Yoram Kaniuk - The Last Jew

He went back home and when he passed by Rachel, he tried to pretend she didn't exist. He went into his room, locked the door behind him, stood silently shaking, and through the window he saw Lily's back.

Lily got up, her back disappeared from his view, the yard was suddenly full of moss and greenery stuck to the old crusted stones. When they entered the apartment, the landlord said: Sherlock Holmes stayed here for two whole days when he was in New York. He said that with an impenetrable face, and Lionel said: That's nice, did he also sit in the garden? And the landlord said: There he solved the murder, and didn't expatiate on what murder. A woman now stuck her head out one of the windows, gaped open her mouth that swallowed wind, and Sam could see the firm teeth in the distance, he thought about her thighs, about the juncture of her legs with her thigh and felt warmth inside him. He didn't sit down and read the books he should have read, but slipped through the yard and entered the room. The voices of Rachel and Lionel were heard dully from the living room. Lily lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Sam went to her, undid the button of her shirt, grasped her breast and looked into her eyes. Her look was cold and distant. She put her hand on his erection and he squeezed her breast, and said: Tamed eagle! And she was silent, and when her hand touched him he smiled, moved away from her, and she didn't even bother to button her shirt. He went to Lionel's desk and started burrowing among the papers. Lily lay and watched him calmly. The drawer was neat. Sam said: Secret Glory is with his stepmother and I'm with the ad for Ritesma Cigarettes. Lipp is lip in English. I'll buy a Mercedes and Maubach and Horick. Whores of public remorse, Lily.

She didn't answer him, shifted the embroidery she had been holding in her other hand, and put it on the cabinet and buttoned her shirt. He took a bundle of papers out of an envelope and glanced at them. What are you looking for? she asked.

I've already found it, he said. Then he wrote something on a scrap of paper, put the papers in the drawer, and said: Tell your man he shouldn't have taken me, I'm not worth his beauty or your beauty. Look, he added, I wandered around with a Jewish dog, I sold condoms and lampshades, I had it good. Sam took his mother's strip of fabric out of his pocket and put the fabric on Lily's face. She didn't budge and didn't move the fabric off her face. He waited, picked up the fabric, looked at it, shrugged and put it back in his pocket. He waited but she didn't say anything. He noticed her tears trying to tear the scrim of her eyes. But she didn't weep, and he said: I saw an American funeral and venomous fish in an aquarium. They've got a hard life here in America, give me money, I've got to go, I'll come back later and don't let them try to be rebuilt with my money. She stretched out her hand mechanically, opened a drawer, took out a bundle of bills and coins and gave it to him. Sam picked up two coins that fell on the ground, and examined the bills in the light of the lamp next to the bed, and said: They must be counterfeit! He counted the money as bank tellers count money. You sit here and sew corpses, he said, you sewed corpses for women mourning in gigantic cars, you really think you can be my mother?

Self-pity doesn't suit you, Sam, said Lily and turned her face away.

That's right, said Sam. What do you know? You're just a filthy Jewess, and he left.

On the way out, he yelled at Rachel: Stay well, Grandma! She tried to see him in the opening of the corridor, but couldn't say a thing, her mouth was dry, and when he went out she said: You made yourself an apartment of rage, live like artists, stay well. Lionel served his trembling mother coffee as Sam's back was seen on the sidewalk, striding quickly.

The wind blew harder, workers were still hanging ornaments over the windswept street. In twenty-six minutes and thirty-two seconds-on the new watch Lionel bought him-he arrived. At the information window he asked for the bus to Washington Depot. The woman said mechanically in a very clear, hasty, nonhuman voice: Have to go to… to arrive… at… and from there… from… to… and… the price is… And she was already talking to somebody else. He went down the escalator to Platform Fourteen. Not many people were in line, and those who were seemed to know one another, even though they practically weren't talking. A little girl with yellow hair asked him if he really was the Brooklyn Bridge. He whispered something to her in Polish, and she apologized and ran to her mother, who was laughing aloud at the comics section she was reading and chewing the end of a pencil that was crumbling between her teeth. Then he got on the bus, waited until the doors were locked, and shut his eyes. Calm enveloped him. He thought, these wouldn't get on the trains, at most they'd work guarding and burying corpses. He issued precise orders of burial and opened his eyes. The tunnel was over and the light was strong for a moment, they rode along a street whose houses seemed to be dying. Then they entered another tunnel, a single policeman stood in an alcove chewing gum. At the end of the tunnel, light was seen at last, then everything was gray, isolated houses and fields. Sam saw cows and a little church and hills. The sun peeped out for a moment between the low rounded clouds. The bus was overheated and Sam opened the window, but people asked him to close it. The little girl was sitting at the back of the bus, her mother was still laughing at the comics she was reading. Sam signaled to them that he was deaf and couldn't hear. They said: Poor thing, but he's got to close the window. A man in a yellow suit and one of Saul Blau's colorful shirts, smelling of cheap perfume, got up and tried to close the window. Sam started struggling with him, the man was surprised and didn't know what to do. The others were silent and indifferent, wrapped themselves in their overcoats and looked as if they were freezing in the strong wind. The man said: Must not be an American, doesn't understand English. He was amazed to hear his own words, something wasn't right. He stood up, his hands intertwined in Sam's, and said: What I meant was that he's deaf in English. Sam kept the window open, but two men coming back from a deer hunt, dressed in gigantic hunting jackets, got up, overcame him, and locked the window. Then they laughed and passed a bottle of whiskey in a brown paper bag from hand to hand. Sam burst out laughing. A woman sitting in front of him turned to look at him and turned pale. The man next to her was reading a newspaper, and said: They come here like flies, got to know how to behave with those who come, got to show them who's boss here. The woman slapped the man and he yelled: Whore! When she turned her face again, she hadn't yet answered the man's yell and he went back to reading the paper. Her face was full of amazement and then suddenly innocence. Sam smiled until she blushed. He pointed at her breasts and drew enormous circles with his hands. Even though she stopped blushing the man with her was afraid to look. The headlines of the evening paper looked threatening through his eyeglasses.

Isolated farms were now seen, frost stuck to them, the trees were naked, cars were seen driving on paths dwarfed by tall trees. About two hours later, the houses increased, the farms gave way to more elegant houses, and then an industrial area belching smoke and taverns, little signs, blinking at their doors, well-tended gardens attached to one another, another hill and naked treetops, and then the bus stopped. Sam looked at a woman who looked monstrous with her face stuck to the windowpane. She gaped her mouth open and blew on the window, her nose was smashed against it. Even in the strong cold, she looked despondent and forsaken. He waved his hand at her and the bus started moving.