by Yoram Kaniuk
Hence your conversations with him that night you described to me, in his house, along with the Israeli teacher Henkin, were recorded by him and remembered by him now as Jewish knowledge along with what he learned in the camp. In his rare consciousness, Ebenezer constantly reconstructs life at one point in the eternal and unchanging present, and prophesies (if we can use that unprofessional term) his past he didn't experience, while what he reads no longer is. As the god in the composition of the madman Ebenezer quotes on behalf of the director of the solar system who describes God as creating from the end to the beginning and merciless, because all life has already died and He meets them on their way-from their death to their beginning. That's how he himself is. As far as he's concerned, they all died and he recites knowledge about something that no longer exists, and not only of those who no longer exist. What I'm writing to you now and will be given to Ebenezer as a copy to keep will also be read by him and recalled as Jewish knowledge. I mean these words literally, the words you're reading now ... What Ebenezer knows, he knows because the words were recited to him. Even the words he recites about himself. Even what he knows about himself. Hence he's deprived of judgment about the value of information, of a book or any system of knowledge dormant in him. He paints the world he wants to guard on the walls of his consciousness. There is a sentence by Professor Sharfstein (an Israeli philosopher) that may be able to describe this situation precisely. The sentence appears in a book titled The Artist in Western Culture. There he says: The god Siva, without a brush and without paints, drew the world on the walls of his own consciousness.
We tried to investigate according to known experiments, for example the experiments of Professor Alexander Luria. Following his example, we urged Ebenezer to recall something that happened in his childhood. We told him about something that happened to him that we found out from a source other than him. When we talked to him about that memory, connected with his dead wife, and we measured his pulse, the pulse speeded up and then fell back. When we asked him to recite a forgotten memory also connected with Dana, a memory he dredged up from what he himself had amassed from things he had heard about himself, from others, the pulse rate was much weaker (seventy-two beats as opposed to a hundred twenty). We tried many other experiments enumerated in the full report and this is not the place to go into detail. The process was repeated several times. The memories that were not told to him did not change the pulse rate. They were alien to him, even though they had happened to him and were a considerable part of the web of his life.
Comparisons with people whose memories are as phenomenal as his did not help us either. We questioned A. G., who now appears all over Europe on television screens and defeats sophisticated computers with quick and correct answers. That gave us no help. Those people were conscious of what they knew. They learned when they were in distress and did that to remain alive, so that in the meantime they would not be impaired. They did not erase themselves to fill the empty space of their brain with knowledge. They learned equations or books by heart because they had to triumph over nothingness and fear.
I attach the tapes. I understand from your words that the book you and the Israeli teacher want to write will be composed or woven mainly of our tapes. Keep in mind that the life of Sam Lipp (Samuel Lipker), for example, is known to Ebenezer only when he was in a trance of indexing his memory. In his real life he doesn't know. In his real life Samuel may also be dying. The Jews are still all dying, and always will die. Hence, we in fact did not succeed in deciphering the secret of Ebenezer's memory, but only in documenting the nature of remembrance. Just as Ebenezer builds racks, so he builds a world of knowledge. The conversion and shoe sizes of a group of Warsaw writers. For us at least the mystery remains. Are we witnessing a kind of spiritual suicide? Vengeance? Escape? I said before: Ebenezer doesn't judge. As far as he's concerned, the Germans are neither bad nor good. Not those he meets today, and not those he met before. The shadows in his brain have no concrete reality. The shadows have no judgment, no past and no future. Fanya R. is his wife. Does Ebenezer live with her or does somebody Ebenezer imagines as Ebenezer live with her? We have questions that only a metaphysical and historiological pathology could solve and therefore science, as in many cases, remains helpless. Art may indeed grant legitimacy to the absurd. Existence is absurd. Ebenezer is absurd and there's no possibility of granting him legitimacy, maybe it's possible to tell him, not about him. As for us, we shall send you the full research, but if our research adds to the perplexity or enlightens it, only Ebenezer's God knows.
Yours truly,
Alexander Twiggy Henderson Levy
Tape / -
Got to bring Henkin the poem, thinks Boaz.
Thinking poem.
