See Under David Grossman (free ebook reader TXT) 📖

Neigel, trying to downplay the importance of what he was saying: “Christina offered to divorce me right away, of course. She didn’t want to spoil my chances for promotion.” And after a moment’s silence: “And the strangest part is, Wasserman, that a few months later Tina was pregnant. Everything worked out fine. Everything. Karl was born four months after the war started, in February 1940, and Liselotte a year ago.” Wasserman: “Because she touched your heart.” Neigel wants to dismiss this sentimental conjecture with his usual Kwatz mit sauze but refrains, and appears to be rather amused with the idea. Silence. Then Wasserman says aloud, “Herr Neigel, once, many years ago, my wife went to a party at Zalmanson’s, about whomyou have already heard, I believe, and there Zalmanson pushed her into the coat closet and kissed her on the mouth.” Neigel looks at Wasserman, at first uncomprehendingly, and then, little by little, the significance seeps into his brain. The information in itself was less important than the fact that Wasserman had confided in him. He understood. (Wasserman: “What dybbuk ever possessed me to make me say this to him? God alone knows. Perhaps being the son of a grocer had taught me that you have to pay for your wares. Yes, I was obliged to recompense him for the secret of his wife and their love with a precious secret of my own. Feh, Anshel! A magpie you became in your old age!”)

NACHUT

DISABILITY

The condition of being disabled by a physical impairment.

According to Wasserman, this is the condition of all beings created in the image of God. He expressed this when Kazik was asking Fried how people feel about their lives, about whether they love living [see under: YOUTH]. Neigel, tired and defeated at the time, protested weakly against “your cruelty, Wasserman,” and was prepared to swear that “before I met you I enjoyed my life. I loved living. You understand? I loved getting up in the morning and doing my work! I loved breathing and riding horses and spending time with my wife and the little ones, I loved it!” To which Wasserman replied with a bitter smile, “We are all maimed, Herr Neigel, disabled in flesh and spirit, lame, and blind. And if you look closely, you will discover that in the depths of our hearts, even those of us who call themselves happy feel the same gnawing sadness, the same worm of despair. For how well we know that happiness, transparent as a soap bubble and just as elusive, will be taken away and lost to us forever. Though ours by right and merit, we have been robbed of it by villains unknown. And that is why I say we are all disabled. Amputees of happiness, cripples of joy, paraplegics of significance, Herr Neigel. Only, like a severed limb, the body still longs for it and does its best to remember the warm pulse, and it is this sadness, the sadness of longing for that which has been cut off and lost forever, that grinds our hearts in its mortar, is it not so, Herr Neigel?”

NES

MIRACLE

An extraordinary event from the point of view of causation, significance, and purpose.

1. Wasserman was saved by a miracle. The miracle occurred when he had lost the thread of the story and did not know how to answer a logical question posed by Neigel, for the third time, out of sheer peevishness: How could Paula, a Polish woman, live with Fried, a Jew, in the middle of the war, despite the law? Wasserman could find no adequate explanation for this. Various clever replies came to mind, but he dismissed them one after the other. It seems he could no longer “remember the eternally forgotten story.” Just then Neigel felt the need to confess that his wife had suggested a separation a few years before, so her infertility would not prevent his promotion in the SS [see under: MARRIAGE PERMIT], and that a new closeness had come into being between them as a result of the external threat to their relationship. Wassennan: “And at that moment I knew exactly what to hatch for him! I told him how Paula had heard about the execrable laws [see under: THIS SWINISHNESS] and had gone to Fried’s house where she fell to lovemaking so that … Perhaps it was a miracle, and perhaps it was due to my own stupidity that the idea had never occurred to me before, and perhaps, nu, everything is possible. And miracles, of course, need luck to make us believe in them, as we used to sing: “The rabbi performed a miracle / I saw him myself. / He climbed the ladder / And fell down dead. / The rabbi performed a miracle / I saw him myself. / He waded in the water / And came out wet …”

Also see under: HITLER, ADOLF

2. Two days after the REBELLION [q.v.] on the Heavenly Way, after Wasserman had finished telling Neigel the latest installment and before they parted for the night, the Jew demanded his shot. Neigel jumped to his feet. “Absolutely not!” he said. “But you promised! You promised!” screamed Wasserman, and Neigel: “You can forget about that tonight.” “Is the word of a German Offizier, no longer important to you?” asked Wasserman, and Neigel blushed, popped his knuckles, and exclaimed in a fury, “Listen here, Wasserman, you yourself said I have to make a decision each time I shoot, you’re the one who put that into my head! And I have made a decision: I will not shoot you! Not nowand not ever! No no no! Is that clear?!” Wasserman, evincing more anger than he really felt: “You promised! You promised! Curse you, Neigel!” And Neigel, his face contorted: “No! Ach! For you it’s nothing! You feel nothing when I shoot you! No pain at all! But for me it’s different! I know you now! You’re