TRANSLATED BY RICHARD FLINT
Editor’s Note
The pages that follow were written by Naphtali Noi himself. They were discovered in a prison cell by one of my acquaintances, a policeman, who, thinking they would interest me, passed them on.
They did interest me. I felt they had to be published.
For the convenience of the reader, I have edited and arranged the pages in a reasonable sequence, retaining almost all of their contents.
I have tried to preserve, as much as is possible, the tone of the original. And it is for the reader to judge.
I
I fixed myself a light meal in the kitchen. It was already two o’clock in the morning—the time I usually come home from the newspaper, where I work as a proofreader, and fix myself a light meal. I was tired and wanted to sleep. I would have fallen on my bed and gone straight to sleep, but I was so tired that I did not have the strength to go against habit. My hands did what they had done so many nights, and I found myself leaning over the small kitchen cupboard, with tea and cheese sandwiches in front of me, and an old newspaper spread out under them.
I was very tired, but as I saw characters I glanced over them to seek out a missing i or a superfluous e—inevitable for a proofreader—and my eyes fell on two items. The first was an advertisement for a film, in which He and She featured; “She, wicked and corrupt from birth,” (here I was annoyed by the use of a comma instead of a colon) “an illegitimate child.” “He: a tempestuous playboy driven out of his mind by youthful passion.” And both of them “like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, naked and unashamed.” The final sentence was printed entirely in Gothic script. Underneath this advertisement was a news item about a man who had killed his wife and told his interrogators: “I had a headache and couldn’t sleep all night. I got up in the morning and wandered around the yard. I saw a big rock. I picked it up and dropped it on my wife’s head.”
The wife’s name was Eve. I was taken by the clear, restrained, almost classical style of this paragraph.
The window in front of me was open and I really do not know why it bothered me. Anyhow, I grabbed it and shook it, trying to close it, before taking the tea in my hand. I was still new on the roof of this old house—I had not been here for more than four weeks—and I was not yet accustomed to all its nooks and crannies. In any case, the window frame, after hitting against the sill, opened up again, dragging with it the other frame. I threw my hand forward to stop it so that the pane would not smash into the corner of the shelf, but before I could reach it I knocked over the cup of tea. The tea spilled out, the cup broke, and I looked around me and saw that it was night. Deepest night. And the wind whistling through the window and the window wide open.
I went out on to the roof. The roof was square, but the darkness was thick, and I could not see its corners. And the trees that always lined the street below were also invisible. As I could not see the corners of the roof, I did not see the plants I raised and nurtured so diligently in the corners of the roof. I heard only a kind of rustle from them, something like a frightened breathing. Then a wind came and cast a feverish tingling over the roof. It wound around like a black flame. Perhaps I felt that a more powerful wind was following—anyway I went into my room and fell on my face. I lay there, feeling on my back and on my neck that all the doors and all the windows had burst wide open.
I opened an eye—and from then on I lay, one eye closed and one eye open.
II
Before Naphtali Noi came to this city he had been married to a girl from an Orthodox family in Jerusalem. Her name was Leah. The marriage had lasted four years (“Just like a pair of doves, you never hear them coming in or going out,” the neighbors had said) and they had no children.
In the mornings Naphtali used to work in the archives of one of the museums of which Jerusalem is so full, and in the afternoons he would study in their quiet apartment, jotting down notes, while Leah walked on tiptoe so as not to disturb his work. From time to time he would go out with his friend Peretz to the Judean Hills, where they would hunt wild duck and hedgehogs and bring the meat home. Leah couldn’t stand it and Naphtali had to eat it alone.
One day he dragged home a skinned hedgehog, stuck by its blood to a filthy sack, and found Leah vomiting, laughing through her tears and saying, “There’s a child in my womb. There’s a child in my womb.” Naphtali refused to believe this, but he saw that his wife’s stomach was swollen. He washed the blood off his hands, began feeling her stomach, and with a trembling hand pulled out from under her dress the feather pillow that she always loved to clasp in her lap. And Leah laughed through her tears—slowly the tears overwhelmed the laughter, “I told you, I told you there’s a child in my womb, but you don’t believe me, you don’t believe me.” Naphtali went up to the roof of the house and looked out at the steeples and domes of the churches of which Jerusalem is so full.
Then he took up taxidermy.
