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

‘This is no surprise to me at all,’ said the doctor. ‘I knew it would be a matter for the police sooner or later. I suppose that spiked fence has been after you again, has it?’

‘Yes,’ said Jachin-Boaz.

‘Very well, then,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m going to be blunt with you, my good man. If you expect to stay in this country you’ll jolly well have to learn our ways. This mucking about with large carnivores won’t do. Those animals at the zoo are laid on for the enjoyment of the general public, and not for the deviant religious practices of the foreign element.’ He turned to the police constable. ‘This is the second time he’s come in this way, you know.’

The police constable did not want to be drawn into a discussion of large carnivores. ‘There’s a young lady with him,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ said the doctor. ‘“Look for the woman”, eh? Not to put too fine a point on it, there’ll be sex at the bottom of this sort of thing nine times out often.’ He snipped off the remnants of Jachin-Boaz’s shirt sleeve and swabbed the wounds with antiseptic. ‘Burns a bit, eh?’ he said as Jachin-Boaz went pale. ‘You’ve got some jolly deep bites in you this time, mate. I don’t mind telling you I consider this a shameful abuse of the National Health Service. I hope there’s going to be an inquiry,’ he said to the police constable as he medicated and bandaged the wounds.

‘Well, we’re having him committed for observation of course,’ said the constable.

‘Use up a little more of the state’s money, eh?’ said the doctor. ‘Everything laid on. Here’s this fellow with his cult and his women and his practices…’ He paused, unbuttoned Jachin-Boaz’s shirt, looked for an amulet, found none, and went on, ‘And you fetch him in, with a motorcycle escort I shouldn’t doubt, and I patch him up, and now he’ll have a free holiday in the loony bin. Probably make a few converts there, too. Where’d you find him, and what was going on at the time?’

‘On the embankment,’ said the constable. ‘The lady had a knife.’ He met the doctor’s eye for a fraction of a second, looked away, encountered Jachin-Boaz’s face, looked away again.

‘You’re not having me on now, are you, old boy?’ said the doctor. ‘You’re not trying to tell me that the lady’s knife produces large-carnivore teeth-marks, upper and lower jaws?’

‘As you say, this whole thing’s got to be looked into,’ said the constable. ‘If you’ve finished with him now we’d better be going.’

‘Quite,’ said the doctor. ‘You don’t mind giving me your name and number, do you? I’d like to ring up some time just to find out what develops.’

‘Not at all,’ said the constable. He wrote down his name and number, gave them to the doctor, and took Boaz-Jachin and Gretel to the police station.

At the police station another doctor appeared with a folder in his hand. Gretel waited with the constable while he took Jachin-Boaz into a little office. ‘Well, old man,’ said the doctor, looking at Jachin-Boaz’s bandages, ‘been having a little domestic trouble?’

‘No,’ said Jachin-Boaz.

‘What about foreign trouble then?’ said the doctor. ‘Who’s Comrade Lyon?’

‘Comrade Lion?’ said Jachin-Boaz.

‘That’s right,’ said the doctor. ‘A lady who lives on your street reported that she was awakened quite early one morning by your shouting. You were having an argument with Comrade Lyon. He was gone by the time she got to the window, but she’s described you accurately. What about that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jachin-Boaz.

‘Perhaps it was someone else having the argument?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Hadn’t you made a suicide attempt not long before that?’

‘Suicide attempt,’ Jachin-Boaz repeated. His wounds were very painful, he was very tired, and he wanted more than anything else to lie down and go to sleep.

‘The young couple who saw it described to the police a man very like you,’ said the doctor. ‘They were quite concerned. Actually we ought to have had a talk with you then. Did Comrade Lyon have anything to do with that?’

‘There’s no Comrade Lion,’ said Jachin-Boaz.

‘Then whom were you shouting at?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And what did this unknown person or persons say to you?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jachin-Boaz. By now the situation felt familiar. The doctor, like the father long ago, was holding up an empty suit of clothes for him to jump into. Jachin-Boaz was too tired not to jump. ‘This is what he said,’ he told the doctor, and tried to roar. It was not the sound of real anger because he felt no real anger, only a sad and defeated fretfulness, defeated in the foreknowledge that his anger was of no consequence. His feeble roar ended in a fit of coughing. He wiped his eyes, found that he was crying.

‘Right,’ said the doctor. ‘Very good.’ He signed the commitment order. Then Jachin-Boaz was taken outside to wait with the constable while Gretel went into the office with the doctor.

‘What is your relationship to this man?’ said the doctor.

‘Close.’

‘And your status is what exactly?’

‘Working-class. I’m an assistant in a bookshop.’

‘Marital status, I mean.’

‘I haven’t any. I’m a spinster.’

‘Do you and this man live together?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cohabitant,’ said the doctor, writing the word as he spoke. ‘And what precisely were you doing with the knife?’

‘I was co-walking with it.’

‘Did you in fact attack this man with the knife?’

‘No.’

‘Please describe what took place.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Had he been running around with some other woman?’

Gretel stared at him levelly. Her manner of looking at the doctor was like the way she had held the knife that morning. She belonged to a man who had fought with a lion and she carried herself accordingly. The doctor reminded himself that he was the doctor, but felt himself to be less impressive than he would like to be.

‘You see two foreigners and immediately the picture is simple for you,’ said Gretel. ‘Women instead of ladies. Sex, passion, fighting in the street. Hot-blooded foreigners. Bloody cheek!’

The doctor coughed, fleetingly imagined himself involved with Gretel in sex, passion, and fighting in the street. ‘Then perhaps you’ll tell me what the situation is,’ he said with a red face.

‘I’m not going to tell you anything at all,’ said Gretel, ‘and I’ve no idea what you want with me.’

The doctor reminded himself again that he was the doctor. ‘You will allow, madame,’ he said stiffly, ‘that going about with a knife is rather a dodgy business: one never knows who’s going to be injured. I think it might be just as well for you to have some peace and quiet for a few days and think this whole thing over calmly.’ He signed the commitment order.

While they waited for the van that would take them to the hospital Jachin-Boaz and Gretel sat down on a bench, and the police constable tactfully walked a few steps away.

Jachin-Boaz sat with tears running down his face. He looked at Gretel, looked away again. His head began to ache. This was somehow her fault. If she hadn’t attacked the lion … No. Before that even. Would the lion have appeared to him if he had not … No. And of course the lion was in any case his … what?

The map. Not here. At home, on the desk. In another desk, in the shop where he had once been Jachin-Boaz the map-seller, was a notebook. Were there recent notes in it that were not incorporated in the master-map? The map was on the desk. Were the windows closed? The desk was near the window, and if it rained … And who would feed the lion?