Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
The tears of blood resurrected a passion in her she didn't remember
being in her, to know what would happen to her after the stone in her chest
melted.
Rachel Brin came to talk with her. She saw Rebecca light and hovering.
Rachel was her only friend. Maybe she pitied her. Later on, Rebecca would
say that Rachel was simply a necessary device to be saved at long last from
the need to know how unnecessary love is. New winds were blowing in the
land then, new books were read, people fled to distant places. The riots
left an unprecedented rage. In the attic, Rebecca found books her father
had inherited from Secret Charity, his great-grandfather. Rebecca saw
the world in translation. But as in translation, she couldn't pity the dead people she collected in her boxes, not even her aunt who died near her.
Her grandmother's dying was a poem in a foreign language for her. So she
created her own language of syllables and taught it to Rachel Brin. Rachel
believed Rebecca that there were enchanted trees and when they'd lie in
bed under the obituaries and the words would fly in the room, some ancient anger that Rachel didn't know would slowly pass from Rebecca's
body to Rachel's. At the age of seventeen, Rachel Brin was what Rebecca
would never be, a love that came from Rebecca's body and disguised itself as a body. So, Joseph Rayna's unborn son burned so much in her.
With her good common sense, Rachel understood what others never did:
that Rebecca was able to love only a love that others loved for her. What
was strong in Rebecca turned dreamy and loving in Rachel. You've got to
learn how to stumble in order to triumph, Rebecca told her, but Rachel
found in her room only dry tears and wept them for two days. She looked
at the tears and saw the beautiful rainbows and couldn't appease Rebecca,
and when she started to weep the weeping of Rebecca's world, the letters
flew into Rebecca's eyes and she laughed. Rachel was startled and felt a
stab of a son in her womb. So, Rachel turned Rebecca's truths into a game,
and would help her cut out obituaries just because she didn't understand
why she did it. She spoke the language of syllables with her and didn't
know why. You have to learn to build yourself a coffin and live in it, said
Rebecca, but Rachel thought about beauty and about life. Rebecca learned
about her great-grandfather who was buried standing up, she wanted to
understand who was Rebecca Secret Charity who bought herself a shroud
at the age of fifteen, measured it, and kept it under her bed. Till the day
she died, she slept in bed as in a coffin, under the mattress, the shroud, the
soap, and the brushes hidden. She prepared her grave and wanted to live in
it. Nehemiah Schneerson, whose girlfriend intended to ascend to the Land
of Israel, saw Rebecca for the first time when she was gathering obituaries.
Nehemiah, the hope of the Gaon Rabbi, then fighting the struggle of the
gods against the prophets of Israel who, in his opinion, were bringing disaster and destruction onto the nation. He wanted to ascend to the Land of
Israel to restore the kingdom of David and Solomon, to grow Japhets and
Boazes and not to cultivate prophets and mourners anymore. Maybe that's
why he hated Joseph's embellished songs so much, even though they were
filled with freedom and love of the Land of Israel. He loathed the ethics that brought a heavy disaster onto his people. Between Elijah and Ahab, he
chose Ahab; between Saul and David, he chose Saul. He was born in the
destruction, the prophets prophesied me, he said, I'll prophesy their disgrace, and the old rabbi wept.
So deep was Nehemiah Schneerson's grief for the destruction of Jerusalem
that he couldn't understand that what he wept for was the image of Rebecca
Sorka tearing down obituaries from the wall of the synagogue. He studied
math and engineering and history and prepared himself to extinguish his
wrath in decadent exile. When Rachel Brin wanted to join Nehemiah, the
boys were embarrassed, but Nehemiah said: We're creating a new nation and
woman is part of that creation, no more separation between men and women,
together we shall strike the decadent exile. He didn't yet take off his hat,
but he did stop wearing ritual fringes. And so Rachel met Joseph Rayna,
who came to tell about the Land of Israel. They weren't scared by the stories of malaria and torments. What did scare Nehemiah were the songs, and
when Rachel gazed at Joseph Rayna, who decided to drop anchor and stop
moving, Nehemiah felt betrayed. That didn't excite Joseph, and when Rachel
watched disaster approaching her body, Nehemiah saw songs that poured a
cunning sweetness and didn't touch distress. As far as he was concerned, the
songs were artificial fire dreamed by the locomotives he saw at the edge of the
city. What does a locomotive dream? he asked. Saints weep in cellars, he said,
they don't seek a locomotive's dream. And when three hundred Hasids stood
on the roofs and shouted "Our God is the Lord," and tried to mediate between the nation of Israel and its Maker, Nehemiah felt betrayed because of
the shouting on the roofs and because of the songs and because of the disgraceful beauty of Joseph Rayna, who told more about himself than he told
about the Land of Israel. He doesn't belong to her, thought Nehemiah. The
shudder in Rachel Brin's body infected Nehemiah and he didn't understand
that what he felt was fear. The Land of Israel of the songs looked like a fraud
to him. The rattle of Purim noisemakers mustn't be adorned with yearnings.
