Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
I hit you because of the Psalms I don't even believe in, said Boaz. I don't
either, said Rebecca, and she got up and warmed the meal she had made
every single day for two weeks.
And he ate. He was even hungrier than before. He swallowed the food
and drank red wine. She said: All the old people are finished, young
people die in wars and you remain. The disease of death is raging here. The Captain and I remain in the meantime. He stands outside and envies.
I'll let him wait until tomorrow. Your godfather, don't forget. The Captain
had a plan to conquer Egypt in one night. The army is here, he said, got to
send soldiers to Egypt and conquer the whole land at night and the sources
of the Nile and then Farouk's soldiers won't have anyplace to go back to.
But he did build an airfield for the English and the English won.
Where do I get a poem?
When Boaz came home, Rebecca was sitting at the window, he recalled
that night after the war. Since then she bequeathed me everything, he
said to himself, but something in him was worn. Rain fell and drainpipes
whimpered. The leaves on the trees stood erect, straightened up, the dust
left after the watering was routed, the vines Dana had planted years ago
were opened to the falling rain, illuminated in the beams of electric light
from the windows. Never does she ask Boaz where he came from and why.
He stands, looks at his father's carved birds still trying to fly.
She said: Still sitting in the cafe and wasting time?
Yes, he said. In her hand she held a bouquet of flowers. The sense that
he had once had parents perplexed him again.
Rebecca looked at him. He came to her and kissed her on the mouth.
She shrank. In the distance, the face of the Captain was seen waving to
her. They sat and looked out the window, the rain fell, he said: I've got to
find some poem, I told somebody his son wrote poems.
Take Joseph's poems, said Rebecca. The words there are a space
between things, that's what they want, don't reveal too much, it was like
Joseph, bold in bed and a liar on paper. He rummaged around in an old
desk and found a big envelope. He chose a few poems Joseph Rayna had
written to the German noblewoman named Frau von Melchior on the
beauty of her neck, her face, and her legs, took eight poems and read
them and started laughing. Three poems he knew from school skits.
I didn't know they were his!
They don't know either, she said.
The rain stopped and the wind dispersed the clouds. Boaz passed by on
a neglected path, the rain has just stopped, the black sky is strewn with
stars, and he walks like a snake, eludes, even though nobody is pursuing
him, in his pocket the poems of Joseph Rayna. From the opening in the
trees, he could see people eating supper, he could guess what they were eating now. The radio played music from the war-Don't tell me good-bye,
just tell me cheers, for war is but a dream soaked in blood and tears. He
threw a stone at a window and went on. The window shattered before he
disappeared and a shrieking woman came outside, her husband apparently
holding a dog's leash, but Boaz was already beyond the prickly pear hedge.
In the distance he could see Nathan's son tracking him with a flashlight
and the woman screamed: Come here, you hero, let's see if you've got any
blood! And her husband said to her: Don't waste your strength, the dog
growled but didn't bark, he was an old dog, about thirteen years old, he
knew Boaz even before Nathan's son, at the age of forty-five, decided to
get married. Between the prickly pear hedges, he found wood sorrel. The
wood sorrel shouldn't be there now, he chewed the wood sorrel, crushed
it and sucked fragrant, wet, and bitter jujube leaves. From there he slipped
off to the citrus grove, in front of him stands a water tower and behind it
Naftali's farm is lighted by the light of the night milking, from Dr. Zosha
Merimovitch's house came a weeping woman, next to the no-threshing
floor he stopped. In the distance a tractor could be seen leaving the lighted
dairy. Empty milk buckets clinked. He walked along a path where young
people once marched to future wars in front of All's-Well's flag, a scent of
washed earth was a restrained reply to the silence of the jackals that had
disappeared. In the dairy sat old Berlinsky, reading Spinoza as usual. Next
to him, milk jugs were heaped up and a sourish smell came from the dairy.
Boaz walked in back, found an empty can, emptied a little milk from the jug
standing there, and drank. The taste of the fresh, unfiltered, unpasteurized
milk, pleased his palate, he licked, and could see old Berlinsky amazed as
ever at the absolute but surprising beauty of the refined logic of Spinoza's
ethics. He could imagine how in a few moments, the old man's eyes would
be veiled as he again ponders the injustice inflicted on such a great spirit.
