by Unknown
Gretel and Jachin-Boaz both stayed home from work that day. Jachin-Boaz rested in bed, his arm wrapped in white bandages. Gretel looked after him with soup, peppermint tea, brandy, custards, strudel. She cooked and baked all day, thumping and banging in the kitchen and singing in her own language.
When Jachin-Boaz had come home all bloody that morning he had fainted without an explanation, and in the ambulance had begged to be excused from going into the matter just then. Gretel had become aware of his early-morning departures from the flat, but she had said nothing. If he needed to go out at quarter to five every morning she would not question it. She had been terrified by his bloody return this morning, had listened, unquestioning, to his spiked-fence story at the hospital and continued to ask no questions. Her no-question-asking stalked through the flat like a tall silent creature that stared at Jachin-Boaz all day.
For most of the day Jachin-Boaz could do nothing but concentrate all his energies on holding himself together. The snaky black and brilliant panic that had surged up in him when he had closed his eyes in the presence of the lion had torn away the sodden rotting cover from a well of terror in him, and into that well his mind dropped like an echoing stone.
He cowered under the covers, hugging himself and shivering with a chill that soup and brandy and peppermint tea could not take away. When he looked around the room his eyes could not take in sufficient light. The day, however it varied from sunny to gray, had less than normal light in it. The twilight was appalling. The lamps when lit seemed feeble, unavailing. His terror stood up strong in him while he lay down. What brought him back to here-and-now was worrying about more beefsteak for the lion.
“Will you be doing any shopping later?� he asked Gretel casually.
“I did quite a bit of shopping yesterday,â€� she said. “There’s nothing we need unless you want me to get something for you.â€�
“No,â€� said Jachin-Boaz. “I’m fine. Thank you anyway.â€� He began mentally to rehearse different ways of mentioning seven pounds of beefsteak. He couldn’t say, You might pick up seven pounds of beef at the butcher’s. He couldn’t send her out three times for two pounds of beef and once more for one pound. He couldn’t go out and come back with it inconspicuously or in defiant silence.
While he deliberated Gretel was in and out of the bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, filling the flat with domestic sounds, singing incomprehensibly, bringing him coffee, chocolate bars, cleaning, dusting. His silence rose up in him like a pillar of stone while her no-question-asking stalked in and out with her, looking over her shoulder and staring.
After a time Jachin-Boaz said in a strained voice, “We’re good together, you and I. These months have been good ones.â€�
“Yes,� said Gretel, thinking. Now it comes: bad news.
“We can be together, but we can also be alone with each other,â€� said Jachin-Boaz, “each with privacy, one’s own thoughts.â€�
“Yes,� said Gretel. Who could be after him? she thought. Brothers of his wife? With knives? What kind of cuts were those on his arm? Not knives.
“We can tell each other everything, every kind of thing,� said Jachin-Boaz. “And also we can allow each other to have things that are not told.�
“Yes,â€� said Gretel. Not his wife’s brothers perhaps, she thought. The brothers of some other woman? Some other woman than herself? I’m eighteen years younger than he is. Is she younger than I am? Prettier?
“If I asked you to go out and buy seven pounds of beefsteak and not ask me why, would you do it?� said Jachin-Boaz.
“Yes,� said Gretel.
“Thank you,â€� said Jachin-Boaz. “Take money from my wallet. It’s on the desk.â€� He sighed, feeling relaxed and sleepy. Would he, wouldn’t he, go out to meet the lion tomorrow morning? He would think about it later when he woke up before dawn.
Jachin-Boaz took a nap. He dreamed of a lion-colored plain and himself walking slowly across it with nothing in sight. From the silence behind him he heard a whispering rolling that grew louder, brazen and heavy.
He knew without turning to look that it was the wheel, and the urge to escape became gigantic in him, too big for his body. He could not convert the urge to action because the vastness of the space made running impossible. There was no place to escape to. There was only empty timeless space all around him under a flat blue sky, and he continued to walk slowly while the escape-urge leaped up in him as if it would burst his throat.
The wheel was closer, the sound greater, filling all the emptiness of the plain. Jachin-Boaz felt the studded bronze tire on his back, crushing him, printing its track upon him, passing over him but not going on, not going away. Again it approached from behind, clamorous with voices, and on its rim now, turning with it, were the coffins of his father and his mother.