Menahem poem.
Boaz remembered how they brought Menahem Henkin to the school gym. The commander looked at the three corpses and said: So Henkin got a summons? And he wrote: Menahem Henkin, Palmah, Harel, the fourth brigade, headquarters company, to inform the parents, Deliverance Street, Tel Aviv.
Fuck it, he said, soon I won't have any live soldiers left! From Tel Aviv, a soldier went to inform the Henkin family that their son had fallen. Boaz lay under a tree and smoked. Years later, he would part from Teacher Henkin on Ben-Yehuda Street. The sky is blue and the clouds float quickly. The vendor of German books crossed the street and walked past Hayarkon Street. Boaz started walking to the central bus station, stood in line, boarded the bus and fell asleep. An hour later, he came to the settlement, it was afternoon. Rebecca expected him as always. She didn't measure, she didn't complain, she didn't pressure, she sat at the screened window and waited. For some years now, Captain Jose Menkin A. Goldenberg had been living in Ebenezer's old house. The house is rented to him with a lease renewed every year. If Boaz wants to live here someday, he'll have someplace to live, said the old woman.
A month after Ebenezer disappeared and boarded the ship that took him to Europe, Rebecca Schneerson went to the offices of the National Committee in Jerusalem. She asked to speak with the head of the committee. They told her that the head of the committee was abroad on a mission. She said she wanted to adopt her grandson as her son. She was told that wasn't possible. Rebecca tried the chief rabbinate and the various district offices and deigned to meet with people whose existence she once wouldn't have been willing to admit. The Captain's connections with the British Mandate authorities weren't any help either. A grandmother can adopt her grandson, she was told, but to state explicitly and officially that Boaz is Rebecca's son by birth was not possible. She wrote a long letter explaining her request. According to her, there was no proof that the person called his mother did indeed give birth to him. In another letter, she claimed that Boaz was her son from a marriage she had never disclosed. She quoted a well-known and reliable Russian newspaper that told of a woman who got pregnant in eighteen twenty-one, while her son was born thirtytwo years later. But even this quotation, which, after a visit from the Captain, was authenticated by three old Russians in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem, didn't make the required impact. When serious arguments were raised against a retrospective pregnancy, she deigned with the courtesy of a desperate woman to refrain from hearing the explanations and whispered to the Captain: They always were and still are fools. Later on, she'll tell Boaz: I was impregnated by a river. Don't turn up your aristocratic nose, even a distinguished mother like me sometimes gets pregnant, the river lusted for me and I for him, all your life you've seen streams, what do you know about a river. Do you know that the Americans bought the Dnieper and transported it to America? And Boaz said: You find a way to say America every chance you get. How do you transport a river? He was ten years old then and she was his mother.
I love him, Rebecca said to the Captain with uncharacteristic candor. I love him like the clods of earth love the dead. Like the riverbank loves the river. I love him as you could have been able to love if you were as false and splendid as Joseph Rayna and as innocent and beautiful as Nehemiah. When I fell in lov
e with Boaz I gave birth to what I didn't want to give birth to all the years, and Ebenezer who's wandering around in Europe didn't come from me, Nehemiah brought him to me and I reluctantly nursed him. If your god can make a virgin give birth to a son, Boaz can be born from a grandmother who loved him before he was born. At last, the Captain gave in and with two Arabs from Marar and Mr. Klomin, they went to visit a friend of the Captain who lived in an ancient house with a wooden turret in a tropical garden on a hill crowned by cypresses and palms, near Jaffa.
The road to the house passed over a small wooden bridge. Years ago a small wadi flowed under the bridge, and even the ancient water had stopped flowing in it. Between geranium, jasmine, rose, and violet bushes the gentle chirping of rare birds was heard and in the small pool in the center of the yard crowned with thick evergreens, gray and white ducks floated, and one swan who looked arrogant and strange in the musty dank garden.
