Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
Things cleared up now and that could be seen on his rounded forehead,
his hardened body; he thrust the ring in his pocket and picked up the
kitbag. You're Minna, maybe we really did know each other, who knows.
She leaned on a tree and didn't notice that a dripping resin stuck to her
dress and she could see purplish leaves falling into her hair. She said, You
said you'd write to me, where were you in the war? And he shook his head
and said more to himself than to her, Where the rings were I was too, I've got a collection of gold teeth of dead Arabs. And an ear that my friend, who
died, would chew like gum. She tried to smile, the dark grew thicker, the
change from evening to night was too swift. So my name's Boaz Schneerson,
he said, here, take the ring from me and wait for me, I don't need phony
rings. He held out the ring he took out of his pocket and started going away
from her, he didn't turn around but walked backward, his face stuck to the
sight of her, she stood leaning on the tree, her hair covered by a gloom
drenched with leaves, and the little girl opposite yelled: Mama mama I've
got to make peepee, a car sprayed water that may have been left there from
the sloppy watering. In the thickening darkness the thick, gnarled, ancient
sycamores looked like giant memorials, and she looked amazed at his back
illuminated in the light in front of the theater that suddenly came on. The
light didn't touch the kitbag or his hand and it looked like his hand were
lopped off. She thought about a hand chewed like gum. The kitbag was the
shadow of a dog that wasn't there. Close to the sand dunes the houses were
scattered up to the row of cypresses whose outlines were now erased in the
light crushed on their backs; for a moment, a stub of moon was seen above
the house under construction and Boaz lit a cigarette, the smoke curled
into the street that led nowhere. Maybe he once knew some girl who lived
here, maybe it was on another boulevard. Minna's house with the red roof
tiles. Everything was too blurred to be caught in a clear picture. She looked
abandoned near the tree, far away, and he thought, maybe the little girl
doesn't have gold teeth anymore. He stood still in the middle of the street
and waited. Then the dull feeling of regret that had started filling him
earlier was finished, his mouth was still full of the dampness of blood and
then he smiled too. But the gloom covered his smile. When he saw the two
headlights of the car heading for him, he thought it was the same car he
saw before, even though maybe it wasn't. The lights moved toward him
like the limbs of an enemy. And that's what he also said to Solomon on the
way to Tel Aviv: Got to search for the enemy even after the war, to search
for a proper defeat, and Solomon said: I'm not searching for any enemy,
going to screw until the middle of next year, nonstop, stop only to eat fresh
vegetables and halvah. The car came close and the driver, who had already
seen Boaz, started honking his horn. The honking was mashed, from one
of those broken horns, so Boaz felt generous toward the honking, but
couldn't budge. The car approached and squealed to a stop; in the light of the streetlamp, it looked like a big ladybug. Another person was there who
burst out of the kiosk hidden under an awning loaded with a heavy dropping of leaves. The kiosk light was dimmed by the black paint that hadn't
been removed when the war ended; the person who came out of the kiosk
held a pencil and a notebook and was writing something. On his lips was
a smile he had brought with him from the kiosk and had nothing to do with
what was going on outside. Boaz looked from the car to the person and
back, wanted to smash the car, but the notebook in that man's hand excited him to some extent, as if all he wanted to do ever since he had come
down from Jerusalem and knew that the battles were over was to see a person with a notebook and pencil. The driver got out of the car and started
yelling. His voice was low, thick, and the words came out of his mouth a bit
drawled, as if he could think even during anger. The person with the notebook and pencil immediately turned into a witness. You were standing here
in the middle of the street, sir, and blocking traffic, he stated with angry
politeness. And nobody asked him. Boaz, who was sparing with words and
afraid to waste them, let the two men discuss it between themselves. He
put down the kitbag and waited. The person with the notebook and pencil said: People like that should be run over, then they wouldn't stand in
the middle of the street and stop traffic, and the driver said: If I hadn't
stopped, he'd be dead, and he looked at Boaz, who didn't move from where
he was standing in front of the car. The word dead inflamed the driver, who
said it with a vague fear, and the person with the notebook and pencil now
seemed dressed with rather exaggerated elegance, on his nose a scratch
was clearly seen that could have come from an illegal chase of municipal
tow trucks, thought Boaz and didn't know if he really had anything to do
with those people, if he really spoke their language, if he understood what
they were saying, and why the shoes of the person with the notebook and
pencil had no laces. They spoke energetically to one another. The notebook in the man's hand shook and the driver wanted to go and then Boaz
approached, with his strong hands that looked so delicate, he grasped the
two heads, held them a moment as they were amazed, coupled them,
moved one head away from the other, and then knocked the heads together. At the moment the smashing of the two skulls was heard, a car was
seen trying to maneuver its way left. From there a wagon with a stooped
carter was seen, and the wagon, unlike the car, passed by very slowly, the mare was old and weary and the carter was humming a song in Yiddish:
There was a queen whose crown was sparkling, sparkling, there was a queen
whose tomb was sparkling, sparkling. The two heads now moved away from
one another, the car whose lights were still on blocked the picture of the
cart and the other car, and after a silent pause, the cart and the car disappeared, the notebook dropped onto the ground and Boaz, illuminated
by the lights, quickly tossed the kitbag into the car and when the driver
yelled: What are you doing, sir? in his slow defensive voice, Boaz saw on
his face the crushed expression of somebody who managed to stun with
illogic but certainly with a certain methodicalness. I'm taking your auto,
said Boaz, what I wanted was to lie on the street to ask forgiveness from
your shoes. But his hands started hitting in rage, the little girl dropped
from the balcony, that tranquility.
