by Unknown
You know, said the white wings silently rising and falling. Don’t tell us you don’t know.
“That’s what I’m telling you,â€� said Boaz-Jachin, leaning out over the rail. “I don’t know.â€� He saw no one on the afterdeck, and he began to talk more loudly, to shout into the darkness and the wake. “I don’t know! I don’t know!â€� Two gulls slanted towards each other like eyebrows, became for a moment a pale frown following the boat. Boaz-Jachin put one foot on the bottom rail and leaned farther out, staring at the darkness where the white wings had crossed and separated.
He felt a hand gripping his belt from behind. He turned, and was face to face with a woman. His turning had brought her arm halfway around him and their faces close together. She did not let go of his belt.
“What’s the matter?â€� said Boaz-Jachin.
“Come away from the rail,� she said, still holding his belt. Her voice was one that he had heard before. They moved towards the lighted windows of the lounge, and he saw her face clearly.
“You!� he said.
“You know me?�
“You gave me a ride. Months ago it was, on the other side, on the road to the port. You had a red car with a tape machine playing music. You didn’t like the way I looked at you.â€�
She let go of his belt. Under his shirt his flesh burned where her arm had been around him.
“I didn’t recognize you,â€� she said.
“Why did you grab me by the belt?�
“It made me nervous to see you leaning out over the rail that way and shouting into the dark.�
“You thought I was going to jump overboard?�
“It made me nervous, that’s all. You look older.â€�
“You look kinder.�
She smiled, took his arm, walked with him along the deck past the lighted windows. Her breast against his arm made it feel hot.
“Did you think I was going to jump overboard?� said Boaz-Jachin.
“I have a son about your age,� she said.
“Where is he?�
“I don’t know. I never hear from him.â€�
“Where’s your husband?â€�
“With a new wife.�
They walked the deck all the way around the boat, then around again. Hearing her say that her husband was with a new wife was not the same to Boaz-Jachin as the word divorcée that had been in his mind that day on the road.
“You’ve changed,â€� she said. “You’re less of a boy.â€�
“More of a man?�
“More of a person. More of a man.�
They drank cognac in the bar. In a corridor a group of students with back packs sang while one of them played a guitar. Honey, let me be your salty dog, went the song.
When the boat docked they drove off in the little red car. “Purpose of your visit?â€� said the customs officer as he looked at Boaz-Jachin’s passport.
“Holiday,� said Boaz-Jachin. The customs officer looked at his face and his black hair, then at the blonde woman. He stamped the passport, handed it back.
It was raining, drumming on the canvas top. Numberless splashes leaped up from the road to meet the rain coming down. Red tail-lights blurred ahead of them. Yes, no, yes, no, said the windscreen wipers. The woman put a cassette in the machine. Where the morning sees the shadows of the orange grove there was nothing twenty years ago, sang the tape in the language of Boaz-Jachin’s country. Where the dry wind sowed the desert we brought water, planted seedlings, now the oranges grow. A woman’s voice, harsh and full of glaring sunlight.
Benjamin, thought Boaz-Jachin. Forgive. “You can buy that on a cassette?� he said.
“Sure,� she said.
Boaz-Jachin shook his head. Why not thought cassettes too? Any kind. What an invention. A slot in the head and you just put in the cassette for the mood you wanted. Lion. Yes, I know, thought Boaz-Jachin. You’re in my mind. I’m in your mind.
“Oranges,� said the woman. “Oranges in the desert.� She looked straight ahead into the darkness and the red tail-lights and drove on through the rain. For an hour they said nothing.
She turned off the main road, drove two or three miles to a half-timbered cottage with a thatched roof. Boaz-Jachin looked at her.
“Yes,â€� she said. “Houses. Houses I have. Three of them in different countries.â€� She looked at his face. “Last time in the car you were thinking of a hotel, weren’t you?â€�
Boaz-Jachin blushed.
She lit lamps, took covers off the furniture in the living room, went into the kitchen to make coffee. Boaz-Jachin took kindling from a basket, coal from a scuttle, started a fire in the fireplace. The books on the shelves came and went in the firelight, red, brown, orange, all their pages quiet. Thin gleams of gold showed in the insets of picture frames. Boaz-Jachin smelled coffee, looked at the couch, looked away, looked at the fire, sat in a chair, sighed.
They drank coffee. She smoked cigarettes. The silence sat down with them like an invisible creature with its finger to its lips. They looked at the fire. The silence looked at the fire. The fire seethed and whispered. They were both sitting on the floor, on an oriental carpet. Boaz-Jachin looked at the pattern, the asymmetry of the endings of rows and the border. He covered the asymmetry between them by moving close to her. He kissed her, feeling as if he might be struck dead by lightning. She unbuttoned his shirt.
When they were both naked her body was surprising. It was as if not being allowed to be a wife had kept her flesh firm and young. Boaz-Jachin was staggered by the unbelievable reality of what was happening. Again, said the backs of the books, the golden gleams in the picture frames.
