The king replaced the intercom receiver on its cradle as delicately as he could, lest he be caught eavesdropping thanks to the click. It was interesting stuff, actually, pretty words if nothing else, and he jotted some of it down on a scrap of paper, which he stuck into his pocket. Still, what bullshit, he said. If I had to listen to every prophet and quasi-prophet out there, I wouldn’t be king but a talk-show host. I could sit in the palace and broadcast all day every day, he said to one of his eunuchs, who’d just come in—unless he was there all along, watching the king listening to the intercom. And let’s suppose, the king said, just let’s suppose that I wanted to listen to them. Do you know how many prophets hang around Jerusalem? Hang around this apartment complex alone, which people keep calling a palace? There isn’t a day, not a day that they don’t come around and prophesy to and about me. On the radio, in the papers, and now this one even managed to get access to my intercom. What’s going on? Isn’t there any security here? Anyone can come and press all the buttons and drive not only the neighbors but the king himself crazy? Look, there’s an old prophet here who turns up every Sabbath and asks to come up, and I actually let him in and offer him a cup of tea, the king said. I respect everyone; my door is always open. I’ve proclaimed as much, even though scarcely a soul ever tries to take me up on it. Why doesn’t anyone ever come? Why don’t more people frequent the king’s open house? So, anyway, this old prophet arrives every Sabbath and utters four words: Palace of the Lord, Palace of the Lord, Palace of the Lord. And then he leaves. What am I supposed to do with that? What am I to make of it? I suppose he means that the palace was, is, and will be? Like in the days of Isaiah? Isaiah, now there was an honest-to-goodness prophet; you could rely on him. He saved my forefathers from Assyria, after all. But, okay, common sense would say—Jehoiakim told a second eunuch, who had replaced the first, who’d slipped away unnoticed—that the House of God can’t be destroyed or harmed. No, please, correct me if I’m wrong, Eunuchvitch, but if God dwells in X’s house, can X’s house be destroyed? That’s ridiculous. It’s like someone saying, Look, if you ever stop eating poppy-seed cake—and I’m crazy for poppy-seed cake!—the skies will fall.
He raised his head and looked at the sky outside the sliding window. And the eunuch looked at the day’s agenda and said, Your Highness, this morning the king has a dental hygienist’s appointment, five months overdue. And the king was afraid and said, No, no, push it back a month; the pain was excruciating; why did you schedule that murderess for first thing in the morning? Let’s get out the scale. The royal scale was brought, and the king stepped on, and was again dismayed to see that he weighed only 196 pounds, whereas he knew that his weight should be at least 286. You didn’t fiddle with the scale, did you? he asked his scale attendant suspiciously. Heaven forefend, my lord king, that I should ever do such a thing—though the attendant had, it goes without saying, fiddled. It was a digital scale, and he’d programmed it to show only two-thirds of the actual weight registered, so that the King of Judah always weighed in at a reasonable and healthy level. I eat and eat and don’t gain weight, he rejoiced. But if we’re already talking about weight and teeth, it’s not a big jump to the subject of breakfast—as in, where’s mine? What, the king doesn’t get a bite to eat in the morning? Do I have to order myself a pizza? And the eunuch chuckled and asked, Wouldn’t my noble king prefer to hold off just a bit and eat from the giant hummus bowl? My I remind His August Majesty that the ceremony is scheduled to begin a mere two hours from now, right after your canceled appointment with the dental hygienist? Perhaps we should start getting dressed, so that Your Highness will have sufficient time? The king stood up. He was dressed in short floral-patterned shorts, and his feet were like twin loaves of white bread, the eunuch reflected. The king said, But the king wants a drink first. And the eunuch said, Oy, my lord is thirsty. Apple-carrot as usual, great king? Large or medium? I’m off to squeeze the juice. And His Royal Highness King Jehoiakim pondered at length, and then decreed majestically, his voice resounding loudly: I’ll take a large.
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NOA AND MATTANIAH’S WEDDING was as modest as it gets. That’s how they planned it, anyway: a wedding followed by a small vegetarian reception in the courtyard of the old Bezalel building, on Shmuel Ha-Nagid Street, without music and without dancing, and with guests invited strictly on the basis of the bride and groom’s wanting them there, not according to official family ties. One of their poet friends was supposed to take photographs, and they also intended to read some poems, so that in the end the entire event would be conducted more like a modest book launch than some ostentatious nuptials. After eating slices of quiche and a green salad, the bride and groom would sit in a circle with twenty or thirty close friends and family, and they’d talk about this thing called marriage, and they’d read passages on marriage from the Midrash, and they’d recount how they met, and what they saw in each other, and in this way set out together on their new path surrounded by the love of friends and relatives.
