Yoram Kaniuk - The Last Jew

In every person hides an image of a first love that may never have been. Lily was my first love, a love I didn't know. Dreams of my youth were embodied not only in the meditations of sin of Ukrainian guards, as Sam put it, but also in my own meditations. There was also a moment I still regret, a moment when I envied Lionel for robbing me of the right to love Lily and in my heart I expressed that explicitly: Our Lily! And I hated myself for that thought. Renate, who sensed something, stroked my hand and let me feel that she understood and forgave, but she wasn't willing for me to continue, and I stopped. That was a moment of wrath, like a demon that attacked, stayed in me and left immediately.

Lily, who maybe also felt it, laughed and looked at me as if to say: You're all alike! But there was also some sign of her own guilt in her smile; if you were forged of this matter, what was I forged of, she surely thought. But the moment passed. Lionel spoke excellent German, he told us about Sam's work, about his theater, and said that Sam had been working for two years on a new play based on the story of Joseph de la Rayna and that Licinda, Sam's girlfriend, was acting in that play. The premiere was tomorrow, and when he asked if we'd like to see the play, we agreed enthusiastically and arranged to meet the next day. Late at night, we went outside, Lily accompanied us, it was snowing, the wind was strong, and then the wind stopped, and Lily said: I know your books, and she linked arms with Renate, who was trembling a little from the sharp transition from warmth to cold. You're decent people, said Lily, but I'm really not at all sure it's good that you came, things aren't yet healed, got to watch out, everybody's conspiring against him, he fights me against Lionel, he's got a broken, corrupt laugh, he's always expecting the blow to land, that play… Sam Lipp isn't producing a play, he's creating the Fourth Reich. She glanced at me, smiled and didn't continue, changed the subject, and said: But it's better like this, you came, maybe it's important that we met, I have to defend Sam and Lionel, I normally don't speak German. In my childhood I sang "Spring, fields, how beautiful are the blue and copper mountains." I sang the "Niederlandisches Dankgebet, Wacht am Rhine." Yes, sometimes, between Sam's dreams, to protect him, she suddenly said in broken German, I have to dream or sing in German… and then she tore her arm out of Renate's and ran home.

We hailed a cab and went to the hotel. By ten in the morning, I was sitting in the public library, in a closed room, and poring over the material. Not until five in the afternoon, when I was so hungry I was dizzy, did I leave. I found very valuable material for our book, Obadiah, and I'll send you copies of all the material as soon as I can. The story about Kramer's meeting with Nehemiah Schneerson amazed me early in the morning, when I read part of the material Lionel gave me. Eating brings an appetite. Even if Kramer's journal, which I read in Ebenezer's house, was (as Renate says) my creation, and I don't accept that crazy versionthe meeting between Nehemiah and Kramer absolutely cannot be the product of my imagination, no matter how fertile it is. In the report from London, Ebenezer tells about the meeting between his father and Kramer. (In his relation to the story, Kramer is not presented at all as a commander in whose camp he stayed. He tells a story of an encounter between a man-and only we, the readers, know was his father-and a German whom only we know was the commander of the camp where he stayed, in other words: he tells a story that is alien to him, unrelated, and that was enough to make me shudder.) Kramer, who was then a young man, went on a journey to the Land of Israel with an old German named Doctor Kahn, who never was a real physician. The two of them were residents of the village of Sharona, although Kramer was born in Willhelma, and only at the age of seven did he move to Sharona. The doctor, who had worked as a ship's physician for many years, collected butterflies, lived with an Arab lad, Higer, who was said to have been wounded once by mistake with his rifle, loved to swim, spawned children all over the east like some ancient god and spoke of turning Palestine into a German protectorate. On one of their journeys they came to a settlement in Judea, and that settlement was the settlement where Ebenezer was born (even though he doesn't mention that fact, and when he recited this story maybe he didn't know he was born there). They were caught in a storm, sought shelter, came to the house of Nehemiah and Rebecca Schneerson. Kramer (according to Ebenezer) describes Nehemiah as a handsome man for a Jew, hot-tempered like most Jews. And Rebecca (in his opinion) was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen even though she was a Jewess. Kramer told Nehemiah there would never be peace between the Jewish world and the Christian world, or the Muslim world. There won't be forgiveness, he said, until the so-called Jew of Jesus is taken out and the reality of the real Jews in the world is separated. Christianity, said Kramer, had a Greek, pagan tone, sublime and tragic in its essence. The idea of conscience and guilt feelings are the Jewish contribution that stuck to original Christianity. The Jews as a nation that rejects race-Gangbok-invented the ahistoricism of remorse. Pure chauvinism is foreign to Judaism, and there's nothing like pure chauvinism to cleanse and create, a solid element in the health of its nation. Would-be patriotic crusades have to be destroyed, he said, and then the Christian Jesus will be the natural god in the world where there are no witnesses to the Jewish betrayal of Him.

