Mr. Mani

by A. B. Yehoshua

  But Your Grace must listen to me, he must listen and not sleep! Here, let me rub your weary bones a bit with some of this oil. Not that I have any reason to doubt the excellent intentions of Doña Flora and her attendants, Jewish or not, but I do believe, señor, that they are afraid that you will come apart in their hands, which is why they wrapped you like a mummy, swaddling band by swaddling band, until, God forbid, you were hardly able to breathe. Let us then, my master and teacher, remove the last of these ties without a qualm, because only a trusty old disciple like myself who has known your most unphlegmatic body for ages will not fear to hurt you in order to make you feel better. There ... that does it ... a bit more ... and now, Rabbi Haddaya, lie back and listen to how the passer-through who became a stayer-on was now a beloved-of in a Jerusalem that was being built from day to day, not always by us, to be sure, but always, with God’s help, for our benefit—and there were times, I must say, when the love of that motherless widow both astonished and frightened me, because what could possibly come of it? “Why, I am a dead man, my child,” I would say to her every evening when we sat down to our dinner of radishes, tomatoes, and pita bread dipped in olive oil while the sun set outside the window and the muezzin sounded his mournful call. “I will go to Rabbi Haddaya in Constantinople and get leave to strangle myself like Saul son of Kish.” She would listen and say nothing, her big, bright eyes wide with tears, her little hands trembling on her belly, as if above all she wished to assure young señorito Mani that he need not fear the grandfather who had skipped a generation to sow him and was now threatening to miss the harvest. Then she would rise, go to wash the bowls at the cistern, and come back to make the beds, trim the candles, and take up the red blouse and taquaiqua that she was knitting for little Mani, never taking her eyes off me, as if I were already preparing the rope to hang myself. Now and then she glanced in the mirror over her bed to see what I was up to in the mirror over my bed. And thus, señor y maestro mío, from mirror to mirror I was so encircled by anxiety and love that I lost all my strength and began to flicker out like a candle. I went up to the roof to say good night to the last breeze of the day, which was winging its way to the Dead Sea above the last lanterns bobbing in the narrow streets, and when I came down again, I found her still awake, sitting up in bed. Unable to hold it back any longer, she burst out all at once into a great, bitter cry that I had to make haste to calm, swearing to her that I would not abandon her before the birth. And although, my master and teacher, she was firm in her belief that the final truth bound us together, even she did not know that behind that truth too yet another truth was hiding...

  There, they are starting to bang on the door, Rabbi Shabbetai, they want me out of here. But I am not leaving until I have been given a clear judgment, even though “His son Rabbi Yishmael used to say”—is not that what you taught me, rabbi?—“‘he who judges not has no enemies.’” And he used to say: “Whoever is born, is born to die, and whoever dies, dies to live again, and whoever lives again, lives to be judged, to know, to make known, and to be made known.” Well, let us stir the fire a bit to warm this room, and raise the curtain for a look at the sky dropping low over their chapel of graven images, may they all rot in hell, and tell at last and in truth the final, the one and only story, the story of sweet perdition that recurs in every generation.

