Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
Later on, Lily will tell Lionel that the blood shed then was the blood
of her virginity and that he was the first man in her life. When Lily saw
Lionel, almost twenty years older than her, standing in the door of her
house and holding a kitbag in his hands, she felt for the first time in her life
an enormous need to belong to somebody. A day before, as she sat in the
office among disgruntled women and waited to renew her temporary ID,
she saw Lionel walking in his uniform. She remembered that, when he
passed by her, there was an innocent dismay on his face, and only then
did he discover her and start talking with her and she smiled, even though
she didn't know she was Melissa, and then he said: What is this Lily
Schwabe, and she said: Lily Schwabe is a woman who lives in a destroyed
house, and she gave him her address-something she had never doneand he went off and she was afraid she'd never see him again, until he
showed up.
Two days later, Lionel stood in the little bathroom, facing the mirror
that had cracked long ago, and cut his face with a razor blade. Lily, who
thought he was trying to commit suicide, yelled and ran to him and tried
to take the razor out of his hand, and then he told her in German: I'm not
committing suicide, I just cut myself. She was amazed to hear the German,
and said: Why didn't you tell me you speak German, and then he said:
Don't worry, Melissa, and she said: My name is Lily and you speak German. Suddenly the sight of the people he interrogated rose in his mind's
eye, the convulsions of laughter, the attempt to be cunning, but still strong,
the endless deceit of those who didn't know anything, always they knew
nothing, and he said to himself: I shouldn't have found her here. His hands
shook and he slapped her. He said: I know how to say that in German, too,
and she sat down on a broken chair, stroked her face, and said: Take the
child, too! And he said angrily: There is no child and there won't be any
child, and she said: Then take the no-child. And then she told him about
her father taken prisoner by the Russians, he tried to trap her, to know if
she was lying to him, but after a while-and he was an excellent interrogator-he understood that Lily Schwabe really didn't know why that war
had raged. She knew French, German, literature, and history, but because
of her reason and some profound wisdom in her, she didn't know why that
war had raged. She didn't know that people died in camps. That offended
Lionel. He knew that everybody said that, it was convenient for him to
know that they said and recalled things and tried to pass on to the agenda.
But to meet somebody like Lily, and to understand, to understand that she
truly didn't know, that was beyond his understanding. He told her: You're
not guilty, In sinne der Anklage-Nicht schuldig, as the war criminals then
claimed. She wasn't angry at him for hitting her, and he said: You taught
yourself to be devoid of moral judgment, but neither did she understand
why Lionel's Judaism constituted any difficulty in their relations. She
understood only that he shouldn't have German children. And she said
that. She tried to understand what happened, to explain how she had shut
herself off, maybe against her will, maybe because of some indifference,
maybe because of a fear that she couldn't hold out, she lived on the periphery, and the war passed by her, the city was blown up, people went away
and didn't come back, but she didn't ask questions, maybe she feared the
answers, she only remembered that near the end of the war, she saw the young children, she'd see them on their way to the nearby school, shooting at low-flying planes and being killed, and older prisoners of war, bound
with ropes, loading sandbags to defend them and being killed too. Lionel
said to her: You're the wrong product of the Third Reich, everything was
wasted on you!
Lionel got up, walked around the room, and for three straight hours, he
delivered a speech to her about the continuity of the Jewish fate, about the
lost echoes of their footsteps, and he left. Two days later he came back.
He'd bring groceries, and she would cook. You're learning to eat, he told
her, envying her hunger. All the time he would talk about his shortcomings,
his advanced age, his failure as a writer, his life as a superfluous journey
between nothing and nothing, and Lily who began to understand that her
name was not only Lily but also Melissa, began to learn English, and one
day she sat among his dirty clothes and laundered them and thought about
a certain word she had learned that day, and shouted it to Lionel who was
in the bath, and he opened the door, saw the young woman sitting there
lovesick with his clothes and gave her some answer about the word she had
uttered, and then he understood the meaning of his love, he understood it
from her concern with his clothes and with words, understood what sensuality a woman could grant to the pants of a man she loved, and how far she
could go to speak a language that is the soul of things and their formulation
before they were in the world. Now he saw Lily imprisoned in a world that
for some reason didn't take vengeance on her because it didn't know what
profound rebelliousness was buried in her, how she could betray herself,
her parents, all out of a total dissociation, out of a rare ability to be like a
wax statue in a legend in which a prince appears and grants her life. Her
life is my sad echo, he said to himself, and loved her as much as he was
disgusted by her and by himself, loved her more than anybody else he had
ever loved in his life.
