B002FB6BZK EBOK (68 page)

(Fragments of reels of recording for cataloguing: tapes [6/76 and tape
5/90] were ruined, these are fragments of them that remained-)

Women who look like Jordana and Noga are sitting in row twelve on the
aisle in the movie house "Pa'ar" in Tel Aviv. A matinee and cracking sunflower seeds. A Lufthansa plane, a Boeing 747 flight 005 takes off from
Cologne. Jordana is weeping and so she can't see the film that Germanwriter doesn't see on the plane because he's sleeping. Noga buys more
sunflower seeds, comes back, and sits down next to Jordana.

Boaz took a Carmel Duke car and went to the desert to hunt vultures.
He parked the car next to a wadi, took the rifle, and walked alone, in a
good mood, whistled something, the gigantic desert, yellow and savage.
The Carmel Duke car is made of fiberglass. When he came back with a
dead vulture and searched for the car he saw a skeleton. Camels passed by
there, saw the car, and ate it. They left only the chassis and the motor and
the chrome. He walked a whole day until he came to Yotbata. From there
he went home. For a week he laughed, even when he saw the vulture
stuffed for a school in Jerusalem.

Boaz told Noga about the camels and didn't tell Jordana.

Jordana claims that Boaz doesn't love her because he didn't tell her about
the camels. Noga tries to undermine her certainty.

Noga thinks: Jordana tastes like hot peppers and wormwood and cheesecake.

Rebecca Schneerson dreamed she had wept for eight years. When she
woke up she didn't know if she had dreamed she wept or wept and had
really slept for eight years. She told Ahbed: I don't know what time is now.
If now is now or not.

Ahbed asked Boaz what afayg, up yours, means.

The Captain's grave moved at night. Bedouins camping there with the
flocks they brought from the south trembled with fear. The son of old
Avigdorov, who was considered one of the thirty-one founders and had once
loved Rebecca, but didn't have the courage in his heart to tell her, toddled
along for six kilometers in the heavy heat to tell Rebecca the Captain's
grave moved. She said: Tea you won't get for that, but know that if he
moves in the grave it means he's preparing for future wars. The Captain
was lazy in his life, and even more so in his death.

Fanya R. was scared, went to the store, and bought two dolls. Then
she hid them. The waiter who came to serve drinks at the party that was
held someplace else and got the address wrong, buried the dolls in the
yard for her, under a tree. She paid him in German marks hidden in a
pillow. Ebenezer went to the place where there had once been a village
named Marar and picked chrysanthemums. Then he tried to plant them
in his garden.

Boaz sat in his house and very slowly burned his hand. He didn't feel a
thing. Noga covered her face with a pillow and Jordana went into the street
and read obituary announcements. She didn't know the dead people. In
the morning she read in the paper that a man had died. She went to his
funeral, stood there, asked herself what she was doing, but didn't have a
satisfactory answer. Somebody asked her if she was a relative, and she said:
Maybe. Then she went to the office. Boaz came with the seared hand bandaged for a memorial book for an artillery regiment. Jordana tried to pretend she didn't know him. They talked with an alienation that suited
their mood. But her hand, her hand groped for him. She told him about
Mr. Soslovitch, a locomotive salesman. Boaz said: If Henkin had come to
Kassit when I sat there three days and waited for him, and Mr. Soslovitch ordered a beer for me and I didn't drink it, I wouldn't have had to write the
poem. And I don't think Mrs. Cohen ever slept with Mr. Soslovitch. Then
they talked about the fact that their love had to end and maybe was already
ended. She wept. All she could say was, I love both of you, Boaz, I love you
and I love Noga. He said: Maybe, and left.

Germanwriter finished writing the novella and went over the last proofs.
Renate was sick. As mentioned above, they flew Lufthansa Flight 005 to
New York.

In New York Sam Lipp said: You act Licinda, Licinda, but you're not
Licinda. Nobody can be himself.

A conversation in Tel Aviv: You remember Samuel Lipker from the
Sonderkommando? He's my son's commander in the reserves.

I thought he died, said the man.

No, he was on the ship with my brother. The name of the ship was
Salvation. He hasn't been seen since. Now, she said, he's called Boaz.

Sam, asked Licinda, were you ever in Jerusalem?

