by Yoram Kaniuk
And then the two men started talking, the two women and I were silent, Renate sipped a small glass of sherry from time to time and the tall blue woman gave us cookies and tiny tasty pastries and later some cold beet borscht. The two men talked about the German's investigation of the Last Jew, the book he wanted to write, and I, the "great" scholar of the man, was silent. I tried to ponder the chain of events taking place before my eyes, I thought of the stormy winter day when I came back from my daily walk on Ben-Yehuda Street, not so long ago, it was raining hard, and I was soaked, trying with all my might to hold onto my hat so it wouldn't fly away and then I saw Ebenezer standing in the garden and watering. It was so surprising that I forgot it, a person watering a garden in a downpour, maybe that was the first time I saw him and I didn't yet notice him, and then the rumors about the Giladis, the stories about the real estate agent sniffing around in the street, I recalled how one day in a meeting at the Shimonis, I thought of the new garden and then Mrs. Shimoni said something about the science of widowhood and bereavement, she talked about a curriculum to be proposed to the Ministry of Education and to be taught according to her by widows and orphans. She said she had discussed that with a famous psychologist and the psychologist wrote a monograph about the Israeli theory of bereavement, how "the togetherness" of committees like ours dulls the pain and maybe people should be taught before the disaster happens to them to spare them the hard years we all went through until we found a way to live with the disaster.... I thought then about the garden, maybe even then I pondered the Last Jew, I thought she was talking about how (like her) you grow plants against solitude, how you buy dolls jumping out of cigarette boxes (or plastic vegetables), against pain, how you move out of your house and start talking about the deceased-as she put it-in the present tense! And then the poem written by Menahem was mentioned and it was said that poems and essays and letters should be filed long before death, children should be taught not to throw away things like poems, essays, photos their parents can use afterward, and I was terrified and shouted but they didn't pay attention to me and yet there was some relationship to me in those things since I was the person who found a poem by his son and they didn't know that the poem wasn't written by Menahem and how the sex kitten of our dead looked at us then and I thought how that dark plot was hatched to blend us, to bring here a Last Jew who would touch what was concealed in my yearnings, I thought about Friedrich, the Germans' son, did he die by electricity or gas, suddenly that was really important ...
In my house, about fifty meters away from that room, two hundred typed pages were lying on the table. Everything was ready there for me to continue my investigation, but now I learned things I had never realized, things the files I had examined and the tapes I had listened to hadn't taught me at all, like Menahem my son I didn't write my poem either, the German wrote it, I listen to the conversation between the two men, how close they are to one another ... still groping, as if that was a postponed lifeor-death meeting, and in the end I was the messenger boy. I looked at Renate's eyes. They were damp but she wasn't crying. I saw in her eyes a spark of understanding, as if she were saying to me, Look, Henkin, how they're playing, how they're trying to touch one another, their eagerness to play a game considerably obscures their ability to triumph over one another, there's no need to play now, Ebenezer, said the German, I shouldn't have given a sign, I would have found you.
I needed a sign, said Ebenezer and poured himself another glass. They drank, and then Ebenezer smiled: The daughters! You don't remember things, said the German, everything was internal signs, what do you remember? You remember only your knowledge, so you didn't have to make an effort, Secret Charity is also a memory you learned from somebody else, you don't even remember who you are!
That's right, said Ebenezer. I'm a man without qualities, that's what they said at the institute.
The German wanted to say something but stopped himself more for us than for Ebenezer. He drank another glass and groped for Ebenezer's hand. I was searching for you, said the writer.
He was searching, said Renate and my wife opened her eyes wide and looked at her with a sympathetic smile. He asked and investigated said Renate, they didn't know, even in the Foreign Ministry they didn't know.
Ebenezer is a small person in Israel, said Ebenezer and shut his eyes to remember who he was, ID number 454322, no papers, only the health service and an election stub. The number there like a number on the arm. One number more, that's all.
