by Unknown
Why am I hurrying? he thought. I’ve got nothing to do with his living or dying. But hurry was in him. He had no rucksack, no guitar, nothing to carry now. His passport had been in his pocket when the Swallow sank. That and the money he had earned on the cruise ship, the new map he had drawn, a toothbrush and the clothes he wore were all he had now. He walked down the road with long strides, going fast, signaling for a ride as he went. Who now? he wondered. Cars, vans, lorries, motorcycles whined, roared, hummed and puttered past.
The van that had taken Mina and her parents to the inn pulled up beside him. The large gentle face of the driver looked out of the window, spoke as a question the name of a channel port. Boaz-Jachin repeated the name, said, “Yes.� The driver opened the door and he got in.
In his own language the driver said, “I don’t suppose you speak my language.â€�
Boaz-Jachin smiled, lifted his shoulders, shook his head. “I don’t speak your language,â€� he said in English.
“That’s what I thought,â€� said the driver, understanding the gesture rather than the words. He nodded, sighed, and settled down to his driving. Ahead of them the numberless grains of the road flowed into sharp focus, rolled beneath the wheels, spun out behind.
“All the same,� said the driver, “I feel like talking.�
“I know what you mean,� said Boaz-Jachin, understanding the voice but not the words. Now he spoke not English but his own language, and his voice was more subtly inflected. “I feel like talking too.�
“You too,â€� said the driver. “So we’ll talk. It’ll be just as good as many of the conversations I’ve had with people who spoke the same language. After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?â€�
“After all,â€� said Boaz-Jachin, “it won’t be the first time I’ve spoken to someone who couldn’t understand what I was saying. And when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?â€�
They looked at each other, shrugged, raised their eyebrows.
“That’s how it is,â€� said the driver.
“That’s how it is,â€� said Boaz-Jachin.
“Empty space,â€� said the driver. “There’s a funny thing to think about. The back of the van is full of empty space. I brought it from my town. But I’ve opened the doors several times since I left. So is it still empty space from my town or is it now several different new empty spaces? This is the sort of thing one thinks about sometimes. If the back of the van were full of chairs the question wouldn’t arise. One assumes that the space between the chairs remains the same all through the trip. Empty space, however, is something else.â€�
Boaz-Jachin nodded, understanding not a word. But the driver’s voice, large and gentle like the rest of him, was agreeable to him. He felt very conversational with him.
“I offered the drawings,â€� he said, surprised to hear himself saying it but pleased with what he was saying. “I offered the drawings. I burned the drawings. Something went out of me, leaving an empty space in me. Sometimes I feel myself hurrying towards something up ahead. What? I’m a rushing empty space. The father must live so that the father can die. Are you a father? Certainly you’re a son. Every man who is alive is a son. Dead men as well are sons. Dead fathers too are sons. No end to it.â€�
“You’re young,â€� said the driver. “Your whole life is ahead of you. Probably you don’t think about such things. Did I when I was your age? I can’t remember. Yet I suppose there must be empty space in you. What will you put into it?â€�
“The space wasn’t always empty,â€� said Boaz-Jachin. “Only after the offering of the drawings. Now I’m hurrying. To what? Why? I don’t know. Lion. I haven’t said that aloud very often, that word, that name. Lion. Lion, lion, lion. What? Where?â€� He leaned forward, leaning into the forward speed of the van. “That he took the master map he’d promised to me, what’s that to me? I don’t need it. Maps.â€� From his pocket he took the new one he’d sketched on the cruise ship, opened the window, started to throw it away, put it back in his pocket, closed the window. “I’ll keep it the way people keep diaries, but I don’t need maps for finding anything.â€� He ground his teeth, wanted to roar, wanted to do violence to something.
