B002FB6BZK EBOK (82 page)

They visited Friedrich's grave. It was beautiful and delicate
and a wind wisped in the treetops. Henkin seemed in tune
with the landscape. Leads a group of parents to Nabi Samuel.
And Germanwriter, who never broke his own pattern and
didn't let himself fall like that, stands for one hour every day
and reads his novellas and stories to his dead son, and the beloved Jordana brings people to see the writer who reads his
works at the grave of a boy who didn't want to read his father's
works, and Renate waits with patience and love, maybe a little
contempt, which she inherited from Hasha Masha but she
understands, like Hasha Masha she understands their need to
love like that after death which they could fix, if they were
able to fear life less, and he stands and reads his works and the
wind is pleasant in Bab-el-Wad, where they died in the wars
and read stories to dead sons who will be brought from far
away by the Holocaust Fund of the needleworkers in Cologne
to help their bereaved brothers in Israel.

Once in Cologne, Ebenezer said, Germanwriter recalls: If
Moses hadn't grown up in an Egyptian house, would he have
been able to think of rebellion? A Hebrew would have thought
about uprising and not of a rebellion that is a revolution. Only at a river with a king who's a god and whose divinity is geometric, tangential, and congruent with the laws of low tide and high
tide, the moon and the sun, only there, in harsh strips of ripples
of water, on the edge of the desert, could it have become clear
finally that a mighty mechanics of water regulation in an arid
desert is a kingdom, is the Lord, is God, the imprisonment of
revolts, and from that root of a river came prison and slavery and
uprisings and freedom. The river is geometrical freedom as well
as eternal slavery. In the desert the Egyptian turned into the
Jew. On Mount Sinai, they turn real and necessary tyranny into
the anarchy of an arid wasteland that burns in the blood. They
needed Moses and he, whose soul was embittered by revolt, of a
hard speech and of a hard language, an ancient desert aristocrat,
needed the grandsons of Jacob who were crazy for the wilderness,
filled with bitterness and depression, the spirit of rocky ground
of lost yearnings for a past they almost had.

And then he quoted the passage: Everything is foreseen and
permission is given. He said that was the whole Torah in a nutshell. So Samuel boarded the ship Salvation and went to the
Land of Israel, and at the same time he met Lionel and went to
America. It was some fateful decision before he was born. It was
known in circles of heaven that Samuel will die like that and
not otherwise, so he had to board the Salvation, fight the British, be sent to Cyprus, ascend to the Land of Israel, be the wolf
who learned to play seventeen different instruments. But permission was also given, and Sam is the permission given, so he
rebelled against his blood.

Thus pondered Germanwriter in the glow of nightfall. Henkin
and Hasha and Ebenezer and Fanya R. also sat in the room. All
of them were over seventy except Fanya R., and nobody could
know how old she was. There was a sense that everybody lived
in that moment when Boaz sits in Samuel Lipker's room and
something that can't be known is happening there, something
nobody can imagine, although the meeting is more imperative
than all the meetings discussed in the hundreds of Ebenezer's
tapes, in the letters Henkin wrote to Germanwriter and German writer to Henkin, what could have been more imperative than
that meeting, decreed by fate in another thousand years when
the last offspring of Boaz and Sam will sit in a spaceship, on the
way to the stars of Andromeda, bound to the world along with
the last human beings on their way to the cosmic explosion that
will come after, or before, and then at that moment that was,
and may arrive, it was decided that that meeting will be and
everything that happened before, including Renate, "Rhapsody
in Blue," the inflation of the 'twenties, the fate of foreign subjects in the Ottoman Empire, all that happened so that Sam and
Boaz will be imprisoned together in a room. The moon was full,
they sat in Henkin's room, there was a clear feeling that every
single one of them destroyed his loved ones and in burying
them entered the grave standing up, like Secret Charity, and
resided there with the loved ones who died by their hand, or
whose fate was decreed by another accidental assignment, who
knows, and it was clear that they're united in a dark connection
whose thread was in the hands of a Captain, and now it was
impossible to ask him anything, that everything is vague and yet
there was life and there were nice moments and there were
days and there were wonderful nights and nobody succeeds in
loving somebody who deserves his love, but in running away to
something like love, to be saved from the vengeance of death,
that maybe Rebecca was right when she married Nehemiah and
not Joseph, for everybody whoever married Joseph Rayna paid
a price that is then not forgiven, anybody who married love
begat offspring who owed something that couldn't be reformed.
And then you find love split on the shore of Jaffa and you pick
up Nehemiah and don't restore him to life and abandon
Ebenezer and Boaz is born and kills Dana and begets Sam and
ends with a son Noga carries inside her and will be the object
of the great destruction that people carried from one generation
to another to avenge the empty heaven for their love for a peculiar nation that was forgotten in ashes.