The wheel went over him again, splintering the coffins, pressing the bodies into his own body — his father’s maleness, his mother’s belly and breasts that now became those of his wife, and it was her body on the wheel crushing him. He turned and clung to her, face to face and front to naked front as the wheel crushed him. It’s all right, he thought. This is the way back, the wheel will take me back. The world won’t go away now. There’ll be world and me again.
He looked up as the wheel passed over him, saw it pass beyond him, saw spears fly over his head into his son Boaz-Jachin who already had two arrows in him and was leaping up at the wheel.
“No more other,â€� said Jachin-Boaz. No more great dark shoulder-world-wheel turning away. He laughed and felt his naked mother warm above him. “It’s all right now,â€� he said as she opened her scissor-legs and brought her weight down on him. The blades enclosed his penis as he thrust, safe and cosy, deep into his wife. “World again, me again,â€� he said. “No more other.â€�
He woke up with Gretel lying partly on him, her head on his chest. Her tears were wet on his skin. How am I here? Who is she? he thought as he kissed her wet face. What am I doing with her? He remembered nothing of his dream. In his mind was a memory of Sunday drives when he sat between his father and his mother, watching the waning sunlight with dread. He always got carsick on those drives.
Gretel cooked dinner and brought it in on a tray. Jachin-Boaz sat up in bed, eating and wondering how he had got to this place and this girl. Gretel sat on the edge of the bed with her plate on her lap and ate in silence.
That night Jachin-Boaz slept well, and he awoke at the usual time. In the dimness of the morning he walked into the living room, to his desk and the master map spread on it.
Jachin-Boaz ran his finger over the smooth paper. If he poked sharply his finger would make a hole in the map, go through it and come out on the other side without having penetrated anything but the thickness of the paper. So his life seemed now: he could poke himself through the flat paper of the map-city he walked on and he would come out on the other side, having only made a hole in non-reality.
Jachin-Boaz spoke to the map. “The man says to the place, ‘What will you give me?’
“The place says, Take whatever you want.’
“The man says, ‘What do I want?’
“The place has no answer for him.
“The place asks a question in its turn, ‘Why are you here?’
“The man looks away and cannot speak.� Jachin-Boaz touched the map again, then turned away.
He was out in the street with the beefsteak in his carrier bag before five o’clock. It was dark and rainy, and only when he saw the glistening street was he aware that he seemed to have decided to meet the lion again. Will the lion be wet too? he wondered.
The lion too was wet and glistening. The lion-smell was stronger in the rain. Jachin-Boaz threw him the meat immediately, and the lion ate it, growling. With his bandaged arm Jachin-Boaz felt a little easier than before with the lion, felt comradely with h
im, as if they had both fought on the same side in a war.
“Comrade Lion,â€� he said. He liked the sound of that. “Comrade Lion, you will kill me or you will not kill me. Your frown is the frown I have seen on the face of my son and on the face of my father. Perhaps it is also the one I see in the mirror. Come, let’s walk a little.â€�
Jachin-Boaz turned his back on the lion and walked towards the river. He went along the embankment, looking back to see if the lion was following. He was. What does he see? Jachin-Boaz wondered. Does he see only me? Is everything else not there?
He walked past the first bridge to the second with the lion following, walked up the steps and on to the bridge, looking up at the cables and the dark sky, feeling the rain on his face. At the middle he stopped, leaned his back against the parapet. The lion stopped ten feet away and stood with his head lifted, watching him.
“Doctor Lion,â€� said Jachin-Boaz, “my father used to look at the maps I drew and say that I would be a man of science. But he was wrong. I never became a man of science. The money that he spent on my education was wasted.â€� He laughed, and the lion crouched. “I am alive and he is dead, and the money was wasted.
“He used to say, ‘I can tell by the way he writes, the way he draws, his exactitude, his sense of order, the questions he asks, that this boy will be a scientist. He will not sit in a shop waiting for customers to jingle the bell.’
