B002FB6BZK EBOK

by Yoram Kaniuk

  In the doorway of the apartment of the Committee of the Dead stands Obadiah Henkin. A charred smell of his son rises in me. A German saving matches tosses my son straight into the fire, how much is two-fifths of an American cent in Israeli money? Sturmbahnfuhrer of literature counts matches and I come to meet him, how do the bereaved parents of Jewish children look in his eyes? My neighbor sends regards with a poem. Marar, from Marar, he sends regards, south, there Arabs were expelled sir, surely you weep for their fate, I can imagine that, and justly, and unjustly, a Yemenite woman beams at me in the doorway of the sanctuary of the Shimonis who have never lacked money, filing pains, come in, shaking hands, smiling, everything's professional, organized, very formal, one of the veteran Hebrew teachers, and I thought about Jordana's devotion to us, about her beauty wasted on us. Of all the sons, she told me, I love Menahem the best. At first I was amazed at the phrase, then I got used to it, as if it were obvious that of all the sons she'd choose Menahem, I would almost have married them off to one another, in moments of nightmare, at night, maybe against Noga, between one dozing and another. And when she came to our house and Hasha Masha looked at her suspiciously but also graciously, with a certain compassion, but without contempt, she didn't give in, wanted to see the photos again, to hear the poem Menahem wrote, spoke angrily of Noga who was unfaithful to Menahem and went to live with Boaz, back then she surely didn't know Boaz. I wanted to say to her: Look, Menahem died many years ago, you were then four, five, six years old, but she'd fix me with a wild look, ardent and virginal at the same time, what's the difference? As if love or life really could be divided into periods, everything is one piece, and if I've got our Menahem, why shouldn't she? Maybe Jordana was his great love? And she smiles a professional, almost cold smile at me, surely I know her dark side, when she sits in my house and loves my son with a desperate love. Here in the Shimonis' house, she's on duty, frozen, modest, smiling, embracing her dear parents, who knows how many of them were previously her lovers, and she dropped them for Menahem, her great love, what do I know? I know that there were two men in her life, something happened to both of them, they said of her that she kills men. They're afraid of her. She brings bad luck, they said, and ever since then enclosed in the department of commemoration, letters, poems, memorial books, statues, always willing to help, to run to the printers, to study, to find material, to find contributions or grants, and surely Menahem her great love was a fake Menahem, not the one that was but the one I made up out of Boaz's lies. But she loves him and I won't rob her of him, what do I understand about love? When my only love is Hasha Masha sitting now and loathing me in her heart and yet loving me in her own way, as if her malice is a dim yearning of flesh ...

  Everybody eats, standing or sitting, talking, Germanwriter sits in a corner, in the green armchair, surrounded by human beings and he notices me and something strange, mysterious lights up in his eyes for a moment and goes out, I think of Jordana, look at her, I think of the German, of his look, is that regret? Is that vengeance? Is that an impossible measuring to see the condemned after what happened, to measure them for the death that is destined and withheld from them?

