The Kindly Ones

ordered Hanning.
At the foot of the Mashuk, I sent Hanning back to the AOK and went by the Academic Gallery to the Pushkin baths, which the Wehrmacht had partially reopened for its convalescents. There I stripped naked and plunged my body into the scalding, brackish, sulfurous water. I stayed in it for a long time and then rinsed myself off in a cold shower. This treatment reinvigorated my body and soul: my skin was mottled red and white, and I felt more awake, almost light. I returned to my quarters and lay down for an hour, my feet crossed on the sofa, facing the open French window. Then I changed and went down to the AOK to find the car I had requested that morning. On the way, I smoked and contemplated the volcanoes and the soft blue mountains of the Caucasus. Night was already setting in; it was fall. Entering Kislovodsk, the road passed the Podkumok; below, peasants’ carts were fording the river; the last one, just a board on wheels, was pulled by a camel with long hair and a thick neck. Hohenegg was waiting for me at the Kasino. “You look fit,” he said when he saw me.—“I’m a new man. But I had a strange day.”—“Tell me all about it.” Two bottles of white wine from the Palatinate were waiting next to the table in ice buckets: “I had those sent to me by my wife.”—“You’re in a class by yourself, Doktor.” He uncorked the first one: the wine was cool and bit the tongue, leaving behind it a fruity caress. “How is your conference going?” I asked him.—“Very well. We’ve gone over cholera, typhus, and dysentery, and now we’re coming to the painful subject of frostbite.”—“It’s not the season for that yet.”—“It will be soon enough. And you?” I told him about the old Bergjude. “A wise man, this Nahum ben Ibrahim,” he commented when I had finished. “We can envy him.”—“You’re probably right.” Our table was placed right against a partition; behind it was a private booth, from which laughter and bursts of indistinct voices were emanating. I drank a little wine. “Still,” I added, “I have to admit that I had trouble understanding him.”—“Not me,” Hohenegg asserted. “You see, in my view there are three possible attitudes faced with this absurd life. First the at

attitude of the mass, hoi polloi, which simply refuses to see that life is a joke. They don’t laugh at it, but work, accumulate, masticate, defecate, fornicate, reproduce, get old, and die like oxen harnessed to the plow, as idiotic as they lived. That’s the large majority. Then there are those, such as me, who know that life is a joke and who have the courage to laugh at it, like the Taoists or your Jew. Finally there are those, and if my diagnosis is correct you are one of them, who know that life is a joke, but who suffer from it. It’s like your Lermontov, whom I’ve finally read: I zhizn takaya pustaya i glupaya shutka, he writes.” I knew enough Russian now to understand and complete the phrase: “He should have added: i grubaya, ‘an empty, stupid and dirty joke.’”—“He certainly thought of it. But it wouldn’t have scanned right.”—“Those who have that attitude do know, however, that the other laughing one exists,” I said.—“Yes, but they don’t manage to adopt it.”

the hole. “Now is it all right?” I finally asked. “A little more. I want a grave that’s as comfortable as my mother’s womb.”—“Hanning,” I called, “come spell me.” The pit was now chest level and he had to help me climb out. I put my jacket and cap back on, and smoked while Hanning started digging again. I kept looking at the mountains; I couldn’t get enough of the view. The old man was looking too. “You know, I was disappointed I wasn’t to be buried in my valley, near the Samur,” he said. “But now I understand that the angel is wise. This is a beautiful place.”—“Yes,” I said. I glanced to the side: Hanning’s rifle was lying on the grass next to his cap, as if abandoned. When Hanning’s head had just cleared the ground, the old man declared he was satisfied. I helped Hanning get out. “And now?” I asked.—“Now, you have to put me inside. What? You think God is going to send me a thunderbolt?” I turned to Hanning: “Rottwachtmeister. Put your uniform back on and shoot this man.” Hanning turned red, spat on the ground, and swore. “What’s wrong?”—“With respect, Herr Hauptsturmführer, for special tasks, I have to have an order from my superior.”—“Leutnant Reuter put you at my disposal.” He hesitated: “Well, all right,” he finally said. He put his jacket, his big crescent neck plate, and his cap back on, brushed off his pants, and seized his rifle. The old man had positioned himself at the edge of the grave, facing the mountains, and was still smiling. Hanning shouldered his rifle and aimed it at the old man’s neck. Suddenly I was overcome with anguish. “Wait!” Hanning lowered his rifle and the old man turned his head toward me. “And my grave,” I asked him, “have you seen that too?” He smiled: “Yes.” I sucked in my breath, I must have turned pale, a vain anguish filled me: “Where is it?” He kept smiling: “That, I won’t tell you.”—“Fire!” I shouted to Hanning. Hanning raised his rifle and fired. The old man fell like a marionette whose string has been cut all at once. I went up to the grave and leaned over: he was lying at the bottom like a sack, his head turned aside, still smiling a little into his blood-splattered beard; his open eyes, turned toward the wall of earth, were also laughing. I was trembling. “Close that up,” I curtly

