Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
Here is a description of a tour of Teacher Henkin: On the
ruins of the Turkish fortress, between Nordau and Jabotinsky
Boulevards, which used to be called Ingathering of the Exiles
Street, they've built a new building. Instead of the Moses and
Shapiro families new people now live there who closed the balconies with sliding shutters. Atom Bar, teeming with Jewish whores and Australian soldiers, changed its name and now its
clientele are old Poles and women with weary faces. Then there
was a club of aging artists there.
The bicycle repairman says: He's wearing a hat again. The perfume shop that used to be a grocery is now on the way to being
a women's shoe boutique. The Czech shoemaker, who couldn't
forgive himself for choking his sick wife in the bunker and
brought new machines from France, died from missing his wife,
and left the store to two young men who sold it to a used car
dealer. What had been a vineyard until 'forty-eight turned into a
big shapeless building with a turret facing the sea. A splendid
victory for a lot of seasonal change, says old Damausz, who lives
above the perfume shop, next to the grocery of Halfon of the
women's shoes who later opened a paint store and even later a
small restaurant with a sign that said: "Original Ashkara Melange
from Jerusalem." And Mrs. Yehoyakhina Sheets of the flower
shop looks at the "Original Ashkara Melange from Jerusalem" and
says: How beautiful it used to be here. The German tobacco vendor whose wife ran away with the Great Dane dog and his son
who wasn't killed in the explosion of the bridges in 'forty-six now
manages the new branch of Bank Leumi. Henkin walks in a maze
of changes. They know him, Renate, he doesn't know them.
What was once the bulletin board where Menahem used to
post declarations against the White Paper is now a marble building with an office for modern matchmaking, as if there is modern
and nonmodern matchmaking. Well-packed white buildings on
the next corner take on a Mediterranean patina, rust in the iron,
in the cement. A slow destruction gnaws the chill beauty, among
the ruins walks Obadiah. The owner of the store on the corner
was once a women's hairdresser named Nadijda Litvinovskaya.
She sits in the window of "Sex and Beauty." They blink their
false eyelashes, and manicure men too. A state of dying sycamores, she says, water flows in the winter and in the summer
is an awful light. My daughters married contractors from Herzliya
Pituah, children go to school with diplomats' children. How are
you, Mr. Henkin? Thank you, he always says, how many years? Maybe five, maybe more. A small country with falafel, without
opera, with Sabras, come to me to be beautiful with black on
the seashore on a body like Negresses. And I say, Here's
Teacher Henkin walking, how's the missus, and he says, Thank
you. After the barber shop, I had a salon, after the salon a boutique. Then Sex and Beauty. His son is still dead, poor soul.
And the soda vendor who now sells "modern beverages" says
carrot juice for women goes well now. And Mrs. Pitsovskaya,
five streets past Mugrabi, Mrs. Pitsovskaya says: Thank you,
he'll say to me. My son's teacher, he'd learn and forget what he
learned, and now he's money and knows what the teacher never
knew. That's life, no? One with sense is a poor soul, one without sense makes money. Rich people have sense, too, says
Halfon sadly. All poor men aren't wise and all rich men aren't
fools, he adds. And the husband of Zipporah Glory-Splendor
stopped selling eggs on the black market, will import instant
coffee, now imports rare clothes from Hong Kong at the other
end of the world. If all the Chinese jumped at the same time,
the world would move and we'd be in Saudi Arabia and we'd
have oil and they'd be in the sea, says Halfon. His boy sometimes kills in wars and then goes to Bezalel to be an artist, says
Marianne Abramovitch. And Mrs. Lustig from the candy store
died of cancer of love, they say in the next shop, she played the
piano, forgot to sell candy, it was hard to digest, and the son of
the neighbor upstairs, who died of an inflammation of the urinary tract, was once a naughty boy who tried to trip Henkin who
said Thank you, didn't see, looked, tripped, didn't see. When
will there be peace, Mr. Henkin? asks the man who sells
purses and cases. Henkin doesn't know, smiles with the contemplation of a bereavedfather, Renate, that's the wisdom of
that man, maybe cunning, maybe a lifeline, and he says, What
do I know: Abravanel's pharmacy on the way back turned into
a travel agency. The messiah who used to sit in the street and
smoke twigs sells carpets and in exchange forgot the redemption we expected so much. They sell gifts and souvenirs.
