Yoram Kaniuk - The Last Jew

I've got a new typewriter, no longer a shabby typewriter, a perfect IBM that can almost write by itself like that fish that once started singing to itself on the Baltic shore and we threw stones at an unseen enemy and warships cruised along the frozen shore toward Norway and then thawed the ice there on the sea, and we carved names in the ice… And you, Henkin, what's with your investigation? Are you able to understand? In an investigation there is no retrospective prophesy as in fiction, no poetic license! Henkin investigates and doesn't know that Ebenezer is Ebenezer, that Boaz is his son, and Samuel Lipker today is Sam Lipp and adopted in America by a Jewish poet who wrote laments on the death of the Jews, he betrayed you, Ebenezer, from the pile of corpses you pulled him out, supported him in nightclubs in Europe, led by him like a dog and today he got rich from you and disappeared and left you Boaz, Henkin, and you don't know what to say to Boaz, who lives with a girl named Noga who was Menahem Henkin's lover, what would have happened if my son had lived and came here to feel remorse, as he used to do in the not-so-distant past, what would have happened to him if he had met Noga? Would Jordana from the Ministry of Defense have matched him with her? My wife was dancing before to distant music from an old-fashioned radio, and I understood, suddenly I understood the German's lost rage, that was our book, Henkin, yours and mine, he'd look at me and his eye wandered a moment, each one by himself alone can't write it, together, maybe… I was maybe supposed to write about my father, not a bad man, didn't throw children into the fire, didn't shoot children with a gold ring, Henkin, all together he was in charge of propaganda. He photographed the burning Warsaw Ghetto, photographed for history. You know what he once said, he said: They didn't want to hear. He meant the world. He said, We took one step, he said, and we waited, there was no shout, and we took another step and another, and then we thought, in fact they're waiting, that whole big world was waiting for us to succeed, and my father photographed the silence, photographed propaganda films, wrote a few monographs on the Jewish race, who didn't write? My son Friedrich didn't forgive. Maybe he agreed and so he committed suicide? Maybe he found too much understanding in the depths of his heart? Can I guess? Through Ebenezer I thought I'd find an answer, but I haven't found anything yet, my father told me: six days the destroyed ghetto burned and it was possible to read a newspaper two kilometers from the ghetto, maybe three, with a father like mine, a grandson commits suicide.

Who knows why your son died, said Renate without raising her head.

How can I write the story I can't not write? I asked you then, Ebenezer, why Denmark of all places, and you said there's a reason, my stepfather, that's what you told me after Samuel looked at you and you shut your eyes a moment, my stepfather, that's what you said almost loved a woman here who died on him.

Joseph Rayna maybe wasn't my father, said Ebenezer.

Maybe?

Maybe, yes, he said.

I remember, then, on that night, in the club, you recited the books of the disappeared Warsaw writers, the stories of Kafka, the poetry of a poet named Idah ibn Tivon, I tried to understand, there was no relation between things, everything was desolate, shrouded in some stinking glory, I'd say, and then you came down. The musicians crept to the stage, and played again. Samuel distributed baskets, in perfect order, as in church, and everybody passed the basket left or right, depending on the number of the row, and they contributed their funds to the basket and Samuel looked at them with his magnetic charm, that was a shameful drama, Ebenezer… And I want to read you an interesting document. In my father's cell was a man whom three countries wanted the right to kill. In his favor it can be said only that, as for him, he loathed all three countries to the same extent. When I went to see my father, right after I met you, he asked me what I was doing in Denmark and I told him I was writing. He said to me: Don't tell them too much, they won't believe you anyway. Then that man was extradited to Poland and hanged there. Before he was hanged he wrote his journal. I want to read a part of it now.

Kramer?

Kramer, said the German, SS Sturmbahnfuhrer Kramer, he muttered. He muttered something about a cunning race and my father said, Why write about people who can't create and I slapped my father, not Kramer, he told me that Ebenezer Schneerson was his dog. He was born in Willhelma and then moved to Sharona. Today your capitol hill is located there, said the German, but then it was a village of German Templars! No?

It was.

Kramer and Ebenezer were natives of the same land. When Kramer came to Germany he was considered an expert on Jewish matters, along with the Mufti of Jerusalem who was to establish the army of the Greater Third Reich. But he didn't get to that.

Tape / -

And I thought about Sharona. It was there I saw Menahem for the last time. He came then from Caesarea. They gathered them in one of those beautiful gatherings. I went to him. I sat facing him and my son sat there and drank cold water. His face was tanned and a glimmer of apostasy flashed in it. He knew where he was going, but he refused to tell. I told him to be careful, and he said: Henkin, I'm a big boy now and I know how to kill and to be careful. He didn't offer me a drink from the canteen of cold water as if I too were part of the enemy he was about to fight. We didn't know what to say to one another. On the rifle he held, a new rifle he had just cleaned from the oil and kerosene and that wafted a pungent odor, a swastika was etched. Those rifles meant for the German army were produced in Czechoslovakia before the end of the war, from Czechoslovakia they came here. I resented that. My son was indifferent, he said: It's good for war like any other rifle, you can't choose your enemies just as you can't choose your friends, I prefer to fight the Swiss, but they aren't shooting at me. The Czechs sent me a rifle, he said, what do I care who it was meant for before? I told him, There are myths, there are words, that has a value, and he said, No value, no symbol, you're too old to understand, Henkin.

After he died you understood him, said Hasha Masha, who opened her eyes wide for a moment.

I was silent. I was thinking, we all were thinking. The light in the window was bittersweet. Bluish, a pleasant wind blew, a fragrance of sea and lemon trees.

Germanwriter asked for a glass of water, Fanya R. who lost two daughters for Ebenezer brought the writer a glass of water. The German wore deerskin shoes. Renate looked as if all her stars had died, what happened to the chorus of dead angels she had conducted before, why isn't she singing? Ebenezer sits and waits. The writer puts on his glasses and reads…

… I met Ebenezer Schneerson in the winter of 'forty-three, it was after Christmas. I remember exactly the argument between me and SS Uber- sturmbahnfuhrer Weiss. I told Weiss I was destined to establish a splendid Arab army, or else to fight on the front like a hero and not to serve throughout the war as the deputy commander of a camp, and he told me: You were wounded in the leg, my dear Kramer, you were stationed in a place that suited you. No matter how sad and conservative my feelings were, my scale of values had always been consistent and stable and so I was silent. I knew that as deputy I had to supervise my commander. Weiss and I would watch one another, as they once said about the Germans and the French on the front in World War I, like two china dogs on a cabinet and on the prowl.

Being a patriotic worshipper by nature, strong yearnings were rooted in me for my ancient homeland, I was graced with a stubborn aspiration to be the heir of Heydrich and Muller, but the world didn't have to know about that. After a long and stormy struggle in which I was demoted to a position of a covered scarecrow with an aluminum lapel on his coat collar and wearing shiny boots, what I had left was the ability to detest. I did that abstractly. Solid and hidden carefully. Hence, my manners were perfect and thus I also hated Weiss. Commander Weiss's work forced him to stay in his office late at night. The food in 'forty-three was still good, our cook, at least, was French. The French did steal the Italian cuisine but they improved it immeasurably. And so, on my way to his office at seven twenty in the morning I often had the privilege of seeing Weiss tired from his sleepless nights in his bed in the office.