Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson

themselves be hunted?”
    “What else should they do?” Wim asked. “Run away or let themselves be caught . . . ?”
    “And yet they want to keep on being rabbits,” Marie said. “Can you understand that?”
    “It’s their religion,” Wim explained.
    But Marie protested. She had never been able to tell from Nico that he had anything to do with religion. In truth, even though they were helping to hide one, neither of them understood what it truly meant: a Jew. A human being like everyone else. But . . . But what? It was hard to be so close to someone, to spend so much time in the same house with him, without finally, eventually, asking about his background, about who he was. They didn’t want to cause problems and draw boundaries where there hadn’t been any before, in their naïve interactions. But both of them would have really liked to know why their Nico was still a Jew. Surely not because other people said so?
    “Do you think I could ask him sometime, Wim?”
    “If you put it carefully. You never know whether itmight be embarrassing for him. Anyway, even normally, it’s kind of a difficult business, asking someone why he’s like this and not like that. And kind of a funny question too.”
    And so Marie, when the occasion arose, while washing dishes in the kitchen, asked him once if he would tell her why he still . . .
    “You can tell by looking at me,” was his first answer.
    Marie shook her head. “In France or in Spain, or even here, in the south near Belgium, no one would notice you.”
    “Yes, maybe you’re right.”
    “And why didn’t you just change countries?”
    She’d meant to say “change religions.” It was a slip of the tongue. But when she noticed it herself, she didn’t correct it.
    “First of all, it wouldn’t be much help now,” he had said calmly, drying a soup plate with big circular motions. “They’re taking everyone, even the converts.”
    Pause.
    “And secondly, Nico?” It was almost an interrogation. Except that Marie, the interrogator, was trembling inwardly more than the interrogated.
    “And then—ach, Marie, to tell you the truth I’ve thought about it very, very often. You know, I don’t observe any of the customs anymore.”
    “And why not, Nico. Why didn’t you do it?” She imperceptibly turned a little toward him without taking her hands out of the basin.
    “And what did he answer then?” Wim asked when Marie told him about the conversation.
    “Something very strange. Actually, I don’t understand it very well. I almost think it’s a little preposterous. He said, ‘I always imagined what my father would say about it.’ ”
    “He said that?”
    “Yes . . . what his father would say about it.”
    Wim was silent.
    “What do you think of that?”
    “I don’t think it’s as senseless as all that,” Wim said after a while.
    Marie hesitated.
    “To understand it, I would either have to be a son—or have one. Don’t you think?” She laughed and stood up a little on her tiptoes.
    “Maybe,” Wim replied, and he lightly tapped his forehead against hers.
    After Marie had finished the usual housework, she came across the laundry bag in the hall on the second floor, clothes still inside as if it had just come from the laundry. With everything else that had been going on in the last few days, she hadn’t got around to putting it away. It was a quarter past eleven, and she was thinking that before making lunch she would quickly take out the laundry and put it away in the closet, when Coba appeared.
    “Coba?” Marie almost shouted, and all at once shefelt pain again about everything she thought she had put behind her. Her face looked so serious and sad that right away Coba knew everything.
    “My God!” —Coba put her hand on her mouth with fright. Five days ago, the last time she was here, he was still alive. So fast! “Tell me,” she said, and sat down on the second-to-top step. “Where is he?”
    When Marie had finished, Coba fell