Jeremiah got up, choking back his rage, strode off to his apartment, rinsed his face in cold water, and grabbed a can of red paint and a Swedish wrench; with that, he left his apartment, which was still half empty, half of his belongings still being back at his parents’ place, leaving his new place looking like a flophouse. He meant to pack up and clear out in a hurry. He dragged himself to the light-rail stop at Mahane Yehuda, got on board, and sat down. Here he dozed off again and woke up again, and for the first time he felt pretty much fed up. If no one paid him any mind, why speak up at all? The light rail traveling east was empty, but the cars traveling west were packed, because everyone was in an awful hurry to get to the gigantic-hummus-bowl competition at Teddy Stadium. Jeremiah watched the crowded cars traveling west, and for a minute he thought he saw his mother pressed against a window. He got out at the Western Wall stop; the city seemed to have emptied, like on the morning of the Day of Atonement. And he strode boldly toward the plaza. Jeremiah shot a quick glance at the Temple, which rose above him with all its chambers and turrets and its low inner wall. He’d run through his plan many times over in the last couple of weeks. He knew there was a fire extinguisher in the plaza, and he meant to arrive there with his gallon of red paint and to unscrew the extinguisher’s top and pour the paint into the cylinder. Then he’d write four short sentences in huge letters across the Wall: Such as are for death to death—and such as are for the sword to the sword—and such as are for the famine to the famine—and such as are for captivity to captivity. That’s all. He’d written down many such short passages on scraps of paper that he carried around with him everywhere—short passages like those he dreamed, or heard, or thought he’d heard; he couldn’t tell the difference anymore. He didn’t know if something he wrote for himself, thinking it was a poem, was his own or had been passed on to him as a prophecy. His pockets were crammed with jottings that he planned to copy or to shout out or graffiti or get printed in the newspapers in the classifieds and then Xerox and staple onto university bulletin boards and distribute in the synagogues in their Sabbath newsletters, such as Give glory to the Lord your God before it grows dark, or But if you will hear not—my soul shall weep in secret.
He approached the plaza and strode up to the extinguisher, and there was no need to figure out how to get inside it, since it looked as if someone had already decided to smash it open. He looked at the Wall as if it were a blank page and calculated how best to divide the page and distribute the letters, and how much space he could afford between the lines. When he had removed the extinguisher from its dock and uncoiled its hose, someone called out to him through a loudspeaker, Whoa there, buddy, nothing’s burning yet, so why bother spritzing? And Jeremiah was scared and glanced around, but he didn’t notice anyone until the plaza guard in his sentry box on top of the Wall, seeing that he hadn’t been seen, flashed his spotlight at Jeremiah. Jeremiah waved back in embarrassment and replaced the extinguisher in rage. He walked over to the Wall, fished a note out of his pocket, read it, and stuck it in the cracks between the stones, as was customary; he then drew out another note and another, and wedged them in. The cracks were crammed with notes, and once a week the same sentry would come with long-nosed pliers and remove the notes in order to make room. Jeremiah knew this, and so he knew that his own notes were fated to be removed as well, but even so he kept on drawing notes out of his pockets and sticking them into the cracks, some of them merely fragments of poems from his failed collection: And death shall be chosen rather than life by the remnant that remains of this evil family, stuck in. See, I am letting loose snakes among you, adders that cannot be charmed and they shall bite you, stuck in. The harvest is past the summer is ended and we are not saved, stuck in. Their tongue is a sharpened arrow it speaks deceit, stuck in. And Jeremiah glanced at the last note that he’d pulled out, which was written in enormous crooked letters; though he remembered that he’d jotted it down in his sleep, it felt as though someone else must have written this poem, and Jeremiah shuddered as though he were not its author: For death has come up into our windows, it has entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from the streets, and the young men from the squares.
