by Yoram Kaniuk
The woman in the house next door started playing her Italian singers, and Jordana said: They always sound as if in the last opera they die and only then do they live.
Get up, said Noga.
Jordana couldn't get up, but she couldn't say that. She was stooped, curled up in herself, before her the day broke and shadows deepened, the light was swallowed up rather than disappeared, a plane passed by and left a long darkening white trail behind, the roofs were swallowed up in the dark that was already heavy and its dimness was cracked by flashes of lights. The wind that had blown before stopped, and the air stood still again. They cleaned up the shards, swept the roof and washed it with water, and then Jordana tried to direct her body to the two pleasures competing with one another: the Italian from the house next door and the melancholy rising from Noga's phonograph, but Noga refused to be caught in her mood that may have been impossible, and the stumbling, that was right for her, maybe therefore something that accompanied her from the moment she left the office. When she fell she thought she wanted to burst out laughing, but she didn't know why she didn't laugh. Her head hit the floor that was just cleaned, and Noga said: Come, let's go in and eat something.
When they went in, Noga slammed the door and turned on a light. She put out a plate of cheese and rolls, butter, and a bottle of red wine. The phonograph went on playing, maybe because Jordana changed the record, even though the two of them weren't aware of that, the light from the vaulted window was red and vied with the light of the lamp, and the burst of air was stronger now. They ate in silence and then Jordana spread butter on a roll, put a triangle of cheese on it, chewed, looked at the zigzag snake of light bursting from the broken vault above the grandfather clock, and said: I went with him to Independence Park, Noga, there were homos there and a woman with a dog. We searched for shade, in the distance I saw Henkin's roof, I ate lunch with him. Sad, Noga ... Boaz's father put up a new television antenna, and Boaz didn't approve and didn't not approve. Near the demolished wall of the Muslim cemetery, he told me he loved me. I said to him: You don't love me, Boaz Schneerson, if you love, you love Noga, and he said: Maybe I'm not using the right words. I told him not to say anything, then he said, It's true, maybe I am tied to Noga, but I need you. I told him, I love you Boaz, say "love," don't say "tied," and he said, But Noga hates you, and then I told him: So what, and I laughed, Noga's feeling is stronger than your empty words.
Noga didn't say a thing and Jordana stood up, the roll in her hand, finished a glass of wine, looked at Noga, and said: How beautiful you are, Noga, you sit here, bring me into the house, give me coffee, cheese, red wine, and Boaz, tell me things so I'll understand him, what do all the ceremonies he makes for people tell you, you do know how to obliterate and you give him to me, some fine gift!
Maybe Boaz discovered my demon, only you know him, nobody else does, when I loved Menahem Henkin Boaz came and took that love too, even before he took me ...
Noga started humming something that may have been some echo to the music from the phonograph. She said: You want to disgust me, to hurt me, but I'm protected, Jordana ... Got to say what happens on the roof on Lilienblum Street, on that roof, not what happens in comparison with something else. There are time differences-in Los Angeles it's now ten hours earlier, but for me those are only words, now here and in Los Angeles is the same time. I've got my own time; you're there, Boaz is there, what happens to us, Menahem, you and Menahem, me and Menahem, no love is that love, in that moment Boaz has to see himself in your eyes, or even "only" in your eyes, that you will love him, that he will know how dreadful he is and of course wonderful, after the ten hours' difference he returned to me, and he was with me also ten hours or ten years before, and always will be. This is home. This home is not love or hatred and not what happens to you or to me or to him, at the limestone wall of the Muslim cemetery.
When did I have more than ten hours? said Jordana.
When you loved Menahem, said Noga with sudden anger that passed immediately.
Maybe, said Jordana, I once tried to feel what it is to be a bereaved father or mother, Noga?
It's almost all I tried, said Noga.
