Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
A young woman with open lips, shut eyes, sat there looking
as if she were rapt in mysterious thoughts. Artists yelled and
cursed one another, and when a person entered and wanted to
sit at an empty table, the waiter took it under advisement and
then allowed him to sit and I recalled Mr. Soslovitch and at the
same time also understood that he was dead, and at that very
moment, Jordana entered the cafe and looked extinguished.
Something in her face was depressed and bitter, she looked nervous, stood next to me distracted, I said Hello Jordana, I was so
glad to see her, and she said Hey Henkin and corrected it to
Hello Henkin, but the words were said distractedly, absentmindedly, she barely saw me, she sat down in a chair, muttered something, excused herself and got up, went to the bar, next to
where the owner of the place always slept with his enormous
belly thrust forward and his legs stretched out in front of him and
on his face a sweet glow of a giant teddy bear, asked permission
to use the phone, dialed and sank into a long whispered conversation, I saw her weep a few times and then hang up decisively,
amazed at the emptiness that filled her and very slowly she came
to me, tried to smile through the screen of tears, said: You look
great, Henkin, she sat down next to me, put her hands on the
table, played a little with the salt shaker that had more grains of
rice than salt, lowered her hands in astonishment, the salt shaker
hit the pepper shaker with a bang that was maybe too loud for
her. She groped in her purse, took out a cigarette and lighter, put
the cigarette back in her purse, lit a cigarette that had been stuck
in the corner of her mouth before, for a moment, she shut her
eyes whose lids pearled with tears, opened them wide in a certain
amazement, as if she didn't know exactly where she was and if
she had already ended the long phone conversation, she inhaled
deeply on the cigarette, and all I could see was a sadness spiraling up in a thin curling smoke, and I, maybe because of my sensitivity to her, maybe because of memories that surfaced in me,
I looked at the man sitting at Soslovitch's table drinking beer and
I tried to think about him, and Jordana played with the lighter
and said: What a day, what a day, twice she said that, as if she
weren't at all sure she had said what she said. The sorrow I saw
in the meeting of her lips looked as if the smoke came to the
soles of her feet and clouded my ability to talk with her about
the outing we were about to plan. I said to her: The man eating
gizzards and drinking beer is sitting at the special table. Maybe
it was an attempt to distract, I really don't know anymore.
Mr. Soslovitch, I said to her, sold locomotives. Ever since the
establishment of the state he sells only one locomotive a year.
A confirmed bachelor. Always dressed up, with a tie and a handsome hat.
Soslovitch loved artists and so he'd come here with the
Cohen family. Mr. Cohen was then a bank manager or a finan cial advisor, I don't remember anymore, and Mrs. Cohen, a big,
handsome woman (her father was one of the founders of Wadi
Hanin and left her some land) had a house that served as a
salon for artists and writers. I'm not well-versed in gossip, but
Mrs. Cohen and Mr. Soslovitch fell in love with one another in
nineteen twenty-nine, while Mr. Cohen used to travel a lot and
seemed satisfied. He performed important missions for the newborn state, loved his wife's artists, and was a close friend of
Mr. Soslovitch. Every Saturday afternoon they'd meet at Kassit,
sit at the regular table, eat and drink. Sometimes they'd even
hug each other emotionally, or would become pale and sing
sad songs in Yiddish or Russian or Hebrew. Mr. Soslovitch would
come alone every afternoon, sit at his regular table, and until
he'd leave, nobody dared to sit at the table. Now a stranger is
sitting there, and that's a sign that Mr. Soslovitch is dead. And
so, out of thoughts of distant years I didn't even know I remembered, Jordana said, half pensively and half provocatively: What
does that have to do with us?
What does that have to do with us? I asked.
Me? she said, blushed and repeated: What does that have to
do, you burst into an open door and that doesn't suit you,
Henkin. I said to her: I was trying to distract you from your
gloom, and Jordana said to me: You're too old and wise to believe
that if you tell a woman like me about a locomotive salesman who
sold one locomotive a year, I'll forget what I'm weeping about.
Did stories like that help you?
I was silent and drank coffee.