Ebenezer was silent and looked at him, he tried to imagine his mother Rebecca. He couldn't remember, he tried.
And the son?
Here Ebenezer woke up, an echo of personal memory struck him, he said: Ask Henkin.
I was silent and looked at my wife. A stub of a smile hung on her lips, but even if she was thinking of Boaz Schneerson, she didn't say a thing.
And then the German said: When was that? 'Forty-six?
And Ebenezer who had almost shut his eyes, opened them wide and said: I don't remember, tell me, tell me why you were searching for me today, why did I want to see you. Before, when I wanted to recite, why did you stop me? You want to tell me something about me, about yourself, tell, what I remember I say, but I don't have a personal memory and what I do have is worthless anyway!
Yes, said the German, now more for us than for Ebenezer, who was listening intensely, it was in 'forty-six. I was living in Zeeland then, in a little village, about an hour from Copenhagen, I rented a neglected old schoolhouse among estates and farms, I renovated it a little, and in the big room next to the giant window, looking at the beautiful monochromatic landscape, I sat and wrote. In my youth I learned Scandinavian languages. My mother was of Danish extraction, I didn't want to live in Germany then. One day I had to go to Copenhagen to buy writing supplies and a coat for the approaching winter. I had practically no money and I saved on the trip, but I had no choice. I walked in the street whose name I don't remember today and a young man came to me, about seventeen years old, and introduced himself as Samuel Lipker the impresario, as he said, he spoke German to me and was the first man who knew as soon as he saw me that I was German. He said he was an American of Norwegian extraction who had been imprisoned in a Jewish concentration camp. I looked at him. He had eyes that were both awful and beautiful, enveloped by violet eyebrows, green mixed with gold, in his look you could perceive a bold Satanism but also some softness, he measured his words carefully, and something in the way he stood made you uneasy. He talked as if he were telling a secret: If you want to see a performance of a tremendous artist, a reincarnation of the magician Houdini, who was also, as you know, a Jew, come this evening to the Blue Lizards Club, and you won't be sorry. Then he smiled at me pleasantly, the smile of an accomplice in crime and said, So see you, Hans. I said to him, My name isn't Hans, and I started talking Danish to him but he laughed and said: Hans Kramer, SS. Dening. I know you, you've all got a fried smell of God in your pocket, and all the time he smiled at me, See you, Hans, and went off. A lot of swindlers were hanging out in Europe at that time, selling churches, nonexistent cities, whatnot, the boy was a broken vessel but his German made me curious, the page he gave me and that I held in my hand said in a broken language that Ebenezer the Great is the Last Jew, scion of a family of rabbis descending from the Prophet Jeremiah and today he is the human calculator who can't be beaten or defied. That evening, said the mimeographed sheet, the Last Jew would perform in the Blue Lizards Club and everybody who came would leave intoxicated.
I bought what I came to buy, it was raining again, I walked in the rain and I thought: I'll go back to the village, the train leaves in about an hour, I'll go back and write, every minute's a waste. But a cold wind was blowing and I went into a small restaurant, ate something, and then didn't find a bus and I got into a cab and when I wanted to say: Take me to the railroad station, I saw a glowing sign in the distance: Jesus is the Messiah! I said to the driver: The Blue Lizards Club, and I dozed off.
I went down a few dark steps
and entered a roofed internal yard. A short man in a suit smelling of garlic mixed with kerosene asked me for the price of admission.
Ebenezer now got up from the chair, went to the window and looked outside. His body was trembling. In the window the moon started setting. A pale glow rose from the street lamps along the old enclosure of the port. The writer took a sip of vodka, munched a few peanuts, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin stuck in a charmingly beautiful wooden triangle, and continued.