And it was that evening, Noga sat pressed to the window, they
were gloomy, Rebecca phoned and was worried about Boaz. Henkin pondered and one of them, Sam or Boaz, slapped
Licinda's face, and Lily started speaking German, and Lionel
thought about a cookbook of medieval pilgrims like Shira Rabat-
Batim, and Licinda, angry, hurting from the slap, got up and recited one tape on the moment when Kramer is tied to German
soldier in a wheelbarrow, and Ebenezer sees Kramer and doesn't
yet understand how a German can be hungry and Kramer refuses
to eat or drink and Ebenezer envies him, hates him, is maybe liberated from him, at least he recites something to him, from
somebody's mouth, about identities and exchanging identities,
and Kramer waits, the hangman's rope will always find him ready
to die a patriotic death withheld from many, Boaz will think,
when Jordana looks at him with the chill hatred of a woman who
once loved, and there is no hatred chillier, quieter, more malicious than the hatred of a betrayed woman, and Licinda, whom
everybody lusts for, beautiful, lithe, and out of place, recites what
Sam crammed into her and they listen, eager to know what they
always knew, in love with her with an impossible love, getting her
pregnant artificially like some Joseph impregnating women who
was the father of them all, and Henkin says: Enough, enough, and
she stops and bursts into tears and then suddenly Jordana smiles.

And up above, in the suite overlooking the sea at whose shore
Rebecca Schneerson looked angrily seventy-three years earlier,
sit Boaz and his alter ego. After the wrestling, as they later told
Germanwriter, they drank vodka, what will they say to each
other? If there were an answer there would be no need for all
these tapes, but there isn't. Some moment requisitioned from
the space of time, from its own history, from the building where
the event didn't take place, and in Rebecca's house, with the
tape recorder next to her where she once recorded herself facing the rot of the old settlement, and all that's left of her is her
fictional past and fictional dreams of a polite Captain and a rabbinical prodigy, who went to a war to the bitter end against frustrated prophets and died on the shore of Jaffa, sits Ebenezer
and suddenly says: Marar is now a destroyed village, a sign that
I'm again listening to myself, and Fanya R. smiles at him sympa thetically, even though she's filled with envy for memories of
Dana on the road between Rebecca's house and Ebenezer's old
house, where the Captain lived and that was registered in the
name of Boaz Schneerson or in fact, although the old woman
didn't know, it was registered in the name of S.L.A. Ltd. because
of income tax regulations that weren't intended to tax the dead,
or were intended only for that, and Ebenezer says: There was a
time, he said, when I forgot Hebrew, Hebrew flew away and
wasn't, I spoke in so many voices that I forgot, and I'd recite
words in other languages spelled backward. When I had to open
a door I closed it. German or Polish I read from right to left, I
wanted to open a bottle and I put the cork in instead of taking
the cork out, and then Hasha Masha said: A big donation came
for the memorial, and Henkin went to the Ministry of Defense
and came back with weeping eyes and thought about what happened, or didn't happen, in the hotel on the seventeenth floor.
Germanwriter says: Right, it's ridiculous and cunning, but Brooks
senior sent a check to the government of Israel, and nobody is
willing to turn down money to create the memorial that Boaz
scoffs at and says won't be erected, but S.L.A. Ltd. will be the
initiator and Boaz will bury his head in his hands and say:
Enough, I'm not ready for that, and goes out, and Hasha sneers
in a whisper, "Melissa Gifts," "Melissa and All Her Suicides,"
which was created in the world by the poem of rage, a poem Boaz
wrote for my husband so he could love his son who loved the sea.

