Ways to Lucena

by Mois Benarroch

  “It tastes like vinegar.”

  “Like wine vinegar?”

  “Like blood vinegar.”

  “Do you still pray?”

  “As others breathe and eat, like a horse.”

  “Who do you pray for?”

  “For my lost sons and for those I will lose.”

  “One will always survive.”

  “Yes, but he cannot raise the dead. Whole lives buried, lost.”

  “Each death is a world unborn.”

  YITZHAK

  Damn the day I saved my son from the Church. Damn the day I fled from Spain to come to this country which promised everything, and gave us nothing. I saved my son from the fire and now he has disappeared in the water. He was removed instants before being burned alive by his mother like the Nuñez woman did. One second more and he would have died a Jew, and not have converted to Christianity. I say to God, perhaps we should have preferred to die rather than convert. But a little child who barely talks: wouldn’t it be better for him to live? But my son, you will never know that you are my son. You will never know that you are descended from the Abrabanel family. You will never know that your forefathers were rabbis, poets and men of science. You will never know from whence you came. You will only remember a mother, crying, with a knife held to your throat one minute before decapitating you like a chicken on Yom Kippur. And you will never understand where this memory comes from when my life is no longer life and my death is my only salvation. I will look to this immense sea, toward the ocean, and I will see how you were put on that ship forever.

  RICHARD

  I am not so sure that the sudden news of your death is as bad as it seems. I hated you so much and forgave you so many times that I no longer know if I am your son and you my father or if we are the fiftieth reincarnation of old enemies. Ever since you abandoned me here with my mother and left with another woman, I am happy you didn’t have any children with her. That is what you deserved. With all the silly things that muddle my noggin I do not know if you are my father, or my enemy.

  It was your wife who paid the high expense of the ticket so I could attend your burial. At least I got three thousand dollars out of your death from your wife. I am here because my friend David put me on the airplane and convinced me that I must come to say Kaddish at your tomb. In spite of everything I’m not interested in the least, and I don’t care. Whatever, I am here to say Kaddish at your fresh tomb. I also don’t believe that the Kaddish matters much to you either. But David convinced me that doing it could help you so probably you are even happy that I am here, I, your only son, saying Kaddish at your tomb. And all those long trips out of all of them so you could get to Johannesburg and hate the blacks. You should know, if perhaps here they don’t know it yet, that in South Africa, soon there will be a black president: the criminal named Mandela. The whole world knows it except you all. I am sorry I can’t see you living under the government of a black. The truth is, I would have liked that. But I don’t care about any of that. I have come here to your tomb to learn how, how you could leave me out of your inheritance. How, when you know full well my economic situation; when you know that I don’t have anything. Not even twenty thousand of the million or two million dollars that you have. Not even that.

  Do you really not know that I don’t have anything? Not even a year before you died, in the law office, did you remember you have a son? But I came to your tomb to say Kaddish. Who knows, probably this will make you happy in the other world and you will even regret you didn’t leave me any inheritance. Probably, after death, you will, at last, regret something. If so, the trip was worth it.

  THE SIXTH DAY

  I get confused about the times and I have forgotten many things but none of that matters any more. The longer we live, the more we forget. I have seen many violent deaths of innocents on the road.

  I found her one marvelous morning at the end of the last century while walking through the alleys of Les Halles. Suddenly our faces met, we looked at each other, and her black eyes bore into mine. She nearly fell onto me and I heard the noise of wood hitting the ground. It was her crutches. She fell against me and suddenly I realized that woman had only one leg. But at the same time I understood that that I would stay with her until she died. Years later, she told me that a week previous she had dreamed she would find her future husband and had even seen me in her dreams.

  It was a Thursday. I always find my women on Thursdays. Her name was Sara, a Jew. They were always Jews. But she didn’t know it until the day she told her mother that she was going to marry a Jew.

  I was there when her mother told her, “I wanted to save you from the Jewish destiny but I see your destiny has come for you. If it weren’t for your incapacity, maybe I would even tell you not to marry him. But in your situation, I can’t hinder your happiness. I can also see that he will take care of your needs for your whole life. I only ask that you not talk about your Judaism with your siblings and that you and your husband go somewhere else to live. I wish you a full life. ”

  From there I didn’t return to Tetuán. Like many tetuaníes I embarked for Venezuela. On the way I realized that Sara would not be able to tolerate the trip, so we stayed in Madeira. All the ships stopped there on the way to South America.

  Sara only survived five more years. Her other leg suffered gangrene and this time it was not possible to prevent the spread of the disease.

  We had no children. Her memory is pure. Surely we were the only Jews in Madeira although it seemed to me that many were Marranos. Also, on feast days, they would wear a kind of skullcap similar to our kippah.

  I remember that solid, tranquil sea, the tiny city of Funchal and the agreeable climate that surely helped Sara to survive a few years more.

  No, I don’t know if you are interested in hearing this story, but to me it is important to tell because that was a true love. Sometimes five years can be more important than fifty.

  Perhaps I tell you that so you can see how very important human relationships are, not social or political “realities”. The most important things are not written in the “important” books.

