Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
Noga didn't say a thing and Jordana stood up, the roll in
her hand, finished a glass of wine, looked at Noga, and said:
How beautiful you are, Noga, you sit here, bring me into the
house, give me coffee, cheese, red wine, and Boaz, tell me
things so I'll understand him, what do all the ceremonies he
makes for people tell you, you do know how to obliterate and
you give him to me, some fine gift!
Maybe Boaz discovered my demon, only you know him,
nobody else does, when I loved Menahem Henkin Boaz came
and took that love too, even before he took me ...
Noga started humming something that may have been
some echo to the music from the phonograph. She said: You
want to disgust me, to hurt me, but I'm protected, Jordana ...
Got to say what happens on the roof on Lilienblum Street, on
that roof, not what happens in comparison with something
else. There are time differences-in Los Angeles it's now ten
hours earlier, but for me those are only words, now here and in
Los Angeles is the same time. I've got my own time; you're
there, Boaz is there, what happens to us, Menahem, you and
Menahem, me and Menahem, no love is that love, in that moment Boaz has to see himself in your eyes, or even "only" in
your eyes, that you will love him, that he will know how dreadful he is and of course wonderful, after the ten hours' difference he returned to me, and he was with me also ten hours or
ten years before, and always will be. This is home. This home is not love or hatred and not what happens to you or to me or
to him, at the limestone wall of the Muslim cemetery.
When did I have more than ten hours? said Jordana.
When you loved Menahem, said Noga with sudden anger
that passed immediately.
Maybe, said Jordana, I once tried to feel what it is to be a
bereaved father or mother, Noga?
It's almost all I tried, said Noga.
Jordana opened the door, cast off the robe that had dried
long ago, stood in the pale light of the room, at the open door
where lights capered, and said: Once I came home from the
Committee of Parents, took off the marble look, I saw
Henkin's eyes in my mind, I thought: What is love for somebody who died twenty years ago? I sat in the big armchair I
had, with arms coated with disgusting black Chinese lacquer,
I shut my eyes and tried to banish the eyes of the fathers and
mother, I thought, I've got a son, I've got a son, I've got a son,
and I felt him inside me, I was pregnant, and he was there,
that son, I was happy, I didn't sleep, I just forgot I was some
existing Jordana, I was me, but in another place, maybe ten
hours' difference? Something like that, on second thought, I
hurt, I invented a child who dies, I gave birth to him, that hurts
but the pain was mine, I raised him in that ten hours' difference, and he was alive, he existed as you exist now in this
room. I didn't look at the clock, didn't know how much time
had passed, it was dark, I talked to him about grades at school
and then about flu and why you have to stay at home another
day and not go to school, and he went out and fell under a car,
I ran out of the house where I was apparently living, but he
was already crushed. After I returned from the cemetery, I
thought here, he's not with me anymore, he isn't even for himself. But for me that was something else, he wasn't anyplace
for anybody, not in Los Angeles, not here, not ten hours ahead
not ten hours behind, I sat in the armchair, I can't even describe what I was feeling. I was choking, I tried to breathe, I
knew that if I woke up I'd be relieved, but I didn't want to, or perhaps I couldn't. The knowledge that he isn't, totally isn't,
no telephone would reach him, no letter would get to him, it
was impossible ... I gathered that emptiness from all the dead
people I had filed, my nothingness was a dinosaur in me, swallowing every drop of air, I felt the emptiness penetrate again
into my womb, but this time it was longing, like an ax, that cut
the face, the feet, the cheeks, the roots of the eyes, his connection through me, cutting off from me, my eardrum was so
taut that I could hear the heart beating, I started yelling, there
was a wooden knife there, I brought it close, thrust it into my
arm, blood flowed, I yelled, the neighbor rang the bell and
then knocked on the door, I heard voices, I was in shock, the
neighbor brought people, apparently I fainted, they broke
down the door, I heard a siren, then I disappeared to it, I connected with it, there was one moment of bliss and pain and
then I woke up in the hospital, they measured my blood pressure, tested my heart and blood, they bandaged me, my blood
pressure was high, I said: My son died, my son died, and they
were busy taking care of me and didn't pay attention. They
gave me a shot of something and I fell asleep and came to only
two days later and was loathsome in my own eyes, what a fuss
I made for them, myself, I apologized to the neighbor ... And
then a week later I was eating lunch with the head of our department, we were eating in Olympia, suddenly I started
yearning for the child, I looked at the people and they were
eating moussaka and stuffed vegetables and shashlik and
drinking beer and cold water and I was trying to eat and that
yearning, like a flash that cuts the body and suddenly all the
people became paper dolls and I saw them through walls and
didn't sense them anymore, and I thought, that's how my
people are, sitting in a meeting, in a car, suddenly that arrow
that's stuck in them, like that, among people, among the living, next to shops, in a cafe, at the movies, suddenly you and
the son, or the daughter, who aren't, and you feel and no word
will express the feeling, and the tears have to roll in the belly,
so they won't be seen, won't be misunderstood, and with whom to share this pain, and it's impossible, and another few
times like that, I was sitting in the movies and suddenly I
didn't have him there either, and on the seashore, among a
crowd of people on Saturday, he wasn't, all the time crushed
by a car, the expectation at night, I should have let months
pass to get over the dead son I never had.