The Captain's friend was old, wrapped in a cloak that may once have been white. The man put on a pince-nez and his face looked like ancient parchment. For a long time, the two of them walked, hugging, among the bushes and whispered together in a language none of the guests understood. Then they stopped, the Captain put his hand in the old man's sash, hiccuped, thrust a paper-wrapped package into the sash, which the old man took in his hands, sniffed like tobacco, smiled, and then the two of them hugged with masculine savagery, the old man's face was so glowing and joyful that even Rebecca felt a slight stab of bliss in her belly. The old man came to Boaz, called an Arab boy wearing an abbiya, who had stood all the time in the shadow of the ancient marble pillar swathed in ivy that climbed up it to a locked window whose recess was more imagined than visible. The boy entered the house and came back with a tray and handed out cold juice and tasty ice cream. After they listened to the bird, which the Captain claimed was called a bird of "the real opposite," which repeated the same chirp one hundred fifty times an hour, without the slightest change, the old man, who was holding Boaz in his clasped hands, said: I've got a document that will suit him, Mrs. Schneerson, and he hugged Boaz's shoulders and Boaz smelled a smell he later knew was the smell of death. Rebecca wanted to say something, Mr. Klomin straightened up and his face turned gray, but the Captain put a nervous but agile finger on her lips and whispered, so Mr. Klomin would also hear: Everything's fine, there's no baptism, let me take care of things, money and God are my business ... The old man disappeared into the house. Boaz and the Arab boy threw stones at the swan, and as Rebecca was trying to assess the brigades of Klomin's Hebrew army against the odor left by the moldy old man, a peacock sallied forth from the bushes. The peacock proudly bore a gigantic colorful tail and it looked to her as if it were desired by the sun and the trees, indulged and arrogant, and the birds stopped chirping and then she thought about Joseph and about Boaz and her insides cramped as if she were giving birth to Boaz, and then the old man came back, hopped on his feet that touched and didn't touch the pebbles of the stream scattered on the paths, held out a parchment scroll to Rebecca, grabbed Boaz, who approached him with the Arab boy standing on the side and smiling with teeth that were almost black, and then he turned to the Captain and said: I do this because of our Lord the Messiah and because of the great patriots who fought in the bold battles of our homeland, and to Rebecca he said: Dante Alighieri Boaz Schneerson of the house of Tefanus, in the name of an ancient hero, Ella the Tyrean, who delivered his mother from the claws of a cruel potentate and granted her his eternal youth and his delicate manhood and appreciated her as a slave of the church and an angel of the hosts of the Lord, Dante Alighieri Benedictus Boaz Schneerson, hallowed by being your legal son and the fruit of your loins. And you Rebecca Schneerson confess here and now before me and before the living God that there was never any doubt in your heart that this child is your son, your flesh and blood! And this lad will be your son from now on forever. Amen. Rebecca, who had never been eager to say words of prayer in the Promised Land, said "amen" in a soft voice, and the man said, If there is anyone here who wants to protest or who does not agree let him now raise his voice or forever hold his peace ... And then Mr. Klomin yelled, all flushed and fervent: I, I object, and the old man smiled at him, tried with all his might to hear Klomin's yell, and said: If so, I see there are no objections? And Mr. Klomin now shoved the Captain closer to the old man and yelled into his ear: I, I'm his grandfather! And the old man delayed a moment, a moderate atrophied smile caught at the corner of his mouth, and said: Since there are no objections, I hereby declare Boaz Dante Alighieri Benedictus the legal son of Rebecca Schneerson. May it be His will.
Rebecca looked at the old man. His serenity in contrast to Mr. Klomin's yelling became foggy and then his eye was covered with a cold metallic glint. Klomin tried to yell, but he too fell mute at the sight. The two Arabs from Marar bristled where they stood. The old man sank into the ground until he was no longer seen. Later on Mr. Klomin (who then filled his mouth with water) would say: The ground was loose because under the building there was certainly an ancient excavation and he sank into it, maybe it was a graveyard from the period of the kings of Judah, Mr. Klomin would add, during the summer they lived in the coastal plain, maybe it was a center of magnetic heaviness, and Rebecca's hungry look turned to a spear point of the yearnings of two thousand years united in her and she didn't know and sold her grandson to the bosom of foreigners and her ancient blood was then roused to avenge her and foreigners who plot evil against us and the magnetic center turned into an archaeological incident because of the forgotten grave of a Hebrew king. Rebecca laughed, and said: He seeks kings everywhere, simple Jews also lived in this land, Klomin, kings lived in palaces. And Mr. Klomin, sunk in glowing contemplation of the future of the new-old Israeli kingdom, said in embarrassment and longing for the great moments that had all apparently been before he was born and he had already despaired of finding them in his life, that if a person understood the great moment in which he lived, he could experience things beyond time and place.
