Sabana replaces the arm of the Jew and sits back, closing her eyes again, resting.
Abahn and Sabana both seem to be in the same exhausted state.
“He had these stories,” says Abahn, “a hundred of them but all the same, those of the Jews. He has barely told any of them to the people of Staadt. He told them instead about the lives of others.”
David nods.
“Before coming here the Jew was released from all parties, Gringo’s and others, and all his stories were finished, he was left with only his own. The Jew couldn’t stand, one more time, to be alone with his own story. So he started again. He began to become a man of Staadt.”
Abahn pauses. He speaks with a great tiredness sweeping through him, slower. He looks down at the ground. He no longer seems to be speaking to David alone.
“With forgetfulness descending everywhere, this new thing became possible — to become a man of Staadt. So he did it. Began once more to become a man of another new place.”
Abahn pauses.
“He wanted to live,” says Sabana.
“Yes,” says Abahn. “He wanted to live without working in the banlieues of Staadt. To exist without working at all, without any occupation but that of living, in the banlieues of Staadt. And he decided to do it like this from now on.”
Silence.
“Just like that? Why?” asks David.
“It was his unchangeable desire. His purest desire.”
Silence.
“That’s terrible,” murmurs David. “To do nothing.”
“No,” says Abahn, looking at David. “He spoke.”
David struggles, searches in the emptiness.
“He said to us: Leave it all behind.”
David speaks but he doesn’t know what he says. He trembles.
“He said: Look here, leave it all, you’re building on ruins.”
In the half-light someone laughs. It’s the Jew.
Joy floods David’s face. He cries out, “He hears us, he laughs!”
One after the other they all start laughing with the Jew.
“He said: Enough with this foolishness. Leave the cement behind.”
“Leave the cement behind,” says the Jew.
“He said: Go hunt.”
“Go hunt,” says the Jew.
“It’s he who spoke to me in the forest,” cries David. “About the jackrabbits. He said, keep going, they’re beyond the barbed wire.”
“Beyond it,” says the Jew.
“He spoke of the light in the forest,” says David, remembering, speaking slower now, “of summer also.”
“Summer,” says the Jew.
Silence.
The broken voice of the Jew then rises:
“David’s summer.”
Someone is shooting near the ponds.
They speak no more. David listens and trembles. Sabana, sitting next to the Jew, also listens. Her voice then rises:
“What is Gringo waiting for?”
The shots cease.
•
Abahn is speaking to David, still overcome by exhaustion. “First he forgets what work he did. Then he forgets about money. Then he forgets what he learned. Finally, at the end, he forgets his wife, his children. He said, ‘I couldn’t lie in front of them the way I could when I was away from them.’ Is that what he told you, David?”
“Yes.”
“And he left so his children would also leave, later on.”
“Then he left again and again,” says Sabana.
“Yes,” Abahn says. “Again.”
“He lingered among the Jews, burned Jews and gassed Jews, with or without God.”
“Yes,” says Abahn. “He was searching.”
“It’s Staadt where he will die,” says Sabana, “in the penal colony on the road to the Jewish capital.”
Silence. Abahn does not continue. David waits.
The silence hovers between them. Abahn closes his eyes. He seems exhausted. David realizes he is lonely, alone, broken down.
Then Abahn continues:
“I know nothing of life.”
Silence. No motion at all on David’s smooth and pale face.
“I don’t know anything about my life any more,” says Abahn. “I will die without knowing.”
David says:
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Nothing,” says Abahn. “In the end: nothing.”
“Me either,” says David. “I don’t know anything either.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No.”
•
Abahn speaks to the Jew in a slow and even voice. “It’s because you came here that we understand a little more. We know some names, some dates.”
“Yes,” says David.
“You came here one night. You walked the village all that night and all the morning that followed. People met you. They remembered. You smiled.” He pauses. “It was the morning of the second day that Gringo recognized you.”
He pauses.
“Yes,” says David.
“Gringo said, ‘No talking to the traitor, no going to see him, no looking at him. He was in the Party and he betrayed it.’” Abahn looks at the Jew. “Did you know that Gringo recognized you?”
Abahn answers for the Jew, saying to David:
“He knew. He knew that whenever he went out that he would be recognized.”
Far off, on the field of the dead, the dogs cry out, howling.
“You bought this house, a bed, a table, chairs. You stayed here for many days. You burned things, the papers — only after you had started preparations to leave. But it was already too late. Gringo had already alerted the workers of Staadt to your presence.”
He pauses. Says:
“In your life, you kept only guard dogs.” Turning to David, he says, “Why?”
“He played with them in the evening.”
“The dogs didn’t know,” Abahn says.
“No.”
“They didn’t know that he is Jewish. Neither did you, David?”
“No,” says David.
Silence.
“Many days passed,” says Abahn. “Many weeks. Many months. The autumn.”
Silence once more. David waits, sitting up in his chair, his eyes tense.
“Afterward, a long time after, Gringo said to you, ‘You’re talking to the traitor? You’re listening to what the Jew says? You don’t know what he did?’ You said you didn’t know. Gringo was amazed. He said, ‘How? Everyone knows. He questions the Party line on the Soviet concentration camps. You don’t know this?’”
Abahn’s voice cracks in places. He gasps for air. He breathes with difficulty.
“You didn’t understand what Gringo said to you. That the Jew was what he still is: any Jew.”
“Yes.”
Abahn gasps for air. There is nearly no air.
“You spoke with him again. Against Gringo’s orders, you kept speaking with the Jew because the Jew had dogs.”
“No!” cries David.
“And that was forbidden also.”
David nods weakly.
Abahn wants to speak more. He struggles to get there, he gets it out quickly because once more he can, he gives it to David in clear phrases.
“You didn’t covet the Jew’s dogs. You just wanted to speak to someone who had dogs.”
David nods.
“Afterward, a while after, Gringo spoke of making the Jew disappear, you thought then for a moment, you might have his dogs.”
David nods yes.
Abahn stops talking to David and starts talking about him instead.
“Right after Gringo’s order David went to the café with the Jew, just like before. It was that very night in the café that the Jew spoke to him about freedom. He said, ‘Your wounded hands are your own hands, David.’”
David nods. Abahn gulps air and continues, talking faster.
“The Jew said, ‘In their suffering and their joy, in their madness and their love, in their freedom these hands are your hands, no other’s, the hands of David.’” He pauses. “It’s because he said these things that the Jew will be killed.”