Muck

by Dror Burstein

  Jeremiah spoke rapidly; he had a feeling that he was about to lose his voice. And he rose from the bed in the court of the guards and went up to Pashhur, in spite of the revulsion he felt toward him—it was like walking toward a large white scorpion—and said, Terror … terror … But Pashhur averted his eyes—he couldn’t look at the prophet—and Jeremiah, who was two heads shorter than the priest, walked around him like a beggar hounding the people coming out of a restaurant, spitting words into Pashhur’s scornful ear, saying, Thus says the Lord, see, I am setting before you the way of life—and the way of death. And Pashhur leaped aside in disgust, but Jeremiah stuck to him like a boxer and said: Those who stay in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence, but those who go out and surrender to the Chaldeans who are besieging you—they shall live and shall have their lives as a prize of war. For I have set my face against this city for evil and not for good. Pashhur tried to get away, climbing on Jeremiah’s bed as though fleeing a stubborn rat. Thus says the Lord! Jeremiah added. And now, Terror-All-Around, if I’ve found favor in your eyes, get off, get off of my bed; I want to go back to sleep. He had still plenty to say to them: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, and do no wrong or violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place, and so on and so forth. But he didn’t see the point. No, enough. It’s too late.

  * * *

  FROM THE KING OF JUDAH’S RESIDENCE resounded the notes of the étude for piano that Jehoiachin had played a decade ago in the stadium. Now the king himself was trying his hand, and he was even making some progress from one lesson to the next. Jeremiah lent his ear to the efforts of the person seated on David’s throne in front of a piano. And he got out of his bed in the courtyard and moved the bed against the wall and climbed on it and jumped and clung to some cracks in the bulging stone wall of the courtyard of the guards, and he pulled himself up on a ledge, from which position he beheld for the first time, with his own eyes, spread before him panoramically, the massive edifice of the siege, and its thousands of soldiers, and he realized that the Babylonians had built an actual city around the Old City, a city ringing a city, a thin cow around a fat cow, and the thin would swallow the fat. Above the Babylonian city burned the new star, and the Babylonian astronomers who’d arrived with the troops stood there and gazed at it through their polished telescopes, and Jeremiah observed that, although it was shining over the Babylonian encampment, it wasn’t shining over the city itself. This greatly alarmed him, and he stood up and ran to the king’s residence, but the king wasn’t there; in fact, the place was almost completely deserted, apart from a handful of servants who were running hither and thither. They kept telling him that the king had gone to fight against the Chaldeans at the head of a great army: The king has gone to welcome Pharaoh, who’s come up from Egypt to his aid and has joined forces with the army of Judah, haven’t you heard? The Babylonian army has retreated, sucked away by the Egyptians like dust into a new vacuum cleaner—surely the bitterness of death is past! And Jeremiah climbed up to his perch again and looked and saw that there were no tanks, that the very place where he’d imagined seeing fortifications a moment ago now seemed deserted, and an eerie silence prevailed over everything. He shook himself in disbelief at what he was seeing; he stood there and jerked his body as if he were shaking something off, but what? The Babylonian army had suddenly retreated, and the siege ramps and engines and battlements had been left behind unmanned, an empty shell of a siege without the bitter core. Zedekiah, the servants told him, had set free all the bondsmen and bondswomen and the animals from their tasks as a sort of enormous peace-sacrifice to appease God, and all masters of bondsmen and bondswomen and anyone who owned an animal obeyed and set free their slaves and their animals, be they fish in an aquarium or an old Canaanite slave. And, indeed, it was reported that the Egyptians were coming to Judah’s aid; the good that was done in the land was immediately recompensed from the heavens, as the Babylonians released their grip on the siege and marched off to the coast to repulse the Egyptian blow. An enormous sigh of relief rose from the city, and the headlines in the papers announced WE’VE BEEN SAVED in letters covering half the front page.

