Lucena

by Mois Benarroch

  A SHORT STORY BY SAMUEL MURCIANO

  “I’m going to open a café,” Yarón happily told his wife and her parents.

  “Fine!” Yarón’s father-in-law was pleased.

  He was happy that at last his son-in-law had decided to do something after a year and a half collecting unemployment and spending his days in front of the computer without doing anything.

  “A café?” interspersed his mother-in-law. “You could work in your field. Why did you study philosophy and literature? Can’t you teach? A bar isn’t respectable at all.”

  “Don’t worry. Just tell us what you need and we’ll help you,” interjected her husband, who right away got pinched under the table.

  If they only knew what I have in mind...thought Yarón, they would have the scare of their life.

  The idea Yarón had was like anything else, an idea emerging from deep necessity. He didn’t know where to get over his rage. When he was in the army he used to go out to a small woods near the base, where he would toss Coca-Cola bottles at the trees and scream until he could no longer do it. Now, married with two little children he could only scream at the children, which he did not want, or at his wife, but he couldn’t do that because he was afraid of her. He also realized that the good life was going away by the minute and the pressure Dana’s parents exerted over him was starting to bear fruit. How could he give up the five bedroom flat on Arnona Street, with paid babysitting and the car that had been a wedding gift? It was not about the money. He loved Dana, but he had certainly gotten accustomed to the quick, easy money.

  Rage Café. That is the name he had thought of for his café. “At the Rage Café you can let out your rage.” Slogans began to fill his head.

  “Have a doughnut and let out your rage.”

  “Why be infuriated in silence? You can scream as you like here.”

  “Anything goes, except hitting.”

  “Yell all you like at the waiters and the owner.”

  “Don’t hold anything back. At the Rage Café everything gets let out.”

  Etc...

  Most of the slogans were just garbage but I will find something. He didn’t explain anything to the family. He only indicated to Dana that he had an original idea that would be successful.

  He spent three months remodeling the café at 13 Rabin Street. He could have done it in less time, perhaps a month, but he decided that if he was going on account of his wife’s family, it was better to cut off the past very slowly to get used to the idea of going back to work.

  He published an ad in the newspapers and many young men and women began coming to his office.

  The first thing he would say to the prospect was:

  “Oh, you’re garbage! Why do you want to work here?” He was physically a delicate-looking man so at first it was hard to be convincing. Soon he began to wear dark glasses and to make fierce expressions to see how the person before him would react.

  Most of those who came just backed off.

  “We’ll find somewhere else.”

  “Nobody will hire you anywhere because you’re worthless.”

  Others remained at the table, or responded:

  “Garbage yo mama,” said one Yacov Segal.

  “Right, get out of here. You shouldn’t talk like that to your boss.”

  “I’ll leave when I damn well please.”

  “Come on, get out of here. I don’t have time for fuckers like you.”

  The interesting ones were those who responded to the insults as though nothing happened.

  “But you look absolutely disgusting,” said Yarón to David Lapidot. “Why should I hire you to work here?”

  “I really need this job. I can improve. I will try.”

  “Improve? You, improve? Look at you. You’re so ugly...”

  Actually, he was a tall, rather good-looking young man.

  “I know I’m ugly, but I am fast, very fast. I know how to work. I dedicate myself completely to the job.”

  The conversation continued like that for a bit until he told him:

  “Fine. Now I will tell you the secret. In my café, everyone who wants to, can scream and shout as he pleases at the wait staff. The waiter must always beg pardon for everything, even that his mother is still alive, everything. Agreed?”

  “And the salary?”

  “Minimum wage plus twenty percent of the sales will be divided among the wait staff. The prices will be high compared with other establishments.”

  “I don’t know...”

  “It could be a lot of money if the business gets going.”

  “We can try it.”

  “I want a small, well-coordinated team.”

  D-day arrived. The first day three people came in. Yarón showed them an elegant menu with an explanation about the café.

  Client’s rights:

  The client is always right, especially when he is not.

