Jakob the Liar (17 page)

J
acob has to hear with his own ears how distorted his stories become when they are passed on.

Jacob is on his way to the attic to see Lina; not that it’s bedtime, but he has to do more with her than just to make sure she washes properly, brushes her teeth, and goes to bed at the right time. At the freight yard we were sent home two hours early; there was nothing left to be unloaded, and the sentries didn’t feel like watching over idlers, so they told us to shove off. A few particularly bold theorists speculate that there is more than mere laziness behind this order: perhaps the sentries are trying to be friends; after all they could just as easily have kept us there another two hours, standing in line. But they sent us home. Perhaps this is a subtle indication that a new era is knocking at the door. Anyway, the two hours will be well spent with Lina, Jacob thinks. As he places his hand on the door handle he realizes that she is not alone. He hears Rafael’s voice asking, “What’s it all about, then?”

“About a princess,” says Lina.

“Does she get kidnapped?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Of course she does. I know all that. She’s kidnapped by a robber. He wants a lot of ransom money for her, but the prince kills him and sets her free. And afterward they get married.”

“What nonsense you talk,” Lina retorts. “That’s a whole other story. Do you think there’s only one story about a princess?”

“All right then, tell it!”

“Aren’t we going to wait for Siegfried?”

“He won’t come.”

Jacob can hear them waiting and the attic window being opened. Rafael shouts, “Siegfried!”

Then he says Siegfried is nowhere in sight, and shortly afterward Lina screams at Rafael to stop that nonsense. What nonsense she means isn’t clear, but he doesn’t seem to be stopping right away. Then he asks, “Who told you the story anyway?”

“Uncle Jacob.”

That gives an eavesdropper pause for thought. Jacob has never told her a fairy tale about a princess, he would be bound to remember that. It must have been the fairy-tale uncle, and without a tremor in her voice she turns two separate people into one man. That gives pause for thought; perhaps it was even Jacob who played the march music and asked the questions and gave the answers. Or it was a hasty slip of the tongue on Lina’s part, or — and this would be best — she had resorted to a white lie so as not to reveal the existence of the radio. That remains to be seen; they will have to discuss it later.

“He won’t be coming now, so you might as well start,” says

Rafael.

And that’s what happens. Lina clears her throat, Jacob pricks up his ears; he has never heard what his stories sound like when they are passed on.

“Once upon a time there was a king, a good old king, and he had a daughter, that was the princess,” Lina began. 

“What was the king called?”

Lina is evidently trying to remember whether any names were mentioned at all. For Rafael this takes too long, and he says, “Surely you must at least know what he was called?”

“His name was Benjamin,” Lina recalls. “And the princess was called Magdalena.”

“What
was he called? Benjamin? Do you know who’s called Benjamin? My uncle in Tarnopol, he’s called Benjamin. But never a king.”

“I don’t care if you believe it or not, but the king in this fairy tale was called Benjamin.”

“Oh, all right!” says Rafi generously, not about to spoil things for the sake of a name. Jacob is almost sure that he is standing there with folded arms in a patronizing manner.

Lina continues, but more hurriedly than at first, as if she had lost the thread, as if expecting further objections: “One day the princess got sick. The doctor couldn’t find anything because he didn’t know what her disease was, but she wouldn’t eat any more bread, and she wouldn’t drink either. So the king went to her himself, he loved her so much, you see — I forgot that part. And he asked her what was the matter. Then she told him she wouldn’t get well again till someone brought her a bunch of cotton as big as her pillow. And then the old king—”

But that’s as far as she gets, Rafael has had enough; he has tried hard and listened patiently, but too much is too much, his credulity can be stretched, but it has limits.

“What kind of a disease is your Magdalena supposed to have had?”

“You just heard.”

“And I’m telling you, there is no such disease! Not in the whole world!”

“How do you know?”

“If at least she had measles, or whooping cough, or typhoid,” Rafael protests. “You know what the princess really had? A fart in her head!”

He laughs, much louder than Jacob, but Lina can find nothing funny about his explanation. “Do you want to go on hearing the story or don’t you?” she asks.