Yes, said Sam.

I dreamed about a house, she said, and I know I got the dream from you,
the house wasn't big and there was a bakery in it.

Sam said: That was my grandfather's house on Baron Hirsch Street in
Tarnopol.

Rebecca Schneerson's cow barn, said the Minister of Agriculture in the
official ceremony, yielded the greatest quantity of milk by three point
forty-six percent of all the cow barns in Israel. I am honored to award the
family representative the medal for increasing and encouraging production.
The great-grandson of Ahbed climbs onto the stage and accepts the award
on behalf of Rebecca Schneerson, and shakes the minister's hand. The
minister's wife whispers to the minister: He looks like an Arab.

The great-grandson of Ahbed hears that and says: I don't look like an
Arab, I am an Arab. And he adds in Arabic, kata hirek, and descends.

Boaz put his mouth to Noga's hand, caught her white hair, and in silence
held her hair in his mouth for two hours and twenty minutes. Noga wept,
but the tears she wept circumvented Boaz's head, and in an arc, like flying deer, the tears landed on his knee. When dawn broke, he turned his
mouth away and said: Anybody who wasn't defending you, Noga, doesn't
know what perfection there is in words.

Noga made him tomato soup.

Jordana called and said: I slept in my house and it was sad, but. And
hung up.

Boaz thought of Samuel in the camp and didn't know why he thought of
Samuel in the camp. He said: My father didn't forgive me for not being
there and I didn't forgive either. And Noga said: Look who's coming, it's
Kootie-and-a-Half, hello Kootie-and-a-Half, and Kootie-and-a-Half bent
over, and said: Who's that beautiful Yemenite woman who's blocking her
ears?

A hard land, said Rebecca Schneerson.

A hard land, said Fanya R. She didn't sleep at night. The letters from
the newspaper get into my eyes, she said. What dreams there are that I left
there and live here. Maybe we'll win the next war? And how alone is it
together?

Tape / -

New York, apologies for the delay.

My dear friend,

I meant to write to you on the plane, but I fell asleep. Renate
is blessed with what can maybe be called psychosomatic wellness. Two weeks before I was informed of the trip, she was sick,
but when they told me I had to fly to New York for the publication of the novella (The Beautiful Life of Christina Herzog), she
recovered in a few hours. With my own eyes, I saw a red runny
nose dry up. Your letter about Jordana and Noga, and the story
you attached, evoked sad thoughts in me about my ability to
understand the connections we're searching for: it was an instructive lesson.

Two days before the flight, Renate dreamed she dropped
into an ocean and then drove a black hearse. The lights went
out and she couldn't see the road, she had to go on driving and
started veering toward the steep slope, and when she woke up
from the dream, she yelled: Friedrich, Friedrich, but since she
hadn't called him in years, and I had meanwhile woken up, I
brought her a cup of coffee in bed and she drank and then told
me the dream and said that Friedrich had to be here. So she went to the fortuneteller. For years now she hadn't been to her,
but back when Friedrich died she had often visited astrologers
and fortunetellers. You see, we also seek lost traces in quicksand. Renate thought Friedrich was alive on another plane of
time and his death was not absolute. Ever since, an essential
change has taken place in her and she doesn't delude herself
anymore, doesn't participate in seances to contact our son, has
returned to the silent despair of those who submit. That dream
before the trip brought her back to the fortuneteller named
Ruth, like most of the women in the life of Adam Stein, whom
we talked about, and whose old circus Friedrich used to go to,
even though he himself no longer appeared in the circus and
nothing remains of it except the name-"Adam's Circus." The
fortuneteller looked at the cards, made Renate a hasty horoscope, and after she talked with her about her nature and her
past, things that need not be repeated here, she talked about
the trip coming up in a day or two. There are encounters connected with the past in store for you, she said, and as for the
flight, and you're flying soon, and Renate said: The flight's the
day after tomorrow! The flight will be comfortable, she said
and Renate said: But it's winter now and stormy, and the
fortuneteller said, and I quote: "The flight will be smooth as
butter."

