The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

by Russell Hoban

  Now his haunted face awoke beside her every morning. A mighty fortress, sang Gretel in her mind, imposing her will on the choir. The sound surged into a lion-colored roar, a strong river of violent . . . what? Not joy. Life. Violent life. I knew that I'd be happy with him, unhappy with him — everything, and more of everything than ever before in my life. Something there is that won't die. A mighty fortress is our something.

  The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973)

  -21-

  The night sky, pinky-gray, leaned close to chimneys, rooftops, hesitantly touched black bridges and the winding river. I am beautiful only if you look at me, the sky said.

  I can't be everybody, said Jachin-Boaz, wise with the mind of sleep and knowing his dream for a dream. His words were an answer to which the question was a sensation of something very big, something very small. Which part of it am I?

  Ha ha, laughed the answer, strutting in the mind that would forget it on awakening. See how simple it is? Male or female? Choose.

  Something very big, something very small, thought Jachin-Boaz. There is a sob I don't let out, there is a curse I don't speak, there is a turning away from whom, there is a black shoulder of what?

  Well, said the answer, this is the place you tried to avoid, but it is not to be avoided.

  I can cover it with a map, said Jachin-Boaz. Then there will be world.

  He spread out the map, so thin! Like tissue paper. The black shoulder heaved up through it, tore it. As from a heaving mountain Jachin-Boaz fell away.

  I can cover it with a map, he said again, spreading vast miles-wide tissue paper over the black abyss. He ran lightly across its surface that billowed in a dreadful rising black wind. See! he cried as he fell through the tearing tissue paper, I'm not falling!

  Right, said the answer. See how simple? Betrayed or betrayer? Choose. Either way you win the loss of everything.

  I cry in the throat, said Jachin-Boaz.

  Yes, said the answer.

  I curse in the dark, said Jachin-Boaz.

  Yes, said the answer.

  From me all turns away, said Jachin-Boaz.

  Loss unending, said the answer.

  She will save, said Jachin-Boaz.

  Whom you betray, the answer said.

  He will save, said Jachin-Boaz.

  Who turns away, the answer said.

  World is there if I hold fast to it, said Jachin-Boaz.

  What is there if you let go? the answer said. Dare to find out?

  I'll let go if I can hold on while I'm doing it, said Jachin-Boaz. Lion-skins make stronger maps than tissue paper, he thought. He stood on the window ledge looking down. Far below him the firemen held taut the lion-skin.

  No use telling me to jump, said Jachin-Boaz. Not even in a dream.

  We all know what a no is shaped like, said the answer.

  Right, said Jachin-Boaz. We know and the noes know.

  Had your noes cut off lately? said the answer.

  Come closer, said Jachin-Boaz darkly to the answer. It was very big, and he was very small and frightened. He woke up with his heart beating fast, remembering nothing.

  Half-past four, said the clock on the night table. The lion would be waiting. Let him starve, thought Jachin-Boaz, and went back to sleep.

  The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973)

  -22-

  “I can't find it,” said Boaz-Jachin in his own language, talking in his sleep.

  “What?” said the girl beside him in the narrow upper berth in the pre-dawn dimness of the stateroom. She spoke English.

  “Where to go,” said Boaz-Jachin, still asleep, still speaking in his own language.

  “What are you saying?” said the girl.

  “Ugly maps. Can't make nice maps. Only where I've been,” said Boaz-Jachin. “Lost,” he said in English as he woke up.

  “What's lost? Are you lost?”

  “What time is it?” said Boaz-Jachin. “I have to get back to the crew's quarters before breakfast.” He looked at his wristwatch. Half-past four.

  “Are you always lost?” said the girl. They were nested like two spoons, her nakedness warm and insistent against his back, her mouth close to his ear. Through the porthole the darkness was graying. Boaz-Jachin tried to remember his dream.

  “Are you always lost?” said the girl.

  Boaz-Jachin wished that she would be quiet, tried to call back the vanished dream. “Everything that is found is always lost again,” he said.

  “Yes,” said the girl. “That's good. That's true. Is it yours or did you read it?”

  “Hush,” said Boaz-Jachin, trying to fit into a silence with her. The porthole was like a blind eye in the dim stateroom. On that round blind eye, whitening with the morning fog behind it, he seemed to see his map, the one he had newly drawn from memory after he and the trader had been picked up by the big white cruise ship: his town, his house, Lila's house, the bus depot and the other bus depot, the road to the citadel, the hall of the lion-hunt reliefs, the hill where he had sat, the road to the seaport, the place where the lorry driver had dropped him, the brief distance with the woman in the red car, the farm where the dying father had written FORGIVE with his finger, the Swallow's track to Rising Son Rocks. The city where he thought his father was now with the other better map, the map of his future.