My God, thought Boaz-Jachin, and led her to the couch. She turned and hit him in the jaw. She was strong, and it was not a woman’s blow. She pivoted athletically, like a boxer, and hit him with her feet planted solidly and all of her weight behind her fist. Boaz-Jachin saw shooting colored lights, then everything went black for a moment as he flew across the room and fetched up in an armchair. He was speechless.
He stood up shakily. Naked she came towards him and hit him in the stomach. All the breath went out of him as she brought up her knee. Blackness and colored lights again, pain and nausea. Boaz-Jachin, rolling on the floor, caught her ankle as she tried to heel-kick him. He pulled, and she came down hard with a thump and a little scream. He crawled over to her on his hands and knees, struck her hard across the face with a backhanded blow. She rolled over on to her side, drew up her knees and lay there crying while her nose bled.
Boaz-Jachin lay beside her until the pain and nausea went away. Then he got up, stirred her with his foot, helped her up, led her to the couch, mounted her as one who had arrived with chariots and spears, and took his pleasure.
“You,� she said into his ear. “Oranges in the desert.�
In the morning there was sunlight. He felt deathless, invincible, the initiate of mysteries, blessed.
The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973)
-30-
It would be better for me not to open this letter, thought Jachin-Boaz as he opened the letter. Fading, fading, said the afternoon sunlight slanting down the wall, slanting on the red curtains, on the yellow, on the blue of the flowers. See how tactfully I die! said the sunlight. Twilight follows. Fade with me.
Jachin-Boaz began to read. In the next bed the letter writer was hard at work. Violet’s face, for instance, he wrote. Is there, in all justice, any necessity for that? She married the young lieutenant to whom I’d introduced her. Everyone said the baby looked exactly like him. Yet only this morning there was Violet’s face in a spoon. Not a silver spoon either. Not even a clean spoon, mind you.
On the other side the tightly furled man was looking at a magaz
ine in which girls in black suspender belts and stockings achieved difficult juxtapositions. He was quietly singing Oft in the Stilly Night in a high falsetto.
The letter writer looked up. The tightly furled man put down his magazine, left off singing. Jachin-Boaz had put the letter in the drawer of his bedside table, flung himself back on his bed, and lay looking up at the ceiling in a silence that filled the air with waves of terror. The two men on either side felt as if they had been fused with the sounding metal of some monstrous bell that was rhythmically annihilating them.
“Stop clanging, can’t you?â€� said the tightly furled man. “It’s driving the very marrow out of my bones.â€� He doubled up in his bed and covered his ears.
“Really,â€� said the letter writer to Jachin-Boaz, “I think you might have the civility not to indulge in effects like that. I can hear mirrors shattering for miles around. Do make an effort, won’t you?â€�
“I’m sorry,â€� said Jachin-Boaz. “I didn’t know that I was doing anything.â€� Bad heart, she said. His father had died of a bad heart and he had a bad heart too. He had had twinges now and then, and his doctor had pointed out that he was a cardiac type and would do well to be careful. Suddenly he felt his heart clearly defined in his body, totally vulnerable and waiting for the inevitable. Angina pectoris. Had the doctor said anything about that? He’d looked it up once. Something associated with apprehension or fear of impending death, said the dictionary. He must remember not to be apprehensive or fearful of impending death. He closed his eyes, and in his mind he saw the map of his body with the organs, nerves and circulatory system illuminated in vivid color. The heart pumped, drove the blood through the branching veins and arteries. Around went the blood on the animated map, and around again. It seemed miraculous that the heart kept pumping. How had it continued twenty-four hours a day for forty-seven years? It could never stop for a rest. When it stopped that was the end of everything. No more world. Only a few years left, suddenly they will all be gone, the last moment will be now. Intolerable! Father died at fifty-two. I’m forty-seven. Five more years? Less, perhaps.
You will want to come back to me.
Yes, I do want to come back. Why did I want to go away? What was so bad? Certainly I never felt this bad before.
The letter writer and the tightly furled man got up and went to the lounge. Jachin-Boaz went to one of the nurses, asked for something to calm him down. He was given a tranquillizer, went back to his bed and reasoned with himself.
She can’t actually make my heart stop, he thought. That kind of magic doesn’t work unless you believe that the other person has the power. Do I believe she has the power? Yes. But she doesn’t really have any special power. She didn’t have the power to keep me, did she? No. Then could she have the power to kill me? Of course not. Do I believe that? No.
Jachin-Boaz lay with his ear to the pillow, listening to the beating of his heart. The map, he thought. The map of Boaz-Jachin’s future that I stole, the future that I cannot have. I’ll stop smoking.
He lit a cigarette, got out of bed, stood against the wall. As soon as I feel a little better, he thought, I’ll stop smoking. My father with his cigars. Why did she have to tell me about the mistress? She found out from her aunt in the dramatic society, but why did she have to tell me?
He thought of Sunday afternoons in childhood, smelled the car upholstery, looked out through the windscreen at the waning sunlight, felt his father on one side, his mother on the other, himself between them, sick. I haven’t been committing suicide, he thought. Suicide has been committing me.
