See Under David Grossman (free ebook reader TXT) 📖

According to Zalmanson, jokes were touchingly primitive offerings to this God. “And what is a joke, after all, but a kind of bastardization: Think of a man standing on a street corner, telling his friend some story he invented just to make him smile! Does he sing him an aria, heaven forbid, or play a tune on the garmoshka? No, but a joke he tells him! And sometimes when friends gather, serious, sober people, they tell each other jokes all evening long!” Zalmanson calls jokes “the shampsalters of idol worshippers.” Not that he makes light of them, heaven forbid. On the contrary, jokers, he believes, are true visionaries, with an insight into something, “though the means at their disposal are poor, ah, pitiable indeed!” And this because “most people have not the gift of real and penetrating humor, but can only chant their shabby second-and third-hand litanies by rote …” Wasserman offers this comment on the subject of Zalmanson’s laugh. “His squeaky, effeminate laugh confirms his twisted theory even more: most people laugh in a voice unlike their speaking voices. It would seem that the vocal qualities used for laughter,” Wasserman propounds with a shy chuckle, “cannot be used for—how shall I put it—‘secular purposes.’”

2. Kazik’s humor

Kazik, according to OTTO BRIG [q.v.], had his own peculiar sense of humor; in fact, there was a kind of painful irony in the way he experienced simultaneously the processes of growth and decay; and whenever one of the ARTISTS [q.v.] talked about their hopes for the distant or even near future, or used words like “chance,” “improvement,” “victory,” “PRAYER” [q.v.], “ideal,” “faith,” etc., or experienced intimacy and communion, or whenever the feeling of STRANGENESS [q.v.] shifted briefly to an illusion of cooperation and solace—at such times Kazik emitted short, compulsive bursts of laughter, over which he had absolutely no control, an almost physical reflex as irrepressible as the hissing of a hot skillet under a stream of cold water. This laughter afforded Kazik no pleasure; in fact, he had no idea why he was laughing, and was keenly aware of the artists’ reactions of grief and humiliation. The editorial staff agreed to call this quality of Kazik’s “humor” only after Otto Brig had done so, most nobly and generously. It should be mentioned that the strange quality disappeared once for a few minutes during Kazik’s lifetime when he too became one of the ARTISTS.

Also see under. PAINTER

HACHLATA

DECISION

The process of arriving at a conclusion after study and consideration.

Following their debate on the subject of RESPONSIBILITY [q.v.] and CHOICE [q.v.], Wasserman maintained that Neigel must not rest content with his initial decision, made twenty years ago, upon joiningthe SS. In order to carry out certain actions in the present, which Wasserman tactfully failed to specify, Neigel had “suspended” his conscience, “sent it away on leave.” No. In Wasserman’s view, we are all duty-bound to renew the moral validity of our decisions for as long as we act upon them. In other words, “no decision, Herr Neigel, is permanently valid, and if you are a man of honor, which what you say appears to suggest, it is incumbent upon you to reaffirm your decision each day, each time you kill another person in your camp; indeed, sir, you must mold your decision anew with fresh words, in order to hear whether your initial wish, your voice, and your essence resound in those words.” To which Neigel, incidentally, replied, “You’d be surprised, Wasserman. That doesn’t frighten me one bit. In fact, I like it. I intend to adopt your little idea.” Wasserman: “Each and every day, Herr Neigel. And each and every time you shoot your gun and destroy another human being. And twenty-five times when you kill twenty-five prisoners here. Decision after decision. Can you stand it? Can you promise yourself as much, Herr Neigel?” And the German: “I don’t understand why you’re making such a big fuss about this. I already told you, I’m not worried. It will only reinforce my faith in the Reich and my duty. I’ll do my work—in the words of our Führer—mit Einsatzfreudigkeit—with pleasure.”

Also see under: REBELLION,

HITLER, ADOLF

(1889-1945) German leader, directly responsible for World War II, and—indirectly—for the love affair between Paula and Fried.

Throughout Fried’s years as chief veterinarian at the zoo, he was in love, silently and hopelessly—as he had been since the glorious days of the Children of the Heart—with Paula Brig. Paula, who was in charge of zoo administration, kept house for her brother, Otto, and out of the kindness of her heart did not neglect poor lonely Fried either. In 1931, Fried sold his sterile luxury apartment in a wealthy Warsaw neighborhood and went to live at the zoo, in the small hexagonal pavilion next to the reptile menagerie. In the evenings Fried used to walk over to Otto and Paula’s pavilion near the zoo gate, where the three would eat supper together, play chess, smoke, and plan the work schedule for the following day. Their lives might have continued like this had it notbeen for certain events, or had not … Otto: “Hitler made Paula so furious with his race laws, I mean Paula, who never took an interest in politics till one day the radio happened to be on and she heard those vicious Nuremberg Laws; it was around noon, she and I were home alone, and she jumped up as if she’d been pinched and said she had to go to town, and ‘It’s Fried I’m thinking of, he’s my concern, the humiliation will break his heart.’ And she took her savings out of her piggy bank, the money we’d put by all these years zloty by zloty, muttering, ‘Swinishness,’ and ‘What do they think, those lousy Deut-schers, can’t they see they’re going to hurt somebody?’ And off she went, without a goodbye, full of anger and confusion, and she took the tram to the swankiest shops on Potozki Square, where