Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
Germanwriter, who had stood and read for some time now, fell asleep,
knocking his head on the paper. I thought of Samuel Lipker looking for
diamonds in rectums. The writer's glasses dropped off and fell to the floor.
Fortunately for him the lenses were plastic. The light in the room was soft,
and outside laborers were heard on their way to work. A car passed by in
the empty street and made noise. Ebenezer gave me a long and vital look,
as if he never slept, Renate wanted to go to her husband but couldn't.
Ebenezer said: Poor Henkin! Samuel the great actor! Came to you and
shuffled the cards for you, played your son, I wanted daughters from the
German and you'll ask him for him. Samuel's not a bad man, just amoral, born without a mother and an evil grandmother raised him. I know her,
she's my mother. The German's journal makes me laugh. Only a journal
like that can make a man like me laugh.
No Samuel came to me, I said, tired, and part of me was already asleep.
Did Boaz come to me? Ebenezer looked at me a long time and turned his
face away, maybe I really did hurt him. Renate asked: Was there really a
commander named Kramer?
He knew a little bit about the poem of wood, said Ebenezer, your husband is a good writer, maybe too good. What in fact happened to us, I met
him years ago, didn't I?
Years ago, mumbled the German either asleep or terrified and then he
stirred suddenly, with a kind of sharp and panicky waking, picked up his
glasses, stretched his slightly crumpled clothes. He said: So many things
ago!
What things? Ebenezer looked amused again. A puppet acts, I thought to
myself. A person who builds gardens in the dark. An enormous need to know
who he was stirs in me and gives no signs. He said: We sat and talked, I remember. I remember, more and more I remember who I am and why I am.
And so the knowledge was forgotten and that's good. A human being will
come from me yet. You wrote to me. Then the contact was broken. The
scholars who studied me at the institute told me, He writes, he writes, and
what did you write? A fictional journal. Listen, don't make me what I'm
not. And we searched for one another, why? Can I know? You should know.
Or Henkin who Samuel came to and stole his daughter-in-law Noga from
him. Mrs. Henkin, I wanted to tell you words of an old man who loved only
one woman in his life, you're a very handsome woman!
She thanked him, my wife, and smiled at me. That was her first smile
at me in years.
I was terrified.
Who was Secret Charity? I asked.
The two of them looked at me and wanted to answer and then Ebenezer
said, You'll know everything, Henkin, everything you'll know, what was
over long ago is starting over ... Look, it's morning now and before it was
night. Maybe a new millennium is starting?
We went outside. The sun was already beating down and Renate was
supporting my wife. We walked to the car. Ebenezer fell asleep on his feet. His wife dragged him inside and started lowering the shutters. Before he
disappeared, his hat slipped off and he picked it up with some tired and
clownish acrobatics. Renate sat behind the wheel and the writer fell asleep
next to her. I shook the old man's hand. Renate kissed my wife, who bent
over to her, she started the car, and drove off.
We went into the house. The heavy curtains preserved the night chill
and for the first time in years we got into one bed together, dressed, but
hugging, still silent. She kissed me softly and fell asleep. I wept but she
didn't see. We woke up in the afternoon. We were hungry; we felt like two
kids. We ate something Hasha Masha warmed up and we fell asleep again.
This time we took off our clothes. We hugged, if we had been young we
would have given birth to a son. The son would die afterward. But we
were too old to give birth. It was beautiful to return to my wife's dark and
fascinating openings. She hugged me and dug her fingernails into me. I
thought to myself, She's become a cat, the mother of my dead son. We
opened the windows and Hasha Masha made good coffee. A knock was
heard on the door. I opened it and in the door stood Germanwriter and his
wife. He was holding a big bouquet of flowers. We drank coffee, we looked
at Ebenezer's house. The German said: Now he'll pretend to be sleeping.
And indeed the windows were shut.
