The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

by Russell Hoban

  “Good evening, sir,” said Boaz-Jachin, although it was the middle of the night. He attempted to walk around the father, but the father stepped in front of him, blocking his way. He was a small man, no taller than Boaz-Jachin, but Boaz-Jachin felt in the wrong and looked it.

  “'Good evening, sir!'” mimicked the father with a dreadful grimace. “Good evening, father number such-and-such of girl number such-and-such. Just like that. Smooth and easy.”

  Boaz-Jachin saw in his mind a map of the sea, its islands and ports. If he were put off at the next port because of a passenger complaint he would have another sea voyage to make, another boat or ship to find, other people with their lives and histories to drag him down with hard and heavy knowledge. It was as if his shirt and all his pockets were filled with great lumpy potatoes of unwanted knowledge. He wished that he could be at the end of his journey and not have to talk to anyone for a while.

  “Excuse me, please, sir,” he said. Still the father blocked his way.

  “What are you?” said the father. “For you life must be one girl after another, and sometimes an older woman who pays you a little something for your services, I suppose. Now you're a waiter on a cruise ship, now a beach boy at a resort. You get the daughters that fathers have stayed up with when they were sick, have listened to the troubles of, have wanted the best for. You with your smooth face and clear eyes and long hair.”

  Boaz-Jachin sat down on the floor, his arms resting on his drawn-up knees. He shook his head. He was almost on the point of crying, but he began to laugh.

  “And that's funny to you?” said the father.

  “You don't know what I'm laughing at,” said Boaz-Jachin. “Nothing is smooth and easy for me, and my life isn't one girl after another — it seems to be one father after another. And how would it help you if I had a wrinkled face and clouded eyes and short hair? Would your daughter then become a nun?”

  The father's face relaxed behind the beard and the glasses. “It's hard to let go,” he said.

  “And it's hard to hold on,” said Boaz-Jachin.

  “To what?” said the father.

  “The wheel,” said Boaz-Jachin.

  “Ah,” said the father. “I know that wheel.” He smiled and sat down beside Boaz-Jachin. They sat together on the floor, smiling while the ship hummed, the air-conditioning whirred, and the dark sea slipped by on either side.

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

  -23-

  Darkness roared with the lion, the night stalked with the silence of him. The lion was. Ignorant of non-existence he existed. Ignorant of self he was a sunlit violence with calm joy at the center of it, he was the violence of being-as-hunter constantly renewed in the devouring of non-being. The wheel had been when he ran tawny on the plain, printing his motion on the grateful air. He had died biting the wheel that went on and left him dead. The wheel continued, the lion continued. He was intact, diminished by nothing, increased by nothing, absolute. He ate meat or he did not eat meat, was seen or unseen, known when there was knowledge of him, unknown when there was not. But always he was. For him there were no maps, no places, no time. Beneath his tread the round earth rolled, the wheel turned, bearing him to death and life again. Through his lion-being drifted stars and blackness, morning sang, night soothed, dawn burst its daylight from the womb of vital terror. Oceans heaved, frail bridges spanned the winding track of days, the rising air sang lion-flight in wings of birds. In clocks ticked lion-time. It pulsed in heartbeats, footsteps walking all unknowing, souls of guilt and sorrow, souls of love and pain. He had been called, he had come. He was.

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

  -24-

  After his last encounter with the lion Jachin-Boaz felt childish, stupid, shaken. That the lion had turned his back on him now frightened him more than the previous attack. He felt as if the present had vomited him out like a Jonah. He lay gasping on dry land under the eye of an exacting God. “There is no God,” he said, “but the exactions exist, so there might just as well be a God. Perhaps there is one after all.”

  “People always assume that God is with people,” said Gretel. “But maybe God is in the furniture, or with stones.”

  Go and preach, thought Jachin-Boaz, his mind still on Jonah. The king sleeps with his chariots, the lions are dead. I have not marked the lion-palace on my master map. Boaz-Jachin's master map. I have a lion, and I have told him about a cowboy suit.

  He tried to remember why his old life had seemed intolerable. Admittedly he had not felt himself to be a whole man, but at least he had been a reasonably comfortable failed man, lacking nothing but his testicles. If only he could have the comfort of his mife, his wife rather, without his wife! Whother, whether he could get along without her he doubted. Despite his new-found maleness it seemed that he had nothing, was nothing. He marvelled that he went on making love with Gretel. Something in me lives its own life, full of appetite, he thought. Where am I while this is going on? On what map?

  Why am I afraid now? he thought. When I was impotent I was secure. It isn't safe to have balls. Now I ramp like a stallion while my soul is sick with terror. Stallions surely aren't afraid, lions aren't afraid. I have a lion. I don't have a lion — a lion has me. A lion hallucinates me. To a lion appears Jachin-Boaz in the early morning. When I was impotent I was safe. What was all that nonsense about wanting my manhood, idiot that I am? Let him starve, that lion. I don't want to see him. They can go on transmitting but I won't receive.

  For several days Jachin-Boaz, awaking at the usual time, went back to sleep, sulking, while in his imagination the lion grew thinner daily. Beside him every morning at half-past four Gretel woke up, waiting with closed eyes for him to go out while Jachin-Boaz went back to sleep, dreaming dreams he would not remember.

