by Unknown
“For what?�
“My wife and son could tell you that at great length,� said Jachin-Boaz looking at his watch again. “And meanwhile the lion is waiting out there every morning before dawn.�
“Does he come into the flat or follow you to work?� said the doctor.
“No. But he’s there, and I know he’s there.â€�
“Right,� said the doctor. “But the choice is yours whether you meet him or not, yes?�
“Yes.�
“So what we’re talking about is that you’re afraid you’ll go out to meet the meat-eating lion. You’re afraid you’ll accept the punishment.â€�
“I hadn’t thought of that,â€� said Jachin-Boaz.
“What kind of people get punished?� said the doctor.
“All kinds, I suppose.�
“The jury goes out to deliberate,â€� said the doctor. “The jury comes back in. The judge says, ‘How do you find the defendant?’â€�
“Guilty,� said Jachin-Boaz. “But where does the lion come from? Explain that.�
“All right,â€� said the doctor. “I’ll go as far as I can with it. But you have to remember that not only don’t I have all the answers but I don’t even have most of the questions where you’re concerned. Let’s forget the technicalities. The lion is something extraordinary, but whether he eats meat or plays the clarinet is academic.â€�
“He wouldn’t kill me with a clarinet,â€� said Jachin-Boaz.
“The lion,â€� continued the doctor, “is capable of a real effect on you. But that’s not much stranger than television, for instance. Right now coming through the air are pictures of people talking, singing, dancing, maybe even pictures of lions. With a television receiver in this room we could see those images. We could hear voices, music, sound effects. We could in reality be emotionally affected by them even though the images would only be images.â€�
“That’s not quite parallel to my lion,â€� said Jachin-Boaz. “Also, everybody with a television receiver can see the programs you’re talking about. But nobody but me can see my lion.â€�
“Suppose,� said the doctor, “that you were the only person in the world who had a receiver that could pick up this particular broadcast.� He looked at his watch. “A guilt and punishment receiver.�
Jachin-Boaz looked at his watch. Less than a minute remained. “But where’s the lion coming from?â€� he said. “Where’s the transmitter?â€�
“From whom are you expecting punishment?�
“Everybody,� Jachin-Boaz was surprised to hear himself say as his mother and father unexpectedly rose up in his mind. Love us. Be how we want you to be.
“That’s as far as we can get now,â€� said the doctor, standing up. “We’ll have to stop there.â€�
“But how can I turn off the program?� said Jachin-Boaz.
“Do you want to?� said the doctor, opening the door.
“What a question!� said Jachin-Boaz. “Do I want to!� But as the door closed behind him he was adding up the cost of daily beefsteak for the lion.
The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973)
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Boaz-Jachin sat down in the layby and marked on his map the place where the lorry driver had left him.
He was still sitting there thinking about the lorry driver when a little red convertible with its top down pulled up, playing music. The number plates were foreign and the driver was a deeply tanned handsome woman of about the same age as his mother.
The woman smiled with very white teeth and opened the door. Boaz-Jachin got in. “Where are you going?� she said in English.
“To the seaport,� said Boaz-Jachin speaking English carefully. “Where are you going?�
“Different places,â€� she said. “I’ll take you to the port.â€� She swung the little red car smoothly out into the road.
Boaz-Jachin, since his encounter with the lorry driver, felt as if his former peaceful state of not knowing anything about people had been peeled from him like the rind from an orange. He doubted that it could be put back. As he sat beside the blonde woman it seemed to him that people’s stories were all written on their faces for anyone to read. Perhaps, he thought, he might now be able to converse also with animals, trees, stones. The lion came back to him briefly, like a memory from earliest childhood, then was gone. He felt guilty because he had made the lorry driver cry.
He looked at the blonde woman. She seemed to carry her womanhood the way men on the docks carried baling hooks on one shoulder — shiny, pointed, sharp.
The wind rushed by, blowing their hair. The music was being played by a tape machine. When one side was finished the woman turned over the cassette and there was new music. The music was smooth and full, and it sounded like the marvelous cocktail bars in films where unattainable-looking women and suave violent men understood each other immediately by a look.
Boaz-Jachin knew the blonde woman’s story as if she had told him everything. She had been married several times, and was now a wealthy divorcée. She, like the lorry driver, was looking for new faces coming out into the world. She too would want him to be something to her for a little while on the road between the past and the future.
There would be a hotel or a motel on the road, the little red car would pull up and stop, and she would look at him as the film stars looked, with her delicate eyebrows raised, without a word.
The room would be cool and dark, with slitted sunlight coming through the blinds. Ice would tinkle in glasses. She would speak low and huskily, with her lips against his ear. There would be room service, hushed, respectful, and envious — some young man a year or two older than he.
She would be artful and tigerish, would please him in ways unknown to him before, and he would give to her because it was unfair always to take without giving. He would be her stranger, and she his. He would appease the hungry ghost of the lorry driver by his generosity to this woman. It would cost him a few days — she would not want to part with him quickly — but they would both be enriched by it.