We got into the car and drove off. The road to Jerusalem was exciting as
always. The German looked at the trees and the mountains and after the
ardor of talking the night before the words seemed to have died out and
were no longer stammered. Renate told how her son once took his sock,
wiped his nose, and then put the sock back on. She laughed. Hasha Masha
also laughed. The writer was tired and pensive. When we arrived, he said
suddenly: What a beautiful place. We parked the car and walked on the path
toward the cemetery. The light was savage but the trees soothed it. Their
thick crests covered us. The path was full of dry and wet pine needles, the
graves were lined up like a military parade. We stopped at Menahem's tombstone. His name was engraved in stone and so was his army number. I
wanted to say something. And all I could say was, Here, next to Menahem,
Yashka is buried. Yashka fell in one of the two battles in which Menahem was
killed. Nothing is known about him except his name, he came to Cyprus in
a ship of illegal immigrants, from Cyprus he came to Haifa and from there he
went to the last battle he took part in. They weren't even sure of his name.
Meanwhile night fell. We stood there a long time. The moonlight that
now beamed tried to save the horrifying sight of the dead lined up under
the hewn stones. It all looked like a cheap stage set for something with no
name, the pain, for some reason, maybe because of the passing night, was
also fuller and more divided, desolate, and so I had nothing to say. I looked
at my new friends, they guessed me correctly, I knew that from their faces.
On the way back, the writer said: Who remains there, you or him?
I didn't answer, I thought. And then I said: Funny that Ebenezer thinks
you wrote the journal. He didn't answer.
We saw each other twice more before they left. We sat a long night in
Ebenezer's house and he told us, as in a dream, about Secret Charity and
his mother Rebecca. Some things I knew from my investigation of him and
some the German knew. We smiled at one another like two conspirators.
Then the Germans left and we went to the airport with them. I had never
been there before: the noise, the turmoil, the giant planes, all that was new
to me.
Hasha Masha and I went back to playing World War II games. I corrected the old map. Jordana came and went, Noga came sometimes. In the
game of old battles we came to the Normandy landing. Now I used more
perfect flags, with pins with round colored heads. I bought a television set
and I started cooking. It's hard for me to understand how a strict and harsh
teacher like me turned into a cook. I love the smell of cooking and that
activity whose purpose you see immediately. Ebenezer gave me two carved
birds. I bought flowerpots and planted cactuses and the garden is growing
beautiful. Hasha Masha found some soothing that allows us to go on living,
she even started playing the old piano I bought her. She plays Russian
and Israeli folk songs and a lot of Chopin, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and
Schumann. There's so much romanticism still in those old bones. At night
after we hug we dream of Menahem. Each of us with his or her own dream.
But we're together now and only the dreams are apart and come together
again. A month later, our committee received a big contribution from Germany to plant a forest in the name of the fallen of Brigade G. I was chosen
to speak on behalf of the bereaved parents. At night Hasha Masha told me:
I hate sacrifices to the dead, but you spoke well, Obadiah. I thought about
Boaz, about his father who calls him Samuel, about his grandmother Rebecca
in the settlement, near what was once Marar, near the vineyards, near the almond trees. I thought: When will the German and I be able to write together the book about the Last Jew? Or perhaps that will be a book about
ourselves?
I didn't know.
Tape / -
Samuel Lipker of the Sonderkommando. What do you mean some gravedigger of the dead. Eitdatius was Bishop in Shaybes. He wrote the continuation of the memoirs of the world from the year three hundred seventy-eight
AD to four hundred sixty-eight. He continued the tradition of Jerome and
Eusebius of Caesarea. Aaron ben Amos, of the tribe of Levi, Aaron Aurora of
Babylon, Aaron head of the court in Pombaditha. Aaron head of the court in
Zelikow (the glory of Uziel) Aaron rabbi of the city of Knishin (author of
"Jacob's Coat)" .. .
Aaron Rav ben Rabbi-not the author of "Oil of Myrrh" but the grandson of the author of "Name of the Great" .. .