  Here they are, all of them, the Davids, the Cohens, the Sackses, the Ilans, all the parents Jordana and I assemble, connecting their nights of terror to days of tours to the Golan, Sinai, Jerusalem, air force bases, to places where the great battles took place, I tasted the delicacies Mrs. Shimoni served me, naturally I was careful not to munch the plastic vegetables, not to open by mistake the pack of cigarettes from which a rubber doll jumps out with a sharp screech, the Shimonis' sense of humor was never to my taste, but I envied their ability to laugh even next to the picture of their son, to buy nonsensical objects together in all kinds of places in the world, to return to an imaginary and impossible childhood, and Jordana, as always, knows how to appease, to rout the pain, to organize a group dance of graves. They eat they laugh they drink, and I always inspire here the same respect everybody needs at special moments when a correct quotation of a biblical chapter or of Alterman or Bialik grants metaphysical meaning to a moment, to say solemnly: Maybe once in a thousand years our death has meaning, and to see how they become serious at Alterman's words, aware that they have lost beloved sons, to see a sublime vision beyond the yellowing bindings of the books they've issued in their memory and are now forgotten in dusty cases ... Mrs. Shimoni asked me if I liked the food, I said I never ate a better mushroom pie and she smiled at me, tapped my back and so at long last I could sit. Jordana finished a round of handshaking and hugs in the enormous room, and I could see her stand alone a moment, belonging and not belonging, trying to be drawn out of herself, not to be seen, with her eyes shut she stood, as if muttering a prayer that was foreign to us, everybody was buzzing around her, and then she stepped toward me, her back bent, sat down next to me, pressed her foot and thigh and carefully put her hand on mine, like a secret bride, gently crushed my hand as if her hands were also muttering incantations, and then she opened her eyes that had been shut when she sat down, or perhaps landed on the sofa, and very slowly the flush returned to her face and the smile was stuck in its place and once again she was charming and necessary to everybody and lost to herself. For some reason, I recalled the first time we met, when I came to her on behalf of the Committee of Parents, which was then in its infancy, to help me finance a book about the son of the writer Aviram who wrote heartrending texts about his son and we sat then for long nights and pasted the photos and the writer Aviram compiled lines from various poems and then, at the front of the book, he quoted Alterman: Don't say I came from dust, you came from the stranger who fell in your stead! Jordana now asked me how was Hasha Masha and I knew that in fact she wanted to ask me how was Menahem, but she didn't ask, I said that Hasha Masha was eating vegetable soup and loathing, and she understood, and then when she started comparing my clothes to the clothes of her uncle who was always dressed with splendid restraint and never as an actor in a play like most Israelis, I felt for the first time, after many years, a physical attraction to a strange woman, her body clinging to my body, her thigh to my thigh, her foot to my foot, I can imagine what was going on through the dress, where the legs led, as Menahem once told me when I asked him why he peeped on the stairs toward the second floor of my uncle Nevzal's house where a young woman went up with her dress flying. The secret of our youth, Jordana, on both sides of life, is alien to Menahem, negates him and something rose in me, something that for the first time in years opposed Menahem himself, maybe envied him, not against myself, and the death that led him away from me. Germanwriter still sat opposite, I could see him through the bodies moving in the room. Corruption fills me beside Jordana, she sees me as the father of her lover and I'm surely betraying both of them.

  And then I heard her say in English: Yes, this is Mr. Henkin, and I raised my face, and a big man (now that he stood up I saw how big he was) stood over me, his eyes like two clear lakes, caught in a kind of thin veil as sometimes on the eyes of an aging dog, his face smiled a smile that was forced but also innocent and perfect, a wise smile intellectuals sometimes have, I tried to stand up but my legs became stiff and he said: Sit, sit, and Jordana stood up carefully so as not to cut herself off from my foot too forcefully and she chuckled, a chuckle that was a mixture of sympathetic complaint, See you, Henkin, she said in her official voice, and from now on, the picture of Menahem facing him is a group picture with a Yemenite girl, and the man stood over me, still smiling, a pensive second passed, Jordana was now smiling her saccharine smile at the drinks table, unsheathing fingernails of dry and charming purity (and I surely know her wild lust, her eyes staring at photos of Menahem, staring at his dead flesh) and she disappears now, mingles in the crowd, at the window the crests of the trees of the boulevard can be seen, a moon is shining on them a silvery light and a pleasant chill blows from the window. I didn't know what to do, my hand seemed to reach out by itself, I said: Yes, nice to meet you, my body still bound to the storm taking place in me befo
re my son's fiancee vis-a-vis the bearishness of the German's full body, and then he sat, introduced himself, as if hangmen also have to be polite.

  With his king-size body he completely filled the empty space left by the thin Jordana. His long legs rose a little, stuck to one another, even his head was higher than mine, although when he leaned his head on the back of the sofa and the soft fabric touched his hair, we were almost the same height and now I could peep at his profile. Before his face looked like a hybrid of a giant dog and ancient trees, something soft, kind, but his profile was different, harsh and sharp, his nose that looked a little squashed from the front looked aggressive from the side, arrogant, in his cheeks more existential suffering than real suffering was obvious, something serious, devoid of softness. His profile had some blend of innocent nobility but also soft earthiness, for a moment he even shriveled and became tinier than he really was and instead of Jordana's delightful behind there was now the giant ass of a German, solid, heavy, a man who looked sated but full of remorse, and suffering was stamped on his face, a suffering whose nature I didn't know, my mind was empty.

