Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
She didn't know how you think about going to America without tears.
There was a heat wave and a strong wind blew and people seemed to be
walking like shadows seeking a foothold in corners that were like shade,
but didn't stop the wind. The sky was heavy and brown. An intoxicating
smell of thistles rose in her nose. She pitied Nehemiah for not leaving her
and now he had to pay the price of her stubborn war, but she didn't know
how to tell him that. When he recovered from his illness, Nehemiah looked
like a different man. A puerile rashness seized him. He put on a light-colored
suit he had bought from Hazti who came every week in a cart loaded with
luxuries, and something that had always been stormy in him was now
appeased. He'd walk around the settlement like a hopeless lover of it, talking with his neighbors, making new plans, preparing an irrigation system,
a new community center, a paved street, planting almond trees, building
a sanatorium for asthmatics. His friends looked at the man whose fields
and farms were failures, whose citrus groves suffered more than others,
whose wife had been weeping nonstop for eight years now, whose son
carved wood, and recalled the stormy nights on the threshing floor, the
dreams he tried to inspire in them and were so in love with him that they
were forced to invent in their common past things that never had been
and never were, to increase his image and love even more. In Nathan's
house a few people gathered to celebrate Ebenezer's ninth birthday. The boy sat in a corner and didn't want to talk, just looked at them and showed
them a carved bird and when he laughed he looked like a jackal. Rebecca
rubbed her face and was silent. Nehemiah looked outside, drank a little
wine, raised his glass and said: To a hundred and twenty Ebenezer, looked
outside and through the window he saw the darkness descending, lovely
roofs, citrus groves, vineyards, ornamental trees, cypresses, cowsheds,
chicken coops, a suppressed smell of hay stood in the air and he told them
how much he loved them and added: Doesn't Ebenezer look like me? And
Nathan said he doesn't look like you, Nehemiah, but thank God, he doesn't
look like anybody else either. At night, Nehemiah said to Rebecca: Let's
leave Ebenezer with Nathan and go on a trip. Rebecca put on a yellow dress
and wrapped a scarf and in the autumn of nineteen nine, nine years after
they came to the Land of Israel, Rebecca and Nehemiah left riding on two
donkeys to part from the land of Nehemiah's dream. They rode along wadis
and ancient riverbeds, met groups of young Pioneers quarrying rock in remote places and living on farms in the mountains. Nehemiah said: They will
succeed where we failed. They yearn less for the past and more for the
future. They would conquer the Land because it's theirs, they didn't
come to ask for pity but to rape the Land. In Jerusalem, Rebecca prayed
at the Western Wall and Nehemiah watched her from the distance. They
crossed the Jezreel Valley, rode among desolated swamps, toured the Galilee, and after a journey along the Jordan, they came to the Dead Sea, lay
there on their backs, and the salt bore them and the mountains around
were a shadow of something that didn't exist at all. Rebecca said: I'm looking into a mirror, and she laughed, and he loved to hear her laugh. At night,
they slept embracing. Never had they loved one another so much. She almost forgot her body's longing for Joseph. Nehemiah's courtesy was only
salt poured on the violent and seductive sweetness. Something is dying in
him, she said to herself, and something else is maybe lit. She began to be
filled with hope and regret at the same time.
They returned to the settlement and Nehemiah delivered a speech that
lasted from six in the evening to three in the morning, and the farmers sat
lit by the halo of light, and there was still a distant echo in it of their dreams.
Six hours Nehemiah talked and nobody budged. Even Rebecca sat fascinated to hear the visions Nehemiah spoke of and she really didn't know that
she saw them. In the middle of his speech, Nehemiah looked at her and understood sadly that Rebecca's mind was made up. That night he parted
from every corner of the farm, kissed his son for a long time, and like
thieves in the night, Nehemiah and Rebecca left with their things hastily packed and after another farewell from their son who didn't understand
a thing, they rode to Jaffa. Ebenezer watched them from the distance and
didn't weep. Rebecca said to him: I'm going with Father and you'll join us
as soon as we get settled. She didn't want to bring Ebenezer to America but
she didn't want to say that, neither to Nehemiah nor to her son. Ebenezer
sat and etched the face of an owl on wood. Even when Nehemiah wept for
a long time and hugged him, he didn't say a thing. He just tried to understand what was happening to the piece of wood when you carve it like that
so the face of the owl looks as if it burst out of the wood and is also destroying it, shattering it to pieces and at the same time, honoring it.
