Muck
Page 40
Jeremiah listened to all of this and remained silent, and the people, who assumed that the black man coming out of the house was the prophet that they’d been looking for this last week in the hills north of Jerusalem, turned to Baruch. He stole a quick look at Jeremiah and told them, I will pray to the Lord your God according to your words. And they waited at the edge of the field. Ten minutes later, Baruch stepped out again and told them, Be not afraid of the King of Babylon, of whom you are afraid, be not afraid of him, says the Lord, for I am with you to save you, and to deliver you from his hand. And I will grant you mercy that he may have mercy on you. And someone shouted, We’ve seen his mercy, and he pointed at the university campus on Mount Scopus and at the Bezalel building on the facing hill, which by now had blended into the landscape like little more than mute extensions of the rocky sediment. We’re waiting here for nothing; the Ammonite will send his assassins again; we’ve got to flee to Egypt. And Jeremiah, who had been leaning all along against the tree and listening to the conversation, started to laugh quietly, at first to himself and then out loud, and he beat his fist against the tree as he doubled over with laughter, and the people stared at him in pity mixed with revulsion. And then they turned back to the black prophet, and Baruch said, If you are determined to enter Egypt and go to settle there, then the sword that you fear shall overtake you there, in the land of Egypt, and the famine that you dread shall follow close after you into Egypt—and there you shall die.
And Jeremiah listened and laughed—truly, he roared with laughter—and he climbed up the tree and waved his hands and shouted: Egypt! Babylon! Egypt! Babylon! And Baruch went up to him and hugged his feet and calmed him down and told the assembled, Don’t go to Egypt; remember what I told you. And one of the newcomers, a senior officer who introduced himself as Azariah son of Hoshaiah, told Baruch: You’re lying. The Lord our God did not send you to say, Do not go to Egypt to settle there, for Baruch son of Neriah—and here he pointed mistakenly at Jeremiah, perched on a branch and hunched over like a monkey, eating an olive—is inciting against us to hand us over to the Chaldeans, that they may kill us or take us into exile in Babylon. And again Jeremiah broke into laughter and clapped his hands, and they all rose to their feet and gathered their scant belongings and the little they’d stealthily looted from the homes in the village, and they got under way, plodding up the hill on the side of the deserted hospital, and Jeremiah stood up and to Baruch’s surprise joined the end of the procession, and Baruch followed him. And they all crowded into the abandoned bus number 9 that they came across parked at an angle in the bus tunnel on Mount Scopus, and they drove all night with their headlights off, heading southwest, tanking up at the deserted gas stations, and they drove in complete silence; only the sound of the engine could be heard. The next day, they arrived in Tahpanhes, which is in Egypt. Stretched out on the rear seat of the bus, Jeremiah wondered what had happened to Zedekiah and Noa and their infant—how old would he be by now?—but only for a moment, no more, and again he sank into a confused, troubled sleep. Slivers of prophecy rose within him on the way to Egypt, about all the neighboring countries, far and near—about Elam and about Edom and about Egypt and about Babylon and about Moab and about Aram and about Ammon and about Kedar and about Hazor and about the Philistines and about whomever—and in his prophecies he warned the entire world against various disasters and grave errors. He walked among the kings in his visions, and in his hand was a wineglass filled with red wine. When he offered them to drink, they refused. And he said: You’ll drink this whether you like it or not; you’ll drink it under duress; you’ll drink, you’ll drink and drink, and throw up, and fall down, and you won’t get up ever again. Make ready your buckler and shield and draw near to battle, for the sword will devour those around you. Have no fear, my servant Jacob. See, waters are rising out of the north and will become an overflowing torrent. Ah, sword of the Lord, how long until you are quiet, and Chemosh will go out into exile, leave the towns and abide in the rock, you who dwell in Moab, and be like the dove that nests on the sides of the pit’s mouth, for I have broken Moab like a vessel that no one wants, terror and the pit and the trap are before you O inhabitants of Moab, and the blood of man in Edom will be boiled.
Words and puns and golden phrases surged from within like fireworks. All of a sudden, his idiom and style turned brilliant and polished. If only there were someone who would listen, he’d happily detonate all these colorful concoctions for them, flaunting them shamelessly, but neither Moab nor Edom nor Baalis, King of Ammon (who waited in his palace for the return of Ishmael, son of Nethaniah, his faithful and handsome assassin), nor Aram nor Hazor could hear Jeremiah’s words—neither the prophecies of wrath nor those of consolation, saying: I will bring back the captivity of the children of Ammon, for I have made Esau bare, I have uncovered his hiding places, your terror has deceived you, although you make your nest as high as the eagle, from there I will bring you down. No one heard a word of any of it.
