B002FB6BZK EBOK

by Yoram Kaniuk

  He didn't even know how to formulate the question. I liked that.

  Staged regards, I said, embarrassed.

  He said, Who? And now some tone of violence was heard in his voice, which Boaz would explain to me later, was in my voice when I told him to come to my house and bring Menahem's poem, a violence of those pressed to the wall who don't have any more words.

  I told him: I've got a neighbor, he asked me, in fact he didn't ask but demanded, really, to deliver something to you and what he wanted to deliver to you is hard for me to deliver, courtesy obliges me to forget his request, while another obligation, a higher one, obliges me to tell you ...

  He smoked another cigarette and I knew I couldn't avoid it, I saw that in his eyes, the lighter was crushed in his gigantic hand, I thought of talking to him about lost wars, but I said: My neighbor said he's the scion of somebody named Secret Charity which means in German ...

  I understand the name, he said quickly, what did he say?

  He said to tell you, that scion ... He's the son of his great-grandson, he said in German, now he tried to smile, stubbed out another cigarette in the ashtray, and when he lifted his finger, I saw that it was stained with ash, he looked at me for a split second, took the lighter out of his hand, moved it to his other hand, lit it, I waited but he didn't take a cigarette out of the delicate case, and only raised his hand pensively and again tried to smile, like somebody caught red-handed he put down his hand put out the lighter and put it in his coat pocket. I said quickly: He asked me to ask you to give him back his daughters! I felt the blood drain out of my face. I was afraid to look at him. He gazed a bit, his eyes slowly shut, tense, a long time passed and maybe the time was short and I only imagined that it was long, and then he said in a voice that suddenly sounded as if it came from the other end of the room: Maybe that's why I came here, for somebody to ask me for his daughters.

  For some reason I believed him, there was no pleading in his voice, no asking for forgiveness, no evasion. He said simply what, maybe, he had to say. I looked at the picture of the Shimonis' son, the room disappeared, I no longer saw the people. Our association was total, isolated, and then the German said to Henkin who builds castles in frail air: Ebenezer didn't have daughters, Mr. Henkin, like Samuel Lipker, his adopted son, he sells lampshades that weren't made from his parents!

  Something in me revolted, even though I didn't understand the meaning of the words, I was filled with a vague longing to run away. I remember the first time we went to see my son's grave. When I stood at the gate of the cemetery I wanted to flee. As if my son was waiting for me there. I thought about circles; I go outside my room and there is no Giladi, a new neighbor lives there, works a garden, talks about north Tel Aviv, I then investigate the history of the Last Jew, and the Last Jew I investigate is named Ebenezer, why did he ask me for daughters he didn't have? Ebenezer, the one I investigated, didn't have daughters, he had a son, the son's name wasn't Samuel Lipker, what's the connection to Marar, to Boaz Schneerson, to Germanwriter? From what side does the sea die near my house, an old man once asked me on the seashore during an evening stroll, how are you sure that Hitler is dead? Did you see his body? How do you know? Germanwriter is talking and I'm listening to him slowly through my thoughts; they held a meeting for me at the Writers' Union, he said, it was hard, what I saw that morning at Yad Vashem was still echoing in me, not that I ever wanted to forget. They spoke, and something brings you close but nevertheless an accusation was heard in their words, what could I tell them? That I've already spent years investigating the history of the Last Jew, the great-grandson of Secret Charity? No, don't say a word, Mr. Henkin, I know what you do, so I asked to meet you, wait, maybe you don't know or you didn't know that Ebenezer Schneerson is the Last Jew.

  Schneerson? I asked and felt my legs growing cold.

  Schneerson, he said, your neighbor! Look, Mr. Henkin, I'm so sorry but he doesn't have and didn't have daughters! At that meeting with the writers one writer spoke excitedly; he said: We live in a world where people walk around who at night dream dreams that terrify them, he meant meThis is a land woven of nightmares of two hundred, three hundred thousand people and this venom of theirs is the texture of our life, he said, the foundation of this tribe that stands with a flag in hand under eighty meters of water, and then he said to me: Here's my friend, acquaintance I would say, his name is Boaz Schneerson, he thought he lost his father in an awful disaster, but his father, whom he didn't know at all, returned after forty years, and they don't know one another....

  You understand Mr. Henkin, there are a lot of people here, not Ebenezer, not him, who really believed that awful absurdity that I may be able to return their daughters to them, what I really came to do is to return Ebenezer's daughters even though he didn't have any daughters.

  I listened, I thought about Boaz, about my neighbor, I tried to believe everything I was hearing, that I wasn't dreaming and indeed I wasn't dreaming, he said those words and I was silent and listened. I tasted the wine I saw in a glass standing nearby; it tasted disgusting but it cooled me. And I sipped the wine again. And the writer said: Ebenezer who's the son of the great-grandson of Secret Charity.

  I said scion, I said.

  Yes, the son of his great-grandson, he said without listening to me at all, he's waiting for me. In the special language of Samuel Lipker whom you may not know, he asked you, Mr. Henkin, to bring me to him. We should go, ah, this party is starting to weary me.

