Yoram Kaniuk - The Last Jew

When Nehemiah spoke of the weeping eye of God, Joseph said: I thought you killed God, and Nehemiah thought: Maybe I did, but your songs, he said, they're words about nothing and Joseph said: So what? Why should they be about something? I don't yearn for anything, Nehemiah. And all that time, Nehemiah didn't sense the electricity between Joseph and Rachel Brin. He thought: There's no grace, there's no messiah, there's no real foe, only words and anger. He didn't know those awful words flying in Rebecca Sorka's room and seeking a foothold in a reality they didn't deserve.

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Many years later, when Ebenezer sat in Rebecca Schneerson's room at the settlement, after forty years had vanished, he'll tell his mother about what I heard from a dying Jew in Block Forty-six. The dying Jew told me the history of a monk he called "our pauper monk, crown of the gentiles, our noble brother Avidius, man of dreams, flint, and humility." In a letter Avidius wrote to a woman he had loved many years before, and now she was forbidden him, he tried to describe his feelings in the eight years he had sat bound to a stone pillar in the Sinai Desert. He described his torments, his endless gazing at the heat, the wind, the rain, the birds, the desolation, and after five years, he wrote, the silence passed, the flesh passed, leaving delight spinning rustling and unseen webs, both dark and pure. As if the dread were tamed to silk of stones that dropped and melted in the heat and were heavenly dust on the earth disappearing under the stone pillar and throughout the expanse, silence reigned, and love sprouted from the heat and the silence, unbearable, independent love, without flesh or spirit, generous love without slander, a rare touch of a butterfly's legs in a fire that doesn't destroy but flickers, taming sorrow to scan silently the reality you're part of and it is no longer in you, only a prayer prayed by a solitary angel for you and strong and wonderful bliss fills the heart, and Rebecca will then tell Ebenezer: I know, for eight years I wept for Nehemiah, the nonlove I found in the river, and then I came into being without compromise and it's impossible, isn't it, Rebecca will say then, impossible to try to extinguish the force of love in love!

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The love Rachel Brin saw in Nehemiah's eyes was alien to her passion and yet like it. She pondered the imbroglio she had come upon and thought, Rebecca is busy rambling after herself and so I'm left alone, I came here as her emissary, Nehemiah is probably thinking of her but saying the words of Joseph, Joseph is looking at me, while I'm giving birth to his sons, maybe Nehemiah hates in Joseph his nonexistent love for Rebecca?

When she walked, she heard steps behind her. The rain that fell earlier had stopped. She felt silence. There was a bridge there and she stopped on it. Joseph approached and clung to her. They started flowing with the ice floes in the river that looked as if they were striking one another and stopped flowing separately. A hot, round ball took shape in her. That was her first kiss, and even though she was trembling, she didn't feel love. She was scared by how much her body longed for the man and how empty her heart was. On her retina she could have described his body to herself through his clothes. Later, they would meet in remote barns or secretly in Joseph's room, at night, and he taught her body to love delicately, but also when they were together they felt that some alien hand was playing with them. When she became pregnant, she went to her sister in the big city. Her sister took her to a doctor. The doctor only confirmed what she knew. She returned to the city and suggested to Joseph to run away. But he said: I've run away enough.

When it became known, Rachel's mother summoned Uncle Zelig, whom the Russians called the Bear, and the Jews called him Secret Glory. Broadshouldered he was, with a mighty body and little eyes like the eyes of a mouse, watery and blue, he lived alone in a distant garden, guarded it, prayed a lot with the few words he knew. For twenty years he served in the Czar's army and it was said that he slaughtered people in the wars and didn't forget whence he came. His niece Rachel he loved more than anything. He came to the city bringing with him a goat that he said was touched by a peacock's feather. The golden fleece will soon be found. The newborn will be named Secret Glory after me, he said, but he went in vain to Joseph's house: Joseph wanted to marry Rachel. The city concocted rumors and everybody accused Rebecca whose grandmother's grandmother was Rebecca Secret Charity. Rabbis wrote bans but when Zelig asked them to stop they did because for a long time Zelig Secret Glory had considerable strength, was simply one of the Just Men. Rachel's parents came out of their quarantine, and a Russian sorcerer brought by Rachel's mother to sprinkle sulfuric acid on the threshold of Joseph Rayna's house looked like a scared vulture, and the house seemed wrapped in flames, but Joseph told them: Why are you acting like fools, I'm marrying Rachel Brin and nobody will stop me especially since there's no need to try to persuade me. When Rachel was with him, she learned to shut her eyes and think she was Rebecca. Now, when there were no more passions left in her, she went to the wedding canopy as the mother of Rebecca's son. Rachel's mother agreed to invite Rebecca to the wedding. Rebecca came with her parents. The house was already humming with people. That was a disaster everybody watched joyfully. Mr. Brin was rich enough to evoke envy. Two days before the wedding drunken Cossacks had beaten two Jews in the street. The police who came six hours later seemed to be searching for hens and beat Jews at random to distinguish between their profound contempt and the Cossacks' enraged drunkenness. In Rachel's house, nineteen of the twenty Klezmers were playing, one of them lay dead in the cemetery. But the celebration couldn't be postponed. Rebecca's father looked at his daughter and said: You're dressed as if you were the bride, and she answered him: Maybe I really am?

Rebecca embroidered her gown with her own hands; her mother envied her. In Rachel's house, brandy, food, and baked goods were served magnanimously, everybody started hugging one another and guests came from far away in carriages and Rebecca looked at her father. When she got her period at the age of fifteen, she thought the blood gushing from her was the blood of her parents, and now that it came out, I'm not anybody's anymore, she said then to herself. She recalled that now, as she walked to Rachel's house. Rebecca's father said: That's nice, what you made, and Mr. Brin wrung his hands and said: They killed the flute player but what, if we wait until they don't kill Jews, we won't be able to get married and there won't be new Jews to kill. Nehemiah stood with his group of lads. When he saw Rebecca he trembled a moment and suddenly understood his anger at Joseph. From far away, Rebecca saw her bridegroom's back. The position of his back was brittle, tense, and yet Rebecca could discern, reluctantly, the nobility and remorse in it. Rachel kissed Rebecca, whom she hadn't seen for a long time, and burst into tears. From far away, Joseph's back was still taut. Rachel tried to say something in the language of syllables, but the syllables flew away from her and she couldn't find them. She was wearing a beautiful and ancient wedding gown whose tassels and fringes were made of gold embroidery. Rebecca asked where the beautiful gown came from and Rachel said that her father found that old gown in the home of a poor sage, who told him that in that wedding gown of Rebecca Secret Charity, the daughter and wife of Secret Charity, Joseph's grandfather, had walked to her wedding canopy. Secret Glory stood next to Rachel's father. To Rebecca his eyes looked like small chameleons. When he looked at her, like many others, he too felt some uneasiness, because he was embarrassed, he started moving here and there and after she looked straight at him, he lowered his eyes and somebody said to him: That's Rivkele, Rachel's friend and Rebecca corrected angrily: Rebecca!