Then she ordered a beer and I saw the beer foam stick to the
lips of the fragile madonna of death, and then she hissed between
her lips: Son of a bitch, that Boaz Schneerson. She tried to smile,
tears again pearled in her eyes, and she said: Let's drop the son
of a bitch and talk about the outing. The son of a bitch said the
stalactite cave is a delightful place, so I want some other place,
Henkin, and now she almost yelled, since the girl who was meditating mysterious thoughts opened her eyes wide and looked at
us in amazement and let her head drop on the table and fell asleep. I thought, Who sells us locomotives today? But that
thought didn't help me, I couldn't really be concerned.
A few days ago, Harvjiaja brought me a story that was published in one of our journals. The story was written by a writer
who fought in the war with Boaz and Menahem. In the story,
Boaz appears, along with Noga, and Jordana, under the names of
Aminadam, Mira, and Shulamith. I translate the story for you
with the original names so as not to confuse you. The title of
the story is "Vulture." The story annoyed me. Only after I read
it did I understand what Jordana's rage meant. I wondered how
the writer knew things I didn't know. But those are facts and
from them we have to interweave "our" story. The writer's name
is Nadav ben-Ami.
[A part is missing] ... And Jordana left her office and went
to the street. The light was dazzling, people who were scared
of the heat weren't the shadows she had thought. She stood
in line for the bus and since she didn't have anything to do
with her hands, she straightened her hair and tried to squint
her eyes because of the dazzling light. On the bus she stood
crowded between people who were pungent with sweat and
the driver yelled, but his voice was blended into the turmoil.
When she squeezed her ticket, her hand was wet and the coins
in her hand seemed to be swimming in water. The sights
passed by in the blurred windows, and a woman sitting next
to where Jordana was standing tried without much success to
open the window wider. When she came to the stop, she got
off slowly, which annoyed the driver who muttered something and even locked the door when the blast of the lock hit
her spine. A sudden burst of wind from an air-conditioned
shop made her shudder with pleasure. She turned to the
street, which, now, at dusk, was empty. The night watchman
in the big building, whose lower floors were built now, put a
pita in his mouth filled with tomatoes and olives. The tomato
dripped red juice and he wiped the blood of the tomato with
a lace handkerchief. When he tried to smile at her he looked distorted because of the tomato and maybe also because the
olive pit didn't come out in time, so he spat out the pit and
the smile was crushed. But she had already crossed the street
and didn't hear the curse. A car sped by and she jumped, the
watchman couldn't help laughing, and the tomato dripped
even more and she looked at the house, and didn't move. Just
as the woman who lived alone in the house next door started
hanging laundry on the clothesline, Jordana lit a cigarette and
immediately let the cigarette drop to the ground and crushed
it with her foot. The watchman looked at the cigarette and the
tiny spark that still flickered in it. Jordana went upstairs, even
though she didn't know where she got the strength to climb.
Noga sat on the roof and embroidered. Jordana looked at
Noga and Noga raised her face and said: It's so hot! Jordana
couldn't say a thing, she touched Noga's face, let her stroke
her hand softly, and as they stood there obeying something
remaining between them without words for a moment, they
seemed to be hoarding an anger that had dissolved into
their standing. Jordana drank water straight from the faucet
and only then did she pour herself a glass of water from the
jar she took out of the refrigerator and drank from the glass
until she was amazed that there wasn't a drop left in it. Dead
tired, she looked at the old grandfather clock without hands
and allowed her clothes, with a light and unconscious help of
her hands, to drop off her. When she stood in front of the
grandfather clock, which she was apparently still looking at,
but didn't see, air blew from the vaulted window and she saw
the upper end of the wheel of the setting sun and a plane
was seen cutting the air and descending on the way to the
airport. The breeze lightened the heat a little and her sweat
cooled. As in a daze, she moved to the shower. For a little
while she stood unmoving under the stream of cold water.
Then, without drying herself with the many towels hanging
there, she put on a robe, and dripping water, stuck to the
robe that was clasped to her, she went out to the twilight on
the roof and looked at its serene riot, and Noga said: Sit down, I'll make you coffee. And Jordana said: I'll make it myself, she sat and looked at Noga and saw again the woman
hanging laundry in the house next door. She got up, and without looking at Noga, she went to the kitchen, put on water,
waited until it boiled, poured Nescafe and some saccharine,
went outside holding the full coffee cup, and said: I dripped all
over your kitchen.