“I don’t,” says Rafael, still amused; the best jokes are always one’s own. “Because she had a fart in her head. Because the whole story is a load of nonsense. First about the king, in the whole world you’ll never find a king called Benjamin. And then princesses never eat bread, only cake. And the biggest nonsense of all is that disease. Or have you seriously ever heard of a person getting sick from not having any cotton?”

Lina seems to be impressed by Rafael’s reasoning; at least she is silent, without tears, Jacob hopes. And he doesn’t alter his opinion; she is a clever girl, anyone can make mistakes. The excitement in the basement may have been responsible for the misunderstanding, or such flights of fancy are simply beyond a child of Lina’s age. Jacob’s hand is on the door handle again; you should intervene, console and explain, they might — God forbid — come to blows. You could go in quite innocently, Hello Lina, hello Rafael, nice of you to come and see her, how’s your mother? Then the conversation will automatically turn to the argument, which will be recounted by both parties, Calm down, children; let’s hear you each in turn. Then you will undoubtedly come up with conciliatory words that will make what is unclear appear in a fresh light, Not a reason in the world, children, to be angry with each other; things actually look thus and so. And in the end it’ll all be settled to everyone’s satisfaction. So Jacob is about to plunge into the fray when he hears Rafael’s peaceable voice: “If your uncle happens to tell you another story, ask him to think up something better than that nonsense. That princess just had a huge fart in her head.”

Jacob never gets to intervene; the door opens and, with his usual luck with doors, it opens outward and provides a hiding place. Rafael is off to more rewarding pastimes; no doubt he is going to look for Siegfried and report. He can be heard running down the stairs and whistling, he is whistling “Oranges and Lemons,” and he goes on whistling as Lina shouts the meager remainder of the story after him: “But she did have that disease! And the garden boy got her the cotton! And that made her well again, and they got married!”

She has said everything, although to closed ears; down on the ground floor the little tune dies away, the front door clicks shut, and up in the attic a long, disappointed tongue is stuck out, and the attic door is slammed, with Jacob outside the door as at the beginning. Doubts arise as to whether the two bonus hours will be well spent with Lina after this. He tells me that although it was quite amusing, listening to those two children, he suddenly lost all desire to go in; he suddenly felt worn out. He would rather keep the two hours for himself after all. And he asks whether he is boring me with such details, if so I only have to tell him.

I tell him, “No.”

Jacob goes for a walk with his two hours; there are other places to relax besides cramped rooms or with children one has grown fond of. He still feels the urge to take a stroll, despite the searchlight and the military office. To take a stroll in a little town from which in your whole life you have never been farther away than a week; the sunshine is pleasant on your path, as pleasant as the memories that are after all the true reason for your having left the house, memories to which every second street builds a bridge, as we know. Around one corner, then another, and there you are in front of the building where it was so often decided how good your next winter would be, for here lived none other than Aaron Ehrlicher, the potato merchant. Much depended on the prices set by him: the price of potato pancakes and with that the volume of business. Ehrlicher could never be persuaded to bargain, so-and-so much and not a penny less, if you think that’s too high, Mr. Heym, you’re welcome to look around to see whether you can get potatoes cheaper somewhere else. If you do, please be kind enough to let me know, I’d like to buy there too. Never, ever did he consent to bargain, and once Jacob said to him, “Mr. Ehrlicher, you don’t deal in potatoes, you just sell potatoes.” Only in fun, of course, but Ehrlicher didn’t burst out laughing. And it was hard to tell whether he was a poor soul, a humble tradesman, like yourself, or a businessman of a higher category. His wife used to wear a fine, brown fur piece, and his children were plump and round and stuck-up, yet his office smelled moldy; it was small and shabby and consisted of a table, a chair, and blank walls. He would gesture at all this with a sigh and ask, “How can I afford to reduce my prices?”

Now there are strangers living there, you turn the page of Aaron Ehrlicher and walk on, two free hours are a long time, head for Libauer-Gasse and stop in front of Number 38. There is no building you walk to as often as this one, when you’re out for a stroll, none that you stand outside for so long, and there are good reasons for this. The fact that you even go into the dark inner courtyard … it all has its reasons; suspicious eyes inspect you through the windows, what is a stranger doing in their courtyard, but you aren’t that much of a stranger here.