Boaz-Jachin thought of the parts of her body that might not be tanned by the sun, how the scent of her flesh would be and the taste of her. He was getting an erection, and crossed his legs discreetly.
Afterwards she would offer him money. He would not accept it of course, although he needed money very badly. On the other hand, he asked himself, was there any difference morally between that and taking money for playing the guitar and singing?
The wind lessened, the music was louder, the car stopped. Boaz-Jachin looked all around for a hotel or motel but saw none. There was a road going off to the right.
“I just remembered,â€� said the woman, “I have to turn off here. I’d better drop you now.â€�
Boaz-Jachin picked up his guitar and his rucksack and got out. The woman closed the door, locked it.
“When a boy your age looks at me the way I think you were looking at me,â€� she said, “then one of us is in bad shape. Either I shouldn’t think that way or you shouldn’t look that way.â€�
The little red car pulled away, playing music, going straight ahead towards the seaport.
The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973)
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The analogy of the television broadcast stayed in Jachin-Boaz’s mind. He was receiving a lion. The lion was a punishment. His wife and son would of course wish to punish him. Did he want to be punished? Was the lion simply a punishment? He could not arrive at a simple yes or no to either of those questions.
The lion ate real meat. What had it eaten since the five pounds of beefsteak three days ago? Would it be thin now, hungry, its ri
bs sticking out? If it was a lion that appeared exclusively to him, surely he was responsible for feeding it?
A customer came into the shop and asked for a book on ancient Near-Eastern art. Jachin-Boaz showed him the two paperbacks and the one hardback that were on the shelves and went back to unwrapping the shipment that had come in that morning.
The customer was one of the shop’s regulars, and inclined to be chatty over his purchases. “The lions are quite remarkable,â€� he said.
Jachin-Boaz stood up from the books, the brown paper and the string, bolt upright and alert.
“What lions?� he said.
“Here,â€� said the customer, “in the reliefs in the north palace.â€� He laid the open book on the counter in front of Jachin-Boaz. “I suppose the sculptor was bound by convention in his handling of the king and the other human figures, but the lions have immense distinction — each one’s an individual tragic portrait. Have you seen the originals?â€�
“No,� said Jachin-Boaz, “although I used to live not very far from the ruins.�
“That’s how it is,â€� said the customer. “Here’s one of the artistic wonders of the world, absolutely the high point of the art of its period, and when you live next door to it you don’t bother to look at it.â€�
“Yes,â€� said Jachin-Boaz, no longer paying attention to the man’s words. He was turning the pages, looking at the photographs of the lion-hunt reliefs. He came to the dying lion biting the chariot wheel.
“Easy enough to see where the sculptor’s sympathies lay,â€� said the customer. “His commission may have been from the king but his heart was with the lion. The king, for all the detail and all the curls in his beard, is little more than an ideograph, a symbol referring to the splendor of kings. But the lion!â€�
Jachin-Boaz stared fixedly at the lion. He recognized him.
“The king is almost secondary,â€� said the customer. “The mortal stretch of the lion’s body meets the length of the spears he hurls himself upon, becomes one long diagonal thrust of forces eternally opposed. That thrust is balanced on the turning wheel and the lion’s frowning dying face is at the center, biting the wheel. Masterfully composed, the whole thing. The king is secondary, really — a dynamic counterweight. He’s only there to hold the spear, and nothing less than a king would be of suitable rank for the death of that lion.â€�
Yes, thought Jachin-Boaz, there was no mistaking that frown. That was his frown, and the mane grew from the forehead in the same way. The set of shadowy eyes was the same. He had been thinner when he had seen him last, he thought, than he appeared here. And he had given him nothing to eat for days! Was the lion only able to eat food that came from him, Jachin-Boaz? No one else saw him. Did he see anyone else?
Jachin-Boaz seemed with his eyes to be possessing the lion in the picture beyond the possibility of its belonging to anyone else. The customer felt that his cultivated appreciation was being made unimportant. He began to feel protective towards the book he was buying, and made little patting motions on the counter with his hands. “I’ll have the book,â€� he said, and took out his checkbook.
“But it’s the wheel,â€� said Jachin-Boaz, his eyes fixed on the implacable eight-spoked studded chariot wheel in the photograph, part of it lost in erosion and the weathering of the stone. “It’s the wheel. He should understand that. It isn’t the king. Maybe the king doesn’t even want the lion to die. He knows that the lion too is a king, perhaps one greater than himself. It’s the wheel, the wheel. That’s the whole thing. The sculptor knew it was the wheel and not the king. Biting it doesn’t help, but one has to. That’s all there is.â€�
“That’s one way of looking at it, of course,â€� said the customer. “Really,â€� he said, looking at his watch, “I must be moving on.â€�
“Yes,â€� said Jachin-Boaz. Mechanically he rang up the sale and wrapped the book, wondering how many pounds of meat were required to keep a lion in good flesh. And of course there must be something cheaper than beefsteak. Horsemeat? Perhaps if he called the zoo they would be able to advise him — he could say tiger instead of lion. Was it possible that the lion didn’t know that it was the wheel? But he must know — there was such knowledge in his face.
