Mr. Mani

by A. B. Yehoshua

  —Because at night, Dona Flora—in those nights that grew longer and longer now that we had seen the last of the last holiday, and on which the sun set sooner and sooner—the idée fixe that I thought had faded with summer’s end now raised its head again with winter’s start and was soon raging out of control, like an illness that had gone to sleep not because it had run its course but in order to wake up stronger than ever. And by now I was mortally afraid for my own soul...

  —Of his idée fixe infecting me too, Dona Flora, so that I would start seeing the world through his eyes Because there was more strength in his silence, in the calm way he shut his eyes while quietly listening to me, than there was in all my warnings and rebukes, which he crossed out with a single thin-lipped smile before donning a large, odd cloak that he had found in the market in Hebron and setting out on his nighttime excursions. It did not even help to hide his lantern, because his pockets were full of little candles, which he stuffed them with in case he had to light one and declare himself to the Turkish watch. The spirit moved him with the fall of night, so that while the two of us, Tamara and I, were preparing for bed, he slipped out of the house without his lantern despite the danger of it and—in the same roundabout way he had of going from Jewish house to Jewish house—went to call on his Jews who did not know yet they were Jews, most boldly walking in and out of their homes, without once stepping into the street, in his eagerness to find some sign or testimony that would prove them wrong...

  —For example, madame, a scrap of parchment, a piece of cloth, a potsherd, a stone, some old ritual object—and when he despaired of all these, he would strain to catch some word murmured in their dreams and to seize it as if it were the handle of a coal scoop burning in the fire of forgetfulness, which he must snatch from the embers to let its contents cool until they regained, like soft white gold, their elemental form. And thus, Rabbi Shabbetai, thus, Doña Flora, he entered the houses of his forgetful Jews as they were turning in for the night, which was young enough for their doors to be still open, passing through hallways, up and down stairways, and in and out of dwellings whose inhabitants, soft with sleep, were getting ready for bed and having a last cup of tea while their new cuckoo clocks—for German salesmen had been to Jerusalem too—cooed away in the corners. He conversed with them gently, with that slight inclination of his head, most amiably and politely; gave them regards from one another; asked them for news of themselves; and listened to what they had to say. Not that they had the least idea of who he was or what he wanted from them—but his good nature was infectious and they welcomed him so warmly that they hardly even noticed that he was already in their bedrooms, bending down to look at something, pulling back a blanket, reaching out to touch a baby or to turn over one of the many children who lay wrapped in their little bed smocks, sound asleep as only youngsters can be who are busy growing in their slumber and not merely resting in it, their eyes sealed by the thin yellow crust still left over from the summer’s trachoma. And then, thinking of the chastisements he must bring upon them for their obduracy, my poor son felt his resolve weaken, swallowed the lump in his throat, and ran his hands over the walls as if looking for a dark opening that memory might burst forth from. And thus, madame, thus, Your Grace, the autumn came and went with the winter on its heels. Freezing rains lashed the walls of the holy city, to which the Russian pilgrims were still crawling on their knees, bundled in their heavy fur coats, their reddish beards and mustaches making them look like so many giant silkworms with their heads in the air. They packed the square of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the streets all around, waiting in puddles of rain and mud for the birth of their god, their hate for the Jew greater than ever, because not only he had killed their Christ he had done it in the remotest and most forsaken of places instead of in Mother Russia...

  —Because they were already mourning their approaching departure from that lavish sepulcher, which they were growing fonder of by the minute, and were quite distraught at not being able to tear it out of the earth in one piece and carry it back to their native land with them. And so, madame, it was hardly surprising that they should have been looking in their most pious ardor for a substitute corpse, preferably a young Jew’s ... and in truth, it was given them...

  —He was given them.

  —He gave himself ... he let himself be passed from hand to hand...

  —In parable ...à la fantastique Your Grace understands...

  —Again? But have I not made you shudder enough, madame? I have already brought tears to your eyes...

  —Again? I cannot.

  —I saw nothing ... I only know what I was told...

