King Jehoiakim glanced over anxiously. He was riding in the first helicopter, and his son was in the second, to which the piano was fastened. He clasped his beloved switchblade in his pocket. The blade wouldn’t open. The grand piano dangled lightly in the air below the second chopper, the one bearing Jehoiachin, who was agitated and perspiring freely. He had no desire to appear before the assembled crowd, nor did he want to play for them, nor, for that matter, did he even want to be in Judah. Jerusalem from high up appeared rather unsightly to him. He looked in vain for the river coursing through the city; he was certain there had to be a river. It was only a few minutes’ flight from the Holyland helipad to the stadium in Malha, but that was more than enough to make the prince feel like throwing up. They’ve brought me here like stage décor for their big hummus-bowl ceremony. This is no sixtieth-birthday party—what a liar, what a crook. He brought me over to provide musical accompaniment for his dopey ceremony, for a gigantic bowl of hummus; he dragged me here for an idiotic dog-and-pony show, just unbelievable. This putrid kingdom, this failing subprovince, this land of tin ears. He wants to show his virtuoso son off to the masses, that’s all, Jehoiachin thought. He was always telling me, Go on, play us a little something, something short!
Thirty thousand spectators were gathered in and around the stadium, and Jehoiachin stared at them from the circling chopper as it got ready to land. The piano was slowly being lowered, and was almost touching the grass when, at the very last minute, someone miscalculated and the piano dropped, free-falling the last two centimeters. Jehoiachin thought he heard, across the din of the rotary blades, the piano scream. He hid his face in the palms of his hands. The thousands of spectators outside the stadium had no idea what was going on inside. And no one could understand the connection between a piano and hummus. We didn’t come to a concert, they said. No, definitely not.
The second helicopter landed, and Jehoiachin stepped out. The roar of the rotary blades was deafening. Jehoiachin’s ears, which for years hadn’t heard anything louder than the fortissimo of a symphony orchestra, were numb with shock. I’m sure to go deaf here, it crossed his mind—I’ll lose my hearing entirely. The helicopter slowly rose and pulled away. He ran to the piano.
And the piano was somehow patched together—its legs were reconnected with steel brackets and screws—and with lightning speed it was roughly tuned. Jehoiachin glanced at his father, who was surrounded by his attendants, whom for the most part the prince hardly knew, and all at once his rage subsided, and he even felt a certain pride that his father had insisted on bringing him to perform at a ceremony of such great import, and he told himself that he’d play, and even play well, and give his father some satisfaction—birthday or no birthday—his father, who all these years had provided for his education and kept him away from the cauldron, whose bubbles were the Judean hills. Not that any music was appropriate here, save perhaps for the War Symphony, the Revenge Sonata, the Murder String Quartet, the opera Nebuchadnezzar in Egypt, and the cantata The Destruction of Assyria. And he looked at his father, who suddenly wasn’t the king, and not even his father, but, rather, a not-all-that-healthy-looking sixty-year-old man, preoccupied, overweight, stressed out. Above them all loomed the cursed, largest-ever bowl of hummus. Jehoiachin realized that it was the reversed dome of an observatory and started to laugh. The crack in the dome intended for the telescope hadn’t been sealed properly, and Jehoiachin stared at the bits of paste that were dribbling down and streaking the lawn. His father was talking with one of his ministers and kept pointing north, and it seemed to Jehoiachin that his father’s face was soaked in tears. And he felt like rushing up to his father to ask him what was going on—if only he could break through the ring of bodyguards and ministers and advisers—and hug him and find out what had gone wrong, but he remained transfixed in place beside the crippled piano. Jehoiachin lifted the lid and sat down to try it out. The sound, to his utter amazement, was clear and sonorous, and he played a number of phrases with his left hand—the PA system hadn’t yet been activated—and he raised his head for a moment and saw his father, flushed, looking in his direction through the ring of guards and advisers, and his father’s eyes said, Yes, just go on, go on playing, and Jehoiachin remembered the encore he’d played at the end of the concert in Vienna, Philip Glass’s Étude No. 5; suddenly he thought of the work as the wailing of someone who no longer has the strength to cry, and the fingers of his left hand began playing, and someone activated the sound system, and all at once the huge soccer stadium was filled with notes—just as night turns to day when floodlights are switched on, instantaneously—and the crowd softly filed in, the multitude haltingly passing by the grandstands and listening as if in a dream, and among them were Mattaniah and Tukulti, who glanced sideways from a great distance at their forgotten Austrian nephew. And Mattaniah sat down, and three or four rows away he noticed Jeremiah’s father and mother, whom he hadn’t seen in years, ever since the days of the youth science club, when he’d been a guest for the night in Anatot and had set off with Jeremiah and his father, whose name he now couldn’t remember, to hike in the hills and gaze at the moon and the fireflies who took cover in its light (to use Jeremiah’s father’s words). After several minutes, Jeremiah had gotten tired and returned home alone to sleep, but Mattaniah and Hilkiah had lingered for a long while, just the two of them, in the white light.