Minna wants him to remember her, the rage stunned him, a rage that
brought a ring down on Minna, I'm sorry, he said, and when he jumped into
the car, he yelled: My name is Boaz, but he should have said: I'm Boaz, he
started the car and began driving. The stunned driver stood there next to
the person with the notebook and pencil, his face crushed from the blow,
and the man with the notebook searched for the pencil that might have
fallen and clenched his arm that had been hit and Boaz drove fast down the
slope of Dizengoff toward the huts on Nordau. He saw people huddled at
the coffee shop where a news announcer's voice was coming, and he went
on, he stopped at a breached bridge with a few bushes still burgeoning
between its tatters and an iron skeleton was seen peeping out of what had
apparently once been a complete structure. He parked the car, turned off
the lights, took the kitbag, and went. He walked along the street and could
smell the blood of the sea. The smell was calming and the crash of the
waves was pleasant and demonstrated devotion and obstinacy.
When he lay on a cot in a tent on the seashore, in the small camp for
soldiers who returned and didn't know where, or why they stayed there, he
thought he didn't remember who Minna was and in fact he did remember,
but it wasn't important to him. And then he realized that he was protecting somebody.
In the morning, he passed by a small hotel with a sign on its wall saying:
"For Soldiers, Discount and Free Wash." He didn't know what was free
and what was discounted and he went in. The clerk was snoozing and upstairs in the rooms, people were groaning. Maybe the clerk recorded
their made-up names in his notebook. Boaz asked for what was free and
found himself in a bathroom whose walls were filthy and whose mirrors
were broken. He asked the man for toothpaste; the clerk was too tired to
refuse. Boaz spread toothpaste on a fountain pen he took out of the kitbag
and brushed his teeth. Then he wet his face and hair and combed his hair
back with his fingers, and the broken mirror didn't give him any idea of
how he looked. When he came out, the clerk said something about the war
and hope and Boaz asked him if he was interested in buying gold teeth of
Arabs. The clerk felt the toothpaste that Boaz returned to him and said:
Enough already, everybody's got those jokes. Boaz didn't correct him, but
went out, pounded his fist, and saw damp crumbling plaster, his hand was
white from the blow and he walked along Hayarkon Street where the sea
was seen flickering between the houses. A woman was hanging laundry out
to dry and he wanted the sun to burn her men's clothes. When he came to
the office, he saw a sign: "Office to Direct Soldiers Who Were Cut Off from
Their Units." He climbed the stinking stairs and saw soldiers standing in
a line. One of them said, There's a Romanian girl on Third Street, twenty
cents a fuck. Boaz waited quietly and chewed imaginary gum. The soldiers
wanted gum and he showed them a mouth with no gum. In the office sat
a well-groomed officer wearing a handsome uniform, and his eyes were
veiled in a panic that became beautiful in a properly functioning smile.
Boaz appreciated that national authority. He answered the officer's questions calmly, pulled out the papers, and showed them to the officer. The
officer said to him: Oh, you were there too, you deserve more, where's the
weapon, they spoke a few minutes and a female soldier came in looking
furious and wrote something on a small thin pink paper form. After he
signed, he wanted to understand how far the female soldier's gigantic
breasts reached, but she turned her back to him and said: Everybody,
everybody, and he understood her, maybe in his heart he pitied her, with
breasts like those to meet those dark schemes. When he went outside, he
remembered dully that he had to go to the settlement, to Grandmother,
but he knew the time hadn't yet come, he'd been moving around for a
month now, he'd wait another few days. And he didn't know where he
had been moving around for a month before he came here, the battles had
ended before, he didn't remember what was the last battle, but he did remember saying to somebody, it's good that it's over but he didn't know
if he really meant that. Different ants walked in a row toward a hole they
had dug and in a nub sat a tree in a big pot. Somebody was watering the
tree with a long hose and standing under the awning of a stationery store.
