by Yoram Kaniuk
Boaz was a taciturn lad. In a small settlement like that one, it's hard to guess the force of hostility and jealousy children feel for somebody who has three grandfathers, a mysterious father, and two mothers who gave birth to imaginary fathers. What the children of the founders didn't know began to be added to what the founders themselves had now forgotten, and their children's children added the rest. Horowitz's son opened an institute for the improvement of seeds that were marketed in many countries. The hothouses they started building were the first of their kind. The produce of the citrus groves, the vineyards, and the fields was good and the yield of the cowsheds was high. The eleven sons of the settlement who fell in the riots of 'twenty-nine and 'thirty-six were joined by heroes who fell in other places and were adopted after their death. Roots, which started as a small handful of graves, turned into a national parade ground hidden by pruned trees from the hot desert winds. Florid speeches were delivered in Roots on memorial days, some of which were invented as needed. Even the death date of the Wondrous One began to be commemorated among most of the nation, children in uniforms carried bouquets of flowers and stood with wooden spears in their hands and swore loyalty to the nation and to the future of the settlement. Choral singing was an integral part of the ceremonies. Throughout the Land of Israel, there wasn't a settlement whose choir sang only in the cemetery. All's Well, principal of the school who was also the husband of the kindergarten teacher Eve, sat in Rebecca's house and tried to learn from her the melody of Nehemiah's speeches from which, he thought, Nehemiah embroidered his "historical" speeches. And she would make up new melodies for him, which he tried unsuccessfully to imitate. Very slowly, he learned the fictional melodies. The Captain, who knew melodies from distant lands, taught him the art of measured grief, the words of the hymn of death, and even the consolations of the old man, who for twenty years was tormented by a damaged heart, succeeded in his premature death, at the age of eighty, to be eulogized as a Pioneer and a hero rich in deeds, who at his death bequeathed us life.
The rabbi of the nearby settlement was now beginning to enjoy coming to the settlement. He knew that here, God was the one Rebecca Schneerson conspired with, but he no longer had enough strength to fight the war of the Lord. A late spring would grant the settlement more spring than the nearby settlements. Old Horowitz told the journalist who came to interview him that the marvelous sculptures of Ebenezer, who was almost Boaz's father, were the most beautiful artistic creations he had ever seen. The aphorism about Ebenezer on the wall of the community center was contributed by the Captain. The farmers helped Boaz overcome the enmity of the children. The yearning looks of the girls he learned to accept as he had to accept his grandmother's Psalms or the mysterious whispers of Mr. Klomin and the Captain about the national-royal party. They still plotted stratagems. Every Wednesday, the Captain still asked for Rebecca's hand and got a negative reply. There was no reply from the British crown even after five letters of five hundred pages each. That was the great imminent war that granted Mr. Klomin the possibility of preparing an innovative strategy, using a short-range tactic to solve the problem of British rule. The royalist party won the settlement (with the Captain's modest support) a contract to sell citrus fruit to the British army, whose troops increased. The best agricultural deal since the beginning of the Jewish Yishuv in the Land was buying the land for a big airport. At a time when the rumor spread that the settlement was infected with the disease of death and old people were dying at the rate of one a week, the sons of the founders, with the aging Captain as agent, sold lands at an exorbitant price to build an airport. Some of the founders were fictitious in any case, and so only the local historians were interested in bearing witness to the disease of death, especially since the price yielded such great wealth. At the eulogy of old Horowitz, who wept at the sight of Nehemiah dancing with Nathan on the day he came to the settlement forty years before and followed Ebenezer when he returned Dana's body, it was said of him that he was a Pioneer not only of Hebrew agriculture in the Land, but also of aviation in the Land of Israel. From here, said Principal All's Well, the airplanes of Judah will fly to strike the enemies of the Lord. A third of the land for the new field, whose airplanes Horowitz prophesied, according