From Jerusalem Naphtali set out for any high mountain peak. And on one of these, near Kibbutz Omrah in Galilee, he met Sternik, who used to stuff birds and small animals and sell them.
Sternik was proud of his craft and strict about its rules. He taught Naphtali patience in operating on a dead animal. “Smoke a pipe—it’s food for patience,” he said. Naphtali started smoking a pipe. But with all the rest he was not so successful. Sternik taught him how to draw out the blood gradually, how to clean off the dirt with various solutions and how to write out a kind of identity card for the dead animal, with personal details like total length, weight, wingspan, sex, color of eyes, length of beak, contents of stomach, and so on. Then how to move the wings of the carcass from side to side to render them flexible before the operation.
“The operation,” explained Sternik, “mainly consists of turning the bird inside out as one does a glove, in the process amputating, step by step, only those parts whose amputation allows the maximum preservation of the skin in its entirety. Thus, the eyes are thrown away and their color noted, the brain is thrown away and the skull retained, and the skin is carefully cleaned of fat. Then—and only then—the skin is to be turned (again—like a glove) back, to be given the appearance of a living creature by means of joining and stuffing.” Naphtali was a good listener, but a poor pupil. Sternik taught him to respect the creatures and to set them up after the operation in their normal position, that which was most natural to them. Not in the manner of some “charlatans” (“some have made it into even this respected craft”)—who set up a bird with one wing raised and a foot tensed, as if poised for flight, with its beak open, ready to screech.
It seems that Naphtali did not quite understand Sternik. He tired very quickly of all rules. Instead of soft, flexible wire, he used springy steel, and instead of sawdust that had been specially imported from abroad, he stuffed seaweed into the open bellies. Nor did he observe the precise sequence of steps of the operation. But what particularly aroused his fastidious teacher’s ire was Naphtali’s style—his style of setting up the bird. Naphtali found no respect whatever, in himself, for the “normal” stance of a creature; he saw no heresy in a bird tensing for flight. On the contrary, the normal, natural pose of the creature annoyed him. His eyes rolled, his pipe clattered between his teeth. In a state of elation he would lengthen the short neck of the thrush, bend the straight beak of the kingfisher, shorten the legs of the hawk, tear off the feathers and stick round, owl-like eyes into the head of the pigeon. Actually he aimed at greater and more terrible distortions than these, but Sternik’s professional strictness kept him in check. Who was Naphtali Noi quarrelling with? He had left Jerusalem and his wife, had stopped eating meat, but went on killing the creatures of the Creator. What for? To give them a new form.
“There are already quite enough charlatans in this profession,” said Sternik one day and sent him away from his workshop.
And Naphtali Noi came to live on a rooftop in this city and went on with his work. He tried to sell some of his stuffed birds and was glad he could not find any buyers. There was nothing like them in the biology books. Naphtali went to work as a proofreader. He would spend the evenings at the newspaper and the mornings on his own work. And the hour between day and night he would spend on neither of these, but would stand silent—the pipe in his mouth upside down and extinguished—and stare in turn at the houses of the city, the sea, and the fringes of the sky.
III
The geranium is a modest plant; it stays in its place, withdrawn, does not spread out unduly, does not demand much water or manure, and yet gives out flowers all year round. And the flowers too are modest, tiny, pale blue or red in color, and when they wither they fall into the box and fertilize the plant. I just have to pass my hand over them, and a great tranquility flows into it—and then into me.
A horrible voice, a woman’s voice: “Don’t go, I told you. No. It’ll be the end of you, I said. The end of you.” The voice was swallowed up in the crying of a child or perhaps of a number of children; the voice broke up into many voices. In the house next door was a huge, closed window. There, I thought, the voices break. In the room stood a heavy table with four wooden legs and the table was covered with a white tablecloth on which was a two-branched silver candlestick with lighted candles. This table was amazingly similar to the dining table in my grandfather’s house when I was a child. I had never seen a living person beside this table. I threw a stone at the window and it seemed to sink into clay or sand, without sound and without echo.
