Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
I love him, Rebecca said to the Captain with uncharacteristic candor. I
love him like the clods of earth love the dead. Like the riverbank loves the
river. I love him as you could have been able to love if you were as false and
splendid as Joseph Rayna and as innocent and beautiful as Nehemiah. When
I fell in love with Boaz I gave birth to what I didn't want to give birth to all
the years, and Ebenezer who's wandering around in Europe didn't come
from me, Nehemiah brought him to me and I reluctantly nursed him. If your
god can make a virgin give birth to a son, Boaz can be born from a grandmother who loved him before he was born. At last, the Captain gave in and
with two Arabs from Marar and Mr. Klomin, they went to visit a friend of the
Captain who lived in an ancient house with a wooden turret in a tropical
garden on a hill crowned by cypresses and palms, near Jaffa.
The road to the house passed over a small wooden bridge. Years ago a
small wadi flowed under the bridge, and even the ancient water had
stopped flowing in it. Between geranium, jasmine, rose, and violet bushes
the gentle chirping of rare birds was heard and in the small pool in the
center of the yard crowned with thick evergreens, gray and white ducks
floated, and one swan who looked arrogant and strange in the musty dank
garden.
The Captain's friend was old, wrapped in a cloak that may once have
been white. The man put on a pince-nez and his face looked like ancient
parchment. For a long time, the two of them walked, hugging, among the
bushes and whispered together in a language none of the guests understood. Then they stopped, the Captain put his hand in the old man's sash,
hiccuped, thrust a paper-wrapped package into the sash, which the old
man took in his hands, sniffed like tobacco, smiled, and then the two of
them hugged with masculine savagery, the old man's face was so glowing
and joyful that even Rebecca felt a slight stab of bliss in her belly. The old
man came to Boaz, called an Arab boy wearing an abbiya, who had stood all
the time in the shadow of the ancient marble pillar swathed in ivy that
climbed up it to a locked window whose recess was more imagined than
visible. The boy entered the house and came back with a tray and handed
out cold juice and tasty ice cream. After they listened to the bird, which the
Captain claimed was called a bird of "the real opposite," which repeated the
same chirp one hundred fifty times an hour, without the slightest change, the old man, who was holding Boaz in his clasped hands, said: I've got a
document that will suit him, Mrs. Schneerson, and he hugged Boaz's
shoulders and Boaz smelled a smell he later knew was the smell of death.
Rebecca wanted to say something, Mr. Klomin straightened up and his
face turned gray, but the Captain put a nervous but agile finger on her lips
and whispered, so Mr. Klomin would also hear: Everything's fine, there's
no baptism, let me take care of things, money and God are my business ...
The old man disappeared into the house. Boaz and the Arab boy threw
stones at the swan, and as Rebecca was trying to assess the brigades of
Klomin's Hebrew army against the odor left by the moldy old man, a peacock sallied forth from the bushes. The peacock proudly bore a gigantic
colorful tail and it looked to her as if it were desired by the sun and the
trees, indulged and arrogant, and the birds stopped chirping and then she
thought about Joseph and about Boaz and her insides cramped as if she
were giving birth to Boaz, and then the old man came back, hopped on his
feet that touched and didn't touch the pebbles of the stream scattered on
the paths, held out a parchment scroll to Rebecca, grabbed Boaz, who approached him with the Arab boy standing on the side and smiling with
teeth that were almost black, and then he turned to the Captain and said:
I do this because of our Lord the Messiah and because of the great patriots who fought in the bold battles of our homeland, and to Rebecca he said:
Dante Alighieri Boaz Schneerson of the house of Tefanus, in the name of
an ancient hero, Ella the Tyrean, who delivered his mother from the claws
of a cruel potentate and granted her his eternal youth and his delicate
manhood and appreciated her as a slave of the church and an angel of
the hosts of the Lord, Dante Alighieri Benedictus Boaz Schneerson, hallowed by being your legal son and the fruit of your loins. And you Rebecca
Schneerson confess here and now before me and before the living God that
there was never any doubt in your heart that this child is your son, your
flesh and blood! And this lad will be your son from now on forever. Amen.
Rebecca, who had never been eager to say words of prayer in the Promised
Land, said "amen" in a soft voice, and the man said, If there is anyone here
who wants to protest or who does not agree let him now raise his voice or
forever hold his peace ... And then Mr. Klomin yelled, all flushed and
fervent: I, I object, and the old man smiled at him, tried with all his might
to hear Klomin's yell, and said: If so, I see there are no objections? And Mr. Klomin now shoved the Captain closer to the old man and yelled into
his ear: I, I'm his grandfather! And the old man delayed a moment, a moderate atrophied smile caught at the corner of his mouth, and said: Since
there are no objections, I hereby declare Boaz Dante Alighieri Benedictus
the legal son of Rebecca Schneerson. May it be His will.
Rebecca looked at the old man. His serenity in contrast to Mr. Klomin's
yelling became foggy and then his eye was covered with a cold metallic glint.
