Howard Jacobson - The Very Model Of A Man

Cain has never seen him less subservient. This too, of course, is disappointing. No one enjoys losing an acolyte. But he was half-expecting some change. Sisobk’s last words to him, hurled at the unheeding back he had turned on Zilpah — ‘You are just a holiday-maker in the Land of Shinar, Cain, and a tourist in the City of Woman’ — clearly signalled some wavering in the prophet’s devotedness. Is this another reason he is here? Has he come to win back lost esteem? Has he come to listen greedily to more rudeness?

How does he know? He was nudged.

Sisobk whistles, scratches himself, takes a keen interest in passers-by. It is cold in the shadow of the walls; a sharp, unseasonable wind blows up from beneath the flagstones, in protection against which Sisobk has lined his filthy robes with parchment. When he moves he rustles like a scroll. ‘Want to go in?’ he says inconsequently — indifferent guide to idle tourist. He doesn’t wait for an answer. Everyone knows what a tourist is going to say. He puts his bear’s shoulders to the gate. ‘Watch the puddles,’ he says, ‘and don’t mind him.’

‘Him?’

‘There, near the rubbish. There… there. He cannot make himself distinct until somebody believes him.’

In a black passage by the stairs Cain sees a wall stir with the urgency of a man. The stones motion to him, clutch vainly, like the stumps of fingers.

‘Why does no one believe him?’

Sisobk knew this was going to happen. Questions, questions. ‘Because he claims to have measured the toe of a god.’

‘Any particular god?’

‘No doubt yours — He’s the cause of most of the trouble in this building.’

‘Do you know what dimensions he claims for it?’

‘Ssh! Let him hear you asking that and he’ll start considering himself credible. The next thing we’ll be having to listen to what else he’s measured. It never stops with the toe, you know. Best to leave him. He’s happy enough being indistinguishable from a wall. It lends him the distinction of indistinctness in this place where most of us aspire to be particles of light or rivers of molten fire. But say hello to this one. He’s intensely curious about you. I don’t know how often he’s pestered me to bring you here. Humour him. He’s quite harmless. Just a touch literal, like all of us.’

Cain finds himself staring into the red eyes of a gaunt figure, wasted by faith, standing by an open door with his hands clasped not so much in prayer as around it. ‘I will bless the LORD at all times,’ he says, in an easy conversational manner, as though he would have said it even had Cain not been passing, ‘His praise shall continually be in my mouth.’

He gives Cain proof of this, opening his mouth wide, as if for a doctor, letting his tongue hang out. It is broad and rounded, a spoon, a spatula, and almost as red as his eyes.

‘Now show him yours,’ Sisobk urges. ‘Humour him. See it as an act of charity.’

‘Mine has not sung praise for a considerable time,’ Cain says. ‘Will that matter?’

Questions, questions.

Sisobk, sighing, does not think it will. The Lord’s eulogist would like to exchange ahs! with a mouth that once did, not necessarily one that still does.

So Cain opens his, and for a few precious seconds experiences the singular intimacy, inveterate only among beasts, fowl and some species of fish, of breathing accommodatingly down a stranger’s throat while the stranger pants necessitously down yours. Then, with a sound that resembles the gurgling of drains, the stranger begins to ferment further psalmody in his gullet. ‘O taste and see that the LORD is good.’

Cain closes his mouth.

The gaunt man appears distraught, seizes Cain’s shirt, stabs at him with his tongue. ‘Thou hast seen and tasted the LORD?’

Cain pulls away.

But this petitioner is not trapped inside a wall. He grabs again. ‘Thou hast seen and tasted the LORD — how was HE?’ He is all maw now, alive only on the lips and in the gullet. ‘How was HE to the palate? Show me again the tongue wherewith thou hast tasted Him. Describe to me how It was.’

Cain the homicide, the murderer of his brother, the rotten fruit in the First Gardener’s eye, feels his stomach rise into his gorge. His jaw is clamped so tightly the whole building can hear his teeth grind.

From the mouth of the holy gourmet a more fluidal commotion — ‘Like unto kid, was It? Like unto venison? Did It scald the skin from thy gums as the flesh of mortal woman’s womb is scalded when she is penetrated by an angel? Did It smoke? Was there bone? Was there gristle? Was It like unto…?’

Only the intervention of Sisobk saves Cain from more of this. Sisobk the Saviour. How the mighty… He leads the way, Cain following obediently, mouth shut, through blackened passages in which men cry ‘Chaos!’ or shudder from the Twelve who have become their persecution, or accuse the sun and moon of fornicating and dripping their lewdness to the earth in dew and honey; then up staircases, uneven and treacherous, where some cry out ‘Murderers!’ against those who swallow eggs, and others open and close compasses, calculating in a frenzy the geometry of the foundations of the earth.

Careful of his guest’s distress, enjoying leadership, Sisobk hurries him along, like a father hurrying a son past an accident, past a killing, by a charnel house, through Gehenna. ‘We are almost there,’ he promises, although there has never been any mention of a destination. And at last they arrive at the wet and windowless cell in which Sisobk shelters from what is and starves himself into deliriums of what will be.

Although it is never closed, Sisobk kicks his door, to shoo away any ghostly rabbi or other textuist who may have thought to return in his absence, mad for more contention.

There is no light in the room and no provision for its manufacture. Grateful not to have to see anything, Cain allows himself to be led to Sisobk’s rat’s-nest bed — a rubbish dump of hassocks spitting straw, rags, flock, strips of rotting papyrus. Cain stretches out on it, thinks of Preplen, thinks of sticks, thinks of food and faith, and is asleep before his host can ask him if there is anything he wants. ‘Just as well,’ Sisobk mutters, ‘because I haven’t got it.’

He sits on the floor and listens. Like a father, or a brother. Like a friend. Like an assistant. Not any longer, then, like a disciple? He sits and watches, watches over, reading Cain’s bad dreams, providing cold and melancholy sanctuary. It is not the honour it would have been, having Cain comatose in the corner of his room — it is not the honour he frequently and fantastically anticipated in the days before… a certain matter. But it is not nothing, either, to be privileged to sit and watch and listen. To watch over. To listen out for. To succour.

Sisobk the…

The very thought of himself in this protective role softens Sisobk’s short-lived obduration. He goes over to the rat’s nest and takes Cain’s hand. Holds it gently in his. Pats it. Traces the whorls of hair on the knuckles. Puts the fingers to his lips. One at a time. So soft, so pliable, so womanly — you would never think they were murderer’s fingers.

He gets the idea from Rebekah. If, despite the stink of goatskins, she can pass off Jacob (who is white and smooth) as his brother (who is red and rug-like), then he, Sisobk (who is shambling and foul), can pass himself off as Cain (who is erect — when he is not prone — and fragrant).

It’s easy to do. The sleeping, unresistant Cain comes out of his clothes as sweetly as lentils emptied from a sack. You hold his gown, and then his undershirt, by the ears, and literally spill him out. It takes the Scryer longer to undress himself. This is because his body has not been parted from its garments in such an age, he is not always certain which is which. Were he to hurry he would as like as not peel his skin off with his drawers.