3 Novellas: Home / Leaving for Jerusalem / The Nobel Prize

by Mois Benarroch

"I’m looking for a book by Menashe Har Esh.

  Someone walked quickly by and suddenly stopped.

  "Menashe Har Esh? Is that what you said? Did you say Menashe Har Esh? ...You must be looking for HOME."

  "Yes, Yes."

  I went over, walked along quickly with him.

  "Why are you looking for this book?"

  "I really don’t know. A childhood memory."

  "Yes, you really look too young to know."

  "To know what?"

  "About ‘HOME’... listen, I did research work on it ten years ago, maybe you can find it in the library. I had four copies of the book, and now I don’t have even one. They tend to disappear then turn up in strange places. Try second hand stores.

  "What is the book about?"

  "This is the question of my research. Look, each one of the copies was different from the other. They all had the same name, without the author’s name. I can’t tell you about the entire research, but it seems that the author intended to write a book whose pages were printed by a cheap laser, each copy was to be different from the others, each reader would find the copy that is right for him, from a hypothesis which seems almost mystical to us today, based on a theory which claims that nothing in life is accidental, that everything eventually falls into place."

  "I don’t understand."

  "It means that for each book there is one reader. I don’t know how many copies were printed. They talked about dozens, maybe hundreds, maybe even thousands."

  "The copies you had, what were they about?"

  "It’s hard for me to answer that. Maybe it was a political book, maybe mystical, a detective novel, a theological journey, philosophy, maybe all of these together, maybe none of them ... but I have a suggestion for you: look for the woman, perhaps she will lead you to what you are searching for. "

  "What?"

  "Always, when you look for something, look for the woman beyond the matter. Maybe his wife, maybe he had a lover or girlfriend at that time, but when you find the book, you can be assured that it’s the only one of its kind, I would even say to you, don’t search for the book, if a copy is to come to you, it’ll come."

  "I did see one copy but the pages were stuck together."

  "Maybe in your search you are stuck on a mistaken idea?"

  "What an idea! It’s only a book that my father showed me when I was five years old."

  "Think about it, maybe there are other reasons for your search, it isn’t enough that your father showed it to you when you were five. There are other books your father showed you when you were five, and you’re not looking for the others, there are many books in general ... more than enough."

  B

  "Mr. Sananes," the editor said to me, "This is a good article, but there are many mistakes. For a new journalist you are promising. What I don’t understand is what is really happening in Jerusalem?"

  "I don’t know," I told him, "I don’t know, it’s as if there is no reality, as if everything happens yet nothing happens, you don’t know who you will meet. Jerusalemites, most of them, feel like they are living under siege. They don’t leave the city, even though there is no danger. I don’t know what they are frightened of. It is as if each of them is wrapped in a bubble that represents their world, each world being different. They do not meet one another, there are those who think that peace has come to the country. Others think that war has broken out everywhere."

  "And the book?"

  "The book ..."

  "HOME."

  "I didn’t find it. I even asked my father and he didn’t remember the book, he is seventy years old, however, he talked about it for years. I don’t understand what happened to that book."

  "And the woman?"

  "Fine, thank—you."

  "No, I mean Menashe Har Esh’s woman and Menashe Har Esh, is he still alive?"

  "I think that he’s still living, but I don’t know how to find him and his book. I go around second hand shops. Maybe it’s a matter of luck, or the opposite."

  "When will you return?"

  "Return where?"

  "To Jerusalem."

  "I’m not coming back. One more week there and I’ll go crazy. If I’m staying there. I don’t believe that a person can leave after a month. People loose their identity there. I have a friend who moved to Jerusalem and when I saw him, he wasn’t the same person. He simply turned into a person from the past, changed his name. It was like talking into space. He was someone else, his way of speaking changed. No, I’m not going back, enough."

  "You must return. I am going to publish your story, I’ll announce that it will continue next month, in the next edition, if you want to continue working here, you better continue working."

  He didn’t say Shalom.

  WITH HIS WIFE AT HOME

  "Leave that work alone. You will always be able to find another job, you don’t have to go back there."

  "Newspapers are closing all the time, this is the best paper in Modi’in."

  Every time David was pressured he would begin talking about his family.

  "My grandfather came to Israel from Morocco."

  "That’s it. Begin with your grandfather."

  "My grandfather’s grandfather traveled his whole life, worked in Brazil, returning every few years to his home and his wife. That’s how he made three children, came home then went back to Brazil, earned money."

  "I never heard about him."

  "Maybe I have family in Brazil. Afterwards, Moshe Sananes, or more correct, Mois Sananes, also wanted to go to Argentina. They offered him management of a Milk Marketing Company, his wife and mother cried and cried. They knew what would be waiting for them if he went, he canceled the whole thing at the last minute. You know, I can see him holding his suitcases, then actually putting them down on the floor and staying in Morocco, in his city, in Benshawen. I can see myself doing that. My grandfather came to Israel and broke down, he said, all the time that he was discriminated against because of his name, because he was from Morocco, he sacrificed his life, or at least that’s what he said, so that his son could live in a Jewish country, that’s my father, who came to Israel when he was 12 years old. He talked with me about discrimination all the time, but he gave birth to me when he was 55 years old. He always talked to me about what would have happened if he had gone to Paris, Madrid, New York, London like all his cousins who became successful. He talked only about those who succeeded. He was everywhere, except for the place in which he was, just like me."