Tape / -
When Ebenezer and Samuel Lipker came to Cologne, Samuel stood in
the street and distributed announcements about the performance. He had
no guilt about dragging Ebenezer to that place. As far as he was concerned,
the enemy should also enjoy. Lionel heard about the performance and
decided to take Lily. When they entered the small wretched nightclub they were greeted by the owner, a very thin man with smoky eyes, holding
rattles to be shaken, and when they sat down at a big wooden table where
people had carved their names for years, two gigantic glasses of beer were
already standing before them and in front was a small lighted stage. The
place was crowded, the smoke of cheap cigarettes spiraled up from all
sides, and whenever Ebenezer declaimed, the room thundered with the
excited rattles. Next to Lionel and Lily sat five hugging men who wept all
the time. For some reason, the tears the men wept were so big that when
he looked at them, Lionel could see how the space left by Ebenezer's
words, words with nothing behind them except borrowed memory, stirred
laugh ducts in five men who came here to demonstrate disguised laughter.
Ebenezer looked to Lionel like a repulsive Jew who wanted to look like a
repulsive Jew, rather stooped, and Lionel wearing the uniform of an American officer felt uncomfortable, he was amazed not only that that man was
amusing people who would have tortured him a year ago, but also at his
own amazement. Lily understood that Ebenezer was reciting things he
didn't understand, but as far as she was concerned, there was something in
that fact itself that justified what she had tried to explain to Lionel without much success, that she too had lived ten years in a recital and didn't
understand that she was reciting, didn't even want to understand.
And then Lionel noticed Samuel Lipker. Between the excerpts, Samuel
praised the Last Jew who was appearing here before this distinguished
audience, as he put it. He spoke like a person reporting on percentages of
interest or a rise in stocks, restrained and aloof, and all the while his face
was thrust at the audience, he had to know who his real enemy was, he had
to overpower them and Lionel understood his look better than he understood Lily's enthusiasm at hearing the things Ebenezer was reciting. Lionel
hated the covetousness he discerned in Samuel's eyes. He saw in him
something that reminded him of the awful moments of his life, when he
saw in the mirror a person he himself didn't know. And then Ebenezer
said: I now list essays on the history of the hostility to the repulsive Jews
(he didn't say that mockingly, he said it dryly, as if he had no opinion)Distinguished gentlemen, set your watches a thousand years back. I'm trying again, I said then boldly: the news according to Benbas, the dialogue
with Trifo by Justin Martyr, the pamphlet against the heretics by Iraeneus,
I'm sorry about the whisper, reading from a distance, dead letters torn in my mind, a smell of a distant church, a ringing that deserted the bells and
remains hovering in the air, torturing Jews by Tertullian, calling God by
Lactinius, and that fool Kramer thought only about the essay by Isidor of
Sevilla and his pamphlet against the Jews. A great expert you had there!
Kramer ... removing all the heretics and an explanatory essay against Jews
by Hippolyte, tasteless kinds of flesh of Jews by Novatian and a selection
of testimonies by Nissa and testimonies from the Old Testament against
the Jews, proof of the Good Tidings, history of the church by Eusebius.
Eight sermons against the Jews and proof to the Jews and the Christians
that Jesus is God by Chrysostom, a pamphlet by Saint Augustine, his Heavenly City ... Rhymes against the Jews by Ephraim the Syrian, Sergei de
Abraga: the Torah of Jacob and the proofs against the Jews by Ephrat, the
sermons of Masrog, the Sabbath against the Jews by Isidore ... Something
is omitted here, and the book of Orthodox faith, a dialogue of Jason and
Papikies, a dialogue of Timothy of Aquilla, a dialogue of Asnasius and
Pepsicus, and Philo, and Lily thought Ebenezer was singing. When she said
that, Lionel looked at her and suddenly couldn't recognize her. Inside him,
a melody he knew from childhood began singing in him. Melissa is listening to my father's melody, thought Lionel, who was my father? But when
Ebenezer started quoting poems by eighteenth-century Polish poets, the
ruddy-cheeked old man with the red flower in his lapel was moved to tears
and frenziedly wrote down every word in a big notebook in front of him.