  After several days, during which not one Babylonian was seen, trucks with provisions began arriving from Moab and unloading food and medicine and soap and toothpaste and cans of dog food. And so all the masters bought back their former slaves for a pittance, and other animals were obtained to serve in the place of those that had been set free, and all of these were made into bondsmen and bondswomen, and they lapped up the canned dog food. And Jeremiah, who didn’t know about any of this but sensed it all nonetheless, ran around in a panic, sweating profusely, from one room of the palace to another. He didn’t know what was happening. Were the Egyptians indeed fighting with us—that is, with us? Had a vacuum cleaner indeed come up from the Nile? Contradictory verses burst out of his mouth—on the one hand, Behold I proclaim for you a liberty, but then, immediately, Behold I proclaim for you a liberty to the sword, to pestilence, and to famine—and he didn’t know whether to speak the verse to its end or not. His brain throbbed with verses and scraps of verses, and his skull seemed to have split open and was awash in warmongers bent on destruction, and he didn’t know what was going on, he just didn’t know.

  Tukulti stood in the corner of one of the palace rooms, looking gaunt, his ribs showing, staring out the window. Jeremiah asked him where the king was, and Tukulti didn’t answer but trotted across the room and opened a secret door and entered, and Jeremiah followed him. They fled down a hidden corridor and descended some steps, and Jeremiah told Tukulti, I’ve got to get out of here, I can’t sit in the jailhouse anymore. Tukulti barked, and an exit sprung into view. Jeremiah climbed a ladder through a round opening; he had a feeling that he’d been there before. And when he stuck his head out and looked into the light, he saw the door with three locks belonging to the rotator cell. His heart stopped, but he scrambled out anyway, and, as in an unending circular nightmare, one of the Temple clerks immediately seized him and screamed: Here’s another one! So you think you’re sneaking out to join the Chaldeans? A Babylonian siege can last five, ten years—everyone knows that. You’ve just got to settle in and see it through! And Jeremiah shouted back, That’s a lie, I’m not joining the Chaldeans, and the clerk said, That’s precisely what we’re going to establish, and dragged him toward a number of officials who were there in the room eating lukewarm meatballs made of dog food along with stir-fried beans, passing the salt from hand to hand. And Jeremiah said, You’ve got to let me go, I’ve got to talk with the King of Babylon. And they made fun of him and said: Yeah, sure, maybe you want to talk to the King of Egypt, too? Are there any other kings you’d be interested in talking to? Hey, we can arrange whatever you want. And what exactly are you going to tell him, Jeremiah? That you want to hand the keys to the city over to him so that he can come and destroy the Temple? We’re done, Jeremiah; the Babylonians have gone, haven’t you heard? It’s finished. Pharaoh is pushing the Babylonians toward the sea, crushing them like Babylonian garlic, and frying them up till they get all brown and bitter. The siege has been lifted. You’re like someone flooring the gas pedal while the car is in neutral; you no longer have any meaning; you’re a walking lie, prattling on and on, and we’ve got to stop the prattling once and for all, because there’s only one thing to do with a poisoned well—it needs to be sealed. And Jeremiah said confidently—even though he wasn’t sure about anything—confidently and forcibly: Do not deceive yourselves, saying, The Chaldeans will surely go away from us, for they will not go away. They will return, they will return, they will return, they will return, they will return, he shouted. It’s only a short break—Pharaoh sent two hundred soldiers, it’s only symbolic. It’s only so he comes out looking nice in the papers. Babylon will trample over them within two minutes; they’re already dying, all of Pharaoh’s soldiers are dying, Jeremiah scr
eamed. And though he had no idea what he was saying, he was describing the situation quite accurately. Pharaoh had indeed sent only a few troops who’d been condemned to death anyhow, and whom he’d released from prison in order to give them a chance to redeem themselves, but Babylonian arrows and bullets had already cleaved their heads, eagles were already hovering over the corpses, and the Babylonians were only resting from their long march. Tomorrow morning they’d be back on their siege ramps and manning their well-secured tanks and cannons. And one of the Temple scribes grabbed a baseball bat and whacked Jeremiah on the back as if he were striking a big gong, and Jeremiah said, Listen, listen all of you, stop beating me. And the scribe said: Beating? Who’s beating? We’re only having a little fun here on the Temple baseball team. And then he struck Jeremiah in the stomach, which doubled him up real good.

