by Yoram Kaniuk
Here I have to note something: In my youth, I tried to write a description of the smell of a rose, and after many attempts, I gave up. If I were able to describe the play, I would of course do it, but when I returned home and tried to do that for you, for me, I couldn't. I have six drafts of a description of the play, and not one of them touches the terrifying and exciting, bold and fascinating phenomenon we saw that night. Never did I see theater like that. But when I say that, I say something about the smell of a rose. Maybe the gist of the play can be summed up in a few flashes and leave things there, so if you saw it someday you'd understand what I meant.
What we saw was a combination of Ebenezer in a nightclub and an attempt to convey with movement, music, acting, and monologues the story of Joseph de la Rayna. The big clock was set backward. We lived in two different times: a camp in the last hours before the surrender and a person haunted by demons who goes to Safed in the late sixteenth century to bring deliverance. The play was opened by Samuel Lipker, or more precisely, an actor who played him, who explained a few things about Ebenezer to the audience and announced that at the end of the play, baskets would be passed around, and every spectator would be entitled to contribute as much as he could for Ebenezer's hungry dead daughters. The story of Joseph was played in full: Joseph mortifies himself, leaves with his students to bring deliverance, prophets warn him, snow on the mountains of Safed, an intentional sin is greater than an unintentional good deed, Joseph's wedding ceremony, also a Frank, the false messiah with a Torah scroll and a whore on horseback. Destruction is essential. Joseph burns down a synagogue. Rabbis mourn at the throne, which is a stove in the middle of the camp, where soldiers without hands clap their lips at other recruits going to die and there sit Lilith and Ashmodai. They love the smell of divine incense. Joseph chews tallow. Smears himself with tallow. The students follow their teacher. Their tribulations, told by Ebenezer, are sung by a chorus, danced by dancers, and then Ashmodai and Lilith are caught. When the arrogant Joseph offers Lilith incense, a spark goes out of her mouth and burns the cords. Gigantic dogs assault the students. Joseph runs away. God yearns for Lilith and Ashmodai. The synagogue burns down. A woman translates for a lad the things said to him by a young woman who doesn't speak his language. Metaphysical pornography, Renate said to me. Joseph is flogged. All is lost. Salvation doesn't come. Ebenezer moves the clocks. A woman brings a dead baby into the world and actors sing numbers of death. Uniting with one another in human perversion. A bakery with a protesting woman put into an oven. Dogs metamorphosed into souls. Words incomprehensible at first and then blood-curdling. Silence, some epic of silence and movement, like animals who learned the annals of horror from the amoeba to SS Sturmbahnfuhrer Kramer who sits and laughs, blinking at Ebenezer at the throne of God, in the middle of a camp with a human barbed wire fence. I'm trying and not succeeding. I know, but a seventh draft won't be hidden anymore. A dog's head on a tray. Ebenezer recites. Tells the history of the Jews from their end to their beginning. The Fourth Reich, says Lily, and tears flow on her cheeks, history of Joseph de la Rayna, Joseph Rayna, his sons and daughters, that horror, Henkin, descending to the dark depths to discover light, some catastrophe in the order of the universe. To save objects, the captain throws the ship into the sea and drowns. And during the play I felt I was in fact participating, acting in the play while sitting, the actors were acting me, I them, and we, one another, and between the silences movement and sorcery, as in some magic rite, sitting heavy, an awful silence broken only by the nervous laughter of the audience, a laughter at pictures from the present blended with the camp, Kramer, Ebenezer, Joseph de la Rayna living in Safed, then and now, as if all times were desecrated and the clock starts going forward and backward and the awful terrifying music and yet more beautiful, the increasing movement, a very thin freeze prevailing, so thin there are no words. Four hours passed and we didn't even go out during the intermission. The woman who gave birth to a dead son did that when some of the audience went to the bathroom. The actors eat and drink onstage. They themselves also constitute part of the set and they dance. Licinda is Lilith, and also the woman who lets some boy crush her breasts, as he reads the numbers of trains that went there in the voice of a stock market announcer reading stock prices and she's indifferent, her eyes extinguished, Joseph flies from Sidon to Greece and enters the dream of the Queen of Greece, who orders him killed. Deliverance doesn't come and won't come, there's only death which all of you, says Samuel, all of you are in and it is with you. The Fourth Reich, says Lily. Lionel hears parts of his Laments, Ebenezer recites with his eyes shut, the clocks are broken, words are lopped off, until it all ends in a thin silence. Only Ebenezer stands there and then falls. And then he laughs. He doesn't know who he is. Maybe he's dead. The actors start applauding the stunned audience and only then, Henkin, only then, does the audience wake up from a state I'd call hypnotic and come out of the role it has played: a spectator of its own execution, and applauds.