to his eulogy, belonged to Rebecca. While Ebenezer was wandering from Poland to eastern Ukraine and to Russia and from there to the camps, Boaz and the other children of the settlement were working to build a new airport. The adult workers learned to appreciate his silence and the quality of his work. Boaz was then thirteen years old, strong with a solid body, and after only two weeks he was appointed supervisor of the work of his older comrades and his salary was raised. That, of course, was without any connection to his special relations with Captain Jose Menkin A. Goldenberg, whom the British discovered was a great air force expert. Boaz didn't ask how the Captain or even Colonel (for he was promoted), who had never fought in any war that anybody had ever heard of, knew how to build airfields. But when he saw how the field was built and the planes started landing, and even more marvelous, taking off, and how satisfied the British were with the field, the row of concrete antitank structures, the way of sheltering airplanes against an air raid, and building decoys to mislead the enemy, Boaz said to himself: What's to ask, maybe in Argentina they fought with airplanes in the last century. But he wasn't even sure the Captain came from Argentina. The British looked at Boaz and said: He's clever like all the Jews, and he laughed. His yellow-green eyes caused incomprehensible excitement among the officers' wives, who sat around a lot in chaise longues topped with parasols held by Arabs from Marar and looked at him. They didn't know he was building a future airfield for Mr. Klomin's royalist party. They would look at him excitedly, giggle, long for children in their wombs, and didn't know it. They were too delicate to express what every one of the children of the settlement understood; but Boaz didn't care.
He walked around among the intersection of the looks of the English women who drank cold juice, as Rebecca said later, as beautiful angels walk around at the entrance to Paradise and try to bribe the gods with their beautiful eyes. She took that sentence, although she messed it up a bit, from a description of Joseph Rayna, who she knew sometimes was Boaz's father. Where could such a resemblance between them come from? she asked herself with a pain she didn't reveal to anybody, not even Boaz, how can it be that Joseph Rayna and Boaz Schneerson were one person born at different times?
At least he doesn't fall in love with those women, she said to herself, at least he doesn't get ugly women pregnant. And then she clapped her hands and Ahbed, the grandson of Ahbed, brought her a cup of tea.
After twelve months of war, in 'forty-eight, after he wandered around for a while and didn't know how long, he met somebody who was his double. He took a fake gold ring off the finger of Minna, the building contractor's daughter, and came to the settlement. Autumn made the descending evening silent and dangerous. The threshing floor wasn't there anymore. Instead of the threshing floor was the big house surrounded by a garden. A black DeSoto was parked next to the house. He thought of the chicks of the kindergarten teacher Eve that had died so they could build a new house here with a DeSoto. He recalled the car he had stopped in Tel Aviv, and thought maybe he shouldn't have banged the heads of those two people together. A woman wrapped in a shawl stood in the glow of evening and pruned a rosebush. In that soft, splendid hour she looked like a firefly. The light glowed on her, flitted and returned. Somebody inside the house was playing with a flashlight. She stood out against the background of the summer ground that had drunk the first rains of the season that morning. On the way, in the bus, he saw two Arabs in the field. The sight of them calmed him. They weren't an enemy he had to shoot at.
The Arabs in the field allowed him to think of Rebecca. They were sheikhs; planted in the landscape like scarecrows, cut out of it, without challenge, without the affection or longing of All's Well her husband or Eve whose chicks didn't all return and some were buried in Roots to her husband's florid speeches. The Arabs in t
he field were domesticated in it. Nor did he resent it, because he thought about his grandfather Nehemiah who couldn't be like them. I'm the wrong man who returned from the war, he thought, and it's her fault! No threshing floor, no Menashe, no Menahem Henkin, no double, no redhead, in the end there's me. On the porches, in the chill evening wind, sit the old women, Grandmother will bury them all and when my turn comes, she'll bury me too. And then she'll go back to Joseph Rayna somewhere in the green moss at the end of the solar system.
