Mr. Trąba suddenly began to search his pockets, and after a moment he extracted a carefully folded newspaper clipping from his shirt pocket; straightened it out; nailed it to the table, which was covered with sky-blue oilcloth, with his index finger; bent over it; and began to read distinctly: “The world renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin, during his tournée of Israel, paid a visit to Prime Minister Ben Gurion. In the course of an informal conversation, both the artist and the politician stood on their heads, since both practice yoga. .” Mr. Trąba panted hard, and apoplectic spots covered his face and neck.
“Chief, Commandant, gentlemen. A Christian cannot stand indifferent in the face of such things. Yoga, yes, OK, it can lead to salvation, but among the Mosaic prophets there isn’t a peep about yoga.” Mr. Trąba fell silent for a moment, and then he suddenly bellowed with a terrifying voice: “Convert them! Evangelize them! Show them the road to salvation!”
“Proselytism,” Commandant Jeremiah growled scornfully. “Common proselytism.”
“What proselytism, Commandant, what proselytism!” Mr. Trąba said with unexpected calm. “I swear on my nine prewar semesters of theology that there isn’t any question of proselytism here. It’s a question of the Biblical plan of salvation. If David Ben Gurion, who came fifteen years ago to stand at the head of the state of Israel, now stands on his head, this means one thing: a flaw has arisen in the Biblical plan of salvation, and we Christians, and especially we Lutherans, must hurry to the rescue.”
Mother placed the steaming tureen on the table and removed plates, knives, and forks from the cupboard. Sitting next to me, Commandant Jeremiah — in whose breathing, agitated gestures, and nervous huffing and puffing I sensed the firm desire for immediate departure — suddenly capitulated and cheered up. Father raised an empty vodka glass. It looked as if he wished to perform a pantomime entitled “The Flight of the Vodka Glass to the Light,” but the Commandant interrupted the performance with an imperial gesture, put the date book, which was still lying on the table before him, away in his pocket, and pointed to the sacred place on the oilcloth where the vessel, already taken down from the heights, but still shot through with spherical radiance, ought to stand. And it came to pass: Father placed the vodka glass before Commandant Jeremiah and filled it.
“If a miracle should happen, if the heavens should open up,” Mr. Trąba declaimed, “and if the Lord of Hosts should look upon my downfall and ask: ‘What can I do for you, Józef Trąba?’ If that should happen, with my certain death as my witness, I would say: ‘Lord, raise up my friend Jakub Lełlich from the dead, fashion him back again from the clay into which he has been transformed, breath life into him, and cause that we could at least once more have a chat about the superiority of the Jewish-Lutheran alliance to all other alliances.’”
Mr. Trąba chattered away indefatigably, but neither Mother, nor Father, nor Commandant Jeremiah paid much attention to him. They must have heard this story too, like the majority of his stories, many times over, but the great ideas of the Biblical plan of salvation were reaching my consciousness for the first time.
“It is irrefutable, irrefutable, that the rise of Israel was the fulfillment of the prophecy of Zachariah and other prophecies. The Lord of Hosts foretold two-and-a-half-thousand years ago that he would deliver his people and lead them to Jerusalem. And this came to pass, and it must be so until the very. . the very conversion itself.”
Mr. Trąba broke off for a moment, swallowed a significant piece of potato pancake, which had been amply sopped in sour cream, and continued, with a zeal that proved he had reached the very heart of his argument:
“This will come to pass, but it’s not the pagan path of yogists that leads here, rather the path of Jewish orthodoxy. Jews came to Jerusalem not in order to stand on their heads there, but in order to be confirmed in their Judaism. After all, only Jews confirmed in their Judaism can attain salvation. As the Scripture says: ‘For an Israelite to become a Christian, he must first eat his fill of his Israelitism.’”
“There isn’t anything like that in Scripture,” Commandant Jeremiah wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nowhere is it so written.”
“Not directly,” Mr. Trąba became impatient, “not directly, but it’s in the subtext, or rather in innumerable subtexts. Just recall carefully, Commandant, Paul’s Epistles to the Romans, Ephesians, not to mention Hebrews. And the prophet Isaiah, chapter eleven, verse twelve, and your namesake, the prophet Jeremiah, touches upon this topic in the sixteenth, and in the twenty-forth, and in the thirty-first chapter. Ezechiel!” shouted Mr. Trąba. “Ezechiel! Above all the prophet Ezechiel and the famous prophecy about the field of bones slowly taking on life!”
“I’ll investigate,” said Commandant Jeremiah in an unexpectedly police tone. “I’ll investigate.”
“I assure you that you can believe a person established in his faith and trained in Scripture. Yes,” Mr. Trąba suddenly fell into a dreamy mood, “that would be a worthy act, that would be an act worthy of my dying ambitions — the deed of conversion. But unfortunately there is little time, and this is the work of decades at least, and not within the abilities of one lonely Lutheran who’s caught in the clutches of addiction. Yes,” he repeated in a voice marked by strategic deliberation, “let them come to full bloom, even to the first signs of wilting. Let them people the streets and markets. Let us hear the murmur of conversations and the rustle of gabardines. Let synagogues be erected. Let the Sabbaths, Pesach, the Feast of Tabernacles, and Purim be celebrated.”
“Á propos,” Commandant Jeremiah interrupted Mr. Trąba’s visionary trance, “á propos Purim, did you, comrade, recently visit Mrs. Rychter and offer her and her numerous relatives help in preparation for the celebration of Purim?”
“I won’t deny it. I tried in my small way to do what I could in order to aid in the realization of God’s plans, but they didn’t avail themselves of my offer.”
“There’s nothing strange there. An old German family has absolutely no reason to celebrate Purim. And, by the way, I don’t wish to trivialize your motives,” said the Commandant, “I don’t wish to trivialize, but I must note that, in the course of celebrating Purim, excessive consumption of alcohol is practically a religious obligation.”
“You don’t wish to trivialize, but you do trivialize!” shouted Mr. Trąba. “You do trivialize!”
“It’s you, Comrade Trąba, who trivializes. You trivialize both the Scripture and God’s designs.”
“But what’s at stake here, what’s at stake if not salvation? After all, as the eventual assassin of First Secretary Władysław Gomułka, I have no choice but to concern myself with the question of salvation. Of course, I would prefer not to murder him, and, instead of troubling myself with the question of my own salvation, help someone else to salvation. For example, the Jewish people. They who have been dispersed will be gathered in. They will regain their identity. They will be strengthened in their identity, and they will develop diversely in their Judaism. They will be converted. They will convert to Catholicism. And then, without fail, having become disgusted by Rome, they will convert to our Lutheran faith. What’s at stake? What more is at stake here? And I would undertake this deed as my dying act. I would truly do this for humanity. Truly. But, I repeat, it’s a question of time. And I don’t have time. I need something quick, something quick like the flash of a knife, like the flight of an arrow.”