Shops for watches and windowpanes that used to sell radios and
phonographs.
Tape / -
And this is how Teacher Henkin met Boaz Schneerson. It was a nice day
and suddenly the first rain of the season started falling. Teacher Henkin
struggled with the wind, but the rain fell in front of him, didn't yet get to
him. He rowed toward Mugrabi Square, passed by Sex and Beauty, Mr.
Nussbaum was already setting his watch and then he entered the rain,
raindrops whipped him obliquely, touching the sidewalk like dancing magnets, the dust was erased, beyond the display windows wrapped in mists
Teacher Henkin looked like he was rowing in the sea. From an opening in
the clouds a prancing sunbeam slices the well-trimmed hedge for a moment and wafts a fragrance of jasmine. Across from the German bookstore
on the corner of Idelson, the rain stops. Teacher Henkin looks at the visual
illusion. The rain falls up to Idelson Street, and from then on, to what was
once Mugrabi Square, rain doesn't fall and the sky isn't cloudy. The border of the black cloud is right over him. The bookstore owner smiles at
Teacher Henkin, who doesn't heed him today. Nor does he peep into the
display window to see the beautiful wrappings he looks at with love and pain.
Old books bound by aged binders, how many of them are still alive, I don't
know, but today he doesn't look. Behind him, the rain is seen in the display
window as a geometric disaster, both tame and wild. Facing him on the dry
curb stands a young man. The young man isn't especially tall but isn't short.
Pinioned in a raincoat that comes to his waist, the young man stands and
looks at the rain on the other side of the street. The young man sees Henkin
and his yellow-green eyes, exaggerated to a certain extent by a prancing sunbeam, look as if they're trying to penetrate that miracle that facing him
stands a man in a black coat and hat in a strong oblique rain, while he stands
on dry land. Henkin isn't able to think logically and tell himself: If you
walked ten, fifteen years on Ben-Yehuda Street to seek traces of a dead son
and a familiar person came to you standing on dry land as if obeying your
secret intentions, an event happened, certain wishes were answered, but the
rain was too pesky for Teacher Henkin, who was seeking Boaz without knowing that he was seeking Boaz to understand what he was seeing.
(I don't know if these things were written in Hasha Masha's letter. I
recite them and now I don't know, maybe they were in the letter and
maybe I'm quoting another source, what do I know?) The young man
dropped his hands with restrained nervousness that didn't cover impatience and anxiety, and then Henkin thought: Maybe he's waiting for me,
and understood, and the young man turned his face aside, took a pack of
cigarettes out of his pocket, those hands were familiar to Henkin. The
slight tremor, the slight restraint of the tremor, the young man takes out
a pack of matches, lights a cigarette and bends the match, looks here and
there and doesn't toss it to the ground, which amazes Henkin, the street
is whipped by wind and the young man puts the extinguished match in
his pocket, exhales smoke, turns his face again, and he says to himself,
Teacher, here's a teacher, and he knows he's thinking about something
else, but he doesn't know what he's thinking. The cigarette is a shelter,
the rain on the side of the teacher is also a shelter. Between them stands
the ruin, will the teacher cross the street?
Teacher Henkin waits until the little car that burst out of Jordan Street
passes by him, its left side is already whipped by rain and its right side is
dry. He looks at his watch as if it's important to know what time it is now.
Music comes from a locked apartment. He knows it's a Bach piano concerto. And then he crossed the street and stood on the dry land, looked
behind him to make sure he has come from the rain, the cloud hasn't yet
moved, Henkin is leaking water, while the young man is dry and wearing
a raincoat, the cigarette held for a moment in his hand and then he thrusts
it back in his mouth. And his mouth takes on the shape of a question mark.