But the wedding was brought to the attention of the king, and, burning with fury, he was ready to blow it all to pieces. Over my dead body, he declared. All of a sudden, Jehoiakim was reminded that he had a little brother, after having barely exchanged a word with him for years. And he told his majordomo eunuch: It’s not going to happen; I won’t let him tarnish our reputation. It’s no skin off my back if he wants to hang out and write poetry—no one reads the stuff anyway—but photographers are bound to show up at his wedding, and TV people, too, and there’s no way I’m going to be seen sitting there surrounded by poets munching on green leaves. You can be sure he’s chosen this sort of ceremony just to humiliate us, Jehoiakim told his majordomo eunuch, and I won’t be party to any of it. Consequently this selfsame eunuch appeared in Mattaniah’s home a month before the wedding and explained to the bridegroom, after blessings and niceties, genuflections and bootlicking, that the organization of the wedding was now out of the couple’s hands, that from now on Mattaniah needn’t worry about a thing, or pay for a thing, that the court would be taking care of the wedding, and that they would even bring their own paramedic along. Mattaniah asked, Paramedic? And the eunuch replied, Yes, people inevitably suffer attacks and strokes of one sort or another at weddings, from all the food and dancing. And Mattaniah said, Attacks and strokes? And the eunuch replied, Yes, heart and brain.
And Mattaniah was delighted with this arrangement, because he assumed, perhaps naturally, that he’d be the one to make all the decisions while his brother had only to foot the bill. And he and Noa were assured that everything would be fine: After all, it’s your wedding, of course, and your preferences have been jotted down point by point. All you need to do is show up and get married, they were told; we’ll worry about all the rest. And they set out for a monthlong, all-expenses-paid sailing trip down the Nile, to the cataracts in the land of Cush.
* * *
THE FIRST THING THAT GUESTS SAW when they arrived at the wedding was the cow. And the paramedic sitting quite bored by the entrance eating a pita. Noa and Mattaniah didn’t see either, however, since they’d been sequestered immediately in the private chambers to which they’d been herded through the building’s back door. The cow stood in an oblong, fenced-off area, and above her head was a sign that read: I’m your cow. Congratulations!!! In another hour I won’t be here anymore! Ha-ha-ha! The three mischievous exclamation points were colored blood-red, and whoever got the hint—well—got it. The animal’s various cuts of meat were drawn on her body in different colors. A butcher was standing beside her and explaining to the guests the virtues of each cut, and every guest chose according to his or her own taste, and their orders were written down. Almost every hind part has a matching fore part, the butcher explained to Noa’s parents and sister. The hind part of the animal works harder than the fore part, which causes the hind parts to be more fibrous and less fatty, and consequently they need to cook for a longer time. There’s a connection between the tenderness of the meat, its texture,
and the part of the body from which it’s taken—that’s the main thing to understand. And Noa’s father said, I want sirloin, I love sirloin. And the butcher said, An excellent choice, sir—the cow lowed—sirloin is terrific for roast beef. Apart from that, sirloin is suitable for steaks, or stuffed schnitzel—if, of course, one uses a thicker cut. But we won’t be smoking it today—no, no, smoking is hazardous to your health, ha-ha. Besides, if we all smoke up before the wedding, we’ll probably doze off before it’s over, am I right? At this, Noa’s mother cracked up and wiped away a tear. Oish, it’s my only daughter getting married, she told the butcher, even though Noa’s sister was standing right next to her, chewing gum: No smoking or stroking your meat during her wedding, please. And the butcher asked, What’ll it be, Shoshanna? Noa’s mother pointed at the cow with her cigarette holder, and the butcher said, Why am I not surprised by madame’s choice? Filet mignon—or, as we call the cut in our profession, filet medallions. Classic. It ought to be clear to madame, then, that it isn’t recommended to cook filet more than medium-rare. If a little blood isn’t visible, it’s a sign that we’ve made a mistake; roasting too long will result in a tough and stringy piece of meat, and hours of picking at your teeth with the ole toothpick. And that—the cow lowed again—we want to avoid at all costs. It’s most advisable to use a cut of veal, of course, but I’m sorry to say we don’t have a veal calf available at the moment; still, even with regular calves and older cows like this one, it’s always possible to get a decent filet mignon. It’s just that veal meat is more delicate in texture and therefore in taste. But we don’t have a veal calf—a calf could hardly feed this crowd—it was simply a matter of insufficient size, and we have so many guests, thank God! And Noa’s mother, Shoshanna, said snidely, Well, they only invited fifty or sixty people. The butcher stared at her, baffled, and said, What? not seeing the joke. And then he continued: Filet of a mature cow will give you a stringier but nonetheless juicy steak, with a stronger taste of meat. You’ll lick your fingers, Mom, the butcher promised. And Shoshanna said, But only on one hand. And the butcher didn’t get it, and Shoshanna said, As far as licking, and raised her right hand, which was gnawed away up to the wrist bone. Her husband, Jacob, explained to the butcher, She used to work in a fish-canning factory, and one day she dropped her purse into the machine, and so she stuck her hand in. I mean she shut off the machine first, natch, and only then stuck her hand in—she isn’t as stupid as she looks—but the blades were still turning even after the current was off, from the inertia. One silly slipup, and—oop!—off went all fives of her fingers, and someone got some extra-nutritious fish spread. And Shoshanna corrected him: Five. All five.