Jordana opened the door, cast off the robe that had dried long ago, stood in the pale light of the room, at the open door where lights capered, and said: Once I came home from the Committee of Parents, took off the marble look, I saw Henkin's eyes in my mind, I thought: What is love for somebody who died twenty years ago? I sat in the big armchair I had, with arms coated with disgusting black Chinese lacquer, I shut my eyes and tried to banish the eyes of the fathers and mother, I thought, I've got a son, I've got a son, I've got a son, and I felt him inside me, I was pregnant, and he was there, that son, I was happy, I didn't sleep, I just forgot I was some existing Jordana, I was me, but in another place, maybe ten hours' difference? Something like that, on second thought, I hurt, I invented a child who dies, I gave birth to him, that hurts but the pain was mine, I raised him in that ten hours' difference, and he was alive, he existed as you exist now in this room. I didn't look at the clock, didn't know how much time had passed, it was dark, I talked to him about grades at school and then about flu and why you have to stay at home another day and not go to school, and he went out and fell under a car, I ran out of the house where I was apparently living, but he was already crushed. After I returned from the cemetery, I thought here, he's not with me anymore, he isn't even for himself. But for me that was something else, he wasn't anyplace for anybody, not in Los Angeles, not here, not ten hours ahead not ten hours behind, I sat in the armchair, I can't even describe what I was feeling. I was choking, I tried to breathe, I knew that if I woke up I'd be relieved, but I didn't want to, or perhaps I couldn't. The knowledge that he isn't, totally isn't, no telephone would reach him, no letter would get to him, it was impossible ... I gathered that emptiness from all the dead people I had filed, my nothingness was a dinosaur in me, swallowing every drop of air, I felt the emptiness penetrate again into my womb, but this time it was longing, like an ax, that cut the face, the feet, the cheeks, the roots of the eyes, his connection through me, cutting off from me, my eardrum was so taut that I could hear the heart beating, I started yelling, there was a wooden knife there, I brought it close, thrust it into my arm, blood flowed, I yelled, the neighbor rang the bell and then knocked on the door, I heard voices, I was in shock, the neighbor brought people, apparently I fainted, they broke down the door, I heard a siren, then I disappeared to it, I connected with it, there was one moment of bliss and pain and then I woke up in the hospital, they measured my blood pressure, tested my heart and blood, they bandaged me, my blood pressure was high, I said: My son died, my son died, and they were busy taking care of me and didn't pay attention. They gave me a shot of something and I fell asleep and came to only two days later and was loathsome in my own eyes, what a fuss I made for them, myself, I apologized to the neighbor ... And then a week later I was eating lunch with the head of our department, we were eating in Olympia, suddenly I started yearning for the child, I looked at the people and they were eating moussaka and stuffed vegetables and shashlik and drinking beer and cold water and I was trying to eat and that yearning, like a flash that cuts the body and suddenly all the people became paper dolls and I saw them through walls and didn't sense them anymore, and I thought, that's how my people are, sitting in a meeting, in a car, suddenly that arrow that's stuck in them, like that, among people, among the living, next to shops, in a cafe, at the movies, suddenly you and the son, or the daughter, who aren't, and you feel and no word will express the feeling, and the tears have to roll in the belly, so they won't be seen, won't be misunderstood, and with whom to share this pain, and it's impossible, and another few times like that, I was sitting in the movies and suddenly I didn't have him there either, and on the seashore, among a crowd of people on Saturday, he wasn't, all the time crushed by a car, the expectation at night, I should have let months pass to get over the dead son I never had.