“Years and years,â€� said Boaz-Jachin. “My eyes only as high as the edge of the table. ‘Let me help,’ I said. ‘Let me work on a little corner.’ No. Nothing. He wouldn’t let me. I couldn’t make clean beautiful lines. Always he had to do the whole thing. He looked at me but he spoke to a place where I wasn’t. ‘You will not follow me into the shop,’ he said. ‘For you there is the whole world outside.’ Fine. Good. Go into the wide world. Go away. I wasn’t good enough to work with him. So now he goes into the wide world. The shop for him and the world for him. For me nothing.â€� He ground his teeth again. “I have to … What? What do I have to do? I have to tell him … What? What do I have to tell him? Benjamin’s father wrote forgive. Forgive whom what? What is it to forgive? Who has forgiveness to give? He held up a suit of clothes for me to jump into: the wanderer. Here’s your map. Then he ran away with the map. I jumped into the wandering clothes. Is he happy now?â€� Tears streamed down Boaz-Jachin’s cheeks.
“Name of God,â€� said the driver. “What an outburst! After all that surely there must be empty space inside you. My word. There’s something about a road. One thinks, one talks. The van eats up the miles, the soul eats up the miles. At the port I’m picking up some wooden crates. In the crates is the machinery for a new press for the local newspaper. The editor’s wife ran off with a salesman. So he needs new machinery. That’s reasonable. With his new machinery he will print the news. This one is born, that one died, so-and-so is opening a bakery. Maybe even the news that he is married again. All of this comes out of what is now an empty space. There are depths in this. It’s a lot to think about. From an empty space the future. If there’s no empty space where can one put the future? It all figures if you take the time to think it out. It’s a pleasure talking with you. It’s doing me a lot of good.â€�
Boaz-Jachin wiped his eyes, blew his nose. “It’s a pleasure talking with you,â€� he said, “It’s doing me a lot of good.â€�
The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973)
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The man in the bed next to Jachin-Boaz was sitting up crosslegged, writing on a foolscap pad a letter to the editor of the city’s leading newspaper. “With our Sanitation Department on the job regularly cleaning the streets,â€� he wrote, “is it not astonishing that so far no measures have been taken towards resolving the problem of image accumulation? The private citizen, however diligently he may divest his home of mirrors and however carefully he may cover windows and polished tables, has daily to encounter public mirrors, shop windows, and innumerable reflecting surfaces from which decades and scores of years of faces, his own and those of strangers, peer out impertinently to mock him.
“As a law-abiding citizen and ratepayer …â€� He stopped writing. He had been aware of figures moving past his bed towards the french windows, and now he looked up. Three patients were standing at the windows looking out at the lawn. Two male nurses who had been sitting in chairs stood up, looked out, and sat down again.
The letter writer got out of bed and walked over to the group at the window, sensing at once that they shared a secret from which the nurses were excluded. He too looked out for a time at the lawn that was green and golden in the afternoon sunlight. Then he came back and sat down on the edge of his bed, looking at the sleeping Jachin-Boaz. He stared at him fixedly, and after half an hour Jachin-Boaz opened his eyes.
“Is it yours?â€� said the letter writer. “It must be — you’re the only
new arrival.� He had a small aristocratic moustache and goatee. His eyes were pale blue and very sharp. “What do you feed it?�
Jachin-Boaz smiled and lifted his eyebrows interrogatively. The powerful tranquilizing-drug dose had left him sluggish, and the question did not immediately make itself clear to him.
“The lion,â€� said the letter writer, and saw Jachin-Boaz look somewhat more alert. “It is your lion, isn’t it? It seems to have arrived with you.â€�
“It’s here?â€� said Jachin-Boaz.
“Walking about on the lawn,� said the letter writer.
“Everybody sees it?� said Jachin-Boaz.
“Only a few of us. Those who did and were on the lawn when it appeared came inside directly. Some of the staff and a number of pseudo-nuts are still outside with it, quite blind to its existence. I must say it seems a well-behaved animal. It isn’t bothering anyone.â€�
“I don’t think it takes notice of everybody,â€� said Jachin-Boaz.
