Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
I don't remember anything, said Ebenezer. Why Menkin?
Maybe he was another father he didn't remember, said Boaz. They went
back to Rebecca. The valise they brought was made of rare deerskin. Dona
Gracia said: Boaz, who will expel the dust from your eyes, and she smiled.
Outside schoolchildren sang songs in honor of Queen Rebecca, Noga chatted with Ahbed about the possibility of Jewish-Arab coexistence in the
Land of Israel, and Ahbed said: Your husband buries Jews, and Rebecca
said: Go to Dana's forest, and Ebenezer said: What forest, and she chuckled, and repeated: Go to the forest, and she added, It's my birthday and I
want to talk with Noga, and after everybody left Rebecca said to Noga:
Tell me about him.
And Noga suddenly pitied her.
She was holding a teacup with a silver handle, looked at the sugar cube
on the saucer, sipped the strong tea, and said: What do I have to tell that
you don't know, Rebecca? You came into a family that doesn't suit you, girl,
said Rebecca, you lived with a dead lover. I know everything. Trying to be
borne on wings and finding a butterfly in bed. Then a chrysalis. Then the
children are shouting. I've got a son sitting there. I mean Ebenezer, a national wonder, knows by heart the annals of the Captain who came here to
search for his father and found me. Ebenezer went to search for him, the
father of your bridegroom-
He wasn't my bridegroom, said Noga, and the cup shook in her hand.
So he wasn't, but the father of somebody who was almost your bridegroom is investigating the annals of Ebenezer. Why do you have to get
into all that? I'll die in another ten years, in nineteen eighty-four, I'll be
a hundred years old.
Why all this bitterness?
Noga sipped the tea, put the cup down on the table, wrung her hands and
crossed her legs sitting in the chair, and in the window, through the screen,
flashed a sunbeam that turned the almond trees, the eucalyptus trees, and
the prickly pear bushes into a hasty and wild blaze of chiaroscuro. She looked
at Rebecca, and because of the dazzling light stuck in her eyes Rebecca vanished and was wrapped in a screen, as if she could no longer be touched.
Outside the children sang Happy birthday Rebecca Schneerson and the
Teacher All's Well conducted them. They were dressed in white and Noga
stretched out a hand as if groping, lightly touched Rebecca's handsome
cheeks, stood up, went to Rebecca and hugged her. Rebecca wanted to
struggle with her, push her away, but stopped. She remained hugged by
Noga, and a shudder went up her spine, when she turned her face to the
window she no longer saw anything. The lenses of her eyeglasses were covered with mist and she couldn't, or wouldn't, wipe them. In total blindness,
she could feel waves of love and refused them as she had done all her life,
but now she didn't have even an iota of defiance or evil left. She said to
Noga: I remember how a lion knelt before me, I didn't sing Hatikvah to him,
I wasn't some Halperin! And Noga laughed, muttered something, put her
lips to Rebecca's lips, kissed them lightly, and said: You're a beautiful
woman, Rebecca, you're a brave warrior, but you won't break me.
Look, little girl, said Rebecca, and glanced in amazement at the other
room where the quiet voices of Boaz, Ebenezer, and the great-grandson of
Ahbed were heard, she smelled people and they walked around in her head,
she used to say, and Ahbed came in for a moment, served Rebecca a glass of
red wine, and Rebecca pushed Noga away from her, but stroked her face one
more moment, as if she wanted to be sure that pure softness had indeed
touched her. Ebenezer won't be alive in ten years, she said, and when he
died in the Holocaust, I stood at his grave, from the second grave, he won't
return. Somebody derides us, destroys us out of rage, doesn't hesitate, on the
verge of a great degradation, and you come from a beautiful and sweet death
of a boy who didn't burn in any fire. What have you got to do with us?
I want Boaz, said Noga, that's all, not all of you. I don't believe in circles
with no exit-
And the Yemenite girl?
Noga looked at her and was silent. Then she lit a cigarette and asked Rebecca if she wanted to smoke. Rebecca said: Yes, give me something
good. And Noga lit her an American cigarette, stuck it in the old woman's
mouth, and the old woman inhaled smoke into her lungs, and laughed:
Great like that ...
Jordana doesn't matter, said Noga, they'll come and go, but Boaz will stay.
