Ivan stared up at the stage.
“Your father. Is that him?”
Ivan looked at Arthur, looked at Lindemann, looked back at Arthur. Then he nodded.
“Would you like to join me, Arthur?”
Arthur shook his head.
“You think you don’t want to. But you do. Believe me.”
Arthur laughed.
“It doesn’t hurt, it isn’t dangerous, you might even like it. Give us the pleasure.”
Arthur shook his head.
“Not at all curious?”
“It doesn’t work on me,” called Arthur.
“Perhaps not. Maybe that’s right, it can happen. All the more reason for you to come up here.”
“Take someone else.”
“But I want you.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I want. Because you believe you don’t want to.”
Arthur shook his head.
“Come!”
“Go on,” whispered Eric.
“They’re all looking at us,” whispered Ivan.
“So what?” said Arthur. “Let them look. Why do children find everything embarrassing?”
“Let’s all say it together!” called Lindemann. “Send him up here to me, show him, clap if you think he should come. Clap loud!”
Wild applause erupted, with stamping of feet and calling, as if nothing were more important to everyone than getting Lindemann’s wish granted, as if none of them could imagine anything more satisfying than seeing Arthur up on stage. The noise achieved a crescendo as more and more voices joined in: people were clapping and yelling. Arthur didn’t budge.
“Please!” cried Eric.
“Please go,” said Martin. “Please!”
“Only for you,” said Arthur, and got to his feet. He worked his way through the howling crowd to the center aisle, walked to the steps, and climbed them. Lindemann made a rapid gesture and the racket ceased.
“You’re going to have bad luck with me,” said Arthur.
“Possibly.”
“It really doesn’t work.”
“That nice boy. That was your son?”
“I’m sorry. I’m the wrong person. You want someone who feels awkward at first, and then chats with you and tells you things about himself, so that you can turn him into a joke and make everyone laugh. Why don’t we skip all that? You can’t hypnotize me. I know how it works. A little pressure, a little curiosity, the need to belong, the fear of doing something wrong. But not with me.”
Lindemann said nothing. The lenses of his glasses glinted under the spotlights.
“Can they hear us?” Arthur pointed to the three motionless bodies.
“They’re busy with other things.”
“And that’s what you’d like to do with me too? Give me another life?”
Ivan wondered how his father was managing to let them all understand every word he said. He had no microphone and he was speaking softly, yet he was completely audible. He stood there calmly as if he were alone with the hypnotist and allowed to ask whatever he wanted. Nor did he seem to be absentminded anymore. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
Lindemann, on the contrary, looked unsure of himself for the first time. He was still smiling, but frown lines had appeared on his forehead. Gingerly he took off his glasses, put them on again, took them off once more, folded them up, and pushed them into his breast pocket behind the green handkerchief. He raised his right hand and held it over Arthur’s forehead.
“Look at my hand.”
Arthur smiled.
The sound of giggling spread through the audience. Lindemann grimaced for a moment. “Look at my hand, look at it, look at my hand. Just my hand, nothing else, just at my hand.”
“I don’t notice anything.”
“Nor should you.” Lindemann sounded agitated. “Just look! Look at my hand, my hand, nothing else.”
“You’re focusing my consciousness on itself, aren’t you? That’s the trick. My attention is focused on my own attention. A slipknot, and suddenly, it’s impossible …”
“Are those your sons down there?”
“Yes.”
“What are their names?”
“Ivan, Eric, and Martin.”
“Ivan and Eric?”
“The Knights of the Round Table.”
“Tell us about yourself.”
Arthur said nothing.
“Tell us about yourself,” Lindemann said again. “We’re all friends here.”
“There’s not much to say.”
“What a pity. How sad, if true.”
Lindemann lowered his hand, bent forward, and looked at Arthur in the face. Everything was very quiet, the only sound was a faint hiss, perhaps from the air-conditioning, perhaps from the electrical current to the spotlights. Lindemann took a step back, a board creaked, one of the sleeping bodies groaned.
“What do you do for a living?”
Arthur said nothing.
“Or don’t you have a job?”
“I write.”
“Books?”
“If what I write got printed, they’d be books.”
“Rejections?”
“A few.”
“That’s bad.”
“No, it doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t bother you at all?”
“I’m not that ambitious.”
“Really?”
Arthur said nothing.
“You don’t look as if you’d settle for a little. You might want to believe that of yourself, but actually you don’t. What do you really want? We’re all friends here. What do you want?”
“To get away.”
“From here?”
“From everywhere.”
“From home?”
“From everywhere.”
“It doesn’t sound as if you’re happy.”
“Who’s happy?”
“Please answer.”
“No.”
“Not happy?”
“No.”
“Say that again.”
“I’m not happy.”
“Why do you stick it out?”
“What else is there to do?”
“Run?”
“You can’t just keep running.”
“Why not?”