Jordana fell silent, she pin
ched her nipple lightly, found the stub of the mirror and looked at herself, Noga looked at Jordana in the mirror, saw the thin swarthy body and Jordana sucked in her belly and a spasm seemed to pass through it, she said: Right, I loved them, they were a yearning for something, Boaz is building an empire of dead people, I loathe that, and live with that, go to the Committee, smile, introduce parents to their sons, but inside I've got this son, once he was and remains forever, and Boaz, he's the only one besides you that I can talk to about that, tell him, today I met a dead person and then touch Boaz, know he's dead and he understands and somehow he also lives. What man would take a woman whose two men were killed and they say she kills her men, she's cursed. They say: Boaz loves the smell that comes from me, as from you, grows stronger from the death of others, mine, others, yours, vulture! He goes to war to be close to blood, meets you in a tent, you play Noga, he plays Boaz, and you can laugh at yourselves, me too, in his jeep, in his car, everyplace, with you, without you, shame, shameless, guilty, not guilty, I live without that official marble, without the curse, all of us in the cemetery, and it's allowed ... And his grandmother who will live forever. Maybe Ebenezer ... Once I went with Boaz to his grandmother, he told her: This is Jordana from the Ministry of Defense, as if I were the chief of staff. She smiled and told about the ants who would eat her someday. And Boaz, Boaz sat on her lap and she bounced her fist and stretched her fingers and said: Grandma baked a sweet cake, cut it in slices; gave it to Poopie, gave it to Moomi, gave it to Boaz, and then she sang some song in Yiddish, full of gloom and spiderwebs and he sat there, the one who meets dead people in my womb, who measures my veins to make them into threads to tie memorials, and listens to his grandmother talking to him as if he were five years old, and laughs ... He sits in the lap of a woman who came to the Land of Israel before Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi, and hears about the bastards who destroyed everything for her and her husband who died on the shore at Jaffa, plays with her beautiful teeth, and she's like some ancient palace, a poster from Switzerland, elegant, and then he came to us two fools, and we're here Menahem's puss, with Henkin's words, stuck to our skin, in different planes of time, ten hours' difference, ten years, what's the difference, a Yemenite and a European, two beauties we, stretched to one another and he weaves us into his rage, hits, and we make him coffee. What, Noga, will be?
And the two of them stand there, Noga's legs touching Jordana's and Jordana lets Noga hug her, she has nothing to say, she holds Jordana and tears flow and you don't know which of them is shedding tears, or for whom they're shed, the phone rings and they answer the phone together and say he'll come back later and hang up and don't know where Noga starts and Jordana ends. The phonograph plays a Mozart concerto, the Italian opera on the next roof is over, the solitary woman there now has a television, rustling of a city, dark schemes, planes to Lod slice the dark sky filled with the roar of heat and then Boaz enters, glances at them, shuts his eyes, they're sunk in that hushed distance from one another like lovers, a feather touch, he washes his face, eats something he picked up from the table and then, when he starts combing his hair fear floods him, he wrenches Jordana away, pushes her to the torn upholstery, lies down next to Noga, looks into her crotch, averts his eyes to Jordana sitting cross-legged, and says: Look how charming she is, white, European, with her it's pressed and small like a seashell. He tries to laugh but doesn't make it. Now she started yearning and didn't yet want to know for whom. Again and again he strokes Noga's groin as she gnaws her fingernails, he tries to catch Jordana who slips away from him, and Jordana says: Let me love the two of you in the distance. She manages to climb onto the nightstand, cross her legs, disappear into the dark niche between the wall and the window with the opaque pane and he turns, caresses Noga, and Noga whispers: Not now. Offended, he hits her but she doesn't respond, goes on gnawing her fingernails, looking at Jordana sitting shrouded in shadows, and he says: Now! And Noga says: I don't feel like it, Boaz, not now, Jordana moves a little, her eyes measure the mattress at her feet, the closeness that had vanished before. He says: I want the two of you, I'm bursting from you, and then Noga said: Once you put a paper flower and were sensitive, now you're full of shadow, and Boaz yelled: Get down, Jordana, but Jordana didn't get down, not yet, and then the phone rang