Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
Lily made tea for the drunken Lionel and then she lay down beside him
and was Melissa with little nipples who killed angels of death with her soft
eyelashes.
What made you Lily made Himmler Himmler, said Lionel with his eyes
shut. And thus he started writing her a farewell letter in his mind. She told
him: What's simple about love? You were the first man in my life and you'll
be the last. She didn't understand how Lionel knew that Ebenezer had no
daughters. She wanted Ebenezer to have daughters. Lionel got angry, but
couldn't explain why Ebenezer had no daughters. And so maybe he felt she
was immune to him, maybe because of her love, maybe because of her
youth as a wunderkind of the Hitler-jugend maybe she had never been a
member of, and they talked about the resemblance between Samuel and
Lionel. Lionel got angry, as if the heavy blood coursing in him truly had a
voice and a shape as the professors and sages in this city had taught for ten
years. A scene of a dream she had had arose in Lily's mind. In her dream,
she told him, her father, who was now a prisoner of the Russians, was stumbling in a forest and she was a baby bird. Her father picked up the baby
bird and decided to cook it. Then he would shoot at birds who came to ask
for the baby bird. He put her into a basket, and walked, and that's how I
was adopted, she said. Lionel thought of Joseph Rayna. Once, when he had
heard about him, he had wanted so much for him to be his father so he could kill him. He thought of how his mother had told him about Rebecca
Schneerson who would translate people into an eternal texture of contempt
like copy paper that transmits things and serves as a fluent copy but preserves
the original. Those thoughts begat in him an almost regal lust that was translated into a tormented and enormous night of love and copulation like some
whorehouse of angels, he thought, and when he woke up and saw her sleeping, he noticed how white and clear her eyes were. Don't die on me, he said
in a panic. And then he sank into sleep and when he woke up he saw her eyes
wide open and looking at him. The responsibility filled him with a bitter
taste. She'll look so beautiful on York Avenue, she'll dry the tears of the world,
she has no right to wonder about Ebenezer's lost daughters, and he said to
her: When Samuel Lipker searched for diamonds in corpses, you sat and drew
sunsets with flags at the Baltic shore and a heroic and bold race lusted for you
with avid eyes, but she didn't answer him. She tried to remember how beautiful it was to fall asleep in his arms, and she said: But if you decided that I'm
Melissa, then let me be Melissa retroactively, too. The vanishing figure of her
father didn't grieve her. In her dream, she remembered, she dreamed that
somebody pointed an accusing finger at her, but since she never knew what
guilt was she didn't know what the finger meant. You know, she said, you're
now all the memories I have, I came to you from total darkness.
That night he said he had to go away for a while. He brought a lot of
groceries and two pairs of nylon stockings. She was silent and looked at
him, and whispered: I'll be here, Lionel. Soon, they'll finish repairing the
house across the street, the apartment there belonged to my grandmother,
she died in the war. The phone number in her apartment is 46655. If you
don't come back and don't call, you'll find me behind Himmelstrasse, in
the new cemetery, in the northern part where they're now burying people.
Look for the letter S. I'll die secretly even if you don't come back, but if
I die, Lionel, all your women will be dead in my eyelashes like the eyelashes that filled Melissa's death. If there's life after death, and if Germans
are allowed to enter there, I'll wait for you there, too.
For a whole year they didn't see one another. At night, he called her
from distant cities, had long conversations with her and once wept into the
phone for two whole hours and didn't say a word and she listened. Once
she told him about the house she had moved to, told that she was working
in the committee of DPs and people were coming back from Poland and Czechoslovakia and other places and searching for their families and she
tried to find the addresses. Lily told that an American officer sent her a
package of food every week and he whispered, It's me, you fool, and she
laughed, he wasn't sure, and she said, I know my dear, and I'm waiting for
you. And he told her: You're naive, Lily, and she said: Maybe, I eat little,
don't look bad. I bought two new dresses, also sewed you a coat of thick
cloth I found in an excavation under a house they repaired and I made
myself a shroud, Jews die in shrouds, don't they? Thinking about your eyes
and Samuel's. About your oval ellipses, demons have green-yellow eyes
wrapped in oval ellipses!
Lionel, who was interrogating prisoners in various cities, got in touch with
Jews who were busy sneaking across borders and ascending to the Land of
Israel. He got them cigarettes and food and for a long time he'd hang around
in places where roads converged of Jews fleeing from northern Europe and
flowing south to get to the Land of Israel. Lily understood who he was seeking and once told him, When you find him come back to me.