  Jachin-Boaz was dreaming. With a microscope he was looking at an illuminated drop of water. In the water swam a green and spherical form of many-celled animal-algae. Thousands of tiny moving whips on its surface made it revolve its green-jeweled globe like a little world.

  Jachin-Boaz increased the magnification, looked deep into one of the hundreds of cells. Closer, closer through the luminous green. Oh yes, he said. The naked figures of his father and mother copulated in the brilliant field of the lens with darkness all around them. So big and he so small. A shoulder turning away within the luminous green world in the drop of water.

  The cell withdrew, grew small, receded into the green and turning world that closed up again, its whips propelling it in sparkling revolutions.

  Unlike the infinitely ongoing asexual amoeba, said the lecturer, this organism has differentiated within itself male and female cells. Sexual reproduction occurs, followed by another phenomenon unknown to the amoeba: death. In the words of one naturalist, “It must die because it has had children and is no longer needed.” That is why this wheel dies. The invention of the wheel is nothing compared to the invention of death, and this wheel invented death.

  Jachin-Boaz increased the magnification again, again looked into the same cell. Darkness in the brilliance. His mother cried out. The lecturer, nodding in a chalk-dusted gray suit, came between him and what was happening in the darkness. This is the wheel that invented death, he said.

  Jachin-Boaz hurled himself into the dark and shining tube of the microscope, saw the green wheel bright before him, leaped upon it, holding it to him, trying to stop its turning.

  The wheel won't die, he said, biting it, tasting its wet greenness. This wheel has had children but he doesn't die. The lions die.

  It seems a kind of intellectual suicide, said the lecturer, looking down on Jachin-Boaz who lay in a paper coffin, his beard aimed up at the lecturer whose beard was aiming down at him.

  Now you're dead, said Jachin-Boaz to the lecturer. But the paper coffin lid came down on Jachin-Boaz. No, he said. You, not me. Turn it around. Let the little green cells die instead. It's always I who die. It was I then and it's I now. Whe
n is it my turn, when the others die?

  It keeps turning but it's not your turn, said the lecturer. Never your turn.

  My turn, said Jachin-Boaz. He was walking away from the coffin, looking back at it and noticing that it was much shorter than before. There was no father's beard sticking up. The hand that held the map was smaller, younger. My turn, my turn, he wept, smelled the lion, wept and whimpered in his sleep.

  Gretel woke up, leaned on her elbow, looked at Jachin-Boaz in the dim light, looked at his bandaged arm that he flung over his face. She looked at her watch. Four o'clock. She turned on her side away from Jachin-Boaz and lay there, awake.

  At half-past four Jachin-Boaz awoke, feeling tired. He did not remember his dream. He bathed, shaved, dressed, took meat for the lion, and went out.

  The lion was standing across the street. Jachin-Boaz crossed to him, threw him the meat, watched him eat. With the lion-smell in his nostrils he turned and walked towards the embankment, not looking back.

  When Jachin-Boaz and the lion had gone some distance down the street towards the river a police constable stepped out from behind a corner of the building where Jachin-Boaz lived. He stepped back as Gretel came out, fully dressed, with a carrier bag in one hand.

  Gretel looked towards the river, then followed Jachin-Boaz and the lion.

  The police constable waited a few moments, then followed Gretel.

  Jachin-Boaz walked along the embankment on the side away from the river. He stopped at a garden above which rose a statue of a man who had been beheaded after a theological dispute with a king. There was a bench on the pavement. Near it was a telephone kiosk. The sky was cloudy, the before-dawn light was gray, the bridges were black over the quiet river.

  Jachin-Boaz turned and faced the lion. Down the street a girl with a carrier bag stepped into a doorway. Beyond her a man's dark figure turned into a side street. There was no one else in sight.

  Jachin-Boaz sat down on the bench. The lion lay down on the pavement five yards away, his eyes on Jachin-Boaz's face.

  “Always the frown, like my father,” said Jachin-Boaz. “How was I to be a scientist, father Lion? Science is knowing. What could I have known? Others always did the knowing, knew what was in me, what should come out of me, what was best for me. I didn't know who I was, what I wanted. I know less now, and I am afraid.”

  The sound of his own voice and the words he was saying became boring to Jachin-Boaz. He felt a wave of irritation flooding through him. He didn't want to say what he was saying. What did the lion want? The lion was real, could kill him, might very well do it at any moment. Jachin-Boaz felt himself disappearing into terror, felt himself coming back, went on.

  "My thoughts are useless to me, and I cannot remember my dreams. I have forgotten more of my life than I remember, and with my forgetting I have lost my being. You expect something of me, father Lion. Maybe only my death. Maybe you are too late for that. Maybe I have beaten you to it. Not that my death belongs to me.

  "One of my teachers said it was an intellectual suicide when I failed my examinations. But science is knowing, and how could I know anything, how make a profession of knowing? Little things, yes. Places on a map.