The lanky woman whom Mattaniah remembered perfectly from his wedding was pushed toward the bleachers and plopped herself down not too far from Mattaniah and Tukulti, and in a thin, shrill voice told Jeremiah’s parents—Mattaniah only managed to catch her words in snatches—I know you, I know your son. I saw him a hundred years ago in a police station. He was under arrest; they let him go, but he’ll be caught and arrested again and again, and he’s right, without warning the robber will come upon us. I was a senior pollster in the Central Bureau of Statistics, she said, but the principal statistician raped me, I was a senior pollster in the Central Bureau of Statistics, and one day they held a concert for the bureau employees, and I walked out of the Jerusalem Theatre, and that’s where he assaulted me, the principal statistician. Disaster overtakes disaster, the woman said, everyone calls me the complainant; maybe you’ve heard about me—there was a profile written up about me in the paper, but that’s not my real name. And she pulled a faded newspaper clipping out of her purse and gave it to Jeremiah’s mother, who glanced at it and passed it on in embarrassment to Jeremiah’s father; he cast an eye over the article, and for a moment he thought of asking her for the clipping to add to his own files. And Jeremiah’s mother, Esther, told the complaining woman, Come, madame, sit here. And the woman said, No, there’s no room. And Esther told her, We’ll make room.
And a crown was set on King Jehoiakim’s head, and a royal cloak was hurriedly draped over his shoulders, and the chief eunuch breathed onto and misted over and polished the royal scepter before placing it in the king’s outstretched hand, and Jehoiakim ascended the steps that had been raised next to the bowl claiming for itself the title of Largest Bowl of Hummus from the Euphrates to the Nile, an attraction that would bring thousands of hummus tourists to the city from the entire region, even luring in devotees of the Dip from beyond the sea, allowing Jerusalem to be declared the Capital of Hummus. And Jehoiakim stood there, his entire body shaking, above the enormous bowl, whose diameter was at least ten meters, with a huge pool of olive oil converging at its center, and large sacks of cumin and sweet paprika being poured in from shore to shore, and Mattaniah recalled all of a sudden that his brother’s real name was Elyakim, and he wanted to call out to him, Elyakim, for no apparent reason, just to call him by his name, but he remained silent.
The hummus had partly solidified during the long period of waiting for the prince, and a haze rose from the paste as from an old, thick bog. The stench was unbearable. And then the king, from the height of the bowl’s rim, thought he saw Nebuchadnezzar’s black Mercedes approaching. Jehoiakim realized that he’d betrayed the K
ing of Babylon, had grievously broken a personal pledge, for which crime there could be no pardon and no mercy, for what would happen if all the local kingdoms could cancel their standing orders in a moment of wild caprice? After all, we in Babylon need to live, too, do we not? The chicks are screaming in the Babylonian nest, and I’m counting on you to provide me with worms, Nebuchadnezzar’s translator had told Jehoiakim affably over the phone. An obligation must be fulfilled, you promised me personally a substantial offering, and it’s already been four years since I first saw the missing line in my bank statement, the translator told Jehoiakim in fluent Hebrew, and I waited a month and I waited a year, and another year and another; maybe the King of Judah will turn from his evil ways and live? I loved the King of Judah as a brother, and the King of Judah sank his teeth into my offering and swallowed it. I thought there must have been some sort of computer glitch, but I was naïve, the translator’s voice continued through the black earpiece. I know everybody makes fun of my naïveté, Nebuchadnezzar said in the car to his son-in-law Nergal-Sharezer, who sat up front, next to the driver, and was working on an Aramaic crossword puzzle, and who would himself, in the years to come, be King of Babylon. And Jehoiakim imagined stuttering in Akkadian and begging for mercy, and how he’d be punished and gruesomely tortured. He couldn’t stop thinking of a pair of pliers crushing his thumb. He could actually feel the iron.