And that was a blatant injustice, he'd yell at them when they'd bring the
milk at night, he was a prince of the Jews, why don't they forgive him now
that there's a state, why don't they go down on their knees and beat their
breast for the sin. Even Rebecca would blurt out a few good words now and
then about the old man, and nobody knew where he came from or what he
had done before he came here at the end of the war. After he drank some
more milk, he came to the house on the no-threshing floor. He could see,
even at that hour, how beautiful were Mrs. Ophelia's roses. In the house of the firefly, the phonograph played Faure's requiem, he knew the music
from Tova Kavenhazer's house. He remembered Tova's father trying to
point a menacing finger at Rebecca's house and saying: She fights us as if
we sinned when we ran away from Germany, and then he'd play for Boaz
the requiem of Faure or Verdi or Vivaldi, and would say: What does she
know, a savage from the dark of the ghetto. Boaz broke into the old DeSoto,
hot-wired it, released the handbrake, and let the car slide to the foot of the
hill. When he came to the foot of the hill, next to Noah's house, he started
the motor and drove off.
The radio didn't work, but the car's lighter was fine and Boaz was filled
with respect for the old car. He lit a cigarette and hummed a song to
himself. The road was almost empty. Fresh smells of virgin land rose to his
nose, a smell of just fallen rain, of night, windows were open, for a moment
he completely forgot that tomorrow at one in the afternoon, he had to bring
a poem.
After he entered the city, he ran out of gas at the corner of Shenkin and
Ahad Ha-Am. Boaz pushed the DeSoto to the side of the street and saw a
bored policeman. The policeman was feeling his gun and looking at the
dark display windows. Boaz asked the policeman if he had a pen. The
policeman said he did and gave it to Boaz. He asked, Why do you need a
pen? Boaz said: I stole a car and I want to leave a note. The policeman
said: You've got a Sabra sense of humor, and he laughed. Boaz took out a
scrap of paper and wrote: I took the car because my ass is shaking in
buses, in America there are more Jews, but on the other hand, there are
buses at night there, too. A state isn't all of the dream. There's no gas in
the car. Return to Mrs. A. name of the settlement ... Signed, Generous
Contaminated.
He thanked the policeman and the policeman went on his way, Boaz
waited a little, pinned the note under the windshield wiper and heard a
rooster crowing. He didn't know there were roosters in Tel Aviv, and when
he looked at his watch he couldn't see the hands because the phosphorus
had worn off long ago. He walked along Ahad Ha-Am Street, came to BenZion Boulevard, sensed people slumbering beyond the walls, and if they
had been made of glass, he could have seen them weeping. Near Habima
Theater, he saw the end of the boulevard and thought of Minna,
sometimes when he'd think of her, he'd come to her, bite her, an affair of many years, where to, where from, for whom, and in the middle she got
married and divorced and was now alone again, the bleeding finger. He saw
people drinking coffee at the kiosk, most of the sycamores here were torn
down, the sands covered with unfinished structures, somebody started
building a gigantic parking lot next to the old streetlamp, on Chen
Boulevard there were little houses, their lights out, and Boaz climbed a
tree, came to the top branch, pushed himself, touched the window, pushed
it, and landed in a room. A small lamp hung over Minna. She was reading
a book. She looked at Boaz, who stood up, and said: Boaz Schneerson,
where do you come from? He said: Where do I come from? There are no
doors in the house anymore, said Minna, in his free time Boaz takes off
fake wedding rings or plays Tarzan. Then he got into her bed and hugged
her. She said: After all these years either you love me or you're going to
hell. You take off my ring in the middle of the street, come, go, come back,
disappear, I've had it, I'm a big girl, want a real life with a husband next to
me, I'm not just for sleeping with when you get a hard-on, Boaz.
