Muck

by Dror Burstein

  PART THREE

  ZEDEKIAH

  32

  NEBUZARADAN AND NEBUSHAZBAN entered the wine shop on Metudela Street accompanied by Zedekiah, the new king. In effect Zedekiah had already begun his reign the day after his appointment near the Chords Bridge. And Jehoiachin his nephew was given the somewhat dubious title King of Judah in Babylon, even before he was exiled there. One may as well ignore the interim period, Nebushazban told Zedekiah, and in any case, you need someone to look after you. We’ll teach you all you need to know, so why not get cracking? For what, after all, does a king need to understand? Nebuzaradan began. Women and wine to understand. His Hebrew was a bit odd, Nebuzaradan’s, captain of the guard. Food, however, he spoke fluently, and he loved to drink wine, loved to savor the taste; in each new province of the empire, the first thing he’d do was check out the wines and vineyards and crush a rinsed grape between his large teeth. The first word he taught Zedekiah to pronounce in Akkadian-Babylonian was karanu, wine. Karanu danu, strong wine. Beit karani, wine house. Rab karani, chief wine bearer. Zedekiah wasn’t familiar with these words from any ancient Assyrian writings, so he diligently repeated them to himself. Nebuzaradan was also fond of olive oil (shaman sirdi), fond of dipping fresh challah into a saucer of extra-virgin oil—for him, this was an unparalleled treat. Nebushazban, by contrast, made sure not to drink while on duty, and oil nauseated him. He was more interested in the local architecture and in the primitive art of the indigenes. Since Jehoiachin had pretty much disappeared after his dethroning ceremony—and it would be a lie to say that anyone really bothered to look for him—they took Zedekiah under their wings. They, too, like Nebuchadnezzar their master, were impressed by the cuneiform tattooed on the limbs and back of the designated local king, and, not having any other acquaintance in the conquered country, they stuck to him like a pair of tourists to their guide in some dangerous, barbaric land. They appointed a local clerk to organize the list of those who were to go into exile with the King of Judah in Babylon, Jehoiachin, and bureaus of exile were opened, and the Jews whose names had been announced arrived and stood in line in order to receive their travel certificates. (And some whose names hadn’t been announced came, too.)

  During the first weeks of his rule, when he accompanied them on their tour of the city, Mattaniah, which is to say Zedekiah, was compelled to leave Tukulti behind in their new home in the Holyland complex, along with Tukulti’s aged mother, the refugee from the house of Broch. Zedekiah wondered whether Tukulti also spoke to her in the language of men when they were alone. Noa, two days after his coronation, said that she had to return to the old house in Abu Tor to gather some of her belongings, a thing or two that she’d forgotten—and she took Eliazar, and a day went by, and two days went by, and she still hadn’t returned. She said that there was a lot to pack and arrange there, that it wasn’t right to move an infant to a new home, and to a top floor at that; she claimed she had a fear of heights. Zedekiah, who was preoccupied with his new responsibilities, let her be for the time being, thought he’d let her get accustomed to the idea. She stared at the nameplate on their old door, NOA AND MATTANIAH, and wondered whether she should change the plate, update her husband’s name. Instead, she got out a screwdriver and simply removed the plate, and left it in the kitchen, beside the jars of chickpeas and lentils. And she opened a can of beans with crushed tomatoes and ate it cold.