  "How is this connected with Jerusalem?" asked his wife and picked up the two month old baby so as to nurse her.

  "It is has nothing to do with it, or it is all connected with it, my grandfather’s dreams of Jerusalem, I want to feel that I belong to something, suddenly to something continuous, after I changed my name from Sananes to Koresh, I want to know where I come from and where I’m going to. Surely my father suffered when I changed my name, even now I don’t talk to him a lot, and he doesn’t speak. He hasn’t spoken for five years. Maybe my son will change his name, look for his roots, I don’t know, but I have to go to Jerusalem."

  "It’s dangerous there."

  "Dangerous, not dangerous, maybe it’s the safest place. A place of contrast, a place of God."

  "God? ... are you talking about God?"

  "My father talked a great deal about God, about the Temple, the Messiah, then he forgot. He forgot everything. I would also like to forget everything, to go into my brain just like a computer, and erase everything."

  "David, I am afraid that you are going to Jerusalem."

  She hugged him and he pushed her away.

  "I am going to walk a little around Mt. Har Afat. I’ll think more clearly about everything."

  It was late afternoon. On the way to the mountain David passed the second hand book store of David Fogel, a sort of kind grandfather who knew how to talk about books with everyone. In the store there was a loud conversation about two typing errors in a book. "It can’t be," the man said pointin
g so that David could also see, "Here, look, on page 110, WULD is written instead of WOULD. Did you see that? Maybe he wrote that intentionally, since Paul Aster would talk 5 pages later about the egg, I simple don’t believe that Penguin Publishers would make a mistake like that, and in such a famous book as the New York Trilogy."

  "The Egg?" asked the seller.

  "There’s another error. On page 157, instead of the letter a,  appears, but maybe this is the Greek alphabet. This is very confusing. I can’t find any reason for looking at it. How can we accept something like this, and from the Penguin Press, in particular. In this age of 999 computers and Tohu theory...."

  "You know," said the seller, ignoring his new customers, "this book is based on the Theory of Chaos, a somewhat primitive theory concerning the relationship between distant events that was widely accepted fifty or sixty years ago, a rather humorous theory that essentially has brought about the economic downfall of the United States when they tried to implement it in economic terms. I think of so many theories that caused the disintegration of governments and wars that I say to myself that now when we are following theories of Tohu maybe we will also ruin ourselves, the strongest economy in the world."

  The man looked at me and I noticed that he was Chinese. It was clear from the expression on his face that he didn’t understand what was being spoken about and what was being sold. He was tall and thin, a nervous type, perhaps a Virgo, as if he read books so as to look for accuracy and error. A book worm. He left the shop, then I went up to David Fogel.

  "I am looking for a book."

  "Who isn’t looking for a book?"

  "’HOME.’"

  "’HOME’. Menashe Har Esh. Neshamah Press, no date listed, the two copies which were in the National Library were burned in the big fire thirty years ago. It seems it was a very limited printing. There is a certain demand for this book. Once I sold one copy, some years ago, or perhaps months ago, it turns up from time to time. I heard from a customer that professor David Yotuel, of the University of Amman is doing research on this book and maybe it will be reedited by Keness Press in the near future, maybe you should go and speak with him."

  "The University of Amman?"

  "Rabat Ammon, near the Moab Mountains, takes fifty minutes on the Tel—Aviv Baghdad train. "

  "I don’t go to occupied cities."

  "Not really occupied. We handed them over in the Baghdad—Kuneitra Agreement."

  "Well, anyway, doesn’t matter. Does the writer live in Jerusalem?"

  "Used to live there. It’s possible he’s still alive, he should be about seventy, he was very young when he wrote most of his work, but he really didn’t receive any sort of attention."

  "Did you read the book?"

  "Not really. I looked through it, I look through them all. It seems like a sort of philosophical novel, you know, like Javetz, Auster, Galneer — novels like that make me quite tired. I like philosophy and also novels, but separately..."

  He creased up his forehead and continued, as though remembering something important.

  "It was also theological, there was something about the First Temple, it was written in code, like Nostradamus because at that time it was almost forbidden to talk about the Temple, just like during Nostradamus, prophecy was forbidden, there were manuscripts written with every other letter, giving instructions how to take control of the Temple Mount, with many mathematical equations, many dialogues. It was clear that the author was not sure of anything he said, each certitude brought another measure of doubt."

  "Thank you for the details."

  I went up to the mountain and looked out at the lights of the largest Arab city in Israel, Har Aviv, I saw the light rising above Jerusalem. There hasn’t been rain for a long time, I said to myself out loud, and saw, behind me, the Chinese man in the shop saying ‘Shalom’ to me. I saluted him.

  "Do you come here often?" he asked me.

  "I come to this mountain, even though it’s really a hill, I come to Mt. Har Afat to look for answers to questions, the height helps me think."

  "Looking for a book?"

  "Who isn’t looking for a book?"

