Russell Hoban - The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

‘Perhaps we could have lunch one day soon?’ That was what he had said to her that first time, after buying a book on string quartets. She had had another man at that time. Wednesdays and weekends. It isn’t that I don’t want to marry you, he said. It would kill my mother if I married a girl who wasn’t Jewish. Right. Here’s another one. Perhaps we could have lunch one day soon. Yes, let’s have lunch. My people killed six million of you. He had brought her a single rose. A yellow one that day, red ones later. She had talked about her dead father. No one else had asked about her father, invited him from the silence. He had kissed her hand when he said goodbye outside the shop. This was not, she had felt, going to be Wednesdays and weekends. She wanted to belong wholly to a man, and this man’s quiet face was claiming her and she was afraid.

Now his haunted face awoke beside her every morning. A mighty fortress, sang Gretel in her mind, imposing her will on the choir. The sound surged into a lion-coloured roar, a strong river of violent… what? Not joy. Life. Violent life. I knew that I’d be happy with him, unhappy with him — everything, and more of everything than ever before in my life. Something there is that won’t die. A mighty fortress is our something.

The night sky, pinky-grey, leaned close to chimneys, rooftops, hesitantly touched black bridges and the winding river. I am beautiful only if you look at me, the sky said.

I can’t be everybody, said Jachin-Boaz, wise with the mind of sleep and knowing his dream for a dream. His words were an answer to which the question was a sensation of something very big, something very small. Which part of it am I?

Ha ha, laughed the answer, strutting in the mind that would forget it on awakening. See how simple it is? Male or female? Choose.

Something very big, something very small, thought Jachin-Boaz. There is a sob I don’t let out, there is a curse I don’t speak, there is a turning away from whom, there is a black shoulder of what?

Well, said the answer, this is the place you tried to avoid, but it is not to be avoided.

I can cover it with a map, said Jachin-Boaz. Then there will be world.

He spread out the map, so thin! Like tissue paper. The black shoulder heaved up through it, tore it. As from a heaving mountain Jachin-Boaz fell away.

I can cover it with a map, he said again, spreading vast miles-wide tissue paper over the black abyss. He ran lightly across its surface that billowed in a dreadful rising black wind. See! he cried as he fell through the tearing tissue paper, I’m not falling!

Right, said the answer. See how simple? Betrayed or betrayer? Choose. Either way you win the loss of everything.

I cry in the throat, said Jachin-Boaz.

Yes, said the answer.

I curse in the dark, said Jachin-Boaz.

Yes, said the answer.

From me all turns away, said Jachin-Boaz.

Loss unending, said the answer.

She will save, said Jachin-Boaz.

Whom you betray, the answer said.

He will save, said Jachin-Boaz.

Who turns away, the answer said.

World is there if I hold fast to it, said Jachin-Boaz. World is there if you let go? the answer said. Dare to find out?

I’ll let go if I can hold on while I’m doing it, said Jachin-Boaz. Lion-skins make stronger maps than tissue paper, he thought. He stood on the window ledge looking down. Far below him the firemen held taut the lion-skin.

No use telling me to jump, said Jachin-Boaz. Not even in a dream.

We all know what a no is shaped like, said the answer.

Right, said Jachin-Boaz. We know and the noes know.

Had your noes cut off lately? said the answer.

Come closer, said Jachin-Boaz darkly to the answer. It was very big, and he was very small and frightened. He woke up with his heart beating fast, remembering nothing.

Half-past four, said the clock on the night table. The lion would be waiting. Let him starve, thought Jachin-Boaz, and went back to sleep.

‘I can’t find it,’ said Boaz-Jachin in his own language, talking in his sleep.

‘What?’ said the girl beside him in the narrow upper berth in the pre-dawn dimness of the stateroom. She spoke English.

‘Where to go,’ said Boaz-Jachin, still asleep, still speaking in his own language.

‘What are you saying?’ said the girl.

‘Ugly maps. Can’t make nice maps. Only where I’ve been,’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘Lost,’ he said in English as he woke up.

‘What’s lost? Are you lost?’

‘What time is it?’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘I have to get back to the crew’s quarters before breakfast.’ He looked at his wristwatch. Half-past four.

‘Are you always lost?’ said the girl. They were nested like two spoons, her nakedness warm and insistent against his back, her mouth close to his ear. Through the porthole the darkness was greying. Boaz-Jachin tried to remember his dream.

‘Are you always lost?’ said the girl.

Boaz-Jachin wished that she would be quiet, tried to call back the vanished dream. ‘Everything that is found is always lost again,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said the girl. ‘That’s good. That’s true. Is it yours or did you read it?’

‘Hush,’ said Boaz-Jachin, trying to fit into a silence with her. The porthole was like a blind eye in the dim stateroom. On that round blind eye, whitening with the morning fog behind it, he seemed to see his map, the one he had newly drawn from memory after he and the trader had been picked up by the big white cruise ship: his town, his house, Lila’s house, the bus depot and the other bus depot, the road to the citadel, the hall of the lion-hunt reliefs, the hill where he had sat, the road to the seaport, the place where the lorry driver had dropped him, the brief distance with the woman in the red car, the farm where the dying father had written FORGIVE with his finger, the Swallow’s track to Rising Son Rocks. The city where he thought his father was now with the other better map, the map of his future.

The map faded, only the round blind stare of the fog was left. In that stare Boaz-Jachin doubted that his father’s map would be of any use to him. He had remembered it as large and beautiful. Now he thought of it as small and cramped, too neat, too calculated, too little cognizant of unknown places, of the night places waiting beyond the day places, of the somewheres dropping from the open wombs of nowheres. He felt lost as he had not done since being with the lion.

‘Maps,’ he said softly. ‘A map is the dead body of where you’ve been. A map is the unborn baby of where you’re going. There are no maps. Maps are pictures of what isn’t. I don’t want it.’

‘That’s beautiful,’ said the girl. ‘“There are no maps.” What don’t you want?’

‘My father’s map,’ said Boaz-Jachin.

‘That’s good,’ said the girl. ‘Is it yours? Do you write? It sounds like the beginning of a poem: “My father’s map is …” What is it?’

‘His,’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘And he can keep it.’ He threw back the sheets, rolled the girl over on her stomach, bit her buttocks, got out of bed and put his clothes on.

‘I’ll show you my poems tonight,’ she said.

‘All right,’ said Boaz-Jachin, as the girl’s room-mate, yawning, came back from where she had spent the night. He went back to the crew’s quarters and got ready to serve breakfast to the first sitting.

The trader had been dropped off at the last port. Boaz-Jachin, signed on to replace a waiter who had left earlier in the cruise, would stay with the ship until it reached its home port. From there he could travel overland most of the way to the city where he expected to find his father. Boaz-Jachin no longer wanted the map, but he wanted to find his father and tell him so. While serving breakfast that morning he thought about what he would say to his father.