City of God

From this point, the ghetto story becomes the dominant narrative of the novel until Everett finishes writing it. Sarah’s father, who earns the name Yehoshua in the course of his story, relates in first person his time as a runner delivering messages throughout the ghetto. He is only ten, but he is well aware of the cruelties of the German soldiers, and he hopes that his parents are alive with the resistance living in the wilderness to the east while knowing in his heart that they were killed by Germans. His mother and father were both academics and deeply in love, and when they were moved to the ghetto, they became day laborers like most everyone else. His father served on the Jewish council (which was tasked with working with the German occupation but mostly served as a group of powerless functionaries) until the Germans burned down the Jewish hospital. Schmitz, the chief S.S. officer, is a particularly cruel man, and Yehoshua’s father could not stand to make formal complaints against such evil.

Yehoshua does not know exactly what happened, but one day, his parents did not return home. He knows that there was a call for educated Jews to participate in an archival project and that those Jews were trucked out of the city and murdered, but he does not know if his parents volunteered or were forced, so he chooses to believe that they may have escaped to the resistance.

After his parents’ disappearance, a rabbi takes in Yehoshua and gives him his new name and identity; he is given papers and led to an old man’s home. That man, Srebnitsky, is a tailor who treats Yehoshua with indifference. Yehoshua soon realizes that the identity he has been given is the man’s dead grandson, and his daughter and son-in-law were also killed. Srebnitsky only has one book in his house, the Bible, and when he sees Yehoshua reading it, he tells him to look closely, as it’s riddled with hypocrisy and fiction—to really know what kind of God exists, Yehoshua must consider everything, including the Nazis.

There is a brief intervention into this narrative of Tom’s remarks to the bishop’s examiners, where he puts forth the same doubts as Srebnitsky: The Bible was written by storytellers, and concluding that they got it down correctly and fully is going against the evidence of the rational mind.

Srebnitsky is ordered to create a new uniform for S.S. Major Schmitz, and he has no choice but to accept, and Yehoshua learns that Srebnitsky’s family was beaten to death by Germans before the ghettos were established. Yehoshua reveals in his narration that the uniform will lead to Srebnitsky’s death as well, and the narrative transitions back into Tom’s remarks. He believes that the Jesus of Christianity has become a political entity, and that his desire is to pursue a more intellectual pursuit of religion divorced from doctrinal law. He is aware that this might be cause to expunge him from the church. This is followed by another midrash of a jazz standard, “Star Dust,” comparing the ending of a relationship to the fall from grace of Adam and Eve.

Schmitz arrives to collect his uniform from Srebnitsky, and Yehoshua watches from across the street. When Schmitz, wearing his new uniform, refuses to pay, Srebnitsky slashes the uniform with a pair of scissors. Schmitz’s driver beats Srebnitsky, and Yehoshua runs away to the Jewish council. Rumors abound about retaliation from the Germans, but Dr. Koenig, the president of the council, calms everyone down.

The people of the ghetto are ordered to build a gallows and assemble at dawn. Mr. Barbanel, another council member, conscripts Yehoshua into his group of young runners, putting him in the custody of the council. From this new post, Yehoshua gets to know the morally ambiguous work the council engages in, bargaining with the German authorities in “a brutal calculus of bodies and work and food” (80).

At his execution, Srebnitsky seems strangely proud of the effort put into making an example of him, and Yehoshua thinks about his sacrifice—he could have murdered Schmitz but chose instead to disrespect him, knowing that Schmitz’s murder would have been disastrous for the ghetto. When a rabbi tries to cut down Srebnitsky’s body, he is shot dead by a German soldier.

The narrative turns back to the resolution of Everett’s movie plot. The usurper murders the husband, and using skills he learned in a jungle, he shrinks the husbands decapitated head and presents it to the wife as a gift. Before the wife commits suicide, she calls the police, and the usurper (still believed to be the husband) is put on trial for killing himself. Everett’s narrative is pure melodrama, and he admits that, just like a sociopath who must escalate his crimes, the author must pursue his idea to the end.

Everett then begins writing in the voice of Wittgenstein, using the numbered system the philosopher often employed in his writing. Wittgenstein admits that even if all scientific questions were answered, “our problem is still not touched at all” (87).

Tom and Everett meet for drinks, and they discuss the detective manuscript and Tom’s own fate. He is still part of the church, and it still bears some significance in his life, primarily because he still prays. They start talking about the stolen crucifix, then turn to the nature of stories in the Bible. Tom admits that the authors of the Bible were great storytellers, which means that the Bible was composed; this is no trouble for a nonbeliever, but to Tom, it’s always been troubling. He sees the Bible as a way of ordering thought, and the advances in science and philosophy in the interim have opened it up to reinterpretation. Tom then admits that despite his shaken faith, he thinks the crucifix being placed above Joshua and Sarah’s synagogue is a sign.