by Yoram Kaniuk
Lionel got up, walked around the room, and for three straight hours, he delivered a speech to her about the continuity of the Jewish fate, about the lost echoes of their footsteps, and he left. Two days later he came back. He'd bring groceries, and she would cook. You're learning to eat, he told her, envying her hunger. All the time he would talk about his shortcomings, his advanced age, his failure as a writer, his life as a superfluous journey between nothing and nothing, and Lily who began to understand that her name was not only Lily but also Melissa, began to learn English, and one day she sat among his dirty clothes and laundered them and thought about a certain word she had learned that day, and shouted it to Lionel who was in the bath, and he opened the door, saw the young woman sitting there lovesick with his clothes and gave her some answer about the word she had uttered, and then he understood the meaning of his love, he understood it from her concern with his clothes and with words, understood what sensuality a woman could grant to the pants of a man she loved, and how far she could go to speak a language that is the soul of things and their formulation before they were in the world. Now he saw Lily imprisoned in a world that for some reason didn't take vengeance on her because it didn't know what profound rebelliousness was buried in her, how she could betray herself, her parents, all out of a total dissociation, out of a rare ability to be like a wax statue in a legend in which a prince appears and grants her life. Her life is my sad echo, he said to himself, and loved her as much as he was disgusted by her and by himself, loved her more than anybody else he had ever loved in his life.
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When Ebenezer and Samuel Lipker came to Cologne, Samuel stood in the street and distributed announcements about the performance. He had no guilt about dragging Ebenezer to that place. As far as he was concerned, the enemy should also enjoy. Lionel heard about the performance and decided to take Lily. When they entered the small wretched nightclub they were greeted by the owner, a very thin man with smoky eyes, holding rattles to be shaken, and when they sat down at a big wooden table where people had carved their names for years, two gigantic glasses of beer were already standing before them and in front was a small lighted stage. The place was crowded, the smoke of cheap cigarettes spiraled up from all sides, and whenever Ebenezer declaimed, the room thundered with the excited rattles. Next to Lionel and Lily sat five hugging men who wept all the time. For some reason, the tears the men wept were so big that when he looked at them, Lionel could see how the space left by Ebenezer's words, words with nothing behind them except borrowed memory, stirred laugh ducts in five men who came here to demonstrate disguised laughter. Ebenezer looked to Lionel like a repulsive Jew who wanted to look like a repulsive Jew, rather stooped, and Lionel wearing the uniform of an American officer felt uncomfortable, he was amazed not only that that man was amusing people who would have tortured him a year ago, but also at his own amazement. Lily understood that Ebenezer was reciting things he didn't understand, but as far as she was concerned, there was something in that fact itself that justified what she had tried to explain to Lionel without much success, that she too had lived ten years in a recital and didn't understand that she was reciting, didn't even want to understand.
