“Who told you this?” asks Abahn.
“No one.”
He looks out at the dark park.
“It’s impossible,” he says.
“Dogs, gassed,” says Sabana softly. “Millions of them.”
“Yes,” says David.
They look at the Jew. His eyes are closed.
“They have been in the family for a thousand years,” says Abahn. “They are part of it. Gringo will set a price.”
“How?” asks David in a child’s voice.
“From the moment he kills them, he ought to explain why,” continues Abahn. “He will say: I kill them because they are worth so much.”
“Such a rich sum,” says Sabana.
Silence. The Jew has opened his eyes and is looking at David.
•
“It’s starting up again,” says Sabana.
Sabana can hear things that David can’t.
She listens. “The bullets ricochet off the ice. They are on the other side of the park.” She listens again. David watches her. “They’re gone,” she says.
“Again,” David murmurs.
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand,” David says to the Jew.
Sabana goes to him, she stops just before reaching him. “You ought to do it,” she says in a low voice.
Almost imperceptibly, he recoils, never taking his eyes off her. “What?” he asks.
“Kill the dogs of the Jew.”
David doesn’t move. Fear leaves him.
“You could say to Gringo: I killed the dogs of the Jew as well.”
David is still staring at Sabana. The fear builds. Like a smile. He sees the blue of her eyes fade out.
“Gringo would promote you in rank, you could leave off the work with cement, rejoin the Red Army.”
David lifts his calloused hands, he pushes the image away, he cries out.
“NO,” he bellows, his hands raised, his eyes closed against the vision of a dog, killed, executed.
Then he falls silent, his hands fall and grip the armrests of the chair.
He looks over at the Jews.
•
“He is crying,” says Sabana.
The eyes of the Jew are closed.
“There’s crying,” says Sabana. “Someone is crying. It’s either you or him.”
She turns toward David. David doesn’t understand. He passes his hand over his face, he looks at the wet hand. He doesn’t understand.
Abahn, sitting next to the Jew, seems to have forgotten him.
“Or he’s sleeping,” says Sabana.
She pauses, looks at the Jew.
“No. He’s crying. About you. Or about nothing.” Her tone grows soft. “About nothing.”
David leans toward the Jew. His face has a pained expression. “He’s not trying to protect himself.”
“No.”
Sabana and David watch the Jew. Abahn speaks without looking at him.
“He is afraid,” David murmurs.
“He didn’t try to escape,” says Abahn. “He has no reason to feel fear.”
“He’s exhausted.”
“No. Look at him. He’s still strong, still vibrant.”
David examines the Jew with the closed eyes, discovers the strength there.
“It’s true,” he murmurs.
“The life he’s led ought to have prepared him for what awaits him,” says Abahn.
They are silent.
“But who is he?” David asks again.
“I don’t know,” says Abahn.
“He was bored of the Jewry,” says Sabana, “of life wandering on the road. That’s why he came here.”
She turns to Abahn. She says:
“That’s you as well, the Jew.”
“Yes,” says Abahn. “Me too.”
All these words sink into David: he looks at the Jew, just him. Still staring at him, he says:
“Gringo said, ‘the Jew is dangerous.’”
“Yes,” says Abahn.
“Still?” asks David.
“Yes.”
David keeps looking, looking, and somehow strangely he sees, sees the danger.
“It’s true,” David murmurs.
With difficulty he turns to Abahn and says:
“Gringo is afraid of him.”
“Gringo doesn’t exist to the Jew.”
David remembers.
“It’s true, the Jew never said anything at all about Gringo, nothing bad ever.”
Abahn smiles, is slow to respond.
“The only way Gringo exists for the Jew is that he is going to kill him.”
Fear seizes David once more. It is almost as if he is going to jump up from the chair. Neither Sabana nor Abahn notice his movements.
“Otherwise,” says Abahn, “the life of the Jew is as invisible as the life of David.”
“A mountain of pain,” says Sabana.
“A mountain of cement,” says Abahn.
“Mountains of the cement of pain,” says Sabana.
“Yes,” says Abahn, smiling, “Invisible, drowned in the Jews.”
The Jew lifts his head and looks over at David.
David notices the Jew looking at him. With a sudden start he tries to evade his gaze. He falls back into the chair. The Jew swings his gaze toward the door out to the darkened park. David calms.
•
“He didn’t know where to go,” says Abahn, “so he came here, to Staadt. He could have gone anywhere, but it would have been the same: other Gringos and merchant’s unions and they would have wanted to kill him too. Here, there, it’s all the same.”
Again David tries to rise up out of the chair. Again he fails. Again neither Sabana nor Abahn notice him.
The Jew has once again rested his head on his arms. He seems exhausted. Sabana sits at the table, leaning against him. She strokes his back, his hair, his hands, his body. Then she lets her hand drop, rests there without moving.
David sees only the Jew.
“It’s been a long time since he left home,” Abahn says. “He had a wife once, children. Then one day he left.”
“Then he left the place he had gone to,” adds Sabana.
“Again and again,” says Abahn. “Left from every place.”
An anxiety builds in David’s eyes.
“And once, a long time ago, he’d had a profession. He’s begun, these days, to forget even what it was. He said once to someone in the village: I forget now what I once did before.”
Silence.
“He said that to you, David?” asks Sabana.
With difficulty, the word comes from David:
“Yes.”
“He also said that he studied. For a long time. In many capital cities. He said: It pleased me to study. No he’s forgotten what all he studied. He said to someone in the village: I can’t remember anymore what I once knew.”
“He said that to me,” says David.
The dogs howl.
The dogs howclass="underline" David turns his gaze toward the door to the darkened park.
The howling subsides.
“He said: I began to think about where I learned this word—‘Jew.’”
A shot rings out near the ponds, disrupting the Staadt night. Shots heard again from even farther off. No one hears the shot near the ponds.
“There’s something written on his body,” says Sabana, “on his arms, there’s something written.”
She sits up and takes his arm, folds back the sleeve of his jacket and looks at his forearm.
“It’s written where the number would be.”
“Written where you arrive,” says Abahn, “in the capital of the world.”
Sabana looks at the arm.
“It’s written in blue.”
“What?” asks David.
“I don’t understand it,” she says. “I can’t read it.”
“It’s the word: NO,” says Abahn.
“When did they write it?” asks David.
“At some point during his life,” says Abahn.
“It’s the same word for the Jew and for those who want to kill him,” says Sabana.
“The same,” says Abahn. “The word of the Jew and the word of those against the Jew.”