We were, as usual, on the brink of ruin. My father, the owner of a small grocery store, owed a substantial amount of money to one of his suppliers. And there was no way he could pay.
But if Father was short of money, he certainly wasn’t lacking in imagination. He was an intelligent, cultivated man with a cheerful disposition. He hadn’t finished school; fate had confined him to a modest grocery store where, amid baloneys and sausages, he bravely repulsed the attack of existence. His customers liked him because, among other reasons, he granted them credit and never exacted payment. With his suppliers, however, it was a different story. Those aggressive gentlemen wanted their money. The man to whom Father happened to owe money at that point in time was known as being a particularly ruthless creditor.
Any other person would have been driven to despair under the circumstances. Any other person would have considered running away, or even committing suicide. Not Father, though. Always the optimist, he was convinced that he would find a way of dealing with his creditor. This man must have a weakness, he would say, and that’s how we’re going to get him. By making some inquiries here and there, Father dug up something promising. This creditor, who to all appearances was a boorish and insensitive man, had a secret passion for Van Gogh. His house was full of reproductions of the work of the great painter. And he had seen the movie about the tragic life of the artist, with Kirk Douglas in the starring role, at least half a dozen times.
Father borrowed a biography of Van Gogh from the library and spent a whole weekend immersed in the book. Then, late on Sunday afternoon, the door of his bedroom opened, and he emerged, triumphant:
“I’ve found it!”
Taking me aside—at the age of twelve I was his confidant and accomplice—he then whispered, his eyes glittering:
“Van Gogh’s ear. His ear will save us.”
What are the two of you whispering about over there? asked Mother, who didn’t have much tolerance for what she called the shenanigans of her husband. Nothing, nothing, replied Father, and then to me, lowering his voice, I’ll explain later.
Which he did. As the story went, Van Gogh had cut his ear off in a fit of madness and then sent it to his beloved. This fact led Father to devise a scheme: He would go to his creditor and tell him that his great-grandfather, the lover of the woman with whom Van Gogh had fallen in love, had bequeathed him the mummified ear of the painter. Father was willing to let his creditor have this relic in exchange for the cancellation of his debt and the granting of additional credit. “What do you think?”
Mother was right: He lived in another world, in a fantasy world. However, the main problem wasn’t the absurdity of his idea; after all, since we were in such dire straits, anything was worth a try. Rather, it was something else that was open to question.
“But what about the ear?”
“The ear?” He looked at me astounded, as if the matter had never crossed his mind. Yes, I said, Van Gogh’s ear, where in the world are you going to get it? Ah, he said, no problem, we can easily get one from the morgue. A friend of mine works there, and he’ll do anything for me.
On the following day he left home early in the morning. He returned at noon, radiant, with a parcel which he then proceeded to unwrap carefully. It was a small jar willed with formaldehyde. Inside, there was something dark, of an indefinite shape. Van Gogh’s ear, he announced, triumphant.
And who would say it wasn’t? Anyhow, just in case, he stuck a label on the jar: Van Gogh—his ear.
In the afternoon the two of us headed for the creditor’s house. Father went in and I waited outside. Five minutes later he came out, disconcerted and indeed quite furious. The man had not only rejected the proposal, but he had also snatched the jar from my father and hurled it through the window.
“Of all the gall!”
On this point I had to agree with Father, although I had sort of expected such a denouement. We started to walk along the tranquil street, with Father muttering all the time: Of all the gall! Of all the gall! Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks, and stared fixedly at me:
“ Was it the right one, or the left one?”
“What?” I asked, without getting it.
“The ear that Van Gogh cut off. Was it the right one, or the left one?
“How should I know?” I said, already irritated by the whole thing. “You’re the one who read the book. You’re the one should know.”
“But I don’t,” he said, dispirited. “I confess that I don’t know.”
We stood silent for a while. I was then assailed with a nagging doubt, a doubt that I didn’t dare to articulate because I knew that the answer could well be the end of my childhood. However:
“And the one in the jar?” I asked. “Was it the right one, or the left one?
He stared at me, dumbfounded.
“You know what? I haven’t the faintest,” he murmured in a weak, hoarse voice.
Then we continued to walk, headed for home. If you examine an ear carefully—any ear, whether Van Gogh’s or not—you’ll see that it is designed much like a labyrinth. In that labyrinth, I got lost. And I was never to find my way out again.
Moacyr Scliar. In: The Collected Stories of Moacyr Scliar / 1st ed. The University of New Mexico Press, 1999, p. 405–408. Translation by Eloah F. Giacomelli, Introduction by Ilan Stavans.
