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“I really haven’t the slightest idea,” Neigel says with a cold, crafty smile, “but I have no doubt you’ll think of something good. I can’t tell you what to make up, can I? You see? There are things even I can’t order you to do.” And the idea seems rather to appeal to him.

Anshel Wasserman, nearly fainting, suggests a compromise (“I will tell your honor the old stories”), which is summarily rejected. In anguish he proposes another compromise, a silly one (“I will tell your honor Wilhelm Auf’s Scheherazade stories. Ach, delightful! ‘Kalif Chasida’ and ‘Little Mok,’ ai, your honor will be pleased!”), but Neigel dismisses these evasions with a crass-sounding argument (“I want fresh goods, Wasserman”), and for a moment there is silence, and we both think Wasserman. is about to accept the offer, only once again he surprises us and declares, “I am grateful for this generous offer, your honor, eppes, what applies to Scheherazade does not apply to me, for the simple reason that the same lovely maiden wished very much to live, which was why she told the sultan her stories, whereas I, on the contrary, wish very much to die, heaven forbid.”

Neigel gives him a good, long look. He rubs his chin and repeats his “unique offer” in a quiet, well-modulated voice: “The best you’ll get in your situation anywhere in the Reich,” and hesitates another moment before tossing another idea into the room: “Every evening, after you tell me more of the story, I am willing to try to kill you. One shot in the head. That will be your reward, understand? Like the other Scheherazade, only exactly the reverse. Every evening I will shoot you, on condition that your story is a good one. Sooner or later it’s bound to work, isn’t it?” and he leans back in his chair and calmly looks at Wasserman, allowing the feeble author to bow under the weight of the idea, and to tell the truth, I can’t help admiring the man’s initiative, though Wasserman, with a certain peevishness, is not at all prepared to see the exquisite literary malice of the offer, and he scolds me, “Feh, Shleimeleh, ashes in your mouth, it is a human life he speaks of so complacently, this yekke, wicked Armilus! It is my life and …” and he musters his remaining strength to whisper, “And what will happen, your honor, if one night, heaven forbid, my story is not a success?” And Neigel says, “You’ll stay alive for one more day,” staring boldly at Wasserman. “I want you to know,” he adds, “that I’ll make sure youwon’t have any opportunity to do away with yourself along the way. And I can assure you that no officer or soldier in this camp will ever try to kill you. You will be protected here, as in a warm nest.” And again he smiles.

And Wasserman sighs, having quickly weighed the situation and concluded that there is no way out, and declares sincerely that “if I must tell a story, sir, in order to die, I am ready and willing.”

But “Liar! Wretched liar!” screams somebody inside Wasserman, and the author allows him to continue. (“Say thank you, wretched liar, that no sooner had the word ‘story’ left Neigel’s mouth than it fanned the cold, dying embers of your life. A new story! New ideas, new plots and drafts and your pen dancing on the paper, and sleepless nights of thinking and reflecting and all the subtle pleasures of the soul! And it will be seven times more wonderful after ten fallow years to sit down at a desk, here of all places! Here! In the bowels of hell!”), and Wasserman nods at the German officer and informs him that he is willing to tell him a story, about those Children of the Heart, only not as Neigel remembers them from childhood but as fully adult. And when Neigel fails to understand, Wasserman explains with strange assurance, as though he had long awaited this moment and inwardly rehearsed the words till they were fluent, “The kids grew up to be goats, your honor, as we, too, have, only they aged quicker. This happens in books sometimes, and now they are sixty-five or even seventy years old, may they live to be a hundred and twenty, or to a very ripe old age, at least.” And Neigel, concerned by what seems to him an unnecessary complication, asks, “Maybe you could let them stay young all the same?” And Anshel Wasserman with a bitter laugh says, “Nothing in this world stays as young as it used to be. Even babes burst out of their dams already old.” And Neigel asks if the Children of the Heart will continue to do the same fantastic things together, and Wasserman promises that the things they do now will be even more fantastic. And Neigel says, “Isn’t that, I don’t know, a little childish?” And the writer, outraged: “Sir!”

“Don’t get so insulted, Scheissemeister,” says Neigel. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” And Wasserman swallows hard and makes the most of this extraordinary apology to inform him with lowered eyes that “the commander will not have a say-so in my story. This I must make clear from the start, otherwise—it is over.” And the Nazi officerwe know so little about nods his heavy head and says, “Naturally, Scheherazade, naturally. There’s a name for that, isn’t there? ‘Poetic license’ you artists call it, right?”

Wasserman studies him anxiously. I, too, am anxious. “Poetic license” doesn’t seem to either of us to belong on the intellectual menu of a Nazi officer. He may have been quoting someone. I’ll probably know more about him when I get under his skin, as I did so easily with Wasserman. It’s my duty, after all. As Ayala said, In the White Room everything comes out of your own self, out of your own guts, victim and murderer, compassion and cruelty … soon, then. Meanwhile,