  I didn't know what to say, I didn't know what not to say, maybe because of the picture of Amnon, the Shimonis' son, hanging across from me, thoughts were contradictory, so maybe I told him: When I was a child we had a sexton who would wait in the corner until the women got up from the bench and would sit down on the bench quickly so his body would absorb the warmth of their bodies, and I tried to laugh, even though he didn't succeed either, the two of us thought about Jordana who had been sitting here before, he tapped me carefully on the shoulder, his hand was manicured, delicate though very big, I spoke broken English and he looked forward toward the backs that were now wildly hugging the girl of our sons' dreams. Mrs. Shimoni walked around with a tray from one person to another, her cleaning woman served drinks, Mr. Shimoni in an amusing Tyrolean hat was standing at the bar and pouring drinks as if the whole thing were a big joke. The sons are laughing at them, I thought, and the German pulled a cigarette out of a handsome silver case, a pleasant smell of good tobacco wafted from it, he offered me a cigarette, I refused politely, he lit it with a gold lighter that seemed to be swallowed up in his gigantic hand, I was afraid he'd be burned but then he put the lighter back in his pocket, inhaled smoke and I could see how nice his suit was, the vest, once I was an expert in such things, an English suit, not stylish, solid, and yet, maybe because of the beautiful scarlet tie, maybe because of the sky-blue shirt, he didn't look like a prosperous merchant but like an artist who doesn't really want to look like an artist, a man of change but he also had the tranquility of clarity, which unites everything into a pleasant unity. And surely that's what we all aspire to, it suddenly angered me that he was such a good writer, as a gift to my son I wanted him to be a bad writer, but some sympathy was ignited in me, a closeness to the man, the expression of his eyes, when he heard my stupid story about the sexton he was gracious and not evasive, looked straight into my eyes, inhaled smoke, and was with me despite the great tumult around us. A picture of a Lag b'Omer bonfire rose in my mind, a gigantic effigy of Hitler was burned, Menahem and his friends sang, Hitler's dead your mother's sick a German submarine, and a woman who declares on the radio: To punish Hitler he shouldn't be killed, he should be brought to the Land of Israel and shown a kibbutz, and how children plant trees. I wanted to laugh but the innocence in his look was greater than the innocence I was thinking about, and that annoyed me, the smoke curled, we were still feeling each other out, a thigh touched my thigh, I thought about the bomb shelter on Halperin Street where my son used to smoke the first cigarettes he'd hide in the first-aid box back then when we sat in the shelters. I thought: I'm drawn to vengeance, maybe because of Jordana, a vengeance that doesn't suit me. The force that came from him, obstinate and cultivated, his hands clasped his knees and the cigarette burning in his hand next to his left knee, he looked at my hand, silence prevailed, and then he said: Maybe you're perplexed, is it because I'm a German? I tried to say something but the words stammered in my mouth, and he went on almost in a whisper, if so I can understand. I'm perplexed, I affirmed, but that's not the issue ...

  If you want me to go, I'll go, he said, over there, and he pointed to a group of people that included a tall handsome woman, there's my wife, you know, he added, and I gauged the resonance of his wife's whispers, "the Jews and the Germans, unlike the Latins, didn't seek or find the perfect form, but always some original amazement prevailed, if an abyss gaped at their feet they looked into it and found emptiness and filled it with hewn, new, cruel substance, some new reading of chaos in which is hidden something that wants to be discovered, some imperfection, a divine imperfectness," said the German and the emphasis of the connection restored me, it was precisely the somewhat awkward Gothic style that drew my heart to his fiction, I loved the practicality he wove from the devils that gushed in him, to which pain do I ascribe you, Germanwriter? Which side do you belong to? You're surrounded here with people, some of them came from your area, they listen to you, maybe you express them better than we do even though they've lived here for years, you express them better than we do, that's a certain failure of culture, of education, of vision .. .

