Yoram Kaniuk - The Last Jew

A young Arab woman from the village of Marar cooked and laundered in Nehemiah's house. His fields flourished because of the help of his experienced friend Nathan. He now had a small dairy, a chicken coop, a vegetable garden, there was a quarry whose profits the farmers shared. In the nearby settlement bigger houses were built. The women played piano. The men drank tea or coffee and smoked cigarettes. The officials vanished, replaced by various committees and representatives of institutions. In the Jerusalem newspaper with a circulation of five thousand readers, they called the nearby settlement Little Paris. At night the girls sang a Puccini opera and an eminent man from Poland applauded so enthusiastically that everybody refused to join him for fear of offending him. He contributed money to the settlers to buy gramophones. The disease of music increased the appetite of the cows the Arabs milked in the nearby barns. Nehemiah's comrades, who heard him talk about the new "Hellenizers" in the nearby settlement, envied the inhabitants of the settlement and the delightful girls in splendid clothes and secretly brought fine fabrics from Jaffa, gorgeous abbiyas from Damascus, silk from Tadmor, carpets from Aleppo, and kerosene lamps from Gaza, and the mosquitoes, said Nehemiah contemptuously, now had to stick to choice silk, because they didn't like the sacks anymore. There were more Arab settlers who came from Egypt to spread rumors of the Jews' gold. As the way became harder, Nehemiah's love for that Land grew greater. Logic and facts of life had no place in his considerations. He grew roots at an alarming rate, and Nehemiah would give speeches that were not forgotten many years later. He would swallow quinine against malaria and see visions: behold, Rebecca stopped weeping and is bringing up an ancient Hebrew shepherd for him. Every week he would examine Ebenezer to be sure he didn't look like Joseph. Rachel Brin, who went to America with her son Secret Glory, wrote Rebecca a long remorseful letter. She told that she had divorced, married a shirt dealer from Long Island, moved to a place called Connecticut, and Secret Glory, now called Lionel, would go to an American school next year. Rebecca wept more bitterly when she read the letter and then she crumpled it up and rubbed her son's face in it.

Ebenezer didn't understand what was said to him. Because of the Hebrew, the Yiddish, and the Arabic that were spoken in the house, he seemed to doubt whether there really was any language that suited him and was silent in all three languages.

One night Nathan was arrested and nobody knew why. Nehemiah defended him and later, when he came back home, Rebecca had to take care of him. He said: Kiss your son, and she said: In America love your son, Nehemiah, and then Horowitz's brother returned from some distant village where they grew silkworms, and when he tried to interest Nehemiah in the big silk production that could be developed here with the ancient mulberry trees in the grove near the big cave, he was bitten by a sneaky snake and died, and then Nehemiah spoke in Roots about silk production. Rosy dreams of those who buy damascene silk, he said, and even spoke again about distress and hope, but because of Rebecca they expelled him and because of Ebenezer they pitied him and the child who grew up without a language would wallow in the fields, murmuring vague words that weren't like a human language, and Nehemiah kept fading while his love for his son grew with Rebecca's tears. An Arab woman raised his son. A screen of tears separated him and Rebecca. Nehemiah, who now spoke of a Jewish church and of masses of Jews coming on big ships, had to see his son grow up like an Arab dog with a cropped tail and mute. And then new Pioneers came to the settlement, whose coming Nehemiah wished for. They were quarried from a different rock, strong, desperate, and focused in their belief. They established two labor parties, and sought positions for their war. Since the only capitalist they could find who was even willing to wrestle with them was Nehemiah Schneerson, they went to foment the revolution in front of his house. Since they believed that the future was in their pocket, their obstinacy was dismal and deadly serious. In their eyes the Arab woman who worked in Nehemiah's yard was an exploited proletarian. When they yelled at his house: "Death to capitalism," "Long live the world revolution," and "Long live Hebrew labor," he came out to them in his tattered clothes, tried to stir yearnings in them for what he yearned for, and they thought he was trying to divert them from their righteous opinion. Rebecca, who never looked at them, had to drive them away because her Arab woman wanted to sleep, and in the nearby settlement a woman still stood with a parasol, but the official who had been under the parasol had gone. And the laborers tried to engage the Arab woman in conversation and explain to her in excited Russian how exploited she was.