  The client may shout at the wait staff. He may insult them or say whatever comes into his head.

  The client may not hit or touch. Violators will be severely punished.

  The client may insult the owner and their supervisor.

  A dissatisfied client is a good client.

  At the Rage Café we like it when customers are never satisfied.

  All the prices are in shekels and the tip is not included. We recommend not leaving a tip because the service always leaves something to be desired.

  The waiter is your servant. Make him run all over however you want. But remember:

  The client must pay for whatever he sends back to the kitchen, even if he is right. Rights and rage do not go together.

  Remember: to let out your rage costs money. When the time comes to pay, it can be critical.

  At first people were unsure.

  “You maniac!” shouted a young girl with a vaguely sarcastic smile. “Did you see this fried egg? Change it at once and stop smiling like that.”

  “You idiot girl!” Said a man in a tie. “Why don’t you go and work the streets? That would suit you.”

  Before the week was out the “Clients Rights” had been published in all the local weeklies and people began to pour in. By evening a long line had formed outside the café.

  “It’s expensive, but it is worth every céntimo,” said Samuel to his companion when suddenly a waitress dissolved in tears as a brown skinned man behind her shouted “What a shame our parents were not liquidated in the Holocaust you disgusting Ashkenazi. I would have burned you too if I could have.” Shmuel wanted to hit the man but right away a security guard was on him: “Anything goes but hitting. Understand?”

  “But what he said is worse than hitting.”

  Meanwhile the Brown skinned man looked at his companion and said, “I would have paid a thousand shekels to say what I said. For two hundred it came out cheap.”

  “Disgusting hick,” Shmuel said.

  Shmuel’s companion made a gesture and they left.

  “Don’t you know who that is?” she said. “That is Yacov Bengigui, the most famous Moroccan poet in the country. I will publish that in the paper tomorrow. All the Moroccans are the same pile of trash.”

  Yarón’s earnings increased rapidly but problems began to emerge from everywhere. People insulted religious Jews, leftists, Arabs, Moroccans, Kurds and Ashkenazi’s. The most frequent statement was: “What a shame they didn’t do away with you in the Holocaust.” “We have to burn all the Arabs” “Hey baboon!” “What Moroccan cave did you crawl out of?” and similar things.

  And these are the problems that were caused:

  Political: Politicians began to share their opinions about the decadence of Israeli society and lack of values. A proposal was made to pass a law to close the café.

  Security: Increasing numbers of guards were needed to prevent physical fights.

  Money: As the money increased everybody wanted to work at Café Rage. It was being rumored that the waiters earned more than twenty thousand shekels a month.

  Yarón r
eceived death threats.

  Client petitions: Primarily requesting sections where waiters could shout at customers but not the reverse.

  Attempts to buy: Some international companies were interested in buying the idea to create an international franchise: RAGE.

  Yarón’s wife: Dana began to feel rejected by Yarón, although on the other hand she was satisfied with the great quantity of money that was coming in and in a few months had become richer than her parents. She evicted her mother from the home.

  There were other problems but Yarón dismissed them as “normal problems associated with success.”

  THE FOURTH DAY

  Yosef Ruti, that was my most famous name. You can see it in the history books. The last thing a man like me needs is to become famous or well-known. That is like seeking out problems that are difficult to carry. I always had money from the first hundred years when I was a carpenter for royalty. There were a lot of gold and silver coins at home which I knew very well how to hide in all kinds of hiding places in Sefarad and in Morocco.

  At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Lisbon, Portugal, a large number of “Marranos” lived in the city because, after the uprisings of the sixteenth century, hundreds of children had been captured and baptized on the king’s orders.

  The Jews managed to lead a double life: Jews at home including praying at synagogue- and showing a Christian face in public, a number of them even attended church services on Sundays. Jews on Saturday, Christians on Sunday.