I won't weary you with the long speech Kramer delivered that night. We can be amazed only that he said those things in nineteen nine, if he really did say them. Kramer was drunk, drooling, and looked at the enormous expanses stretching to the Arab vines. He said: Today we no longer remember who was the first father of the eagle, evolution isn't only in nature, it also exists as a huge intellectual trap.

The argument was trenchant. Nehemiah's reasoning was, of course, ridiculous to the German. But despite all that, Kramer found Nehemiah charming. Maybe he saw him as a crucified one too miserable to worry about. He hated regretting pessimists and historical thinkers. For him, history was something that happens at this moment. He wanted to write to the German government, to describe the situation in the Holy Land, which monks and cunning spies were tempted to depict too romantically. He wanted to warn the government never to rely on the Jewish Yishuv that had German or Austrian subjects. He told Nehemiah: You've got a beautiful wife, and if I weren't a man of noble feelings, I would steal her from you. Afterward, Nehemiah went to visit him. The houses with handsome roofs, fields measured as with a ruler, the advanced agriculture, impressed Nehemiah. At night, he visited Dr. Kahn's room. He advised Nehemiah not to envy. He spoke with him about the splendid Jewish nation, which was beaten by all the great nations that lit up and went out, while it remained to tell that. He spoke with Nehemiah about the savage Germans, who sometimes had a stroke of wis dom, but lacked a tragic quality. They're even afraid of themselves, he said. The Jews have a rebellious, sober, and sad, maybe ironic, surely tragic deafness, he added, ultimately they will defeat the Kramer idea, just as your god overcame gods like Tamuz, Apollo, Dagon and Ba'al. The field of defeat will always be the hearts of men, he said sadly, and Kramer who heard the words beyond the wall, scolded him and got in return the proud poetry of an anthem and the finger held out to him as conciliation, and then the doctor finished drinking a whole bottle of wine and delivered confused speeches into the night.

Tape / -

In the evening, we went to the theater. The journalists had raised great expectations for a long time, so there was a big and curious audience. In the distance, I saw my publisher talking with the charming attache. They stared at me in amazement, but were afraid to come ask me what I was doing there. Lily and Renate went backstage and Lionel took me into the gigantic auditorium, with a semicircular stage at the end. Actors were already sitting on the stage, chatting among themselves. Somebody was weeping. They sat in a big camp with a barbed wire fence. A gigantic clock hung over the stage. A group of musicians played music composed of jazz elements, Hasidic melodies, and what astounded me more: I could hear through the first tune-like a leitmotif-the fearsome and exciting anthem of the Black Corps. It was a monstrous blend, and yet something pleasant was anchored in it. The musicians looked tired, I remembered the sight of the small chorus in the Blue Lizards Club in Copenhagen. Lily looked radiant. Her dress was light purple, her hair was plaited into thin braids that crowned her cascading hair. She smiled at me (now she returned with Renate and sat next to Lionel), and said: I'm a disgusting woman and had to challenge Sam. I'm scared of his Fourth Reich. Her beauty was ingenuous and wicked, I tried to understand her desperate war.