  "When you kill yourself you kill the world, but it doesn't die. He'd had a bad heart for some time, so it couldn't have been my fault altogether. Why did he never talk to me? Why did he seem always to be talking to a space that I hadn't moved into? Why was he always holding up an empty suit of clothes for me to jump into? He talked to clothes I never did put on. A sleeve with no arm in it struck him down. An empty shoulder turned away from him. He closed his mouth and lay down, but he is more alive in me than I am.

  "I am a coward, and you are patient with me. You are a sporting lion. You want my death to stand up like a man in me before you spring. You have contempt for anything that turns away.

  “But if you kill me I shall then be more alive than ever, strong as the brazen tire on the wheel. My son will feel me heavy and unfinished on his back, big in his mind.”

  Jachin-Boaz was silent for a time, then stood up. “Perhaps I too have never spoken to my son,” he said, “but to an empty place where he was not. Now I talk to you, his anger. I will stand before you, look at you. If I did not look at him at least I will look at you, his rage. My rage. Can I roar like you? Can I make a big sound of whole anger?” Jachin-Boaz tried to roar, broke off in coughing.

  The lion crouched, gathering himself, lashing his tail. The lion roared, and the river of lion-sound rolled beside the other river, thunderous under the broken sky.

  “No!” cried Gretel, running towards the lion from behind. “No!” She had thrown away the carrier bag, and held the carving knife she had concealed in it. She held the knife in the manner of knife-fighters, with the blade extending the line of her wrist, ready to thrust in and up.

  “Get back!” shouted Jachin-Boaz. But the lion had turned at the sound of Gretel's voice. Jachin-Boaz saw the muscles bunching for the leap, threw himself on the lion's back as it sprang, his fingers locked in its mane, his face buried in the coarse rank hair.

  The lion, turning his head to seize Jachin-Boaz's right arm in his jaws, landed short as Gretel jumped aside.

  “Here!” shouted the constable, striking the pavement with his truncheon. “This won't do! Stop it at once!”

  “Into the telephone box!” yelled Jachin-Boaz to the constable. “Get her into the telephone box!”

  But Gretel flung herself at the lion, drove her knife at his throat. The blade was partly deflected by the thick mane, but it went in, and the lion let go of Jachin-Boaz's arm and swung his head around towards Gretel.

  “Here!” shouted the constable. He pulled Jachin-Boaz from the lion and thrust Gretel back.

  Jachin-Boaz, strong as a madman, hurled himself with arms flung wide at Gretel and the constable, slamming them against the telephone kiosk. Gretel and he together shoved the constable out of the way for long enough to open the door, then pulled him savagely inside.

  “No, you don't,” said the constable, his face red. He had been in family situations many times before, and more than once had had the combatants turn on him like this. Simultaneously he gripped the wrist of Gretel's knife hand and brought his knee up into Jachin-Boaz's groin.

  “Imbecile!” gasped Jachin-Boaz, sinking to the floor with the pain. In a red and golden haze with black and shooting lights he felt a rage too big for his body, too strong for his voice, immense, unlimited by time, amber-eyed and taloned.

  “Good God!” said the constable, staring through the glass door. “There's a lion out there!”

  “Aha!” said Jachin-Boaz, exulting. “You can see him now! How do you like him! He's big, he's angry. He can say no to anybody, eh?”

  The constable, jammed between Gretel and the side of the telephone box, was writhing desperately while Gretel, bloody knife in hand, glared at him wildly. “I beg your pardon, madame,” he said. “I am trying to get to the telephone.” He looked away from the lion, dialed his station number, looked back again.

  The constable identified himself, reported his location. “What I think we need here,” he said “is the fire brigade with a pumper. Big net too. Stout one. No. Not a fire. Animal situation, actually. Yes, I should say so. With a strong cage, you know, as fast as they can. Ambulance too. Well, let's say a large carnivore. No, I'm not. All right, a tiger, if you like. How should I know? Yes, I'll be here. Goodbye.”

  As the constable rang off there was a screech of brakes, followed by a crash. Looking past Jachin-Boaz the constable saw two cars stopped on the road, the front of one and the rear of the other crumpled together. Both drivers remained in their cars. Jachin-Boaz and Gretel were looking beyond the cars at the pavement and the parapet along the river.

  “Where is it then?” said the constable.

  “Where is what?” said Jachin-Boaz.

  “The lion,” said the constable.

  “Lions are extinct,” said Jachin-Boaz.

  “Don't try t
hat on with me, mate,” said the constable. “Look at your bleeding arm.”

  “Spiked fence,” said Jachin-Boaz. “Stumbled. Fell. Drunk again.”

  “What about you, madame?” said the constable.

  “I walk in my sleep,” said Gretel. “I don't know how I got here. This is very embarrassing for me.”

  “You two stay here,” said the constable. He opened the door of the telephone kiosk, looked all around, and stepped out. The motorists were still there, sitting in their cars with their windows rolled up. The constable went to the first car, motioned to the driver to lower the window.

  “Why'd you stop?” said the constable.

  “Quite extraordinary,” said the driver. “Somehow my foot slipped off the accelerator and came down on the brake. I don't know how it happened.”

  “What did you see in front of you when you stopped?” said the constable.