  Quickly, quickly, though, because the banging on the door is growing louder, and soon, señor y maestro mío, Doña Flora and her men will come bursting in here. It is time, Rabbi Haddaya, betahsir, vite-vite, to come forth with the story that I have kept for last, the story of a murderer—because I have already told you, señor y maestro mío, that there was a bit of a murderer here—or, si quiere, su merced, a manslaughterer, a shohet-uvodek—to whom, ever since that first night, one felt drawn again and again in the crowded lanes of Jerusalem—in the souks, by the cisterns, gazing out from the gates of the city—by a lightning-like glitter of a glance—a wordless nod—an imperceptible bow—a casting-down of the eyes—a sudden shudder. Ah, how drawn—on the chalky hillside of Silwan, among the olives on the road to Bethlehem—so powerfully that sometimes one’s feet stole of an evening to the consulate, to one of its literary soirées, to listen to some Englishwoman praise some British romance that no one ever had read or ever would read, for the sole purpose of staring wordlessly at the silent shade standing in the doorway and bearing the memory of my poor son—oh, rotting! oh, beloved in his grave! Yosef, my only one—who on that accursed night of snow and blood ... But who could restrain himself, Rabbi Shabbetai Hananiah, from running after him through the streets in an attempt to forestall an assault that was in truth a retreat, a provocation that was in truth a flight from the pain and punishment that he imagined twirling over his bed like an angry, patient carving knife? And it was thus that slaughterer joined slaughterer by the light of the torches of the Russian pilgrims, who were bellowing their piety on the stone floor of the Holy Sepulchre—thus that the two of them, the frantic father and the Ishmaelite friend, the aristocratic, mustachioed sheikh’s son—linked forces to catch in time the idée fixe that in its passionate pride was about to turn on its own self and become the very prototype that it was searching for of the Jew forgetful of being a Jew, an example and provocation for all recalcitrants. For as he elbowed his way into the crowd of pilgrims that was excitedly tramping through the mud and snow, wary of being recognized by some excitable Christian who might inform on him to the Turkish soldiers surrounding the square, he was seeking, or so I felt, Rabbi Shabbetai, to forget us all—Salonika, Constantinople, myself, yourself—as if he had been conceived and born from the very floor of the church, rising up from the cisterns and the souk as a new Ishmaelite who had discovered that he was a forgetful Jew who might remember ... only what?

  In truth, Your Grace has good reason to hold his breath and shut his eyes, fearful in thought and spirit for the story’s end ... and no less fearfully, although ever so gently and clandestinely, did the two of us, the murderer and myself, plan to pluck my son from that crowd of celebrants and lead him back home to his bed. But when we stepped up and seized his lantern so as to make him follow us, he took fright and started to flee—and seeing us run after him, the celebrants at once joined in the pursuit. He ran down the long, deserted street of the Tarik Babel-Silseleh with his cloak flapping behind him like a big black bird—or so, from that moment, I began to think of him, an odd bird that must be pinioned before it flew away above our heads. He ran and ran through the cover of snow that made all of Jerusalem look like a single interconnected house, but instead of heading for home, for the quarter of the Jews, and then doubling back through the Middle Synagogue or the synagogue of Yohanan ben-Zakkai, he kept going straight ahead, turning neither left nor right until he came to the Bab, the Gate of the Chain leading up to the great mosque. He shook it a bit until he realized that it was locked, and then, without giving it any thought, as if trusting in the snow to protect him, turned left and proceeded in the same easy, flying, unconcerned lope to the second gate, the Bal-el-Matra, from which he entered the great, deserted square in front of the golden dome, which the snow had covered with a fresh head of white hair. The echoes of his footsteps were still ringing out when he was seized by two sleepy Mohammedan guards. Perhaps they too thought that he was some kind of black bird that had fallen from on high and soon would fly back there, because why else would they have hurried to bind him with long strips of cloth and lay him on the stairs amid the columns, where his squirming shape now made an imprint in the snow?

  My master and teacher. Rabbi Shabbetai. My master and teacher. Your Grace. Rabbi Haddaya. Señor y maestro mío Shabbetai Hananiah. Hananiah Shabbetai. Su merced ... can it be?

  In no time he was surrounded, because the news spread quickly from gate to gate across that huge deserted square, from the golden dome to the silver dome, so that soon more sleepy guards appeared, although this time there was no telling what time of sleep my son had roused them from. They crowded about him and bent over hi
m to read in his eyes the mad chastisements that he planned for them and that he was begging them to inflict now on himself so that he might demonstrate how he was the first to awaken and recollect his true nature. And although the guards could see for themselves that the man in the cloak spread out in the snow on the steps was an infirm soul, they did not, simple beings that they were, give credence to this soul’s suffering but rather suspected it of taking pleasure in itself and its delusions and sought to share that pleasure with it, so that they began to make sport of it and roll it in the snow, a glitter marking the passage of a half-concealed knife from hand to hand. And I, my master and teacher, was outside the gate, I was watching from afar while listening to the distant bell of a lost flock, silently, wretchedly waiting for the worst of the night to wear itself out and the morning star to appear in the east, faint and longed-for, so that I might go to him, to the far pole of his terror and sorrow, whether as his slaughterer or whether as the slaughterer’s inspector, and release him from his earthly bonds, because I was certain that he had already deposited his seed...