  —I have already told you all I know.

  —They slit his throat.

  —There, you are shaking again, madame. And Rabbi Haddaya has stopped eating...

  —He was passed from hand to hand.

  —In truth, he stole into that pilgrim crowd, and on the night of the holy fire...

  —I suppose his idée fixe had swallowed all his fears and made a fine grist of them.

  —’Tis no wonder, madame. Even the Mohammedans are afraid to approach on such a night...

  —Perhaps he expected to convert them too ... who knows?

  —I am saying that I do not know what my son really thought, or what he thought that he should have thought. Insofar as he had decided that everyone in Jerusalem was connected, not even the wildest or strangest of pilgrims could fail to arouse his insatiable curiosity, which was forever looking for ways to link strangers together and do battle with what he deemed their self-immurement...

  —At first, perhaps, the motherless bride you found for him, madame ... and possibly, he considered me too to be such a case of self-inflicted isolation...

  —No, God forbid—he loved her, madame! He loved and honored her greatly, and always spoke to her with much tact and circumspection, as if they were still in the midst of their betrothal and he must not encumber her—which is why he went off each evening and left her to her own devices. And once he realized that I would stay with her, he grew more unbridled than ever...

  —Followed him at night too, madame?

  —At first I tried. But the nights grew colder and colder, the pilgrims having managed to their great satisfaction to bring their Russian snow and hail with them, and his idée fixe could no longer hold in check my own dreadful fright. And so I begged his friend from the consulate, the son of the sheikh from Silwan, to do all he could to save him from himself while I sat home by the coal-burning stove and sang Tía Loja’s conacero to that little drop of fluid, which I knew by the first candle of Hanukkah, madame, to be safely deposited where it belonged ... Here, this is how I sang it, Doña Flora—

  —Because I saw no sign of menstrual blood.

  —I always noticed, although don’t ask me how. And I was so happy that I sang like this—

  —I have a pleasant voice. Come, listen, madame...’tis but a short conacero....

  —No, he is. He knows the song...

  —No, I will not!

  —It was his favorite of all Tía Loja’s conaceros. I beg you ... I desire to sing it for him!

  —No, he is looking at me. He is pleased. I will not sing much ... soon I will be gone, madame ... the best hope of man is the maggot...

  —No. ‘Tis not I but you who needs rest, Doña Flora. Your face is so pale that the light passes right through it. And the worst times are still to come...

  —I will stay here ... I will watch over him ... I will take it on myself...

  —I will not be a burden to him ... I will lullaby him to sleep...

  —Most pleasantly ... until he falls asleep. Does Your Grace remember? Go now, madame. Adieu, madame. I am only lullabying him ... go, madame ... adieu, madame...

  When all go to the kehillá,

  I go to your house,

  Istraiqua, apple of my eye

  When all kiss the mezuzá,

  I kiss your own face,

  Istraiqua, apple of my eye


  To the graveyard has your mother gone

  For my death to pray,

  That I may take you as my bride not

  To the graveyard have your sisters gone

  For my death to pray,

  That I may take you as my bride not.

  She is finally gone, then, the woman! And you and I, my master and teacher, are alone again as once when we were young. She is most wondrous, Doña Flora! “A woman of valor who can find? For her price is far above pearls; the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.” But will she have the strength? In the port in Salonika we had a saying, “What good is gold when the husband is old?” And suppose he is sick too? Once it seemed to me, Rabbi Shabbetai, that I envied Your Grace for his marriage, but today I understand that my envy was of her, for taking Your Grace away from me. Will she prove equal to the task, though? ‘Tis the hand of God that has brought me, Your Grace’s oldest and most trusty disciple, back to him. Now that the two of us are alone, I would be most grateful if Your Grace would kindly whisper a word to me. I am all silent anticipation. What can be the meaning of this great silence of yours?