Rottwachtmeister. There.” He gestured with his head: “And the old man there? Can’t he dig?”—“No. Go on, start digging.” Hanning set his rifle and cap down in the grass and headed to the place indicated. He spat onto his hands and began to dig. The old man was looking at the mountains. I listened to the rustling of the wind, the vague rumor of the city at our feet; I could also hear the sound of the shovel hitting earth, the fall of the clumps of earth thrown out, Hanning’s panting. I looked at the old man: he was standing facing the mountains and the sun, and was murmuring something. I looked at the mountains again. The subtle and infinite variations of blue tinting the slopes looked as if they could be read like a long line of music, with the summits marking time. Hanning, who had taken off his neck plate and jacket, was digging methodically and was now at knee level. The old man turned to me with a gay look: “Is it coming along?” Hanning had stopped digging and was blowing, leaning on his shovel. “Isn’t that enough, Herr Hauptsturmführer?” he asked. The hole seemed a good length now but was only a few feet deep. I turned to the old man: “Is that enough for you?”—“You’re joking! You aren’t going to give me a poor man’s grave, me, Nahum ben Ibrahim! Come on, you’re not a nepios.”—“Sorry, Hanning. You have to keep digging.”—“Tell me, Herr Hauptsturmführer,” he asked me before going back to work, “what language are you speaking to him in? It’s not Russian.”—“No, it’s Greek.”—“He’s a Greek?! I thought he was a Jew?”—“Go on, keep digging.” He went back to work with a curse. After about twenty minutes he stopped again, panting hard. “You know, Herr Hauptsturmführer, usually there are two men to do this. I’m no longer young.”—“Pass me the shovel and get out of there.” I took off my cap and jacket and took Hanning’s place in the ditch. Digging wasn’t something I had much experience of. It took me some minutes to find my pace. The old man leaned over me: “You’re doing it very badly. It’s obvious you’ve spent your life in books. Where I come from, even the rabbis know how to build a house. But you’re a good boy. I did well to go to you.” I dug; the earth had to be thrown out quite high up now, a lot of it fell back into