Tape / -
That year, the wandering of peoples began, my friend Goebbelheydrich-
himmel. People, like little ants, slipped across borders, through mountains,
in forests, slowly slowly came to gathering places near Marseilles or Naples,
in the forests of Yugoslavia, in many places they gathered. And I searched
for Ebenezer.
Tape / -
Lionel travels. People start setting real clocks, no longer covering up sin.
My mother was a lampshade, said Samuel, and Ebenezer now performed
in a hundred and sixty nightclubs. Now he appeared on a list of professional nightclub entertainers. And one night in Marseilles Lionel Secret
sees a long line of Jews. The Jews are waiting to board a small ship named
Redemption. A small ship, like a Mississippi riverboat, says an American
standing not far from it and goes off. A young man comes to Lionel, too
short to be the thug who taught ourselves to be, his arms strong, he clasps
Lionel's hands and thanks him for the cigarettes and food, asks Lionel to
get weapons too. Emotionally, it's still hard for Lionel to smuggle weapons
they'll use to fight the British. The British medals still flutter over his shirt pocket. The line to the ship winds around along a deserted and forgotten
quay. The people sit or stand, buy, sell, hold onto their miserable belongings, scared of every stranger, and Lionel notices Ebenezer and Samuel.
Ebenezer is sitting on a suitcase. At the sight of Lionel, Samuel takes off
and Ebenezer points to an empty place and says, Sit down, take a place in
line, we're going.
Samuel told me to go, he added, and I'm going. Samuel says I was born
there. One of the Israelis announces on the loudspeaker that the boilers
have broken down and there may be a delay of a few hours. Tea will be
distributed to you, he added, but nobody got up, they're afraid to lose their
place. There's room for four hundred people on the ship, and there are
seven hundred people standing here. Sounds of strife are heard in the
distance. Behind a destroyed enclosure, a battle rages between Samuel
Lipker and another man. The man bought a defective camera from Samuel
and is demanding his money back. Lionel leaves Ebenezer gazing at the
water of the port striking the concrete wall, and stands not far from the enclosure, Samuel hits the man and then wants to go back to the line and
then he looks at Ebenezer's back, Ebenezer is sitting up and dozing with
his eyes wide open, Samuel discovers Lionel looking at him, shifts his eyes
from Ebenezer to the American officer. The power coming from him annoys him, he says: You think you're an important person because you've got
a house and money, I remember how you saved a few pennies! I've got a
few francs, maybe you need a little money to buy some ice cream or chewing gum? Lionel, who looks from Samuel to Ebenezer, feels some calm, as
if his whole life had been aimed at this moment, some moment when he
had to know well how to act, and he said: Looks like I hoped you'd come
back.
You don't sound sorry, said Samuel.
Give me the money you said, Lionel suddenly says furiously.
Samuel seeks in his pocket and gives Lionel a few pennies. Lionel takes
them, counts each and every penny, and tosses them into the sea. The
pennies are swallowed up in the water, and Samuel says: I worked hard for
that money, sir!
He worked, says Lionel, and points at Ebenezer.
You're helping these miserable Jews? asks Samuel. You're an old miser
who got medals of dead soldiers, I know guys like you. Lionel didn't an swer. For a moment, he looked to the side, fog started moving toward the
port, people started making bonfires from tree bark they had gleaned.
You don't answer, said Samuel.
No, I don't answer.
Why didn't you give me money then?
Because you sold things that weren't yours, he said, and Ebenezer had
no daughters.
Samuel looked to the side and he also looked at Ebenezer now. An amazement he didn't understand flooded him. He felt animosity and softness at
one and the same time. Ebenezer looked like somebody who was finished
here, on the edge of that water. Samuel, who started acting the poor soul,
bent over a little and said: I've got something here that they made from my
parents, this lampshade, you can't know what was there!
Lionel was tense at every word. Samuel's cunning stirred old memories
in him. A boy standing at the window of Melissa's house and waiting for a
signal. For some reason he was less furious now than he thought he'd be.
Maybe suffering does have some reward, he said to Samuel, but I'm not the
man who will give it to you. That lampshade you sell to the soldiers who
believe you isn't your parents. You deserve a lot more, but you also deserve
less than what you demand! Don't try to lie to me. I'm fond of you because
of what you are, not because of what you can sell me.
I'll sell the truth, said Samuel angrily. In his mind's eye he now succeeded in seeing his naked parents.
You're lying, said Lionel.