“One day when I was still a little boy, still playing with toy guns, he brought home for me two presents to choose between. One was a western cowboy suit, like those worn in the films, splendid in black and silver, with a sombrero, with a leather waistcoat, with great flapping leather trousers with silver bosses, with a cartridge belt and two shining pistols in black and silver holsters.
“The other was a microscope and a box of scientific equipment and materials — slides, test tubes, beakers, retorts, graduates, chemicals, a book of experiments. ‘Choose,’ he told me.
“I wanted the black-and-silver leather, the sombrero, the shining pistols. I chose the microscope and the test tubes. Are you looking at your watch, Doctor Lion? The sky is dark, but it is almost daytime now.�
Jachin-Boaz walked towards the lion. The lion backed away, growling. Jachin-Boaz shouted, “I TOLD YOU OF SOMETHING THAT I WANTED ONCE. ARE YOU BORED, LION? ONCE I CLEARLY WANTED SOMETHING, NOT A VERY BIG THING. IS YOUR TIME TOO VALUABLE FOR YOU TO LISTEN ANY LONGER?�
The lion had turned his back on Jachin-Boaz, and now walked off the bridge, down the steps, and was out of sight behind the parapet of the embankment.
Jachin-Boaz followed. When he got to the embankment there was no lion. Only the rain, the pavement and the street wet and glistening, the hiss of tires on the road.
“YOU WEREN’T LISTENING!â€� shouted Jachin-Boaz to the empty air, the rain. “THERE WAS A TIME WHEN I WANTED SOMETHING AND I KNEW WHAT IT WAS. I WANTED A BLACK-AND-SILVER COWBOY SUIT WITH TWO PISTOLS.â€�
“Cheer up, mate,â€� said the police constable with whom Jachin-Boaz collided while going down the steps. “Perhaps Father Christmas’ll bring you one. You’ve plenty of time till December.â€�
The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973)
-18-
Boaz-Jachin walked on the quayside in the darkness beyond the lights of the cafés. Above the harbor were the honeycombed lights of the big new hotel, and behind it the colored lights and smoky flames of the oil refinery. Sometimes the wind brought dance music down from the hotel. The jukebox music from the cafés had darkness all around it, like the red and yellow bulbs strung outside. Boaz-Jachin did not want to go into the cafés. He did not want to play his guitar again for money just yet.
He walked out on to a pier between boats tied up on either side, creaking at their mooring lines while the water of the harbor slapped at their sides. Some showed lights, some were dark. Across the water at the harbor mouth the light on the mole turned and flashed. Boaz-Jachin smelled fish and sour wine, the salt-wood smell of boats, the harbor-water quietly slapping piles and planking.
He smelled petrol, oranges, and orange-crate wood, and thought of the lorry driver. The smell was coming from a boat with lights in the wheelhouse and cabin skylight. The boat was broad-beamed and big-bellied and painted blue, with a stumpy mast forward, the sail loosely furled on a short boom. Automobile tires hung along its sides. The high bow curved back on itself with certain classical pretensions, was ornamented with two blind bulging wooden eyes, and sported an archaic anchor. A blue dinghy was tied up astern.
I’m the real thing, said the backward-curving bow, the wooden eyes, the archaic anchor: brown-faced men squinting into the morning fog, women in black waiting. Maybe the sea and I will kill you.
Boaz-Jachin walked along the pier the length of the boat, read the name on the stern: Swallow. The home port, where the oranges were going, was where he wanted to go. There he could find another boat to take him farther or he could travel overland in the direction of the city where he expected to find his father.
He sat down on the string-piece, took out his guitar, and played The Orange Grove without singing the words, thinking of the desert in the song that was far from the sea, the sparse green of the grass at the farm of the Benjamin family.
A man came out of the Swallow’s wheelhouse and leaned against it, his face mostly in shadow. He wore a wrinkled dark suit, a wrinkled white shirt with no tie, and pointed dark shoes. He looked like a rumpled waiter.
“Nice,� said the man. “A nice song. Sounds good, music like that coming over the water.�
“Thank you,� said Boaz-Jachin.
“I see you looking at the boat,â€� said the man. “She’s a sweet one, this one, eh? Catches the eye. Swallow, her name is. Over the waves like a bird. Comes from the other side. Here they don’t build them like this.â€�
Boaz-Jachin nodded. He knew nothing about boats, but this one looked slow, burdensome, heavy. “Do you sail her or has she got an engine?� he said.