Tape / -
With a good bottle of orange soda to be thirsty. Henkin hadn't been
seen for a few days now. The sea ranges from turbulent to billowy. When
I came to the Land of Israel, Samuel appeared and called me father. I
said to him Samuel, and he said, I'm Boaz. And he despised me. Maybe
he wanted to cry. Me too, old mother Rebecca laughed a hissing wicked
laugh. There was a rage in her because I returned after forty years and
didn't explain to her why. Maybe the jackal who raped her in her youth
laughed in her. Ever since, my dear Samuel, I've been waiting for you!
Tape / -
Maybe that's the preface to the Last Jew by the director of the solar
system who's based in Berlin, thinks that television antennas are arms asking heaven for salvation, sees wonderful people writing letters to one another and finds a small music box in abandoned houses where they listen
to innocent melodies and say, Oh, what beautiful work. And the lord of the
solar system sits and tries to restore the history for me, I want to get to
Boaz who returned from the war at another time, hit a woman on the boulevard, coveted her phony gold ring, then invented Menahem for Henkin and killed him one more time, the director who writes a book like a shoplifter in a piano store; a deep sense of frustration. God had to create the
world, but after He created it He changed His mind but by then it was too
late. The gods of the solar system can indeed create or perhaps even have
to, but they can't participate in running the world they created, since it's
their night, in the morning they wake up from it and it's like a shadow.
God created the world out of His waking. His point of view is different
from the point of view of what are called human beings. He destroyed a
world and created a mixture of chaos, storm clouds of gas from explosions
in space, all those were the awakening of the world when his moon hit it.
But for what are called human beings that was an event that was yet to
happen. For God it had already happened.
In the beginning was the destruction. Hard to understand that in light
of the ethical findings of God on the face of the earth. The time has come
to tell the truth and to disappear. It bores me to see people who died a
thousand years ago born and thinking their torments have meaning. For
God, the aforementioned Boaz and Samuel and Ebenezer died long ago.
The world no longer exists. Five hundred frightened travelers stuck for
a few months now in a sophisticated spaceship on its way to the stars of
Andromeda are freezing. When they reach their destination the ape will
begin to resemble man and three billion years later Abraham the Hebrew
will go to the land of Canaan. The words "ethics" and "forgiveness" remind
us, slaves of the directorship of the system, of the words "ice cream" and
"treason." The origin of God is from a green and yellow moss that grew in
the depths of space. The Jews turned God into what never could have been;
an imaginary and arid god. The real God knew about the grief brought on
Him by His believers and the creators of His imaginary image. The grief of
those Jews chilled his wrath at their stubbornness a bit, and so He fell in
love with the smell of Jewish grief; the grief was a real challenge and only
thus did the tragicomic encounter between God and His chosen people
take place.
The first Adam lived in two fictional versions. One was with Lilith and
the other was with Eve. I'm an expert on the creations. I live in the solar
system, sit here in Berlin to teach you wisdom. All of that is still to happen.
And Cush will beget Nimrod, a mighty one in the earth. The Pathrusim
begat the Casluhim, Arphaxad begat Salah, and Salah Eber, Serug begat Nahor, and Terah begat Abram. Abram will beget Isaac and Ishmael. Jacob
the son of Isaac will beget Simeon, Levi, and Joseph, the sons of Judah will
be Er and Onan, Tamar the daughter-in-law of Judah will give birth to
Pharez with one stroke of strong and splendid passion. Ram will beget
Amminadab, Amminadab Nahshon, Nahshon Salmon, Salmon will beget
Boaz, Boaz Jesse, Jesse David. Generations will pass. And somebody will
invent the wheel and will domesticate wheat and prophesy. Then Avrum
ben ha-Rav Kriv will beget the Vulgar of Vilna who will beget Praise of
Israel who will beget Unworthy in His Faith May He Live Long. Who saw
the light and his eyes were extinguished from sight. Unworthy will beget
Secret Charity. Secret Charity will meet the messiah Frank riding on the
horse of a knight with a naked woman rabbi. Rebecca Secret Charity will
be the daughter and wife of Secret Charity. Her grandchildren will be
Joseph Rayna and Rebecca. Rebecca will give birth to Ebenezer. Ebenezer
will beget Boaz. Joseph Rayna will beget another hundred sons and daughters. Samuel Lipker's betrayed father, the son of Joseph, will bequeath a
diamond in his rectum to Samuel, Boaz will be the adopted son of his grandmother Rebecca and the stepbrother of his father.
