by Yoram Kaniuk
Respectfully, Noga Levin
Judge, the letter was returned to me, the director came to visit me. He found a cold, silent, and apparently handsome woman. That's what he said. I told him somebody wrote the letter in my name. After he left, Boaz Schneerson filed that letter under "trivialities." You do know the file "trivialities," the one that isn't taxable.
Yours, Noga Levin
I want, said Noga, for somebody to finish me off and Boaz. To destroy the devil in him that lives in me. To release us from the dependence on ourselves and on death. But the years pass. I'm here. I learned, Noga thought of driving a jeep, they collect parts of burned tanks and rotten berets, etc., etc., etc....
Tape / -
I got off the plane shrouded in foreignness. Ebenezer Schneerson got off the plane shrouded in foreignness. Around him was a state he didn't know. When he got into the bus from the plane to the air terminal with Fanya R., he tried to think, but he couldn't. he only said: When we come to Israel, there will be Israeli buses at the airport and Hebrew police. And Fanya R. said: Ebenezer, we've already come.
The clerk stamped his papers, the suitcases came on the baggage carousel, and he stood outside, facing the yelling cabdrivers, Fanya R. leaning on him and he looked at the turmoil.
They took a cab to the settlement. The driver was listening to a radio program and Ebenezer looked at the landscape he thought he was imagining. When they passed the tombstone of the paratroopers, Ebenezer asked to stop. He asked: Where is Marar? The driver turned his head, looked at the strange couple in amazement, stopped at the barrier of prickly pear that still remained here on the border of the citrus grove, and said, What? Marar? What Marar?
The village that was here, said Ebenezer.
Don't know, said the driver, that's the tombstone of paratroopers.
There was Marar here, said Ebenezer.
There was also Sodom and Gomorrah, said the driver, but the tourists don't find them and come to Tel Aviv, which is almost the same thing, and he laughed. He was smoking a pungent cigarette. Ebenezer looked for the houses sliding down the slope, like dovecotes, and didn't find them. Maybe there was no village, he thought, maybe there will be, I don't know, what do I know, maybe that's part of the things that are going to happen like my trip to Israel that is still to come. Something in him bothered him; there was Marar, there was Dana, they weren't, and a dull ticking of old lust stirred in him.
On the main street, nobody knew him. He was dragging a suitcase and Fanya R. walked behind him. They went down the slope, they passed by what had once been the threshing floor, saw new houses and handsome gardens, and an old DeSoto with a woman who looked like a scarecrow, wearing a wide-brimmed hat smoking a long thin cigar, and they came to Rebecca's house. He didn't recognize the house, but the sight of the aging Argentinean officer watering the garden, wearing a military cap, gave him a dull sense of belonging. Shaking with a sudden anger that gripped him, he grabbed Fanya R.'s hand and with his other hand, he pounded on the door. The door was hidden in a thicket of gigantic bougainvillea. The great-grandson of Ahbed opened the door, looked suspiciously at the Last Jew and the woman. The Last Jew said: We came to visit Mrs. Schneerson. The great-grandson of Ahbed said what he had been taught to say: She's not home and come back in a month and then you'll go again, and he tried to lock the door, but Ebenezer put a foot on the threshold and stopped the door. He said: You must be the grandson of Ahbed. The great-grandson of Ahbed didn't move a muscle, and said: I'm the great-grandson of Ahbed, and remove your foot, sir.
Tell the old lady her son has come back home, said Ebenezer.
Ahbed pushed Ebenezer, managed to lock the door, and disappeared. He put the suitcase down on the tiles at the entrance and waited.
A short while later, Ahbed opened the door a little and said: She said her son is dead, but since you're here already, come in. Fanya R. smiled. Ebenezer hugged her, and said: When we come to Israel, my mother will be excited. And Ebenezer tried to remember if it really was Rebecca, whose flyswatter he could hear now, curious. But he couldn't remember. When Ahbed asked them to come in to what was called the "salon," they walked like two frightened children. Ahbed locked the door behind them. Rebecca sat in an easy chair at a table with black domino tiles. Even Fanya R. could guess that Rebecca had just won a victory. She surveyed Ebenezer for a long time and her old beautiful eyes turned to Fanya R. She examined her impassively, and said: Ebenezer Schneerson, you were dead!