He of course didn't understand then that he was jealous of his wife's lover.
When Nehemiah spoke of the weeping eye of God, Joseph said: I thought
you killed God, and Nehemiah thought: Maybe I did, but your songs, he
said, they're words about nothing and Joseph said: So what? Why should
they be about something? I don't yearn for anything, Nehemiah. And all
that time, Nehemiah didn't sense the electricity between Joseph and Rachel Brin. He thought: There's no grace, there's no messiah, there's no
real foe, only words and anger. He didn't know those awful words flying in
Rebecca Sorka's room and seeking a foothold in a reality they didn't deserve.
Tape / -
Many years later, when Ebenezer sat in Rebecca Schneerson's room at
the settlement, after forty years had vanished, he'll tell his mother about
what I heard from a dying Jew in Block Forty-six. The dying Jew told me
the history of a monk he called "our pauper monk, crown of the gentiles,
our noble brother Avidius, man of dreams, flint, and humility." In a letter
Avidius wrote to a woman he had loved many years before, and now she
was forbidden him, he tried to describe his feelings in the eight years he
had sat bound to a stone pillar in the Sinai Desert. He described his torments, his endless gazing at the heat, the wind, the rain, the birds, the
desolation, and after five years, he wrote, the silence passed, the flesh
passed, leaving delight spinning rustling and unseen webs, both dark and
pure. As if the dread were tamed to silk of stones that dropped and melted
in the heat and were heavenly dust on the earth disappearing under the
stone pillar and throughout the expanse, silence reigned, and love sprouted
from the heat and the silence, unbearable, independent love, without flesh
or spirit, generous love without slander, a rare touch of a butterfly's legs in
a fire that doesn't destroy but flickers, taming sorrow to scan silently the
reality you're part of and it is no longer in you, only a prayer prayed by a solitary angel for you and strong and wonderful bliss fills the heart, and Rebecca
will then tell Ebenezer: I know, for eight years I wept for Nehemiah, the
nonlove I found in the river, and then I came into being without compromise
and it's impossible, isn't it, Rebecca will say then, impossible to try to extinguish the force of love in love!
Tape / -
The love Rachel Brin saw in Nehemiah's eyes was alien to her passion and
yet like it. She pondered the imbroglio she had come upon and thought,
Rebecca is busy rambling after herself and so I'm left alone, I came here as
her emissary, Nehemiah is probably thinking of her but saying the words of Joseph, Joseph is looking at me, while I'm giving birth to his sons, maybe
Nehemiah hates in Joseph his nonexistent love for Rebecca?
When she walked, she heard steps behind her. The rain that fell earlier
had stopped. She felt silence. There was a bridge there and she stopped
on it. Joseph approached and clung to her. They started flowing with the
ice floes in the river that looked as if they were striking one another and
stopped flowing separately. A hot, round ball took shape in her. That was
her first kiss, and even though she was trembling, she didn't feel love. She
was scared by how much her body longed for the man and how empty her
heart was. On her retina she could have described his body to herself through
his clothes. Later, they would meet in remote barns or secretly in Joseph's
room, at night, and he taught her body to love delicately, but also when
they were together they felt that some alien hand was playing with them.
When she became pregnant, she went to her sister in the big city. Her
sister took her to a doctor. The doctor only confirmed what she knew. She
returned to the city and suggested to Joseph to run away. But he said: I've
run away enough.
When it became known, Rachel's mother summoned Uncle Zelig, whom
the Russians called the Bear, and the Jews called him Secret Glory. Broadshouldered he was, with a mighty body and little eyes like the eyes of a
mouse, watery and blue, he lived alone in a distant garden, guarded it,
prayed a lot with the few words he knew. For twenty years he served in the
Czar's army and it was said that he slaughtered people in the wars and didn't
forget whence he came. His niece Rachel he loved more than anything. He
came to the city bringing with him a goat that he said was touched by a
peacock's feather. The golden fleece will soon be found. The newborn will
be named Secret Glory after me, he said, but he went in vain to Joseph's
house: Joseph wanted to marry Rachel. The city concocted rumors and
everybody accused Rebecca whose grandmother's grandmother was Rebecca
Secret Charity. Rabbis wrote bans but when Zelig asked them to stop they
did because for a long time Zelig Secret Glory had considerable strength, was
simply one of the Just Men. Rachel's parents came out of their quarantine,
and a Russian sorcerer brought by Rachel's mother to sprinkle sulfuric acid
on the threshold of Joseph Rayna's house looked like a scared vulture, and
the house seemed wrapped in flames, but Joseph told them: Why are you acting like fools, I'm marrying Rachel Brin and nobody will stop me especially since there's no need to try to persuade me. When Rachel was with
him, she learned to shut her eyes and think she was Rebecca. Now, when
there were no more passions left in her, she went to the wedding canopy
as the mother of Rebecca's son. Rachel's mother agreed to invite Rebecca
to the wedding. Rebecca came with her parents. The house was already
humming with people. That was a disaster everybody watched joyfully. Mr.
