Psalm 44

She knew, therefore, that Jakob wasn’t going to protest now but also wasn’t going to be lulled into complacency; and anyway it was high time for Dr. Nietzsche to start whatever he had come to Jakob for at that time of night, the real conversation he wanted to have, just between them, a confidential talk, as though between colleagues; that is, that thing on account of which he had right till this moment been hemming and hawing and mincing around Jakob with his little short sword, but in a conciliatory way, as if he were only playing, though Jakob had to feel the danger too, or else he wouldn’t have said, a little earlier, “If I were to forget that even for a minute. .” a comment he didn’t finish although it had to mean something, but Dr. Nietzsche would have to get to the point at last if for no other reason than because Jakob would challenge him eventually for he surely hadn’t forgotten that he’d locked Marija in the cabinet, and he knew that she couldn’t stand there like that forever but was going to collapse or cry out or give a loud moan; and then she thought that maybe it was a good thing that she too — even though it came at the cost of so great an effort and so many trials — was in attendance at this secret duel, this dangerous game in which one of the players has a jack of spades with two swords on his side and the other has only the imaginary shield of a poker face and his intellect and perhaps of time as well: if the Allied forces somewhere in Europe or in the Urals or the Pacific didn’t manage to remove several tens of thousands of jacks of clubs, clad in tunics and armed with their two swords, from the deck, and soon, thereby joining forces with time (the ace of hearts), Dr. Nietzsche would have his two SS men work Jakob over — in spades — as punishment for his disobedience and his passive resistance, and Marija would remain there in that cabinet bleeding out like a slaughtered lamb hung upside down on a hook. And for an instant she wondered how this game without rules would evolve if she weren’t there; she decided that even if she bled to death and so stopped eavesdropping and spying on the game, invisible but present, even then they would, nonetheless, still feel her mute presence (in the same way that she now felt the presence of Polja’s corpse in the barracks), her testimony or her accusation: Jakob would then, if only that one time, give a different response, even though it might only vary by a shade from the one he threw back at Dr. Nietzsche now, in front of her.

The chair scraped anew and she saw the unseen skull of Dr. Nietzsche and his graying locks á la Schopenhauer, as she had noted to herself the first time she saw him, as he looked angrily into Jakob’s invisible face:

“You are familiar with the situation on the front lines?” he said.

“One hears talk.”

“Unfortunately, it’s accurate,” Dr. Nietzsche said. “The Allies are advancing. You know that to be the case. No less so than I do.”

“It’s more that I have a premonition of it,” Jakob said.

“Yes, yes. You’re all. . You’re all Bergsonians, goddamn it.” He paused for a moment: “Intuition. . versus free will.”

“Ah,” Jakob continued. “Also sprach Zarathustra.”

“Never mind that now,” Dr. Nietzsche said nervously. “Let’s get down to cases; this conversation has led us far afield.”