The years that had passed since his rebellion against the King of Babylon had been more than enough time for his imagination to work up detailed scenes of Babylon’s horrific retribution—alongside the undeniable pleasure of his bimonthly savings—and he knew for certain that he couldn’t endure it, that there was no way he could endure being tortured. He was even terrified of having a tooth pulled, or just getting a filling, even eye drops made him cringe—the moment before the drop falls into your eye, forced open by a eunuch’s fingers. And as the days flew by, he sank further and further into these grim fantasies, and suffered at night from nightmares, and he understood, too, that he wasn’t to suffer alone, but that the entire city and all of Judah would be hit just as hard. He beheld it all in his mind, and even wrote in his notebooks and on random scraps of paper how the city would fall, how it would go up in flames; he wrote of the terrifying massacre by the Chaldeans and their allies of all the members of his family as well as his friends. There were legions of Aramean mercenaries whose cruelty surpassed even the Babylonians’, and the rules of war and the Geneva Conventions were no concern of theirs. He knew that they would arrive, that they would rape and pillage and dash children to the stones and hack people to pieces with bucksaws, and yet all that wasn’t the problem—he knew he could somehow live with all that, albeit with a kind of dolorous grief—but the thought that he’d be stripped stark naked and lashed to a breaking wheel, or maybe on the king’s grill, or that they’d cut off his thumbs and tear out his hair, this was unbearable, even if only as noxious food for thought. Jehoiakim knew perfectly well that there was one way out, and only one way, and the way out was to die as quickly as possible, for if the obligation that had been broken was personal and the obligator was no longer around to be there to be rebuked, maybe Nebuchadnezzar wouldn’t destroy the city. And he couldn’t punish me, either—I wouldn’t be there to receive his blows. It will cool him off, his rage is personal, Jehoiakim thought: I must cool off his Babylonian rage, because I won’t be able to save myself no matter what.
And he knew perfectly well that there was only one course of action, one and only one. That way, he could also avoid the pain and … and … He didn’t manage to finish the sentence, for he realized in terror that even if he died painlessly they would mutilate his body, that if he fell on his sword or shot himself in the head in his palace they’d display his naked body or his head on the walls of the city, and if they chose his head they’d exhibit it on a pike with his purple tongue lolling out. This terrified him no less than the possibility of their tormenting his live, sensate body. I must disappear, not only die—I need to disappear and save my body from these hellish torments and from any further humiliations, he thought. He stood, shaking, at the brim of the bowl, holding the banister with one hand, his other hand clasping the locked switchblade in his pocket.
