See Under David Grossman (free ebook reader TXT) 📖

questions must be asked in a different vein: Not “Would a certain person destroy X, Y, and Z?” but “Would he bring them back to life? Would they be brought back to life by him with every passing moment?” and—this may be the decisive question—“Would a certain person’s own self be brought back to life, with the same fervor, passion, and love—by a certain person—with every passing moment?”

And since no answer to this question was found, one peevish last question was posed: Which is the real horror, death or life? Real life,without reservation, life in the sense that—etc. Suddenly a certain person went running back to his desk to write. But his pen refused to write. The ink refused to flow. A certain person received a kick. A cold sweat broke out. His pen was jabbed and banged on the table as though in an attempt to wake somebody under it, beyond it. At last the ink flowed.

Wasserman is still there. He’s always there, facing Neigel. He describes the bewildered doctor, too cautious to register the baby in his notebook yet (the same one he has been using a few years now for both zoo animals and employees), because he has no name, and Fried: “It’s not my job to give my patients names, is it?”

Thus writes Fried: “Anonymous baby. Brought to me by Otto Brig at 2005 hours on 5/4/43. Wrapped in woolen blanket. No sign of parents. Sex: Male. Length of body: Impossible to measure because of resistance; an estimated 51 cm. Head measurement: Ditto; an estimated 34 cm. Weight: Ditto; an estimated 3 kg. At 2020 Otto Brig saw 2 teeth in the lower jaw. At 2110 I myself (A.F.) saw another two teeth in the upper jaw. Approximately two minutes later another two appeared in the lower jaw. All in all: six teeth.” Since the baby did not interrupt the rest of his scientific documentation, Fried returned the favor with extravagant generosity, noting: “2120. The baby is alert, and even smiling.” Fried: “And there I was, writing away, paying no attention to him till he moved on the carpet, or fell or something, and I looked and saw—ah! The baby was suddenly lying on his tummy! Poor thing. I turned him over on his back again and watched him, and believe it or not, he flipped over on his tummy again!”

Fried detested any form of fraud or deception, and there was always someone trying to deceive him, poor Fried! He lived with the sense that somebody out there had taken advantage of his momentary carelessness to change the world’s scenery from top to bottom. And in furious protest against the lies and decadence engraved on the world, Fried clung to his decency, and gripped it by his fingernails. Marcus: “And the more the world deceived him and opened up its books of legerdemain and deviltry—” Harotian: “And all the suitcases with false bottoms and trapdoors and hidden pockets—” so the doctor buttressed his hate and shame-filled faith with the necessary logic of things, and with the existence in our world of a proper order, lucid and simple, which is bound to be discovered someday, in somebody’s life.

Neigel raises a hand. “You’re wrong there,” he says to Anshel Wasserman.“There’s always a logical explanation.” Wasserman appears to object. Neigel is willing to elaborate: “Even when something seems unnatural at first, it turns out to have a logical explanation.” And Wasserman: “Herr Neigel, the role and mission of logic in our world is to divide things into categories and connect them to each other, in the manner of every winged fowl after its kind. But things in themselves,” he says sadly, “things in themselves are totally lacking in logic! And so are people. Yes, indeed. A mixed leaven of passion and fear, ai, a fine world, and what is logic? Only the divider and connector between them. Yes. Logic, for instance, is your wonderful program for transporting trains here from all over Europe. To the slaughter. Logic is the railroad tracks stretching over most of the world, and the cars that never tarry in the station. Logic, Herr Neigel, is the invisible string that binds the hand of the dutiful functionary whose signature authorizes the engine’s oil supply for the day, and the engineer who drives it over the tracks, and, if you will, logic is what conjoins the two and prevents them from meeting the corrupt stationmaster, the best of men, who in return for a purseful of mammon, which we shoved through the train window, brought a flaskful of water for my little girl when she fainted. He, too, behaved according to the logic at the root of the situation, only this logic, sir, connects things that are lacking in logic, the coils of cruelty and mercy, human beings, my daughter’s life and her death …”

Neigel, who has just heard about the death of Wasserman’s daughter for the first time, prefers to ignore it. Or maybe he doesn’t have the emotional stamina to cope with the information. He looks down with a “humph,” that seems to indicate that Wasserman should continue. Wasserman gives him a long look full of pain and bitterness, and then his face takes on an expression as close to hatred as I’ve ever seen on it. Then he nods to himself and continues.

Marcus: “And in our Fried, honesty and disillusionment were so intertwined that they developed into a permanent spasm of the throat and stomach, and Paula claimed that by this strange form of self-torture Fried was perpetrating no less an injustice than falsehood or fraud.” Paula: “But I can’t understand why people are always trying to fool my Friedchik. He’s so sensible and smart and suspicious of everyone, while me, of all people, such a dupe I’d believe a cat, they leave alone.” Harotian: “But you’ve got to hand it to our doctor, when it came to a choice between logic and the merciful lie, he chose the lie. And hope.I appreciated