The dank hall was quite big and humming with people. I sat in the last row as if I had learned their theory of safety from the Jews. Always be close to an escape route. Two shabby musicians sat on the little stage and played. They played Hasidic tunes and their eyes were shut, and I wasn't sure they knew where they were, I thought at the time about what the English had said about Wagner, that his music was probably nicer on the ear when it wasn't heard. The tunes were shrill, not precise, without pain or laughter. Maybe there was some point to that revolting playing. A waiter wearing an apron came to me and even though I hadn't ordered anything, he served me a double shot of aquavit and when I finished drinking the aquavit two glasses of beer were brought to my table, along with a few pickles and herring with some small onions and a pinch of cheese in a copper bowl that wasn't especially clean.
Now that fellow I had met in the street climbed onto the stage, in the same clothes, and shouted Heil! And the people laughed and applauded flaccidly as if they only put their hands together and their laugh was also definite but blurred. The musicians flowed to the back of the stage and fell asleep sitting up and I felt some fraternity in the hall, as if everybody knew each other from time immemorial and I was the only stranger there. My being German filled me with dread. I looked behind, the doorway was close by. The man at the entrance stood there, didn't look at the stage, but at the ceiling, I looked at the ceiling and saw silvery cigarette packs pasted to it. I thought about German soldiers who had spent time here and that only increased my uneasiness, the fellow smiled, I looked back at him when there was a hush in the hall, he said: I'm Lipker, remember? Danny from America. Ebenezer and I are glad to return to beautiful Copenhagen. Some of you suffer from ailurophobia, fear of cats, or androphobia, fear of men, or optophobia, fear of opening one's eyes, or some suffer from the typical American disease, archinutirophobia, fear of getting peanut butter stuck on the palate, or even who suffer from phobophobia, fear of fear, all those, said Samuel Lipker with a smile, are requested to leave now and you'll get your money back.
He put his hand on his pocket. As if all the treasures of the globe were in his pocket, nobody got up, he stopped smiling. If you don't laugh, said Samuel Lipker, it means that we really have come to Copenhagen. And that's good. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome in total silence the genius, the man who possesses the most knowledge in the world, the memory of all generations, on two feet, millions of words by heart, welcome the Last Jew!
And then Ebenezer, you climbed onto the stage, you wore the clothes in which you welcomed us tonight. You were pale, a hush was cast over the audience, they were waiting for you, and when you appeared, Samuel said: Birthplace-Palestine. Education-six years of grammar school. Loyal remnant of the Third Reich, carpenter, you didn't listen, you stood there, flooded by the spotlight shining on you, you shut your eyes, Samuel whispered a few words and only you heard, you didn't respond, didn't move, stood as if you were praying, stooped over, you looked like a pauper, you'd evoke pity and contempt and then Samuel said in a monotone that may have been a signal to you: Ladies and gentlemen, set your watches three years back, the time is seven twenty a.m., snow is falling, gray, smoke, two cows are electrocuted on the fence, January, a train rumbles. And you were concentrated on one point, stooped over, wretched, like an epileptic, and the audience-that amazed me-set their watches, as if you really could set watches three years back and a few minutes later, time no longer existed, and I say minutes and maybe it was hours, a voice sounded from the audience: Einstein's theory of relativity. I waited, it was possible to hear the dead herring in the onion sauce, and then you recited, you recited quietly, in a monotone, in Polish, and then in Danish, the theory of relativity. When you spoke Polish, Samuel translated, and I knew a little Polish, my father was in charge of propaganda in Poland for a while, and my son, you don't know, committed suicide after the conversation with my father, a conversation my father demanded and I opposed, he demanded that the grandson know and not wonder and after that you were asked to recite other things, the audience knew what to ask, what to request, they knew you, they loved you, maybe they hated you, I don't know, and yet it was so touching, I drank my two glasses of beer, I ate the herring, and you recited Jewish knowledge, Danish was also Jewish knowledge as far as you were concerned, you recited in great detail the annals and strange deaths of Christian saints and the annals of their authentication, you quoted with maximum precision (I checked it later) the love affairs of the popes up to the fourteenth century. Then you recited the annals of the Jews of Spain and the system of counting used at the time of the Talmud, and I listened in despair, I enjoyed and was absurd in my own eyes, excited. You entertained, it was awful, you stood at your own end and you laughed, because you knew things that shouldn't be known, that nobody can or should know by heart. You were an acrobat of words, annals, history, and the audience loved you, loved the disgust and the entertainment, they were tired, it was after the war, hunger reigned, you amused them, they drank their beer, ate the herring and the shreds of cheese, and listened.