Never did I hear such applause ...
We went outside. A cold wind was blowing. We bundled up. In the distance I saw the charming Kristina waving a flaccid goodbye to me and disappearing into a cab. My publisher came, shook my hand, and didn't say a thing, looked at me, for a moment he forgot why he had come to me, and he left. We went to Lionel's house. Later, somebody brought the reviews. We also heard the review on television. Sam closed himself in his room and didn't come out. I went to him. He was sad and quiet. A spark of anger flickered in his eyes. I don't like art, he said, I don't make art, what do they want from me, everything they saw was truth, somebody showed them, what's the big deal. But I couldn't pity him. He created a great work and he was suffering because of that. To create something great is to touch painful nerves, it's to try to create, to challenge, to change a world, and they come and say: Oh, it was awfully beautiful, I understood it.
One General Allenby, said Sam, wanted to scare the Sudanese and told them: I command you with a telegram, I sit here with weapons and supervise the wires. What does it mean to create? I translate dreams into theater. By the same token, I could have been a professional murderer or an undertaker, I've got no compassion, Melissa-Licinda is an open wound, I need her and Lily, that's all. I smiled at him and he looked at me, and then he confessed to me about the letter I had once sent him. Lily smiled the honeyed smile of a jungle queen in a Walt Disney movie, and Sam said: Did you see how my naked parents lay there! You must know, your wife could have been an excellent Jewish shawl, there's no future for that stupid past, trying to teach actors to act "it," not "about," what comes out? A review in the Times: Powder and milkshake. A crooner and a football player understand better. Who am I doing theater for and why? I don't have electricity in my hands and I don't have flames. I have to do theater. What does art do? Except that one man I knew built beautiful boxes to stay alive and then I too, because of him, and the life I have left isn't the life I wanted, you know how many came out of Auschwitz alive? Thirty thousand, another two days of war and not even one would have come out alive to tell.
Henkin my friend, a malicious thought came to me: The next time I'm asked about the heroes of my fiction, I'll tell whoever asks that he really should ask the characters about the author and not the author about the characters. I thought about that as a result of something that happened to me and that I'll tell you now. I'm not a person who acts impulsively. I stayed in New York to meet Sam, Lionel, and Lily. The meeting with Sam was disappointing to some extent. The night after the party, I invited him to a small bar, we sat and drank. He didn't talk about anything but his hatred for the play he had worked on for years. He didn't open up to me. I couldn't really make him talk, even when I gave him some information that should have interested him. When I tried to talk with him about Ebenezer, he shut up, then he said to me: For me Ebenezer is dead! And didn't go on.
When I told him about Boaz he was silent a long time and I saw three things at the same time. He envied Ebenezer, whose existence he didn't admit, he envied Boa
z, and he felt a profound fear. He said: That's nonsense! I was the only son of the Last Jew. Licinda is the incarnation of Melissa. Melissa is the love of my stepfather's youth. He said that, since he knew very well that I know they're brothers. But he chose not to relate to that and I didn't press him. I'm afraid of those combinations, he said, those crossroads, of you and of me. The real world doesn't exist anymore and we're its last witnesses. Why embellish them? Melissa is dead so we'll act for her the death of the Jews as she sits at the throne of honor and sells lampshades for ten percent profit. If God were dead, said Sam, we wouldn't have to suffer so much, but He's not dead, He exists as long as Jewish suffering exists. And then I did the irrational act I alluded to earlier, I write you now, and my hand shakes. I did something like Ebenezer's request, when he told you to ask me for his two daughters, something like Renate's desperate attempt with the fortuneteller, I went to Connecticut.