  You have become, señor y maestro mío, most silent. Can it be that you are already gone?

  Wait! I want to come too, Rabbi Shabbetai Hananiah ... Why don’t you answer me?...For the love of God, answer me...

  ‘Twould take but a nod...

  ‘Tis not as if I need words to understand ...

  In truth ...

  Is it self-murder, then?

  Yes? ... No?...

  Biographical

  Supplements

  AVRAHAM MANI received no answer to his question, nor was there the least movement of the rabbi’s head for him to interpret as a yes or a no; indeed, at this stage of the conversation, even he, as agitated and carried away as he was, had to admit that Rabbi Shabbetai Haddaya, whose judgment he had sought, was dead. There was no way of knowing exactly when the rabbi had breathed his last, and although often, in the years to come, he sought to go over those last minutes in his mind, even staging them there by playing both roles, his own and that of his teacher, he was unable to decide when the moment of death had occurred. In any event, he remembered well his desperate, bizarre, and persistent attempts to resuscitate the rabbi, which were accompanied by loud, angry bangs on the locked door that was finally broken in. Once a local doctor was fetched and the rabbi’s death officially announced, a great wave of emotion swept over the Jews of Athens. While Rabbi Haddaya’s death had been more or less expected, those ministering to him, and especially Dona Flora, felt no sense of relief, for during the forty days they had been tending him they somehow had come to believe that he might remain as he was for many years. Naturally, an accusing finger was pointed at Avraham Mani, who served as the target of angry words and hostile looks, it being felt that his stubborn insistence on remaining by the bedside, where he cried and behaved unrestrainedly, had brought on the old man’s death. Avraham Mani himself, however, was too absorbed in his own private mourning to be perturbed by these accusations, and especially, in the dilemma that continued to haunt him of whether or not to take his life and of the effect such an action might have on his share in the World to Come.

  Be that as it may, though, Avraham Mani made himself a central figure at the funeral and during the week of mourning that followed. Although he was not a blood relation of the departed, he slashed his clothing, said the mourner’s prayer by the grave in a loud, ceremonious voice, and spent the week of mourning sitting on a cushion at Madame Flora’s feet as though he were a member of the family. He seemed to enjoy the many condolence calls, which included visits by Greek and Turkish religious and political dignitaries who came all the way from Salonika and Constantinople, and—since he was the only one present to have known the deceased from as far back as the Napoleonic wars in Russia—he dominated the conversation with his stories and anecdotes about Rabbi Haddaya.

  Following the first month-day of the death, when Dona Flora began to pack her things, Avraham Mani considered proposing marriage to her, both as a way of “doing what the old man had always wanted,” as he thought of putting it to her, and of making up for his original rejection. In the end, however, Dona Flora was so chillingly aloof toward him that he dared not even hint at the matter. She, for her part, apprehensive that he would follow her to Constantinople, decided at the last minute to set out for Palestine and visit her niece and her niece’s baby, whom Mani’s stories had made her greatly desirous of seeing.

  Fearful that the secret of his paternity might be revealed and place him in an impossible position in Jerusalem, Avraham Mani did not follow her there. Reluctantly, he returned to Salonika and to his daughter, son-in-law, and two grandsons, still preoccupied with the thought of suicide and with various possibilities of carrying it out. Meanwhile, he comported himself as a mourner and went from synagogue to synagogue to tell of the rabbi’s death. He especially liked to mount the podium on the Sabbath when the Torah scrolls were being taken out of the Holy Ark, give the prayer book a loud clap that brought the congregation to its feet, and compel the cantor to sing the special requiem for distinguished souls, which begins with the verses: “Whence then cometh wisdom, and where is the place of understanding? Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. Oh, how great is Thy goodness that Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee; which Thou has wrought for them that trust in Thee before the sons of men.”

