by Yoram Kaniuk
Rebecca went to Rachel in the next room. In the mirror, Rachel's mother was seen putting a pin in her hair. Rachel fell into Rebecca's arms and wept again. Rachel said: This is your son, Rebecca! Not mine, we've had a disaster! Rebecca shook her head angrily and said: This is your coffin, Rachel, not mine. He's got fifty-two sons and daughters, said Rachel. He's a pedigreed little god who spawns and begets all over, and Rebecca said: You're a fool, Rachel Brin, you're a foolish and contemptible little girl. Love your husband! What else is left for you to do? And Rachel who was offended, said with a wicked smile taught her by recent months: See what a disaster the emissary from the Land of Israel your Nehemiah has brought on us!
Mine?
Not yours?
Rebecca was amazed at the new strange phrase, but she cherished it in her heart and didn't say a thing.
She mingled with the crowd. Nehemiah tried to fish out her profile. The musicians played with fake gaiety. Rebecca saw a back hugged savagely by uncles and cousins and relatives. Violins ripping. Outside, it started snowing. In the big room there was a sour smell of human beings, and wine and pots of delicacies and flowers. On the wall hung a charity box of Rabbi Meir Ba'al ha-Nes and underneath it was a flowerpot with a bush in it. Rebecca was pushed to the wall and stood with her head next to the box and her legs touching the bush. Now Joseph and Rachel stood close to one another and four men held the wedding canopy over them. One of the men was Nehemiah. When she looked at Joseph, she knew him from her dreams, that was the black man sliced by dogs. As her lover was pledged to Rachel, Rebecca saw the tears Rachel tried constantly to wipe away, and then Joseph noticed Rebecca. He noticed her when the rabbi talked and he put the ring on his bride's finger and said: Behold, you are consecrated to me, and then for the first time in his life, Joseph Rayna fell in love with his grandmother's mother's mother who stood and looked at him now with a gleaming smile on her lips. Because he turned pale, Rachel held him up, she looked here and there, and saw Rebecca. As soon as the ceremony was over, Joseph was cut off from his bride.
Rebecca left the room a few minutes before the end of the ceremony. She passed through various rooms, crossed the kitchen, and went outside. Beyond the paved square stood the old house where she had sat years ago with Rachel and talked about bewitched trees. Outside there was an intense chill and all she wore was a thin dress. She climbed the stairs of the old house and everything was empty except for some old pieces of furni ture and objects tossed here and there. She went into the frozen sewing room and sat at the window. She picked up a few old bags and cloths basted coarsely, reeking of an old summer, and wrapped herself in them. She was warmed a little, but the stone didn't melt in her chest. She put her face against the windowpane and looked outside. Snow fell and a rooster came out, pecked in the snow, and pranced back to his shelter. Clouds touched the chimney of the new house and from the windows you could see the festivity through the mists coming together and parting again, when she looked at the rooster, she recalled how she held Joseph's hand before she was born. When the rooster came out again, Joseph was standing in the door of the room and she didn't even turn her face to him; in advance, she knew every movement he'd make. At that time, Rachel said: Apparently he's scared, he'll come back soon, he's not used to getting married, veteran libertines don't get married every day and everybody laughed and drank and she left the room. Joseph dragged a broken chair and sat down behind her. He took a bottle of vodka out of his pocket and started drinking. Downstairs in the yard Rachel appeared in her bridal gown. Her eyes looked around until she raised them and her look met Rebecca's eyes in the window. Trembling with cold, she hugged her shivering body. For a moment, her look froze, then a painful smile crept over her face, her hair scattered in the wind, her gown was covered with sticky snow, and she turned back to the house.
Joseph Rayna's lips were seared, he couldn't think. All he had left in the world was painted on the amulet around his neck and on the back turned to him. Rachel went into the house, asked the musicians to stop a moment and announced with a choked and giggling laugh that her bridegroom had apparently drunk too much and with all due respect to the guests was already in bed and snoring like a slaughtered bird and please excuse him, and the musicians started playing again and Nehemiah looked into Rachel's eyes and was silent and pale and Rachel went up to her room, shut the door, locked it, lay in her bed and instead of crying, she burst out in a laughter that was quite different from the laughter that choked her before; she laughed so wildly she had to bury her head in the blanket.