I went up to the edge of the roof, looking with all my eyes. The same ancient, heavy table. And the candles, alight. No. There was no one there. The sea glinted beyond the roof. Not the big sea, just a thin strip of sea, preparing itself for the sun. In another two or three hours the sun would come into it and it would cover itself with gloom, and a shadow would steal into my heart from there. I opened the box in which I kept all my various taxidermy materials: seaweed, scissors, nylon thread, plastic glue, plastic paints, wire, and some iron implements. I took a hammer and some small steel nails and went down to the entrance of the house to put up my mailbox.
Naphtali was known in intellectual circles as a person of original taste, a man of knowledge. And since no one could say exactly in which field he was most talented, he was sent periodicals and journals of all kinds from the Bible Society, the Society for the Preservation of Flora, and the Society for Moral Improvement, was sent archaeological, philological, literary, and astrological reviews—and was urged to express an opinion on this or that and, if possible, to contribute an article of his own.
It’s worth noting that, although many people had heard of Naphtali Noi, very few had met him, and of these very few, very few indeed were among his acquaintances. It would not be correct to say that people turned away from him. There were also those who were very happy to exchange a word or two with him. There was something hearty in his big brown eyes. His face was full, even sated. He was squat and solid in stature. His walk was easy, and his smile unexpected. He could send out a smile from any part of his face. This smile was perhaps pleasant to see, but it was very private, and generally did not encourage people to approach him and speak to him. His acquaintances knew that this smile of his was not meant for them, and so they remained within their own borders and Naphtali in his.
Because they left him on his own, he did not turn them down nor did he deny his own impulses, and so from time to time he would send an article to one journal or another. “The Eclipse of the Moon and the Eclipse of the Mind,” “Archaeology and the Loss of Purpose in Modern Existence,” “The Use of the Name of God and the Magic of the Word,” “From the Machine Age to the Age of Silence,” “The Revolt of the Beautiful in Nature,” and so on. The articles called up echoes and sharp retorts from one circle or another and soon sank into an oblivion of stalemate. And Naphtali Noi, rather than being astonished at the short lives of his articles, would wonder at the fuss they caused in this or that academic circle; his eyes would pucker up and his smile would sink dimples in his full cheeks. Dark dimples.
When I came to live in this house I put my mailbox up in the downstairs entrance. The next day I found it hanging about forty centimeters higher than I had left it. There was a note in the aperture: “We have moved your mailbox so that it will not prevent access to the light switch for the stairs at night. Thanking you, the Tenants of the House.” In my imagination I saw all the tenants of the house holding the mailbox at once, pulling it down with one pull, and with the pounding of tens of hands fixing it in its new place. It also annoyed me that in order to remove the box from its original place and put it up in its new one, they would have had to open it, for the nails had been banged into the wall from inside the box. Which meant that the tenants of the house supposed that my mailbox was communal property. I put the box back in its original place. The next day I found it higher up again, this time with no note. I put it back in its place again.
So my mailbox changed places all the time. It should be said, to the credit of the tenants, that they never disturbed me in my work when I came down to repair what they had spoiled. But as time went by the nail holes in the box got too wide and I had to make new ones. And the holes in the wall multiplied, till I was forced to use longer nails. My only consolation was that my neighbors were forced to do the same.
I had not eaten since morning and the work of putting up the mailbox had increased my hunger. I washed my hands and face and headed for the kitchen to eat something. The doorbell rang, and a bearded man with a pleasant, comfortable, but slightly bewildered face was standing in the doorway. He asked if Naphtali Noi lived here. I said to him, “No, what do you mean, there’s no Naphtali Noi here, and actually there’s no Naphtali Noi at all.” But I was all upset about nothing, because the man was quiet, modest, and didn’t really seem like he meant to do me any harm. And, anyhow, he wasn’t looking at me but at my taxidermy. There was something undefined in his eyes: a question, or a warning. When he saw that I was annoyed he turned and went.
Even as he was going he didn’t scold or shout at me. He just said, “You’re Naphtali Noi. I only wanted to see. I’ll come some other time.” He even looked familiar to me—he resembled that bearded character who sells combs in the city streets. That one’s flesh weeps through his rags and this one was properly dressed, other than that they only differed in dress. I actually expected him to pull out a pile of multicolored combs from his pocket and offer them to me. The one in the street would add, at times, in between combs, a kind of warning: “The last train is leaving, gentlemen! The last train is leaving!” I bet his train had already left many years ago. Somehow I was pleased when he told me he would come again to have a look at my stuffed animals.