Her face was covered with a cloud of rumination and she looked as if she were trying to solve a riddle without help from anybody. She said: Now the Captain will have to move out of Boaz's house!
Whose?
Boaz's, she repeated. Ebenezer looked at her and tried to recall, but he couldn't. Fanya R. sat down on a chair, put her hands on the arms, one of which was carved with tiny features, and Ebenezer said: I'll live in Tel Aviv, near Samuel.
Who's Samuel? asked the old woman.
Samuel, said Ebenezer.
The old woman looked outside and saw the avenue of almond trees, and said: Where were you? He tried to think. Nothing concrete was clear to him. Where was I for so many years? He said: Samuel is my son, he came out of the camp and he'll come.
They told me you always wanted to go to America, added Ebenezer. Did you go? She smiled and wrung her hands. Ahbed entered the room and smiled. Ebenezer saw a carved bird on the windowsill. He looked at it and strong yearnings for the smell of sawdust filled him.
They were right, said the old woman.
But it's easier to find people here, said Ebenezer, Israel is smaller. And Rebecca said to Ahbed: Bring my son and that woman some cold juice and bring me wine. Ahbed looked at Ebenezer, blinked his eyes, tried to remember something, and went out.
He's the great-grandson of Ahbed, said the old woman. They always stay with me. When they attach Arabs to Israel, there's somebody to rely on. They're not Jews who disappear for fifty years and come to ask for Boaz's house for themselves.
Who's Boaz?
Your son. She said and smiled. And then she realized there was a danger lurking here whose nature she hadn't yet grasped. She looked at her son and thought about her father. A thousand years of life in distant places streamed from Ebenezer's face. She said: You left Ebenezer and you came back as some Diaspora Jew.
Fanya R. drank the juice Ahbed gave her. Rebecca started getting bored. For a moment she thought of Nehemiah as if he tried again to betray her and die for nothing. She said: Boaz is now my son, you were my son, maybe you still are my son, but you're old, Ebenezer, there were wars here and there's suddenly a state, there were locusts! Does your wife have sons? She had daughters, said Ebenezer.
Rebecca didn't respond, she got up with the suddenness that was always typical of her, came to Ebenezer and kissed his cheeks. For a moment, she was soft, her fingers combed his hair, and then she hugged the back of Fanya R., who straightened up and leaned forward. Then they sat down and were silent. Ahbed brought black coffee and they drank and ate cookies and peanuts and tiny sandwiches filled with cheese that was sweet but sharp. The fragrance of basil stood in the air. After dark, they moved to the dining room and sat around the table. Ebenezer tried to tell in three sentences what he remembered. Rebecca fell asleep and Ahbed came and carried her to her room sitting in her chair. Fanya R. picked up a carved bird that contained a lot of force. Tears flowed from her eyes at the sight of the birds on the windowsills. Ebenezer said: Look at the beautiful birds the old woman has.
The next day, Mr. Klomin came. He told Ebenezer how awful the Holocaust was, and Ebenezer listened to him and tried to mutter something but couldn't. All he remembered were things he wasn't sure had happened to him. From Mr. Klomin's words, he understood who Mr. Klomin was.
These things I'm saying now, I also know from what I heard, how I came to Rebecca's house, how she kissed me, how I didn't know who Klomin was, how I didn't know who Boaz was.
When Mr. Klomin told about Boaz, vague things started to clear up in h
is brain. He stroked Fanya R. and inquired about Boaz, he was sure they were talking about Samuel. Klomin said: He hangs around the house of the Teacher Henkin who lost a son in the war. A handsome fellow. And Klomin took a photo out of the drawer and showed it to Ebenezer. Ebenezer smiled and said: That's Samuel. And Fanya R. said: That's an old picture of Joseph Rayna.