All of his unremembered dreams seemed to walk silently behind him, passing one by one between him and the wall, smirking over his shoulder at invisible phantoms in front of him. If I turn very quickly, he thought, and turned. Something very big, something very small, whisked around the corner of his mind. Either way, said the answer in the wall that faced him: betrayed or betrayer. Betrayed and betrayer.
“Be reasonable,â€� said Jachin-Boaz quietly to the wall. “I can’t be everybody.â€�
Loss unending, said the wall. Dare to let go? “I don’t know,â€� said Jachin-Boaz. Suppose, the wall said, sometimes he laughed away from home. What then? You owe her nothing. He wants to rest. If you stand up they lie down. Follow your noes.
“Lion,� said Jachin-Boaz silently, only shaping the word.
Oh yes, the wall said. Play with yourself. Jachin-Boaz turned away. Everyone else was going to dinner. The thought of food sickened him, the smell from the dining area was offensive. The lion was still outside, no doubt. He would be waiting all the time now until the end. Everybody would want to feed him, look at him, share him. No, no, no.
The tightly furled man had taken his plate to the door near the french windows. “Pss, pss,� he called, making the sound one makes for a cat. Three others came and stood near, looking over his shoulder. One of them, a man with a round white face, looked back at Jachin-Boaz and said something to the others. Everyone laughed.
Jachin-Boaz felt immensities of rage in him, infinities of NO. Crying, he burst into the group by the door, flung them in all directions, and rushed out on to the lawn.
The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973)
-31-
Boaz-Jachin had arrived in the city and was staying with friends of the blonde woman. When he told them that his father was likely to be selling maps they advised him to advertise for Jachin-Boaz in the book trade weekly, which he did.
Boaz-Jachin bought such clothes as he needed and a cheap guitar, and every day he went into the underground stations and sang and played. The money he had earned on the cruise ship would keep him for several months, but he wanted to be able to support himself for as long as he needed to remain in the city.
His advertisement would not appear until the next week, and while he waited he played his guitar and sang in two different stations every day. He timed his arrival so that he would be at one when people went to work and at the other when they went home. Each day he went to new stations in the hope of seeing Jachin-Boaz. Each station had its own sound and its own feel. Some felt as if Jachin-Boaz was not to be found in them, others seemed full of probability. Boaz-Jachin made a list of the latter. If there was no answer to the advertisement he would keep only those stations on his guitar route as time went on.
The advertisement appeared, but there were no telephone calls or letters for Boaz-Jachin at the house where he was staying. He went on with his guitar route, trying new stations daily. He made enough money to live on cheaply, found a room for himself, and settled down to stay until he found his father. He no longer asked himself whether he knew or how he knew that Jachin-Boaz was in this city. He felt it was a certainty. Every day he inquired for letters or telephone calls, and every day there was nothing.
Boaz-Jachin’s ear became attuned to the roar of trains arriving and departing, the constant numberless footfalls approaching, receding, voices and echoes. He sang the songs of his country, sang of the well, of olives, of sheep in the hills, of the desert, of orange groves, his voice and his guitar echoing in the corridors and stairways under the ground in the great city.
Boaz-Jachin inserted another advertisement, subscribed to the trade weekly, and went on to new underground stations with his guitar. He became known to his regular clientele. At each station the same faces smiled at him day after day as coins dropped into the guitar case. He smiled back, said thank you, but said nothing else to anyone. In the morning he saw the daylight and in the evenings he saw the fading of it. Above him the city was immense with all that the lines on the master-map led to. Bridges crossed the river, birds flew up circling over squares, and Boaz-Jachin lived underground, singing in corridors and stairways. He had not spoken aloud the word lion since the ride to the channel port with the van driver.
Boaz-Jachin found that he was thinking less in words than he used to. His mind simply was, and in it
were the people he had been with, the times he had lived. Sounds, voices, faces, bodies, places, light and darkness came and went.
He had no sexual appetite, wanted no one to talk to, read nothing. Often in the evenings he sat quietly in his room doing nothing. Sometimes he played the guitar quietly, improvising tunes, but more often he had no wish to let out anything that was in him, nor did he look for anything new to take in. Whatever thoughts and questions were in his mind carried on their own dialogues to which he paid little attention. The feeling of emptiness rushing towards something became a waiting stillness.
Sometimes at night he walked in the streets. The leaves of the trees rustled in the squares. Lights shone on statues. Often he seemed to be without thought. It ceased to matter to him who was looking out through the eyeholes in his face and it ceased to matter who was looking in. He had no amulet to wear around his neck, no magic stone to hold in his hand. He held nothing. He was. Time passed through him unimpeded.
One day Boaz-Jachin took his guitar to an underground station, put the open case on the floor beside him, and tuned the instrument. But he did not begin to play immediately.
Faces passed him. Footsteps echoed, pattering like rain. Trains came and went. Boaz-Jachin listened past the footsteps, past the trains and echoes to the silence. He began to play music of his own, improvising on themes that he had composed in his room. He was unwilling to let the music out of him but unable to make himself stop.
He played the shimmer of the heat on the plains and the motion of the running flickering on the dry wind, tawny, great, and quickly gone. He played the silence of a ghost roar on the rising air beneath a shivering honey-colored moon.