  I poured myself another glass of wine. Jordana came to us and tried to smile, I couldn't respond to her, and the writer said to Jordana: Call Mr. Givon from the Foreign Ministry for me a minute, I want to tell him something, my legs are heavy and I can't get up. She looked at him and I looked in her eyes and they were empty. The man from the Foreign Ministry came and we, two tame dogs, we looked at him and didn't know him. I drank more wine, the Germanwriter also sipped and Mr. Givon, splendidly dressed fitting his position, bowed to us and my neighbor on the sofa said to him: I'm going with Mr. Henkin and Givon said to him, Fine, tomorrow morning at ten we'll come get you. Please don't forget the luncheon with the Foreign Minister ...

  From my perspective, the German's leg looked like a mountain. I looked at the fold of his trousers, which was sharp and precise, I saw a spear. Beyond the boulevard a light was gleaming and from some hidden window came rhythmical, distant music, I drank more wine until the glass I was holding remained empty and one drop rolled around on the glass and left a delicate trail behind, a small drop of blood, small as a miniature galaxy in the process of final destruction.

  When I reconstruct today what happened then, I remember that I was amazed. I started drinking everything that came to hand, from half-empty goblets, from bottles on the table, while the German drank in a more controlled manner, like somebody who's used to drinking, munched roasted peanuts, and then I knew I was drunk. The writer begged pardon and said he had to go to the bathroom a moment, he wandered toward the corridor and I pondered something that had happened long ago, in my childhood. It was the night of the Passover Seder, I drank wine then and went out of the room, I went up to our attic, I found there the piles of my father's books, textbooks, reading books, sex books, forbidden stories including a small booklet titled The Tale of Reb Joseph de la Rayna and His Five Students by Solomon Navarro. The subject of it had a name that was destroyed, and I read it drunk and shocked, and later on, that story is etched so deep in my memory-and that was the one and only time until that evening that I got drunk-until I wrote the first study in the Land of Israel on the case of Joseph de la Rayna. In that story I found some apocalyptic meaning for our enterprise here. For the great spiritual revolt. As I said it was my first study and as far as I know that study of mine preceded many greater scholars than I. And to this day I keep a letter of congratulations from Bialik about that study of mine that was published in 1912. Once in a moment of anger I even called my son Joseph, and when he wanted to know why, I told him the story and back then I didn't have time f
or my son as I do today, and he, for some reason, copied the story into his notebook and from then on whenever he rebelled-and he rebelled so many times-he'd turn to me with his refreshing and open laugh and say: Henkin, I bring salvation and I ask him, how, by pinching a little girl's behind? And he told me something like: Why don't you say ass, Henkin, why behind or buttocks? And how do you know I don't bring salvation? And I try to explain to him the tragic, pathetic structure of the yearning for revenge the enormous need for salvation, for breakthroughs and breakthroughs, talk about chains, about the sense of impotence toward the creation and the sense of betrayal of the nation but in vain.

  Now I could have fun with my real son, not the Menahem Jordana is in love with, not my son that Boaz Schneerson created for me, but the one my wife shaped in her heart, impetuous, loving the sea, and I got up, my head spinning, the teacher Henkin who placed thirty-four generations of students walks like a drunkard, my son is smoking in the shelter, I approached the Shimonis who separated me from the wall opposite, the wall where my features were still stuck between the Bedouin ruin and the etching of Goethe. Gallantly, I took Mrs. Shimoni's pure, wrinkled hand, kissed it, and said to Jordana: Eat a plastic tomato, Jordana, and Mrs. Shimoni looked at me with measured, chilly defiance, she wasn't used to seeing me lose my poise and here I am a fool in her eyes, mischievous, and she tries to formulate something against me, something her son will transmit to my son, that's what we always do, bring our sons not only for the sake of closeness but also for the sake of conflict, listing virtues in our sons they didn't have, blazing up toward the dark death where our sons are cut up for a new fabric, and they're exaggerated there immeasurably and Mrs. Shimoni smiles at me, we're too sad to be vindictive, guardians of sin or judges, only wondering sometimes, and she smiles as if she understood at long last, everybody has his own apostasy, even Obadiah Henkin, and Jordana looks at me, knows me here and knows me in my house, half and halved, smiles an overly professional smile, and Mrs. Shimoni softens, forgives me, that awful need to remain loyal, Jordana glances at her, her hand held out in that same gallantry in which I kissed it, and I go to the wall, maybe, I don't see exactly ... Contradictory thoughts in my mind and then the German's handsome wife appeared, introduced herself, a few words of parting were said, hands were shaken with exaggerated fervor, and the writer pressed on me with his outsized body and the wife said, My name's Renate, and I said Obadiah Henkin, he hugged my arm hard but gently and pulled me outside, Jordana tried to get to me, to catch my eye, maybe I saw a laugh on the lips of 'sixty-seven, but it was hard for me to create contact, and we left, Renate walked behind us, the door slammed.