  A week later, once he realized that she’d relocated to their apartment and wasn’t going to return on her own volition, Zedekiah sent for Noa. When she had ridden up the Holyland elevator with Eliazar in his sling, he greeted her warmly and told her about the view. One could see everything from way up there, through Jehoiakim’s old sliding window, from the Temple right up to the Babylonian camp in Ramat Rachel, pitched on the remains of an early Assyrian encampment, and farther out, toward the city center, the old Bezalel building, where their wedding had taken place and their son had been born, and even over to the Old City. Zedekiah approached the toddler and extended his finger for him to grasp. And later Zedekiah would himself take the time to spread and tuck in the sheets on their queen-size bed on the thirty-first floor in one of the building’s towers, open on all sides and protected by armored glass. And he told her: Noa, they changed my name and moved me to a new apartment, but these are trivial things. You don’t have to take it so hard—you’ll be able to continue your life just like you wanted, only with fewer frustrations, so why make things difficult? Sit, sit … There are greater forces than us at work here … And they went to sleep under the glass dome, and the heavens opened over her, and Zedekiah, who still remembered from his days in the youth science club several interesting facts about the nocturnal skies, told Noa: The night connects us to the infinite, because the dark that descends on us is the darkness that goes on and on right up to the edge of the universe. During the day, it’s possible to believe that we aren’t part of the infinite, that we’re in a bubble of light, but night reminds us of the truth. And no one wants to remember it, so they hurry to shut their eyes and sleep, or to switch on a light. And Noa said, I get it, it’s scary. I want to shut my eyes. I want to fall asleep. And Zedekiah looked at her and said: The problem is that the darkness that’s behind our closed eyelids is a part of the big darkness, too. That’s why it doesn’t help. There’s no getting around it, no. And she said, Are you happy to be king? And he replied, I wasn’t interested, but if that’s where life has led me … can’t you see also the positive side? And he fell asleep and didn’t hear the answer.

  After some time, she was woken by a loud noise and didn’t understand what it was, and then she understood: Oh, he snores now. In the old house in Abu Tor, he had never snored. And the following night, it happened again. She’d shove him a bit, or hiss shhh at him, or even squeeze his nostrils shut with two fingers. He’d stop for a moment, and then start up again. And after a several sleepless nights, she told him that his snoring was wearing her out. Nonsense, he said, I don’t snore. If anything, you’re the one who snores—I heard you once. You also mumble in your sleep and grind your teeth. So she waited another night and recorded him, and he blushed when he heard himself snoring and said: I should be hanged! How horrible. I’ll go sleep in another room—I’m such a nuisance. And he went to the adjoining room, which was a sort of walk-in closet, since he didn’t want it to be known that the King of Judah was sleeping apart from his queen, but it didn’t help: the wall wasn’t thick enough, and the noise went right through. Even when he moved down a floor and slept there, she heard him, and then he flew into a rage: What do you want from me, anyway? You want me to give up sleeping at night entirely? And she said, Just move down another floor or two.

  Zedekiah summoned Baalgezer, the minister of defense, to seek his advice, and the fellow said: We’ll take advantage of the situation to get in a little publicity coup. You’ll sleep on the ground floor, and we’ll make it public; we’ll say that the king has decided to move closer to his people and not to lock himself at the top of his ivory tower. That the king is a night watchman to his people! And so it was, and it was made public, and Zedekiah started to sleep on the ground floor, without the stars and without the dome of darkness. They arranged a windowless basement for him and placed a bed and lamp there, and people would come and stand around the building at a safe distance. To catch sight of the king asleep wasn’t possible, of course—if there had ever been windows down there, they were now sealed up—but at least they could hear him snoring. You could stand and listen, every night, to the loud snores coming from the ground floor. And people crowded around and muttered prayers and entreaties to the king’s snores. And Noa would lie on the top floor, with her eyes open, under the heavens that stretched above her like a bowl, and the silence there was almost painful.

  Zedekiah asked that his staff purchase a heavyweight motorcycle for him. Sometimes he was startled awake by his own snores, and was unable to fall back asleep, and he’d escape quietly and motor up and down Begin Expressway just for the hell o
f it, and cause an enormous racket in the city before sunrise. And he also realized an old dream: they brought him a female singer to give him voice lessons. It turned out that he was a bass-baritone, and in the morning it was possible to hear him singing outside the palace.

