“When he is sleeping, who is he?” asks Abahn.
Sabana is silent.
“The child of Sabana,” says the Jew.
She is still there, in front of the door to the park, silent, staring out into the darkness.
•
Staadt is the entire darkened park.
The dogs of the Jew howl.
David’s hand lifts gently as if pushing away the howls.
They are standing apart from David, their bodies separate.
“You went to start work,” says Sabana. “You came back, you wrote. They saw you writing behind the windows of your house.”
The dogs no longer howl. David has fallen again into sleep.
“I wasn’t writing,” says the Jew.
“In the night, at the table, everyone could see you. You wrote on blank paper.”
She turns toward Abahn.
“Every night he walked back and forth in this house. He wrote. In the morning, he slept.”
“I wrote what people said,” says the Jew. “People said nothing.”
Their voices are even, they sound the same.
“You wanted to write only what people said,” says Sabana.
“No,” says the Jew. “Not anymore.”
“And what did people say?”
“Together or alone, they said the same thing.”
“But even so upon returning here you wrote it down.”
The Jew doesn’t answer.
They are silent. From all sides, the constant dull pressure of the dark park. The Jew looks out at it through the windows. Sabana seems like she is waiting for something.
“Yes,” says the Jew. “I wrote it.”
They are silent once more.
“Gringo said he comes a little before sunrise?” asks the Jew.
“I don’t know,” says Sabana.
Silence. There is some subtle change in their voices.
“Did you think they would say something?” Abahn asks.
“I thought nothing like that,” says the Jew.
“Before coming to Staadt?” asks Sabana.
“I was told there was no point in trying. But I never tried to write what people said.”
The Jew points at something on the table.
“The papers are right there,” he says. “They won’t have to look for them.”
“They will burn them,” says Sabana.
“Yes.”
“When they burn them,” says Abahn, “Gringo will say, ‘The Jew has written a secret journal. In this journal he has said how he contacted foreign powers.’”
“Yes,” said the Jew.
“Every time they each speak of the figures in the journal,” says Sabana.
Silence.
“And they won’t understand,” says Sabana.
“They won’t,” agrees the Jew.
A tight smile stretches across the face of the Jew.
“They will burn your things as well,” says Sabana. “Your furniture, your clothes. They won’t leave anything whole. They’ll destroy the dogs.”
“David’s dogs,” says Abahn. “David’s forest.”
“Yes.”
Silence. Then Sabana rises, goes toward the door to the park.
“It wasn’t interesting, what people were saying in Staadt?”
“It still isn’t,” says the Jew.
“So that’s interesting to whom?” asks Sabana.
“Everyone,” says the Jew.
“To burn it, then?”
“Sure,” says the Jew, “to look at it, as well.”
“And for the ones who said it all, the people of Staadt?”
“No,” says the Jew.
“It’s not interesting for anyone,” says Sabana.
She moans a single word. A brief sob, mournful, low: “David.”
Deep in slumber, David moans at the same time, long, seemingly without end: an unknown dream without a doubt. No one notices the dream.
They are silent.
“There has to be time,” says the Jew.
He points toward David.
“So David can. . David, David. .”
He does not finish his sentence.
•
It is Abahn who takes up the charred papers lying on the table. He reads:
“We reached the eighth floor on January 18th. The walls were not yet built. The wind blew through. Winter was hard. We drank alcohol at all hours. In the evenings, we were drunk. The Portuguese are not used to it, this cold. Three Portuguese at the site died. Five of the Africans froze to death in their room. The Greeks aren’t used to it either. There was one of them in my room and he coughed all the time. My site is number three. At seven in the morning it was less than 12 degrees. We do less work than we could in the summer, the cold cracks the skin of your hands, the cement you poured into the cracks, gray, the morning, cracked skin. Gringo is the head of site number three. Jeanne taught the Portuguese how to write. Gringo said that site number three creates honor for the Party. He sent a list of our names to the city. We petitioned the city. Gringo wrote out the petitions. He said, ‘The conditions of the Portuguese are unacceptable.’ Gringo spoke to the House of the People. He spoke all night to the 22nd Congress of the House of the People. We were exhausted that evening. So sleepy. At the end of all this, we carried cement, thirty times ten kilos of it. That’s three hundred kilos. Our hands burned from it. From the moment you can’t manage anymore you’re just like the Portuguese.”
In the silence David cries out. “The dogs!” he calls out in his sleep.
The dogs howl in the dark expanse. A single howl.
“Gringo,” says Sabana.
She doesn’t move, she doesn’t take her eyes off the Jew.
The dogs fall silent.
David falls back into his fitful sleep.
“They bark at night whenever someone passes by,” says Abahn.
“No,” says Sabana, “they mark the passage of Gringo.”
She listens intently in the direction of the pathway outside. The Jews are not paying attention.
“He’s looking at you,” she says.
She is listening with her eyes closed.
“He’s alone.”
She listens again in the direction of the road. The Jews are not paying attention.
“He was alone. He’s gone now.”
Silence anew.
“Maybe it was someone else,” says Abahn. “Or it was nothing.”
“In Staadt,” Sabana says, “we recognize every sound. Even Gringo walking past. He came to see.”
•
“Is that all there was to read?” asks Abahn.
The Jew takes some time to respond. “There were some other things about the working conditions.”
They are silent, the three of them, standing apart from one another, unmoving.
“The dogs aren’t barking anymore,” says Sabana.
“We could read,” says the Jew.
“Someone could talk,” says Abahn.
“Or cry,” says Sabana, “for the dogs.”
“They are on the table, under the scorched pages,” says the Jew.
They are, all three of them, caught in the same languor.
“The Realtors Society,” begins Abahn.
He stops. Begins again:
“The Realtors Society was created for three industries. It grew from strong investments. A pharmaceutical company, French. A German company, cellulose. And an American company, tungsten.”
He pauses. Silence.
“Go on,” says the Jew.
“Yes, go on.”
Abahn goes on, with a growing languor:
“The payout, at this level of investment is a strong 52 percent. The legal percentage of payout has been fixed at 27 percent, the legal fees comprise the 25 percent remaining.”
He pauses. Sabana says:
“I knew about the pharmaceutical company.”
“Keep going,” says the Jew.
“The Realtors Society,” continues Abahn, “was built on top of the old cemetery in Staadt. Permits to build were given in four days. The commissioners and three municipal councilmembers were able to raise three and a half million. At this level that sum has tripled.”