He saw children at the bougainvillea bush and thought about a little girl he had once known. They spawn like fish, produce Hebrew soldiers in an assembly line for Eve the kindergarten teacher. I've come back without your chicks, Eve! The soldiers died for you, proudly they carried to their graves the exalted words you instilled in them. Did that help them? So you've got a flag! In the bus, a woman sat next to him and read a magazine. She wore a purple dress and her lips were painted. She didn't know that Marar no longer exists, she didn't even know there ever was a village here named Marar. She read indifferently about the homemade ink flag hoisted in Eilat. The picture shows a person climbing a pole and hanging an improvised flag. The Arabs don't draw flags with ink, Marar was destroyed, they killed Menahem and they go on plowing. The woman in the bus smiled at him. What? Marar? You didn't know, new in the Land, you lived in Beersheba, a new housing project, in the war, it was bad. She talked about another war when Ebenezer died and we built an airfield for the British. A radio is open to the evening, the old women sit listening to music, the wind blows silently, the trees move in restrained splendor, the old women don't recognize Boaz, they don't know that Ebenezer's son brought them the state. Boaz returned intact, not wounded, no woman stood up for him in the bus. All's Well won't make a speech for me, he thought bitterly, no flag will wave, no enemy will be arrested for my dead body. That "togetherness," which started in Eve's kindergarten and continued in the threshing floor when they all sang "there was a young woman at Kinnereth" and I sat on the side, I prepared the next wars with Jose Menkin A. Goldenberg. I helped him woo Rebecca. I told him how she looked without a bra and without panties, and he blushed. He clutched a sword he no longer wore belted at his side, stood gazing, the girls sang about the threshing floor, and I sang and didn't sing. The truth is that what oppressed him most was that he couldn't get killed. I have nothing to come back to, he said to himself, and those who did have where to come back to and what to come back to, didn't return. That's not glory, Eve.
From the day Boaz was mobilized until the war was over, Rebecca Schneerson sat pinned to her chair. My men die too much, she thought. She wasn't really interested whether Boaz wanted to or not, she decided he would return and she recited Psalms. Some nights she shouted the verses and other nights she whispered them. Today she got up from her chair. She knew Boaz was coming back home. And Boaz is walking on the path, evening has fallen now, the no-threshing floor in the distance. One summer when he worked in the Burial Society to understand "what life is woven of," he sat with Tova Kavenhazer on the threshing floor. She was quite beautiful then. They hugged and he pressed against her and she felt his eyes penetrating her body through her dress, and then he told her about Nimitz's body, how they embalmed it, washed and wrapped it in a tallith, and Tova Kavenhazer jumped up in alarm, pushed his hands aside, and yelled: With the hands you embrace dead bodies, you embrace me? And he thought, With the hands I embrace her I embrace dead bodies, and ever since then he often pondered that sentence. She ran away. I was left with the thoughts, embracing dead bodies and embracing Tova Kavenhazer ... She yelled: Don't you dare touch me, Boaz Schneerson! Later she married a shopkeeper from Akron who sold bootleg vodka.
When he entered the house, the Captain stood up, saluted, hugged Boaz, shook his hand, and left. Boaz put the kitbag on the ground and looked at Rebecca. She moved her hands a little, almost said something, but didn't. Behind her, through the screened window, the skeletons of almond trees were seen and the moon was starting to light the roof of the cowshed. They looked at one another and her mouth became soft and yet it was firm, and then he took a step toward her, his body rigid, stuck to the center of gravity in a space he didn't know yet, regulated by glory, and hit her hard. The accumulated rage pitched the old woman aside, dropped her to the ground, and Boaz trampled on her and from the window of Ebenezer's house, the stunned Captain peeped out. In the distance music came from a radio, the Captain who was afraid to interfere, tried to move so as not to see anymore. Rebecca lay on the ground, her body heavy and shrunken, her lips rounded, and a strange smile on the opening of her lips. The lips seemed stuck to her mouth. The lamp moved from the blow and then stayed still, murmurs of pain were heard, Boaz kicked her again and she shrank up and growled, but the smile didn't depart from her mouth, a thin slit of abomination popped up and vanished, and then the slit was filled with blood that flowed like a chameleon, and in the pain a groan of laughter was heard. The old woman lay shriveled and laughing; jets of blood burst from her face and her wide-open eyes.