“Engine,â€� said the man. “The sail is just to keep her steady. She used to be rigged for sail when my father was alive. Not now. Too much fucking trouble. This way I get there, I get back, I have a good time ashore, no trouble. I come over with wine and cheese, I go back with oranges, melons, whatever. You’re on your way somewhere, right? You’re going somewhere. Where are you going?â€�
“Where you’re taking the oranges,â€� said Boaz-Jachin.
“You’re hanging around looking for a boat. You’re hoping maybe you can work your way across,â€� said the trader. When the light at the harbor mouth flashed and turned one side of his face was lit up. He had a big smile, large teeth, looked desperate.
“I had a feeling when I saw you,â€� said the trader. “Sometimes it’s like that — you see a person, get a feeling. I’ll make a bet with you: I’ll bet you’ve never been on a boat before, you don’t know how to steer, you can’t cook, and if I told you to cast off the mooring lines you wouldn’t know which rope to put your hand to.â€�
“That’s right,â€� said Boaz-Jachin.
“That’s what I thought,â€� said the trader. Again a big smile. “It’s all right. You’re in luck anyhow, because my cousin isn’t coming back with me this trip. You can help me take her over. I’ll show you how to steer, and all you have to do is keep awake.â€�
“All right,� said Boaz-Jachin. “Thank you.�
“We’ll go out in the morning,â€� said the trader. “You can sleep on board.â€�
The bunks were below, next to the galley, and smelled of petrol, salt wood, tobacco smoke, and old frying. Boaz-Jachin took a blanket and lay down on deck, watching the stars, large and bright, rocking above him. Between him and the stars the beam of the harbor light swept as it turned. He fell asleep thinking of Lila and th
e night they had slept on the roof of her house.
In the morning he was awakened by the sun on his face. There was a professional-looking seagull perching on the mast. It looked down at Boaz-Jachin with a contemptuous yellow eye that said, I’m ready for business and you’re still asleep. Other gulls were flying over the harbor with creaking cries, screaming over the garbage behind the cafés, perching on masts and piles.
The trader treated Boaz-Jachin to coffee and rolls at one of the cafés. Then he took on fuel, cleared his cargo at the harbormaster’s shack, hoisted the steadying sail and started the engine. Towing her dinghy astern the Swallow puttered past freighters and tankers from whose galleys came the clink of cups and the smell of coffee. Here and there men in shorts or pajamas leaned on railings looking down, standing in the morning shadows that moved slowly in the sunlight on the metal decks. This is life, thought Boaz-Jachin. This is being out in the world.
They cleared the harbor mouth, passed the old stone mole with its lighthouse now standing sleepy like an owl in strong sunlight, and went out past the channel markers, heading into a fresh wind from the west and a slight chop outside. The sunlight danced in glints and sparkles on the green water. The gull, still on the masthead, expressed with his eye that it was a late start but never mind.
The trader was still wearing his pointed shoes, his dark suit trousers, and his wrinkled white shirt, now more wrinkled and less white, but no jacket. The boat pitched slowly as she went, her big-bellied hull pounding in the chop. The sunlight glinted on the little brass wheel as the trader handled the spokes.
“She pounds, eh?â€� he said. “She’s not built for an engine, the old bitch. Built for sail. With an engine it’s like driving a big heavy pancake over a bumpy road. Wears you out.â€�
“Why don’t you sail her?â€� said Boaz-Jachin.
“Because she’s motorized now,â€� said the trader. He seemed almost angry. “She’s not rigged for sail any more. This is not the old days. My old man used to keep me hopping. One of these things rigged for sail, you’ve got two masts, big long yards. Every time you go about you have to dip the yard, bring it around the other side of the mast, set everything up again on the weather side. Big sailing deal. ‘Move, boy! Hop!’ I can still hear him. Big deal sailor, my old man. Fuck that. This is modern times, eh? He was a wonderful man.â€� The trader spat to leeward from the wheelhouse window. “Sail like the devil, afraid of nothing. Great pilot. You never saw anything like it. Knew where he was anytime. Middle of the darkest night, no land, no nothing, knew where he was.â€