  They're incomprehensible, he said, his eye close to my face became watery, melted in the warmth now coming from him, obstinate, but disguised as pallor, I listen to the German of my readers at the Goethe Institute, they speak the German of my grandfather, of the writers I tried to learn from ... And, without noticing it, we slipped into speaking German and even though I hadn't spoken German for about fifty years, my German wasn't broken, it flowed with a naturalness that was so fluent at first I didn't notice it, and neither did he. The florid language of my father, my educated teachers in Galicia, my uncles, strict teachers, everything came back to me, sat on my tongue, I thought, Culture! Language! He, Germanwriter, is surely the Bialik and the Alterman of thousands of human beings who live here, he's their real geography from which their longings, their loves, and their nightmares are woven, and they're said to be people who live in the past that never had a future and here is their future, somebody who can someday describe them, he lights another cigarette with the gold lighter, maybe Zyklon B, I tell him that sentence about our Germans, he smiles, Really? I don't think so ... It passes ...

  And then I returned to the anger that had permeated me before. There was no closeness between the two nations, that was a one-sided love, the closeness of Jews and Germans, it's a lie, that's what they want to say today, the Jews lived in Cologne before there were Germans there. Ever since then they burned in desolation for fifteen hundred years. They stood on tiptoe and waited for kisses. That was a one-way struggle, sir, not closeness, the German your readers speak here is a language foreign to them, and they don't know, they're tolerated, no more, excuse me, but-

  I know, he said, it's hard to understand ... The Prussian state was founded by Teutonic peasants who came back from a Crusade and studied it here, in Palestine. From here they also brought the glass for the windows of their houses and the Bible and what I talked about before. But what was the switch? What was our eternal fortress? I'm seeking, searching, do you think there is really a chance?

  He fell silent now. People's loud talking was heard, and more than talking, they were yelling at one another. Laughter was heard, somebody maybe munched on a plastic cucumber by mistake. On the walls, aside from the picture of Amnon Shimoni there was a picture of the Empress Theresa, pictures of snowy European landscapes, a photo of the River Zin in the Negev and an aerial photo of Jerusalem with the edge of the wings of the Mirage birds, a gift from the air force for bereaved families. All that was cut off from some possible answer to Marar, an answer to my neighbor whose request still presses on me, to wondering why he wanted to meet me, of all people, surely not to tell me how many readers he has here and how profound is the closeness between the murderers and the murdered, I tried to calm down, I found myself speaking ardently, in a language I hadn't spoken for fifty year
s, I tried to find in front of me an empty strip of wall (something rare in the Shimoni house), between china plates, pictures, objects, the Binding of Isaac drawn on glass and a small portrait of Goethe next to a Bedouin ruin that may have belonged to Amnon Shimoni or maybe the Shimonis bought it themselves, I didn't know, an empty strip of wall suddenly glittered, split off from all the objects and grew bright, next to a reddish shade of chiaroscuro colors on the wall whose whiteness had long ago darkened to a kind of pleasant, old patina yellow, a splendid shade of rust, and there I could imagine my face, without a frame, in a light purple, striped tone, without a face, as if the fading graffiti on the wall blended into the wall and doesn't exist except in the vision I created on the wall, a gesture of the existent toward its image, there I was revised in that nauseating light that now started becoming hard inside me, not toward what was in me but for what I could have been if I weren't formulated by ideas instead of trying to formulate them, and there I found myself, my body clinging to the body of the German and I could understand that bear next to me, smoking the cigarette that turns leaves of elusive bright thin smoke violet and telling him: I've got something to tell you, that is, I was asked to tell you, and he then held the smoke in his mouth, exhaled it very slowly, pensively, ardent but restrained. In my body clinging to him I felt him shrivel, grow hard, a car passed in the street and illuminated the pillars of the boardwalk for a moment and the two of us could look at the bored back of the girl of our sons' dreams, so thin, swarthy, in the white dress, hear our laughter mixed up in the tumult, he stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray and asked: What were you asked to tell me?