by Yoram Kaniuk
Tape / -
I don't remember anything, said Ebenezer. Why Menkin?
Maybe he was another father he didn't remember, said Boaz. They went back to Rebecca. The valise they brought was made of rare deerskin. Dona Gracia said: Boaz, who will expel the dust from your eyes, and she smiled. Outside schoolchildren sang songs in honor of Queen Rebecca, Noga chatted with Ahbed about the possibility of Jewish-Arab coexistence in the Land of Israel, and Ahbed said: Your husband buries Jews, and Rebecca said: Go to Dana's forest, and Ebenezer said: What forest, and she chuckled, and repeated: Go to the forest, and she added, It's my birthday and I want to talk with Noga, and after everybody left Rebecca said to Noga: Tell me about him.
And Noga suddenly pitied her.
She was holding a teacup with a silver handle, looked at the sugar cube on the saucer, sipped the strong tea, and said: What do I have to tell that you don't know, Rebecca? You came into a family that doesn't suit you, girl, said Rebecca, you lived with a dead lover. I know everything. Trying to be borne on wings and finding a butterfly in bed. Then a chrysalis. Then the children are shouting. I've got a son sitting there. I mean Ebenezer, a national wonder, knows by heart the annals of the Captain who came here to search for his father and found me. Ebenezer went to search for him, the father of your bridegroom-
He wasn't my bridegroom, said Noga, and the cup shook in her hand.
So he wasn't, but the father of somebody who was almost your bridegroom is investigating the annals of Ebenezer. Why do you have to get into all that? I'll die in another ten years, in nineteen eighty-four, I'll be a hundred years old.
Why all this bitterness?
Noga sipped the tea, put the cup down on the table, wrung her hands and crossed her legs sitting in the chair, and in the window, through the screen, flashed a sunbeam that turned the almond trees, the eucalyptus trees, and the prickly pear bushes into a hasty and wild blaze of chiaroscuro. She looked at Rebecca, and because of the dazzling light stuck in her eyes Rebecca vanished and was wrapped in a screen, as if she could no longer be touched. Outside the children sang Happy birthday Rebecca Schneerson and the Teacher All's Well conducted them. They were dressed in white and Noga stretched out a hand as if groping, lightly touched Rebecca's handsome cheeks, stood up, went to Rebecca and hugged her. Rebecca wanted to struggle with her, push her away, but stopped. She remained hugged by Noga, and a shudder went up her spine, when she turned her face to the window she no longer saw anything. The lenses of her eyeglasses were covered with mist and she couldn't, or wouldn't, wipe them. In total blindness, she could feel waves of love and refused them as she had done all her life, but now she didn't have even an iota of defiance or evil left. She said to Noga: I remember how a lion knelt before me, I didn't sing Hatikvah to him, I wasn't some Halperin! And Noga laughed, muttered something, put her lips to Rebecca's lips, kissed them lightly, and said: You're a beautiful woman, Rebecca, you're a brave warrior, but you won't break me.
Look, little girl, said Rebecca, and glanced in amazement at the other room where the quiet voices of Boaz, Ebenezer, and the great-grandson of Ahbed were heard, she smelled people and they walked around in her head, she used to say, and Ahbed came in for a moment, served Rebecca a glass of red wine, and Rebecca pushed Noga away from her, but stroked her face one more moment, as if she wanted to be sure that pure softness had indeed touched her. Ebenezer won't be alive in ten years, she said, and when he died in the Holocaust, I stood at his grave, from the second grave, he won't return. Somebody derides us, destroys us out of rage, doesn't hesitate, on the verge of a great degradation, and you come from a beautiful and sweet death of a boy who didn't burn in any fire. What have you got to do with us?
I want Boaz, said Noga, that's all, not all of you. I don't believe in circles with no exit-
And the Yemenite girl?
Noga looked at her and was silent. Then she lit a cigarette and asked Rebecca if she wanted to smoke. Rebecca said: Yes, give me something good. And Noga lit her an American cigarette, stuck it in the old woman's mouth, and the old woman inhaled smoke into her lungs, and laughed: Great like that ...
Jordana doesn't matter, said Noga, they'll come and go, but Boaz will stay.