Arthur didn’t reply.
“And your children? Do you love them?”
“You have to.”
“Right. You have to. All of them equally?”
“Ivan more.”
“Why?”
“He’s more like me.”
“And your wife? We’re all friends here.”
“She likes me.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“She earns money for us, she takes care of everything, where would I be without her?”
“Free perhaps?”
Arthur said nothing.
“What do you think of me? You didn’t want to come up onto the stage, and now you’re standing here. You thought it wouldn’t work on you. What do you think now? For example, of me?”
“A little man. Insecure about everything, which is why you are what you are. Because without all this here, you’d be nothing. Because you stutter whenever you’re not up here.”
Lindemann was silent for a while, as if giving the audience the chance to laugh, but there wasn’t a sound. His face looked white and waxy; Arthur stood very straight, his arms by his sides, stock-still.
“And your work? Your writing? Arthur, what is it with all that?”
“Not important.”
“Why not?”
“A hobby. No reason to fuss about it.”
“It doesn’t bother you that your work doesn’t get published?”
“No.”
“That you aren’t any good? It doesn’t bother you?”
Arthur took a small step back.
“You think you have no ambition? But maybe it would be better if you did, Arthur. Maybe ambition would be an improvement, maybe you should b
e good, maybe you should admit to yourself that you want to be good, maybe you should make the effort, maybe you should work at it, maybe you should change your life. Change everything. Change everything, Arthur. What do you think?”
Arthur said nothing.
Lindemann moved even closer to him, went up on tiptoe and put his face close to Arthur’s. “This superiority. Why make the effort, is what you’ve always thought, isn’t it? But now? Now that your youth is over, now that everything you do carries weight, now that there’s no time to be casual anymore, what now? Life is over very quickly, Arthur. And it gets squandered even more quickly. What needs to happen? Where do you want to go?”
“Away.”
“From here?”
“From everywhere.”
“Then listen to me.” Lindemann put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “This is an order, and you’re going to follow it because you want to follow it, and you want to because I’m ordering you, and I’m ordering you because you want me to give the order. Starting today, you’re going to make an effort. No matter what it costs. Repeat!”
“No matter what it costs.”
“Starting today.”
“Starting today,” said Arthur. “No matter what it costs.”
“With everything you’ve got.”
“No matter what it costs.”
“And what just happened here shouldn’t bother you. You can think back on it quite cheerfully. Repeat.”
“Cheerfully.”
“And it really isn’t important. It’s all a game, Arthur, just fun. A way to pass the time on an afternoon. Just like your writing. Like everything people do. I’m going to clap my hands three times, then you can go and sit down.”
Lindemann clapped his hands: once, twice, three times. There was no sign of any change in Arthur. He stood just as he had before, back straight, his neck tilted slightly backward. There wasn’t a sound to be heard. Hesitantly, he turned around and went down the steps. Gradually timid applause broke out here and there, but once Arthur had reached his seat, it crescendoed into a thunder. Lindemann bowed and pointed to Arthur. Arthur imitated him with an empty smile and bowed back.
That was what was so wonderful about his métier, said Lindemann when the noise had finally died down. One never knew what the day would bring, one could never foresee the demands that would be made on one. But now finally for the high point, the star turn. With a light touch on her cheek he woke the sleeping woman and asked what she had experienced.
She sat up, but after a few sentences the excitement took her breath away. She panted, sobbed, gasped for air. In tears, she described a life as a farmer’s wife in the Caucasus, and a hard childhood in the winter cold, she spoke about her brothers and sisters, her father and mother, her husband, the animals, and the snow.
“Can we go?” whispered Ivan.
“Yes, please,” said Eric.
“Why?”
“Please,” said Martin. “Please, let’s go! Please.”
As they stood up, there was the sound of snickering in the audience. Eric clenched his fists and said to himself that he was only imagining it, while Martin understood for the very first time that people could be mean-spirited and spiteful, taking malicious pleasure in things for no reason at all. They could also be spontaneously good, friendly, and supportive, and both these qualities could exist simultaneously in the same person. But above all, people were dangerous. This realization would stay with him permanently, bound up forever with a memory of Lindemann’s face looking down from the stage at their departure, as he polished his glasses with the green handkerchief. At the very moment Martin, bringing up the rear, was leaving the theater, he caught Lindemann’s expression: eyebrows arched, smiling, wet tongue peeping from a corner of his mouth. Then there was a little click and the door closed behind him.
The whole way home, Arthur beat time on the steering wheel and whistled. Martin sat very straight next to him, while Ivan stared out of one window and Eric out of the other. Twice Arthur asked what on earth had upset them, why they’d wanted to leave, and why in the world children found everything so embarrassing, but when no one replied, he just said there were some things he’d never understand. That woman, he cried, that idiotic story about the Russian farm, all laid on far too thick, obviously she worked in cahoots with the hypnotist, childishly easy to see through, who would believe stuff like that! He turned on the radio, then turned it off again, then on again, and then, not very long afterward, off again.
