by Yoram Kaniuk
I know, he said.
Later, they told me there was a battle in the Old City and you died. I said you didn't die. People came from the settlement. They said, I have a grandson there, recite Psalms for him, what could I say? My Psalms don't belong to their grandsons. Hillanddale and God's Joy lost a grandson, what could I do? My Psalms weren't meant for their sons and grandsons ... In our city there was a woman who went mad. People came and tried to get the madness out of her with fire and sulfur and they couldn't. She was possessed by the spirit of a heretic who ran away to Germany. They tried spells and it didn't work. She shrieked and her eyes burned, they raised heavy smoke and it didn't help. Need connection, they said, need connection. They said: a false messiah is eight hundred and fourteen and Joshua son of Miriam is eight hundred fourteen, but it didn't work, not even Shabtai Zvi. Didn't work, they blew the shofar, and said Lord King and pass away and the spirit didn't leave. They shouted, Out evil one, and then they said, There's Rebecca there, bring her. They clothed me in a gown and scarf so they wouldn't see my face and they took me. I used to sleep with my eyes open back then. I said to the man, Out evil one, come to me, I was beautiful, come hug me, the rabbi was scared and blocked his ears, didn't want to hear, I said I'm yours, I thought about the river that would make me pregnant some day, and the spirit left, I felt it strong in my body, a piece of him stayed in me, didn't leave, I spat and then he was scared and part of him ran away. They saw the window opened and he flew, you think those are tales, but he flew, then I left, they wrote his name on an amulet and the man came back, because they didn't write the name of the woman on the amulet, but by then I wasn't there and after eight days of the circumcision, she died foaming at the mouth.
I hit you because of the Psalms I don't even believe in, said Boaz. I don't either, said Rebecca, and she got up and warmed the meal she had made every single day for two weeks.
And he ate. He was even hungrier than before. He swallowed the food and drank red wine. She said: All the old people are finished, young people die in wars and you remain. The disease of death is raging here. The Captain and I remain in the meantime. He stands outside and envies. I'll let him wait until tomorrow. Your godfather, don't forget. The Captain had a plan to conquer Egypt in one night. The army is here, he said, got to send soldiers to Egypt and conquer the whole land at night and the sources of the Nile and then Farouk's soldiers won't have anyplace to go back to. But he did build an airfield for the English and the English won.
Where do I get a poem?
When Boaz came home, Rebecca was sitting at the window, he recalled that night after the war. Since then she bequeathed me everything, he said to himself, but something in him was worn. Rain fell and drainpipes whimpered. The leaves on the trees stood erect, straightened up, the dust left after the watering was routed, the vines Dana had planted years ago were opened to the falling rain, illuminated in the beams of electric light from the windows. Never does she ask Boaz where he came from and why. He stands, looks at his father's carved birds still trying to fly.
She said: Still sitting in the cafe and wasting time?
Yes, he said. In her hand she held a bouquet of flowers. The sense that he had once had parents perplexed him again.
Rebecca looked at him. He came to her and kissed her on the mouth. She shrank. In the distance, the face of the Captain was seen waving to her. They sat and looked out the window, the rain fell, he said: I've got to find some poem, I told somebody his son wrote poems.
Take Joseph's poems, said Rebecca. The words there are a space between things, that's what they want, don't reveal too much, it was like Joseph, bold in bed and a liar on paper. He rummaged around in an old desk and found a big envelope. He chose a few poems Joseph Rayna had written to the German noblewoman named Frau von Melchior on the beauty of her neck, her face, and her legs, took eight poems and read them and started laughing. Three poems he knew from school skits.
I didn't know they were his!
They don't know either, she said.