Therefore, the encounter became like most important encounters, through
small misunderstandings, through alternating rain and dry, through a cigarette that should herald a change. The roof of Mugrabi Cinema was open,
and the roar of its closing was heard. From the window above peeps the
face of a worker closing the roof. The young man flicks the cigarette into
a niche, the match is bent in his pocket, the cigarette in a niche, the time
is eight-oh-five, and then Teacher Henkin has to cope with some uneasiness that fills him, shuts his eyes, says: Hello, and the young man tries to
look surprised, hesitates, wrings his hands and separates them as if they
bothered him, and says: Yes, hello.
My name's Obadiah, says Teacher Henkin, you're familiar to me, were
you my student and I forgot?
As he said that he thought: Did a student wait for him here in the dry
part to toss a cigarette into a niche?
I wasn't your student, said Boaz, I had a kindergarten teacher who knows
us even when we grow up. She says the features of the face don't change.
You're familiar to me.
You're familiar to me too, says the young man, but he says the words
warily and then they understand. The moment the rain crosses the street,
both of them see the same picture in their mind's eye: years before, Boaz
stands in front of Henkin's house on Deliverance Street, measuring it,
observing, not saying a word, refusing a glass of water, and Henkin goes
into the house and looks at him through the shutter.
My name's Boaz Schneerson, he says, you're Menahem's father.
After they went into the cafe, the worker came out of the kitchen,
closed the windows, and stretched the covers over the chairs on the sidewalk. Boaz and Teacher Henkin sat down at a table and a weary waitress
got up from where she was sprawled, chewing gum, slowly came to them
and they ordered coffee, one roll, and cake for Boaz. Teacher Henkin also
ordered a glass of soda. He tries to sit more authoritatively, as if it were
important to set the balance of power and know who was more important,
who had more rights. And Boaz understood and didn't resent him. He
understood that Henkin had to win where people like him always lose.
Recognizing his look blended of reproach and envy, he decided to ignore
it. I have no other line of defense, he said to himself and was amazed at the
words "line of defense," which he had heard from Rebecca. The conversation flowed while drinking coffee. At first there were gropings, Henkin
took off the hat, asked Boaz if he really was the young man who once stood
in front of his house, and Boaz tried to evade but his face answered yes,
and he couldn't explain why, he just said, I was angry then. Why didn't you
ever come to us, asked Henkin. I didn't know, said Boaz, for some reason
I didn't know. His death was too much for us, we didn't manage to live
afterward, maybe the next generation will be more successful. He wanted,
he wanted so much to tell Henkin how he once saved Menahem from
death, by mistake, when they shot at them from the village of Koloniya and Menahem shot through the peephole of the armored car and he suddenly was pushed to him, took him down, and a bullet penetrated the armored car and bounced around in it and hit one of the guys who was
slightly wounded, and Menahem was saved. For how long? What will he
tell him? I saved your son so he could die a month later? So, from the hopeful eyes of that handsome old man, dignified in the enjoyment of his loss,
Boaz told how Menahem had saved him from death. He also put in suddenly's, as if there are suddenly's in war. Very slowly, the scene changes, the
story changes, the image of Menahem grows bigger, Henkin's eyes demand
more and more and Boaz talks from the man's desires, it's sad for him to
sit across from that man, who seeks Menahem and finds Boaz, so he tells
him stories of Boaz as if they were stories of Menahem, what difference
does it make, he won't die from that again, thinks Boaz and Teacher
Henkin swallows every word, a strong wind flies dust, the rain whips down,
the waitress shivers, winter's coming, leaves fly in the wind, cars look elusive in the oblique downpour that fills the street with spraying water, and
he tells Henkin his son who was Boaz, he tells and exaggerates and he
doesn't care, good luck to him, he thinks, from the things he tells he even
starts loving Menahem, a national hero he creates, Menahem who would
tell him about the English in the Muslim cemetery and who would peep
at them screwing Ruthie Zelmonovski's sister. Single-handedly, Menahem
now conquers Jerusalem for Teacher Henkin ...