On the third floor, behind the door on the left of the corridor, is where, to put it grandly, you gambled away or won your life’s happiness: at the crucial moment you couldn’t make up your mind, and to this day you don’t know how good or bad that was. Josefa Litwin asked you point-blank what your intentions were, and you couldn’t think of anything better to do than cast your eyes down and stammer that you needed a bit more time to think about it.

A magnificent woman, if eyes are any judge. You saw her for the first time in the train and instantly you thought, Boyoboy! She was wearing a green velvet dress with a white lace collar, and a hat the size of an open umbrella. And she was at most in her mid-thirties and thus exactly right for the forty-year-old you were then, right as far as age was concerned. But there in the compartment you never dreamed that sitting opposite you was the greatest problem of your next few years. You just gaped at her, so you tell me, like a young idiot; she may not even have noticed. Coincidence or not, when you got off the train together and there was no porter in sight, she asked whether you would mind carrying her heavy suitcase, she lived only a few streets further on, at Number 38 Libauer-Gasse. But she didn’t ask as if you were a man of inferior position, although even then you wouldn’t have refused; she was helpless and smiled and asked you a favor in her capacity as a weak woman. In your capacity as a gentleman. Delighted you said: “What a question!” Snatched up her suitcase as if you were afraid a porter might yet turn up and hurried after her as far as Number 38, as far as her own front door. There you set down the suitcase, and for a few seconds you smiled at each other in embarrassment. Then she thanked you nicely and said good-bye. And you stood there thinking, Too bad.

A few weeks later, and that was certainly a coincidence, she appeared in your shop one afternoon accompanied by a man. You recognized her at once, and quite unjustifiably felt annoyed about the man, but then you were pleased because she recognized you too. You didn’t exchange a word, and the two of them had lemonade and raspberry ice cream. You observed them and couldn’t make out their relationship, and why should you?

But when she came back the very next day, this time alone, you knew that was no coincidence. For the first time you were glad your shop was empty; apart from her, there was no other customer in the place — and the very next day! You sat down beside her, you chatted and introduced yourselves; she was the widow of a watchmaker who had been dead four years. It goes without saying that you didn’t allow her to pay for her ice cream; she was to consider herself your guest, today and as often as she liked. The man yesterday was mentioned as a casual acquaintance, he was no reason for you not to meet often, and there was no other reason either. So the next day in the shop, once again in the shop, then in another restaurant, in a neutral location so to speak, an innocent little dance. Then soon in your flat. Meanwhile, you had found out about her modest but by no means straitened circumstances, and that she had no children. Finally at Number 38 too. A cup of tea and some little homemade cakes, in the air a hint of delicate, flowery perfume; you spoke of mutual attraction, from the first moment really, and then another cup of tea, and there were more cakes in the kitchen.

That was an evening such as no poet ever described, my God, and a night, my God, ah well. What can one say, this story isn’t about Jacob and Josefa, soon this page must be turned too. Just this: four whole years were the result, four years of living together as man and wife, though they never actually moved in together, though one subject was always avoided: rabbi or civil ceremony. Most carefully by Jacob, probably. There was ample opportunity to explore one another, Josefa’s glitter wasn’t always gold, some less precious metals were worked in with it. Sometimes Jacob found her domineering, sometimes too talkative, sometimes an indifferent housewife, and she in turn found the occasional flaw in him, without any of this immediately leading to a breakup. Quite the contrary, they got along very nicely together, and Jacob was beginning to think that things could go on like this indefinitely. But when she suddenly — what am I saying, suddenly! — suggested it might be better if she moved in with him and she could help in the shop, he was afraid he would become his own employee, and he replied, “We’ll discuss that later.”

Very well, later, Josefa was in no hurry, or so it seemed. Until, as noted, that particular evening came along, the one at Number 38 Libauer-Gasse, when Jacob gambled away or won his life’s happiness, who knows? He arrived as usual and, as usual, took off his shoes and put his feet up on the sofa. Josefa stood at the window with her back to him.