Maybe not?
He'll stay, said Noga.
I don't want him to, said the old woman.
I know, said Noga. Look, Rebecca, I know what you want from me.
What do I want, little girl?
I'm not a little girl anymore, and you sit here like a splendid and shattered palace and want Boaz to live in it with you, until the fire. Do we
bother you?
Who's we? asked Rebecca, and a cherished panic blew from Noga. Who's
we? Ebenezer and I.
Right, said the old woman and crushed the cigarette and now she was
alert and vigorous. She wanted to get up, but remained sitting, deeply
right, as that fool Horowitz used to say, deeply right I want you to move,
clear out, leave me Boaz, what is ten years in your life?
Noga smiled a thin smile that now popped up on her open lips, and the
concave line between the nose and the mouth sharpened became more
severe as the smile tried to invent a subsistence area. She looked at the
splendid old woman and said: That's not simple, Rebecca. We're not together because we want to be together.
No grandchildren, said Rebecca. That's forbidden! No great-grandchildren, look at the great-grandson of Ahbed, he comes to stare at his grandfather's land, so there won't be forgiveness. I need him, said the old
woman. I didn't have anybody, the Captain died, Nehemiah died.
You've got Ebenezer, said Noga.
No I don't, said Rebecca. Then Rebecca contemplated and suddenly
saw herself in a ridiculous light she had never been in, and because she
didn't know how to behave in moments of weakness, she started shaking,
and because the weakness was strange to her, she also wanted to bark, but
the growls and the barks stayed inside her, deep inside her, and she looked
at Noga, and saw how beautiful the young woman was and for a moment, she
even thought: If I've lost Boaz, I've gained a wife, why should I ask, since when do I ask, how do I know what I really want, how do people know what
they want, why do I want to be dependent when I wasn't dependent on
anybody, and she stretched out her hand and started stroking Noga's face,
and asked her: Where are you from, who do you belong to, where did you
come from before the death that brought you to Teacher Henkin?
Noga was alert to rapid changes. For some reason that pain touched her
heart, the effort to win a position that was completely unnecessary. She
loved Rebecca's face. That woman bows her head before death, doesn't
want crumbs, but the whole, can kill Boaz to hold onto him. Her heart was
stirred to pity, and Noga who knew only one love envied Rebecca, who
could ask of her what people ask in old, unreliable stories. She almost said:
Take him, but she knew that both Rebecca and she depended on Boaz
more than he depended on them.
Late at night, everybody was tipsy. Even Rebecca tried to dance and fell
into Boaz's open arms, and he hugged her as somebody who knew he had
lost her that day to a girl his foster mother saw as a reflection of purity in
the features of a murderer.
Tape / -
When Jordana disappeared, they phoned from the Ministry of Defense.
Then Noga sat down, and Boaz, holding a narghila to plant a pinch of cannabis in it, put the mouth of the narghila he had brought from Mount Sinai
to Noga's mouth, and Noga looked like an old Indian sunk in meditation,
and Boaz went to drizzle water on the cannabis bush, which had meanwhile grown solitary in a brown flowerpot, where a fragrant jasmine bush
had previously grown. The roof was crammed with flowerpots and smells,
Noga brought spices she had cultivated and pruned and watered, and Boaz,
who tried to check whether airplanes were continuing to fly low toward the
airport, felt a pleasant giddiness, he landed next to Noga and stroked her
back. Noga said, Jordana disappeared!
When? asked Boaz.
They haven't heard from her in months, and only now did they call, the
bastards.
Boaz took off the cotton shirt, smelled his own odor, and tossed the shirt
into the corner of the room. Then he stood up, his torso naked, and tried to let the thoughts run around in his brain. He said: If you hadn't given her
Menahem, she wouldn't have run away!
Noga didn't answer, and pondered quietly. Her face was furrowed with
new lines that would disappear later. Her eyes were sunk deep in their
sockets. He saw her body harden and wanted to ask her to stop thinking
about Jordana, but Noga thought of what he said and suddenly a distant
pain condensed in her that tormented her again, and she said: Why when
you want to pity do you attack?
He stood still and didn't know what to do with himself, Noga clasped
the narghila, thrust her hands in it and tossed it to Boaz. He ducked and
the narghila hit the pile of sheets Noga was about to put into the linen
closet. Then she dropped her eyes, and said: Where did she disappear?