In the attic of the old house sat Rebecca Sorka. For one moment she turned her face and looked at the handsome man sitting there. She found a sooty old lantern, Joseph gave her matches, and she lit it. He held out the amulet to her. She looked at it a long time and said: That's me? And he said: Yes. She touched his hand and said: You've got a wife in bed, Joseph, and we're brother and sister. Because she knew Joseph's face so well and he knew her face so well, there was no point talking. When they held hands, they felt the guile of the loving couples who had toiled for generations to permeate the two of them with that longing, destruction, and disgrace, the profound and sublime loathing they felt for themselves. The lamplight moved in the wind winding in the frozen room. Outside the snow went on falling. Rebecca said: Now go to Rachel, tomorrow night I'll wait for you at the bridge.
The next day she waited for him wrapped in a coat. The cold was intense. Rebecca told Joseph about the river. Holding hands and walking along the path covered with blackened snow, they felt that their distress didn't humiliate them enough. I don't want any child from you, Joseph, said Rebecca, why did you come and kill the river for me?
Joseph returned to Rachel, who knew how to accept him with untormented betrayal. And the next day, Joseph and Rebecca went to the small station on the outskirts of the city. Trains would slow down when they passed our town, only one small train a day would stop at the station that didn't even have a name. After the big curve, beyond the poplars, the trains would speed up and fly to unimagined distances that Joseph knew and Rebecca didn't. When Rebecca was a fourteen-year-old girl she saved the son of the stationmaster from being trampled. She didn't mean to save the child. The guard was a drunken lame Ukrainian called Jewish Death. The ant has five noses, said the Ukrainian to Rebecca and Joseph who had come to the station and gone up to the room of the bats, upstairs, and lovers he said, have only one limb. Then he sat in his chair, laughed, and drank his brandy. Joseph and Rebecca sat upstairs and held hands. Downstairs, the slow trains moved and the Ukrainian would bring them cookies and wine. A few days later, Rachel came. She found the two lovers holding hands and looking at one another. To translate the distress of the silence, she moved toward them stunned, hunched up in the pincers of their hands holding one another, and said: What dependence, Rebecca! That silence! And she put her head on Rebecca's lap and stroked her own womb and looked into Joseph's face and her cold heart was calm. Rebecca looked toward Joseph's son in Rachel's womb and thought of the dead children she had packed in the suitcase. Joseph looked at Rachel trying in vain to remember who she was. Rebecca pushed Rachel off her and said to Joseph: If you really love me, give your wife what she deserves, I have to know ... Joseph said: I want you, but she laughed in his face, felt Rachel's womb, and said: First be a father of your son, beget him for me, too, and she left. Rachel got up and stood facing him. She said to him: You don't have to pretend anymore, Joseph. But to save something that died in me, at least embrace what you left in me. They hugged and then Rebecca shouted: I've got to see love, and they hugged again and then Joseph saw Rebecca in front of his eyes and was with her. Rebecca stood in the next room in the window bay overlooking the tracks and the avenue of poplars and looked at them. With all her might, she pitied Rachel's love for Joseph, but along with love a profound contempt was anchored in her that had always been embedded in her and now found a correct spelling. She said to herself: an ancient contempt came to me from a distant grave, and then the river laughed in her
.
And the city concocted rumors. The mothers of Rachel and Rebecca locked their houses, put down the shutters, sat in Rachel's house, and wept. Together they sent their husbands to the rabbi of the island, delegates went out urgently to sages in other cities, and Nehemiah Schneerson leading his group of youngsters would try not to hear, not to know, to console himself with love of the Land of Israel, and at that time the three would walk in the forest, pick blackberries and red berries, and in an abandoned hut that Rebecca knew from her torments in the forest, Joseph and Rebecca would love in silence, Joseph trying to embrace Rebecca, press her to him, kiss her, and she let him but only a little and Rachel pleads with Rebecca to give Joseph herself and Rebecca despises Rachel and says, Why? Why?
