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

Keep it, he would say. I don’t need it. I don’t need maps. At first he imagined himself only, saw and heard himself saying the words without seeing his father in his mind. Then he tried to imagine Jachin-Boaz. Perhaps he would be lying in a dirty bed, unshaven, ill, maybe dying. Or dim and pale, lost in some shop of dust and shadows in the great city, or standing alone on a bridge in the rain, looking down at the water, defeated. What have you found with your map? he would say to Jachin-Boaz his father. Has the future you drew so beautifully for me come to you? Has it made you happy?

The dishes clattered, the music played anonymously its tunes that were the same in airports, cocktail bars and lifts, the children quarrelled and left their eggs uneaten. The parents sat with the faces and necks of every day coming out of their holiday clothes, spongy backs and flabby arms of women in sun-back dresses, festive trousers on men with office feet. Girls displayed in the shops of their summer dresses the stock that had not moved all year, their mouths open with surrender, their eyes blurred with hope or sharp with arithmetic.

Boaz-Jachin walked behind his smile, served from behind his eyes, looked down on bald heads, bosoms, brushed ardent shoulders with his thighs, said thank you, nodded, smiled, cleared away, walked back and forth through swinging doors and galley smells. Every person here had had a father and a mother. Every person here had been a child. The thought was staggering. The feet of the men in the festive trousers made him want to cry.

Boaz-Jachin served the table of the girl he had slept with last night. She shaped the word hello with her mouth, touched his leg with her hand. He looked down her dress at her breasts, thought of last night and the night that was coming. He looked up and saw her father looking at him.

The father’s face was busy with horn-rimmed glasses and a beard. The father’s eyes were sad. The father’s eyes spoke suddenly to Boaz-Jachin. You can and I can’t, said the father’s eyes.

Boaz-Jachin looked at the mother looking at the father. Her face was saying something that his mother’s face had often said. But he had never paid attention to what it was. Forget this, remember that, said her face. What was the this to be forgotten? What was the that to be remembered? Boaz-Jachin thought of the road to the port and of the time after the lorry driver when it seemed to him that he could speak with animals, trees, stones.

Beyond the windows of the dining room the sea sparkled in the sunlight. Part of an island passed, a straggle of ruins, a broken citadel, the pillars of a temple, two figures on a hill. Gulls rose and fell on the air currents beside the ship. This, said the sea. Only this. What? thought Boaz-Jachin. Who? Who is looking out through the eyeholes in my face? No one, said the sea. Only this.

‘Thank you,’ said Boaz-Jachin serving the mother, averting his eyes from her bosom.

That night again he went to the girl’s stateroom.

‘Wait,’ she said as he began to take his clothes off. ‘I want to read you some poems.’

‘I just want to be comfortable,’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘I can listen with my clothes off.’

‘All right,’ she said. She took a thick folder from a drawer. The sea and the sky outside were dark, the ship thrust cleaving its phosphorescent bow wave, the engines hummed, the air-conditioning whirred, the lamp by the berth made a cosy glow. ‘They mostly don’t have titles,’ she said, and began to read:

Black rock rising to a neverness of sky,

Black alone, no sky above the

Far-down lost and winding

Blood-red river and my

Frail black boat, dead

God my freight, too heavy for my

Craft, blind broken eyes.

Blind father-stone between my thighs …

‘Shit,’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘Another father.’

… Deflower my death, seed

My defeat, get NOW from nothing,

Fierce upon your daughter.

Lot was made drunk, salt

Wife behind him in the

Desert. Stone is my lot, dead

God my steersman.

Blind,

Find

Star.

‘What do you think?’ said the girl when she had finished reading.

‘I don’t want to think,’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘Can’t we not-think for a while?’ He pulled her T-shirt over her head, kissed her breasts. She twisted away from him.

‘Is that all I am?’ she said. ‘Something to grab, something to fuck?’

Boaz-Jachin bit her flank hopefully but with lessening conviction. She sat motionless, looking thoughtful.

‘You’re beautiful,’ she said, ruffling his hair. ‘Am I beautiful to you?’

‘Yes,’ said Boaz-Jachin, unbuttoning her jeans. She rolled away with her jeans still on.

‘No, I’m not,’ she said. She lay on her stomach, leafing through the poems in the folder. ‘You’re saying I am because you want to fuck. Not even make love, just fuck. I’m not beautiful to you.’

‘All right,’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘You’re not beautiful to me.’ He sat up, got off the bed, put on his trousers.

‘Come back,’ she said. ‘You don’t mean that either.’

Boaz-Jachin took off his trousers, climbed back into the berth. When they were both naked he looked down at her face. ‘Now you’re beautiful,’ he said.

‘Shit,’ she said, and turned away. She lay with her face averted, inert while Boaz-Jachin tried to make love. ‘Oh,’ she whimpered.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘You’re hurting me.’

Boaz-Jachin lost his erection, withdrew. ‘The hell with it,’ he said.

‘Daughters are supposed to attract their fathers sexually,’ said the girl as he lay beside her, sulking, ‘but I don’t. I’m not beautiful to him either. He once told me that boys would love me for my mind. In some ways he’s rotten.’

‘My God!’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘I am so sick and tired of fathers!’ He sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the berth.

‘Don’t go away,’ she said. ‘Goddam it, have I got to plead for every lousy minute of human companionship? Have I got to pay for every minute of attention with my pussy? Can’t you talk to me, just one person to another? Can’t you give anything but your prick? And even that isn’t given — you’re only taking.’

Boaz-Jachin felt his childhood vanish as if he had been launched from it in a rocket. As if with ancient knowledge he recognized the departure of innocence and simplicity from his life. He groaned, and lay back on the pillow staring at the ceiling. Lila seemed long ago, never to be found again.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he said.

‘Talk to me. Be with me. Be with me, not just parts of me.’

‘Oh God,’ said Boaz-Jachin. She was right. He was wrong. He hadn’t wanted to be with her. He had sensed that she would be willing and he wanted a girl to cuddle with, a no one. But everybody was a someone. He cursed his new knowledge. He had known this girl for a few days only, and it seemed a lifetime of mistakes. He felt roped together with her on the sheer face of a bleak mountain. He felt immensely weary.

‘What?’ she said, looking at his face. ‘What’s the matter?’

Boaz-Jachin stared at the ceiling, remembering Lila and the first night on the roof, remembering the brightness of the stars and how it was to feel good and know nothing. The lion came into his mind and was gone, leaving emptiness that urged him forward.

‘What do you want to do?’ the girl said. ‘I don’t mean now, this minute. In life, I mean.’

What do I want to do? thought Boaz-Jachin. I want to find my father so I can tell him I don’t want his map. That’s not a lifetime career. ‘Shit,’ he said.

‘You’re a real intellectual,’ said the girl. ‘You’re a real deep thinker. Try to say something in words, just for the novelty of it.’