The rain stopped and the wind dispersed the clouds. Boaz passed by on a neglected path, the rain has just stopped, the black sky is strewn with stars, and he walks like a snake, eludes, even though nobody is pursuing him, in his pocket the poems of Joseph Rayna. From the opening in the trees, he could see people eating supper, he could guess what they were eating now. The radio played music from the war-Don't tell me good-bye, just tell me cheers, for war is but a dream soaked in blood and tears. He threw a stone at a window and went on. The window shattered before he disappeared and a shrieking woman came outside, her husband apparently holding a dog's leash, but Boaz was already beyond the prickly pear hedge. In the distance he could see Nathan's son tracking him with a flashlight and the woman screamed: Come here, you hero, let's see if you've got any blood! And her husband said to her: Don't waste your strength, the dog growled but didn't bark, he was an old dog, about thirteen years old, he knew Boaz even before Nathan's son, at the age of forty-five, decided to get married. Between the prickly pear hedges, he found wood sorrel. The wood sorrel shouldn't be there now, he chewed the wood sorrel, crushed it and sucked fragrant, wet, and bitter jujube leaves. From there he slipped off to the citrus grove, in front of him stands a water tower and behind it Naftali's farm is lighted by the light of the night milking, from Dr. Zosha Merimovitch's house came a weeping woman, next to the no-threshing floor he stopped. In the distance a tractor could be seen leaving the lighted dairy. Empty milk buckets clinked. He walked along a path where young people once marched to future wars in front of All's-Well's flag, a scent of washed earth was a restrained reply to the silence of the jackals that had disappeared. In the dairy sat old Berlinsky, reading Spinoza as usual. Next to him, milk jugs were heaped up and a sourish smell came from the dairy. Boaz walked in back, found an empty can, emptied a little milk from the jug standing there, and drank. The taste of the fresh, unfiltered, unpasteurized milk, pleased his palate, he licked, and could see old Berlinsky amazed as ever at the absolute but surprising beauty of the refined logic of Spinoza's ethics. He could imagine how in a few moments, the old man's eyes would be veiled as he again ponders the injustice inflicted on such a great spirit. And that was a blatant injustice, he'd yell at them when they'd bring the milk at night, he was a prince of the Jews, why don't they forgive him now that there's a state, why don't they go down on their knees and beat their breast for the sin. Even Rebecca would blurt out a few good words now and then about the old man, and nobody knew where he came from or what he had done before he came here at the end of the war. After he drank some more milk, he came to the house on the no-threshing floor. He could see, even at that hour, how beautiful were Mrs. Ophelia's roses. In the house of the firefly, the phonograph played Faure's requiem, he knew the music from Tova Kavenhazer's house. He remembered Tova's father trying to point a menacing finger at Rebecca's house and saying: She fights us as if we sinned when we ran away from Germany, and then he'd play for Boaz the requiem of Faure or Verdi or Vivaldi, and would say: What does she know, a savage from the dark of the ghetto. Boaz broke into the old DeSoto, hot-wired it, released the handbrake, and let the car slide to the foot of the hill. When he came to the foot of the hill, next to Noah's house, he started the motor and drove off.
The radio didn't work, but the car's lighter was fine and Boaz was filled with respect for the old car. He lit a cigarette and hummed a song to himself. The road was almost empty. Fresh smells of virgin land rose to his nose, a smell of just fallen rain, of night, windows were open, for a moment he completely forgot that tomorrow at one in the afternoon, he had to bring a poem.
After he entered the city, he ran out of gas at the corner of Shenkin and Ahad Ha-Am. Boaz pushed the DeSoto to the side of the street and saw a bored policeman. The policeman was feeling his gun and looking at the dark display windows. Boaz asked the policeman if he had a pen. The policeman said he did and gave it to Boaz. He asked, Why do you need a pen? Boaz said: I stole a car and I want to leave a note. The polic
eman said: You've got a Sabra sense of humor, and he laughed. Boaz took out a scrap of paper and wrote: I took the car because my ass is shaking in buses, in America there are more Jews, but on the other hand, there are buses at night there, too. A state isn't all of the dream. There's no gas in the car. Return to Mrs. A. name of the settlement ... Signed, Generous Contaminated.
He thanked the policeman and the policeman went on his way, Boaz waited a little, pinned the note under the windshield wiper and heard a rooster crowing. He didn't know there were roosters in Tel Aviv, and when he looked at his watch he couldn't see the hands because the phosphorus had worn off long ago. He walked along Ahad Ha-Am Street, came to BenZion Boulevard, sensed people slumbering beyond the walls, and if they had been made of glass, he could have seen them weeping. Near Habima Theater, he saw the end of the boulevard and thought of Minna, sometimes when he'd think of her, he'd come to her, bite her, an affair of many years, where to, where from, for whom, and in the middle she got married and divorced and was now alone again, the bleeding finger. He saw people drinking coffee at the kiosk, most of the sycamores here were torn down, the sands covered with unfinished structures, somebody started building a gigantic parking lot next to the old streetlamp, on Chen Boulevard there were little houses, their lights out, and Boaz climbed a tree, came to the top branch, pushed himself, touched the window, pushed it, and landed in a room. A small lamp hung over Minna. She was reading a book. She looked at Boaz, who stood up, and said: Boaz Schneerson, where do you come from? He said: Where do I come from? There are no doors in the house anymore, said Minna, in his free time Boaz takes off fake wedding rings or plays Tarzan. Then he got into her bed and hugged her. She said: After all these years either you love me or you're going to hell. You take off my ring in the middle of the street, come, go, come back, disappear, I've had it, I'm a big girl, want a real life with a husband next to me, I'm not just for sleeping with when you get a hard-on, Boaz.