Maybe not?
He'll stay, said Noga.
I don't want him to, said the old woman.
I know, said Noga. Look, Rebecca, I know what you want from me.
What do I want, little girl?
I'm not a little girl anymore, and you sit here like a splendid and shattered palace and want Boaz to live in it with you, until the fire. Do we bother you?
Who's we? asked Rebecca, and a cherished panic blew from Noga. Who's we? Ebenezer and I.
Right, said the old woman and crushed the cigarette and now she was alert and vigorous. She wanted to get up, but remained sitting, deeply right, as that fool Horowitz used to say, deeply right I want you to move, clear out, leave me Boaz, what is ten years in your life?
Noga smiled a thin smile that now popped up on her open lips, and the concave line between the nose and the mouth sharpened became more severe as the smile tried to invent a subsistence area. She looked at the splendid old woman and said: That's not simple, Rebecca. We're not together because we want to be together.
No grandchildren, said Rebecca. That's forbidden! No great-grandchildren, look at the great-grandson of Ahbed, he comes to stare at his grandfather's land, so there won't be forgiveness. I need him, said the old woman. I didn't have anybody, the Captain died, Nehemiah died.
You've got Ebenezer, said Noga.
No I don't, said Rebecca. Then Rebecca contemplated and suddenly saw herself in a ridiculous light she had never been in, and because she didn't know how to behave in moments of weakness, she started shaking, and because the weakness was strange to her, she also wanted to bark, but the growls and the barks stayed inside her, deep inside her, and she looked at Noga, and saw how beautiful the young woman was and for a moment, she even thought: If I've lost Boaz, I've gained a wife, why should I ask, since when do I ask, how do I know what I really want, how do people know what they want, why do I want to be dependent when I wasn't dependent on anybody, and she stretched out her hand and started stroking Noga's face, and asked her: Where are you from, who do you belong to, where did you come from before the death that brought you to Teacher Henkin?
Noga was alert to rapid changes. For some reason that pain touched her heart, the effort to win a position that was completely unnecessary. She loved Rebecca's face. That woman bows her head before death, doesn't want crumbs, but the whole, can kill Boaz to hold onto him. Her heart was stirred to pity, and Noga who knew only one love envied Rebecca, who could ask of her what people ask in old, unreliable stories. She almost said: Take him, but she knew that both Rebecca and she depended on Boaz more than he depended on them.
Late at night, everybody was tipsy. Even Rebecca tried to dance and fell into Boaz's open arms, and he hugged her as somebody who knew he had lost her that day to a girl his foster mother saw as a reflection of purity in the features of a murderer.
Tape / -
When Jordana disappeared, they phoned from the Ministry of Defense. Then Noga sat down, and Boaz, holding a narghila to plant a pinch of cannabis in it, put the mouth of the narghila he had brought from Mount Sinai to Noga's mouth, and Noga looked like an old Indian sunk in meditation, and Boaz went to drizzle water on the cannabis bush, which had meanwhile grown solitary in a brown flowerpot, where a fragrant jasmine bush had previously grown. The roof was crammed with flowerpots and smells, Noga brought spices she had cultivated and pruned and watered, and Boaz, who tried to check whether airplanes were continuing to fly low toward the airport, felt a pleasant giddiness, he landed next to Noga and stroked her back. Noga said, Jordana disappeared!
When? asked Boaz.
They haven't heard from her in months, and only now did they call, the bastards.
Boaz took off the cotton shirt, smelled his own odor, and tossed the shirt into the corne
r of the room. Then he stood up, his torso naked, and tried to let the thoughts run around in his brain. He said: If you hadn't given her Menahem, she wouldn't have run away!
Noga didn't answer, and pondered quietly. Her face was furrowed with new lines that would disappear later. Her eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. He saw her body harden and wanted to ask her to stop thinking about Jordana, but Noga thought of what he said and suddenly a distant pain condensed in her that tormented her again, and she said: Why when you want to pity do you attack?
He stood still and didn't know what to do with himself, Noga clasped the narghila, thrust her hands in it and tossed it to Boaz. He ducked and the narghila hit the pile of sheets Noga was about to put into the linen closet. Then she dropped her eyes, and said: Where did she disappear?