  And Jeremiah realized that he’d been mistaken to leave the court of the guards. It would have been far better to remain in the compound with the dogs and their trainer—an Ethiopian, a refugee from one of Pharaoh Neco’s wars in southern Egypt who’d drifted from one place to another and somehow ended up in Jerusalem, and who for some reason was afraid of people but calmed down in the company of dogs. He walked around the court of the guards on all fours, barking and yowling, and slept with the dogs in their kennel, and licked their faces and ears, and the King of Judah had put him in charge of the royal dogs; the king attended to his daily welfare and called him Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian—Servant of the King.

  The Temple scribe again raised his bat, and told the officer next to him, Let this man be put to death, because he causes the soldiers who are left in this city to lose heart, and all the people, by speaking such words to them, for this man is not seeking the welfare of this people, but their harm. And the officer called up a senior officer, and the senior officer called the minister of defense, until the red phone rang in Zedekiah’s room. Zedekiah was busy shoving his wife toward the king-size bed in near-total darkness—ever since her plastic surgery, he couldn’t stand looking at her in the light. But the minister called and disturbed him right in the middle, stiff and lubricated, and Zedekiah cried out in exasperation and got dressed and rushed out. He went down to Benjamin Gate and grabbed Jeremiah and led him aside and bawled: Out of my sight, all of you! Let me interrogate him myself! And they were left alone, both of them dressed in black. Zedekiah asked, Has there been any word from the Lord? And Jeremiah whispered into his ear—on which he noticed for the first time a minuscule cuneiform tattoo (yes, here too)—and told him, There was. And Zedekiah asked, What? And Jeremiah said, into his ear, You will be handed over to the King of Babylon. And Zedekiah suddenly felt like telling Jeremiah, Look, I know by now that every word you’ve spoken is true, and that you speak with the true voice of God, but even though you speak nothing but evil words to me, know this, my dear childhood friend, it’s been a huge privilege for me to see you and listen to you; I know I’ll never again be so close to God. But different words altogether came out of his mouth. He opened the door and called out to his officers and to the scribes who were waiting a short distance away, and who all fixed their eyes upon their king: Enough, I’m fed up. The interrogation failed. Here he is, he’s in your hands, for the king cannot do a thing against him. Take him back to the house of the guards. And he added abruptly, Give him a loaf of bread daily. Until such time as the city runs out of bread.

  And the officers took him away, and one of them, who was called Malchiah the King’s Son, for he professed to be in the line of succession, said on their way to the court: But the city ran out of bread a long time ago. The king is clearly suggesting something to us … Yes, I’ve got a better idea. Let’s take him to my place for a bit. And Jeremiah said, But the king spoke, and Malchiah the King’s Son said, But I’m Malchiah the King’s Son, and I, too, have a say in this city—or maybe you think I don’t have a say? And Jeremiah said, Fine, whatever, let’s go, then. And Malchiah the King’s Son said, What? And Jeremiah said, Okay, I agree, let’s go to your place for a bit, and Malchiah the King’s Son said, What? And Jeremiah said, Look, it’s fine, I’m not arguing with you. For at that moment Jeremiah had decided that he was abandoning his hopeless task; he was renouncing this life growing more corrupt by the day, retiring from all his shouting with his parched, inflamed throat at deaf ears in the hopes of a redemption that wasn’t going to happen for another seventy or seven hundred or seven thousand years at best, and all he now wished for himself was a swift death, so that his eyes wouldn’t behold the horrors of the siege and the destruction of Jerusalem. For a moment, he felt happy that his sister had died a long time ago, that she hadn’t been exposed to this coarseness, this avalanche of flesh, the awful defeat of humanity, and happy, too, that his parents were in exile. Though he hadn’t heard from them in ages, he felt—that is, he hoped—they were alive and well, and that soon, perhaps—forgetting he was probably about to be killed—he’d be able to send them the letter he’d written: tomorrow he’d go to the post office and he’d send them the letter by registered mail. And then he started to laugh quietly, his head bent low. A registered letter, he chuckled, a registered letter! He took a quick peek at the view of Jerusalem from the upper floor of the Temple—he’d been led up there in an elevator to shorten the way to Malchiah’s place—and it looked to him as though everything outside had been burned to the ground, like the aftermath of a forest fire, when everything is scorched black apart from a couple of greenish stains and some smoldering embers. But this vision lasted only a moment, and Jeremiah heard Malchiah saying, That’s how I like my prophets, quiet and obedient!