The wedding area was organized by the majordomo eunuch so that the guests—their numbers had swelled from exactly fifty-two to, grosso modo, four thousand—strolled down a path that led to the reception hall, where they were offered an assortment of tidbits. There were the customary lamb kebabs, and sushi platters, and half portions of falafel, and little sweets, and cheese platters, and fried fish, and burekas with all kinds of fillings, including, of course, a vegetarian option—namely, mock liver, which was mainly stir-fried mushrooms. It was all meant to look moderate, discreet, so as not to provide any sort of target for the media who’d been invited to report on the event. Once the last of the guests had entered, they led the cow away and took her back to her shed, since all the cuts of meat had actually been prepared in advance, and the entire business of selecting one’s preferred cut had been intended purely to whet the guests’ appetites—even though this cow, too, was slaughtered, it goes without saying, several weeks later. When one woman saw the cow being led away by a rope, she asked her husband, Say, d’you think they’ll be serving parsiman? And he said, What, Parmesan? And she said: How stupid can you get? I said parsiman. And he said, What the hell is parsiman, you moron? And she said, What the hell do you mean by What the hell is parsiman? You acting stupid or what? You know, that sweet stuff, made of sugar and ground almonds? He stared at her for a long time, and at that very moment knew that he’d leave her. But they stayed married for another thirty-six years.
Mattaniah’s mother, Hamutal, arrived at the wedding accompanied by thirty girlfriends who weren’t on the guest list; this led to a polite disagreement with the majordomo eunuch, which ended with the thirty girlfriends’ being loaded onto a truck and sent back to the center of town, although they were told that they were being driven to the bridal canopy platform. There they waited, in the locked truck, for three hours, until the end of all the celebrations and dancing. Hamutal searched in vain for her son and the bride, to bless them and bestow on her son her late husband Josiah’s ring, a ring that had been handed down from generation to generation, beginning with Solomon, and within which, so it was said, Asmodeus, king of the demons, was still confined.
But Mattaniah wasn’t among the guests; he was still in their private chambers. Tukulti was there, too; he understood perfectly what was going on outside; he didn’t need to see it with his own eyes, and didn’t say a word, either. He and Mattaniah had agreed that they wouldn’t talk to each other in the presence of anyone else, apart from Noa. The majordomo eunuch told Mattaniah, I’m giving you an hour, you’ve got to impregnate her now. And Mattaniah said, She’s already … And the eunuch looked at Noa again and saw that she was pregnant, which he hadn’t noticed under her broad wedding dress, and he yelled: What, already in the family way? In that case, you’ve got to plow her again—that’s the custom—don’t spoil everything. I’m going outside now to proclaim it, so don’t go and make me a liar. And Mattaniah said, Okay, I’ll see what I can do, and Noa, stunned, said: Plow? Plow? What sort of vulgar idiot is this? And the eunuch said, But it’s a vulgar sort of thing, isn’t it? Maybe it’s all hidden under silk and crinoline and muslin right now, but, as far as I know, once you start poking into a tube of paint with your paintbrush, once you start picking at your nose with your pinkie, once you get in there … He demonstrated on his own nose what he meant. And Noa said, A tube of paint? And Mattaniah said, Okay, okay, can we be left alone now? The eunuch licked his pinkie clean and said, I see that the groom’s already hot—what month is the bride? Noa replied, Beginning of the ninth, and Mattaniah estimated, She’s giving birth in another month. And the eunuch said: Just try to make some noise—I want the moans to be heard outside—and do me a favor, come at the same time today, just for me. Everyone’s milling around and waiting for it. Then, later, only when you hear the song, enter. But, please, please, I’m begging you, make sure there aren’t any stains on your clothes, okay? I’ve been at weddings where the groom and bride make their grand entrance and she’s been sprayed all over. There’s a change of clothes and some towels here in the chest. The king has already arrived, and there’s a diplomatic emissary from Babylon here, too, so do your part, okay? After all, it’s your wedding. And Mattaniah asked, When are the butterflies going to be released? And the eunuch said, When