Jordana fell silent, she pinched her nipple lightly, found the
stub of the mirror and looked at herself, Noga looked at
Jordana in the mirror, saw the thin swarthy body and Jordana
sucked in her belly and a spasm seemed to pass through it, she
said: Right, I loved them, they were a yearning for something,
Boaz is building an empire of dead people, I loathe that, and
live with that, go to the Committee, smile, introduce parents
to their sons, but inside I've got this son, once he was and remains forever, and Boaz, he's the only one besides you that I
can talk to about that, tell him, today I met a dead person and
then touch Boaz, know he's dead and he understands and
somehow he also lives. What man would take a woman whose
two men were killed and they say she kills her men, she's
cursed. They say: Boaz loves the smell that comes from me, as
from you, grows stronger from the death of others, mine, others, yours, vulture! He goes to war to be close to blood, meets
you in a tent, you play Noga, he plays Boaz, and you can laugh
at yourselves, me too, in his jeep, in his car, everyplace, with
you, without you, shame, shameless, guilty, not guilty, I live
without that official marble, without the curse, all of us in the
cemetery, and it's allowed ... And his grandmother who will
live forever. Maybe Ebenezer ... Once I went with Boaz to his
grandmother, he told her: This is Jordana from the Ministry of
Defense, as if I were the chief of staff. She smiled and told
about the ants who would eat her someday. And Boaz, Boaz sat
on her lap and she bounced her fist and stretched her fingers
and said: Grandma baked a sweet cake, cut it in slices; gave it
to Poopie, gave it to Moomi, gave it to Boaz, and then she sang
some song in Yiddish, full of gloom and spiderwebs and he
sat there, the one who meets dead people in my womb, who measures my veins to make them into threads to tie memorials, and listens to his grandmother talking to him as if he were
five years old, and laughs ... He sits in the lap of a woman who
came to the Land of Israel before Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi,
and hears about the bastards who destroyed everything for her
and her husband who died on the shore at Jaffa, plays with her
beautiful teeth, and she's like some ancient palace, a poster
from Switzerland, elegant, and then he came to us two fools,
and we're here Menahem's puss, with Henkin's words, stuck to
our skin, in different planes of time, ten hours' difference, ten
years, what's the difference, a Yemenite and a European, two
beauties we, stretched to one another and he weaves us into
his rage, hits, and we make him coffee. What, Noga, will be?