  "Me, I’ve read them all. I’m now reading them for the second time, because I don’t have anything to do, my wife died two years ago, the children have left home, what do I have to do?"

  I noticed that the man showed absolutely no sign of age, he could have been thirty or sixty, maybe that was because of his slanted eyes, his Chinese origin, or his smooth skin.

  "Maybe you could help me, I’m looking for a book called HOME, have you read it?"

  "HOME, certainly. That is, I’m sure that I didn’t read it. No one has read it. But I’m sure that I read it. It’s a book I’d want to find again, but no chance."

  "That’s not clear."

  "It’s a very strange book, a very few copies were printed. And, each copy is different from the next, not slightly different, rather each copy is essentially another book, I read two of the copies, each was different, and when I finished reading them I burned them."

  "You burnt them?"

  "Yes, because at the end the reader is asked to burn it, this really was convincing, so I burnt it, but even if I wasn’t convinced, in the second book there were two pages of curses directed to the person who doesn’t burn it. So, it turns out, pay attention, that the book must be in the house of someone who hasn’t read it. Surprising, isn’t it?"

  "Yes, truthfully, I saw it in the house of someone who lives in Jerusalem, who said that the book is holy, belongs to a cult that believes in the religion of the state, the pages of the book were completely stuck together."

  "I imagined all the copies of the book. For example, in one of them there would be curses to whoever was to read the book, in another, blessings for whoever

  read the book, another tells about a lonely woman, and yet another about a man who searches for a woman he saw when he was fifteen years old, maybe all the books join together there. The smoke that rises from them, are you paying attention to what I’m saying, in the smoke that rises from the pages, like smoke which comes from the Torah scroll when it is burnt and one can see the letters rising to heaven, that’s where the letters and images join one another."

  "Amazing? ... tell me, do you believe in God?"

  He looked at me with one eye and then the other, and said to me with authority. "Why not?"

  "Why not?! ... I’ve never heard an answer like that."

  "This was my father’s answer, why not? What do you have to lose, you believe in God and that’s it, what does it cost you?"

  "In the same way you can say why yes."

  "Why not?"

  "Why not, or why yes?"

  "You can say why yes, but it seems better to believe in God. You can pray to him when something troubles you, you cannot pray to a non—God when you are in trouble, you wouldn’t pray to someone you don’t believe in."

  "Let’s leave it for now, you’ll never be a theologian. Tell me, did you burn more of Har Esh’s books?"

  "There are no more of his books, all of his books are HOME, maybe a hundred or two hundred books, no less than fifty, I’ve spoken with fifty people who have read it, no doubt they all remembered the book, and each of them talked about another book, no doubt about it, interest in HOME has fallen in the last ten years, well — for sure there are no copies left, or maybe Har Esh from time to time releases a book, another different and strange copy."

  "And puts it in a used books store, maybe sells it, maybe he, himself, sells it."

  "No one knows what he looks like ... it’s possible, you know, entirely possible."

  C

  Jerusalem, winter, cold. The city looks like there’s been a holiday, buildings dressed, as always, in stone, people walking back and forth. For some reason, as a way of distinguishing between other Israelis, their way of walking seems full of deep, fateful significance, as though each step is crucial to the future of humanity.

  I slept in the Jacob Hotel and in the e
vening I drank Razin Brandy, the advertising slogan was ‘Taller than Napolean’ and in the picture you can see a tall bottle of Razin in contrast with Napoleon’s short bottle, which, understandably relates to the favorite drinks of the two generals. From time to time books and articles appear with titles ‘Who Killed Yaacov Razin?’ or ‘In whose interest was it not to save Razin?’ with long debates over whether or not the murderer really murdered him, or was it a police guard who went with him to the hospital, or if his second in command was interested in his death, it’s just that no one remembers the name of his second in command or any of the ministers of his government, all of whom died in different, strange beds. It all begins to be somewhat tiring. Reminiscent of Simone Bolivier in Venezuela — Razin Square, Jacob Boulevard, Jacob Hotel, Jacob Cake, Jacob Razin Shoe Store, Razin Hamburger Chain, why not?"

  The followers, praying to the false gods of the Church of Peace in the name of Razin. seem to be especially dangerous. They believe that in name of Peace, one must overcome and kill the opposition, like during the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, like Christianity thousands of years ago.

  I continue walking in Jerusalem and come to the Softic Church, its founder St. Bill originated the idea that God is a computer. He built a computer which improves itself by ten percent each year. People come to stare at this marvel, which, understandably, although I don’t really know why this is so understandable, is in Jerusalem. The name of the program is God, and we are in the 70th God cycle, according to his believers when the 1000th program for God arrives, it can create an alternative world, and in this world the followers of St. Bill plan to live.

  I wonder if it’s possible to ask the computer about a book I’m looking for. They say that you can ask anything you want, the only thing is that each question costs 200,000 zuzim.

  "Twenty year’s salary?!" I’m amazed.

  "But it’ll have an answer for every question."

  "Okay, I’ll ask the editor."

  A woman of about fifty waited for me outside and said: "I have an exact copy of the Softic program and I can do the work for you at a quarter of the price."