When his bags came from the port, Ebenezer went to Tel Aviv and bought the Giladi house. When Boaz came to see him, Ebenezer said: Samuel, and fainted. For three days Ebenezer wept in a closed room and thought. After he came out of the room he almost knew things he hadn't known before that he knew. Boaz, who was disappointed, didn't show his emotions. He was scared as never before in his life. Fanya R. told him about her daughters. Their skin, she said, was grafted onto the body of a German who was burned in a tank. But when Ebenezer tried to understand who Boaz was and how he wasn't Samuel, Boaz said: Never mind, it's not so important, he left the house, and when he got to the corner of Hayarkon Street, he entered a yard and banged his head against a wall for a long time.
Mr. Klomin, who envisioned the meeting between Boaz and his father, began to feel a certain closeness to his grandson, maybe because time wasn't working to his advantage now, as he put it, or because Dana became concrete before his eyes the moment Ebenezer called his son Samuel.
Once every two weeks, for years, Mr. Klomin and Captain Jose Menkin A. Goldenberg would meet in Tel Aviv to discuss their party affairs. Most of the people who had joined them over the years had died or were in old people's homes or in hospitals and had stopped being interested in the renewed Kingdom of Israel. A gigantic yoke of keeping the flame, as he defined it, fell on Klomin, and became heavier from year to year. The return of the last son gave him certain hopes that inconceivable things were happening. If Ebenezer came back, he said to the Captain as they walked in the street to their regular meeting place, all kinds of things can happen, he said and didn't elaborate. The two of them were up in years now. Whenever they'd walk in the street they'd discover a new city they hadn't known before, partly because they forgot. Suspicious-looking cars passed by and stopped at traffic signals that had just been planted on street corners. Mr. Klomin meditated aloud about the connection between the words grief and brief, dissect and connect, brave and wave, and then they went into the small old-fashioned cafe where they had once prepared the great revolt against the British Empire. They sat down in their regular places at the back window behind a gigantic bush that had turned gray over the years. Hidden from the eyes of passersby, they sat and whispered to one another. The Captain's uniform had faded long ago, a new replacement hadn't come. His once elegant hat looked shabby, even though he took such devoted care of it. He was already starting to forget for rather long periods why he ever had to go back to Egypt. As a sign of the passing years, he said to Mr. Klomin: I don't edit a French newspaper anymore, and Mr. Klomin, who had never believed the Captain had ever edited a newspaper in Cairo, thought to himself a bit, looked at the damp walls, the red plastic chairs, and said: Maybe you really didn't edit a newspaper for many years. The Captain's praise-wreathed past had faded with the years, bereft of that importance that had once been ascribed to it. And one of the two said, they didn't remember anymore which of them said it: Maybe we have to turn over a new leaf? And the Captain adjusted his folds that had grown flaccid, drank the thin coffee, and a shriveled old waitress, who remembered her youthful grace through them, said to her replacement waitress: Those were giant years, you felt electricity in the air, and what secrets they whispered there, and the new waitress came to them, bored, asked if they wanted anything, offered them the famous cheesecake and they laughed, in unison they laughed, and said: Us, cheesecake? Sometimes toast, not today, and then they gave in and ordered nut cake and said it was good, even though it had stood four days on the counter waiting for a defeated and hungry army, she pulled her apron, wiped a table that was already clean, looked bored toward another table covered with crumbs, and sat down to look at the street.
When the Captain, drinking coffee and chewing the hard nut cake, thought of what he had left of the past he had almost managed to live, he sank into depression, he thought of Rebecca, he thought of dark schemes he could no longer invent, and then a tear pearled in his left eye and he said to Mr. Klomin: But the memorial to Dante Alighieri I do have to erect.
It was because of the memorial, he said a few minutes later, that I came here fifty years ago, wasn't it. Mr. Klomin, who looked like a routed war hero who couldn't have been invented by the Captain even in his good days, pondered to himself: Boaz builds memorials, and here respected and unhesitating stands an ancient and firm fifty-year-old expectation. Not fair, he said sadly, really not fair ...
