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us, your bedā€™s an act of God, an avalanche.ā€

ā€œPlease, the table, on the table, not thereā€”ā€

But she had already turned the white plastic bag upside down. A cascade of papers spilled over the humps and ridges of his quilt.

His fatherā€™s handwriting. The writingā€”the lettersā€”growing out of his fatherā€™s true hand. Crossed-out words all over. He pitied each one: discarded, canceled, exiled. A beastā€”a sort of apeā€”began to jump inside his frame, from rib to rib: could it only be this pump, this pump of a heart? An inward ape heaving itself about. Beating with its fists, crashing. Exultation! And pity, pity. These old sheets, his fatherā€™s poor old foolscap, had been through water, he saw. Wrinkled dead skins, rubbed, creased, drowned.

ā€œTheyā€™ve gotten wet,ā€ he said.

ā€œTheir cellar was flooded once. The woman with the shoesā€”she was only a peasant woman, her husband delivered milkā€”ā€

ā€œIn Warsaw?ā€ The ape, blind and berserk.

ā€œIn Drohobycz. A man in a long black coat paid the husband to dig under their cellar in the middle of the night. You know the kind of flat metal box menā€™s garters used to be sold in? Long ago? The papers were in one of those. A drygoods box, the husband buried it under the cellar floor. The man in the coat said he would come back for it when the war was over and pay them some more, but he never did.ā€

The Messiah: those scattered bruised pages. Leaves and leavings, nullified. Swallowed up. And resurrected now, on his own bed! The bed of rebirthā€”where, a hundred times before, the greased beak had seized him and thrust him under his fatherā€™s terrible eye.

ā€œItā€™s enough,ā€ Lars said. ā€œItā€™s not the point.ā€

ā€œDonā€™t you want to hear credentials? You said credentials. Itā€™s how I got the manuscript.ā€

ā€œI donā€™t care about how. Itā€™s why. Why should you have it? Who are you to have it?ā€

ā€œHe gave it to me. The husband.ā€

ā€œHe gave it to you in Drohobycz?ā€

She spread her arms as wide as geography. ā€œNot the Drohobycz husband. The Warsaw husband.ā€

The north light, knifing through his narrow windowā€”he had a window, an archerā€™s slitā€”sent a bright scimitar across his bed: the light was too cold, too sharp. A winter sharpness coursed like a spray of icicles over the peaks and valleys of his quilt. Her arms, stretched out, were contriving a cloud over his fatherā€™s words. His fatherā€™s words, under her shadow.

ā€œYou wonā€™t let me tell it,ā€ she argued.

And told: she went on telling itā€”it didnā€™t occur to Lars to disbelieve or believe. Here was The Messiah; here. It was here. He thought of that. The story went on: he believed it, he didnā€™t believe it. How the womanā€™s husband died of a stroke, after the war, when there were no more Jews in Drohobycz. Deported, perished. All the Jews, all the hasidim in their long black coatsā€”gassed, undone. How the man in the long black coat never came back to fetch the box. How the box had gone out of the womanā€™s headā€”she was only a peasant woman, what was it to her? Her head was busy with selling her little house, no bigger than a hut, with a cellar that was damp and easy to dig up; then she went off to Warsaw to get work. In Warsaw she became a domestic, what else could she do? The box was left in Drohobycz, under the earthā€”she didnā€™t give it a thought, why should she? The man in the long black coat never came back. It was the new people, the people who had bought the houseā€”well, the cellar had a dirt floor, they started to lay cement down there, and the pickaxe threw up the box with its papers. They imagined it was a will when they opened it, a Jewā€™s will, and they set out to find the woman in Warsaw, supposing she would reward them for restoring the papers; the papers might mean something; they might mean a legacy. The Jews when they went away left their valuables behind, everyone knew thisā€”sometimes even their pots, pots with false bottoms, in which they hid their gold. But by then, in Warsaw, the woman had married again, she had a new husband and had moved away, to a brand-new flat on the other side of the city, in the rebuilt neighborhood where the Ghetto had stood. Where the Ghetto had fallen. Clean new flats in that place, no one could tell anything at all from the looks of it; the Ghetto was buried and gone; it was a nice new neighborhood.

ā€œThe woman told you all this?ā€

ā€œThe husband. When I came there it was much later, the woman was dead, she had died. Thatā€™s how I came there, because she died in Tosiek Glowkoā€™s kitchen. His wifeā€™s kitchen. Tosiek Glowko was my motherā€™s special friend all the time we lived in Warsaw. All my motherā€™s special friends are youngerā€”she canā€™t help it, thatā€™s how she is, sheā€™s always been that way, except when she was young herself. The woman died of a stroke just like the Drohobycz husband. She was scrubbing a wall.ā€

Lars was quiet: it was as if the foreign ape had calmed itself, and was now swinging tranquilly in his breast. He was relieved. He sank down under her flow. Did he believe any of it? It made him think of Heidiā€™s fence, Heidi with her arms flung out just this way, insisting and insisting.

ā€œThat boxā€ā€”her arms passed over his quilt, over the twisted papersā€”ā€œwell, itā€™s gone. Lost. I looked everywhere for it. In every closet and cabinet of that flat. The husband let me look, he didnā€™t care. He was in a hurry to get rid of every bit of it. Thatā€™s how I found the pages in the shoesā€”looking for the box.ā€ And went on, then, with the cadence of it, the mad consecutiveness: how the box was carried to Warsaw by the people who had bought the womanā€™s house, how when they showed her the box she was outragedā€”it

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