From there you could see a big yard behind a house that might once have
been a fashionable cafe. In the yard were pieces of chairs and posts with
broken lanterns hanging on them. Boaz loaded the kitbag on his back,
spread out his hands, bent down to balance the weight, as if he were walking on a tightrope, and walked toward the courtyard, where cats striped
like tame tigers were yowling. He sat down in a broken chair in the courtyard and tried again to think. The ants and the beetles were a sign that his
friends really did die and that he really did come back but if he could, he
would have asked the officer more questions now, but since it was a waste
of effort to go back up, he didn't. He fingered the money they had given
him and didn't recognize the money. The money was written with Hebrew
letters. That money already has a state, he said aloud and the cat jumped
with trained wildness toward a broken lantern and planted its claws in it.
So he went to the cafe not far from there and ordered coffee, cake, and a
glass of soda. When he wanted to pay, he gave the waiter all the money and
the waiter looked at him in shock, counted the necessary coins, and said,
returning most of the money to him, You're funny today sir; but he said
finny.
Boaz thought that as a funny, or finny, person, he had to see the car he
had taken the day before but he knew that was only an excuse to return to
some place, for no good reason, and the car surely wasn't there. He wanted
to know where he should go. When he came, he saw the car parked where
he had left it. The man from the grocery store who came outside to bring
in the margarine thrown on the sidewalk by the driver of the worn-out and
squeaky pickup truck said, You looking for an apartment here? There's one
upstairs, rent control. Boaz said, That car is stolen! The man pondered
a bit and bent over to pick up the margarine. Boaz picked up the case of
margarine for him and dragged it inside. The man gave Boaz an Eskimo
Pie and he nibbled at it. Boaz said, Cars should live in their own houses.
The shopkeeper muttered something and said there were people here at
night, but they left. And Boaz said they come and go all the time. Over
the counter hung an announcement about food rationing and food coupons and Boaz read it carefully; the shopkeeper said, It'll be hot today. When he
came out of the shop, he saw the driver in the distance, he leaped into the
yard and climbed the tree. He looked and saw them checking the car and
a person who looked like a plainclothes cop searched for fingerprints on
the handle. That made him laugh, in the tree, and he slowly came down
and started walking. They didn't even see him. He came to the tents,
put down the kitbag, put on a clean but wrinkled shirt, and went out.
After he sat for hours and looked at the sea, he went to Cafe Pilz. The
music burst out and the waves of the sea looked silvery. He drank two
spitfires and Menashke played songs on the accordion. Then they played
a rumba and everybody danced. A girl Boaz later discovered in his arms
tried to defend herself against the shock on his face. But she accepted
Boaz's kiss with empty lips cut off from himself. She was offended and
tried to look into his eyes but in the middle of the second kiss, with two
spitfires in his belly and his head spinning, he left her slack-jawed and
went toward London Square. She yelled something that was drowned in
the noise of the sea. He expected her to be the daughter of the driver of
the car and would sue him. So he groped in the empty pocket where he
used to keep the gold teeth. Then he sat on a rock and looked at a bench
not far from him. The bench was surely more comfortable to sit on because
in the morning, when he went to the office, he saw that it was repainted.
The sea spread out before him. The girl was still yelling, or the yelling was
before and only the echo was heard now, the sea was locked because of the
dark. The moon shed a little light but it was thin and curved and a car that
might have broken down, parked with its lights on and illuminated the
wrong section of the sea. Boaz leaned over the rock and behind it were
white houses gleaming in the curved light, with eyes wide open he saw
nonexistent eagles darting, swooping and a bright path, and a man yelling,
they died, got to save the black. Boaz sat there terrified, shrouded in dread
from some unknown source, thought about the baby that could have been
born if the woman who got an indifferent kiss near Cafe Pilz was yelling
something. Maybe Boaz was a bastard who fell on his head, he thought;
maybe that's Minna, did I know her once, or not, Minna, and what does he
have to do with all those Minnas, he told the baby kicking inside him: Wait
a while, I'll give birth to you, pretty one, with two mothers, three fathers,
and two grandfathers. Then he went down to the boardwalk and bumped into wires not reached by the car's headlights. Maybe they were laid here
recently when the war was close to Tel Aviv, which always expected wars
on her border.