you hear the butterfly song. Male singer. When you hear the words I want to paint the world with a paintbrush / in the colors of sweet honey, the eunuch sang, you stand by the door, and then there are a few seconds of music without words, he reminded them, and then comes the refrain, White butterflies, et cetera, et cetera. The eunuch wiped away a tear: Such a perfect song, such beautifully epistemological metaphors. Anyway, that’s when you come out, and that’s also when the butterfly hatches will be opened. It was Noa’s idea, and Mattaniah had agreed enthusiastically: they’d invited an entomologist, who brought with him in perforated boxes several thousand cabbage white butterflies. As soon as the bride and groom stepped out of the private chamber, they knew that, all at once, to the guests’ utter surprise, the cabbage whites were to be released to the sound of “White Butterflies.” They, Mattaniah and Noa, were dressed in white, and the message was clear and impressive—white on white, there was no mistaking it. The eunuch left, and Mattaniah sat in a corner and read from Rilke’s letters; he intended to read a passage out loud during the ceremony
. Noa sank onto a pile of cushions, exhausted and stressed out, and in spite of her being in her ninth month of pregnancy, she smoked half a cigarette—she couldn’t help herself—and the fetus inside her coughed and cringed. And they waited tensely, without exchanging a word, until the first notes of the song were played; then they quickly got up, and together reached for the doorknob, and her hand touched his, and he drew back his hand timidly. Outside, the guests were eating hors d’oeuvres, ready to burst even before the main course, and the butterfly man, who was standing directly on the other side of the door, raised the lid of one of his boxes for one last look-see, and his face turned as pale as his butterflies’ wings, for they were all—how to put this—corpses now, simply dead, lying in heaps. There had been some sort of mistake; maybe they got too hot. He examined box after box, and the situation was the same—all his cabbage whites were stone dead. The song began—strings, drums, a guitar riff—and the butterfly man realized what he had to do, as the bride and groom stepped out at precisely the right moment, to hoots of delight from the crowd.
Far more than four thousand people were present; half the city was there to have a look, and the celebrants were spilling out from the courtyard into the surrounding streets. Noa and Mattaniah registered the sheer number of people present only after standing awhile, trapped under the bridal canopy. The butterfly man and his assistant began to release the cabbage whites, flinging them in the air haphazardly over the bride and groom as they accompanied them up the aisle on their festive walk to the bridal canopy. Noa’s mother said, Amazing, ingenious, butterfly confetti—it’s such a beautiful idea. And Jacob, her husband, said, At our wedding we had chicken leg quarters and white rice; why be fussy, Shosh? And she said, At our wedding we also had your parents there, but they’re not around anymore, are they? He’d have smashed her face with his elbow if they weren’t in public, and, in the midst of the high decibels of the sweet butterfly song, he told her, What a pity it wasn’t your head, rather than your hand, that got left in the fish machine. And she, who hadn’t heard a word, said, That’s so right, exactly what I thought, too; we’ve been blessed, Yankele, we’ve been blessed to marry a daughter into the royal family. The butterfly man returned to his boxes and began to clean up, covered in sweat, shaking. He was dumping his remaining butterflies into the trash when he noticed, in one of the final boxes, live butterflies—the butterflies in this box had somehow survived. And he was about to release them then and there, but one of the majordomo eunuch’s assistants caught on, and said, Hey there, what do you think you’re doing, Butterflyvitch? And the butterfly man said, I’m setting them free. Forget it, said the assistant. You want them to go flying into people’s food? First course is quartered brain over cabbage—are you crazy? And the butterfly man said, I’m setting them free; they’ve got to be released; if they stay cooped up, they’ll die, too. And the assistant said, You know what, hold on a minute, I’ve got an idea. He went to the storeroom and brought back some bug spray and sprayed it generously through the air holes in the butterfly boxes, and then he split and returned the spray to where he’d found it, even though the can was nearly empty.
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