His hand flew over the paper, his eyes were almost shut and some coquettish smile spread over his face. When Ebenezer moved to the stories of the
Cadet from the Zohar and then to the stories of the Brothers Grimm, the
old man said: Forty years I've been investigating forgotten Polish poetry,
both of us, he and I, the only ones in the world who still remember. I sit
in London, sir, investigate, encyclopedias empty of that poetry, no books,
there was a man who remembered and passed it on to Ebenezer, in his
mind he holds onto that sublime poetry, I copy it to publish it. Is there
anything more awful than a nation forgetting its songs, Lord! Of all the
dozens of poets he knows-I follow him from city to city-only three are
still known to scholars of Polish literature. Who was the man who taught
him that poetry? Could it have been a Jew? How does a Jew who died
know that poetry? And the man wept and Lionel didn't know exactly what
he was weeping about. He covered the notebook so the tears wouldn't melt the words he wrote and he started shaking the rattle. I don't know,
if he'd ask me I'd be amazed, do I really know those poems? Maybe Germanwriter knows. The man stopped shaking the rattle and again wrote something. Lily swallowed a piece of orange Lionel gave her.
And then Ebenezer stood up to the cheering rattles. A bitter smile flickered in the corners of his mouth. Those who didn't just want to shake the
rattles applauded. Ebenezer looked tired and pale. Samuel Lipker gave him
a glass of beer. Lily said: That lad looks like you! Lionel, who had known that
from the first moment, glared at his venomous beauty, he shifted his eyes to
Ebenezer and thought: Ebenezer and I are the same age. I'm with Lily
Schwabe and he's with Samuel Lipker, and he envied Lily's beautiful eyes
that saw that beauty.
Anger at himself made him shiver and he diverted his hostility to war
against Lily.
And Lily was an easy enemy, thought Lionel with his characteristic bitterness. And then a murderer who had been dormant in him ever since
Melissa shut her eyes was kindled in him. His hands reached out to Lily
to strangle her. There was a lot of noise. A flush rose onto Lily's cheeks.
She saw the hands reaching out to her. Samuel Lipker stared long and
wantonly at Lionel, who felt his look. He dropped his hands and buried his
face in them. Lily sidled up to him and caressed his hand, shook the rattle
exaggeratedly, and sipped the beer. The Pole stood up and went to sit
someplace else. Lionel wanted to get up. Ebenezer was standing on the
side of the stage and looked like a grasshopper stuck to a blackboard in a
biology class. Lily is watered by an artificial rain, he thought, and Melissa,
my angel, you died before my eyes. Samuel Lipker now told how he had
met Ebenezer, how Ebenezer learned his knowledge. He told how they
had crossed borders and countries, and said: This performance is designed
to collect money for our families, we glean pennies to save souls from
death. He didn't expatiate on what death and only the smiling expression
of Ebenezer's eyes clarified for Lionel the disgrace of the moment. When
they passed the baskets among the audience, Samuel's eyes examined the
room carefully but kept coming back to Lionel. When the basket came to
Lionel, Lily wanted to pay, but he caught her hand, held the basket for a
whole minute, looked at the money heaped up in it and passed it on.
Samuel looked at the basket that dropped out of Lionel's hand, and his eyes expressed some contempt and then Samuel said, his eyes staring into
Lionel's eyes: Ebenezer has to save his daughters! But Lionel knew and
didn't know how he knew that Ebenezer had no daughters. Now he
wanted to see Samuel's defeat but maybe even then that love for that
bold and attractive lad stirred in him, and the closeness he felt for Lily
made him shiver even more, he had to kiss or die, her or him, he went outside and threw up. Then, he took the rattle and shook it in the street until
they came to Lily's house. People dressed in rags sitting huddled at bonfires next to what once were their houses looked with characteristic loathing at somebody who had lost them their palaces, and he yelled: I piss on
you and the dream girl of the Third Reich also laughed. At home, Lionel
said: I'm forty-four years old and I weep without tears. And you, a daughter of the thousand-year Reich-and you laugh! You're an ad for Ritesma
and Simon cigarettes, a painting of the great German school, sitting with
a kike born in Poland and wanting children he doesn't have to give you.