I came to Washington Depot at noon and went to the official Ford dealer. Mr. Brooks was sitting behind a glass wall reading a newspaper. When I looked at him, he turned his chair around, took off his reading glasses, and tried to see me. I walked around the gigantic show room and a smiling woman came up to me, and said: Aren't you the German writer we saw on television? I read your last book, she said after I said yes. You want to buy a car? At that moment, Mr. Brooks came out of his office and approached us. An old man dressed meticulously, his hair white, his nose thick and some thread of taut harshness around his eyes, he introduced himself to me, and said that an honored guest like me-he had also seen me on television-warranted special attention, and I said: That's fine, your assistant was friendly and generous, and she smiled, maybe even blushed. I looked at him, I spoke, but I tried to think of my son. What arose in the back of my mind was an impossible blend of Boaz, Sam, Friedrich, and Menahem. He looked at me as he spoke and I'm not sure I heard what he said, I tried to understand his mourning, but his mourning was hidden under so many masks that I could almost see myself in his eyes. I was moved to pity for him, I can't explain why, never did I pity you, Henkin, or myself, or even Renate. I said: I came to meet you Mr. Brooks, and please forgive me, I wanted very much to see the house where Melissa grew up, but I can't explain why to you.
He made a gesture as if to stop me, and I stopped talking. He seemed to be trying to digest my words, to understand them. After a bit, he said: My brother's granddaughter, Priscilla, is a student at Smith College in Northampton, not far from here. A very distinguished college ... When the Catholics came to Northampton, they built a splendid church there, next to the college dorms. Do you know what the scholars of Smith College did? They put the chemistry lab in a building next to the church. The windows of the chemistry lab face the windows of the church, and for fifty years, sir, the Catholics, now the majority of the population in the city, except for the members of the college, have had to suffer the stench ...
I nodded as if I understood the parable, even though I didn't yet completely fathom what he was talking about, I felt the shining chrome of a new Pontiac and now, in his sterile church, between a Ford coupe, an elegant Mercury and a big white Lincoln, Mr. Brooks tried to smile. I saw the lines of his face refuse to illustrate a real smile. The layers of his face interwoven with thin red threads expressed some grievance, maybe anger, maybe even a threat, but under the threat I made out lines of serenity. He said: Melissa died years ago ... I don't read books, sir, but I saw you on television and I read about you in Time. You look and sound like a rational and honorable man, you come from a country I admire for its practicality, its culture, its industry. Do you know how much I wanted to sell BMW and Mercedes? Listen, he said, and now at long last he managed to smile, I'd be glad to have you over to the house, let's go there, you'll have lunch at my house, but sir, Melissa no longer is, she's not in me, and now he almost raised his voice, she's not in the house, she's not in my wife, she's not finally and definitely, it's been many years since I stopped missing her, I've got two sons and one of them will surely take over my business, Priscilla can stay at her college, in the chemistry department and know she's still fighting an ancient war against Catholics, and with us, that's a rare, maybe desirable, case of a sequence of generations, sir ... We're not like you, and it's too bad, he added sadly.
He took me to his office overlooking the showroom, ordered coffee for me, and went out. I munched a crunchy cookie, I drank the coffee, and I waited. He came back, we put on our coats, and went out into the harsh cold. We got into his white Lincoln Continental, the heat came on immediately, he started the motor and we glided to his house.
I won't weary you with the details of the meal. There were whispered conferences, the mounted hides are still there. We drank sherry, Melissa's mother is a charming, gentle old woman, much harsher than her husband. One of the sons asked me a lot of question about the two Germanys and I tried to answer him to the best of my understanding. The lemon mousse (after the ribs and roast potatoes) was excellent, and the more we talked, the more perplexed we became. Why am I here, they weren't the only ones who wondered, I also wondered myself and didn't know what to say ...
