Jakob the Liar Read Online Free PDF

the night, nothing added and nothing withheld. He omits his brief imprisonment in the doorjamb, keeps to essentials, nothing either about the man who took him to the duty officer, a minor figure in the story, only about the duty officer himself, who must have been human and hence a weak link in the otherwise logical chain of evidence. He had looked at the clock like a human being and then, like a human being, told Jacob to go home.
    And then to his horror Jacob sees that there is no stopping Mischa now. The only way is through certainty, and already the soldiers are facing each other. The enemy must be caught off guard, when his attention is at a low point. Mischa is crouching, ready to leap, certainty and the Russians are far away; the only thing left for Jacob to do is grab Mischa and hold on to his leg. They both fall to the ground, and Jacob sees the hatred in Mischa’s eyes: he has ruined his chance, at least he is trying to. Mischa wrenches himself free, nothing can stop him now, and he thrusts Jacob away.
    “I have a radio!” says Jacob.
    It’s not the sentries who have fired. So far, busy with their changeover ritual, they haven’t seen a thing — Jacob has fired, a bullet straight to the heart. A lucky shot from the hip without taking proper aim, yet it found its mark. Mischa sits there motionless: the Russians are two hundred and fifty miles from here, near some place called Bezanika, and Jacob has a radio. They sit on the ground staring at each other: there never was any freight car with potatoes, no one has ever waited for the sentries to be relieved, quite suddenly tomorrow is another day. Although it is still true, of course, that opportunity and risk are two sides of the same coin, one would have to be crazy to forget that there must be some sort of healthy relationship between the two.
    They go on sitting for a bit, Mischa with a blissful smile in his eyes, the result of Jacob’s handiwork. Jacob gets up; they can’t sit there indefinitely. He is angrier than ever. He has been forced to launch irresponsible claims, and it’s that ignorant idiot who has forced him, just because he didn’t believe him, because he suddenly had a craving for potatoes. He’ll tell Mischa the truth all right, not this minute but sometime today, no matter whether that freight car is still there tomorrow or not. Within an hour in fact, an hour at most, maybe even sooner, he’ll tell him the truth. Let the fellow enjoy a few more carefree minutes, not that he deserves them. Soon he won’t be able to live without that happiness, then Jacob will tell him the truth, and Mischa will have to believe what went on at the military office. After all, that doesn’t change anything about the Russians; he’ll have to believe it.
    “Pull yourself together and get up. And above all, keep your trap shut. You know what that means, a radio in the ghetto. Not a soul must find out about it.”
    Mischa couldn’t care less what that means, a radio in the ghetto. Even if a thousand regulations were to prohibit it on pain of death, let them — does that matter now, when suddenly tomorrow is another day?
    “Oh, Jacob …”
    The corporal in command of the sentry detail sees a lanky fellow sitting on the ground, just sitting there, hasn’t even collapsed, propping himself on his hands and staring up into the sky. The corporal straightens his tunic and comes striding toward them, little fellow that he is.
    “Watch out!” Jacob cries, nodding toward the danger approaching in all its dignity.
    Mischa regains his senses, comes down to earth, gets up, knows what is about to happen but can’t keep the look of pleasure off his face. He busies himself with the crates, is about to tip one on its side, when the corporal hits him from the side. Mischa turns toward him; the corporal is a head shorter than he and has trouble reaching up to hit Mischa in the face. It almost verges on the comical, not suitable for a German newsreel, more like a scene