One night, Rebecca's father came into her room and hit her; she slipped away from him and escaped. Rabbis wrote excommunication decrees and Rebecca returned to her hut. Rachel sat outside and Joseph was inside and made a fire of pieces of wood he had previously gathered. Rebecca let him undress her and stood before him naked. The fire enhanced the beauty of her body. She shut her eyes and let him stroke her. She didn't want to see the sight of her body in his eyes. I won't allow any love to confound the high price I set on the beauty I feel, she said. Shutting her eyes she could have been destroyed by gods Joseph said were in another location, and returned to the grave of her disappointments that were always her life itself. I'm part of the night, witches burned in fire, sleep, dreams, the pallbearers of Rebecca Secret Charity, she said, and Joseph was willing to die just to be borne by her, but he was afraid of the lofty words buzzing in his temples. Rebecca knew there wasn't even one corpse who would be ready for love like Joseph. Suddenly she abandoned her body, a wild joy she didn't know except from dreams came to her, Joseph's hands came, his body came close to her, blood started flowing when he came close to her, seasonal blood, she said, seasonal blood, Joseph, and he didn't see a thing, a forbidden woman, said Rebecca. And suddenly a tremor went through Joseph, Rebecca laughed in his face, he saw the laugh, hit her, and she dropped down, laughing, Rachel looked on hypnotized, and the blood still flowed and Rachel thought to herself: Who do I love, Joseph or Rebecca, and she knew that the hatred she felt for them was a kind of irreparable love. So she didn't know who she wanted to kill, and she hugged her son in her womb and called him to herself Secret Glory and Rebecca dreams, despicable in her own eyes, hugged in Joseph's arms, looked into his eyes and he is in her and her blood flows, and she gives birth to dead sons, all of them in her suitcase, and he still doesn't see the blood, and then Rebecca gets up and Joseph is still writhing on the ground, and she says: You're a fool, Joseph, you're the most beautiful man I ever met in my life, you kill you in me, and she started getting dressed. When she was dressed, Rachel came in and Joseph looked at her with the pain of his tormented body. Rebecca looked at Joseph and Rachel and they looked so distant, so threatening in their soft words.
In that longing, she was afraid she'd be a mirror there and see herself. In her eyes, they were so full of a future she didn't want to be in. Such a love mustn't be fostered because it's against all possibility of real disgust, she said and left. Joseph ran after her, pleaded, but Rebecca strode quickly and without turning around. From the windows of the city, frightened faces peeped out and contemptuous looks were hung on her and on Joseph running after her. Rebecca's mother put her head in the oven and Rachel's mother took her out of the oven, poured water on her, called the doctor, and Rebecca's father sat cross-legged and started praying, even though he hadn't prayed for years, and Rebecca walked to Nehemiah's house, and Nehemiah Schneerson's mother was knitting a shawl and looked outside and saw Rebecca knocking on the gate of the house. Nehemiah had dressed ahead of time, as if he were waiting for some sign. A few days before, when he saw Joseph walking around like a blind man, he wanted to mourn and then he went to the forest and vowed revenge against Judea for preventing him from avenging the cursed Exile, and said: In blood and fire Judea fell, in blood and fire Judea will rise, and now, dressed in warrior clothes he stood in the door he opened to Rebecca.
From his mother, Nehemiah inherited the intelligence of the quiet defeated people who fabricate small consolations. Rebecca said: If you want you can marry me, Nehemiah, I'll be your wife all the days of my life, and only yours, but if you don't want to, tell me now.