  The map faded, only the round blind stare of the fog was left. In that stare Boaz-Jachin doubted that his father's map would be of any use to him. He had remembered it as large and beautiful. Now he thought of it as small and cramped, too neat, too calculated, too little cognizant of unknown places, of the night places waiting beyond the day places, of the somewheres dropping from the open wombs of nowheres. He felt lost as he had not done since being with the lion.

  “Maps,” he said softly. “A map is the dead body of where you've been. A map is the unborn baby of where you're going. There are no maps. Maps are pictures of what isn't. I don't want it.”

  “That's beautiful,” said the girl. “'There are no maps.' What don't you want?”

  “My father's map,” said Boaz-Jachin.

  “That's good,” said the girl. “Is it yours? Do you write? It sounds like the beginning of a poem: 'My father's map is . . .' What is it?”

  “His,” said Boaz-Jachin. “And he can keep it.” He threw back the sheets, rolled the girl over on her stomach, bit her buttocks, got out of bed and put his clothes on.

  “I'll show you my poems tonight,” she said.

  “All right,” said Boaz-Jachin, as the girl's room-mate, yawning, came back from where she had spent the night. He went back to the crew's quarters and got ready to serve breakfast to the first sitting.

  The trader had been dropped off at the last port. Boaz-Jachin, signed on to replace a waiter who had left earlier in the cruise, would stay with the ship until it reached its home port. From there he could travel overland most of the way to the city where he expected to find his father. Boaz-Jachin no longer wanted the map, but he wanted to find his father and tell him so. While serving breakfast that morning he thought about what he would say to his father.

  Keep it, he would say. I don't need it. I don't need maps. At first he imagined himself only, saw and heard himself saying the words without seeing his father in his mind. Then he tried to imagine Jachin-Boaz. Perhaps he would be lying in a dirty bed, unshaven, ill, maybe dying. Or dim and pale, lost in some shop of dust and shadows in the great city, or standing alone on a bridge in the rain, looking down at the water, defeated. What have you found with your map? he would say to Jachin-Boaz his father. Has the future you drew so beautifully for me come to you? Has it made you happy?

  The dishes clattered, the music played anonymously its tunes that were the same in airports, cocktail bars and lifts, the children quarreled and left their eggs uneaten. The parents sat with the faces and necks of every day coming out of their holiday clothes, spongy backs and flabby arms of women in sun-back dresses, festive trousers on men
with office feet. Girls displayed in the shops of their summer dresses the stock that had not moved all year, their mouths open with surrender, their eyes blurred with hope or sharp with arithmetic.

  Boaz-Jachin walked behind his smile, served from behind his eyes, looked down on bald heads, bosoms, brushed ardent shoulders with his thighs, said thank you, nodded, smiled, cleared away, walked back and forth through swinging doors and galley smells. Every person here had had a father and a mother. Every person here had been a child. The thought was staggering. The feet of the men in the festive trousers made him want to cry.

  Boaz-Jachin served the table of the girl he had slept with last night. She shaped the word hello with her mouth, touched his leg with her hand. He looked down her dress at her breasts, thought of last night and the night that was coming. He looked up and saw her father looking at him.

  The father's face was busy with horn-rimmed glasses and a beard. The father's eyes were sad. The father's eyes spoke suddenly to Boaz-Jachin. You can and I can't, said the father's eyes.

  Boaz-Jachin looked at the mother looking at the father. Her face was saying something that his mother's face had often said. But he had never paid attention to what it was. Forget this, remember that, said her face. What was the this to be forgotten? What was the that to be remembered? Boaz-Jachin thought of the road to the port and of the time after the lorry driver when it seemed to him that he could speak with animals, trees, stones.

  Beyond the windows of the dining room the sea sparkled in the sunlight. Part of an island passed, a straggle of ruins, a broken citadel, the pillars of a temple, two figures on a hill. Gulls rose and fell on the air currents beside the ship. This, said the sea. Only this. What? thought Boaz-Jachin. Who? Who is looking out through the eyeholes in my face? No one, said the sea. Only this.

  “Thank you,” said Boaz-Jachin serving the mother, averting his eyes from her bosom.

  That night again he went to the girl's stateroom.

  “Wait,” she said as he began to take his clothes off. “I want to read you some poems.”

  “I just want to be comfortable,” said Boaz-Jachin. “I can listen with my clothes off.”

  “All right,” she said. She took a thick folder from a drawer. The sea and the sky outside were dark, the ship thrust cleaving its phosphorescent bow wave, the engines hummed, the air-conditioning whirred, the lamp by the berth made a cosy glow. “They mostly don't have titles,” she said, and began to read:

  Black rock rising to a neverness of sky,

  Black alone, no sky above the

  Far-down lost and winding

  Blood-red river and my

  Frail black boat, dead

  God my freight, too heavy for my

  Craft, blind broken eyes.

  Blind father-stone between my thighs.

  “Shit,” said Boaz-Jachin. “Another father.”