The Wall, the guard, the extinguisher, the spotlight, the notes, his emptying pockets—suddenly everything seemed like a story someone else had written. He felt that something had given way inside himself, some simple hold on reality, some fundamental understanding of the solid as opposed to the ethereal, of the palpable as opposed to the phantasmal, of the foothold as opposed to the chasm. And he realized then that he was longing, truly and completely, for the coming of the Babylonians, as for the coming of the Messiah, if only to put an end to this hassle once and for all. He wasn’t even sure it would be so terrible if he himself were among those who would fall in battle, since he knew all too well that, after what he’d been doing and saying these last few years, he would never again find a place among the people of Judah and Jerusalem, that he’d be despised everywhere, that no woman would ever marry or befriend him, because how could it be possible to have a relationship with a belligerent and querulous fellow whose pockets were crammed with nonsensical notes? And suddenly he also longed to be deported to Babylon. There were rumors that the Philistines from Ashkelon who’d been deported seven years ago had built a new city in Babylon, on the ruins of a city the Assyrians had destroyed years earlier, and they called the city Ashkelon City, and the Babylonians were allowing all the exiled kingdoms to do the same. Every kingdom was allotted a ruined quarter or a city in Babylon that had been razed to the ground, and they permitted the exiled to restore what had been destroyed. In this way, all the exiled petty kingdoms in the region were being re-established in the land of Babylon as miniaturized, renewed, duplicate kingdoms that were reaching, each in its own way, a magnificent zenith of degeneration. And there were those who said the Babylonians were certainly a painful blow, but painful not in the sense of an attack so much as an unpleasant but necessary medical intervention, like a dentist pulling a rotten tooth before your whole jaw putrefies. And tales began to circulate of a restored, utopian Ashkelon rising again on the outskirts of the city of Babylon, along the banks of the river, where they picked almonds, preserving the good ones and leaving the bad ones to rot and stink, on their way north, and how they built their new city there on the good river with the aid of a ruler and a pair of compasses, and conducted themselves according to the prophets of justice of all the world’s nations and cultures, and lived according to their lights.
The guard called from his perch, If you’ve finished with your notes, please clear the plaza. And Jeremiah stepped back and saw throngs of people approaching the plaza from the west—the celebration in the stadium had apparently ended—and he stood there with his back to the Wall and watched them stream in. The heart is devious above all else, and exceedingly weak, Jeremiah thought. What can I do? On the other hand, he thought, on the other hand, I’ve got to turn my life inside out.
People were walking silently, in pairs or alone, and Jeremiah realized that something had happened. He looked the people over, so as to understand, as they headed straight for the Wall and now and then raised their heads toward the Temple. And Jeremiah threaded his way through the crowd in the opposite direction and hearkened to what they were saying and thinking. He immediately heard that the King of Judah had died, just as Jeremiah had prophesied into the Holyland intercom that morning, and this unnerved him and weighed upon him, for he felt once again that wheels had been set in motion, that something was under way that till now had been only jottings. He stopped in his tracks and saw the sentry, who’d descended from his sentry box with his long-nosed pliers, speaking to someone in hushed tones; it was a priest named Pashhur, whom Jeremiah had once seen being interviewed on the five o’clock news, his graceful but scarred face filling the TV screen. The guard pointed at Jeremiah with the hand holding his pliers, and Pashhur looked at Jeremiah and started to walk toward him; Jeremiah pretended not to notice and continued on his way a
t a halting pace, while listening in on what people were saying around him. But Pashhur managed to open a path through the crowd and caught up with Jeremiah and knocked him over with a smack while running; then the priest blew into a pennywhistle, and three more priests or cops pounced on Jeremiah, dragged him off, shoved him into a van, slipped a burlap sack over his head, emptied his pockets, and drove off in silence. And Jeremiah, sitting stricken, could barely breathe, and imagined to himself that they were finally going to do away with him—now that Jehoiakim was dead, a state of emergency had been declared, and all the dams had burst. He mumbled prayers under his breath: Heal me and I shall be healed, for you are my praise. Arise, O Lord, save me my God, for you strike all my enemies on the cheek, you break the teeth of the wicked. The policemen and the priest appeared to hear his prayers, though he was trying to keep them as inaudible as possible, and someone slapped Jeremiah through the sack, cutting him below the cheekbone. And they spoke about his forthcoming death completely without guile, as it were. One cop said, We’ll go by the book, one bullet in the head. A second cop said: Why waste a bullet? Better to shove him off a cliff. After all, accidents do happen. If you walk along the edge of a chasm, you fall—it happens, right? And someone else said, Let’s light up his beard, and Pashhur said, Hunger is free, let’s just throw him into a pit and finito, and a third cop said, Let me choke him with those notes he was sticking into the Wall; we’ll cram what came out of his mouth back into his mouth. He rustled what must have been Jeremiah’s notes close to Jeremiah’s covered ear, and then he blew into a paper bag and burst the bag inches away from the sack.