Later on, she told Nehemiah what had happened to her in the three days since Rachel's wedding. He was silent, sipped the tea his mother served, and his eyes filled with unshed tears. He didn't say a thing. Then they drank wine and the two of them were gripped by some spasm that united them so profoundly they had to embrace. And Rebecca felt peace for the first time in her life. For a moment she loved Joseph with an impossible love and hated him with an impossible hate, and that was the last time she thought about Joseph with that passion and disgust that had filled her from the moment she saw him at Rachel's wedding, and until her grandson Boaz was born she no longer yearned even one minute for the handsome man who was her brother, her cousin, and her only lover. When she felt peace, Nehemiah stopped being afraid of her. She drank wine and began talking gaily, she said: Does my educated lord know why God lays tefillin? Nehemiah looked out the window. In the window Joseph appeared. She said: Because it is written, The Lord hath sworn by his right hand. Does my young lord know that King David, like Joseph Rayna standing there outside, sang a song in his mother's belly? It is written that he sucked from the breasts of his mother and looked at her breasts. Don't blush, lad. And then he started singing. And it's written, Bless the Lord 0 my soul and forget not all his benefits, said Rabbi: that's because he made teats instead of intelligence. Not I, Nehemiah, the rabbis said: That's so he won't look at her groin. Don't blush! Nehemiah, who had almost not listened to her, said: You'll love me Rebecca, and she said: Maybe, maybe. I told you about David because of my violated honor, we'll go to America and start a new life. And Nehemiah said: No, to the Land of Israel, and she thought: We'll go there and from there we'll go to America. She didn't like to argue with him.
Joseph and Rachel asked for compassion, but she banished them. I'll bear the hatred that hates the only love I could have had, she said. There were pogroms then and people hid in their houses and Nehemiah went out with his group to defend the lives of the people and they were forced into exile for fear of the authorities and Rebecca followed him, and after the ransom was paid, people said: Something new happened to the Jews, and Rebecca laughed, it was because of her hatred that those things had come, and then Rebecca and Nehemiah got married with a haste caused by the time and the dread. Hasids again went up to the roofs and shouted to God, Secret Glory died choked by a drunken Cossack who beat up a Jew, and two wrinkled old women died holding onto one another in terror. A house was burned and the smell of its smoke filled the street and a child was thrown into the fire. Only relatives were invited to the wedding of Rebecca and Nehemiah, there were no musicians, people were busy fixing their destroyed houses, and Nehemiah told them: Why fix what will be destroyed again, go to the Land of Israel, and they laughed at him. But Rebecca's father came at night, hugged his daughter, touched Nehemiah's arm, and said: Maybe that's a vision of death, maybe this nation can't be revived, but go and erect a house for me there. Rebecca's mother stood on the side and didn't say a word. Something deep and old rested on her beautiful face. They had to slip out of the city at night. An old carter took them over the border. The new arrest warrant against Nehemiah had been delayed in a tavern where a clever Jew deceived the officials with cheap brandy. The Ukrainian who wanted to reward Rebecca for his melancholy kept the drunk until morning. After wandering a lot, Rebecca and Nehemiah came to the city of Trieste. Rebecca went to the coffinmaker and told him of the coffin she wanted for her husband and the splendid coffin of her husband, when her stomach swelled up, she took with her on the ship. As the distance between her and Joseph grew, she could love him like a shadow blended with who she once was. Now Rebecca Schneerson was taken to the land she didn't want to go to
with a fetus in her belly and a husband in a coffin.
Tape / -
The journey to Jaffa took ten days. The sea was strong, and near Crete, the stairs broke and the sailors stretched ropes along the moldy corridors, and in the crowded halls people lay groaning. Rebecca sat on deck and knitted a scarf. The waves would break at her feet and didn't touch her. A Russian officer, splendidly dressed, brought her a cup of tea and said: For a brave and beautiful lady. She looked through him and saw the breakers stopping at what could have been her steps. Twice a day she would go down to the belly of the ship and sit at her husband's coffin and then would go up and sit on deck. Looking with meticulous indifference at the Christian pilgrims, the Hasids in black caftans, shouting and screeching, and the Pioneers who would recite the moldy poems of Joseph Rayna and long for a place they had never been.