Klomin tried to yell, but he too fell mute at the sight. The two Arabs from
Marar bristled where they stood. The old man sank into the ground until he
was no longer seen. Later on Mr. Klomin (who then filled his mouth with
water) would say: The ground was loose because under the building there
was certainly an ancient excavation and he sank into it, maybe it was a graveyard from the period of the kings of Judah, Mr. Klomin would add, during the
summer they lived in the coastal plain, maybe it was a center of magnetic
heaviness, and Rebecca's hungry look turned to a spear point of the yearnings of two thousand years united in her and she didn't know and sold her
grandson to the bosom of foreigners and her ancient blood was then roused
to avenge her and foreigners who plot evil against us and the magnetic
center turned into an archaeological incident because of the forgotten
grave of a Hebrew king. Rebecca laughed, and said: He seeks kings
everywhere, simple Jews also lived in this land, Klomin, kings lived in palaces. And Mr. Klomin, sunk in glowing contemplation of the future of the
new-old Israeli kingdom, said in embarrassment and longing for the great
moments that had all apparently been before he was born and he had already despaired of finding them in his life, that if a person understood the
great moment in which he lived, he could experience things beyond time
and place.
Rebecca didn't want to hear about the graves of ancient kings. She saw
a gentile sinking into the ground. The Arabs were willing to swear to it
with a thumbprint. She still remembered Nehemiah's war against the
prophets. In her heart she laughed at the poor men who always fight wars
that were decided long ago. Boaz remembered the peacock and the old
man who disappeared into the ground. Never did he accept his adoption
by Rebecca as more than a sufficient reason to torment her or love her as
the only person he knew whose loyalty to him he never doubted. She was
mine, my mother and my father betrayed me, he said to Noga.
The next day, Boaz had to stand before a big crowd at the community
center and tell how the old gentile sank into the yard and disappeared.
Some of the founders who limped to the community center shook their
heads. Rebecca didn't come. Horowitz's daughter shouted: She always was
a witch and always will be ... Nehemiah knew that and so he died, she
taught Aryeh to play the piano.
Tongues began wagging freely and used what Boaz told. There was no
television back then, Noga, Boaz will say later on, and there was still fantasy in the air. She killed the mare of the baron's official, yelled an old
woman whose false teeth fell out of her mouth from enthusiasm and her
son had to search for them among the feet of the old people that smelled
of powder against prickly heat and cow dung. She killed Nehemiah and
Dana, she hates us, she lives in the settlement and closes herself up. Germans played for her on the piano during the war when they burned cowsheds of All's Well and Meshulam, her Captain is a spy for the Armenians
and Americans and he's a Greek like we're Turks. She injects milk hormones into her cows so they'll win the contests. Her chickens are bewitched
and lay eggs nonstop and don't even have time to eat. When the bull sees her
he immediately mounts all the cows in the barn. Boaz burst out laughing and
the others also felt they were talking nonsense and laughed, in fact nobody
was really afraid anymore. Even the exact description of the old man sinking
into the dirt wasn't very scary, Rebecca no longer aroused in them more than
an enormous need to describe their life as a certain miracle in which she
was the leaven. They remembered the Wondrous One and Nehemiah as if
they were her lovers. Lately, they were filled with yearnings for Ebenezer.
After all, Ebenezer was the first son of the settlement who had changed in
their eyes into a mysterious and miraculous tale. As they looked at the
birds he left behind they began to be filled with forgiveness for the child
they were never able to understand. They didn't forget how he walked in
the rainswept street with Dana's body in his arms. His image grew to dimensions it had never had before, and as his death grew more certain, his
qualities became more refined. A wood carver turned into a wondrous sculptor. And then it was also decided unanimously to call the community center
built by Nehemiah in the name of his dead son and they put a wooden
plaque up at the entrance and carved on it: Community Center in Memory
of Ebenezer Schneerson Who Knew Wood in Its Distress.
Boaz, who grew up in Rebecca's house, didn't resent the facts of his life,
which changed with the years. He succumbed to the essential quality of
the settlement, a quality that turned into an incurable disease, to create
the past according to the givens of the present and to live in a fictional past
as much as possible. His age changed. Later on, when he tried to correct
the date of his birth, he couldn't anymore and he remained the age written by the Captain in the document given him by the old man who sank
into the dirt, and the Captain's retrospective godfatherhood turned into a
fait accompli. Boaz was the only lad in the settlement who had two birth
dates, two godfathers (Klomin and the Captain), two mothers, a father in
heaven, and three grandfathers: Klomin, Nehemiah, and Joseph Rayna.
One of them, and he didn't know which, was also his father or perhaps
wasn't, as he used to say afterward. A woman named Rachel Brin who grew
shirt trees in America is his aunt, her son Secret Glory also called Lionel
Secret is his cousin, the world was created when Secret Charity went down
to a cellar and started sallying forth at night and made nineteen children
with his stunned wife. There they shouted in cellars, said Rebecca, and not
in ridiculous community centers ...
