspiration.

Wasserman—I think I’m beginning to know him now—will have to do something to dampen all the good cheer coming his way. “But, your honor, there were stories about … nu … how shall I put it … the lowliest people …” And Neigel cuts him short with a smile: “Yes, I know. Stories about your people, and the Armenians and the Negroes, only don’t forget, times were different then. That was—let’s see—about thirty years ago? More? Thirty-five? Forty years? Yes. Forty years ago. At the turn of the century. How time flies! I was six years old then. Just learning to read. And for years after, five years, maybe more, I read your stories every week … of all things …”

Neigel continues to bask in the remembrance of those days. His big head seems to rise and fall with the effort of drawing memories from a deep well. Anyone looking at him now, at this grown man, happy as a child, would discern at once that things truly had been “different then.” Only Wasserman, for some reason, quickly strips himself of pride and pleasure (“Nu, Shleimeleh, would you believe it? A regular ‘AndJoseph revealed himself to his brothers’! Fch!”), to await the ominous interpretation of this incredible dream.

“And what else can you do, besides pulling gold teeth and running the shittery?” asks Neigel as the first excitement fades. “Nu, well, I can tell stories, your honor. Adventuresome tales, Commander,” answers Wasserman in all humility. “We’ll take care of that now,” says Neigel casually, and Wasserman: “Pardon?!” And the German: “Shut up a minute. I have to think. Yes, yes. Definitely possible. There’s only one problem: your number has come up with the group we’re finishing. But that can be remedied. A new prisoner will have to do without a number. It won’t be much of a problem.” And he jots something down in his little black notebook. “Now let’s see. What was your profession before the war? Just writing?” “Just writing? Don’t you know?” “Know what?” “Nu, well, I have written nothing for the past twenty years … The Children of the Heart are no more … To earn a living I worked as a proofreader for a small magazine in Warsaw … and every so often I edited articles and essays by other writers, or prepared other people’s stories for the printer, and other such things …” “Cooking!” cheers Neigel suddenly. “You could help my cook. That way you can stay here without a lot of questions.” “Begging your pardon. About cooking I know less than nothing. A cup of tea, perhaps, and a boiled egg.” (“In all my years of bachelorhood I took my meals at Feintoch’s home restaurant, Shleimeleh. Clear noodle soup for a first course, followed by herring with a little shmaltz, and for dessert, nu, what else, heartburn.”) But Neigel doesn’t give up so easily, and rattles off a list of domestic positions (“Ironing? Mending? Plastering?”), and before long I realize that he is ridiculing Grandfather, and this makes me furious, all the more so when I see Wasserman giving in without a fight. He hides his head between the wings of his protruding shoulder blades and silently tells me that “I always think about my Sarah. My thoughts forever flock to her. And how we used to laugh that I, nebuch, with these two poor arms of mine, mere straws, not arms at all, a travesty of arms, Mephibosheth’s legs were stronger than my arms! It was a miracle that I found her, my Sarah, who was also a real baleboosteh, and managed the housework in her father’s home, and even knew a thing or two about electricality, and could turn a collar like a master tailor, or repair a shoe like a cobbler, ah, what could she not do!” And Neigel, beginning to despair, vents his anger with a visciousinsult (“Not a great record for a man of sixty, Wasserman, who can’t even die!”), and then he suddenly remembers another possibility and exclaims, “Gardening!” at which point I interrupt the conversation and answer in Wasserman’s stead, much to his amazement, “Gardening! Yes!”

Neigel smiles with satisfaction. He is already spinning a green dream (“Ah, you’ll lay out a glorious garden for me around the barracks!”); already settling invisible scores (“Far prettier than Staukch’s, eh?”); already improving and expanding on the original plan (“And you can till a vegetable patch so I won’t have to eat the turnips those Polish farm women water with donkey piss”); and I quickly jot down a reminder to myself to find out about gardening for poor Wasserman (Ruthy is good at such things), but Wasserman, my maddeningly unpredictable Anshel Wasserman, says, “The truth is, your honor, that my spirit is not so inclined, not at all so inclined.”

Neigel is unperturbed by this refusal. He wants Wasserman, and nothing will prevent him from carrying out his plan. Slyly he brings the conversation back to the safer topic of the Children of the Heart, with a recollection of an episode about a Negro slave rebellion in America, concluding artfully, “Admit it, Scheherazade, you never dreamed you’d find such old admirers among us, did you?”

Here my Wasserman acknowledges Neigel’s compliment with a light nod, unique in its synchronistic disclosure of multiple expressions: 1. amiability, 2. sham meekness, 3. feigned self-mockery; and likewise, in combination with a very thin smile—a. an almost dog-like gratitude, b. abject deference, but only superficially, and c. a wretched craving, suppressed with iron jaws, that forges the spasmodic smile.

(Wasserman: “Feh! How certain I had been that I would never again resort to this little pose, and in my old age yet …”) Neigel continues to drip flattery into Wasserman’s ears; he