Samuel measured Lionel, looked again at Ebenezer, and said: If we
leave here, they won't let me back.
If you want, they'll let you, said Lionel. And he felt like somebody who
steals a piece of bread from a pauper. And they started walking in the fog
that thickened and covered the port and Ebenezer who sensed something,
turned his face, saw Samuel's back far away in the fog and wanted to run
after him, but he was afraid to lose his place in line and by the time he
made up his mind, Samuel and Lionel had disappeared in the fog.
Tape / -
I don't remember, I sat there. Somebody who was me, he thought.
What was he thinking about? About somebody he loves, he thought. Some yearning, to love somebody like that, without conscience or regret, and
they would have destroyed him if not for my boxes. Bronya the Beautiful
with an apple in her mouth, she connected us, held us, on what authority did he go, I didn't know, but I didn't know who's thinking what I
say now, confused, lost and alone, without myself, my memories, no, his
image in me, a lust to embrace him, to hold the hand, forgiveness from
him for asking about all the things I didn't do.
In the cab, Samuel was silent. Lionel looked at the gray houses and next
to them the bay spread out, gleaming in the dull light. They got out of the
cab and climbed the stairs of Cafe Glacier, the big balcony was closed.
They sat at a little table, the place was almost empty.
Now tell me, said Lionel and offered Samuel a cigarette. Samuel lit it
with a little lighter Lionel handed him, he looked at the lighter and Lionel
said, Keep it, and Samuel held onto the lighter, wanted to give it back but
couldn't, buried it in his pocket, and started talking with the cigarette in
his mouth. That American officer looked naive to Samuel, but also bold.
For a moment, he thought about a possible love affair between his dead
mother and the officer and from the recesses of memory rose a picture of
his mother, dressed in festive clothes, next to a statue of a bearded poet
and Samuel is eating candy wrapped in gold foil and afterward he would
straighten the foil and bury it in his pocket. If only I could really understand his suffering, he thought. Lionel said: Look, man, for a long time now
I've been interrogating people, I read you and you think, Ah, how naive is
this Lionel Secret and don't know that my name is Lionel Secret, but I
know that your name is Samuel Lipker, I don't know who your father was,
who your mother was, I don't know exactly what world you came from. He
bent over a little, the cigarette dropped its ash on the table, the place
began to fill up, beyond the locked balcony, the sun began to set, the sea
was transparent and gleaming.
What did you get the medal for?
I fought.
What did you do before?
I wrote stories.
Why?
I don't know, said Lionel.
So don't write them, said Samuel, and began drinking the wine they
were served. Lionel tasted the wine. In the distance, fogs thickened even
on the nearby boulevards, haberdashery salesmen seemed hidden in niches,
he felt like hugging the fellow, stories that should be written-are written,
he said, the rest don't matter, and you're right.
I'm not so sure I want to be right, said Samuel. But then the moment
became soft and pleasant and Lionel looked confident sitting across from
him, Ebenezer is simple and pure, said Lionel, you're not. You always divide
everything into black and white, said Samuel, that's why I can defeat you.
Not me.
You're also them.
That's what I wanted to write about, said Lionel.
And do you have a car?
I have a lot with buses, cars and tractors, fire engines and pickup trucks.
I used to play with them like toys.
I'll have a Mercedes, said Samuel. Part of my wealth stays with
Ebenezer. He'll need it. The rest is with me. I'll wear nice clothes and
drive a splendid car. Lionel advanced his hand and stroked Samuel's head.
Samuel's eyes were glassy, he looked in despair at the stroking hand.
Lionel wanted to explain to Samuel who he was and what his life had been.
But Samuel kept his distance and when Lionel understood why he had
waited all the time, why he had been searching for Samuel and didn't know
he had been searching for him, why he was sitting with him now, he wasn't
able to explain, he got up, begged his pardon, and said he'd come back. He
found the telephone and Samuel called the tall maitre d' with watery eyes
who was looking at him with wicked indifference, and said quickly: Pad the
bill! Afterward we'll split it fifty-fifty! The maitre d' smiled, a gold tooth
danced in his mouth. Samuel suddenly had a dreadful erection. Some tear
duct he'd forgotten started pressing on his eyes, tears of people he didn't
know wept in him, he didn't want to be caught again by those maitres d',
and the maitre d' hissed between his teeth: It'll be fine, and he went off.
Samuel sat and looked at the food he'd been served and for a moment it
seemed to him that he was loved. He just didn't know by whom.