  My legs were heavy, I felt my body pulling me down and yet my head seemed weightless, in the staircase it was dark and I looked for the switch. And the German, even though he was such a well-known writer, didn't know how you illuminate Israeli staircases. With light legs, maybe too light, I searched for the switch with my hand stroking the walls. My hand came upon the doorbell of the neighbors' apartment, hit a bracket where a lamp or a mailbox may once have hung and then suddenly the light came on, and my hands on the wall were white with plaster, even my nose was white and the German lady was wiping the plaster with her finger. We went down the stairs and stood in the entrance hall, facing the gray-white brick wall that remained as a shelter from the days of World War II. I saw clearly-sharpened by my drunkenness-the soot of a cigarette crushed in a slot between two bricks. Renate also looked at the spot of soot illuminated by the dim light from the staircase so that those bricks, two bricks and between them was a spot, those bricks were lighted more brightly than the other bricks and when Renate stared at the spot next to the wall of darkened stones I saw how proper and handsome her clothes were: she wore a light gray Indian silk blouse, a faded scarlet skirt, a necklace of small delicate pearls, while she attached a restrained dark black comb in her hair. We walked slowly toward the car parked not far from there. The German opened the doors and for some reason I was glad it was an Escort assembled in Israel, and I, mocked by my son for knowing every article by Ahad Ha-Am and not knowing the difference between a tile roof and a DeSoto, I now know the names of cars, their virtues, from my incessant rambles I learned to know the capacity of a motor, what is a gearshift, whether the car is automatic or front-wheel drive and it was terrific of me to know for him not only yearnnnnings, as he'd say, or what difference does it make but what are Ford and Fiat and Escort. The German asked where we were going and I wanted to tell him: Ebenezer lives on Deliverance Street but I said: Go north here, and on Nordau Boulevard you turn left and ...

  The newly painted gate was gleaming in the silvery moonlight, I wanted to point to the rose and geranium bushes, my lightness was beginning to dissolve, the sea peeped through the two trees in front of our houses and somebody had already started grooming and pruning them, in that epidemic of resurrecting the gardens that had broken out in the neighborhood. I saw the shutters shift a moment, the flash of my wife in the cleft of the shutter, and when we went inside Hasha Masha was sitting under the sheaf of her light, forlorn, torn from the world, the light flattered her, I could see her beauty in the eyes of strangers too. Germanwriter and Renate his wife were bracketed in the door, next to the white spot I hadn't repainted, where I had once torn off the mezuzah in rage. The dull gleam in Renate's eyes grew even duller, I glanced at her, from where she stood, in the presence of the gloomy room she fished up the face of my wife and I saw how she was seduced by the beauty of Hasha Masha, how she warmed to her, maybe the wine sharpened my senses that I hadn't known before, and the light, more than flattering her emphasized her powerlessness, her clinging to a certain moment in her life. She looked at the opened door, at the two strangers, captured by Renate's eyes and suddenly she got up as if all those long hours she had been waiting only for them, slammed the door behind them, and was stirred to life. She held out her hand to the writer and his wife, and I wondered what had made my wife suddenly so calm, so domesticated, there wasn't a trace of the contempt or anger in her I'd usually see when I'd bring strangers home. She was glad, really glad to hold out her hand to Renate. She looked at her a long time and when Renate wanted to kiss her cheek she refused but with a friendly evasion, without challenge, as if it was a delaying tactic, the kiss grazed Hasha Masha's hair, and in her eyes a smile of sisters in sin ignited, which I couldn't understand except as a joke, since Renate looked at her and smiled too.

  And as the two of them were looking at one another, the German was looking at pictures hung in our house, landscapes by the painter Shot, a small photo of my son, the heavy drapes, the old, simple furniture, and then Renate sat down. She sat on the front of the chair, her legs held tightly together, I wanted to tell her: No one will throw you out of here, but I didn't know what Hasha Masha had given away in her rare smile. The German was busy with some thought, as if he was and wasn't here at one and the same time, he smoked his cigarette, measured the face of my wife, his face became hard, maybe that was a challenge, maybe a measuring, I said in Hebrew: They're terrific and they want to meet our neighbor, but my wife wasn't listening to me at all, she hadn't even noticed my rare drunkenness, the German exhaled smoke from the cigarette and a cloud of smoke suddenly filled the room and Hasha Masha said to Renate in German I never knew she could speak, Come with me to the kitchen, I made cookies and cheesecake and there's also tea and coffee. For years she hadn't made anything for guests, the fact that she had clearly expected them to come perplexed me even more than her German, Renate almost skipped from the chair and the two women, who, despite the difference in their height, in a strange way looked like one another, were about to go to the kitchen but at that very moment Renate stared at the closed album, stopped a second, trembled, and Hasha Masha, who was attentive to her, came to the table, put a finger on the album and then on Renate's pale face, and then the two of them quickly took off for the kitchen, we were left alone in the room, the album was illuminated by the beam that always fell on Hasha Masha's head, shadows on th
e walls, my head was now light and elusive.