  Is it in truth silence, then? Is señor’s muteness decreed? Perhaps the lute has indeed popped a string. Is it that, then: that there is no longer a voice to give utterance? Even the “tu tu tu” that Your Grace sounded before would be most welcome. “Rabbi Elazar ben Hisma says, ‘Cryptic portents are but the crumbs of wisdom.’” But I would make something whole even of Your Grace’s crumbs, for I am well versed in Your Grace’s manner and have been for ages. Your Grace need not fear me ... Ai, will you cling to your silence forever, then, or is this but an interval? Can it be that you will leave us without breaking it? Who would have thought it, señor, who would have imagined it! Not that I did not know that the day would come when His Grace would grow weary of us, but I somehow had never foreseen it as silence, only as a vanishing, a desaparición like all your others: one day the rabbi would set out, again to preach and hold court in some far place, and while we were still thinking that he was there, or elsewhere, he would be already nowhere, quite simply gone and no more. So I imagined your departure: your tobacco on the table, your little nargileh next to it, the quill and inkwell in their usual place, an open book lying beside them, your cloak flapping near the looking-glass by the doorway—and Your Grace gone I would go look for him in a place that I knew he always had yearned for, in Mesopotamia, señor, or Babylonia, where your furthest, your first father is buried. And I already pictured myself, Rabbi Haddaya, following in Your Grace’s tracks and entering a most ancient synagogue at the time of the afternoon prayer, a synagogue rosy with age, in which a sole Jew sat on a divan saying his vigils and asking him about Your Grace—and without ceasing to recite from his book, he would point to the open window with a gesture that meant, “You have a long, long way to go, for he was here and moved on; he has crossed the purple fields in the bounteous light of a tawny, dry Eden and is gone...” He is gone eastward into the great interior, into the land of primeval ruins, into the last light of the shattered blocks of giant idols, headless, buttockless ... eastward ... so I imagined it ... and now, this silence. Is that all, then? Silence? Not a word to clutch at—not even a tiny pearl of wisdom—just this dark little room in a Europe that Your Grace swore never to set foot in again, in an inn run by Greek rebels against the Porte, bound to a bed on wheels? And what is this that I see out the window? A chapel for their dead saints, may their bones rot! Your Grace breaks my heart with his little eyes that are so full of pain and sorrow. See, here I am, maestro y señor mío, come from the Land of Israel, in dire need of a word, of a verdict—ah, su merced Rabbi Shabbetai, I am in need of a judgment from you! I demand that you convene a rabbinical court, right here and now...

  Or is this your way, señor, of outwitting death? When my father passed away, and I was called back posthaste to Salonika, and I wept before Your Grace in Constantinople because I did not want to leave you and return home, you said: “It is your duty to return to your mother and say the kaddish for your father.” And I asked, “But who will say the kaddish for you, señor, my master and teacher?” And I offered to do it myself. Your Grace did not answer me. You just stroked my head and smiled to yourself, and I knew at once from your silence that Your Grace did not believe in dying but rather in something else. Is this it, then? And yet nonetheless...

  I am in a hurry to seek judgment. And though it says, “Make not an only judge of yourself, for there is One alone who can judge by Himself,” I always knew that you were not one but two, as has now been made so frightfully clear, for half of you is here and half of you is not. The truth is out. “Ben Ha Ha says, ‘According to the sorrow shall be the reward,’” but I, señor y maestro mío, make bold to say: according to the reward shall be the sorrow. And while I regret neither sorrow nor reward, I demand to know if I will have a share in the World to Come...

  I am whispering, because perhaps Doña Flora is listening in the next room. Her I wish to spare sorrow, because even though she is a most clever woman, it is inconceivable that she has already understood what Your Grace—I could tell by the gleam in his eyes—understood in silence For in truth, there was no seed, nor could there have been any, so that the seed could not yet know that it was seed but could only hope to be the seed that it longed to be. That is, it was the seed of longing, the seed of yearning to be seed—seed on the doorknob, seed on the parched earth, seed of shroud and sepulcher, “seed of evil-doers, children of corruption...”