Boaz said: Why is that so important? Maybe she just couldn't take it anymore?
Noga got up and went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, looked at the row of eggs in their niches and picked up a carton of milk, opened it, tried to pour the milk into an empty space with no cup, changed her mind, put the milk in the refrigerator, and sat down in front of the old grandfather clock. The milk flowed on the countertop, and Boaz, who tried not to see Noga, pushed the pinch of cannabis into the narghila that wasn't broken. She searched for music, but on all the stations there was only talk. She turned off the radio and opened the chest, took out papers, and read aloud the numbers she had written at night after they returned from the unveiling of the memorial at the Dead Sea, when Boaz asked her to prepare the income tax report: the mileage doesn't fit the gas receipts, she said, and Boaz said: I can't calculate everything exactly. He saw Jordana's lost face among the memorial books, Obadiah Henkin strolling in the mountains and showing her where her beloved fought, tried to pity himself and Noga.
On the way to Henkin's house, they stopped at a cafe. Next to the wall, four men sat and talked. Around each one of them you could see the aura of foreignness. The old men yelled to one another in order to be scared less and to be present. Boaz could understand Jordana's not-being in the space between those men and themselves. He didn't know who they were, but they looked as if they were still expecting something that would never happen. And Boaz knew that wound, knew how to smell it in the distance, and Noga, who knew how much the pain costs afterward, asked Boaz to leave. He understood her fear and left. Henkin's house suddenly looked like a frontier. One window in Ebenezer's house was painted a new color. Why does he paint at night? he asked Noga, and Noga said: How do I know what your father does?
Obadiah Henkin sat at his table and looked at Boaz and at the door at the same time. Through the open door, Hasha could be seen carefully drawing Noga's wild hair off her forehead, and gave her a small round mirror. After they combed their hair and each looked in the little mirror, Hasha gave Noga a glass of cold lemonade, and Henkin said to Boaz: The story about Jordana has been worrying me a long time now. I didn't know what happened, the Shimonis said they saw her in Kiryat Haim. They went to the Galilee on their memorial day, on the way back they stopped for a cup of coffee, and in the distance they saw what Mrs. Shimoni described as a familiar back and then they made out her profile, but by the time Mrs. Shimoni stood up and found her coat hanging under three coats, she disappeared in the direction of what she described as a boulevard facing the highway. I really don't know what she's doing there ...
Jordana's parents' family doctor knew some details he was willing to reveal. He told Noga: She went through a difficult experience. He didn't know where she lived or how to find her, but a doctor at the clinic in Kiryat Bialik called him about Jordana, and asked if she could take five-milligram Valiums and how to give it to her, and what were her reasons for needing Valium.
On the way to the suburbs of Haifa, cows were seen grazing near a field shaded by a row of thin-trunked cedars, and a heavy red horse was seen leaping with clumsy nobility. They bypassed Haifa and came to the suburbs in a heavy cloud of soot. The Carmel was buried in a giant bubble of sweetish stinking stickiness.
When they entered the small one-room apartment, Jordana looked docile, curled up in a giant armchair with torn upholstery, and remnants of foam rubber popped out of the worn back. In the small ugly mirror hanging next to the television that was on, she appeared sucking her thumb. Her eyes were fixed on the screen and on her face was a faded look. She raised her hand to beckon them in. On the screen was a teacher, the teacher was talking about decimals, it was a fifth-grade education program.
Boaz looked around, tried to take in the sight, maybe he even understood. He touched a leaf of a bunch of dead narcissi stuck in a blue vase, with no water. When he touched the leaf, dry white petals dropped off. The room had the musty odor of locked windows, orange peels, and skin lotion. Noga went to Jordana and hugged her from behind, and Jordana took Noga's hand, held it to her face, tears began flowing on her cheeks and she softened a bit, turned sideways toward the guests, stared stoned and stunned, tried to take her eyes off the screen, but when Boaz turned off the television the tears became clearer and hotter, and she turned the television back on in a panic, stared at the screen, as if she didn't see a thing, and Boaz turned it off again.