“Naturally not. Who does?� said the letter writer. “As I was saying, what do you feed it?�
Jachin-Boaz became wary and sly. Hold on to everything you have, said the sunlight slanting down the wall. He didn’t want anyone else to know what or how much his lion ate. “How do you know it eats?â€� he said.
The letter writer’s face flushed. He looked as if he had been struck. “I’m so sorry,â€� he said. “I beg your pardon.â€�
In a flash Jachin-Boaz understood that it was as if one duke who owned a rare and expensive motorcar had been rude to another duke who happened not to own such a car. He blushed. “Forgive me,â€� he said. “He should have six or seven pounds of meat a day, six days a week. I’ve been feeding him beefsteak, but not regularly.â€�
“Something of a supply problem,â€� said the letter writer cosily. “I don’t suppose that he could accustom himself to shepherd’s pie and toad-in-the-hole? Meat is a bit thin on the ground here.â€�
“I don’t know,â€� said Jachin-Boaz. “Actually, it may even be possible that he can do without food altogether. He’s real enough, but not in the ordinary way.â€�
“Quite,� said the letter writer stiffly, as between dukes to whom such things need not be explained.
Jachin-Boaz fell silent. He did not want to see the lion just now, and he began to think about the other people who could see it. Already this other man wanted to feed it. Jachin-Boaz began to get a headache. “Why can they see it, the others?� he said, speaking to himself but saying the words aloud.
“Sorry about that, old man,â€� said the letter writer. “But you’ve got to expect that sort of thing here. After all, why have they put us in the fun house? The straight people agree that some things are not allowed to be possible, and they govern their perceptions accordingly. Very strong, the straight people. We’re not so strong as they. Things not allowed to be possible jump on us, beasts and demons, because we don’t know how to keep them out.
“Others here can see my faces and they can see your lion, even though you may want to hug it to yourself like a teddy bear. If your lion weren’t possible you’d be happy to share the impossibility. But people get very possessive about possibilities, even dangerous ones. Victims become proprietors. You may have to grow up a little. Perhaps you’ll even have to let go of your lion one day.â€�
“And your faces?� said Jachin-Boaz.
“They accumulate faster than they can be taken away,â€� said the letter writer smugly. “There’ll always be more.â€�
“Lovely,â€� said the man who had just returned to the bed on the other side. Empty-handed and in bathrobe and pajamas, he appeared to be fully and impeccably dressed and carrying a tightly furled umbrella and a respectable newspaper. “Lovely,â€� he continued. “Lovely wife, children, home, weather, central heating, career, garden, shoelaces, buttons and dentistry. All modern conveniences, or nearest offer. Lovely bank lessons, music account, lovely miles to the gallon. Lovely ‘O’ Levels, ‘A’ Levels, eye levels, level eyes. Lovely level eyes she has and sees through everything but.â€�
“But what?� said Jachin-Boaz.
“That’s what I mean,â€� said the tightly furled man. “The butness of everything. I don’t go home any more. Goodbye, little yellow bird. That’s the cracks of it, sweetheart.â€�
“Crux,� said Jachin-Boaz.
“Show me a crux and I’ll show you the cracks,â€� said the tightly furled man. “You’re not talking to squares now, darling. Don’t try to slide by on crossword puzzles and ninety-nine-year leases. The blank spaces are bigger than ziggurats here, and it’s a long, long climb. Deeper than a well.â€�
“Rounder than a wheel?� said Jachin-Boaz.
“You’re forcing it, poppet,â€� said the tightly furled man. “Just let it happen.â€�
“Don’t be a snob,â€� said Jachin-Boaz.
“Look who’s talking,â€� said the tightly furled man. “Him with his lions and his traveler’s checks and his cameras. Obesity is the mother of distension. A bitch in time shaved mine. Take the bleeding castles apart and ship them home stone by stone for all I care. Piss off, you and your lion both. Tourists.â€�
“There’s no need to take that tone,â€� said Jachin-Boaz.