  The problem then was that those “Marranos” began to forget their Judaism and some married Christians. On the other hand, the church and the king decided to require that Jews give up the transition period they had been promised and had to decide if they wanted to be Christians and live like everyone in Portugal, or Jews, in which case they must leave the kingdom. But leaving the kingdom was not such a simple matter. Where to go? To Sefarad? To the sea, which in those times was loaded with pirates, and presented its own dangers as well? I understood the importance of that moment in 1580 and I went to work to save them. Basically it was the first Jewish agency and thanks to this action, you are alive, and you are a Jew.

  I took quite a bit of the money that I had and took the name of a prosperous businessman. Then I went to see the King to propose that I buy the grain crop of the kingdom at a good price. I bought the grains and I distributed them all over Europe, selling most of it to Portugal, England, which, back then owned Tangier, and to the Vatican. That is how I formed solid relationships with all those who had influence over the King. I did this for several years straight, and by so doing I made not a little money and I became one of the most famous businessmen of the times. I came and went at will in the court of the King of Portugal, Alfonso III, the King of Morocco, Abd al-Rahman, as well as the Pope and the king of England. So it was at the beginning of 1600, I began to take Jews from Portugal to Tangiers on my ship. They arrived at Tangier and from there rapidly fled to Tetuán or to Fez, where the Jews had organized their reception, to see to their needs and instruct them in the true and correct practice of Judaism. The Portuguese clergy didn’t like what I was doing and therefore tried by any means possible to detain me and convince the Vatican to put an end of my activities. They couldn’t do that because both the Vatican and the King of Portugal, who depended on my services, to be able to distribute grain to their subjects, had issued me a special Passport. In reality, it was impossible to do anything to me. I was a one-man free-trade zone.

  Over three years I transferred nearly all the Jews that wanted to leave. That is how Jewish Tetuán was born. There had been a pirate Tetuán in the fourteenth century but it had been destroyed. And only with the arrival of the Jews in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did Tetuán flourish anew as a city.

  How I disappeared that time is a funny story. Back then I had so many enemies that I looked for a double who I paid handsomely to throw my pursuers off the track. One day, on returning from Gibraltar, I found that the man had taken over my identity and told everyone that he was me.

  Only my wife could tell it was not true, but it had been a year since he had died. It happened when I had finished transporting all the Jews, so I let him take advantage of everything. All I wanted to do was to disappear and I went to Tetuán as though I were one of the “Marranos.” Under a year later it became known that the new King of Morocco had decided to confiscate all of Yosef Ruti’s property and condemn him to death. People said that my double went crazy and at the gallows began to scream that he was a Muslim, that he had simply taken my place. It looks like that is how I escaped death.

  Who knows, perhaps if he hadn’t let himself be seen, nothing would have happened to him. Maybe that was his punishment.

  It was during that time frame that the saga of the Benzimra family that you belong to began. I married the first Sol who gave me seven sons and three daughters, from which come all the Benzimra. Then I simply disappeared on a commercial expedition, something very common in those times.

  WHERE ARE THEY TAKING YOU, MY SON?

  “I don’t know. There is a cloth over my eyes. It is a long trip.”

  “I hear the water.”

  “Where there is water, fire cannot burn you.”

  “My memory is burning.”

  “What do you see on the cloth?”

  “I see the only two words in Hebrew that my mother taught me, Shemá Israel.”

  “Pronounce them every day to remember them, and teach them to your children, they will take you again to your people.”

  “I can’t come back papa. You know very good and well that this is a one-way trip, not a circle. There is no exit.”

