by Yoram Kaniuk
Rebecca took an apple out of her pocket, polished it on the fabric of her coat, and bit into it. The bittersweet apple pleased her. Snowflakes started sticking to her coat, she tasted in her mouth the jaws of the dogs preying on the man of her fantasy. Before getting up in the morning, before she opened her eyes, and as usual she counted the dead children she envisioned, she lost her reflection in the window and saw the dead in the obituaries plucked off the synagogue wall and hung over her bed. The dogs' teeth smelled like perfume. She put the dead children into a gigantic suitcase clasped with leather straps.
The suitcase exploded and eyes burst out of it. The eyes were words plucked from the obituaries, they flew in the room and sought a hold in the paper where they had been written before. The words would stroke her and torture and all the time she would think quickly: How many dead do I really know, and would count the dead and make a list on a scrap of paper and look at the list and say: There were more and I don't remember.
Rebecca spat an apple pip and trembled. A thin layer of ice covered the wooden boards that had been laid next to the houses. People passing by were so wrapped up that only their eyes showed. A carriage harnessed to a pair of horses wrapped in blankets passed by and sprayed mud. When she entered the copse, the top branches of the trees were already touching the shreds of sky sailing quickly under the heavy clouds instead of over them. By the time she climbed up the hill, the charm of the flying sky was extinguished and the air was layers of heavy, hostile gray. An unseen hand played with the sun that was seen flickering now and then, heavy, and immediately extinguished. At the moment of flickering, the top branches of the trees would move in the wind like sparks and she saw that as a sign that everything was crushed and broken and so she could blend more easily into something as hopeless and stupid as she. And then, as if by accident, she came to a river. The river was frozen and white. From the shadows of light she imagined she saw a cow munching snow across the river. Then she understood that those were linden trees. On the bank of the river, she stood still; I'm darling and wicked, she said, threw away the rest of the apple, took hold of the hem of her skirts, and lifted them.
Her naked skin was notched now by a strong burst of wind from the river. The cold was crushing and came with a blow of wind, and stabbed her. She felt a lust she had never known before. The wind ripped into her body, through her groin gaping to it, and she felt the cold penetrate through the veins into her innards, enter her belly, up to her throat and choke her. Her nipples hardened and her body sharpened. Blissful now as never before, she was disgusted with herself, started smiling and the cold changed to downy warmth. And again was sharp as a razor. Her heart beat hard. The stone that had lain on her chest for many days began to melt. I won't have to search for my other half anymore, she said to herself, if I stand in profile, they won't see me. The razor cut her, she put her hand on it and felt the warm blood. She collected the blood in her hand and licked it. Across the river, once again a linden tree disguised as a cow munched snow that now turned black. She felt licentious and wonderful and wanted to marry a woman. Threshold of my violated honor, she said with a splendor just as false as the sudden bliss before that, I'm done with sadness, eighteen useless years old, the blood now flowed from her mouth, not from her groin. Inside her, something refused to pity her and so she felt grateful. The kingdom of naked trees around her was a pierced slave to her, lords of cutting down, glorious in evil, she said. An indifferent aristocratic and frosty wind blew toward her. And then, on the verge of her bloody defeat, she undid her skirts, let them drop, gathered her hair in the kerchief she kept in her pocket, rubbed her hands with ice, put her frozen palms on her face, wiped the blood of her groin from her mouth, and stepped back as if the river were a lord and you couldn't turn your back on him. She thought: nothing can ever again endanger my beauty, and the solitude filled her with joy and the joy created tears that weren't tears of sorrow, they were red in the extinguished and kindled light and they dropped onto the ice.
The tears of blood resurrected a passion in her she didn't remember being in her, to know what would happen to her after the stone in her chest melted.
Rachel Brin came to talk with her. She saw Rebecca light and hovering. Rachel was her only friend. Maybe she pitied her. Later on, Rebecca would say that Rachel was simply a necessary device to be saved at long last from the need to know how unnecessary love is. New winds were blowing in the land then, new books were read, people fled to distant places. The riots left an unprecedented rage. In the attic, Rebecca found books her father had inherited from Secret Charity, his great-grandfather. Rebecca saw the world in translation. But as in translation, she couldn't pity the dead people she collected in her boxes, not even her aunt who died near her. Her grandmother's dying was a poem in a foreign language for her. So she created her own language of syllables and taught it to Rachel Brin. Rachel believed Rebecca that there were enchanted trees and when they'd lie in bed under the obituaries and the words would fly in the room, some ancient anger that Rachel didn't know would slowly pass from Rebecca's body to Rachel's. At the age of seventeen, Rachel Brin was what Rebecca would never be, a love that came from Rebecca's body and disguised itself as a body. So, Joseph Rayna's unborn son burned so much in her. With her good common sense, Rachel understood what others never did: that Rebecca was able to love only a love that others loved for her. What was strong in Rebecca turned dreamy and loving in Rachel. You've got to learn how to stumble in order to triumph, Rebecca told her, but Rachel found in her room only dry tears and wept them for two days. She looked at the tears and saw the beautiful rainbows and couldn't appease Rebecca, and when she started to weep the weeping of Rebecca's world, the letters flew into Rebecca's eyes and she laughed. Rachel was startled and felt a stab of a son in her womb. So, Rachel turned Rebecca's truths into a game, and would help her cut out obituaries just because she didn't understand why she did it. She spoke the language of syllables with her and didn't know why. You have to learn to build yourself a coffin and live in it, said Rebecca, but Rachel thought about beauty and about life. Rebecca learned about her great-grandfather who was buried standing up, she wanted to understand who was Rebecca Secret Charity who bought herself a shroud at the age of fifteen, measured it, and kept it under her bed. Till the day she died, she slept in bed as in a coffin, under the mattress, the shroud, the soap, and the brushes hidden. She prepared her grave and wanted to live in it. Nehemiah Schneerson, whose girlfriend intended to ascend to the Land of Israel, saw Rebecca for the first time when she was gathering obituaries. Nehemiah, the hope of the Gaon Rabbi, then fighting the struggle of the gods against the prophets of Israel who, in his opinion, were bringing disaster and destruction onto the nation. He wanted to ascend to the Land of Israel to restore the kingdom of David and Solomon, to grow Japhets and Boazes and not to cultivate prophets and mourners anymore. Maybe that's why he hated Joseph's embellished songs so much, even though they were filled with freedom and love of the Land of Israel. He loathed the ethics that brought a heavy disaster onto his people. Between Elijah and Ahab, he chose Ahab; between Saul and David, he chose Saul. He was born in the destruction, the prophets prophesied me, he said, I'll prophesy their disgrace, and the old rabbi wept.
So deep was Nehemiah Schneerson's grief for the destruction of Jerusalem that he couldn't understand that what he wept for was the image of Rebecca Sorka tearing down obituaries from the wall of the synagogue. He studied math and engineering and history and prepared himself to extinguish his wrath in decadent exile. When Rachel Brin wanted to join Nehemiah, the boys were embarrassed, but Nehemiah said: We're creating a new nation and woman is part of that creation, no more separation between men and women, together we shall strike the decadent exile. He didn't yet take off his hat, but he did stop wearing ritual fringes. And so Rachel met Joseph Rayna, who came to tell about the Land of Israel. They weren't scared by the stories of malaria and torments. What did scare Nehemiah were the songs, and when Rachel gazed at Joseph Rayna, who decided to
drop anchor and stop moving, Nehemiah felt betrayed. That didn't excite Joseph, and when Rachel watched disaster approaching her body, Nehemiah saw songs that poured a cunning sweetness and didn't touch distress. As far as he was concerned, the songs were artificial fire dreamed by the locomotives he saw at the edge of the city. What does a locomotive dream? he asked. Saints weep in cellars, he said, they don't seek a locomotive's dream. And when three hundred Hasids stood on the roofs and shouted "Our God is the Lord," and tried to mediate between the nation of Israel and its Maker, Nehemiah felt betrayed because of the shouting on the roofs and because of the songs and because of the disgraceful beauty of Joseph Rayna, who told more about himself than he told about the Land of Israel. He doesn't belong to her, thought Nehemiah. The shudder in Rachel Brin's body infected Nehemiah and he didn't understand that what he felt was fear. The Land of Israel of the songs looked like a fraud to him. The rattle of Purim noisemakers mustn't be adorned with yearnings. He of course didn't understand then that he was jealous of his wife's lover.
When Nehemiah spoke of the weeping eye of God, Joseph said: I thought you killed God, and Nehemiah thought: Maybe I did, but your songs, he said, they're words about nothing and Joseph said: So what? Why should they be about something? I don't yearn for anything, Nehemiah. And all that time, Nehemiah didn't sense the electricity between Joseph and Rachel Brin. He thought: There's no grace, there's no messiah, there's no real foe, only words and anger. He didn't know those awful words flying in Rebecca Sorka's room and seeking a foothold in a reality they didn't deserve.
Tape / -
Many years later, when Ebenezer sat in Rebecca Schneerson's room at the settlement, after forty years had vanished, he'll tell his mother about what I heard from a dying Jew in Block Forty-six. The dying Jew told me the history of a monk he called "our pauper monk, crown of the gentiles, our noble brother Avidius, man of dreams, flint, and humility." In a letter Avidius wrote to a woman he had loved many years before, and now she was forbidden him, he tried to describe his feelings in the eight years he had sat bound to a stone pillar in the Sinai Desert. He described his torments, his endless gazing at the heat, the wind, the rain, the birds, the desolation, and after five years, he wrote, the silence passed, the flesh passed, leaving delight spinning rustling and unseen webs, both dark and pure. As if the dread were tamed to silk of stones that dropped and melted in the heat and were heavenly dust on the earth disappearing under the stone pillar and throughout the expanse, silence reigned, and love sprouted from the heat and the silence, unbearable, independent love, without flesh or spirit, generous love without slander, a rare touch of a butterfly's legs in a fire that doesn't destroy but flickers, taming sorrow to scan silently the reality you're part of and it is no longer in you, only a prayer prayed by a solitary angel for you and strong and wonderful bliss fills the heart, and Rebecca will then tell Ebenezer: I know, for eight years I wept for Nehemiah, the nonlove I found in the river, and then I came into being without compromise and it's impossible, isn't it, Rebecca will say then, impossible to try to extinguish the force of love in love!
Tape / -
The love Rachel Brin saw in Nehemiah's eyes was alien to her passion and yet like it. She pondered the imbroglio she had come upon and thought, Rebecca is busy rambling after herself and so I'm left alone, I came here as her emissary, Nehemiah is probably thinking of her but saying the words of Joseph, Joseph is looking at me, while I'm giving birth to his sons, maybe Nehemiah hates in Joseph his nonexistent love for Rebecca?
When she walked, she heard steps behind her. The rain that fell earlier had stopped. She felt silence. There was a bridge there and she stopped on it. Joseph approached and clung to her. They started flowing with the ice floes in the river that looked as if they were striking one another and stopped flowing separately. A hot, round ball took shape in her. That was her first kiss, and even though she was trembling, she didn't feel love. She was scared by how much her body longed for the man and how empty her heart was. On her retina she could have described his body to herself through his clothes. Later, they would meet in remote barns or secretly in Joseph's room, at night, and he taught her body to love delicately, but also when they were together they felt that some alien hand was playing with them. When she became pregnant, she went to her sister in the big city. Her sister took her to a doctor. The doctor only confirmed what she knew. She returned to the city and suggested to Joseph to run away. But he said: I've run away enough.
When it became known, Rachel's mother summoned Uncle Zelig, whom the Russians called the Bear, and the Jews called him Secret Glory. Broadshouldered he was, with a mighty body and little eyes like the eyes of a mouse, watery and blue, he lived alone in a distant garden, guarded it, prayed a lot with the few words he knew. For twenty years he served in the Czar's army and it was said that he slaughtered people in the wars and didn't forget whence he came. His niece Rachel he loved more than anything. He came to the city bringing with him a goat that he said was touched by a peacock's feather. The golden fleece will soon be found. The newborn will be named Secret Glory after me, he said, but he went in vain to Joseph's house: Joseph wanted to marry Rachel. The city concocted rumors and everybody accused Rebecca whose grandmother's grandmother was Rebecca Secret Charity. Rabbis wrote bans but when Zelig asked them to stop they did because for a long time Zelig Secret Glory had considerable strength, was simply one of the Just Men. Rachel's parents came out of their quarantine, and a Russian sorcerer brought by Rachel's mother to sprinkle sulfuric acid on the threshold of Joseph Rayna's house looked like a scared vulture, and the house seemed wrapped in flames, but Joseph told them: Why are you acting like fools, I'm marrying Rachel Brin and nobody will stop me especially since there's no need to try to persuade me. When Rachel was with him, she learned to shut her eyes and think she was Rebecca. Now, when there were no more passions left in her, she went to the wedding canopy as the mother of Rebecca's son. Rachel's mother agreed to invite Rebecca to the wedding. Rebecca came with her parents. The house was already humming with people. That was a disaster everybody watched joyfully. Mr. Brin was rich enough to evoke envy. Two days before the wedding drunken Cossacks had beaten two Jews in the street. The police who came six hours later seemed to be searching for hens and beat Jews at random to distinguish between their profound contempt and the Cossacks' enraged drunkenness. In Rachel's house, nineteen of the twenty Klezmers were playing, one of them lay dead in the cemetery. But the celebration couldn't be postponed. Rebecca's father looked at his daughter and said: You're dressed as if you were the bride, and she answered him: Maybe I really am?
Rebecca embroidered her gown with her own hands; her mother envied her. In Rachel's house, brandy, food, and baked goods were served magnanimously, everybody started hugging one another and guests came from far away in carriages and Rebecca looked at her father. When she got her period at the age of fifteen, she thought the blood gushing from her was the blood of her parents, and now that it came out, I'm not anybody's anymore, she said then to herself. She recalled that now, as she walked to Rachel's house. Rebecca's father said: That's nice, what you made, and Mr. Brin wrung his hands and said: They killed the flute player but what, if we wait until they don't kill Jews, we won't be able to get married and there won't be new Jews to kill. Nehemiah stood with his group of lads. When he saw Rebecca he trembled a moment and suddenly understood his anger at Joseph. From far away, Rebecca saw her bridegroom's back. The position of his back was brittle, tense, and yet Rebecca could discern, reluctantly, the nobility and remorse in it. Rachel kissed Rebecca, whom she hadn't seen for a long time, and burst into tears. From far away, Joseph's back was still taut. Rachel tried to say something in the language of syllables, but the syllables flew away from her and she couldn't find them. She was wearing a beautiful and ancient wedding gown whose tassels and fringes were made of gold embroidery. Rebecca asked where the beautiful gown came from and Rachel said that her father found that old gown in the home of a poor sage, who told him that
in that wedding gown of Rebecca Secret Charity, the daughter and wife of Secret Charity, Joseph's grandfather, had walked to her wedding canopy. Secret Glory stood next to Rachel's father. To Rebecca his eyes looked like small chameleons. When he looked at her, like many others, he too felt some uneasiness, because he was embarrassed, he started moving here and there and after she looked straight at him, he lowered his eyes and somebody said to him: That's Rivkele, Rachel's friend and Rebecca corrected angrily: Rebecca!
The young people said: An anarchist poet entered the kennel and will bark! And they laughed when Rebecca came back to the room, one of the men looked at her who laughed at Joseph brashly and said: Look, a wild man is tamed! She took out a demon who was with her from the river and waved it at him. He stood still, and the glass of brandy in his hand was emptied without him drinking from it. The fellow looked at the emptied glass and was terrified. Rebecca turned away from him and once again her look was drawn to the taut back of the bridegroom. Rachel's kiss and weeping were additional proof that maybe the river didn't stop for the disaster. The stone came back and lay on her chest. With her kiss, Rachel stuck Joseph to Rebecca's lips. Joseph, who felt the sudden silence, turned around and saw the glass that was emptied and then saw a woman's back slipping out but when he wanted to understand what happened, new guests entered and started hugging him with clumsy wildness. Nehemiah came to him and congratulated him. You're very polite, Mr. Schneerson, said Joseph. Once, Joseph added, I saw a wedding in your Judea, the bride was covered with dust. In your holy books didn't you read about dust? Will love of Zion wipe out the dust? A destruction isn't only demolished palaces, a destruction is also endless misery. Then came a rabbi riding on a donkey. In his modest coat a radish somebody gave him. He smelled of garlic. The bride curtsied in the dust and her eyes were yellow. They threw rice at them. The donkey brayed instead of the musical instruments they didn't have, the canopy was put up in the field. The bridegroom smashed a glass but was afraid to break it for real. I wrote them a song and they still sing it to this day.