Then they talked about her nipples, and he said: I let you get married and I didn't tell at the rabbinate, you'll teach me how to love, and she said either you know by yourself or it's not important. They kissed one another with serene passion, shrouded in the past, everything flowed slowly now, he calmed down inside her and she reached out, her hand took a flower from the vase and laid it on her chest. Then, rage stirred in him, he thought of Menahem that he was screwing for him, and about the poem, he fucked her and then he lay on his back, struck, and his eyes began shedding tears. At first she thought it was the water flowing from the flower, but when she saw the tears, she was scared. She sat up straight and said: Never did I see Boaz crying! He bent over, put on his shoes, and said to her: I have to invent for somebody who's dead, I'm going and don't make yourself beautiful for anybody, you don't know what pain will be on your father's face the day you die. She took a thermometer out of the drawer of the nightstand and put it in her mouth. He looked at the book she was reading and saw that it was a report of an income tax evader. He asked her if she read that book a lot and she shook her head and didn't take the thermometer out of her mouth. He wrenched the thermometer out and she said, Yes, mainly because my father is one of the main characters, he put the thermometer back in and she shook her head and he didn't know if she was really laughing. He asked, What's with you? You'll sit like that until morning, and she nodded. He went up to the window, caught a branch and once again pushed himself and was on the tree and when he crossed above the street, a motorcycle roared by underneath him. The streets were empty and he walked to the tents where he had once lived. The tent that was his was lighted by a hurricane lamp. A worker was sleeping there. Boaz went in and the worker didn't wake up. He looked under the bed and found an old carton. He picked up the carton and went outside. The sea stretched before him and two people were seen walking on the boardwalk. A dog barked, the hotel where he had once stayed with a woman whose name he didn't know was dark. He walked to his hut, went upstairs, opened the door, a few minutes later he sat at the small table and the lamp was lit and he tried to think of Menahem's letter, and what he would do with it. When Menahem died, Mr. Henkin, said the commander, he received an order to move, soldiers were lacking, every death was a national annoyance, not like today.
Boaz Schneerson
I checked your Thompson, it's dirty, I cleaned it. They say you'll be active tonight, they're going up on some crappy hill, I didn't mention to you that you look tired. I owe you my life. A moral obligation, my father would surely say. I found a saboteur's knife in Amnon's clothes-he stole the clothes from the horse. I'm going up to Jerusalem to see Fiesta in Mexico for the tenth time, crazy about Esther Williams, she's all there is. I wanted to tell you something important, Boaz, I wasn't able to save your life. Thinking only about how you get out of all that. I'm drunk on the champagne you all brought from Katamon. You bathed in champagne, I drank. I'm thinking about home, father and mother, mother's all right. And Noga? She's silent. I belong to her as you belong to orphanhood, but maybe I love her, and she? There's no contact with the plain and I don't receive telepathic messages. And here's the list you asked me for: in the platoon, twenty are left not wounded and not dead. There are four shirts in the warehouse, not too clean. There's also an overcoat of Yashka the partisan, who may really have had another name. Possible to mend and wear. There are two torn flak jack ets, five black undershirts, a package of Fishinger bittersweet chocolate, three stocking caps, one with holes, and a few coats, I think-five. In Mapu's Love of Zion, there are nicer descriptions, ask my father. There's one girl in Jerusalem, not the prettiest, but at night you don't see anyway. Her parents were stuck in Tel Aviv and couldn't come back to their dear daughter, who puts out and also puts out omelets with eggs she bought on the black market. Her address is Love of Zion Street 5, 3rd floor. If you get by there, go to her. She knows you from the stories. Eat an omelet in her warm bed. The twins asked about you, thank you for my life and I hope you die a true national hero.
Yours, Menahem Henkin
Tape / -
I could have composed the letter in short, poetic lines, Henkin, but you won't want that, eh?
Boaz sits at the table. It's four in the morning. The roof is burning in a black silence. Menahem wouldn't have written: Clods of dirt mounded up/I will shelter my soul in yearning . . . The poems don't get women pregnant anymore, Boaz thought, but their innocence is exciting, how was the illegitimate father of a hundred offspring able to write such innocent lines? An ancient smell of a starched collar rises in Boaz's nose, an aged, old-fashioned adulterer, with flowers in his hand, chocolate in flowered paper, roses. He had learned Menahem's handwriting before, now he tries to shape a poem. Very slowly the rhymes are constructed and he sharpens, edits, I need another Menahem, trees, groves, Tel Aviv, peeling houses, burning sun, and annihilated jackals, sunset, melancholy-a beautiful word, melancholy. And so dawn breaks, breaking dawn! I laugh. Boaz copies the poem, in three places he writes k's not like Menahem, maybe to give himself away, he scorches the paper a little, scrunches it, pours tobacco and sand on it, tramples it, straightens it, wets it and dries it. Turns off the light, disconnects the telephone left by the former owner of the house, and falls asleep.