  Today, as well, I think on the sea. Even airplanes fall into the sea, and people, as always, are taken aback. Husbands, sons and daughters disappear as though they had never existed. The sea drinks them in. The earth, with earthquakes, swallows people and I have lived many years without being swallowed by anyone. Someone disappears into the sea at age two, another, an old man of one hundred, nothing happens to, and we are bewildered. I, my son, certainly, after a thousand years, I don’t have any answer to what is the meaning of life and death. Perhaps, having asked a lot, causes me a mental pain like when one scratches oneself too much in the same spot. I’m sure you are expecting answers from me. We always expect more answers from those who have lived more. I have seen my sons die, young and old, and I have always cried. I don’t know who I cry for more, if for those who carried the weight of their life spent it and saw, or for those who did not live to grow up and died before knowing the taste of sex and disillusionment. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself for having lived so long and having gone through so much. But sometimes I think I should be the happiest mortal from all that I have seen. And I, even when very young, always had the feeling I was ready to renounce life and leave this world. Destiny has fallen on me to live for more than a thousand years. Precisely I, as Moises, asked for enemy leaders from the vault so perhaps God asked for the lives of enemies so I could live a thousand years. Maybe, in time, I forgot at what time, as a youth, I wanted to leave the world while still young. I have forgotten it a little. I had loves, women and children that gave me satisfaction, not only suffering. And now I see you. After a thousand years of exile, I should be happy. I am content because you were born to bless me. You will be the one to say Kaddish at my tomb. You will say Kaddish for the defenseless women, for the fiancées I left without a husband, for the children who thought themselves orphans and didn’t have a tomb of their father to say Kaddish. For those
who thought I had disappeared in the sea, that I was dragged by the boat to where I would feed the sharks. Among all, you, Samuel are the only one who will come to my tomb.

  THE PARTS FARM

  A short story by SAMUEL MURCIANO

  Under this attractive name was hidden one of the most important scientific projects of the twenty first century. In a secret place in the jungle of Africa or Asia, a completely unknown site carried out the greatest genetic experiment in history. Raising of humans to produce organs for transplants. They were persons without being. Anonymous, without names, of no interest to the world.

  Professor Lichtenstein looked hourly, at the petitions that arrived via e-mail.

  “Leg for young woman 1.70 meters tall. Do we have one?”

  The secretary looked in the files on the computer and said:

  “Yes, but not frozen. We need to contact the organ bank.”

  “How long will it take? It’s urgent.”

  “What part of the world?”

  “Switzerland.”

  “Fifteen hours. Under that, no can do.”

  “OK I’ll answer them. Let’s see what they say.”

  The process was carried out by pressing a button. No human intervention, neither in the gestation of the individuals whose organs would be removed, nor in cutting off the needed item.”

  “OK they agree, but they ask it be done as soon as possible.”

  “I have to look on the computer to see if the transfer was made.”

  The secretary looked at the bank account and saw that the money had arrived. She immediately typed the number of the donor: 25584.

  The computer asked if the rest of the body parts should be frozen or if only the leg should be cut off.

  “What do you think?” the doctor, who faced her, asked.

  “What is the blood type?”

  “AB negative.”

  “It is an uncommon blood type. They should just cut off the leg. I don’t think we will need many members for this blood group.”

  A robot passing through the farm took the girl to the operations room and with local anesthesia, removed the leg. She felt no pain. At birth her neurological pain centers had been removed. Then she returned, lamed, to play with her friends. They looked at her, surprised for a few minutes, but soon she left to play with others who had had amputations as well, leaving the group that had all four extremities.

  While she was with her friends, her leg had been frozen, placed in a green box and taken to an airplane waiting with engines running to transport it.

  On the box was a label:

  “Organ farm- limbs for the world within twenty-four hours.”

  LA CAMPANA

  There he is in the ‘La Campana’ bar. Sitting there dazed and he doesn’t even recognize me. Once in a while he’ll hug the young man next to him. Now it is understood that he may be the last Jew from here who didn’t emigrate. But I propose to kill him. I will kill him. Perhaps it would be better if he didn’t recognize me. I may not have been the only one. Maybe there were others. However that may be, his day has come. I will do it quickly. He usurped my joy of life and I will usurp his life. Here is an important man, an established businessman who looks to be very satisfied with his life but he does not know that he is at the point of ending it all. His life, his family life, his libertine life, the life of a rapist, that of a pedophile, everything. Because here important people are allowed to do anything. They can rape. They can seduce a young man. The police are bribed, or is it that nobody cares about what happened to me, nobody. He can’t even imagine that the woman seated in front of him, looking at him, isn’t doing it because he is handsome or rich. Nor is it so he can go after her for her Magrebi-Asian sex appeal.

  It is evident that he does not remember me. He doesn’t even look at me. He, a man sixty years old, handsome, attractive. Perhaps he doesn’t have enough girls? Women of a certain age! But thirty years ago it seemed like he liked girls without means. That is how it was that shining evening when I returned home. He approached me in the street and forced me into his new car. If anybody saw it they didn’t say anything. Nobody turns in a rich guy with a car, the son of a...

  I had approached the car thinking I knew him, but what he wanted was not to talk.

