Yoram Kaniuk - The Last Jew

All that may not have been and so maybe it was. Then Dona Gracia died and he buried her in a Greek Orthodox funeral ceremony, which he learned from ancient books he obtained in a long correspondence with the relatives of the Countess, who remembered him fondly from his youth, and thus he could get to the east and strike roots in the life of the colonial bureaucracy without evoking suspicion and that even enabled him to pretend, even when there was no need, to invent methods of attack and deception. Then there were wars that didn't have to be invented, and he learned not to fight in them admirably, and when he lived in Egypt, he came up with the idea that life is a corridor leading to a world in which his father and mother lived when there were still gods in the world, and only the great poetry of Dante Alighieri gave expression to the place where traces of things remained as they were before history was created which made everything monochrome, dark, and eager for destruction. And so he was enflamed by the great desire to erect memorials to Dante, which he established or didn't establish in various places in the world as tombstones people sometimes mistook and attributed them to somebody else. Giant tombstones where the names of those buried beneath them were sometimes fake. He felt superior in knowing that Dante Alighieri's tombstones conquered the world, and as reward for his happiness he would transport information from place to place, served so many masters that he had to peep in the small well-hidden booklet, written in code and based on key words from the Divine Comedy, to know who his real master was at the moment, and so he also started editing a newspaper nobody needed, and a little woman who was caught in the plot wrote the articles, received the payment of thirty-two subscribers with fictitious names and Jose, who was meanwhile also called Menkin and added the A to his name because of his love for mystery, initiated plans that certain governments paid enormous sums to acquire.

Tape / -

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?