When we were over the ocean, the head flight attendant
came to us and said that the captain, who had seen me on television when I talked about my new book, invited me and my
wife to the pilot's cabin. We went up to the cabin of the Boeing
747. The captain's name is Commandant Klein, and when we
left Cologne after we took off, he said: Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to Lufthansa flight zero zero five from Cologne to
New York, this is your captain, Commandant Klein speaking ...
And I thought about Adam Stein and I said Commander Klein
caught me in the air, but Renate didn't pay attention and I shut
up. Klein, a nice enough man, was excited by the modern instruments he showed us, the up-to-date radar, the boards and
the miraculous accessories, and the view from the pilot's cabin really was spectacular: you see the sky before you and you don't
sense you're flying, you're up above, you're not aware at all of
the plane behind you and beneath you, and below the ocean is
spread out and you're alone before that stillness, a gigantic panorama of stillness and red and green lights go on and off and
hum, we drank good coffee, we talked about politics and the
fact that writers essentially lack understanding of problems that
he as a captain and a practical man who "still remembers a thing
or two," maybe understands no better, but surely different. We
talked about economics, the Common Market, and then we
parted with a warm handshake and a promise that when we flew
over the state of Maine, we'd be invited back and could stay
there until we landed in New York. That will be an unforgettable
experience, promised the captain.

Later on, they showed some film and I fell asleep and didn't
see it. Renate, who doesn't sleep much on airplanes, rented earphones and watched. I slept so soundly I didn't hear the head
flight attendant come to invite us to the pilot's cabin. Renate
decided not to wake me, and since she knew I wasn't as excited
as she was by new technologies of pop-up toasters, automatic
washing machines, transistors, and such instruments, and since
she knew that the sight of the landing wouldn't be so important
to me-and I could always imagine it and tell about it as if I had
seen it, as she put it with a smile-she spared me the early rising and went up to the pilot's cabin without me. As she sat
there drinking coffee Commandant Klein said we'd soon enter
a strong storm. He showed her the radar screen, and she heard
the voices on the radio, and as she told me later, she could see
the storm right before her eyes. It was, she said, a gigantic black
mass, like a threatening square at some distance in front of the
prow of the plane. Renate said: But that can't be! The captain
asked why not. (I'm quoting her because this letter is also addressed to Hasha Masha and I think Renate would want Hasha
to know these things.) And Renate said, Because Ruth said the
flight would be smooth as butter. The commandant laughed
and pointed to the black storm at a reasonable distance from the prow, but Renate insisted, it was important for her to believe. Later on she told me she thought she was red as a tomato,
and she said: No, it can't be, and when the pilot finished laughing, Renate told me, she buried her face and looked at the floor
and thought of a beautiful Bible verse that Hasha translated for
her from Hebrew to German, even though it's also in our Bible,
but in Hasha's translation, the sting wasn't lost, she thought
about King David, of whom it was said that he was ruddy but
withal of a beautiful countenance. She liked the word "withal"
in that context. The wind velocity above Boston at the moment
is one hundred ninety knots, said Commandant Klein and he
wiped his nose, but the plane didn't dance. Renate asked: What
happened to your storm? and the captain said: Soon, the storm
simply moved left a little, and Renate looked ahead and did see
a storm and from above it looked like a gigantic black box moving left toward the ocean, and the captain said: Soon! But his
voice, she said, wasn't so confident, and it continued like that
until the landing in New York. The storm moved left, like a
snake, six minutes before the prow of the plane, and when we
landed in New York, Renate told me (I of course was sleeping),
the wind at Kennedy Airport was six knots, while only ten minutes before it was eighty knots. On the way, traces of the storm
were seen and as we were descending, cities and villages
wrapped in snow could be seen, and because it had already grown
dark the lights were seen sparkling after a decent washing, and
the commandant wasn't laughing anymore. Renate had to give
all the members of the crew Ruth's address and phone number
and when she came back to me, she woke me up and said: We're
here, Ruth was right, and I woke up, looked outside and saw the
plane approaching the Lufthansa gate, and Renate told me the
story, brought me coffee in a plastic cup and I smiled. She didn't
tell me she gave them the address and phone number, because
she knew that would annoy me. She knew that my enemies, the
extreme rightists and leftists, would make mincemeat of me in
their newspapers. They'd write about the staunch rationalist who
went to a fortuneteller. For they wouldn't write that Renate went to Ruth on her own, but would weave my name into the plot and
would brew up a proper brew.