Jordana reached for the television, but fell down and Noga caught her. They picked her up and saw how thin she had become, sat her on a small sheet like a baby on a rough green bedspread. Jordana asked for water. Boaz went to the neglected kitchen, washed some glasses that were moldering in the sink, opened the refrigerator that held one egg, a rotten tomato, nuts, chocolate, and five jars of cold water that had been filled long ago and had turned yellow, took out some ice, put it in the glasses, poured tap water into them, and went back in the room. Jordana looked at him and for a moment, a smile ignited in her eyes. She drank two glasses of water in a row and asked for a cigarette. After she smoked a few minutes and smoke swirled around her face, she said: You remember that I once lost a child?
Noga looked at Jordana and didn't say a thing.
After that, I loved the two of you, and Menahem. Menahem I loved before. Then I couldn't. You shouldn't have found me, I don't belong to anybody Noga ...
We love you, said Boaz, we were worried.
You don't love anybody, said Jordana, you're too distinguished to love. How's Obadiah?
He's worried about you, said Noga.
And about an hour later, seated on the sofa, her legs folded and her mouth gaping open, so blighted, beautiful against the background of the room laced with old wallpaper, Jordana said: Then I started watching television, they say I fell in love with it. I see all the programs in Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon, sometimes I get Cyprus. There's a guy here, Jacob, who set up an antenna for me with five directions. That's important.
Why is that important? asks Boaz.
'Cause I'm improving myself in a new direction, Boaz, at long last I'm building a past for myself that has a future.
Boaz got up and walked around the room, and Noga, who was sitting next to Jordana, hugged her. The infinite softness from Noga melted in Jordana a tremor that had begun to emerge when she took her eyes off the screen. You went out of your mind, Jordana, said Boaz, you've been imprisoned here day and night, sitting, what do you see, King Hussein, kissed wildly by officers of the armored corps? Cartoons? What are you wasting your life on!
This is my life, Boaz, and you have really no idea about somebody else's life. At night, when the light is over in the set, after the chapters of the Koran in Jordan, I see how the light pours into the screen, and then with four Valiums I fall asleep. And then Jordana yelled: I'm fed up, Boaz.
Then she whispered: The truth is I wanted to die, but I couldn't, death is too good for me, it belongs to those I love.
And Noga, Noga got up, maybe even darted up, and slapped Boaz's face. Her face bled pain, she started hitting the wall and Boaz in turn in a rage she didn't know was in her. Jordana tried to laugh, but her lips didn't move, she looked de trop and infantile and started sucking her thumb again. Boaz once again turned h
is face to the wall. An old calendar was hanging there, with a smiling swarthy girl holding a bunch of grapes.
When Boaz packed up her things, she didn't insist. He carefully wrapped the television, dragged the cartons to the big car, filled it so there was room for Noga and Jordana, and they left. He even paid the landlord. Jordana didn't look back, she just said: The new antenna you left here, too bad ...
Boaz thought: What is it to sit in front of a television from three in the afternoon to twelve at night? But when he looked at her, she was dozing in Noga's arms. Noga, who had long ago wept at her outburst, but couldn't apologize, tried to signal something to him, but he didn't think of trying to understand. So deep was his contempt for Jordana. To himself he thought: She's leading me astray, that whore! When they got to the Henkin house, Hasha said: The undertaker's come, Obadiah.
Boaz left the two girls in the car. He removed an imaginary hat, turned to Hasha who was drinking tea at the table, and said: If you weren't the mother of my wife's husband, I would rape you. Hasha chuckled and said: You're scary, Mr. Schneerson, and she went on drinking her tea. After that, Henkin went out and hugged Jordana, who trembled in his arms. When they brought her inside, Henkin was more solid than he had been in years, and said: Hasha Masha, she was found in Kiryat Motzkin, she's in shock and needs rest, for now she'll stay in Menahem's room. Hasha looked at her with eyes that were scared at first and then calm, and said arrogantly: Why not? I'll have grandchildren to raise and somebody's diapers to change. Suddenly she let her head drop onto the table, and her head banged on the table. Boaz managed to notice that when the album was shifted by the bang, squares crowned with dust frames appeared. He called home. The girl who worked there said: There were a few invitations, the newspaper reports of the ceremony at the Dead Sea were fantastic ...