“Did you know,” he asked, “that the condor flies higher than any other birds?”
“No,” said Eric. “I didn’t know.”
“So high that sometimes it’s no longer visible from the ground. As high as a plane. Sometimes so high, that the distance above it is shorter than the distance below.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Ivan. “Above it to where?”
“You know, above it!” Arthur rubbed his forehead. For a few seconds he steered with his eyes closed.
“I don’t understand,” said Martin.
“What’s there to understand? I’d rather you tell me about school and how it’s going, you never say anything.”
“Everything’s fine,” said Martin quietly.
“No problems, no difficulties?”
“No.”
Arthur played with the radio again. “So!” he cried. “Out!”
Martin, Eric, and Ivan looked at one another in surprise. Only now did they realize that they were in front of Martin’s house.
Martin got out.
“Us too?” asked Ivan.
“Of course.”
The twins got out rather hesitantly; only Arthur remained sitting where he was. Eric looked down at his shoes. An ant was following a crack in the asphalt, and a gray beetle was crossing its path. Tread on the beetle, said a voice in his head, tread on it, quick—tread on the beetle and then maybe everything will still be all right. He lifted his foot, but then set it down again and spared the beetle’s life.
Arthur wound down the car window. “All my sons.” He laughed, wound the window back up, and put his foot on the gas.
The three of them watched the car drive off, getting smaller until it disappeared around the corner. For a while, nobody said anything.
“How do we get out of here?” Ivan asked finally.
“Five streets over there’s a bus,” said Martin. “After seven stops you change to another bus, then it’s three stops, then you can switch to the subway.”
“Can we come in with you?” asked Eric.
Martin shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Mama’s a bit funny about that sort of thing.”
“We’re your brothers.”
“Exactly.”
But when they rang the doorbell anyway, Martin’s mother came to grips with the situation surprisingly quickly. It was unbelievable, she kept saying, impossible to take in, like two peas in a pod. She gave the twins Coca-Cola and a plateful of sugary gummy bears, which they ate so as not to be rude, and of course she allowed Ivan to use the phone to call home.
After that they went to Martin’s room and he got out the little air gun that Arthur had given him just a few months before and that he kept well hidden from his mother. The three of them positioned themselves at the window and took turns aiming at the tree that was slowly disappearing in the darkness on the edge of the street. Eric scored twice on the trunk and twice just leaves, Ivan hit the trunk twice but no leaves. Martin hit one leaf but not the trunk, and gradually they began to feel that they were related, and realized what it meant to be brothers.
And a car was already pulling up with a sharp honking of its horn to summon Eric and Ivan down the stairs and into the street. When their mother asked them what had happened and where their father was, they didn’t know how to answer her. It wasn’t until a telegram arrived from Arthur shortly after midnight that she got the two of them out of bed and made them tell her all about it.
Arthur had ta
ken his passport and all the money in their joint account. There were only two sentences in the telegram: First, he was fine, no need for concern. Second, they shouldn’t wait for him, he wouldn’t be coming back for a long time. And in fact none of his sons set eyes on him again until they were grown up. But the following years did see the publication of the books that made Arthur Friedland’s name famous.
The Lives of the Saints
I confess. I hear their voices, but see nothing because the sun coming through the windows is blinding. The altar boy next to me yawns. That I have sinned through my own fault. Now I have to yawn too, but I suppress it and clench my jaw so hard that tears form in my eyes.
In my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and what I have failed to do.
In a moment the light will fall at a deeper slant, and with it a little group of people emerges from the sea of shadows: the five old women who always come, the friendly fat man, the sad young woman, and the fanatic. His name is Adrian Schlueter. He often sends me handwritten letters on expensive paper. He’s obviously not yet heard of emails.
Forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life. I can’t get used to having to get up so early. The organ starts with a drone. We worship You, we give You thanks. I miss most of the notes, but that’s a given in my profession, almost all priests sing badly. We praise You for Your glory. The organ falls silent. While we’ve been singing, the sun has risen higher, multicolors flicker brilliantly in the windows, thin blades of light flash through the air, each bearing a tiny blizzard of dust. It’s so early still, and yet so hot. Summer is at its merciless height. With the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. The yawning altar boy lays the missal on the lectern. If it were up to me, the poor boy would still be in bed. It’s Friday, I don’t have to give a sermon, so now I say: The Word of the Lord. The congregation sits, and Martha Frummel comes to the front, seventy-eight years old, she does the morning reading every second day.
First Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians. When I came to you, brothers, proclaiming the mystery of God, I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom. Martha Frummel is a gentle, good woman, perhaps even one of the Just of the World, but she has a voice like a barrel organ. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling, and my message and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of spirit and power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.