And then Lionel noticed Samuel Lipker. Between the excerpts, Samuel praised the Last Jew who was appearing here before this distinguished audience, as he put it. He spoke like a person reporting on percentages of interest or a rise in stocks, restrained and aloof, and all the while his face was thrust at the audience, he had to know who his real enemy was, he had to overpower them and Lionel understood his look better than he understood Lily's enthusiasm at hearing the things Ebenezer was reciting. Lionel hated the covetousness he discerned in Samuel's eyes. He saw in him something that reminded him of the awful moments of his life, when he saw in the mirror a person he himself didn't know. And then Ebenezer said: I now list essays on the history of the hostility to the repulsive Jews (he didn't say that mockingly, he said it dryly, as if he had no opinion)Distinguished gentlemen, set your watches a thousand years back. I'm trying again, I said then boldly: the news according to Benbas, the dialogue with Trifo by Justin Martyr, the pamphlet against the heretics by Iraeneus, I'm sorry about the whisper, reading from a distance, dead letters torn in my mind, a smell of a distant church, a ringing that deserted the bells and remains hovering in the air, torturing Jews by Tertullian, calling God by Lactinius, and that fool Kramer thought only about the essay by Isidor of Sevilla and his pamphlet against the Jews. A great expert you had there! Kramer ... removing all the heretics and an explanatory essay against Jews by Hippolyte, tasteless kinds of flesh of Jews by Novatian and a selection of testimonies by Nissa and testimonies from the Old Testament against the Jews, proof of the Good Tidings, history of the church by Eusebius. Eight sermons against the Jews and proof to the Jews and the Christians that Jesus is God by Chrysostom, a pamphlet by Saint Augustine, his Heavenly City ... Rhymes against the Jews by Ephraim the Syrian, Sergei de Abraga: the Torah of Jacob and the proofs against the Jews by Ephrat, the sermons of Masrog, the Sabbath against the Jews by Isidore ... Something is omitted here, and the book of Orthodox faith, a dialogue of Jason and Papikies, a dialogue of Timothy of Aquilla, a dialogue of Asnasius and Pepsicus, and Philo, and Lily thought Ebenezer was singing. When she said that, Lionel looked at her and suddenly couldn't recognize her. Inside him, a melody he knew from childhood began singing in him. Melissa is listening to my father's melody, thought Lionel, who was my father? But when Ebenezer started quoting poems by eighteenth-century Polish poets, the ruddy-cheeked old man with the red flower in his lapel was moved to tears and frenziedly wrote down every word in a big notebook in front of him. His hand flew over the paper, his eyes were almost shut and some coquettish smile spread over his face. When Ebenezer moved to the stories of the Cadet from the Zohar and then to the stories of the Brothers Grimm, the old man said: Forty years I've been investigating forgotten Polish poetry, both of us, he and I, the only ones in the world who still remember. I sit in London, sir, investigate, encyclopedias empty of that poetry, no books, there was a man who remembered and passed it on to Ebenezer, in his mind he holds onto that sublime poetry, I copy it to publish it. Is there anything more awful than a nation forgetting its songs, Lord! Of all the dozens of poets he knows-I follow him from city to city-only three are still known to scholars of Polish literature. Who was the man who taught him that poetry? Could it have been a Jew? How does a Jew who died know that poetry? And the man wept and Lionel didn't know exactly what he was weeping about. He covered the notebook so the tears wouldn't melt the words he wrote and he started shaking the rattle. I don't know, if he'd ask me I'd be amazed, do I really know those poems? Maybe Germanwriter knows. The man stopped shaking the rattle and again wrote something. Lily swallowed a piece of orange Lionel gave her.
And then Ebenezer stood up to the cheering rattles. A bitter smile flickered in the corners of his mouth. Those who didn't just want to shake the rattles applauded. Ebenezer looked tired and pale. Samuel Lipker gave him a glass of beer. Lily said: That lad looks like you! Lionel, who had known that from the first moment, glared at his venomous beauty, he shifted his eyes to Ebenezer and thought: Ebenezer and I are the same age. I'm with Lily Schwabe and he's with Samuel Lipker, and he envied Lily's beautiful eyes that saw that beauty.
Anger at himself made him shiver and he diverted his hostility to war against Lily.