The crowd overran the grandstands and waited, and the king had no idea how much time had passed, but all of a sudden his son was there beside him; he hadn’t removed his mutilated tuxedo, but his father didn’t care anymore. And Jehoiakim whispered, though everyone heard him through the PA system, and every word he said echoed back to him like a shot: Don’t worry, don’t worry, it won’t happen that fast, it won’t happen so fast. I am leaving you today, my people, I’m leaving you today my people. I know that you think only good of me. And he glanced to the south as if expecting to see the cavalry on the way, and for a second he did indeed fancy he saw Pharaoh’s chariots there, kicking up a cloud of dust, coming to his aid, coming to watch over him heroically, to embrace him and protect him from the dreadful king of the north, but it was just dust, dust without chariots and without Egypt. In fact, what he saw there was a herd of donkeys who’d escaped their pen and run wild, and he stared at the sight of them, for it reminded him of something, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, something he wouldn’t have time to remember. And he took out his speech and cleared his voice and read into the microphones, Stand at the crossroads, stand at the crossroads, and ask for the old paths, and ask for the old paths, where the good way lies, where the good way lies, and walk in it, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. The technicians finally fixed the echo, so his last words sounded naked and solitary, and he choked them back and looked fixedly at the scrap of paper that was supposed to contain his speech, because this was not the note he had intended to read from, and he had no idea now how this note had ended up in his pocket, but it was already too late to do anything about it; besides, the note was, without a doubt, written in his own handwriting. And the king cast one last glance over all the Jews in the stadium, and he took the hand of the rep of The Guinness Book of Records and shook it warmly, and then he raised his head and saw the new star burning up in the skies, beyond the dark clouds. And in the galleries the complainant said, It’s happening, but Jeremiah’s parents paid no attention, and all at once a scream was heard, and as though this was a prearranged signal, Jehoiakim immediately turned toward his son and thrust the royal scepter into his dissenting, clenched fist, and draped the robe over his shoulders. And the king climbed over the banister, then turned toward his son, his back to the bowl, and said only this, Never mind, before pitching backward into the bowl, headfirst, his feet and the soles of his black leather boots appearing for a second, heels up in the muck, before he sank farther and immediately drowned in the pool of hummus as surely as in cement. And Jehoiachin was left there, wide-eyed, standing next to a number of officials, the crown slightly askew on his head, and the scepter held aslant, and the robe hanging over only one of his shoulders, and he fixed his gaze on the piano below on the lawn and then raised his eyes toward the people in the topmost seats overhead. He thrust his hands into his pockets and felt a pain in his right pocket, and blood dribbled over his fist. It suddenly occurred to him that he still hadn’t seen his mother. He didn’t dare to look at his hand, to pull it out. And he realized, to his horror, that he’d been crowned king.
23
JEREMIAH FELL ASLEEP in the light-rail station. In his dream, the familiar voice told him to wake up and go buy a linen belt, and to make sure not to wet it with water. The instructions didn’t make any sense—made even less sense than the smashing of the jug. When he got up, he quickly wrote down what he’d been commanded to do. And he stood for a long time in front of a mirror and stared at himself as he grimaced and gnashed his teeth. He then went to buy the belt in the market where he’d bought that jug, and discovered, to his surprise, that Noa, the girl who’d sold jugs in the pottery stall, was also the vendor at the belt stall. She dashed from one stall to the other, back and forth, and he was
happy to see her; maybe now he’d be able to talk to her a bit, but she tells him: Jeremiah, no. You won’t find a wife for yourself. Nor will you have sons and daughters in this place. There’s a silver crown on her head and he understands. And he hears the voice telling him, Now set out for the Euphrates and hide the belt in the cleft of a rock. And he wants to propose she accompany him but remains silent. Someone else has already entered the stall; for a moment, he thinks the buyer is his father, but he knows, in the dream, that this is impossible.
He stares out the window at the desert scenery rushing by. He’s alone in the train, and the linen belt is strapped around his waist. And he arrives in Uruk without knowing why or wherefore. No one sees him doing it—it hardly seems worth all the effort. And all at once he realizes that he’s doing it for himself. A moment later, he turns around and there’s a range of mountains close to the station, and he beholds the broad river and the corpses of Egyptian soldiers rotting there in the sun, and eagles casting their shadows over the bodies’ empty eye sockets. He wants to dip into the Euphrates and gulp down lots of water. He’s never bathed in the sea, or in such a wide river, only in the Dead Sea, not even in the Jordan. But instead he heads toward the mountain range, trudges wearily up, and hides the belt; within moments, the belt left there in the rock is ruined, it is totally worthless, all that remains are a few strands scored with cuts and gashes … And the voice tells him: Just so I will ruin the pride of Judah, and the great pride of Jerusalem. They stuck fast to me like a belt, but the belt has fled from my waist, the belt desired another waist, the voice said. And Jeremiah woke up, and the dream weighed on him like a smothering blanket, and he tried to pray, quoting from memory a few verses that he recalled from the Torah portion on Abraham and Sodom—Maybe there are ten just men, and that sort of thing—but the voice said: Shh, don’t pray for them, enough, end of story. Listen, please … Jeremiah tried. I’m not listening to you, came the retort. And now arise and go to the Western Wall.
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