It was a short drive; when they ascended a hill, Jeremiah realized they were taking him to the Temple, or at least somewhere in its vicinity. The van stopped, and he saw, in spite of the sack over his head, that they were at the upper Benjamin Gate, located at the northern end of the Temple compound, and he nearly stumbled over a manhole cover or something of the sort; he fancied for a split second that he could see his parents’ house far to the north, and the soft midwinter light slanting through thin clouds over villages and towns, some empty, others populated, over Anatot and Ramallah and Neve Yaakov and over Issawiya, and over the airport. Somewhere out there, in the distance, the light rail was speeding cheerfully along, gleaming under the new star, whose light, so it seemed, was glowing just a bit more intensely. And Jeremiah opened his eyes in the sack, and he was overcome by the frightful realization that they’d been waiting for him there at the Wall all along, that someone had smashed open the fire extinguisher precisely to wheedle him into action, that someone had told them of his plans. And they arrived, and there was a room there next to the gate, and the priest opened it with a set of large iron keys, and they stepped into the dark. It wasn’t even necessary to push Jeremiah—he entered like a man returning to his home at dusk—and they switched on a strong light, and he saw, through the sack that still covered his head, the machine.
24
THEY WALKED OUT OF THE STADIUM, which all at once had turned into the king’s grave. And suddenly they realized they were holding hands, after years during which they hadn’t. And they decided to return home by foot, as in those faraway days when they’d intended to walk across Holland, and even set out from The Hague, but stopped in Amsterdam to see Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, and Esther told him, What chaos, and Hilkiah answered, Like life. Later, in the hotel, without exchanging a word, they showered together in silence. And one of the two wept under the warm torrent of water. Even so, they figured that the distance from Teddy Stadium to Anatot was too far to walk; undoubtedly, at some point they would have to hop onto the light rail. But even to plan this long walk across the city at a diagonal was in itself a sort of declaration, that, yes, it was still possible, the past could come around again. And light suddenly burst through the winter clouds, and one of them said: Even though the king is dead, we’re still out for a stroll. Isn’t it amazing? The world goes right on existing. And they were reminded of how, in Scheveningen, they’d stood facing the waves, rock-shattering waves, and Esther had placed an empty glass at the end of the wharf, and Hilkiah had poured out a little water from a bottle, and for a long while they’d sat there facing the North Sea and drinking in the light.
They said they’d pass by the market and bring home some vegetables and prepare something to eat, and they’d call Jeremiah up and invite him over. And just as they were saying this, Esther saw a sweet potato lying on the sidewalk. And it was as a sign and portent, Esther said: We’ll make orange-lentil soup. And she bent over the root like someone saving a snail in the rain. And Hilkiah said, This we won’t put in our soup; we’ll take it and plant it in a pot. Years ago, he’d planted an avocado pit, but nothing came of it—it didn’t sprout. He hadn’t understood what went wrong; he’d intended to live off its fruit, to spread it on bread with olive oil and chopped onion, but the savor of this future spread never came to fruition in his mouth. And he took from her the orange lump with its pointed ends.