  For the most part, he slept pretty well, with no one pushing his knees or pinching his nose or startling him with shhh or smacking his elbows: deeply, healthily, nine hours a night. In the morning, the two Babylonian ministers would pick him up in a Mercedes, and every couple of days they’d set out on a wine-tasting tour. They’d start, as was their habit, at the rabbinate, where the rabbinate’s head vintner diluted his terror by pouring a third of a glass, and Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, placed the base of the glass on the bar counter and jiggled the wine in the glass, twice, thrice. Then he stooped over and, as though preparing to dive into the glass orifice, shoved in his enormous nose and inhaled without tasting. Zedekiah and Nebushazban looked at him, kind of astonished, while the vintner attended to his every movement and word. Nebuzaradan flourished a white napkin, and the vintner spread it in front of the wineglass so that the Babylonian might examine the color of the wine against a white background. He then peered, with one eye shut tight, at the drops that trickled down the side of the glass, and again inhaled, and then, with both eyes shut, sipped. A tense, brittle silence spread amid the bottles. He didn’t swallow, and gazed at the ceiling, lost in thought. He turned completely red, Zedekiah noted, remembering that his father was also like that, immediately turning red even if imbibing just a sip for the Kiddush. The vintner looked at the king as if asking for help, but Zedekiah returned a blank stare. And then the captain of the guard turned toward the window and all at once spat the wine out. No … Nebuzaradan said, no … no … And the vintner, who’d brought out his best wine, was shaken up and asked: No? No? Nebuzaradan deliberately ignored him and said, No, I’m astounded, it’s beyond all expectations, this godforsaken hole, but, hey, don’t be stingy, this is great wine. Great wine. Worth you should taste, Nebushazban, he said. Such great wine has not come to our mouths since same wine in Nineveh our mouths we opened to sip. I’m almost drunk, he laughed, from one spitted sip. Not wine but winey presence. Be precise—not wine but whine-ish essence in itself. This wine deep like Babylon wells, and balanced, too, he muttered in a mixture of Akkadian and bits of Hebrew he’d picked up in the last weeks, I appreciate vines are fifty years, please correct if we’re not mistake. We have body full in the mouth, tannins soft and caressing. And lo, sugar, too, came out strong! he shouted abruptly.

  He moved on to the second glass. Good color, like the King of Akkadia and Babylon Nebuchadnezzar’s car after a night of dew, he determined, dark-toned, almost obscure, but there’s an open moist crack and sweet to the tongue and mostly for the tip of the tongue to chafe, concentrated and full-bodied, and odd, toothed tannins that sting in their calm like genitalia hairs that have just started sprouting. This wine he swallowed to the dregs—he couldn’t help himself. Muscular wine like our honorable king here, Zedekiah, but, like the king, it’s also round and generous, and he gives me finish especially fast. Sometimes a person just wants to finish strong, to give everything inside, without all the preliminary games, without all the pleasures of the palate … This is a handy and delightful wine now, he told the head vintner of the rabbinate, to drink it, to drink today, with the meat. Mattaniah sat nearby and looked at him, from time to time fishing out a peanut-flavored Bamba from its packet and placing it on his tongue.

  The Babylonian passed from one glass of wine to another—he was unquenchable. Each and every wine was for him another open field of secrets and visions that waited to be translated into a treatise: here was one that was full-bodied and aromatic like strong, genial goat milk straight from the udder, and it was rich and velvety, crammed full of the savors and fragrances of Nabataean avocado and lemon, all backed by a light tannin, like a puppy’s milk teeth, revealing suppressed intimations of city brushfires; there was one in which he detected a conspicuous though not bothersome woody influence, nicely blended with a sharp but enticing presence of saddle leather. At the first assault, Nebuzaradan said, the tastes of almost sharp plums and black forest-berries clearly emerge; in their wake, red berries appear, dark chocolate—eighty percent—made with Brazilian cocoa, and hinting at sweet and bleeding chewing tobacco. No, no, not sweet, he corrected himself after another moment of reflection, alive-salty. This is Assyrian wine, right? he asked the vintner, and even though it wasn’t Assyrian but from Hebron, the vintner said, Fantastic, precisely, the vineyards of Ashurbanipal. Great wine, the minister ruled, and the vintner nodded: Great wine.

