A. Yehoshua - A Late Divorce

“You know, your poems made a great impression on me.”

Can it be? The miracle. And so painlessly.

“Honestly?” I sink soundlessly ecstatically deeper into the chair.

“Where have you been until now? Your poem Pleasantly My Body is absolutely marvelous.”

“Which poem?”

“ Pleasantly My Body …” He leans ceremoniously toward me to read with me from the yellowish manuscript that’s covered with a strange curvy disturbed scrawl. He’s mixed me up he’s thinking of someone else.

Pleasantly My Body?

“Amid all the junk that comes my way at last I find a new sound, the prospect of a new linguistic key.”

In a crumbling yet courageous voice:

“One minute, I think you’re mistaken… those pages aren’t mine… Dina Kaminka… you’re mixing me up… my husband gave you a notebook with a floral design…”

He’s stunned. Turns red. He drops the manuscript smiles (what’s so funny?) grabs hold of his head and slaps it lightly gets up sits down gets up bends over mumbling just a minute excuse me that’s right how could I have confused you. He kneels to pull out a bottom drawer talking to himself just a minute everything’s all jumbled up here they’ve turned this room into an editorial office yes Dina Kaminka of course your husband Asa’s in the history department of course I remember…

“You didn’t get around to reading it… it doesn’t matter…” With a sudden feeling of relief I seek to extract myself from the jellylike armchair and vanish.

“No, just one moment. I did read it. I’m sure I did…” He rummages feverishly through some papers. “There was a story there, wasn’t there? About a young woman… just one minute… it takes place in a shop on a winter day… one minute…”

One minute for what? Some other woman has already found a new linguistic key amid all the junk that’s being written. She can look forward to the joyous prospect of hearing it from you perhaps she’s already coming up the stairs. But behold he has my notebook in his hands triumphantly he shows it to me. My first mistake was to copy everything out into a high-school notebook. I should have written on yellow disturbed paper yea to take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate and they shall spread the cloth…

Silence.

He clutches the notebook predatorily racing through it quickly filming digesting with supreme concentration he’s not embarrassed to read it now in front of me. At last he shuts it puts it down stands up and smiles at me kindly.

“Which will it be, Turkish or instant? Or perhaps you’d like something cold?”

“No, thank you. I really don’t want anything.”

“Turkish or instant?” he persists, still smiling his patronizing smile. “I wanted to make some for myself anyway.”

“No, thank you, really…”

He steps up to me and takes the liberty of laying a warm hand on my shoulder.

“You’re angry at me. But I really did read it… it was just one of those things. If you don’t have coffee with me, I’ll feel hurt. Turkish or instant?”

“Turkish.”

He energetically loads the glasses and the remains of some crackers on a tray lays my notebook on top of them and leaves the room.

I rise from the bottomless depths of the armchair and loiter by the row of books drawn to the yellow manuscript left on the desk with its strong curvy scrawl.

Death can fall from the dark

Like a poem —

But a poem was all that it was.

Laughter from the kitchen. I return to the books unable to read even their titles my eyes on the watery light swirling over the mountains.

The door opens and he carries in a tray with coffee cups cookies and my notebook. The stage is set he glances hesitantly toward me at the other end of the room I’m still rooted to my place by the window have a seat he smiles and I float to another chair (enough of that mortifying armchair) and sit down by the steaming cup while he offers me sugar. He lays my notebook on his knees picks up his cup and drinks from it vigorously.

“My first question is just out of curiosity. Are you religious? Do you come from a religious background?”

“I went to religious schools.”

“High school too?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

He’s tickled pink with himself.

“It’s something one senses in your language, your imagery, your values, your way of dealing with things, of approving or disapproving. It’s something one can smell. It’s a new phenomenon, this writing of literature by religious Jews. There’s already a whole school of you.”

He’s classed me with a whole school, and a religious one yet. He’s got the world all figured out.

“But I’m not so observant anymore…”

“That doesn’t matter. These things run too deep to be easily cast off. It’s a whole outlook.”

“Is that good or bad?” I inquire submissively trying to grasp the steaming-hot cup.

“On the whole, it’s a welcome new source. Not that I myself can subscribe… on the contrary… but it’s a new climate for literature, a new possibility. How old are you? Please, drink your coffee, why aren’t you drinking?”

He was asked for a literary opinion and he’s already made himself my guardian he thinks he can ask what he wants he does have a technique though for dealing with young scribblers.

“I’m twenty-two ”

“Are you a student?”

“I finished a year ago.”

“In what field?”

“Social work.”

“Not literature?”

“No.”

“That’s good. But how did you manage to finish so quickly?”

“I was exempted from the army.” I look straight at him waiting for the scornful smile of the injured solid citizen. He says nothing suddenly blushing at a loss.

“But drink something. It will get cold. Have a cookie.”

“Thank you.” I lift the cup noticing with revulsion the lip prints on the rim I quickly slurp a drop of bitter Turkish coffee and put it down again.

“Do you have any children?”

“What? No, not yet.”

“Do you have a job?”

“Yes. In the municipal department of social work.”

Why all these questions? Is he playing for time or gathering material for a diagnosis?

“How long have you been writing?”

“For quite some time. I began in the eighth grade. I was sick for a few months… some kind of rheumatic fever… that’s why I didn’t serve in the army. It wasn’t on religious grounds.” (Take that, you varmint!) “I was bedridden for a long while, and it was then that I started to write. To this day when I want to concentrate on writing I get into bed and write on the pillows.”

I’m talking too much.

“Into bed?” He laughs amazedly warmly excitedly leaning toward me.

“To tell you the truth” (just lay it on me gently please) “your story is weak, still juvenile. It gets too involved for no good reason in the middle and lets itself off too easily in the end. Basically, the poems are better. This one here… For You Raised Me Like a Thistle …it really sings, it even deserves to be published. At any rate, it’s no worse than a lot of poetry that does get published these days. So if you’ve come to ask me which to devote yourself to, prose or poetry” (I didn’t) “I should obviously say to you: poetry. And yet still… I can’t help thinking… that you shouldn’t stop writing fiction either. There are definitely some good passages in this story, not all that many, but a few. The descriptive ones in particular. What’s the one that I’m thinking of… ah yes, in a grocery store, isn’t it? An old-fashioned sort of grocery. Something in your description of it struck me.” (I shut my eyes.) “The shelves, the dim bread compartment. There was a wonderful, humorous bit about a hunk of white goat cheese — you captured the absurd shape of it perfectly, you used a precise image there, I can’t remember it, but I recall having marked it.” He rapidly leafs through the notebook. “Well, never mind…”