And there was also a moment of no return. And maybe all those tapes
were meant only to describe that moment, so I know, my son said what he
said and from then on everything was obscured, it's hard for me to understand how, because of one song, such a strong revolution takes place, Boaz
spoke, maybe it was an indifference coordinated with the fears, the eyes of
Teacher Henkin demanding more, pleading, dictating, Boaz reads in them
things he has no time to discern precisely, to decipher, he has to talk, he
restores the dead Menahem, magnifies, turns his death in a diversionary
action near Mount Radar into death in the Old City, there was a mistake
in the recording, he said, the reports were confused, another Menahem fell
near Mount Radar, I was in both battles and I know, Menahem saved me,
helped the wounded, they don't know what happened to him, he became
so human, something in him started to pity, the opposite of what he tried
to be, he sat in the courtyard, says Boaz, the guys were killed on Mount Radar and he waited for us to decide what unit he belonged to. We held a
discussion, it was decided to accept him, that was the moment he showed
me the poem, he quoted a poem then and I write too: and it was written
in Henkin's eyes: Poem! Poem! And Boaz reads word for word: Poem!
Poem! As if he were first learning to read, and Teacher Henkin is silent,
drinking thirstily, unable to conceal from Boaz his other son, the one Hasha
Masha mourns, the one Noga loved, was another Menahem and Boaz discovered him, but he knew all the time that Menahem was different, they
didn't know, he knew. A poem he wrote, Boaz reads on Menahem's father's
face, and that's how the poem was sold to the teacher who had thought all
his life in the ancient skill of his profession, systematically, around and
around, and the poem will bring redemption to men who are so in need of
the right word, the proving word, the knowing word. And Boaz now forgets
Menahem who, between battles, took him to the movies to see Fiesta in
Mexico, the one and only film showing in besieged Jerusalem and the
owner of the movie theater sat outside and waited for somebody to come
and watch it, and the divine Esther Williams jumps every night, at the
same time, with the electricity from a private generator, into a beautiful blue
pool, and Ricardo Montalban with splendid sideburns and brilliantined hair
sings with a Mexican accent and Estherke swims in a shiny bathing suit and
her teeth are white, and then he took him to the twins and one of them
was a little hunchbacked and had a wounded look in her eyes and they
sucked lollipops he had brought from the black market. A bereaved father
wants a Menahem he dreamed about at night. As if imprisoned in the hands
of that teacher, Boaz sells heroism and a poem. He'll love me, Boaz says to
himself, he'll love me, and a deep wound inside him all his life gapes open.
They drank another cup of coffee, something becomes clear in Teacher
Henkin's face. One eye still pondering, he finishes sipping the coffee,
looks at the new cigarette in Boaz's mouth, even hands him a match from
the box of matches on the table. The rain outside stopped for a moment
and then intensified, and then Boaz lopped off the match on the table,
looked at the heavy clouds in the window, somebody drew a rabbit on its
steam, and a little girl sitting there sang: Come to me, butterfly grand,
come back to me, sit on my hand, and she said: I love my rabbit. And there
were also faces she had drawn, and the waitress wiped the table with a gray
rag, trying to gather up the cigarette butts and Menahem grows stronger, his image is opened to a new biography, a salvation of the wounded, the
battle for the Old City, explosives in the Wall, after all, Hasha Masha said
afterward, after all why should you blame Boaz? He sat with Henkin and
Henkin wants to be worthy of his son, wants his son to be worthy of some
ideal so he can love him, what did Boaz do? He told Henkin Menahem as
if he were Boaz. What Boaz did in the war was copied to my son. And Boaz
erased himself, was he looking for a father for himself? I don't know. I
loathe the fellow, but I also understand him. The devil in him, that innocence to read in Henkin's eyes what he longs for.