Yoram Kaniuk - The Last Jew

Noga looked at Jordana and didn't say a thing.

After that, I loved the two of you, and Menahem. Menahem I loved before. Then I couldn't. You shouldn't have found me, I don't belong to anybody Noga…

We love you, said Boaz, we were worried.

You don't love anybody, said Jordana, you're too distinguished to love. How's Obadiah?

He's worried about you, said Noga.

And about an hour later, seated on the sofa, her legs folded and her mouth gaping open, so blighted, beautiful against the background of the room laced with old wallpaper, Jordana said: Then I started watching television, they say I fell in love with it. I see all the programs in Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon, sometimes I get Cyprus. There's a guy here, Jacob, who set up an antenna for me with five directions. That's important.

Why is that important? asks Boaz.

'Cause I'm improving myself in a new direction, Boaz, at long last I'm building a past for myself that has a future.

Boaz got up and walked around the room, and Noga, who was sitting next to Jordana, hugged her. The infinite softness from Noga melted in Jordana a tremor that had begun to emerge when she took her eyes off the screen. You went out of your mind, Jordana, said Boaz, you've been imprisoned here day and night, sitting, what do you see, King Hussein, kissed wildly by officers of the armored corps? Cartoons? What are you wasting your life on!

This is my life, Boaz, and you have really no idea about somebody else's life. At night, when the light is over in the set, after the chapters of the Koran in Jordan, I see how the light pours into the screen, and then with four Valiums I fall asleep. And then Jordana yelled: I'm fed up, Boaz.

Then she whispered: The truth is I wanted to die, but I couldn't, death is too good for me, it belongs to those I love.

And Noga, Noga got up, maybe even darted up, and slapped Boaz's face. Her face bled pain, she started hitting the wall and Boaz in turn in a rage she didn't know was in her. Jordana tried to laugh, but her lips didn't move, she looked de trop and infantile and started sucking her thumb again. Boaz once again turned his face to the wall. An old calendar was hanging there, with a smiling swarthy girl holding a bunch of grapes.

When Boaz packed up her things, she didn't insist. He carefully wrapped the television, dragged the cartons to the big car, filled it so there was room for Noga and Jordana, and they left. He even paid the landlord. Jordana didn't look back, she just said: The new antenna you left here, too bad…

Boaz thought: What is it to sit in front of a television from three in the afternoon to twelve at night? But when he looked at her, she was dozing in Noga's arms. Noga, who had long ago wept at her outburst, but couldn't apologize, tried to signal something to him, but he didn't think of trying to understand. So deep was his contempt for Jordana. To himself he thought: She's leading me astray, that whore! When they got to the Henkin house, Hasha said: The undertaker's come, Obadiah.

Boaz left the two girls in the car. He removed an imaginary hat, turned to Hasha who was drinking tea at the table, and said: If you weren't the mother of my wife's husband, I would rape you. Hasha chuckled and said: You're scary, Mr. Schneerson, and she went on drinking her tea. After that, Henkin went out and hugged Jordana, who trembled in his arms. When they brought her inside, Henkin was more solid than he had been in years, and said: Hasha Masha, she was found in Kiryat Motzkin, she's in shock and needs rest, for now she'll stay in Menahem's room. Hasha looked at her with eyes that were scared at first and then calm, and said arrogantly: Why not? I'll have grandchildren to raise and somebody's diapers to change. Suddenly she let her head drop onto the table, and her head banged on the table. Boaz managed to notice that when the album was shifted by the bang, squares crowned with dust frames appeared. He called home. The girl who worked there said: There were a few invitations, the newspaper reports of the ceremony at the Dead Sea were fantastic…

Boaz said: In all those years I never came into the room. He saw the closed yellow writing desk, the coat hanging on a hook, Menahem's cloth cap, the picture of Lana Turner, yellowed with age, the chair next to an old issue of the children's magazine. In the other room Hasha sits and measures him in the distance, she knows how to curb the sweep of hostility she reluctantly felt for him, and that thought brought a crooked smile to his lips. He yelled: If you loved me, Hasha, I might have been saved, and Hasha looked toward the room and saw Boaz putting down the television, seeking the connection to the antenna to bring the cord to Henkin's outlet, and she said: This house is dry, Jordana can live in your enemy's room, Boaz, in fact that's what you all deserve.

When Henkin went to Hasha, she let him hug her, stood still, and for a long time she stayed in his arms. Then she reached out her hand, touched Boaz, and suddenly flushed, came even closer, stroked him, pushed him away from her, touched his hand and moved her hand away, sat down and stood up again, and called out: Jordana, turn on your television. She calmed down, sat down, and for the first time in a long time she looked at the pictures on the walls. From one of them looked Menahem's face. She said: I didn't even succeed in hating properly. You're the most corrupt person I knew, but I know one thing, you once saved a child, once you really saved Menahem, why couldn't you save him when you really should have?

Henkin muttered something to himself and Hasha called to him: Don't mutter, Henkin, when you need to you know how not to be in the right place, give me grandchildren, Boaz, you hear me, give me a grandson, I want to be a woman, you hear? To be a good old woman. Jordana slammed the door and the announcer's voice was heard clearly. Maybe she was trying to imprison things, not to let them be heard, she had to give birth to her children from the giant set she loved, that filled half the wall of the room of somebody who was her lover and now strangers want to give birth to his grandson… In fact a son, she said, and then she didn't hear another thing.

When Boaz came two days later and Jordana looked at him, he saw a chilly darkened look in her eyes. He understood how total the blow was.

Three poets spoke, said Jordana, I watched them. One was fair-haired, with beautiful blue, somewhat scared eyes, full of black gold, he talked like the last man in the world, something both bombastic and blighted, measured and solemn, as if he stood on the frontier of ability, and so he had to find the most beautiful and elegant words to describe that frontier. The second poet was full of joy to be talking, and the third was a little suicidal, defeated, sad, spoke evil of himself, maybe it was a plea, I looked at him, I wanted him to be good, and after a few minutes, he started twisting, muttered something, moved a little, I think the microphone slipped away from him, and then he smiled, and after the smile he said a few things I wasn't listening to, but his eyes weren't so sad anymore, the gloom almost disappeared, I think I was good for him.

Boaz listened and didn't say a word. He had already heard about that from Noga. Noga spoke with the doctor. The doctor claimed that he refused to put her in the hospital because she wasn't really sick but was hiding from herself. The idea that she was able to cure people of their sorrow through television scared Boaz. He did what he had wanted to do for a long timehe went to the man Jordana had succeeded in smiling at on television and knocked on his door. The man gave Boaz a cup of coffee, complained that he hadn't been paid for the writing Boaz used in many memorial books and even published in three albums. Boaz didn't respond to the complaint and asked what had happened to him on the television program. The man was somewhat perplexed and said: I sat there, the two of them were talking and I didn't know what to say, I'm getting old, nothing happened, suddenly I felt as if strange eyes were looking at me, without understanding what I was doing, I moved, the microphone almost fell, I smiled, I wasn't there anymore, I spoke, what I said afterward was all right, somebody got me into a conversation, I spoke out of that somebody's mouth and I spoke to him at the same time. I felt enormous love pouring to me.