“Please,� said the customer, “may I have the book?�
“Yes,â€� said Jachin-Boaz, putting it at last into the customer’s hands and thinking how strange it was that anyone else should carry a photograph of the animal so intimately and oddly connected with him.
He was nervous and jumpy for the rest of the day, putting books in wrong places and forgetting where he’d put them. He moved quickly and suddenly from one part of the shop to another without remembering why he went where he did. His mind darted from one thought to another.
He dreaded the lion, trembled and went cold at the thought of him, but at the same time craved the sight of him. The feeding of the lion now seemed his responsibility, his peculiar obligation, and he worried about the expense of it.
Jachin-Boaz rang up the zoo, said that he was doing research for a magazine article, and asked how much meat a full-grown tiger would require daily. He waited while the young lady at the zoo made inquiries. When she returned to the telephone he was told that the tigers each received a twelve-pound joint six days a week and were starved for one day.
“Twelve pounds,� said Jachin-Boaz. Well, actually that included the bones, she said. The meat in such a joint might be six or seven pounds.
How long could a lion … tiger, he meant to say, go without food?
Another absence from the phone. Five to seven days, she said on her return. Tigers in a wild state might consume forty to sixty pounds at one time, then go hungry for a week. Certainly one could say that they were able to go without eating for five to seven days.
Where did they buy the meat for the tigers? They bought condemned meat, he was told, and was given the name of the butchers who sold it.
Condemned meat! thought Jachin-Boaz after he had rung off. The thought made him uncomfortable. Condemned meat, no. He would economize somewhere else.
Then he became preoccupied with the wheel again. He saw his life as the wheel’s track printed on the desert, left behind by that inexorable and monstrous onward rolling. He wanted to make the lion understand that the wheel that forever bore the unscathed king away from him bore the king away from himself as well. However many wheels there were, there was in reality only one wheel. The wheel on the cage-wagon that brought the lion to the place of his death was the chariot wheel that hurried the king to his own death farther on its track. There was only one wheel, and nothing and no one had power against it.
Jachin-Boaz took another copy of the art book from the stockroom and looked at it several times during the afternoon. Often he was on the verge of weeping. He wanted to buy the book, but thought of the cost of beefsteak and borrowed it instead. When the shop closed he hurried home with the book, stopping on the way to buy meat.
At the butcher’s he looked at the carcasses hanging on hooks, stared at their nakedness.
All evening he sat at his desk, silent with the book before him, looking at the picture of the lion biting the wheel. Gretel had come to know his moods by now and was accustomed to them. She did not ask Jachin-Boaz why he had particular expressions on his face at certain times.
He knew that he would go out to meet the lion before dawn. He felt like a condemned man, and was surprised to find that he wanted to make love. There were times when it seemed to him that the different parts of him were not all under the same management.
Afterwards he lay looking at the glow in the night sky over the city. He fell asleep, dreamed that he was running on an enormous master map with the bronze-studded tire of the chariot wheel rolling behind him, scraping his back, tearing flesh from his back as it pursued him.
At half-past four he woke up remembering nothing of his dream, bathed, shaved, dressed, and went out carrying the meat for the lion.
Jachin-Boaz saw the lion as soon as he came out of the building. He was lying on the pavement across the street, the light from the overhead lamp making harsh black shadows under the frowning brows.
He knows now that I know who he is, thought Jachin-Boaz. We are countrymen. Jachin-Boaz’s legs became weak, and there was coldness in the pit of his stomach. He wanted and did not want to go towards the lion, and he felt his body advancing while his mind sat like a passenger inside his head, looking out through his eyes and seeing the lion grow larger as the distance between them lessened.
The lighted red telephone kiosk was only a few yards to his left, and he moved in that direction as he walked diagonally towards the lion. When the telephone kiosk was ten feet away and the lion was twenty feet in front of him, Jachin-Boaz stopped. Again he smelled the hot sun, the dry wind, the lion-smell.
The lion got slowly to his feet, stood watching him. He was thin, Jachin-Boaz saw.
Jachin-Boaz moved forward a little farther, threw the meat to the lion. The lion pounced, tore at the meat as he held it between his paws, ate it quickly, growling. He licked his chops, looked at Jachin-Boaz, his eyes like steady green fires.
“Lion,� Jachin-Boaz heard himself say, “we are countrymen, you and I.� His voice seemed loud in the empty street. He looked up at the dark windows of the flats behind the lion. “Lion,� he said, “you have come out of the darkness into which the wheel took you. What do you want?�
For answer his mind showed him lion-colored desert, singing silence in the heat of the sun, taloned sunlight opening endlessly in the eyes of his mind, lion-sunlight, golden rage, blackness.
“Lion,â€� said Jachin-Boaz. He was humbled by the lion-feeling his mind had given him, he was dominated by the lion’s commanding presence, found it difficult to go on. “Lion,â€� he said, “who am I that I should speak to you? You are a king among lions, I see that plainly. I am not a king among men. I am not your equal.â€� While he spoke he watched the lion’s face, his feet, his tail. He kept his eyes on the lighted telephone kiosk and edged a little closer to it.