* * *
HE LOST HER AT THE PAT INTERSECTION, in the crush returning from the hummus competition. One moment she was there next to him; the next moment someone else was beside him, with a small dog on a leash. The crowd was grimly silent, perhaps on account of the awful death of the king, perhaps out of dread of what was to come. Prophets didn’t lose any time in clarifying and commenting on all that had occurred, and in forecasting the future; they spoke of the coming of the Messiah, son of David—this was, for the moment, the ruling conception. And someone nearby told a group of people who’d gathered around him: Jehoiachin, Jehoiachin—surely that’s the name of the new king. If so, let’s do the numbers, let’s see what the gematria says. And someone computed rapidly, and the number 111 came up. Everyone applauded: This number is doubtless a nice number, but is its niceness a good niceness or a bad and bitter niceness? And someone else quickly calculated that the words very wise also added up to 111, and then another gematria smart-aleck shot back, But they won’t rest also makes 111, so maybe we’ll find out that Jehoiachin’s great wisdom will only bring us trouble and unrest. And someone else calculated: 111 also gives us the name of the sage Baba Sali. That says it all! If so, we’re saved and delivered, the Baba has returned in the semblance of our king, the time of the Messiah has come, beyond any doubt! And someone else said: Indeed, he was crowned in a sports stadium, and 111 in gematria also gets us the name of the soccer player Eli Ohana, that’s got to mean something … but what? Does it mean the king will score many goals? That’s marvelous! And someone else said: But what if he breaches the gates to our city? That is to say, what if he’s destined to lead us to utter destruction? And another prophet said: That music you heard on that broken piano, that music that just keeps repeating itself, over and over, over and over? From now on, it’ll be this city’s sound track. And they asked him, Then what’s the meaning of that melody? And he said, Oho, don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to hear all its meanings, believe me—you’ll pick up every last one of its meanings sooner or later.
Hilkiah looked up for a moment at the new star that shone above them, as it did every other day, and told it, Enough already, turn off. And he raised his hand between his eyes and the star in order to hide it from sight. He was carried along eastward by the throng. He didn’t see his wife. But she’ll show up, he thought. Esther will show up soon. And the words Esther will show up brought back a medley of bygone moments, memories of her performing assorted dance movements onstage. Once, he saw her borne up in the arms of a muscular black dancer and was filled with envy, for he knew he’d never bear her up like that, would never be able to lift her up that way. And someone remarked, practically in his ear, Life’s a sweet potato, eh? And he slipped the potato into his jacket pocket, embarrassed. He told himself that it needed planting, badly—otherwise, it would rot there in his pocket. He had to find some black earth. Yes, black earth, only black earth. And as soon as possible. Find a pot and fill it up and water it. Give it a home, li
ke a fish in an aquarium. You can’t carry a fish too far without sticking it in an aquarium. And a sort of picture appeared in his mind in which he saw six-year-old Jeremiah’s hand holding a transparent plastic bag filled with water inside of which a white fish swam, a fish they named Avitar the High Priest. The light—he chiefly remembered the sunlight refracted through the bag.
But he couldn’t find a flowerpot, or a nursery. At the head of Gaza Street, close to the prime minister’s home, which was surrounded by a deep moat—where crocodiles from the Egyptian Nile could be seen swimming in circles—the ground was moist from the moat waters and the recent rains, and he crouched down for a moment and filled his pocket with several fistfuls of soil, enough to cover the sweet potato.
* * *
FROM A SHORT DISTANCE AWAY, Esther caught sight of Hilkiah crouching down and filling his pocket. She could have approached, pushing her way through the packed crowd at the head of Gaza Street, but something held her back. I’ll keep him in sight, she thought, I’ll go over to him in a few more minutes. His actions seemed odd to her, filling his pocket with earth. You turn your back on someone you’ve lived with for twenty years for just a few minutes, and already he appears in a different light, digging and filling his pocket with dirt. She wanted to see what else he would do, if anything, and whether he’d look upset and seek her out with his eyes. There was a cash machine there, and she leaned against it as she observed how Hilkiah stood up and tamped down the earth in his pocket and spoke to the sweet potato. Someone behind her said, Signora, I need to get some cash quickly. He had to flee, he said, and return home to Tarshish. She didn’t understand what was so urgent. He said, Don’t you listen to the news? And when she turned back around, once again Hilkiah was nowhere in sight.
Muck Page 23