Brin was rich enough to evoke envy. Two days before the wedding drunken
Cossacks had beaten two Jews in the street. The police who came six hours
later seemed to be searching for hens and beat Jews at random to distinguish
between their profound contempt and the Cossacks' enraged drunkenness.
In Rachel's house, nineteen of the twenty Klezmers were playing, one of
them lay dead in the cemetery. But the celebration couldn't be postponed.
Rebecca's father looked at his daughter and said: You're dressed as if you
were the bride, and she answered him: Maybe I really am?
Rebecca embroidered her gown with her own hands; her mother envied
her. In Rachel's house, brandy, food, and baked goods were served magnanimously, everybody started hugging one another and guests came from
far away in carriages and Rebecca looked at her father. When she got her
period at the age of fifteen, she thought the blood gushing from her was
the blood of her parents, and now that it came out, I'm not anybody's anymore, she said then to herself. She recalled that now, as she walked to
Rachel's house. Rebecca's father said: That's nice, what you made, and Mr.
Brin wrung his hands and said: They killed the flute player but what, if we
wait until they don't kill Jews, we won't be able to get married and there
won't be new Jews to kill. Nehemiah stood with his group of lads. When he
saw Rebecca he trembled a moment and suddenly understood his anger at
Joseph. From far away, Rebecca saw her bridegroom's back. The position
of his back was brittle, tense, and yet Rebecca could discern, reluctantly,
the nobility and remorse in it. Rachel kissed Rebecca, whom she hadn't
seen for a long time, and burst into tears. From far away, Joseph's back was
still taut. Rachel tried to say something in the language of syllables, but the
syllables flew away from her and she couldn't find them. She was wearing
a beautiful and ancient wedding gown whose tassels and fringes were made
of gold embroidery. Rebecca asked where the beautiful gown came from
and Rachel said that her father found that old gown in the home of a poor sage, who told him that in that wedding gown of Rebecca Secret Charity,
the daughter and wife of Secret Charity, Joseph's grandfather, had walked to
her wedding canopy. Secret Glory stood next to Rachel's father. To Rebecca
his eyes looked like small chameleons. When he looked at her, like many others, he too felt some uneasiness, because he was embarrassed, he started
moving here and there and after she looked straight at him, he lowered his
eyes and somebody said to him: That's Rivkele, Rachel's friend and Rebecca
corrected angrily: Rebecca!
The young people said: An anarchist poet entered the kennel and will
bark! And they laughed when Rebecca came back to the room, one of the
men looked at her who laughed at Joseph brashly and said: Look, a wild
man is tamed! She took out a demon who was with her from the river and
waved it at him. He stood still, and the glass of brandy in his hand was
emptied without him drinking from it. The fellow looked at the emptied
glass and was terrified. Rebecca turned away from him and once again her
look was drawn to the taut back of the bridegroom. Rachel's kiss and weeping were additional proof that maybe the river didn't stop for the disaster.
The stone came back and lay on her chest. With her kiss, Rachel stuck
Joseph to Rebecca's lips. Joseph, who felt the sudden silence, turned around
and saw the glass that was emptied and then saw a woman's back slipping
out but when he wanted to understand what happened, new guests entered and started hugging him with clumsy wildness. Nehemiah came to
him and congratulated him. You're very polite, Mr. Schneerson, said Joseph.
Once, Joseph added, I saw a wedding in your Judea, the bride was covered
with dust. In your holy books didn't you read about dust? Will love of Zion
wipe out the dust? A destruction isn't only demolished palaces, a destruction is also endless misery. Then came a rabbi riding on a donkey. In his
modest coat a radish somebody gave him. He smelled of garlic. The bride
curtsied in the dust and her eyes were yellow. They threw rice at them.
The donkey brayed instead of the musical instruments they didn't have,
the canopy was put up in the field. The bridegroom smashed a glass but
was afraid to break it for real. I wrote them a song and they still sing it to
this day.