The tightly furled man began to cry. Kneeling on the bed, he bent forward, burying his head in his arms, thrusting out his bottom. “I didn’t mean it,â€� he said. “Let me pet the lion. He can eat my dinner every day.â€�
Jachin-Boaz turned away, lay back on his bed with his arms behind his head and stared straight up at the ceiling, attempting to find silence and privacy in the space over him that was presumably as wide as his bed, as high as the room, and his personal domain. The sunlight said, Once you begin to doubt you will lose everything. Begin now. “No,� said Jachin-Boaz to the curtains. You will perish, said the red, said the yellow-and-blue flowers. We abide. Many have come and gone here, said the smell of cooking. All have been defeated.
Jachin-Boaz became aware that someone with mental-hospital-doctor feet had arrived at his bed. He had sometimes heard clocks whose tick-tocks became words. When the doctor spoke, his words became tick-tocks unless Jachin-Boaz listened very hard.
“How are we tick-tock today?� said the doctor. “Tick-tock?�
“Very tock, thank you,� said Jachin-Boaz.
“Tick,� said the doctor. “Ticks will tock themselves out, I have no doubt.�
“I tick so,� said Jachin-Boaz.
“Tick all right last tock?
“Very tock,� said Jachin-Boaz. “No dreams that I can remember forgetting.�
“That’s the ticket,â€� said the doctor. “Tock it tick.â€�
“Cheers,� said Jachin-Boaz, making an upward gesture with two fingers.
“You do it the other way for victory,� said the doctor.
“When I see a victory I’ll do it that way,â€� said Jachin-Boaz.
The doctor’s feet went away, and the doctor went with them. Civilian feet appeared. Familiar shoes.
“How are you feeling?� said the owner of the bookshop. “Are you all right?�
“Not so bad, thank you,â€� said Jachin-Boaz. “It’s kind of you to come.â€�
“How come you’re here?â€� said the bookshop owner. “You seem the same as you’ve always been. Was it the dog-food-eating hallucination?â€�
“Something like that,� said Jachin-Boaz. “Unfortunately a police constable saw it too.�
“Ah,â€� said the bookshop owner. “It’s always best to keep that sort of thing to you
rself, you know.�
“I should like to have kept it to myself,� said Jachin-Boaz.
“Things’ll sort themselves out,â€� said the bookshop owner. “The rest will do you good and you’ll come back to work refreshed.â€�
“You don’t have any reservations about taking me back?â€� said Jachin-Boaz.
“Why should I? You sell more books than any other assistant I’ve ever had. Anybody can come unstuck once in a while.â€�
“Thank you.�
“Not at all. Oh, there was an advert in the trade weekly. Letter for you at a box number. Here it is.�
“A letter for me,� said Jachin-Boaz. He opened the envelope. In it was another envelope, postmarked at his town, his town where he had been Jachin-Boaz the map-seller. “Thank you,� he said, and put the letter on his bedside table.
“And here’s some fruit,â€� said the bookshop owner, “and a couple of paperbacks.â€�
“Thank you,� said Jachin-Boaz. He took an orange from the bag, held it in his hand. The paperbacks were two collections of supernatural and horror stories.
“Escape literature,� said the bookshop owner.
“Escape,� said Jachin-Boaz.
“I’ll stop in again,â€� said the bookshop owner. “Get well soon.â€�
“Yes,� said Jachin-Boaz. “Thank you.�
The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973)
-29-
Only you, said the black water rushing past the ferry in the night.
“Only I what, for God’s sake!â€� said Boaz-Jachin. He saw no one near him, and spoke aloud. He leaned over the rail, smelled the blackness of the sea and cursed the water. “Every fucking thing talks to me,â€� he said. “Leave me alone for a while. I’ll talk to you some other time. I can’t be rushed all the time.â€� He walked aft to the stern, saw flights of white gulls rising and falling in eerie silence above the wake. Out of the darkness into the light. Out of the light into the darkness. Boaz-Jachin shook his fist at the gulls. “I don’t even know if he’s there!â€� he said. “I don’t even know if I’m looking for him in the right place.â€