And Lily was an easy enemy, thought Lionel with his characteristic bitterness. And then a murderer who had been dormant in him ever since Melissa shut her eyes was kindled in him. His hands reached out to Lily to strangle her. There was a lot of noise. A flush rose onto Lily's cheeks. She saw the hands reaching out to her. Samuel Lipker stared long and wantonly at Lionel, who felt his look. He dropped his hands and buried his face in them. Lily sidled up to him and caressed his hand, shook the rattle exaggeratedly, and sipped the beer. The Pole stood up and went to sit someplace else. Lionel wanted to get up. Ebenezer was standing on the side of the stage
and looked like a grasshopper stuck to a blackboard in a biology class. Lily is watered by an artificial rain, he thought, and Melissa, my angel, you died before my eyes. Samuel Lipker now told how he had met Ebenezer, how Ebenezer learned his knowledge. He told how they had crossed borders and countries, and said: This performance is designed to collect money for our families, we glean pennies to save souls from death. He didn't expatiate on what death and only the smiling expression of Ebenezer's eyes clarified for Lionel the disgrace of the moment. When they passed the baskets among the audience, Samuel's eyes examined the room carefully but kept coming back to Lionel. When the basket came to Lionel, Lily wanted to pay, but he caught her hand, held the basket for a whole minute, looked at the money heaped up in it and passed it on. Samuel looked at the basket that dropped out of Lionel's hand, and his eyes expressed some contempt and then Samuel said, his eyes staring into Lionel's eyes: Ebenezer has to save his daughters! But Lionel knew and didn't know how he knew that Ebenezer had no daughters. Now he wanted to see Samuel's defeat but maybe even then that love for that bold and attractive lad stirred in him, and the closeness he felt for Lily made him shiver even more, he had to kiss or die, her or him, he went outside and threw up. Then, he took the rattle and shook it in the street until they came to Lily's house. People dressed in rags sitting huddled at bonfires next to what once were their houses looked with characteristic loathing at somebody who had lost them their palaces, and he yelled: I piss on you and the dream girl of the Third Reich also laughed. At home, Lionel said: I'm forty-four years old and I weep without tears. And you, a daughter of the thousand-year Reich-and you laugh! You're an ad for Ritesma and Simon cigarettes, a painting of the great German school, sitting with a kike born in Poland and wanting children he doesn't have to give you.
Lily made tea for the drunken Lionel and then she lay down beside him and was Melissa with little nipples who killed angels of death with her soft eyelashes.
What made you Lily made Himmler Himmler, said Lionel with his eyes shut. And thus he started writing her a farewell letter in his mind. She told him: What's simple about love? You were the first man in my life and you'll be the last. She didn't understand how Lionel knew that Ebenezer had no daughters. She wanted Ebenezer to have daughters. Lionel got angry, but couldn't explain why Ebenezer had no daughters. And so maybe he felt she was immune to him, maybe because of her love, maybe because of her youth as a wunderkind of the Hitler-jugend maybe she had never been a member of, and they talked about the resemblance between Samuel and Lionel. Lionel got angry, as if the heavy blood coursing in him truly had a voice and a shape as the professors and sages in this city had taught for ten years. A scene of a dream she had had arose in Lily's mind. In her dream, she told him, her father, who was now a prisoner of the Russians, was stumbling in a forest and she was a baby bird. Her father picked up the baby bird and decided to cook it. Then he would shoot at birds who came to ask for the baby bird. He put her into a basket, and walked, and that's how I was adopted, she said. Lionel thought of Joseph Rayna. Once, when he had heard about him, he had wanted so much for him to be his father so he could kill him. He thought of how his mother had told him about Rebecca Schneerson who would translate people into an eternal texture of contempt like copy paper that transmits things and serves as a fluent copy but preserves the original. Those thoughts begat in him an almost regal lust that was translated into a tormented and enormous night of love and copulation like some whorehouse of angels, he thought, and when he woke up and saw her sleeping, he noticed how white and clear her eyes were. Don't die on me, he said in a panic. And then he sank into sleep and when he woke up he saw her eyes wide open and looking at him. The responsibility filled him with a bitter taste. She'll look so beautiful on York Avenue, she'll dry the tears of the world, she has no right to wonder about Ebenezer's lost daughters, and he said to her: When Samuel Lipker searched for diamonds in corpses, you sat and drew sunsets with flags at the Baltic shore and a heroic and bold race lusted for you with avid eyes, but she didn't answer him. She tried to remember how beautiful it was to fall asleep in his arms, and she said: But if you decided that I'm Melissa, then let me be Melissa retroactively, too. The vanishing figure of her father didn't grieve her. In her dream, she remembered, she dreamed that somebody pointed an accusing finger at her, but since she never knew what guilt was she didn't know what the finger meant. You know, she said, you're now all the memories I have, I came to you from total darkness.
That night he said he had to go away for a while. He brought a lot of groceries and two pairs of nylon stockings. She was silent and looked at him, and whispered: I'll be here, Lionel. Soon, they'll finish repairing the house across the street, the apartment there belonged to my grandmother, she died in the war. The phone number in her apartment is 46655. If you don't come back and don't call, you'll find me behind Himmelstrasse, in the new cemetery, in the northern part where they're now burying people. Look for the letter S. I'll die secretly even if you don't come back, but if I die, Lionel, all your women will be dead in my eyelashes like the eyelashes that filled Melissa's death. If there's life after death, and if Germans are allowed to enter there, I'll wait for you there, too.