Rebecca didn't want to hear about the graves of ancient kings. She saw a gentile sinking into the ground. The Arabs were willing to swear to it with a thumbprint. She still remembered Nehemiah's war against the prophets. In her heart she laughed at the poor men who always fight wars that were decided long ago. Boaz remembered the peacock and the old man who disappeared into the ground. Never did he accept his adoption by Rebecca as more than a sufficient reason to torment her or love her as the only person he knew whose loyalty to him he never doubted. She was mine, my mother and my father betrayed me, he said to Noga.
The next day, Boaz had to stand before a big crowd at the community center and tell how the old gentile sank into the yard and disappeared. Some of the founders who limped to the community center shook their heads. Rebecca didn't come. Horowitz's daughter shouted: She always was a witch and always will be ... Nehemiah knew that and so he died, she taught Aryeh to play the piano.
Tongues began wagging freely and used what Boaz told. There was no television back then, Noga, Boaz will say later on, and there was still fantasy in the air. She killed the mare of the baron's official, yelled an old woman whose false teeth fell out of her mouth from enthusiasm and her son had to search for them among the feet of the old people that smelled of powder against prickly heat and cow dung. She killed Nehemiah and Dana, she hates us, she lives in the settlement and closes herself up. Germans played for her on the piano during the war when they burned cowsheds of All's Well and Meshulam, her Captain is a spy for the Armenians and Americans and he's a Greek like we're Turks. She injects milk hormones into her cows so they'll win the contests. Her chickens are bewitched and lay eggs nonstop and don't even have time to eat. When the bull sees her he immediately mounts all the cows in the barn. Boaz burst out laughing and the others also felt they were talking nonsense and laughed, in fact nobody was really afraid anymore. Even the exact description of the old man sinking into the dirt wasn't very scary, Rebecca no longer aroused in them more than an enormous need to des
cribe their life as a certain miracle in which she was the leaven. They remembered the Wondrous One and Nehemiah as if they were her lovers. Lately, they were filled with yearnings for Ebenezer. After all, Ebenezer was the first son of the settlement who had changed in their eyes into a mysterious and miraculous tale. As they looked at the birds he left behind they began to be filled with forgiveness for the child they were never able to understand. They didn't forget how he walked in the rainswept street with Dana's body in his arms. His image grew to dimensions it had never had before, and as his death grew more certain, his qualities became more refined. A wood carver turned into a wondrous sculptor. And then it was also decided unanimously to call the community center built by Nehemiah in the name of his dead son and they put a wooden plaque up at the entrance and carved on it: Community Center in Memory of Ebenezer Schneerson Who Knew Wood in Its Distress.
Boaz, who grew up in Rebecca's house, didn't resent the facts of his life, which changed with the years. He succumbed to the essential quality of the settlement, a quality that turned into an incurable disease, to create the past according to the givens of the present and to live in a fictional past as much as possible. His age changed. Later on, when he tried to correct the date of his birth, he couldn't anymore and he remained the age written by the Captain in the document given him by the old man who sank into the dirt, and the Captain's retrospective godfatherhood turned into a fait accompli. Boaz was the only lad in the settlement who had two birth dates, two godfathers (Klomin and the Captain), two mothers, a father in heaven, and three grandfathers: Klomin, Nehemiah, and Joseph Rayna. One of them, and he didn't know which, was also his father or perhaps wasn't, as he used to say afterward. A woman named Rachel Brin who grew shirt trees in America is his aunt, her son Secret Glory also called Lionel Secret is his cousin, the world was created when Secret Charity went down to a cellar and started sallying forth at night and made nineteen children with his stunned wife. There they shouted in cellars, said Rebecca, and not in ridiculous community centers ...