  “I’ll show you a good time if you like, if not, by force.” How he liked to say “by force.”

  He emphasized the word “force.” As though it were his mantra. I screamed but before I knew it we were on the outskirts of the city. He took me to an isolated house and there he raped me again and again for several hours. That guy always had it up. Rape is what excited him, and fear. That is what I noticed the whole time—his fear at not enjoying it at all because he preferred men—and he did this to get away from the young men who attracted him.

  I remember that the only thing I was thinking was that I should not resist him so he wouldn’t leave marks on my face so that nobody would know what had happened that evening. So that nobody would suspect. Back then I was a young girl. And if, in the Jewish community, it became known that I had been raped, I could not be married.

  Now here, the irony of destiny, twenty five years after having left the city, I have returned—my husband’s business. He is constructing a hotel with a casino on the coast. – to find myself with him again. He doesn’t remember me; nor does he know that today he dies. How should the last day be for someone who has a pile of money, lovers,—hims and hers—, the best doctors? How does it feel Mr. Pinto? How do you feel? Maybe the way I felt thirty years ago, young, a virgin, a beauty, and wanting to get married? Is it the same? Could I have imagined that a few hours later I would feel dirty and worthless to any man? Could I have imagined the lost years that nobody would understand what I was doing in Paris, fleeing from men and my obligations? I have spent twenty years trying to recover my innocence, seeking the young girl that I once was, looking for her everywhere, even as a female escort, as a teacher, as a detective in district thirteen in Paris, investigating rapes of minors. Up to age forty I didn’t feel able to love any man. That’s the way it is, Mr. Pinto. How you stole from me the possibility of having children, but today you die. I will do it cleanly. I know they won’t catch me. Surely they will say some Moor knifed a Jew and that will be the end. It won’t be the first time something like this has happened. There will be talk, and finally the Jews will say that they haven’t been able to catch the assassin because the Moors are anti-Semites. Oh Mr. Pinto! Your wife will grieve for you and your children will be overjoyed at being liberated from you. They’ll go waste it in Paris with female escorts or with a girl who has been raped and who fucks for money, and the feeling that she is in control of the situation, the man and her own body. To be a whore to be able to control her own body and a tiny Mercedes. I was one for a year until I understood that I was only doing it to avoid myself. It wasn’t easy to disappear and give up the money but the money didn’t really matter to me. I saved and continued living like a normal ordinary girl. Outside of work itself, I didn’t care at all about the other girls, or the work, or the money. You know what I did with the money? I emigrated to Israel. Money from prostitution for Zionism.

  Right away I began to study Social Work at the university but after the first year I already began to see that that country with so very many Jews living together was not for me. They were gross and humiliating. Everything I did seemed humiliating. It was much more humiliating than for a man to give me money. For me such vulgarity and the crude way they talked was as if they were humiliating me. They didn’t do it on purpose. That’s the way they are. Period. But everything humiliated me. Maybe I had that feeling because the Jews started looking to me as degrading as you Mr. Pinto. Monseur Pinto, spoiled, perverse rich kid who thinks he can do anything that pops into his head. Surely your wife knows that you fuck your young Moor, but she doesn’t care because of the money, or perhaps because she is the kind of woman who can’t see beyond their own nose. Like my own mother who, when she came to Paris she didn’t try to
find out how I could buy a Mercedes Coupe. She didn’t ask about anything. Maybe she was afraid to find out. But she was an expert in not seeing or asking. She has always been that way. She didn’t want to know that I had grown up. That I had become a woman, a monster. Nobody knew that I did what I did because of you. Then I used the money for psychological treatment while I was working as a translator for UNESCO. You always came up in the sessions and I always said that I wanted to kill you. She, the psychologist, tried to influence me to resign myself to the fact that this had happened in the past. But the only thing I wanted to do was to kill you. To assassinate you. And today I will do it. I will wear a djellaba. I’m tall enough for people to think I’m a man. It will only be a few seconds. I’ll do it, Mr. Pinto. Today a Moor will kill you that’s what everybody will think. Perhaps the only thing that’s lacking, is to look you in the eye and remind him of what happened. To talk to you for an instant but those are just dreams. Today, at dusk, the same time you forced me into your new car, as you go to synagogue for the evening prayers. Yes, I know you go there to complete the minyan. I will stick the knife into your gut at nightfall. I will run along the streets and then I will get into my car, take off the djellaba and no one will be able to identify me. Everybody will think you were assassinated by a crazy Moor dressed in a djellaba. Could there be a more logical death for a rich Jew than that?

  A SEPHARDI IN TEXAS

  I am not the first of course. There were already Sephardim who settled here in the eighteenth century. It is surprising what I am doing here. It is absolutely surprising how things happened. I participate in international poetry festival it is the first time I participate in a festival and right here, in Austin, Texas.

  In Israel I had not been invited to a single festival. This is both surprising and not surprising. Here I am, here after having uploaded several dozen poems on the internet. Someone in some corner of the world saw them. And here I am, the most international poet in the world. I read my poems in Spanish, in English, and in Hebrew. And every time I present, I am asked to read, again, the poem that gallops, they say, the poem “Caballos.”