Nehemiah was silent all the way to Jaffa. Rebecca, who didn't know what
to think about, was still dozing and trying to dream about the last days, and
when she woke up and they were close to the citrus groves of Jaffa and saw
the palm trees at the entrance to the city, she recalled the small details that
had joined together into some picture that was not yet clear to her, and when
she looked at Nehemiah she saw on his face the expression that had covered
his face on the day of Rachel's wedding. His hatred now for Joseph was so
strong that Rebecca almost fell in love with him.
And suddenly from the dread that filled her, maybe because of remorse,
she wanted so much to save Nehemiah, to give up, to be somebody she
never thought she could be, to take Nehemiah back to the settlement to
his son and to his lands and to his friends, but she didn't know how to do
that and was silent. Jaffa was now a different city. Jewish shops were
opened in the narrow streets. Carts from settlements in Judea and the
Galilee came to the city, people bought agricultural machines and seeds
and sold farm products, and the city was teeming with life and they were
already starting to build the new neighborhood of Tel Aviv on the sands
north of the city and Arabs were still smoking narghilas next to the mosque
and Turks were standing barefoot and listening to an orchestra of ragamuffins from Egypt and slapped their faces whenever they fell asleep while
playing and ships anchored in the port and two locomotives were added to
the railroad junction whose tracks already reached the edge of the desert
and Nehemiah and Rebecca stole into the hotel.
Nehemiah didn't go out the door of the hotel and Rebecca bought a few
souvenirs for her friend Rachel, met Jews she thought she had known before, and saw an elderly consul stroking the body of an Arab boy on a dark
streetcorner, and then she drank tea with mint with the Jewish agent Joseph Abravanel, who reminded her that his son would someday rule the
Land and didn't mock her, but quietly arranged the tickets and the cabin
on the ship that had already tooted and the toots were already dancing on
its masts and the ship looked menacing and beautiful among the little
waves capering on the shore and then she sat next to her husband and said:
I smell fire, and he said in a hollow cracked voice, You smell the future, and
she felt stabbings in her womb as if there were a child in it and she wanted
to give birth for Nehemiah to all the dead children she had once known
but she was silent and said to him: What did I do to you, Nehemiah, and
he said: You were Rebecca, you were what you were, don't cry, I love you
more than any person in the world and I won't tell you again how much I
love you because you won't believe me. She smiled at him and hugged him,
but he put her off and as she was falling asleep, she seemed to hear the
sound of weeping, but since she had never heard Nehemiah weep, she
thought somebody else was weeping in one of the rooms.
Early the next morning they went to the port. The valises stood at the
jetty with the boats, Nehemiah said some harsh words to Joseph Abravanel, who was dressed in white, and paid a few cents less than what was
demanded. He haggled and Rebecca had never seen Nehemiah haggle.
Afterward-as agreed in advance-he put her on the boat, since he had to
load the valises on another boat. Rebecca stood on the boat, she couldn't
sit down. Something in her was still steeped in an incomprehensible dread.
The ship tooted and she trembled. She wanted to weep, but she had no tears.
She wanted to go back and couldn't now. The sailors raised their oars and
pushed the boat. They jumped on a big wave and Rebecca saw Nehemiah
standing and looking at her, but because of the strong light, his face was
clearly seen despite the distance. And even though she was scared, she didn't
yet know what she was scared of.
Banners and flags rose and fell on the masts. Rebecca thought for a
moment about eight years of tears. Nehemiah stood on the shore, the rising
tears on his face were incomprehensible in view of his erect and aristocratic
stance. Something was ruined and she didn't know what. He looked so bold and tense that in a little while he would leap and rush to battle.
Nehemiah vanished behind some shed, and right at that moment she
grasped what was liable to happen and started yelling, but the roar of the
sea swallowed her yells, she started hitting the passengers and they were
alarmed and the sailors rowed her back to shore and she jumped off and ran
in the shallow water and everybody looked at her and silence reigned and
she came to the corner of the mosque just one minute after Nehemiah,
with eyes wide open, but without seeing a thing, took out a gun, aimed it
and shot his temple.
Very slowly Nehemiah collapsed onto the ground he had sworn never to
leave. When Rebecca came to him he was still trying to touch the Land and
his body was already dead. People gathered around Nehemiah. And Rebecca
lay there with her mouth stuck to his, trying to make Nehemiah breathe,
until they separated them and dragged her away from there and carried his
body to one of the sheds. The ship tooted again and Rebecca looked one
last time at the ship waving its flags, and very slowly she started walking
toward the dead body of her husband. Clotted blood was stuck to his lips.
