See Under David Grossman (free ebook reader TXT) 📖

“I’ll bring you plants and seeds,” says Neigel. “Tomorrow you’ll start hoeing and clearing. The soil here is hard and stony. It’s high time we did something about it.” “Yes, your honor.” “I’ll order petunias. You know petunias? I hope they’ll grow here. My wife grows them in the window box.” “As you wish, Commander.” “And radishes, too, of course. I like radishes. Especially the small red ones, crisp when you crunch them between your teeth, ah!” And while he speaks thus, waxing enthusiastic, Wasserman tries desperately to remember whether radishes grow on bushes or on trees.

“Ai, Shleimeleh, again I reflected how much my Sarah could have helped me with this awesome task. How would I ever be able to write without her wisdom and intelligence? She was such a fountain of knowledge, it was extraordinary. Et, before we met I used to spend days on end in the Lutheran library in Warsaw, looking up facts and details. I am scatterbrained by nature, and have a terrible memory, and compared to me, Zalmanson was as pedantic as the School of Shammai.”Accuracy, my little Wasserman, ac-cu-ra-cy!” he used to repeat in my ears before Sarah’s day, underlining with a venomous stroke of the pen, phrases like “the princess’s tunic”! “We mean ‘the princess’s ballgown,’ do we not, my little Wasserman? A tunic is a short coat. Does your princess go off to the ball in a tunic? Oy, mein kleiner Wasserman, if only you would look at women in the street, if only you would undress them and take their garments off, one by one, you would find better things to write about than princesses and fairies …”

“And then my Sarah came along, and my stories were exceedingly enriched. They glittered with a thousand brilliant hues! In a very littlewhile I learned the difference between turquoise and Bordeaux, between linen and cotton, and between Antarctica (which lies by the South Pole) and Alaska (which lies by the north. Or is it the other way around? I forget!), or the difference between various Italian dishes, e.g., spaghetti and macaroni, one of which is a thinner variety, and I learned that elephants sleep on their feet, and that in scientific books the white race is called Caucasian; ai, there was nothing my Sarah did not know, a mind like a cistern that loses not a drop: she furnished and adorned her mind beyond her youthful years! And through her, my writing became more ‘earthy,’ in the elevated sense of the word, and I remember, Shleimeleh, ah, something insignificant really, but since I thought of it, I will tell you—namely, how filled I was with poetic inspiration when I wrote the words ‘Robin Hood in fine array danced the first waltz with the rich and comely Marchioness Elizabeth, and his heart kept time: one, two, three; one, two, three,’ ah, like honey!”

Later Neigel informs Wasserman that he will not be returning to Keizler’s lower camp anymore, and will reside from now on in the second-floor storeroom of Neigel’s barracks, and that Anna, the Polish cook, will prepare one hot meal for him a day. “So you can’t say I don’t look out for my intelligentsia, Scheissemeister!”

I should also describe Neigel showing the writer around his new quarters—a tiny hole in the attic, at the top of a flight of wooden stairs behind the barracks. Wasserman climbs heavily up, opens the small door, and recoils with a grimace of pain. (“Paper. I smelled the smell of paper, reams of paper!”), and he calls down to Neigel and asks permission to use one of the many notebooks in storage there. He also asks for a pen. And when Neigel wonders (“What, you mean to tell me you won’t remember the story otherwise?”), Wasserman enacts a scene that must have come out of some gladiator film he saw in Warsaw: descending the rickety stairs as erectly as possible, he pronounces with all the gravity he can muster in a nasal, monotonous voice, “I am an artist, your honor. An artist who polishes every letter a thousand times!” And Neigel mutters, “Of course, of course,” so Wasserman returns to the attic and comes back holding a brown notebook with a picture of a big eagle and the legend Property of the Quartermaster Corps / SS / Eastern Division. And Neigel, with a gesture at first casual and eventually grand (“Esau felt he was dubbing me thus his knight of the realm of literature”), takes his own pen, a steel Adler, glory of the HapsburgEmpire, out of his pocket and offers it to Wasserman, as they stand looking into each other’s eyes. (Wasserman: “When I held the pen in my hand I knew: I will vanquish him. And if I can prevent him from using me like Scheingold the musician, who fawns all over the officers and wags his tail, and who even turned informer, they say, and slanders his fellow prisoners—but to be truthful, Shleimeleh, I was afraid. A just man knows the heat of the beast within, and though it filled me with loathing, I knew myself to have been a toady, Zalmanson’s toady, and I could not stop myself, feh, wretch that I am!”)

Neigel looks at the Jew, whose eyes are suddenly shut tight. Though I don’t know what he is thinking now, I suppose there is something about this weak old man that is vaguely troubling to the determined Nazi officer. He leans over Wasserman and whispers emphatically, “A story with Otto and Paula, right?” “With Fried and Sergei of the golden hands and Harotian, too.” “Harotian? Who’s that?” “The little Armenian fellow. A sweet magician, have you forgotten him?” “Oh, right. The boy who played the flute for Beethoven.” “That is so. And there will be others, naturally.”

“Who?!”

Neigel squints suspiciously, and Wasserman is quick to reassure him, “Boon companions all, your honor, do not forget that a mighty task awaits