The wheel of the sun almost disappeared, leaving behind an
astounding wake. The shadows were starting to fill the roof and
penetrated between the flowerpots. Jordana, still dripping water, drank the coffee and started dancing. Noga came to her.
They stood so close they almost touched one another, Jordana
sipped the coffee she held behind Noga's back, the sun disappeared behind the department store, and Jordana said: What a
disgusting pink, and Noga looked at the old antenna and saw
a bird landing, cleaning its feathers, and soaring again. Noga
gently pinched a bush growing in a giant flowerpot, picked a
jasmine flower, brought it to her nose and smelled it as in a
long ceremony and then, gently, she moved it back and forth
in front of Jordana's nose. Jordana stood transfixed, her face
almost didn't move toward the flower, her nostrils expanded,
and then, with a quick movement, she tried to snatch the
flower from Noga's hands, and in a twinkling, Noga managed to
hide it behind her. When she moved and stamped on the floor,
the phonograph started playing. Jordana could move from the
spot, and so, even though she didn't pay any heed to it, she let
the half-full cup drop from her hand and shatter on the floor.
Only after the smash was heard did her hand start shaking
again. Noga didn't avert her face. Her back reconsidered, and
when Jordana came to her, she waited until she was clinging to
her and bent over, picked up a shard of the coffee cup whose
slivers were scattered around them and black coffee still
poured from the shard. The coffee was thick and a drop fell on
her shorts. Her leg was long and well-shaped, and Jordana went
down on all fours and cleaned the drop of coffee dripping from
the pants on Noga's well-shaped leg. Noga held out her hand, and moved it very close to Jordana's long hair, got wet from the
water still dripping from the hair and Jordana stopped shaking.
The woman in the house next door started playing her
Italian singers, and Jordana said: They always sound as if in
the last opera they die and only then do they live.
Get up, said Noga.
Jordana couldn't get up, but she couldn't say that. She was
stooped, curled up in herself, before her the day broke and
shadows deepened, the light was swallowed up rather than disappeared, a plane passed by and left a long darkening white
trail behind, the roofs were swallowed up in the dark that was
already heavy and its dimness was cracked by flashes of lights.
The wind that had blown before stopped, and the air stood still
again. They cleaned up the shards, swept the roof and washed
it with water, and then Jordana tried to direct her body to the
two pleasures competing with one another: the Italian from the
house next door and the melancholy rising from Noga's phonograph, but Noga refused to be caught in her mood that may
have been impossible, and the stumbling, that was right for
her, maybe therefore something that accompanied her from
the moment she left the office. When she fell she thought she
wanted to burst out laughing, but she didn't know why she
didn't laugh. Her head hit the floor that was just cleaned, and
Noga said: Come, let's go in and eat something.
When they went in, Noga slammed the door and turned
on a light. She put out a plate of cheese and rolls, butter, and
a bottle of red wine. The phonograph went on playing,
maybe because Jordana changed the record, even though the
two of them weren't aware of that, the light from the vaulted
window was red and vied with the light of the lamp, and the
burst of air was stronger now. They ate in silence and then
Jordana spread butter on a roll, put a triangle of cheese on it,
chewed, looked at the zigzag snake of light bursting from the
broken vault above the grandfather clock, and said: I went
with him to Independence Park, Noga, there were homos
there and a woman with a dog. We searched for shade, in the distance I saw Henkin's roof, I ate lunch with him. Sad, Noga
... Boaz's father put up a new television antenna, and Boaz
didn't approve and didn't not approve. Near the demolished
wall of the Muslim cemetery, he told me he loved me. I said
to him: You don't love me, Boaz Schneerson, if you love, you
love Noga, and he said: Maybe I'm not using the right words.
I told him not to say anything, then he said, It's true, maybe
I am tied to Noga, but I need you. I told him, I love you Boaz,
say "love," don't say "tied," and he said, But Noga hates you,
and then I told him: So what, and I laughed, Noga's feeling is
stronger than your empty words.