  THE FATHER

  I judge myself every day. Did I really do the right thing when I decided to go back to Málaga? So that my children would be Jews? What else could I do? In Israel, no matter who I asked, I was always up against a brick wall. Everything I tried ended up with me hitting insurmountable obstacles. Samuel worries me a lot but perhaps he is good. People say that when a boy goes to the army he learns a little about life and becomes a man. He spends the day staggering around with all kinds of friends, going to the beach, from the beach to home, who knows if he would be capable of completing his studies. How much can a man weigh his actions, I can’t regret it now. Now I am here, and here I will die. They will bury me in Málaga. This is closer to Tetuán than to Jerusalem. Who knows if perhaps someday they will expel us from here too? Maybe this will be changed into the neo-Nazi common market. They will get rid of us in different ways. We thought that if the influence of Christianity in Europe weakened, anti-Semitism would lessen. But precisely when Christianity evaporates, a new anti-Semitism appears, scientific, demonic, and pagan. Compared with this, Christian antisemitism was child’s play. And now we think that if Europe unifies, the danger to minorities will decrease, especially the Jews. Wrong. No, no, we can’t really be sure of anything. The communist Jews also believed that in a secular state they would be protected and then, communist antisemitism also began. Expulsion, death, and a nomadic life awaited us at every corner. We take with us, just as we take the coin purse in our pocket, and if I thought the answer could be Israel, that, also, was motivation for other migrations, return to Sefarad. Who could have imagined it there in Tetuán? My mother would tell me “Israel is not for us. It is a lovely state, a lovely country, but it is not for us. We can only live in Sefarad.”

  It seems that, like always, she, half senile, was right. She was old, but she was right. The two years I spent there wasting time are a joke... At myself. . . No matter what I did was reason for humiliation. Everything humiliated me. Even going to the café, ordering a pizza, or a combination plate. Getting on a bus, travelling in a car, seeing how people were squashed together in those pieces of metal placing their lives in danger to demonstrate one is not stupid, everything humiliated me. I felt suffocated all day long. But perhaps, as Coti said, I was too egotistical and sacrificed the future of my sons for my own well-being. Perhaps here,
in one or two generations, there will be no Jews. But after living two years in Israel, I ask myself: Why is it so important to be a Jew? What have they done with this country? For this they have remained Jews for two thousand years, just to create this economic chaos? Maybe yes. Maybe in reality this is the achievement. I don’t know. Maybe this is the goal. I don’t think these people are very smart, at least as a people, they do everything backward or against themselves. One thing is certain, out of all this ruckus some people important to humanity, and they are just half Jews, even less. Just when they assimilated, or their contact with Judaism is scarce, great Jews emerge like Freud, Jesus, Teresa de Jesus, or maybe Cervantes. It could be that the tension of the guilt feelings that makes one distance oneself a little more from the Jewish people is what produces Jewish genius. Certainly during the hundred years of Zionism not one of our writers has deserved world acclaim while in the countries of the diaspora dozens of them have flourished. Isn’t that surprising? Generally national revolutions make great writers but here precisely the opposite occurs. Maybe what gave us an Isaac Bashevis, a Woody Allen, a Bob Dylan, an Edmond Jabés and an Allen Ginsberg was precisely that: feeling guilty for not participating in the Zionist revolution, they set themselves to sewing sutures between Judaism and assimilation. Surely my son Samuel would have fainted if he had known that I once dreamed of being a poet, but now I won’t be. I will sell my textiles in the city of Málaga just as the Benzmira family has always done. Textile merchants for generations. I have closed the circle of Tetuán to Jerusalem and back to Málaga to be a textile merchant. Isn’t that a very strange thing? It’s as though one can never renounce one’s destiny? Will my son also be a textile merchant?

  PATRICK

  I was born in Oran. My father was born in Oran. My mother was born in Oran. But I am from Tetuán. I can’t even say I am an immigrant. Nobody in the family could think we are French or anything other than Tetuanies. Although we lived so far from Tetuán, not really. My grandfather, Samuel Benzimra son of Mesod Benzimra and Clarita Yovel left the Jewish ghetto in 1866. That was four years after the Spaniards returned to Spain. The reason was simple. There was no more room in the ghetto and Jews were not allowed to build new houses. The streets were increasingly stuffed with people, so, well, the rich, who could buy a house in Tangier, in Gibraltar, or in Oran left the city. And the poor, who could not buy a house, had to go to faraway places. Every so often, an epidemic would break out. They called it the tithe. Because of it a tenth of the Jewish population would die.