old man walked in front with a nimble, sure step; behind, the shovel on his shoulder, Hanning was panting heavily. When we emerged from the trees, I saw that the wind had chased the clouds away from the summit. A little farther on I turned around. The Caucasus barred the horizon. It had rained during the night, and the rain had finally swept away the ever-present summer haze, revealing the mountains, clear, majestic. “Stop daydreaming,” the old man said to me. I started walking again. We climbed for about half an hour. My heart was pounding wildly, I was out of breath, Hanning too; the old man seemed as fresh as a young tree. Finally we reached a kind of grassy terrace, a scant hundred meters or so from the top. The old man went forward and contemplated the view. This was the first time I really saw the Caucasus. Sovereign, the mountain chain unfurled like an immense sloping wall, to the very edge of the horizon; you felt as though if you squinted you could see the last mountains plunging into the Black Sea far to the right, and to the left into the Caspian. The hills were blue, crowned with pale-yellow, whitish ridges; the white Elbruz, an overturned bowl of milk, sat atop the peaks; a little farther away, the Kazbek loomed over Ossetia. It was as beautiful as a phrase of Bach. I looked and said nothing. The old man stretched out his hand to the east: “There, beyond the Kazbek, that’s Chechnya already, and afterward, that’s Daghestan.”—“And your grave, where is that?” He examined the flat terrace and took a few steps. “Here,” he said finally, stamping the ground with his foot. I looked at the mountains again: “This is a fine place to be buried, don’t you think?” I said. The old man had an immense, delighted smile: “Isn’t it?” I began to wonder if he wasn’t making fun of me. “You really saw it?”—“Of course!” he said indignantly. But I had the impression that he was laughing in his beard. “Then dig,” I said.—“What do you mean, ‘dig’? Aren’t you ashamed, meirakiske? Do you know how old I am? I could be the grandfather of your grandfather! I’d curse you rather than dig.” I shrugged and turned to Hanning, who was still waiting with the shovel. “Hanning. Dig.”—“Dig, Herr Hauptsturmführer? Dig what?”—“A grave,

taking you is beautiful. And then: Despite yourself, you have been formed in the body of your mother, and despite yourself, you have been born to come into the world. Immediately the child begins to cry. And why does he cry? Because of the world in which he had lived and which he is forced to leave. And as soon as he has left, the angel gives him a blow on the nose and extinguishes the light above his head, he makes the child leave in spite of himself and the child forgets all he has seen. And as soon as he leaves, he begins to cry. This blow on the nose the book talks about is this: the angel seals the lips of the child and this seal leaves a mark. But the child does not forget right away. When my son was three years old, a long time ago, I surprised him one night near his little sister’s cradle: ‘Tell me about God,’ he was saying. ‘I’m beginning to forget.’ That is why man must relearn everything about God through study, and that is why men become mean and kill each other. But the angel had me come out without sealing my lips, as you see, and I remember everything.”—“So you remember the place where you will be buried?” I asked. He smiled wide: “That is why I came here to see you.”—“And is it far from here?”—“No. I can show you, if you like.” I got up and took my cap: “Let’s go.”
Going out, I asked Reuter for a Feldgendarm; he sent me to his company chief, who pointed to a Rottwachtmeister: “Hanning! Go with the Hauptsturmführer and do what he says.” Hanning took his helmet and shouldered his rifle; he must have been close on to forty; his large metal half-moon plate bounced on his narrow chest. “We’ll need a shovel, too,” I added. Outside, I turned to the old man: “Which way?” He raised his finger to the Mashuk, whose summit, caught in a cloud bank, looked as if it were spitting out smoke: “That way.” Followed by Hanning, we climbed the streets to the last one, which encircles the mountain; there the old man pointed to the right, toward the Proval. Pine trees lined the road and at one place a little path headed into the trees. “It’s that way,” said the old man.—“Are you sure you’ve never come here before?” I asked him. He shrugged. The path climbed and zigzagged and the slope was steep. The

Rabbi Eliezer said, the thought of God does not fill the belly. Arabic I studied with the imams of the madrasas of Daghestan, and Greek, as well as Hebrew, from books. I never learned the language of the Jews of Poland, which is nothing but German, a language of Nyemtsi.”—“So you are truly a scholar.”—“Don’t make fun of me, meirakion. I too have read your Plato and your Aristotle. But I have read them along with Moses de Leon, which makes a big difference.” For some time I had been staring at his beard, square-cut, and especially his bare top lip. Something fascinated me: beneath his nose, his lip was smooth, without the usual hollow in the center, the philtrum. “How is it that your lip is like that? I’ve never seen that.” He rubbed his lip: “That? When I was born, the angel didn’t seal my lips. So I remember everything that happened before.”—“I don’t understand.”—“But you are well educated. It’s all written in the Book of the Creation of the Child, in the Lesser Midrashim. In the beginning, the man’s parents mate. That creates a drop into which God introduces the man’s spirit. Then the angel takes the drop in the morning to Paradise and at night to Hell, then he shows it where it will live on Earth and where it will be buried when God recalls the spirit he has sent. Then this is what is written. Excuse me if I recite badly, but I have to translate from the Hebrew, which you don’t know: But the angel always brings the drop back into the body of its mother and The Holy One, blessed be his name, closes the doors and bolts behind it. And The Holy One, blessed be his name, says to it: You will go up to there, and no further. And the child remains in his mother’s womb for nine months. Then it is written: The child eats everything the mother eats, drinks everything the mother drinks and does not eliminate any excrement, for if he did, it would make the mother die. And then it is written: And when the time comes when he must come into the world, the angel presents itself before him and says to him: Leave, for the time has come for your appearance in the world. And the spirit of the child replies: I have already said in front of the One who was there that I am satisfied with the world in which I have lived. And the angel replies: The world to which I am