When he went into first grade, Ebenezer was the worst student in the class. He refused to read and was bored with the books his father read him with desperate assiduousness. He'd chomp on vine leaves and gaze at the trees and fields for a long time and find a small measure of solace in them. Only when he started playing with the logs in the yard did the desolation vanish from his face. Then he started carving. He was eight years old. He carved a bird and suddenly he was quiet and happy. He learned to carve human faces and birds before he knew how to write the words bird and man. The Hebrew hero who would grow here on his native land found tranquility. He'll be a carpenter like that fool from Jaffa, said Rebecca between one tear and another.

Tape / -

One night, after Ebenezer sat all day in the yard and carved a bird and sang, Nehemiah thought: Maybe my whole life was a mistake, Rebecca is weeping, my son is carving birds and can't tell the difference between see and sea. He put on his clothes, went outside, saw his son bent over a piece of wood, kissed him, hitched up a cart, and went to Jaffa. There he bought a plow and returned in the morning. Two laborers arguing fervently about Plekhanov's theory were sitting in his yard and eating grapes. Rebecca sat in a chair and tears covered her like a curtain. Nehemiah was covered with warts and sunburned and his hands were suddenly weak. Ebenezer was sleeping with his mouth gaping and looked like a bird he had carved the day before. Nehemiah walked in the fields and a full moon was hung in the sky and an intoxicating aroma of citrus blossoms filled him, he saw his mare and stroked her and let her gallop home and went on walking along the hedges of prickly pears and acacias. Suddenly he heard a rustling, saw his friend Nathan dressed in tatters and looking like a madman. In his hand he held a bottle of wine, which he offered to Nehemiah. Nathan was distraught, his mouth sprayed foam, and when he tried to talk he couldn't. Nehemiah didn't know what to do with the bottle in his hands and so he started drinking from it. When he drank he started thinking of Joseph Rayna, his songs, his hatred for him even before he knew who Rebecca was, he thought of the fifty-two sons Joseph begat with women he chanced upon. He thought about his love for Rebecca and more than he understood it, he felt for her that feeling like the beloved moth in the kerosene lamp. He thought he was thinking of Joseph out of loathing, but he also felt some admiration of a man betrayed and despised. Rebecca will never be mine here, he said to himself, this land is foreign to her and as long as they sing Joseph's songs here, she'll remain the lover of that noble pampered rogue and because of that I'll never be able to let her leave me, he said, and he understood the labyrinth of his torments as a circle with no exit.

Some time later, Nathan managed to say something that had been swallowed in his mouth a long time. He vilified himself, the settlement, Ebenezer, Rebecca, Nehemiah, the Zionist Committee, the Lovers of Zion, the new laborers, he looked at Nehemiah as if he had only now discovered him, kissed his face and vanished into the night. Nehemiah returned home. Rebecca stood tied to the mare, alarm on her face. When she saw him she went back to weeping the tears that had previously stopped on her cheeks. He went down on his knees and told her how much he loved her. He grabbed her by the waist, dragged her home with a force she didn't know was in him and she yelled: I thought you went to America without me! And then he locked the door and lay with her furiously, and the delicate man who was Nehemiah saw hostility in Rebecca's eyes, got up and started beating her and from her tears she burst out laughing. But she also loved the suddenly strong hands and his desperate embrace and they lay together in silence and he stroked her and penetrated her like preservative and kindled in her some spark of children she had once buried in suitcases. Afterward, he sat naked and asked forgiveness and she said: In love there is no forgiveness, Nehemiah, I'm yours, and that's it, just let's leave here, and she stroked his face and kissed him and then they lay like two young people who didn't know what love was and talked and Nehemiah said to Rebecca: Our strange child, I love. And she said: Maybe you'll tell him, and Nehemiah said he couldn't. And she remembered how Joseph Rayna waited for his father who didn't come and in her heart she wept for the awful days in store for her son she couldn't love and her husband couldn't understand and couldn't get up and tell him how much he loved him. After he fell asleep, Rebecca looked at him and said to herself: We will leave here, my love, we'll build a life in a place where you can make a future and not only a made-up past.