Wanderings, hostility, and unimaginably vast expanses of grief filled the
life of the Hebrews with yearning. From their place of birth they learned
the price of foreignness. They were forced to invent a god and heaven even
before they had ground to walk on. That is their ancient curse. Their roots
long for the air, their treetops for the ground. Only people who understood
heaven before they understood earth could imagine a universe and a creation as punishment or reward. In their flight to their savage pride, out of
a passion for vengeance, hatred of domestication and lusts for uncompromising rebellions, they clung to one thing that had no foothold in any reality, to words. They had a language before they had houses, they had a
grammar before they had a land, so they could create a future even when
they didn't have a past. They created for themselves a creator god who
judges the future according to what was. The desert was imprisoned in
their soul, the wanderings were their homeland. God was more important
than man. With the Hebrews, imagined glory turned into denial of life with
unbridled lust for it. An inconceivable yearning was born in them for something even the very old people, who remembered everything that never
happened (and invented in exchange a changing past) couldn't formulate explicitly. The times were wild. Tribes and tribes joined forces in ancestral homes. They captured cities and burned them. Desperate ones went
to the land whose wine is good, whose women made merry in the vineyards, its villages happy, whose gods were small, nice, and cunning, and
they brought with them a jealous and rough God. Thus they learned desire
and curiosity instead of learning domestication and obedience. Bereft of
annihilated temples, what the Hebrews measured all the time because of
the words that couldn't defend their stubborn savagery, was invented
time. Hence the torments were necessary. And thus God knew there was
a people who created Him. Others had ceremonies that belonged to a
place, not to yearnings, God saw the disgrace and laughed. That was the
one and only time He laughed. Ever since then He has been indifferent
and gloomy. He's still waiting for the beginning of time flowing from its
end, there are no more people in the world, there's a black hole in the sky
from the place where there was a world and He's waiting. Only five hundred passengers in the spaceship going to the stars of Andromeda remained. It won't get any place, its time is borrowed from a nonexistent
clock. It doesn't fit divine time. In the invented past of the Hebrews there
were fathers and poets who called themselves prophets. Inventors of sublime words for a people who captured words and were captured by them.
The land the Hebrews longed for was hard, lordly, capricious, hating lords,
incoercible, loving ephemeral lovers, hating wild lovers who sing her songs
of beloveds. The Hebrews had to surrender to their most awful passions to
know better than all others how lost wars are won and so they invented
defeat as a sign of their life and survival as a code of life. The Hebrews
always knew the grief of extremities, therefore they were so stubborn, and
with their own hands they created for themselves the instruments that
always brought destruction upon them. The wanderings begat Torah and
intentions of purity, the laws-the punishment; the punishment was God.
From the frying pan into the fire, like splendor. That is how we were born,
always to be burned, they said, and the angels heard and wept. Only God
remains indifferent. He meets the people on their way from their end to
their beginning. How can He grieve at the torments of man if His first
encounter with him is after all his descendants have already died? In that
walking backward, He has no ethics and He has no sorrow and the anguish
alien to Him is left only to them. Fate is not a law of nature. It's inanimate nature. There's a need for that splendid invented past. What they always
knew about God was the distance of time they invented and it is the opposite of the imaginary but imperative divine time between their unnecessary universe and the realm of their impossible yearnings. To belong to
a place that doesn't belong to you. To serve an indifferent God out of a
disappointed passion for His love, I can understand that here in Berlin better
than any other place. This is their great contribution to current events. They
brought God to armed revolt against the laws of the Milky Way, in their
extinction the Hebrews were kings of a proud and invented past, in their
flight to the past they laid the foundations of their mass grave.