  With your permission, I will lock the door, because perhaps madame will try to enter nonetheless. And the court must brook no interruption in its labors—is that not what Your Grace taught me when Jews came to seek redress in your home in Constantinople and you shut the door to keep me out? Yes, that’s better now, isn’t it? And we will stir some life into the fire, because Your Grace is wet and the blanket is damp too. How could they have bound and swaddled you so? With your permission, we will free you a bit. Can this be, ah, can it be the Strong Arm of the Law that presided over an entire age? If I am hurting Your Grace, let him move his strong arm...

  In actual fact, the case is not at all difficult. The defendant has already brought in a verdict of guilty and given himself the maximum sentence. He simply does not know if this will atone for the crime or if it will only compound it. Or to put it differently: will I have a share in the World to Come—even the tiniest share—no more than a peephole through which to see the honor bestowed there on Your Grace and to say to whomever will listen, “I too knew the man”?

  Is that better? Here, let me rub your back a bit too, to help the lazy blood circulate. Does Your Grace remember how he taught me as a boy to scratch his back? There, that’s better. The muy distinguida doña swaddled you too much. Her worry made her overdo it, the poor thing. The ties need to be loosened some more. There was a time, señor, I won’t deny it, when I thought of madame as a kind of trust that Your Grace was safekeeping for me, for she had held out against marriage and had no father to impose his will, and I thought that Your Grace was merely trying to tame her. And indeed, I added a son to tame her even more—until little by little it dawned on me that the trust was not meant for me. And yet even when Your Grace forbade her to join me on my journey to Jerusalem, I still supposed that this was only because he wished us not to jump to any hasty conclusions. It was not until I saw my son’s anguish in the port in Jaffa as I stepped out of the ship by myself, and watched him producing Jews who did not know yet they were Jews on our way to Jerusalem, that my understanding began to grow by leaps and bounds—and each leap and each bound leaped and bounded still more when I entered their little house and saw madame’s motherless niece for the first time, the Jerusalem damsel who had been betrothed in Beirut. Did Your Grace have any idea of the fascinating, the frightening resemblance between them? Why, she is the very image of Dona Flora, just thirty years younger and fresher, a thing of beauty!

  Perhaps, señor, we shou
ld massage the soles of your feet a bit too, both the good foot and the bad one. What made your cara rubissa wrap you in so many layers? As if it were not enough for her to feed you with a spoon, she has to diaper Your Grace like a baby! Perhaps she really thinks she has given birth to you, hee hee. With your permission, let me poke the fire a bit and untie you, and then I will tell you a one and only story, a story of sweet perdition—because even if Your Grace realized there was no seed there, you could not have realized that there could not have been any seed there, that is, that no answer was given because no question had ever been asked. For by that same secret light that shone from the snow that now was draping the walls and streets of Jerusalem like a newly grown beard on an old man, the time had come to know that there was a truth that came before the truth...

  Here? Or does it feel better here?...Let us return from the funeral on the Mount of Olives and sit the two mourners, the widow and the father, next to each other on pillows, across from the coal-burning stove, their feet unshod and their tunics slashed. Rabbis Franco and Ben-Atar did their tactful best to ease us into the week of mourning, so that it might enfold us and warm us and cushion the bleeding wound. We were fed dough rings and raisins, and given hard-boiled eggs that are round and have no beginning or end, and gently taught the laws of mourning word by word. The consul, his wife, and their attendants sat pityingly around us, quite chagrined that they too could not slash their clothes, pull off their shoes, slump down on the floor, and eat the never-ending egg. They too grieved greatly for the lad and felt anguished by his death—and perhaps guilty, too, for having plied him with dreams that were too much for him. By the door of the crowded little dwelling, between old Carso and a Turkish gendarme, I was distressed to notice, señor y maestro mío, the young sheikh from Silwan, who had returned with us from the cemetery to continue weeping for his friend and join the circle of comforters. And perhaps he too, señor, was asking the unasked question that haunted everyone and made all eyes sear the young woman who sat dressed in black, shivering by the coal-burning stove In the several hours that had gone by since the death she had as though grown older and even more alike our Doña Flora ... ah!...