Around them, people are selling and buying diamonds, exchanging earrings for foreign currency, and Menkin Jose Captain says: I've got a dim sense we won't succeed in establishing your kingdom, Klomin. And Klomin drinks the coffee, chews the unchewed cake, and says: The Prophets win again, Captain. He said that so sadly that tears filled the Captain's eyes. To the three hundred sixty letters he wrote to British commissioners, leaders of Israel, its ministers, noble American, French, and British leaders, chief rabbis, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, King Saud, the Prime Minister of Nigeria, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union in New York and Left Poalei Zion in Brooklyn, no answer had come, except one, short and laconic, from Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion wrote: I read your letter carefully, if we build our state with innocence, boldness, faith and wisdom, we shall be redeemed. Until we do we will not be redeemed. Respectfully, David Ben-Gurion.
Mediocrities are always celebrated here, said Klomin, great minds are stoned to death. The gigantic figure of the kings is corrupted by frustrated poets, the Bible is written testimony to the greatness of great dreamers despite its tendentious values ... Everything's a lie, Jeroboam the Second was a great king whose figure was reduced by poets, and Jeremiah who called for betrayal and throwing up your hands gets a whole book. The Russian Revolution of nineteen five failed in Russia and succeeded here. Secular Hasids devoid of real greatness believe in the miracle drug of hackneyed rhymes. They started with a demonstration against Nehemiah Schneerson and now they're building a state of shopkeepers and an oppressed kingdom. We, Captain, we're the last ones who see what could have been. A great historical moment was missed, now maybe it's too late. I intend to write one last letter, Captain, added Mr. Klomin in a loud voice and the old waitress, who hadn't yet taken off her apron, recalled the stormy days of the great revolutions and wonderful arguments, I'll write a six-hundred-page letter: The last will and testament of one who thought up the state. I'll write what reptiles they are! How they turned possible redemption into a new ghetto, or in the words of the poet Tshernikhovsky, "The Lord God conquered Canaan in a tempest-and He will be imprisoned in straps of tefillin!" My letter will be testimony of memory and a memorial to Dana my daughter, guilt of Samaria against love of Zion!
But he'll erect my memorial, said the Captain, who had stopped listening to his friend's speech some time ago. I'll call the last letter the will and testament of the last Jews, said Klomin, my grandchildren will read the letter as we read Herzl's prophetic writings today. After they parted, the Captain stood with a South American firmness and the old waitress came to him, held out her hand, and said, I've served you for thirty years now and today I'm retiring, I just wanted to say what an honor it has been for me to serve you, she burst into tears and ran away. The Captain, who tried to wipe a tear from his eye, discovered to his surprise that his eye was dry. He walked along the street slowly, turned right, and ran right into a tree. His sight was failing now, but his honor didn't allow him to wear eyeglasses, and he walked to Boaz's house.
Climbing to the roof was hard for him, but he rested on every floor, wiped his sweat and the pathetic image of the waitress was still stuck to his eyelids. For thirty years she had served him and he hadn't noticed her. When Boaz opened the door, the Captain walked in and was caught in the last light flutt
ering on the roof and touching the leaves of the trees and plants and herbs that Noga planted in flowerpots and barrels. A few chairs and an old easy chair stood there. The Captain sat down in the easy chair, and said: You could have been my grandson but in the end I did succeed in being your godfather.
Godfatherhood is also an obligation on the part of the godson, said Boaz and smiled. Boaz surveyed the Captain with a certain affection, maybe a lot more than he allowed himself. There was some imagination in the Captain, even fictional, even not clear, that, instead of winning a position, honor in the big government of the world, he agreed to live with us here in this forsaken place. The splendid figure of the Captain now stood in the twilight and looked to him like the abandoned god of a treacherous kingdom.
After they spoke, Boaz said: But why the memorial, why now all of a sudden? Because I'm waning, Boaz, said the Captain in a gloomy despair and a betrayed sadness, Dante wrote the world and then tried to build another world, he's my bereaved son! I've got the money. You've got the knowledge. You build memorials for everybody. Build one for me.
Maybe, said Boaz.
No maybe, said the Captain. You owe me and you'll build. I'll pay.
Boaz asked: Is there a specific place that will suit the memorial?