For a whole year they didn't see one another. At night, he called her from distant cities, had long conversations with her and once wept into the phone for two whole hours and didn't say a word and she listened. Once she told him about the house she had moved to, told that she was working in the committee of DPs and people were coming back from Poland and Czechoslovakia and other places and searching for their families and she tried to find the addresses. Lily told that an American officer sent her a package of food every week and he whispered, It's me, you fool, and she laughed, he wasn't sure, and she said, I know my dear, and I'm waiting for you. And he told her: You're naive, Lily, and she said: Maybe, I eat little, don't look bad. I bought two new dresses, also sewed you a coat of thick cloth I found in an excavation under a house they repaired and I made myself a shroud, Jews die in shrouds, don't they? Thinking about your eyes and Samuel's. About your oval ellipses, demons have green-yellow eyes wrapped in oval ellipses!
Lionel, who was interrogating prisoners in various cities, got in touch with Jews who were busy sneaking across borders and ascending to the Land of Israel. He got them cigarettes and food and for a long time he'd hang around in places where roads converged of Jews fleeing from northern Europe and flowing south to get to the Land of Israel. Lily understood who he was seeking and once told him, When you find him come back to me.
Tape / -
That year, the wandering of peoples began, my friend Goebbelheydrich- himmel. People, like little ants, slipped across borders, through mountains, in forests, slowly slowly came to gathering places near Marseilles or Naples, in the forests of Yugoslavia, in many places they gathered. And I searched for Ebenezer.
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Lionel travels. People start setting real clocks, no longer covering up sin. My mother was a lampshade, said Samuel, and Ebenezer now performed in a hundred and sixty nightclubs. Now he appeared on a list of professional nightclub entertainers. And one night in Marseilles Lionel Secret sees a long line of Jews. The Jews are waiting to board a small ship named Redemption. A small ship, like a Mississippi riverboat, says an American standing not far from it and goes off. A young man comes to Lionel, too short to be the thug who taught ourselves to be, his arms strong, he clasps Lionel's hands and thanks him for the cigarettes and food, asks Lionel to get weapons too. Emotionally, it's still hard for Lionel to smuggle weapons they'll use to fight the British. The British medals still flutter over his shirt pocket. The line to the ship winds around along a deserted and forgotten quay. The people sit or stand, buy, sell, hold onto their miserable belongings, scared of every stranger, and Lionel notices Ebenezer and Samuel. Ebenezer is sitting on a suitcase. At the sight of Lionel, Samuel takes off and Ebenezer points to an empty place and says, Sit down, take a place in line, we're going.
Samuel told me to go,
he added, and I'm going. Samuel says I was born there. One of the Israelis announces on the loudspeaker that the boilers have broken down and there may be a delay of a few hours. Tea will be distributed to you, he added, but nobody got up, they're afraid to lose their place. There's room for four hundred people on the ship, and there are seven hundred people standing here. Sounds of strife are heard in the distance. Behind a destroyed enclosure, a battle rages between Samuel Lipker and another man. The man bought a defective camera from Samuel and is demanding his money back. Lionel leaves Ebenezer gazing at the water of the port striking the concrete wall, and stands not far from the enclosure, Samuel hits the man and then wants to go back to the line and then he looks at Ebenezer's back, Ebenezer is sitting up and dozing with his eyes wide open, Samuel discovers Lionel looking at him, shifts his eyes from Ebenezer to the American officer. The power coming from him annoys him, he says: You think you're an important person because you've got a house and money, I remember how you saved a few pennies! I've got a few francs, maybe you need a little money to buy some ice cream or chewing gum? Lionel, who looks from Samuel to Ebenezer, feels some calm, as if his whole life had been aimed at this moment, some moment when he had to know well how to act, and he said: Looks like I hoped you'd come back.