The gun was still in his hand. The Turk wanted to write down something,
but she told him: There's nothing for you to write, he's been buried here
for nine years.
She touched his forehead and said: You shouldn't have done that to me,
Nehemiah, and an awful anger, an anger steeped in love, rose in her and
overcame her, and she gave into that anger and let it twist her face, and the
Turk who saw her was forced to fall and then to run from there as if he had
seen the sun coming out of a hole in his pants.
At the funeral, in Roots, she stood silent. Nobody dared approach her.
Ebenezer, who stood not far from her, was also silent. She didn't shed a tear.
They don't deserve that, she thought, but she also knew that there were no
more tears inside her to weep even if they did deserve them. Ebenezer said
the orphan's kaddish and Rebecca went back home, closed the windows and
the doors and said: No mourning, nothing. Nobody will come in here.
On the last day of mourning, Ebenezer finished carving two heads of
wood. He called them Father and Mother, one of the heads was Rebecca
while the second was Joseph Rayna. And then Rebecca assaulted Ebenezer,
broke his carvings, and started a successful farm.
My friend Goebbelheydrichhimmel.
Tape / -
About two weeks ago, I returned from a visit to Israel. Because of the
heavy fog in northern Germany, we were forced to land in Copenhagen. A
freezing rain was falling and it was impossible to see a thing. We took a cab
and went to a small hotel near Herdospladsen. I called Inga, who by the
way sends you warm regards. She came immediately and as usual didn't
leave us alone. She fed us at a small, and I must say excellent, restaurant
not far from the hotel. Then she informed us she was taking us to a party
at the American ambassador's. When we got to the ambassador's house
there were only a few guests left, including an Israeli, a native of Copenhagen, who fought in the war of independence in Israel, returned there in
the fifties, lived there, worked as a journalist for an Israeli newspaper and
for a Danish newspaper and was now the editor-in-chief of Politikan, his
name is Pundak, a pleasant and wise man of principle who can formulate
things in a way that isn't harsh, doesn't place perplexing full-stops, a cultured man in the old sense of the word, an excellent editor and a fascinating conversationalist. His wife Suzy is a woman with a profound bubbling
in her, whose rare common sense, existential perplexity with a thin patina
of a smile that's liable to be broken any minute spread over her face. There
were also a few writers there who are familiar to you, too. Herbert Pundak
saved me from an unnecessary conversation with an American colonel who
thought that now that I returned from Israel we had a lot in common. He
and I, thought the colonel, understand those Jews. I didn't want to quarrel as soon as I came, and the ambassador, who, by the way, is a German
Jew, came to us, and looked too cordial for me to cause a diplomatic incident. I felt tired. The trip in the morning to Lod Airport, parting from the
friends I had made there, the flight, the trip to the hotel, the dinner with
Inga, and now the party, all that dropped some heaviness that I couldn't
yet get away from for some reason. So we sat in a big pleasant room and
sipped punch. I sat in a big comfortable fine leather armchair, across from
me above a fireplace was a big black wall. I turned the chair around a bit,
the color of the black wall turned blue a bit, and then, when I heard the
editor of Politikan explaining something about Israeli foreign policy, and the ambassador trying to argue with him, I saw the face of the Fuhrer looking at me above the fireplace and I shuddered. Inga, who sat next to me,
asked what happened, and I said: What's missing on that wall is the picture of Hitler! My knees buckled, I felt as if my blood ran out. I was sorry
for what I had said, but I really did see the Fuhrer looking at me in that
splendid room. The ambassador got up, stood over me, Renate sipped
punch, he looked at the wall in silence, and said: Were you here then?
When I said I had never been here in my life and didn't understand why
I had said what I did, the ambassador came to sit down next to me, stroked
my knee, chomped on a cigar and then lit it, and also lit the cigarette I
took out of my coat pocket, and said: You're sure? I said: I'm sure. Funny,
said the ambassador, this was the house of the governor Werner Best. A
decent navy man, and his assistant Diekwitz, also a navy man, who informed the underground of the expected expulsion of the Jews, and afterward the house was transferred to the Americans, and here, on that wall,
until forty-five, was a picture of the Fuhrer, and the armchair you're sitting in was there at that time, only with different upholstery, of course.
Next to it is a trap door, the governor was sensitive to explosions and
under this room, which is an addition to the original house, a big shelter
was dug. He'd sit here, smoking, drinking wine, with the opening next to
him leading to the shelter ...