and he said: It's for you, Noga, who in the hell wants you? And Noga grabbed the receiver from his hand and whispered into it briefly, talked about some film they had to see and Boaz went to the kitchen and drank cold water and returned and yelled, Stop! Noga put her hand over the receiver and whispered: Stop, Boaz, and then he looked at Jordana and a slight smile started on her lips, and he said: What's going on here? A revolt of the streetwalkers? And Jordana laughed and then Noga whispered, Fine, see you, and replaced the receiver, went to the nightstand, bent over a little and started pulling Jordana's hands, which began, as in a dream, to stretch out to her with a pleasure Boaz couldn't bear, and Jordana shut her eyes and offered herself to anybody at all, she didn't care anymore, shuddering on the nightstand. Like a hedgehog, said Boaz, and went to the refrigerator and shrieked: Where's the beer, why don't they buy beer, and then he found a beer and drank it, put his head under the faucet and let the cold water stream and apparently also yelled because burbling noises came from the sink, and then Noga laughed and Boaz went to the other room and called out: Why isn't there any more beer? and Noga said: Because I didn't buy any, and he broke a chair, and Jordana said: Noga, he broke a chair, and Noga lifted her face and said: Jordana, Boaz Schneerson broke a chair, soon there won't be anything to break in this house and then we'll all get married and get new chairs from all the mothers and fathers, because there are three of us and we've got a lot of fathers and a lot of mothers, we've got Henkin and the whole Committee, and we'll get chairs and clocks, and Boaz threw a chair leg that didn't hit either of them, but could have, and said: You, you brought Jordana here, not me, you invited her to live here, not me ... And Noga puts on the robe that Jordana took off, and says: Me? I didn't bring anybody, Boaz, I opened the door and some poor Jordana was standing there and I let her in, the ticket you paid for, and Jordana approached Noga who seemed sunk in a distant and maybe even malicious melancholy for a moment, as if she borrowed it from another body, maybe from Los Angeles, ten hours behind, and Noga pushed Jordana away and in a clear and quiet voice said: I'm my own rag, who am I? Do you have any idea of the harmony you destroyed? Do you really grasp who I am and why I am, and where I'm going and where I came from, without any connection to you or Menahem Henkin whom you killed or didn't kill. I myself became a memorial book for a fallen soldier who never was!
And then, again the empty silence of the south of the city will swallow them. That dark will prevail, planes will go on passing over the house on their way to the airport, Boaz is softened with, without, Noga, Jordana, everything is again as it was, but in the air there will be a sense that all that can't happen and that it's not possible anymore, that we, said Boaz, we take things too deeply, we can't do it simply, and we can't do it not-simply, and at four in the morning they woke up. If they had slept at all before.
Tape / -
Jordana went to the shower, stood and looked in the mirror and splashed cold water on her face, but she was still blazing. When she went back to the room, Noga and Boaz were sitting on the gigantic mattress. That pale light penetrating inside flickered and went out. Jordana said: I dreamed of the dog we had in the village, his name was Haman, he was old, I dreamed he devoured you.
She looked toward the window, her face was molded in the flickering light, etched like the face of somebody else. She said: Poor old Haman was a Don Juan. In the days when he was a real dog, he'd make bitches pregnant like a fish. Now she was filled with an envy that flooded her and almost choked her. She looked at Noga and Boaz and they didn't see the tears: You'll always be with each other, she said, you'll have each other, that dog was a son of a bitch, like you! Then she said, he'd still run after the smells of bitches, but they didn't want him anymore. When he was fourteen or thirteen
and a half, I don't remember exactly, which is like ninety years, Boaz, maybe a hundred, he started falling in love with cats. We had a cat named Incense, she was always pregnant or nursing six or seven kittens. Haman started wooing Incense, and then, the kittens. When Incense was in heat, he'd sniff her all day long.
You're weeping, said Noga.
Those tears have nothing to do with you, said Jordana, or with Boaz either, I'm thinking about Incense, I'm weeping for old Haman, who am I talking to? The window? The streetwalkers of teleprinters? I've had it. I'm jumping out the window, I left a cigarette downstairs and across the street is a night watchman as lewd as old Haman. By the way, in the end he died.