And Lionel will sit at night and tell about his mother and
Rebecca will want to weep and won't be able to, and then that
moment will end as it began, with uncertainty, and one of them
will go out, Sam or Boaz, and a few days later, a siren will be
heard and Talya's friend from the adjutant's office won't come
this time because he didn't come back from the last war, and
they'll search for Boaz and Noga to give them orders, and Noga
will laugh with a belly full of a fetus and none of them knows
who the father is, revenge of a woman who found her father
dead in a room and loved a violent lad and stopped loving him
to live in Henkin's house and turn into a product of national mourning until Boaz came and betrothed her to Jordana and
Sam and Licinda, in whose veins Melissa lived and this time
declared a revolt, and Rebecca pleaded, Give me Boaz, don't
bring a son into the world, who's the father of the son? And
Noga is silent, withdrawn, in love with her swollen belly, will
bring a son into the world and they won't know who the father is.
Joy filled her when they came to bring her a mobilization order
that was needless because the computer was wrong. She had long
ago passed the age and would no longer stay in a tent with Boaz
and play licentious streetwalker in light of the headlights of the
armored troop carrier in the desert, and Sam or Boaz, whoever
came out of the room and they don't know who, or perhaps they
do know and pretend they don't know, will go to the war that
started, and again they wait for Rebecca's expected disaster, but
she's silent, searching the sky to drill a hole in it, doesn't find it,
is offended to her last disgrace, and Boaz or Sam, in a uniform,
will go to the airport, three gigantic transport planes were parked
there, emergency doors gaping open, a unit of young soldiers sat
on what had once been a lawn. The sky is clear and no wind
blows. The roar of the motors is ear-piercing. Officers and noncoms run back and forth, messengers come with flashes of orders,
whistles are heard on all sides. And he stands there, in a battle
uniform with sand stuck to it from a previous battle, washed but
not ironed. The insignia of rank aren't conspicuous. The greenyellow eyes scare the recruits. He asks which of them was in the
last war, and there isn't one who had fought then. He explains to
them what they have to do: get into the planes and then
parachute into another field, and from there to the front. The sun
is beating down and he's sweating. He turns to a young soldier
who looks pensive and handsome, with curly hair, and calls out:
Soldier, get up! And the soldier gets up. Scared, you can see how
scared he is. Run to the canteen and bring paper and pencils. And
the soldier says: Yessir, and runs. The soldiers are sitting. Somebody starts humming, tomorrow when the army takes off its
uniforms ... The soldier comes back. The planes are roaring. A liaison officer comes and whispers something in his ear. First aid
kits and stretchers are loaded onto the plane.

He orders the soldier who had returned and was standing at
attention: Give every soldier a pencil and paper! They look at
him in amazement, but nobody opens his mouth.

The soldier gives every one of the soldiers a pencil and paper.

They don't see that their commander is weeping, he's weeping with his eyes shut.

The sun beats down and the motors are ear-piercing.

May Jordana not love you, he says. And then he yells: This is
an order, everybody has a pencil and paper. Everyone, every one
of you now write a poem and give it to me with your first name,
last name, serial number, and address.

He yells: That's an order! One soldier whispers: That commander was in all the wars, I'm not getting in trouble, and he
starts writing. And the commander yells: You've got five minutes, so step on it!

And they write fast.

Forward! he yells.

He collects the poems, puts them in a manila file. Calls the
sergeant. Sends him with the manila file. To put it in headquarters under the name of Schneerson until. The soldiers finish loading their gear and boarding the planes, once again a siren sounds.
He follows them, swallowed up in the plane, and takes off.

And the moment up there doesn't end. They're still there,
even though Boaz or Sam was swallowed up in the plane. And
then everything ended and Noga gave birth to a son. Ebenezer
died and was buried in Roots. Fanya R. will die after him. Lionel
and Lily went back to America. Licinda will direct Sam's play at
the national theater. Sam will stay or go, what do we know who's
who. They came back. Three secretaries are trying to make order
in the files of S.L.A. Ltd. Letters come from all over Israel, millions of dollars from the money of "Melissa Inc." And everything's
desolate. Boaz sits and looks out the window. Sam is dusty inside
him. As was said in the book Ebenezer quoted and that will be written in another few years, Rebecca will die on the seventh of
Adar, the day of Moses' death, in nineteen eighty-four, a hundred
years old she'll be at her death. After her burial Roots will be
closed for lack of space. Next to Nehemiah her husband Rebecca
will be buried. In the safe, along with the writings of the Captain,
are the poems written by the soldiers, and Noga raises her son.
He's got green-yellow eyes and he plays with the wooden birds
once carved by a man named Ebenezer.