‘On Easter Sunday 1882,’ it said, ‘in the Hungarian town of Tisza-Eszlar a desperate father and mother reported the disappearance without trace of their daughter. All attempts to find fourteen-year-old Eszter Solymosi, a particularly alert and lovable girl, were fruitless. No corpse was washed up on the banks of the Theiss, which has particularly dangerous currents in the region. The case would probably have remained a tragic mystery for all time, had not five-year-old Samuel Scharf, the son of the Jewish synagogue servant, been driven by the voice of his conscience to a terrifying confession. His father, he explained, had together with his older brother Moritz, lain in wait for the innocent girl, dragged her into the synagogue, and there, with the knife ordinarily used for the slaughtering animals, slit her throat. The blood of Christian virgins was known to be used by the Jews in their ancient ritual for the making of Pesach bread. The body of the girl, whose life was so horribly taken from her, was never found, so that the violently disputed trial ended with the acquittal of the synagogue servant, a judgement that provoked great rage in Hungary.’
A choking sensation rose in Arthur’s throat and filled his mouth with a sour taste. He heard thunder that was meant for him alone. It was his fault. He had known that the Panopticon was not allowed, and he had gone anyway. He had wanted to unveil the forbidden picture, and now he was being punished for it.
When day appeared, the priests
Found him extended senseless, pale as death
Before the pedestal of Isis’ statue.
There were mysteries, he had always known, things that went on in the shadows, which one only glimpse out of the corners of one’s eye, and which one must on no account turn around to see. And if one did…
His happiness in life had fled for ever
And his deep sorrow soon conducted him
to an early grave.
Every time he was asked to recite that passage, he felt as if it referred to him.
Again the sky flickered outside. Arthur closed his eyes tight and waited for the thunder as if it were a judgement.
The man with the bowl of blood was suddenly empty handed, and he was no longer a wax figure: he was Uncle Melnitz, whom Arthur knew so well, even though Papa always said he was dead and buried long ago.
‘That’s how it is,’ said Uncle Melnitz. ‘You will never be quite sure whether the story might not be true after all. Of course it is a lie, you know it is a lie, but if the same lie is told again and again, and believed again and again… You will never be quite certain.
‘You know Uncle Pinchas, who is also a shochet and has a long knife. You know that he cuts the throats of cows, with a single long slice and without flinching. Cows and calves and sheep and sometimes a chicken. But not children. But not little girls. Not Uncle Pinchas. You know that. You think you know. But you can’t be sure.
‘You sat on his knee and he told you stories. About a fish, as big as an island, so big that a ship moored by it and the seamen lit a fire on its back. You liked the story, because you knew it could not be true, that the big fish was made up and couldn’t do anything to you. You knew, but you weren’t sure.’
Uncle Melnitz was now holding the long knife in his hand.
‘It is well known,’ he said, ‘that the blood of Christian virgins is used by Jews to make the Pesach loaves. Well known.’
He drew the knife, without flinching, along his own throat, and no blood came.
‘You have unveiled the picture,’ said Uncle Melnitz, ‘and you will never be able to tell anyone about it. “All that he saw and learned, his tongue ne’er confessed.” You won’t be able to talk about it, and you won’t be able to fight it. Because you’re not sure. You will go to the library at school and you will ask your teacher for the big atlas, you will seek the land of Hungary and the town of Tisza-Eszlar on the Theiss, you will find both, and you will not be sure.’
It had grown dark behind the canvas walls, but Arthur could still clearly see Uncle Melnitz.
‘You will not be able to get rid of the fear,’ said the old man, and had long locks at his temples, ‘the fear that there might be something inside you which you’ve never been aware of, and which is still a part of you. Until it suddenly comes out of you, from one day to the next, and is stronger than you. Eventually. It could be, yes. If everyone tells the story, it could be. Although it isn’t true. Or else it is true. How could you know? How could anyone know?’
Outside the thunder crashed, like a rock fall or an avalanche, the lengths of canvas bulged inwards, hailstones rattled down like gunshot, as the bullets had rattled at Sedan in Janki’s stories, something sharp caught Arthur in the back of the neck, an ice pick or a knife, a long knife for cutting the throats of cows, and not only cows.
As was well known.
He couldn’t find the exit, he couldn’t find the spot where you could simply lift the canvas, in the darkness his face collided with a figure that might have been a torturer or a murderer or a shochet from Tisza-Eszlar, he bumped into a hand that wanted to grab him and hold on to him, he wanted to flee and couldn’t, he crept on all fours over sand and trampled grass, whining and trembling, eventually, somehow, found himself outside, lay with his face in the mud, the storm hammered down on his back and he was grateful for it, it was like a cleansing, he imagined that his jacket was in rags, and his trousers, that his skin was shredded and his trousers, that he was bleeding from a thousand wounds like the martyr in the painted panel, that he was smiling mildly and bravely, but without a halo, because Jews didn’t have such things, that he endured unbearable pains and thus redeemed everything, the truancy and the lying and the curiosity, that he was innocent again, or newly born, or turned into a girl, that he was maybe even dead and they found him and said, ‘He was a good boy, such a good boy.’
The hail stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Arthur raised his head. The black clouds were fleeing the sky as if they had a guilty conscience. It was not night, but still bright daylight.
He drew up his legs and straightened his torso. The hailstones under his knees were hard as gravel. Where the wind had driven them against the canvas of the Panopticon, they were piling up into white cushions.
He stood up and noticed that he had lost his cap. It was somewhere in the booth, and he would never have the courage to look for it.
The two horses stood with their legs spread and their heads in between them. They were probably not trying to shelter from the storm any more, however, just rummaging for the remaining oats at the bottom of their feed bags.
Arthur was hungry.
In one of the two trucks a lamp burned behind a window, exactly as if it were in a house. He remembered that it was late, that everyone had been waiting for him for ages, and that, drenched and dirty as he was, no one would believe that he was coming from bar mitzvah instruction with Cantor Würzburger.
But that wasn’t what frightened him most.
28
By the time Arthur finally came home, he had come up with an excuse. He had been on his way home from bar mitzvah instruction, exactly, that’s how he would put it, when suddenly a whole gang of boys he’d never seen before jumped out at him from a doorway and beat him up and threw him in the dirt. Of course they would ask him if he recognised the faces, and he would reply: They certainly hadn’t been from his school. They would believe his story, he hoped, because something of the kind had actually happened once before, except that it hadn’t come to blows. They’d just shouted ‘Schiissjud, Schiissjud!’ — ‘Fucking Jew! Fucking Jew!’ and ‘ — ‘Jewboy, Jewboy, fetch your cap, or else pay us seven rapp’!’ They’d taken his cap from him and thrown it from hand to hand while he dashed helplessly and breathlessly after it. He had only told Mama the story; Janki got so cross so quickly, and he himself had felt strangely guilty, as if he had somehow deserved this torment because of some special quality he had. This time, this was the story he had come up with, they had run off with his cap, had put it on the end of a stick and waved it around like a flag. They had also shouted something else while they laid into him, not ‘Judebübli’, but ‘Tisza-Eszlar!’, ‘or something like that’, he would say, he hadn’t really understood. It had all happened so quickly. He had defended himself as best he could… No, he had been too scared to put up any resistance; that would make the whole thing properly convincing, he reflected.