At exactly one o'clock, Boaz is standing at Henkin's house. The house is still neglected as then, the yard is a weave of crab grass and thistles, the trees, like corpses, without foliage, trampled in some disaster that befell them. The sea is seen through two houses, in one of them a woman is beating a small dusty rug. Over the little grocery is an old sign, SMOKE MATUSSIAN. Mr. Singer in a wrinkled shirt, beyond him the enclosures of the port, and Boaz knocks on the door and Teacher Henkin in a white shirt and gray trousers opens it and lets him in. For a moment, they look at one another, then Henkin drops his eyes and without a word leads Boaz into the gloom of the chilly house.
The shades block the light, a bulb is lit above a silent woman in a dark dress, the woman raised her face, looked at Boaz with a long and weary look, and without getting up or turning her face, s
he said: Will you drink something? Coffee, juice, tea?
He looked at her, the closed photo album lay in front of her on the table. He said: Thanks, and followed Teacher Henkin who led him with ostentatious impatience. But at the same time as if he also wanted to defend himself against something. In the other room, he saw the library Menahem used to joke about: books up to the ceiling, manila files, big notebooks, a mess, a table lamp with a hexagonal, old-fashioned shade, peeling a little, on the wall documents of the Jewish National Fund. Boaz sat down in a chair across from Henkin and waited. The woman didn't even knock on the door, she entered and put a tray with two glasses of juice, cookies, and a steaming glass of tea with a slice of lemon next to it. Boaz said: Thanks, but she had already slammed the door and didn't hear.
Boaz took out the poem and put it on the table, for some reason he couldn't put it in Henkin's shaking hands.
Henkin picked up the poem, put on his reading glasses, felt the paper and with his other hand, started stirring the tea and squeezing the lemon slice. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped his fingers carefully, put the handkerchief back in his pocket, and once again held the paper in both hands. Boaz took a glass of juice and drank. His eyes wandered over the shelves and he tried to read the titles of the books, what he wanted to see was Love of Zion, but he didn't find Love of Zion among the books near him. Henkin muttered, This is his handwriting, it's exactly his handwriting, a poem ...
And then he sank into reading that lasted about an hour. Never had Boaz seen a person read a poem so devotedly. Henkin forgot that a person was sitting across from him. He forgot the tea he had stirred and hadn't tasted. His glass of juice also remained undrunk until Boaz gulped it too. The pale light through the cracks of the shutters dimmed for a moment, maybe the sky was covered with clouds, Henkin didn't move, his lips stammered, his eyes blinked through the glass that emphasized their pupils, from the other room came the sounds of water boiling and a fly buzzing, somebody opened a door and locked it again, the sea breaking was heard clearly and a car honked. Boaz felt disembodied. The light glowed on Henkin, but Henkin wasn't there. On the horizon between two cracks of the shutter a line of sky or sea was seen, he didn't know which, a dim light that slowly darkened his eyes, a hand unattached to his body started hurting, he tried to feel the hand but couldn't, the pain wasn't his, suddenly he was in an unfamiliar landscape, a name echoing in his brain: Baron Hirsch Street, Tarnopol ... mountains wrapped in white savagery rising over him, birch trees, in the distant mountains time goes backward and they become different, bald, in a desert, high, rising to the sky, bright, Boaz thinks names he never knew before: quartz crystals, orthoclase crystals, ancient granite rocks, red and brown, even black, tiny gardens, like grooves of blood in the expanses of wasteland, yellow flame, slopes hewn by ancient gods, perforated, stone beasts of prey, gigantic, in a gnawing expanse, sky hanging obliquely, as if falling, crag crown, a cliff over a wadi wide as a person and high as the sky, a plant called round-leafed cleome, a person he knows but doesn't know who he is, somebody very close to him drinks tea with desert wormwood, and Captain Jose Menkin A. Goldenberg stands wearing a uniform gleaming in the awful light, and says: Here the golden calf is buried! And a person finds the place of the golden calf from an ancient map, and says to the Captain: Here a memorial to Dante Alighieri will be built. The Captain says: He's not dead, Boaz isn't dead, he found a golden calf, what an historiosophical find! Gibal Mussa, near a prairie crushed with rocks, between snake and heron, raisins of sun here, the eagle eye that's the innocent eye, in wadi channels that are the face of God, the face of man, and there the nation was created.