  . . . Deflower my death, seed

  My defeat, get NOW from nothing,

  Fierce upon your daughter.

  Lot was made drunk, salt

  Wife behind him in the

  Desert.

  Stone is my lot, dead

  God my steersman.

  Blind,

  Find

  Star.

  “What do you think?” said the girl when she had finished reading.

  “I don't want to think,” said Boaz-Jachin. “Can't we not-think for a while?” He pulled her T-shirt over her head, kissed her breasts. She twisted away from him.

  “Is that all I am?” she said. “Something to grab, something to fuck?”

  Boaz-Jachin bit her flank hopefully but with lessening conviction. She sat motionless, looking thoughtful.

  “You're beautiful,” she said, ruffling his hair. “Am I beautiful to you?”

  “Yes,” said Boaz-Jachin, unbuttoning her jeans. She rolled away with her jeans still on.

  “No, I'm not,” she said. She lay on her stomach, leafing through the poems in the folder. “You're saying I am because you want to fuck. Not even make love, just fuck. I'm not beautiful to you.”

  “All right,” said Boaz-Jachin. “You're not beautiful to me.” He sat up, got off the bed, put on his trousers.

  “Come back,” she said. “You don't mean that either.”

  Boaz-Jachin took off his trousers, climbed back into the berth. When they were both naked he looked down at her face. “Now you're beautiful,” he said.

  “Shit,” she said, and turned away. She lay with her face averted, inert while Boaz-Jachin tried to make love. “Oh,” she whimpered.

  “What's the matter?”

  “You're hurting me.”

  Boaz-Jachin lost his erection, withdrew. “The hell with it,” he said.

  “Daughters are supposed to attract their fathers sexually,” said the girl as he lay beside her, sulking, “but I don't. I'm not beautiful to him either. He once told me that boys would love me for my mind. In some ways he's rotten.”

  “My God!” said Boaz-Jachin. “I am so sick and tired of fathers!” He sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the berth.

  “Don't go away,” she said. “Goddam it, have I got to plead for every lousy minute of human companionship? Have I got to pay for every minute of attention with my pussy? Can't you talk to me, just one person to another? Can't you give anything but your prick? And even that isn't given — you're only taking.”

  Boaz-Jachin felt his childhood vanish as if he had been launched from it in a rocket. As if with ancient knowledge he recognized the departure of innocence and simplicity from his life. He groaned, and lay back on the pillow staring at the ceiling. Lila seemed long ago, never to be found again.

  “What do you want me to do?” he said.

  “Talk to me. Be with me. Be with me, not just parts of me.”

  “Oh God,” said Boaz-Jachin. She was right. He was wrong. He hadn't wanted to be with her. He had sensed that she would be willing and he wanted a girl to cuddle with, a no one. But everybody was a someone. He cursed his new knowledge. He had known this girl for a few days only, and it seemed a lifetime of mistakes. He felt roped together with her on the sheer face of a bleak mountain. He felt immensely weary.

  “What?” she said, looking at his face. “What's the matter?”

  Boaz-Jachin stared at the ceiling, remembering Lila and the first night on the roof, remembering the brightness of the stars and how it was to feel good and know nothing. The lion came into his mind and was gone, leaving emptiness that urged him forward.

  “What do you want to do?” the girl said. “I don't mean now, this minute. In life, I mean.”

  What do I want to do? thought Boaz-Jachin. I want to find my father so I can tell him I don't want his map. That's not a lifetime career. “Shit,” he said.

  “You're a real intellectual,” said the girl. “You're a real deep thinker. Try to say something in words, just for the novelty of it.”

  “I don't know what I want to do,” said Boaz-Jachin.

  “You're a very interesting person,” said the girl. “I don't meet people as interesting as you every day in the week. Tell me more about yourself. Now that we've been to bed, let's get acquainted. Have you ever done anything? Have you ever written a poem, for instance, or painted a picture? Do you play a musical instrument? I'm trying to remember why I did go to bed with you. You were beautiful and you said something good. You said that you were looking for your father who was looking for a lion, and I said there were no lions any more, and you said there was one lion and one wheel, and I said that was beautiful, and then all you wanted to do was fuck.”

  Boaz-Jachin was out of the berth and putting his clothes on. “I play the guitar,” he said. “I drew an ugly map that I lost, and then I drew another map. I copied a photograph of a lion once. I've never written a poem. I've never painted a picture.” He was angry, but as he spoke he became unaccountably elated, proud. There was something in him not drained off by poems or pictures, something unknown, unavailable but undiminished, intact, waiting
to be found. He tried to find it, found only emptiness, was ashamed then, humbled, felt mistaken in his temporary pride, shook his head, opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.

  As he closed the stateroom door behind him he saw the girl's father coming towards him. The father's face became very red. He stopped before Boaz-Jachin, his face working behind the horn-rimmed glasses and the beard.