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

‘I don’t know what I want to do,’ said Boaz-Jachin.

‘You’re a very interesting person,’ said the girl. ‘I don’t meet people as interesting as you every day in the week. Tell me more about yourself. Now that we’ve been to bed, let’s get acquainted. Have you ever done anything? Have you ever written a poem, for instance, or painted a picture? Do you play a musical instrument? I’m trying to remember why I did go to bed with you. You were beautiful and you said something good. You said that you were looking for your father who was looking for a lion, and I said there were no lions any more, and you said there was one lion and one wheel, and I said that was beautiful, and then all you wanted to do was fuck.’

Boaz-Jachin was out of the berth and putting his clothes on. ‘I play the guitar,’ he said. ‘I drew an ugly map that I lost, and then I drew another map. I copied a photograph of a lion once. I’ve never written a poem. I’ve never painted a picture.’ He was angry, but as he spoke he became unaccountably elated, proud. There was something in him not drained off by poems or pictures, something unknown, unavailable but undiminished, intact, waiting to be found. He tried to find it, found only emptiness, was ashamed then, humbled, felt mistaken in his temporary pride, shook his head, opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.

As he closed the stateroom door behind him he saw the girl’s father coming towards him. The father’s face became very red. He stopped before Boaz-Jachin, his face working behind the horn-rimmed glasses and the beard.

‘Good evening, sir,’ said Boaz-Jachin, although it was the middle of the night. He attempted to walk around the father, but the father stepped in front of him, blocking his way. He was a small man, no taller than Boaz-Jachin, but Boaz-Jachin felt in the wrong and looked it.

‘“Good evening, sir!”’ mimicked the father with a dreadful grimace. ‘Good evening, father number such-and-such of girl number such-and-such. Just like that. Smooth and easy.’

Boaz-Jachin saw in his mind a map of the sea, its islands and ports. If he were put off at the next port because of a passenger complaint he would have another sea voyage to make, another boat or ship to find, other people with their lives and histories to drag him down with hard and heavy knowledge. It was as if his shirt and all his pockets were filled with great lumpy potatoes of unwanted knowledge. He wished that he could be at the end of his journey and not have to talk to anyone for a while.

‘Excuse me, please, sir,’ he said. Still the father blocked his way.

‘What are you?’ said the father. ‘For you life must be one girl after another, and sometimes an older woman who pays you a little something for your services, I suppose. Now you’re a waiter on a cruise ship, now a beach boy at a resort. You get the daughters that fathers have stayed up with when they were sick, have listened to the troubles of, have wanted the best for. You with your smooth face and clear eyes and long hair.’

Boaz-Jachin sat down on the floor, his arms resting on his drawn-up knees. He shook his head. He was almost on the point of crying, but he began to laugh.

‘And that’s funny to you?’ said the father.

‘You don’t know what I’m laughing at,’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘Nothing is smooth and easy for me, and my life isn’t one girl after another — it seems to be one father after another. And how would it help you if I had a wrinkled face and clouded eyes and short hair? Would your daughter then become a nun?’

The father’s face relaxed behind the beard and the glasses. ‘It’s hard to let go,’ he said.

‘And it’s hard to hold on,’ said Boaz-Jachin.

‘To what?’ said the father.

‘The wheel,’ said Boaz-Jachin.

‘Ah,’ said the father. ‘I know that wheel.’ He smiled and sat down beside Boaz-Jachin. They sat together on the floor, smiling while the ship hummed, the air-conditioning whirred, and the dark sea slipped by on either side.

Darkness roared with the lion, the night stalked with the silence of him. The lion was. Ignorant of non-existence he existed. Ignorant of self he was a sunlit violence with calm joy at the centre of it, he was the violence of being-as-hunter constantly renewed in the devouring of non-being. The wheel had been when he ran tawny on the plain, printing his motion on the grateful air. He had died biting the wheel that went on and left him dead. The wheel continued, the lion continued. He was intact, diminished by nothing, increased by nothing, absolute. He ate meat or he did not eat meat, was seen or unseen, known when there was knowledge of him, unknown when there was not. But always he was.

For him there were no maps, no places, no time. Beneath his tread the round earth rolled, the wheel turned, bearing him to death and life again. Through his lion-being drifted stars and blackness, morning sang, night soothed, dawn burst its daylight from the womb of vital terror. Oceans heaved, frail bridges spanned the winding track of days, the rising air sang lion-flight in wings of birds. In clocks ticked lion-time. It pulsed in heartbeats, footsteps walking all unknowing, souls of guilt and sorrow, souls of love and pain. He had been called, he had come. He was.

After his last encounter with the lion Jachin-Boaz felt childish, stupid, shaken. That the lion had turned his back on him now frightened him more than the previous attack. He felt as if the present had vomited him out like a Jonah. He lay gasping on dry land under the eye of an exacting God. ‘There is no God,’ he said, ‘but the exactions exist, so there might just as well be a God. Perhaps there is one after all.’

‘People always assume that God is with people,’ said Gretel. ‘But maybe God is in the furniture, or with stones.’

Go and preach, thought Jachin-Boaz, his mind still on Jonah. The king sleeps with his chariots, the lions are dead. I have not marked the lion-palace on my master-map. Boaz-Jachin’s master-map. I have a lion, and I have told him about a cowboy suit.

He tried to remember why his old life had seemed intolerable. Admittedly he had not felt himself to be a whole man, but at least he had been a reasonably comfortable failed man, lacking nothing but his testicles. If only he could have the comfort of his mife, his wife rather, without his wife! Whother, whether he could get along without her he doubted. Despite his new-found maleness it seemed that he had nothing, was nothing. He marvelled that he went on making love with Gretel. Something in me lives its own life, full of appetite, he thought. Where am I while this is going on? On what map?

Why am I afraid now? he thought. When I was impotent I was secure. It isn’t safe to have balls. Now I ramp like a stallion while my soul is sick with terror. Stallions surely aren’t afraid, lions aren’t afraid. I have a lion. I don’t have a lion — a lion has me. A lion hallucinates me. To a lion appears Jachin-Boaz in the early morning. When I was impotent I was safe. What was all that nonsense about wanting my manhood, idiot that I am? Let him starve, that lion. I don’t want to see him. They can go on transmitting but I won’t receive.

For several days Jachin-Boaz, awaking at the usual time, went back to sleep, sulking, while in his imagination the lion grew thinner daily. Beside him every morning at half-past four Gretel woke up, waiting with closed eyes for him to go out while Jachin-Boaz went back to sleep, dreaming dreams he would not remember.

Jachin-Boaz was dreaming. With a microscope he was looking at an illuminated drop of water. In the water swam a green and spherical form of many-celled animal-algae. Thousands of tiny moving whips on its surface made it revolve its green-jewelled globe like a little world.