  He turned to Zedekiah and poured him a glass. Zedekiah refused. His mouth tasted of his snack; besides, he disliked wine. But Nebuzaradan insisted, resolutely, his apparent drunkenness falling away: That wasn’t a suggestion, King. If you want to rule here, you’ll learn to drink, and to talk knowledgably about wine. Don’t be like all the other pushovers who rule over petty kingdoms and drink beer and seventy percent rubbing alcohol and don’t know how to say a thing about their drink apart from It tastes good or It doesn’t taste good. Now, drink up, or else I’ll break another bottle over your head! Nebuzaradan pounded the table with his fist. And Zedekiah, afraid, drained the glass of Assyrian wine, which tasted just disgusting, like a gulp of liquor mixed with sweet raspberry juice for children, and Nebuzaradan said, Well, whaddaya say? And Zedekiah, who didn’t have the faintest idea, seized on some of what he’d just heard and added some rubbish of his own—after all, he’d been a poet a hundred years ago—and said, In the amazing prolonged finish emerges an alluring smidgen-hint of licorice with a trace of Hittite lokum, and in the margins I sensed grass that has only ever imbibed the water dripping from an air conditioner that then suddenly dried up and died under someone’s cleated leather boot. And Nebuzaradan patted him on his broad shoulders.

  In his corner, Nebushazban folded the financial page of the newspaper impatiently and stuck it into the book he was reading for the third time, Toward a Theory of Urban Unsightliness, a book that was responsible, in many ways, for his general outlook on things. What bullshit, he felt like shouting at his companions, but instead he restrained himself, and was all deference, as was his way. They got up to leave, but before doing so, Nebuzaradan told the vintner: Thank you, you’ve subdued the captain of the guard. This was a one-of-a-kind experience. You are my oasis here—I’ll be back. Please, start packing your bottles. In three months, you’re coming with us to Babylon with all your wine, every last bottle. Don’t leave a drop behind you, chief of my vineyard, I want you close to me … Just don’t forget to bring a corkscrew.

  33

  ONCE THE LISTS WERE PREPARED, the deportees were put on the light rail in an orderly fashion. Everyone figured that the light rail would take them to the airport in Atarot, but they soon found out that the railroad from the north—that is, from Babylon—had been connected to the Pisgat Ze’ev stop. Thousands of Ammonite and Moabite workers had toiled day and night so as not to lose a moment. Jerusalem, Rabat Bnei Ammon, Ashteroth Karnaim, Damascus, Rivla, Tadmor, Mari, and then northeast along the Euphrates on the old Imperial Assyrian railroad. When they passed by the Sea of Galilee, from the east, everyone looked out at it for the last time—though for many of the deportees this was also the first time that they’d ever seen the sea that was part of the northern kingdom of Israel. They’d seen it only in pictures till now, and because of some sort of optical illusion, the Sea of Galilee appeared to them as completely black. It was something to do with the angle of the light, they assumed.

  The journey took seven days, more or less, since they stopped at every station, sometimes for a few minutes and sometimes for several days, and without being notified beforehand. It was permitted to disembark, so many deportees got out and never returned; they abandoned the exodus and settled in towns along the railroad tracks, selling the jewelry they’d brought with them, or else they rented a house and some land and a
donkey or goat and planted vegetables and took a few books out of their suitcases and set up a makeshift synagogue in a deserted shoe store. And maybe someone had brought a portable Book of the Law, or else a tablet onto which the Torah had been copied by a scribe, which just needed to be plugged in for a bit so the Torah could reach full power, and there was a rabbi present who ruled that this could serve as a kosher Torah in the hour of their need, and they read from the Torah, and someone started teaching the few children with them to read and write.

  The Babylonians received the list of poets to be deported from the Jerusalem Writers’ Association. First they rounded up all the prizewinners; they stood beside their beds, watching them muttering in their sleep or simply breathing in and out like any run-of-the-mill guy, and then they cleared their throats and woke the poets up, shaking them by the shoulders. In a single night, they seized all of the poets of Judah, first the famous ones, and the serial winners of prizes and grants, and the habitual invitees at festivals abroad, and then the minor ones, the sort who wandered about town carrying with him the shreds of a newspaper on which was printed the only poem he’d ever published, and even then using a pseudonym, and regretting just a bit that he hadn’t used his real name. But for the Babylonians this didn’t change a thing. They saw through all the pen names—that is, they’d seized the vice president of the Writers’ Association, and he’d furnished everyone’s true name with the utmost pleasure. The handful of poets who weren’t home the night of the purge were saved from exile for the time being, like deep-sea divers exploring the ocean floor while way up above them a nuclear war was raging, divers who slowly swam up from the depths of the seas to discover that their world had been nullified. After several days, one could have said that all the literature of Judah had been erased.