  As they entered the court of the guards, Jeremiah said, But you said that you had a better idea, I thought we were going somewhere else … Were you bluffing about wielding the scepter, Malchiah? And Malchiah the King’s Son said, Lower him down into the pit, and Jeremiah said, Yes, a pit fit for the end! And Malchiah instructed four of the ministers who were accompanying them (or were they, in fact, the ministers’ young sons, who were learning their fathers’ trade, and who simply bore the same names? for they suddenly seemed awfully young to Jeremiah)—Baalzecher and Baalmelech and Baalgezer and Cohen-Mastemah—to tie the prophet up. And Malchiah said, Lower him down slowly, as though he were made of porcelain, lest people say we killed him: I want him alive, if barely, when he touches bottom; I want to sleep soundly tonight. And Jeremiah told the officers, It’s just like with Joseph and his brothers, and you, too, are my good brothers, I understand you—you’ve got to wipe out all the dreams I dreamed, all the fears I woke in you. Thank you, thank you, for all the mercy you’ve shown me. But they didn’t pay any attention to his words, and the four officers let Jeremiah down into the steep cesspool that stood in a corner of the court of the guards, behind the kennels, and they peered down from above and saw that there was no water in the pit, only muck.

  And Jeremiah sank in the muck. Ever so slowly, he was lowered to the bottom, which was filled with sewage—sticky, slurping, putrid. He felt that he was being sucked into it inch by inch. And he felt a deep tranquillity washing over him, because he knew that in another quarter of an hour, half an hour tops, everything would come to an end: what mattered most was that they would leave him alone, what mattered most was to be alone. It was perfectly quiet there, as in a cave, but without any echo, and Jeremiah knew now that he was undefeated, that none of this was important—the pit wasn’t important and the muck wasn’t important. He had never been defeated; even though he’d been battered and bruised, he’d stood up to his trials. What exactly the point was of his having suffered through them all, he couldn’t quite say, but, then, nobody was demanding an answer from him, either. By now it was very hot in the city—summer was here—but in the pit it was cool. Jeremiah already knew that the Babylonians would soon batter down the city walls and set Jerusalem to the torch, and that the flames would consume the court of the guards, and the palace, and the Temple, and the desiccated fruit trees in their enclosures, whose shadows his eyes had regist
ered a short while before, on the way over from the Temple. But none of this concerned him, not at all, for he was deep in the pit, in this pit that would protect him and shield him the way a shell shields its pearl in the depths of the sea even as a whale glides overhead; even when Jeremiah died, this shell would still watch over him. For he knew that he would soon die there, floundering, that the pit would be both his executioner and his grave, and that the foul-smelling muck in which he would drown would harden over him after the destruction of the city in the heat of this dry summer, after all the city’s sewage stopped oozing through the pipes, the way the piss and shit in a corpse likewise dry up and cease to flow. Though the city and its ramparts swam above his head, he was no longer in the world but under the world; the pit nourished Jeremiah deep in its bosom. And he called his sister to mind—she, too, had had a pit, her illness, and she, too, had been slowly sucked into the muck. And his parents, too, for that matter, had sunk in their Babylonian pit, he reflected: Why, the world’s nothing more than an ocean of muck! Okay, the end. And he shut his eyes and relaxed, just as someone who’s been clinging to the edge of a cliff might finally slacken his grip.