I knew the moment of truth was approaching, I was worried, and so were they, and Mrs. Brooks, with that cleverness our wives call "feminine intuition," told me a young man came years before and then they found out that his name was Sam Lipp, and now everybody's talking about him. I told her: I'm doing research for a new book, maybe not so new, and I met a lot of people, including Sam Lipp. Mrs. Brooks showed signs of restrained excitement. For a moment she looked both desirable and shriveled, like some mounted hide of insatiable passion. She drank a lot of wine and her tongue became faster and maybe a little inarticulate. She talked about Sam Lipp, about the articles she read, that he isn't interviewed, that there aren't any photos of him, and nevertheless she said: I recognized him, I knew that was him. Maybe she recalled that dog, called her dog to come to her, it was a new dog, she patted his curly head with a sense of mastery, of revenge for Sam Lipp, some terrible sense for chilly melodrama. And then she got up, paced back and forth, and Mr. Brooks lit a giant cigar, smoked it slowly, and belched clouds of white smoke, and the maid brought a tray with coffee cups. Sam Lipp, she said, also went to the cemetery and we chased him. The dog betrayed us, we should have caught him, that famous stage director, what is he doing? I'm afraid to go to the play, Bud and Priscilla tell wonders and miracles about it. He patted the dog. The dog melted in his hands. I'm talking a lot. What hatred there was in him. Anger. What did I do? That anger of his. Melissa isn't his. He loved her, he said. Jesus!
I was silent and looked at the crease in my pants. Mr. Brooks was quiet and pensive and his look was caught in the smoke wisping up from the cigar. His face was impassive, and then suddenly, something in Mr. Brooks's dead face lit up. That flash I sensed in him before, something that would look inside, immune, creating stories about the chemistry department turned from an alloy of tiny red gills and miniature lizards into an almost savage audacity, and the shriveled silence turned into genuine rage. He said: There is in them that anger, the stubbornness, the cleverness, the nerve to get into the wrong places, where they're not wanted. There are reasons, natural reasons, aren't there? And you know, who knows better than you.
Yes, I said, and tried not to get upset, not to give it away.
No, that's not what was in him, she said. True, he's one of them, but no. Even then I thought, a trapped wolf, foreign, with a frightening, almost filthy beauty, some generosity in evil, some agitation in rottenness, his play, even then he tried to please ... What did Melissa have to do with him?
And I knew she meant, What do I have to do with Melissa?
I told you, sir, said Mr. Brooks, somebody didn't build enough chemistry departments next to what could have been a cemetery! Those were strong words and I kept silent, Henkin! She shut up, and unlike her husband, she didn't trust me. The perplexity about my coming hadn't yet been explained. But he was swept up now in some old, gnawing enmity. He didn't know Melissa, she sai
d, he tried to steal her! There was one who sneaked in, but we knew how to get rid of him, and now Mr. Brooks was incensed against the writer sitting there, and he barked: We're playing with words, what do you have to do with Melissa! What do you want after fifty years, what, what, what?
I said: I met Sam Lipp, and-
And what? Melissa wasn't his, she died before he was born!
I'm investigating!
Investigating what?
I'm investigating the death of our children, I suddenly said, the death of Sam, who's disguised as living. The death of my son, the death of a boy named Menahem Henkin, the life of somebody who learned the history of the world by heart, Melissa is somehow interwoven in that story, I don't understand how, but I know and so I came here. Even before he met Licinda Hayden and called her Melissa, long before that, he was in love with Melissa and didn't even know her, just as I came from Cologne and find myself an unwelcome guest in your house, trying to know how you miss or don't miss Melissa. My son is dead. Sam Lipp, or as he was called before, Samuel Lipker, is also a fellow named Boaz Schneerson, and his events and the events of his father, I'm trying to write together with my friend who lives far away from here. He was in love with your daughter, knew her in another plane of time-an expression I learned from my spouse -and he's still searching for her, maybe in his disappointed love for Licinda Hayden who acted Lilith in his play ...