And the two of them stand there, Noga's legs touching
Jordana's and Jordana lets Noga hug her, she has nothing to
say, she holds Jordana and tears flow and you don't know
which of them is shedding tears, or for whom they're shed, the
phone rings and they answer the phone together and say he'll
come back later and hang up and don't know where Noga
starts and Jordana ends. The phonograph plays a Mozart concerto, the Italian opera on the next roof is over, the solitary
woman there now has a television, rustling of a city, dark
schemes, planes to Lod slice the dark sky filled with the roar
of heat and then Boaz enters, glances at them, shuts his eyes,
they're sunk in that hushed distance from one another like
lovers, a feather touch, he washes his face, eats something he
picked up from the table and then, when he starts combing his
hair fear floods him, he wrenches Jordana away, pushes her to
the torn upholstery, lies down next to Noga, looks into her
crotch, averts his eyes to Jordana sitting cross-legged, and says:
Look how charming she is, white, European, with her it's
pressed and small like a seashell. He tries to laugh but doesn't
make it. Now she started yearning and didn't yet want to
know for whom. Again and again he strokes Noga's groin as she
gnaws her fingernails, he tries to catch Jordana who slips away
from him, and Jordana says: Let me love the two of you in the distance. She manages to climb onto the nightstand, cross her
legs, disappear into the dark niche between the wall and the
window with the opaque pane and he turns, caresses Noga,
and Noga whispers: Not now. Offended, he hits her but she
doesn't respond, goes on gnawing her fingernails, looking at
Jordana sitting shrouded in shadows, and he says: Now! And
Noga says: I don't feel like it, Boaz, not now, Jordana moves a
little, her eyes measure the mattress at her feet, the closeness
that had vanished before. He says: I want the two of you, I'm
bursting from you, and then Noga said: Once you put a paper
flower and were sensitive, now you're full of shadow, and Boaz
yelled: Get down, Jordana, but Jordana didn't get down, not
yet, and then the phone rang and he said: It's for you, Noga,
who in the hell wants you? And Noga grabbed the receiver
from his hand and whispered into it briefly, talked about some
film they had to see and Boaz went to the kitchen and drank
cold water and returned and yelled, Stop! Noga put her hand
over the receiver and whispered: Stop, Boaz, and then he
looked at Jordana and a slight smile started on her lips, and he
said: What's going on here? A revolt of the streetwalkers? And
Jordana laughed and then Noga whispered, Fine, see you, and
replaced the receiver, went to the nightstand, bent over a
little and started pulling Jordana's hands, which began, as in a
dream, to stretch out to her with a pleasure Boaz couldn't
bear, and Jordana shut her eyes and offered herself to anybody
at all, she didn't care anymore, shuddering on the nightstand.
Like a hedgehog, said Boaz, and went to the refrigerator and
shrieked: Where's the beer, why don't they buy beer, and then
he found a beer and drank it, put his head under the faucet
and let the cold water stream and apparently also yelled because burbling noises came from the sink, and then Noga
laughed and Boaz went to the other room and called out: Why
isn't there any more beer? and Noga said: Because I didn't buy
any, and he broke a chair, and Jordana said: Noga, he broke a
chair, and Noga lifted her face and said: Jordana, Boaz
Schneerson broke a chair, soon there won't be anything to break in this house and then we'll all get married and get new
chairs from all the mothers and fathers, because there are
three of us and we've got a lot of fathers and a lot of mothers,
we've got Henkin and the whole Committee, and we'll get
chairs and clocks, and Boaz threw a chair leg that didn't hit
either of them, but could have, and said: You, you brought
Jordana here, not me, you invited her to live here, not me ...
And Noga puts on the robe that Jordana took off, and says:
Me? I didn't bring anybody, Boaz, I opened the door and some
poor Jordana was standing there and I let her in, the ticket you
paid for, and Jordana approached Noga who seemed sunk in a
distant and maybe even malicious melancholy for a moment,
as if she borrowed it from another body, maybe from Los Angeles, ten hours behind, and Noga pushed Jordana away and in
a clear and quiet voice said: I'm my own rag, who am I? Do you
have any idea of the harmony you destroyed? Do you really
grasp who I am and why I am, and where I'm going and where
I came from, without any connection to you or Menahem
Henkin whom you killed or didn't kill. I myself became a memorial book for a fallen soldier who never was!
And then, again the empty silence of the south of the city
will swallow them. That dark will prevail, planes will go on
passing over the house on their way to the airport, Boaz is
softened with, without, Noga, Jordana, everything is again as
it was, but in the air there will be a sense that all that can't
happen and that it's not possible anymore, that we, said
Boaz, we take things too deeply, we can't do it simply, and
we can't do it not-simply, and at four in the morning they
woke up. If they had slept at all before.
Tape / -
Jordana went to the shower, stood and looked in the mirror and splashed cold water on her face, but she was still
blazing. When she went back to the room, Noga and Boaz
were sitting on the gigantic mattress. That pale light penetrating inside flickered and went out. Jordana said: I dreamed of the dog we had in the village, his name was
Haman, he was old, I dreamed he devoured you.