Boaz was a taciturn lad. In a small settlement like that one, it's hard to
guess the force of hostility and jealousy children feel for somebody who has
three grandfathers, a mysterious father, and two mothers who gave birth to
imaginary fathers. What the children of the founders didn't know began to
be added to what the founders themselves had now forgotten, and their
children's children added the rest. Horowitz's son opened an institute for
the improvement of seeds that were marketed in many countries. The hothouses they started building were the first of their kind. The produce of
the citrus groves, the vineyards, and the fields was good and the yield of
the cowsheds was high. The eleven sons of the settlement who fell in the
riots of 'twenty-nine and 'thirty-six were joined by heroes who fell in
other places and were adopted after their death. Roots, which started as a
small handful of graves, turned into a national parade ground hidden by
pruned trees from the hot desert winds. Florid speeches were delivered in
Roots on memorial days, some of which were invented as needed. Even the
death date of the Wondrous One began to be commemorated among most
of the nation, children in uniforms carried bouquets of flowers and stood
with wooden spears in their hands and swore loyalty to the nation and to the future of the settlement. Choral singing was an integral part of the
ceremonies. Throughout the Land of Israel, there wasn't a settlement whose
choir sang only in the cemetery. All's Well, principal of the school who was
also the husband of the kindergarten teacher Eve, sat in Rebecca's house and
tried to learn from her the melody of Nehemiah's speeches from which, he
thought, Nehemiah embroidered his "historical" speeches. And she would
make up new melodies for him, which he tried unsuccessfully to imitate.
Very slowly, he learned the fictional melodies. The Captain, who knew
melodies from distant lands, taught him the art of measured grief, the words
of the hymn of death, and even the consolations of the old man, who for
twenty years was tormented by a damaged heart, succeeded in his premature death, at the age of eighty, to be eulogized as a Pioneer and a hero rich
in deeds, who at his death bequeathed us life.
The rabbi of the nearby settlement was now beginning to enjoy coming
to the settlement. He knew that here, God was the one Rebecca Schneerson
conspired with, but he no longer had enough strength to fight the war of the
Lord. A late spring would grant the settlement more spring than the nearby
settlements. Old Horowitz told the journalist who came to interview him
that the marvelous sculptures of Ebenezer, who was almost Boaz's father,
were the most beautiful artistic creations he had ever seen. The aphorism
about Ebenezer on the wall of the community center was contributed by
the Captain. The farmers helped Boaz overcome the enmity of the children. The yearning looks of the girls he learned to accept as he had to
accept his grandmother's Psalms or the mysterious whispers of Mr. Klomin
and the Captain about the national-royal party. They still plotted stratagems. Every Wednesday, the Captain still asked for Rebecca's hand and
got a negative reply. There was no reply from the British crown even after
five letters of five hundred pages each. That was the great imminent war
that granted Mr. Klomin the possibility of preparing an innovative strategy,
using a short-range tactic to solve the problem of British rule. The royalist party won the settlement (with the Captain's modest support) a contract to sell citrus fruit to the British army, whose troops increased. The
best agricultural deal since the beginning of the Jewish Yishuv in the Land
was buying the land for a big airport. At a time when the rumor spread that
the settlement was infected with the disease of death and old people were
dying at the rate of one a week, the sons of the founders, with the aging Captain as agent, sold lands at an exorbitant price to build an airport. Some
of the founders were fictitious in any case, and so only the local historians
were interested in bearing witness to the disease of death, especially since
the price yielded such great wealth. At the eulogy of old Horowitz, who
wept at the sight of Nehemiah dancing with Nathan on the day he came
to the settlement forty years before and followed Ebenezer when he returned Dana's body, it was said of him that he was a Pioneer not only of
Hebrew agriculture in the Land, but also of aviation in the Land of Israel.
From here, said Principal All's Well, the airplanes of Judah will fly to strike
the enemies of the Lord. A third of the land for the new field, whose airplanes Horowitz prophesied, according to his eulogy, belonged to Rebecca.
While Ebenezer was wandering from Poland to eastern Ukraine and to Russia and from there to the camps, Boaz and the other children of the settlement were working to build a new airport. The adult workers learned to
appreciate his silence and the quality of his work. Boaz was then thirteen
years old, strong with a solid body, and after only two weeks he was appointed supervisor of the work of his older comrades and his salary was
raised. That, of course, was without any connection to his special relations
with Captain Jose Menkin A. Goldenberg, whom the British discovered
was a great air force expert. Boaz didn't ask how the Captain or even Colonel (for he was promoted), who had never fought in any war that anybody
had ever heard of, knew how to build airfields. But when he saw how the
field was built and the planes started landing, and even more marvelous,
taking off, and how satisfied the British were with the field, the row of
concrete antitank structures, the way of sheltering airplanes against an air
raid, and building decoys to mislead the enemy, Boaz said to himself: What's
to ask, maybe in Argentina they fought with airplanes in the last century.
But he wasn't even sure the Captain came from Argentina. The British
looked at Boaz and said: He's clever like all the Jews, and he laughed. His
yellow-green eyes caused incomprehensible excitement among the officers'
wives, who sat around a lot in chaise longues topped with parasols held by
Arabs from Marar and looked at him. They didn't know he was building a
future airfield for Mr. Klomin's royalist party. They would look at him excitedly, giggle, long for children in their wombs, and didn't know it. They
were too delicate to express what every one of the children of the settlement understood; but Boaz didn't care.