  Yet not even these dramatic ceremonies were able to soothe his soul or to give it respite from the question of whether to take his life for his sin. In the end, he decided to wander in the footsteps of his master, seeking, in his words, “to fulfil his unfulfilled disappearance.” In 1853 he set out for Damascus, from where he sent a brief missive to his five-year-old son-grandson with a conacero he had written himself, which was full of obscure allusions. But he found no peace in Damascus either, and after the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853, he journeyed onward to Mesopotamia until he reached the region where his grandfather had been born. The last known Jews he lived among, word from whom eventually got back to his daughter and son-in-law in Salonika, were those of a small town called Dahaman, near Midshakar, an ancient port that had been silted in over time and was now no longer near the sea. Avraham Mani served as a rabbi-cantor there and died—from natural causes, it would seem—in 1860, the year of Herzl’s birth, or in 1861, the year of the start of the American Civil War. He was sixty-one or sixty-two at the time.

  FLORA MOLKHO-HADDAYA was deeply shocked by the death of her husband Rabbi Haddaya. Despite his paralyzing stroke, his loss of speech, and the difficulties imposed by their extended stay in an inn in Athens, the childless Dona Flora derived a special pleasure from caring for her distinguished invalid of a husband, who had become, as Avraham Mani accurately put it, “a venerable babe.” When she and the Greek servant broke down the locked door and found Mani cavorting around the rabbi’s dead body, she burst into uncontrollable tears and screams and fell upon Mani in a fury. She quickly got a grip on herself, however, and retained her aristocratic bearing through the period of mourning, even behaving with restraint toward Mani himself out of respect for her late husband. As soon as the month-day ceremony was over, though, she resolved to have no more to do with him and set out for Palestine in order to visit her niece Tamara and Tamara’s baby boy.

  Doña Flora arrived in Jerusalem in the spring of 1849 after having been away from the city for eighteen years, and was received with great warmth and honor. She moved into her parents’ old apartment, in which she was given back her childhood bed, and became little Moshe’s “second grandmother,” as he called her. The British consul and his wife, who had recently inaugurated the new Christ’s Church in a lavish ceremony, were quick to see that the distinguished doña, “Yosefs aunt,” had much to recommend her and grew to be very fond of her. They even invited her to a soirée of the Jerusalem Bibliophile Society for a discussion of the newly published novel David Copperfield, although her English was all but nonexistent.

  Tam
ara, of course, did not reveal to her aunt the true identity of her son’s father, and Doña Flora felt happy to be back in her native city and country. She even consulted several of her acquaintances about the possibility of transferring her late husband’s remains from Athens to Jerusalem and publicly reburying them on the Mount of Olives. But in 1853, during the Crimean War, a letter written by Avraham Mani arrived from Damascus with a poem for his grandson that contained several oddly phrased hints that Mani might soon come to Jerusalem. Tamara was gripped by great anxiety and emotion, and after much soul-searching and many excruciating nights of insomnia, she broke down and confided her secret to her beloved aunt. Doña Flora was horrified. Although at first she seemed to make her peace with her niece’s confession, she gradually developed a strange revulsion for her surroundings, including Jerusalem and Palestine themselves. In 1855, following an earthquake in the city and riots between Greeks and Armenians in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and after taking part in the dedication of a new trade school for Jews established by the British consul in an uninhabited area outside the walled city that would one day become the neighbor of Abraham’s Vineyard, she left Jerusalem for Alexandria, where her late father Ya’akov Molkho had cousins. She settled down there, lapsed into a prolonged melancholia, and died in Egypt in 1863 at the age of sixty-three.