Henkin the teacher, thinks Teacher Henkin, is sitting in a house that is both familiar and unfamiliar, he is looking at the subject of his investigation and his ears are surely burning, Hasha Masha looks at him, does she feel compassion? Henkin investigated the history of the Falashas. The story of Joseph de la Rayna, Masada and Yavneh. Survival versus the fever of revolt, wrote about the greatest heroic speech written in the history of Judaism, the patriotic speech every Israeli student learns by heart, the speech of Eleazar ben Yair about Masada, written by Josephus Flavius, that is, Yohanan the Traitor who commanded the siege of Yodfat, sur rendered, joined the Romans and wrote the history of their war against the Jews and with his own hands wrote the speech of great hope, the dying speech of Eleazar ben Yair. Only if you steal the victory from the Romans will you be remembered and that's how the Jewish memory was born, and the Last Jew is its last product, or perhaps not the last ...
Some time ago I read in the paper that they were seeking soldiers at a salary of two hundred pounds a day for the Roman army. They were making a movie about the Masada revolt. And they really did set their watches back. In the Land of Israel, written time didn't exist then, Henkin, Hebrew time has its own logic. That attempt of mine to write about Ebenezer is my last attempt. And now it was stolen from me, too, a good writer doesn't have to be a commander of a bad camp.
I look at the big cabinet to the left of Ebenezer. Three squares constitute the center of each door of the cabinet. Made of veneer, so many shades of brown and beige and yellow and black that isn't exactly black but isn't brown either, woven into one another, etched with wonderful acrobats, winding and cunning, lacquer backgrounds, delicate work of stripes and slats, some intelligent musicality, for with his own hands Ebenezer had built that cabinet just as he had built the grandfather clock, and all the other furniture of the house, and had even carved the birds.
Who would have wasted days and nights to bring the wood to such a charming and complex decadence, to rinse the lacquer to lechery like some artificial rain, like a sweet psalm to wood, subdue the tones to a marvelous harmony, and he stands here before me, the father of Boaz who destroyed my life and recites not to me, not to his great investigator, but to a German who tossed into the fire the last of the blacksmiths, the last of the carpenters, the last of the great artists, the last of the kings where a single violin played on the millions of their graves, Jewish entertainers in Warsaw, the electricians, the physicians, the great adulterers, that sadness that was thrown into
the fire, two-fifths of an American cent, I look at the cabinet, who will still build such cabinets? You, Ebenezer? The world that wanted you to disappear comes to applaud you in nightclubs ... And soon it's morning, they drink tasty, cold borscht, with a little sour cream, chilly, a pleasant wind blows from the sea, and the German says, Henkin brought me, he doesn't even know who you are!
I knew and I didn't know, I stammered pensively.
He knew and didn't know, said my wife with a laugh that was not devoid of warmth.
And Boaz, said my neighbor.
A fine dog, said my wife, a purebred, green and gold eyes, charm and devilishness.
A purebred, said my wife, son of a father who fled from him to be a Last Jew, took a great lust to kill a Jew, took Noga and Menahem Henkin, and Obadiah, my dear doesn't understand, the love that was suddenly kindled in her.
Renate got up and gave Hasha Masha a cookie. Hasha Masha gnawed on the cookie from Renate's hand. The German was silent, took a pack of papers out of his pocket and leafed through it, then he said: These are letters you wrote me, Ebenezer, and Ebenezer scanned the letters in the glow of the neon light and my wife fell asleep or perhaps only shut her eyes with a cookie in her mouth. Renate stroked my wife's head and started conducting an invisible chorus as if we were now to hear the singing of dead angels.