Boaz went to the window, hit it, and yelled: That's not for you, Captain! And when the Captain took off, he made out the curbstones of the path and for a moment something the Captain had once told him flashed in his brain: Your mother built the path, and he asked then, Who, Rebecca? And the Captain said, No, Dana, and for the first time in his life he felt a longing for a stranger and hated himself so much. Boaz turned from the window, an oppressive compassion lay on him, he picked Rebecca up off the floor, sat her in her chair, brought a bottle of cognac, washed her face, and then kissed her wounds. She sat silent, blood still gushing, smelling of flowers, cognac, and sweat, she picked up the flyswatter that had fallen, wiped her dress, and since she couldn't yet talk, she pointed to her purse on a small chest of drawers next to the door, and Boaz handed her the purse, she opened the purse, rummaged around in it, took out a brush, undid her long hair from the pins that were trying to hold it, and started brushing it. After her hair was smooth, she got up, went to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and let a stream of water flow on her face for a long time. Then she wiped her face, went back and sat down in her easy chair, and Boaz looked at the beautiful woman who had smeared a little powder on her face, stretched it, put the black scarf on her back, and said: A new state you've got, every Negro's got a state, Indians in movies have a state, Charlie Chaplin has a state, my grandfather's grandfather didn't have a state, but he was wise and didn't stand at attention every day at flags, like stupid Eve. I came back, said Boaz and didn't know what to say.
I waited for you. I went to the settlement. There's a new watchmaker there, came here a few years ago. Hung up a blue and white flag, stood there in the sun and sang one of Joseph's songs. They've got ministers in top hats, like Stutberg's automobile! Nehemiah knew when to die and where, on the border! They made themselves an army of Mr. Klomin and the Captain, won a state from some Arabs who didn't know the shape of a pogrom and don't know on what side you write what they never could read and made a state for Ben-Gurion, Princess Elizabeth, and Shirley Temple! So what? Did you fight for them too? You look tired, it was hard to bring a state to the people of Israel? Maybe you're hungry. Eat something, Boaz.
But what does all that have to do with Stutberg's car? he asked.
His automobile, when he brought it, everybody came to admire. It was a first auto. He opened the hood of the motor and everybody, Horowitz the dummy, Nathan Nehemiah's friend, and even Holtz who later married somebody who was almost your mother and didn't talk, even he stood there with a kippah on his head and admired, and they said: A motor that drives a cart like ten horses, ten kilometers an hour! All the insides of the auto were outside, now they look at the insides of the Jewish state, what a wonder! The Jews have a state too.
Eat something, she said.
She made a theatrical gesture that amazed Boaz. She stretched out her hand and her last word rang like a period and not a question mark, not an answer, not a suggestion-a gesture. She reached out her hand, her face bec
ame tender, and yet, as always, some thin thread of chill malice was stretched on her face and the blood still flickered from invisible scratches and Boaz felt his feet stagger, went to her, sat down on her solid lap and she hugged him, laid his head on her chest, and when he tried to weep, whimpers blurted out of his mouth like the whimpers of the jackal in his childhood when the settlement was girded by whimpering jackals and at night he would listen to them and try to understand their shrieks.
She stroked his face with her thin hands, kissed his neck, and whispered: I had to, Boaz, it was one night, I sat here in the chair, it was dark, the generator wasn't working and the civil guard walked in the street wearing berets and yelled to put out the light. In the distance, machine gun shots were heard from Negba and I felt in my flesh how Boaz in the mountains, is stabbed, shot, almost dead, eyes shut, I saw vultures, vultures with your eyes, Boaz, vultures, beaks of death, I aimed the words into the sky, to the river that throbbed, to Secret Charity, and I recited Psalms in an ancient melody, and you walked between the bullets, and you lay down and didn't die, I stopped, I stopped short, the vultures wanted your flesh, the eyes, the words stuck to you, you lay in my words, and a few hours later, something happened, I don't know what, I fell, as I fell before when you hit me, I drank blood, and Ahbed, the grandson of Ahbed, was scared, he didn't leave with the other Arabs and stayed, he yelled: You fall, Madame, they see blood in the dark, too, the window was open now, I was full of blood, I said to him, Shut up, Ahbed, and you ran, and you fled into the mountains, I had no choice, Boaz.