from Germany.”—“And who was your father?” I smiled: “Why does my father interest you, old man?”—“How am I supposed to know who I’m talking to if I don’t know who your father is?” His Greek, I heard now, contained unusual turns of phrase, but I managed to understand it. I told him my father’s name and he seemed satisfied. Then I questioned him: “If your father fought with Shamil, you must be very old.”—“My father died gloriously in Dargo after killing dozens of Russians. He was a very pious man, and Shamil respected his religion. He said that we, the Dagh Chufuti, believe in God better than the Muslims do. I remember the day he declared that in front of his murid, at the mosque in Vedeno.”—“That’s impossible! You couldn’t have known Shamil yourself. Show me your passport.” He held out a document to me and I quickly leafed through it. “See for yourself! It’s written here that you were born in 1866. Shamil was already a prisoner of the Russians then, in Kaluga.” He took the passport calmly from my hands and slipped it into an inner pocket. His eyes seemed to be sparkling with humor and mischief. “How do you think a poor chinovnik”—he used the Russian term—“from Derbent, a man who never even finished elementary school, could know when I was born? He guessed I was seventy when he wrote up this paper, without asking me anything. But I am much older. I was born before Shamil roused the tribes. I was already a man when my father died in Dargo, killed by those Russian dogs. I could have taken his place by Shamil’s side, but I was already studying the law, and Shamil told me that he had enough warriors, but that he needed scholars too.” I had absolutely no idea what to think: he would have had to be at least 120 years old. “And Greek?” I asked again. “Where did you learn that?”—“Daghestan isn’t Russia, young officer. Before the Russians killed them without mercy, the greatest scholars in the world lived in Daghestan, Muslims and Jews. People came from Arabia, from Turkestan, and even from China to consult them. And the Dagh Chufuti are not the filthy Jews from Russia. My mother’s language is Farsi, and everyone speaks Turkish. I learned Russian to do business, for as

That same morning, Leutnant Reuter, an adjunct of Gilsa’s, came to my office: “We have a strange case that you should see. An old man, who presented himself here on his own. He’s talking about strange things and he says he’s Jewish. The Oberst suggested you interrogate him.”—“If he’s a Jew, he should be sent to the Kommando.”—“Maybe. But don’t you want to see him? I can assure you he’s surprising.” An orderly led the man in. He was a tall old man with a long white beard, still visibly vigorous; he wore a black cherkesska, a Caucasian peasant’s soft leather ankle boots tucked into rubber galoshes, and a handsome embroidered skullcap, purple, blue, and gold. I motioned to him to take a seat and, a little annoyed, asked the orderly: “He only speaks Russian, I suppose? Where is the Dolmetscher?” The old man looked at me with piercing eyes and said to me in strangely accented but understandable classical Greek: “You are an educated man, I see. You must know Greek.” Taken aback, I dismissed the orderly and replied: “Yes, I know Greek. And you? How do you come to speak this language?” He ignored my question. “My name is Nahum ben Ibrahim, from Magaramkend in the gubernatorya of Derbent. For the Russians, I took the name of Shamilyev, in honor of the great Shamil with whom my father fought. And you, what is your name?”—“My name is Maximilien. I come

For days on end