Boaz said: Why is that so important? Maybe she just couldn't take it
anymore?
Noga got up and went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, looked at
the row of eggs in their niches and picked up a carton of milk, opened it,
tried to pour the milk into an empty space with no cup, changed her mind,
put the milk in the refrigerator, and sat down in front of the old grandfather
clock. The milk flowed on the countertop, and Boaz, who tried not to see
Noga, pushed the pinch of cannabis into the narghila that wasn't broken. She
searched for music, but on all the stations there was only talk. She turned off
the radio and opened the chest, took out papers, and read aloud the numbers
she had written at night after they returned from the unveiling of the memorial at the Dead Sea, when Boaz asked her to prepare the income tax report: the mileage doesn't fit the gas receipts, she said, and Boaz said: I can't
calculate everything exactly. He saw Jordana's lost face among the memorial
books, Obadiah Henkin strolling in the mountains and showing her where
her beloved fought, tried to pity himself and Noga.
On the way to Henkin's house, they stopped at a cafe. Next to the wall,
four men sat and talked. Around each one of them you could see the aura
of foreignness. The old men yelled to one another in order to be scared less
and to be present. Boaz could understand Jordana's not-being in the space
between those men and themselves. He didn't know who they were, but
they looked as if they were still expecting something that would never
happen. And Boaz knew that wound, knew how to smell it in the distance, and Noga, who knew how much the pain costs afterward, asked Boaz to
leave. He understood her fear and left. Henkin's house suddenly looked
like a frontier. One window in Ebenezer's house was painted a new color.
Why does he paint at night? he asked Noga, and Noga said: How do I know
what your father does?
Obadiah Henkin sat at his table and looked at Boaz and at the door at
the same time. Through the open door, Hasha could be seen carefully
drawing Noga's wild hair off her forehead, and gave her a small round
mirror. After they combed their hair and each looked in the little mirror,
Hasha gave Noga a glass of cold lemonade, and Henkin said to Boaz: The
story about Jordana has been worrying me a long time now. I didn't know
what happened, the Shimonis said they saw her in Kiryat Haim. They went
to the Galilee on their memorial day, on the way back they stopped for a
cup of coffee, and in the distance they saw what Mrs. Shimoni described
as a familiar back and then they made out her profile, but by the time Mrs.
Shimoni stood up and found her coat hanging under three coats, she disappeared in the direction of what she described as a boulevard facing the
highway. I really don't know what she's doing there ...
Jordana's parents' family doctor knew some details he was willing to reveal. He told Noga: She went through a difficult experience. He didn't know
where she lived or how to find her, but a doctor at the clinic in Kiryat Bialik
called him about Jordana, and asked if she could take five-milligram Valiums
and how to give it to her, and what were her reasons for needing Valium.
On the way to the suburbs of Haifa, cows were seen grazing near a field
shaded by a row of thin-trunked cedars, and a heavy red horse was seen
leaping with clumsy nobility. They bypassed Haifa and came to the suburbs in a heavy cloud of soot. The Carmel was buried in a giant bubble of
sweetish stinking stickiness.
When they entered the small one-room apartment, Jordana looked
docile, curled up in a giant armchair with torn upholstery, and remnants
of foam rubber popped out of the worn back. In the small ugly mirror
hanging next to the television that was on, she appeared sucking her
thumb. Her eyes were fixed on the screen and on her face was a faded
look. She raised her hand to beckon them in. On the screen was a
teacher, the teacher was talking about decimals, it was a fifth-grade education program.
Boaz looked around, tried to take in the sight, maybe he even understood. He touched a leaf of a bunch of dead narcissi stuck in a blue vase,
with no water. When he touched the leaf, dry white petals dropped off.
The room had the musty odor of locked windows, orange peels, and skin
lotion. Noga went to Jordana and hugged her from behind, and Jordana
took Noga's hand, held it to her face, tears began flowing on her cheeks
and she softened a bit, turned sideways toward the guests, stared stoned
and stunned, tried to take her eyes off the screen, but when Boaz turned
off the television the tears became clearer and hotter, and she turned the
television back on in a panic, stared at the screen, as if she didn't see a
thing, and Boaz turned it off again.