And Jeremiah, sound asleep, was tossed from side to side there in the bus, which was driven by a young boy. Baruch sat next to him, and every so often translated into his own tongue and jotted down in his notebook what Jeremiah was muttering in his sleep, completing any incomplete sentences. When Jeremiah woke from his troubled sleep, he felt that he could almost speak coherently now, and all of a sudden he was tempted to tell someone, anyone, saying Babylon is taken, Bel is put to shame, Merodach is dismayed, for out of the north a nation has come up against her. And he beheld a clear picture in which God clasped a golden cup filled with wine. He remembered the swollen pot, but by now there was nothing he could do with such pictures and words, and he spoke a few more words to the rear window, prophesying about Babylon: And with you I smash nations, and with you I destroy kingdoms, with you I smash the horse and his rider; with you I smash the chariot and the charioteer, and with you I smash man and woman, and with you I smash the old man and the boy; and with you I smash the young man and the girl, and with you I smash the shepherd and his flock, and with you I smash the farmer and his oxen, and with you I smash governors and deputies, and I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea all the wrong they have done in Zion before your eyes, and I will smash and I will smash and I will smash and I will smash and I will smash. And he remembered the old jug, and realized that the jug was still speaking. He told Baruch, Babylon is suddenly fallen and shattered. And he took the red emergency hammer and thought of smashing the jug that wasn’t really there, or the pane of glass that was, but desisted—all of a sudden he felt like comforting all the passengers in the bus, the long line of wretched refugees, all sorts of former senior officers and citizens who’d become powerless. But all they heard was Jeremiah repeating the words And I smashed, and someone told his friend, Come on, enough already, knock it off. And he then turned to Jeremiah and said, We’re not listening to you, get it? Two of the passengers whispered to each other briefly, and they went up to the monkey, and they stopped the bus, and they forced Jeremiah out of the bus. But before leaving the bus, he managed to stop for a moment alongside Baruch, who remained in the bus and wasn’t allowed to accompany his friend. Jeremiah took out a notepad, and he told him, Read this when you have a chance, dear Baruch, and when you finish reading, tie a stone to the pad—here Jeremiah handed him a stone that was exactly the size of the pad, but heavier—and cast them into the Euphrates, saying, Thus will Babylon sink, and it will not rise again because of the disasters that I will bring upon her, and they will be—
Jeremiah wanted only to complete this last sentence, just one more word, but they shoved him out of the bus, and one of the officers going down to Egypt took the stone that Jeremiah had given to Baruch and examined it up close. They left Jeremiah in the sand in the middle of nowhere on the highway leading to North Sinai. It was possible to make out the great sea from there, which neither Jeremiah nor the other Judeans had ever seen, and he turned to the sea, his heart swelling, and understood that the sand was the sea’s border,
and that the sand kept the waves back. This came to him like a staggering discovery, even though it was a known fact to all, and he beheld with wonder a fleet of ships making its way south to Egypt, and he stretched his hand out as if to caress them. Then he bent down and dug a shallow hole in the sand and buried the almond from his locket in the hole and covered it back up with sand, using his foot. And he thought, The tide will flow up to here, the water will come up to here. And he shut his eyes under the desert sun and took one or two steps in the direction of the sea, thinking, I’ll wash myself in the sea, and then I’ll shave off this tangled beard—it’ll be such a relief. A desert wind rose, sweeping everything along in its path, and Jeremiah saw a straw drifting off in midair.
* * *
IT WAS FIVE-THIRTY IN THE MORNING, and someone from behind threw the stone he’d left with Baruch at Jeremiah. It was just a joke, but the stone hit the back of Jeremiah’s head, and though he tried to open his eyes to the light, it was dark now, for in one stroke he’d lost his sight. Only the new star still shone there in his eyes, except that its light was now as bright as the light of the sun. He took one step forward in the direction of the starlight, his arms flung out wide like a tightrope walker balancing himself. Baruch sat on the bus and stared down at the notepad Jeremiah had left him; he couldn’t bring himself to look out the window, so he buried his eyes in the pad and jotted down from memory on the empty pages at the end of the pad what he’d just heard from his friend. And someone outside picked up a second stone, and another, and after they’d finished pelting Jeremiah with stones, they strode down to the sea to take a piss before returning to the bus. Baruch glanced at them as they boarded and sat or stood in the aisle. At first he didn’t understand what was going on, and then he realized, and he rushed out and ran and stumbled in the sand toward the heap of stones, some small and others large, from which a pair of bare feet poked out, their ankles exposed. And he circled around in distress, but he didn’t remove the stones; all he did was stand there and wail. He collapsed in a heap in the sand, but two short, sharp honks came from the bus, and he got up and shook the sand off his face and went back, his feet sinking in the sand. But the driver, following the order of one of the officers, wouldn’t let the black bastard back aboard, and they all laughed at this. And Baruch looked up at the driver and knocked at the bus’s door as it started on its way. The officer, who’d had his fun, now ordered the driver to stop and open the door after all, and Baruch boarded and found a seat, and they went down to Egypt. And after some time, they stopped by the Nile, and Baruch trudged in the mud with the other passengers along the banks of the river, and they stooped over the water to drink, and Baruch, too, stooped. He left the notepad on a stone and drank, and then he plunged into the river and was gone.
ALSO BY DROR BURSTEIN
Kin
Netanya
A Note About the Author
Dror Burstein was born in 1970 in Netanya, Israel. After practicing as a lawyer for a mere twenty-four hours, he devoted himself to literature, producing fourteen books of poetry and prose since 1999, including the novels Kin and Netanya. Among numerous other honors, he received the Bernstein Prize for his debut novel, Avner Brenner, and the Isaac Leib and Rachel Goldberg Prize for his 2014 novel, Sun’s Sister. He lives in Tel Aviv. You can sign up for email updates here.
A Note About the Translator
Gabriel Levin is the author of six collections of poetry, numerous translations, and a collection of essays, The Dune’s Twisted Edge: Journeys in the Levant. He lives in Jerusalem. You can sign up for email updates here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Part One: Jehoiakim
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part Two: Jehoiachin
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part Three: Zedekiah
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Also by Dror Burstein
A Note About the Author and Translator
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2016 by Dror Burstein
Translation copyright © 2018 by Gabriel Levin
All rights reserved
Originally published in Hebrew in 2016 by Keter, Israel, as טיט (Ṭiṭ)
Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2018
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from Leisure, by Zelda, copyright © 1985; reprinted with the kind permission of Hakibbutz Hameuchad.
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71752-0
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Published by arrangement with the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature