by Yoram Kaniuk
The bicycle repairman says: He's wearing a hat again. The perfume shop that used to be a grocery is now on the way to being a women's shoe boutique. The Czech shoemaker, who couldn't forgive himself for choking his sick wife in the bunker and brought new machines from France, died from missing his wife, and left the store to two young men who sold it to a used car dealer. What had been a vineyard until 'forty-eight turned into a big shapeless building with a turret facing the sea. A splendid victory for a lot of seasonal change, says old Damausz, who lives above the perfume shop, next to the grocery of Halfon of the women's shoes who later opened a paint store and even later a small restaurant with a sign that said: "Original Ashkara Melange from Jerusalem." And Mrs. Yehoyakhina Sheets of the flower shop looks at the "Original Ashkara Melange from Jerusalem" and says: How beautiful it used to be here. The German tobacco vendor whose wife ran away with the Great Dane dog and his son who wasn't killed in the explosion of the bridges in 'forty-six now manages the new branch of Bank Leumi. Henkin walks in a maze of changes. They know him, Renate, he doesn't know them.
What was once the bulletin board where Menahem used to post declarations against the White Paper is now a marble building with an office for modern matchmaking, as if there is modern and nonmodern matchmaking. Well-packed white buildings on the next corner take on a Mediterranean patina, rust in the iron, in the cement. A slow destruction gnaws the chill beauty, among the ruins walks Obadiah. The owner of the store on the corner was once a women's hairdresser named Nadijda Litvinovskaya. She sits in the window of "Sex and Beauty." They blink their false eyelashes, and manicure men too. A state of dying sycamores, she says, water flows in the winter and in the summer is an awful light. My daughters married contractors from Herzliya Pituah, children go to school with diplomats' children. How are you, Mr. Henkin? Thank you, he always says, how many years? Maybe five, maybe more. A small country with falafel, without opera, with Sabras, come to me to be beautiful with black on the seashore on a body like Negresses. And I say, Here's Teacher Henkin walking, how's the missus, and he says, Thank you. After the barber shop, I had a salon, after the salon a boutique. Then Sex and Beauty. His son is still dead, poor soul. And the soda vendor who now sells "modern beverages" says carrot juice for women goes well now. And Mrs. Pitsovskaya, five streets past Mugrabi, Mrs. Pitsovskaya says: Thank you, he'll say to me. My son's teacher, he'd learn and forget what he learned, and now he's money and knows what the teacher never knew. That's life, no? One with sense is a poor soul, one without sense makes money. Rich people have sense, too, says Halfon sadly. All poor men aren't wise and all rich men aren't fools, he adds. And the husband of Zipporah Glory-Splendor stopped selling eggs on the black market, will import instant coffee, now imports rare clothes from Hong Kong at the other end of the world. If all the Chinese jumped at the same time, the world would move and we'd be in Saudi Arabia and we'd have oil and they'd be in the sea, says Halfon. His boy sometimes kills in wars and then goes to Bezalel to be an artist, says Marianne Abramovitch. And Mrs. Lustig from the candy store died of cancer of love, they say in the next shop, she played the piano, forgot to sell candy, it was hard to digest, and the son of the neighbor upstairs, who died of an inflammation of the urinary tract, was once a naughty boy who tried to trip Henkin who said Thank you, didn't see, looked, tripped, didn't see. When will there be peace, Mr. Henkin? asks the man who sells purses and cases. Henkin doesn't know, smiles with the contemplation of a bereavedfather, Renate, that's the wisdom of that man, maybe cunning, maybe a lifeline, and he says, What do I know: Abravanel's pharmacy on the way back turned into a travel agency. The messiah who used to sit in the street and smoke twigs sells carpets and in exchange forgot the redemption we expected so much. They sell gifts and souvenirs.
Shops for watches and windowpanes that used to sell radios and phonographs.
Tape / -
And this is how Teacher Henkin met Boaz Schneerson. It was a nice day and suddenly the first rain of the season started falling. Teacher Henkin struggled with the wind, but the rain fell in front of him, didn't yet get to him. He rowed toward Mugrabi Square, passed by Sex and Beauty, Mr. Nussbaum was already setting his watch and then he entered the rain, raindrops whipped him obliquely, touching the sidewalk like dancing magnets, the dust was erased, beyond the display windows wrapped in mists Teacher Henkin looked like he was rowing in the sea. From an opening in the clouds a prancing sunbeam slices the well-trimmed hedge for a moment and wafts a fragrance of jasmine. Across from the German bookstore on the corner of Idelson, the rain stops. Teacher Henkin looks at the visual illusion. The rain falls up to Idelson Street, and from then on, to what was once Mugrabi Square, rain doesn't fall and the sky isn't cloudy. The border of the black cloud is right over him. The bookstore owner smiles at Teacher Henkin, who doesn't heed him today. Nor does he peep into the display window to see the beautiful wrappings he looks at with love and pain. Old books bound by aged binders, how many of them are still alive, I don't know, but today he doesn't look. Behind him, the rain is seen in the display window as a geometric disaster, both tame and wild. Facing him on the dry curb stands a young man. The young man isn't especially tall but isn't short. Pinioned in a raincoat that comes to his waist, the young man stands and looks at the rain on the other side of the street. The young man sees Henkin and his yellow-green eyes, exaggerated to a certain extent by a prancing sunbeam, look as if they're trying to penetrate that miracle that facing him stands a man in a black coat and hat in a strong oblique rain, while he stands on dry land. Henkin isn't able to think logically and tell himself: If you walked ten, fifteen years on Ben-Yehuda Street to seek traces of a dead son and a familiar person came to you standing on dry land as if obeying your secret intentions, an event happened, certain wishes were answered, but the rain was too pesky for Teacher Henkin, who was seeking Boaz without knowing that he was seeking Boaz to understand what he was seeing.
(I don't know if these things were written in Hasha Masha's letter. I recite them and now I don't know, maybe they were in the letter and maybe I'm quoting another source, what do I know?) The young man dropped his hands with restrained nervousness that didn't cover impatience and anxiety, and then Henkin thought: Maybe he's waiting for me, and understood, and the young man turned his face aside, took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, those hands were familiar to Henkin. The slight tremor, the slight restraint of the tremor, the young man takes out a pack of matches, lights a cigarette and bends the match, looks here and there and doesn't toss it to the ground, which amazes Henkin, the street is whipped by wind and the young man puts the extinguished match in his pocket, exhales smoke, turns his face again, and he says to himself, Teacher, here's a teacher, and he knows he's thinking about something else, but he doesn't know what he's thinking. The cigarette is a shelter, the rain on the side of the teacher is also a shelter. Between them stands the ruin, will the teacher cross the street?
Teacher Henkin waits until the little car that burst out of Jordan Street passes by him, its left side is already whipped by rain and its right side is dry. He looks at his watch as if it's important to know what time it is now. Music comes from a locked apartment. He knows it's a Bach piano concerto. And then he crossed the street and stood on the dry land, looked behind him to make sure he has come from the rain, the cloud hasn't yet moved, Henkin is leaking water, while the young man is dry and wearing a raincoat, the cigarette held for a moment in his hand and then he thrusts it back in his mouth. And his mouth takes on the shape of a question mark. Therefore, the encounter became like most important encounters, through small misunderstandings, through alternating rain and dry, through a cigarette that should herald a change. The roof of Mugrabi Cinema was open, and the roar of its closing was heard. From the window above peeps the face of a worker closing the roof. The young man flicks the cigarette into a niche, the match is bent in his pocket, the cigarette in a niche, the time is eight-oh-five, and then Teacher Henkin has to cope with some uneasiness that fills him, shuts his eye
s, says: Hello, and the young man tries to look surprised, hesitates, wrings his hands and separates them as if they bothered him, and says: Yes, hello.
My name's Obadiah, says Teacher Henkin, you're familiar to me, were you my student and I forgot?
As he said that he thought: Did a student wait for him here in the dry part to toss a cigarette into a niche?
I wasn't your student, said Boaz, I had a kindergarten teacher who knows us even when we grow up. She says the features of the face don't change.
You're familiar to me.
You're familiar to me too, says the young man, but he says the words warily and then they understand. The moment the rain crosses the street, both of them see the same picture in their mind's eye: years before, Boaz stands in front of Henkin's house on Deliverance Street, measuring it, observing, not saying a word, refusing a glass of water, and Henkin goes into the house and looks at him through the shutter.
My name's Boaz Schneerson, he says, you're Menahem's father.
After they went into the cafe, the worker came out of the kitchen, closed the windows, and stretched the covers over the chairs on the sidewalk. Boaz and Teacher Henkin sat down at a table and a weary waitress got up from where she was sprawled, chewing gum, slowly came to them and they ordered coffee, one roll, and cake for Boaz. Teacher Henkin also ordered a glass of soda. He tries to sit more authoritatively, as if it were important to set the balance of power and know who was more important, who had more rights. And Boaz understood and didn't resent him. He understood that Henkin had to win where people like him always lose. Recognizing his look blended of reproach and envy, he decided to ignore it. I have no other line of defense, he said to himself and was amazed at the words "line of defense," which he had heard from Rebecca. The conversation flowed while drinking coffee. At first there were gropings, Henkin took off the hat, asked Boaz if he really was the young man who once stood in front of his house, and Boaz tried to evade but his face answered yes, and he couldn't explain why, he just said, I was angry then. Why didn't you ever come to us, asked Henkin. I didn't know, said Boaz, for some reason I didn't know. His death was too much for us, we didn't manage to live afterward, maybe the next generation will be more successful. He wanted, he wanted so much to tell Henkin how he once saved Menahem from death, by mistake, when they shot at them from the village of Koloniya and Menahem shot through the peephole of the armored car and he suddenly was pushed to him, took him down, and a bullet penetrated the armored car and bounced around in it and hit one of the guys who was slightly wounded, and Menahem was saved. For how long? What will he tell him? I saved your son so he could die a month later? So, from the hopeful eyes of that handsome old man, dignified in the enjoyment of his loss, Boaz told how Menahem had saved him from death. He also put in suddenly's, as if there are suddenly's in war. Very slowly, the scene changes, the story changes, the image of Menahem grows bigger, Henkin's eyes demand more and more and Boaz talks from the man's desires, it's sad for him to sit across from that man, who seeks Menahem and finds Boaz, so he tells him stories of Boaz as if they were stories of Menahem, what difference does it make, he won't die from that again, thinks Boaz and Teacher Henkin swallows every word, a strong wind flies dust, the rain whips down, the waitress shivers, winter's coming, leaves fly in the wind, cars look elusive in the oblique downpour that fills the street with spraying water, and he tells Henkin his son who was Boaz, he tells and exaggerates and he doesn't care, good luck to him, he thinks, from the things he tells he even starts loving Menahem, a national hero he creates, Menahem who would tell him about the English in the Muslim cemetery and who would peep at them screwing Ruthie Zelmonovski's sister. Single-handedly, Menahem now conquers Jerusalem for Teacher Henkin ...
And there was also a moment of no return. And maybe all those tapes were meant only to describe that moment, so I know, my son said what he said and from then on everything was obscured, it's hard for me to understand how, because of one song, such a strong revolution takes place, Boaz spoke, maybe it was an indifference coordinated with the fears, the eyes of Teacher Henkin demanding more, pleading, dictating, Boaz reads in them things he has no time to discern precisely, to decipher, he has to talk, he restores the dead Menahem, magnifies, turns his death in a diversionary action near Mount Radar into death in the Old City, there was a mistake in the recording, he said, the reports were confused, another Menahem fell near Mount Radar, I was in both battles and I know, Menahem saved me, helped the wounded, they don't know what happened to him, he became so human, something in him started to pity, the opposite of what he tried to be, he sat in the courtyard, says Boaz, the guys were killed on Mount Radar and he waited for us to decide what unit he belonged to. We held a discussion, it was decided to accept him, that was the moment he showed me the poem, he quoted a poem then and I write too: and it was written in Henkin's eyes: Poem! Poem! And Boaz reads word for word: Poem! Poem! As if he were first learning to read, and Teacher Henkin is silent, drinking thirstily, unable to conceal from Boaz his other son, the one Hasha Masha mourns, the one Noga loved, was another Menahem and Boaz discovered him, but he knew all the time that Menahem was different, they didn't know, he knew. A poem he wrote, Boaz reads on Menahem's father's face, and that's how the poem was sold to the teacher who had thought all his life in the ancient skill of his profession, systematically, around and around, and the poem will bring redemption to men who are so in need of the right word, the proving word, the knowing word. And Boaz now forgets Menahem who, between battles, took him to the movies to see Fiesta in Mexico, the one and only film showing in besieged Jerusalem and the owner of the movie theater sat outside and waited for somebody to come and watch it, and the divine Esther Williams jumps every night, at the same time, with the electricity from a private generator, into a beautiful blue pool, and Ricardo Montalban with splendid sideburns and brilliantined hair sings with a Mexican accent and Estherke swims in a shiny bathing suit and her teeth are white, and then he took him to the twins and one of them was a little hunchbacked and had a wounded look in her eyes and they sucked lollipops he had brought from the black market. A bereaved father wants a Menahem he dreamed about at night. As if imprisoned in the hands of that teacher, Boaz sells heroism and a poem. He'll love me, Boaz says to himself, he'll love me, and a deep wound inside him all his life gapes open. They drank another cup of coffee, something becomes clear in Teacher Henkin's face. One eye still pondering, he finishes sipping the coffee, looks at the new cigarette in Boaz's mouth, even hands him a match from the box of matches on the table. The rain outside stopped for a moment and then intensified, and then Boaz lopped off the match on the table, looked at the heavy clouds in the window, somebody drew a rabbit on its steam, and a little girl sitting there sang: Come to me, butterfly grand, come back to me, sit on my hand, and she said: I love my rabbit. And there were also faces she had drawn, and the waitress wiped the table with a gray rag, trying to gather up the cigarette butts and Menahem grows stronger, his image is opened to a new biography, a salvation of the wounded, the battle for the Old City, explosives in the Wall, after all, Hasha Masha said afterward, after all why should you blame Boaz? He sat with Henkin and Henkin wants to be worthy of his son, wants his son to be worthy of some ideal so he can love him, what did Boaz do? He told Henkin Menahem as if he were Boaz. What Boaz did in the war was copied to my son. And Boaz erased himself, was he looking for a father for himself? I don't know. I loathe the fellow, but I also understand him. The devil in him, that innocence to read in Henkin's eyes what he longs for.
But while Boaz was completely sunk in his new creation, Henkin suddenly gaped out of the thoughts from his starched suit, became serious, grave, the teacher I met on the Tiberias Tsemakh road, that gentle savage who read us poems and quarried and knew how to love this body of mine with hands full of softness and honor, and he said: The poem, Boaz, what about the poem?
What poem?
The poem Menahem wrote.
Oh.
I want it.
&n
bsp; But...
No but.
Boaz came back to reality and once again found himself sitting in the cafe. The waitress was sitting in a corner humming to herself. The rain subsided and strips of blue sky appeared between the clouds.
The poem disappeared.
Find it.
Where?
You'll find it, Boaz Schneerson, and you'll bring it. You know where I live, you came once, and now I know why.
Henkin leaned forward, his eyes cold, Henkin's dead son, says Boaz with restrained fear, is indifferent now, his dead son wrote him a poem. What does he want from me, fucking Henkin?
Bring it!
I'll look for it, said Boaz. Henkin observes him seriously, Boaz is terrified in the chair.
You will bring it.
A teacher's grammar: I shall bring, you will bring, we shall bring, where shall I bring it from?
Bring it from wherever you bring it, says the teacher of Hebrew language and literature.
I'll look for it.
You'll find it, says Henkin and starts to get up, and then he turns to Boaz: Tomorrow afternoon. I can't, said Boaz.
Tomorrow afternoon, said Henkin and all the softness disappeared, no poet was written on his brow ... a father's acquisitiveness, Boaz didn't take it into account. Tomorrow afternoon. Deliverance Street, near Singer's store. I'm waiting for you, his voice is cruel, rigid. He wants to pay, but Henkin doesn't let him. I'll pay, says Henkin. He counts the coins, puts the wallet back in his pants pocket, puts on his coat, his hat, repeats: Tomorrow afternoon. When Teacher Henkin goes outside the wind scatters the fastsailing clouds. Across the street, on the wall of the house, gigantic wet spots appear, the street is gleaming with the sudden sun, Boaz remains on the corner, lights a cigarette, puts the match in his mouth, and tramples on the cigarette.
