Yoram Kaniuk - The Last Jew

What did you get the medal for?

I fought.

What did you do before?

I wrote stories.

Why?

I don't know, said Lionel.

So don't write them, said Samuel, and began drinking the wine they were served. Lionel tasted the wine. In the distance, fogs thickened even on the nearby boulevards, haberdashery salesmen seemed hidden in niches, he felt like hugging the fellow, stories that should be written-are written, he said, the rest don't matter, and you're right.

I'm not so sure I want to be right, said Samuel. But then the moment became soft and pleasant and Lionel looked confident sitting across from him, Ebenezer is simple and pure, said Lionel, you're not. You always divide everything into black and white, said Samuel, that's why I can defeat you.

Not me.

You're also them.

That's what I wanted to write about, said Lionel.

And do you have a car?

I have a lot with buses, cars and tractors, fire engines and pickup trucks. I used to play with them like toys.

I'll have a Mercedes, said Samuel. Part of my wealth stays with Ebenezer. He'll need it. The rest is with me. I'll wear nice clothes and drive a splendid car. Lionel advanced his hand and stroked Samuel's head. Samuel's eyes were glassy, he looked in despair at the stroking hand. Lionel wanted to explain to Samuel who he was and what his life had been. But Samuel kept his distance and when Lionel understood why he had waited all the time, why he had been searching for Samuel and didn't know he had been searching for him, why he was sitting with him now, he wasn't able to explain, he got up, begged his pardon, and said he'd come back. He found the telephone and Samuel called the tall maitre d' with watery eyes who was looking at him with wicked indifference, and said quickly: Pad the bill! Afterward we'll split it fifty-fifty! The maitre d' smiled, a gold tooth danced in his mouth. Samuel suddenly had a dreadful erection. Some tear duct he'd forgotten started pressing on his eyes, tears of people he didn't know wept in him, he didn't want to be caught again by those maitres d', and the maitre d' hissed between his teeth: It'll be fine, and he went off. Samuel sat and looked at the food he'd been served and for a moment it seemed to him that he was loved. He just didn't know by whom.

Lionel called his hotel and the old woman at the reception desk said one minute, Mr. Secret, and transferred the call to his room, where he had an extension because of his high rank and even from here he could smell the old woman's sly smile.

On his bed sat Lily. She wore a bathrobe she had brought from Cologne and was shaking with cold. She closed the windows but the cold didn't stop. She didn't know how to turn on the heat. The phone rang and she was afraid to answer. She had gone through a lot of trouble to get a travel permit. She even promised one of the officers she'd go out with him and that was how she found out where he lived and went to him and the old woman at the reception desk now became fussy, and Lily had to bribe her with the last of her money, and now, when she wants to surprise Lionel with or without his lovers, the phone rings. Her hand reaches for the receiver, but the hand doesn't manage to pick it up. The phone stopped ringing and she picked up the extinguished receiver and heard beeping. Then her eyes starting shedding tears and she tried to talk to the dead receiver. Lionel tried to dial again, but his line was busy. Lily dropped the receiver, put it on its cradle and stood up. Her body trembled, the window was covered with mist. She hugged herself. And then the phone rang again. She picked up the receiver and didn't stop weeping. Lionel recognized the sound of Lily's tears. He said to her, Don't cry, little girl, but she didn't stop. She tried to talk but only fragmentary syllables burst out of her mouth. All those tears piled up in her for years, she later told Lionel, at long last I was Melissa, maybe I died and your voice talked to a dead woman and I didn't know what to say. Only after a few minutes did she say, Yes my dear, I'm here, sorry.

I know you're here, he said to her.

His laugh was calming and offensive, but she had already learned what was in store for her, a whole year in a closed room she had acted at night the wife of a child thrown into the fire, learned in books what she could have known if only she had opened her eyes earlier while acting herself in another garb, and learned to hate in herself what Lionel loved in her. She knew he was searching for Ebenezer to try to forgive himself and she couldn't take part in the forgiveness. She had nothing to complain about. He called her. He heard her body rustling in the distance. She asked where are you and he told her, and she said: I need you here, and she blushed. And she told him she blushed. I'm dining with the fellow who appeared with the Last Jew in the nightclub, he said, Boulevard Canbiere, Cafe Glacier, upstairs.

I'm coming, she said.

And now Samuel Lipker is looking at her. The light in the hall dims, the erection still prevents him from standing up. A torn ad for Ritesma cigarettes waves on the wall. He knows the ad hung in the room of the guard who'd hug him and give him candy. On the ad for Ritesma or Koli cigarettes was a photo of a typist, maybe it was a drawing, the drawing was Lily. Now he could know how German guards' cigarettes create for him the Melissa that Lionel tried to tell about earlier. The guards in the camp loved her too, and that strengthened her unimaginably, now he could sit across from her, loathe her, understand her, he already teased Lionel who probably beat and tortured her to teach her what love is. She was and still is the girl of all our dreams he thought. Even of Leibke who was shot by the guard, and the man who castrated himself after Bronya the Beautiful refused him. Bronya the Beautiful with the apple in her mouth. No, they didn't look alike. Bronya looked like his mother, Lily was a wild song in the Tyrolean Mountains. With her he could capture stars or hunt electric rabbits. Beautiful only for herself. And the love she showered on Lionel made her forbidden. Like death, he thought, to sleep with her is to sleep with cancer, she looks at Samuel and at Lionel and recalls the frightening lad she saw in the nightclub, and when Lionel looked at her and caressed her with his eyes, Lionel thought: She may not know that a disaster happened, but she knows exactly who it didn't happen to. Lionel pronounced the names of the dishes he had ordered for her in a charming French accent that made Samuel measure Ebenezer against Lionel again, he also wanted to understand what they wanted from him and how much he had to pay, and what he would have to pay. The ships in the port hooted, the noise in the cafe grew louder, waiters tried to please Lionel, Samuel imagined himself sleeping with Lily and stroking Lionel's hair, and for a moment, his parents appeared to him walking arm in arm in the street, houses began falling on them and they vanished along with the pain in him whenever Ebenezer would recite the past that none of them knew. Lily tried to eat but had no appetite. Her lips were shaped like her eyes. The lines are clear, a slight flush rose on her cheeks, something in her image recalled not only ads for Ritesma cigarettes, but also pale northern twilights. Some total defeat melted in her. The struggle between himself, thrown into the fire, and the pallor of her face enchanted him, and he could understand things in her face that Lionel couldn't. Her hair was especially fair in the light of the lamp above her. When she fixed her eyes on Samuel, his erection stopped and he calmed down, as if he had met his mother's lover. He said: My mother was an actress in a house full of carpets and she'd act for me. Ebenezer's memories were enough for me, my mother also had a husband. He was an unsuitable lover for my mother, she wanted opera generals. I'm a corrupt angel and look like it. So do you. In her late youth, after she finished being a communist, my mother seriously thought of going to a convent or into international prostitution-I imagine from Ebenezer-her lover was an old man by then, made hundreds of children with weary women, Ebenezer sometimes recites some of his poems, once I was in love with them.