Then they talked about her nipples, and he said: I let you get married
and I didn't tell at the rabbinate, you'll teach me how to love, and she said
either you know by yourself or it's not important. They kissed one another
with serene passion, shrouded in the past, everything flowed slowly now,
he calmed down inside her and she reached out, her hand took a flower from
the vase and laid it on her chest. Then, rage stirred in him, he thought of
Menahem that he was screwing for him, and about the poem, he fucked her
and then he lay on his back, struck, and his eyes began shedding tears. At
first she thought it was the water flowing from the flower, but when she saw
the tears, she was scared. She sat up straight and said: Never did I see Boaz
crying! He bent over, put on his shoes, and said to her: I have to invent for
somebody who's dead, I'm going and don't make yourself beautiful for
anybody, you don't know what pain will be on your father's face the day
you die. She took a thermometer out of the drawer of the nightstand and
put it in her mouth. He looked at the book she was reading and saw that
it was a report of an income tax evader. He asked her if she read that book
a lot and she shook her head and didn't take the thermometer out of her
mouth. He wrenched the thermometer out and she said, Yes, mainly because
my father is one of the main characters, he put the thermometer back in and
she shook her head and he didn't know if she was really laughing. He asked, What's with you? You'll sit like that until morning, and she nodded. He
went up to the window, caught a branch and once again pushed himself
and was on the tree and when he crossed above the street, a motorcycle
roared by underneath him. The streets were empty and he walked to the
tents where he had once lived. The tent that was his was lighted by a
hurricane lamp. A worker was sleeping there. Boaz went in and the worker
didn't wake up. He looked under the bed and found an old carton. He
picked up the carton and went outside. The sea stretched before him and
two people were seen walking on the boardwalk. A dog barked, the hotel
where he had once stayed with a woman whose name he didn't know was
dark. He walked to his hut, went upstairs, opened the door, a few minutes
later he sat at the small table and the lamp was lit and he tried to think of
Menahem's letter, and what he would do with it. When Menahem died,
Mr. Henkin, said the commander, he received an order to move, soldiers
were lacking, every death was a national annoyance, not like today.
Boaz Schneerson
I checked your Thompson, it's dirty, I cleaned it. They say
you'll be active tonight, they're going up on some crappy hill, I
didn't mention to you that you look tired. I owe you my life. A
moral obligation, my father would surely say. I found a
saboteur's knife in Amnon's clothes-he stole the clothes from
the horse. I'm going up to Jerusalem to see Fiesta in Mexico for
the tenth time, crazy about Esther Williams, she's all there is.
I wanted to tell you something important, Boaz, I wasn't able to
save your life. Thinking only about how you get out of all that.
I'm drunk on the champagne you all brought from Katamon. You
bathed in champagne, I drank. I'm thinking about home, father
and mother, mother's all right. And Noga? She's silent. I belong
to her as you belong to orphanhood, but maybe I love her, and
she? There's no contact with the plain and I don't receive telepathic messages. And here's the list you asked me for: in the
platoon, twenty are left not wounded and not dead. There are
four shirts in the warehouse, not too clean. There's also an overcoat of Yashka the partisan, who may really have had another
name. Possible to mend and wear. There are two torn flak jack ets, five black undershirts, a package of Fishinger bittersweet
chocolate, three stocking caps, one with holes, and a few coats,
I think-five. In Mapu's Love of Zion, there are nicer descriptions, ask my father. There's one girl in Jerusalem, not the prettiest, but at night you don't see anyway. Her parents were stuck
in Tel Aviv and couldn't come back to their dear daughter, who
puts out and also puts out omelets with eggs she bought on the
black market. Her address is Love of Zion Street 5, 3rd floor. If
you get by there, go to her. She knows you from the stories. Eat
an omelet in her warm bed. The twins asked about you, thank
you for my life and I hope you die a true national hero.
Yours, Menahem Henkin
Tape / -
I could have composed the letter in short, poetic lines, Henkin, but you
won't want that, eh?
Boaz sits at the table. It's four in the morning. The roof is burning in
a black silence. Menahem wouldn't have written: Clods of dirt mounded
up/I will shelter my soul in yearning . . . The poems don't get women
pregnant anymore, Boaz thought, but their innocence is exciting, how
was the illegitimate father of a hundred offspring able to write such innocent lines? An ancient smell of a starched collar rises in Boaz's nose, an
aged, old-fashioned adulterer, with flowers in his hand, chocolate in flowered paper, roses. He had learned Menahem's handwriting before, now
he tries to shape a poem. Very slowly the rhymes are constructed and he
sharpens, edits, I need another Menahem, trees, groves, Tel Aviv, peeling houses, burning sun, and annihilated jackals, sunset, melancholy-a
beautiful word, melancholy. And so dawn breaks, breaking dawn! I laugh.
Boaz copies the poem, in three places he writes k's not like Menahem,
maybe to give himself away, he scorches the paper a little, scrunches it,
pours tobacco and sand on it, tramples it, straightens it, wets it and dries
it. Turns off the light, disconnects the telephone left by the former owner
of the house, and falls asleep.