I was lost in thought when the door to the roof burst open like in a whirlwind and my two little angels, the twins Nili and Lili, fell upon me.
The noise Nili and Lili are capable of making could fill a king’s palace, let alone a miserable space like mine. At first they walk contentedly on either side of me, casting long glances at the stuffed wildfowl, staring at each other, and then their fluttering eyes begin to smile. I’ve never been able to understand how the circles of their eyes can contain so much light. Their faces change shades, like a strip of sea being played with by the sun.
“Why is his head so high?”
“So he can see a long way,” I answered.
“And can he fly?”
“No,” I said.
“So why can’t he fly?”
“Because he’s got straw in his belly.”
“But why has he got straw in his belly?”
“So he can’t fly.”
Nili’s eyes grew very wide and darkened a little. Lili did not hear. She only looked on.
“So why is he looking up so high?”
And then, in unison, as though a hidden signal had been received, the two began to fly around the roof with their little skirts waving. And Naphtali ran after them afraid that their feet might leave the roof and they might take wing. He did not catch them, but they caught him.
They are playing catch with him. One pulls his trousers, and as he rolls after her to catch her the other one pinches him there, and he runs after her. And the voices of both chime out, and their peals of laughter resound on the roof like golden bells. By this time Naphtali is already down on all fours and feeling like a wildcat, a kind of cheetah, or a young tiger pouncing on a pair of gazelles. And then the hoarse and dangerous trumpet of the hunter is heard:
“Ni-li-li! Li-li-li! The soup’s getting cold!” This is Mrs. Schturz, the mother of the twins, a woman of great girth and with a strong but hoarse voice. It’s a wonder how such a coarse voice can put together two such delicate-sounding names. “Ni-li-li!” the voice calls. Naphtali straightens up and shakes his trousers, and the little ones open their eyes wide and listen. Actually the roof is dirty. Between the flowerpots and ferns strips of wall stare out, peeled of their plaster. Blobs of black tar are stuck in little piles all over the roof. Like an old patched-up garment.
“Nililili! The soup’s getting cold—Father’s waiting—”
Nili and Lili gather their wings and next to the door the two of them say in unison:
“Mama said you should come at four o’clock.”
Their mother, Mrs. Schturz, a large-limbed flushed-faced house-wife, did not particularly like me, but she was on to a good thing with me, since I would entertain the twins whenever she went to town. She herself never bothered me, so she didn’t owe me any thanks. It was enough for me to hear Nili and Lili chirp.
If Mrs. Schturz didn’t particularly like me, Mr. Schturz did not particularly hate me. I didn’t really know him, as I didn’t really know the other tenants of the house, but this I did know, that whenever I was called down to their flat—he was not at home. Once when I was going down there he passed or crept by me like a shadow, and if you can believe that a shadow can say hello, then Mr. Schturz said hello to me. The house is old, the windows of the staircase are blocked with bricks and sandbags from the days of war, and on the staircase of the house a man looks like a shadow.
The sun entered into a thick cloud, a remnant of the winter, as into a hairy coat, and this tickled my kidneys. Of the lilting laughter of the little ones nothing remained but rags interspersed with nervous silence. The palpitations of my heart seeped down into my stomach. I went into the bathroom. There is a wide drainpipe there that goes from ceiling to floor, then down into the Schturz’s apartment, from there into the lower floors of the house, and from there joins a wider pipe that continues under the ground and on to a pipe that is wider still, and so on. It is a wonderful conductor of sound. I closed the window so that the noises from outside wouldn’t disturb me, and caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror. Burning eyes turned away from me. I ignored them and looked around. There was no one there with me.
Naphtali sat down on the step of his shower stall, turned his face inside and pressed his head to the pipe.
IV
No one but me knows Lysanda. And the reason is simple—I created her.
God created man from dust and Eve from his rib; I made Lysanda as I rocked alone in my rocking chair on long, lonely evenings. And I didn’t make her all at once.
My mother, may she rest in peace, was a beautiful woman. But I could not bear the flesh of her arm. It was thick, and flopped a bit when she moved her hand to pat my head, and even more when she moved it to hit me. My first love would set off my masculinity with her wide-open eyes. Then those open eyes would melt me and I could do nothing to close them. I re-invented Lysanda continually, according to my needs.
Her hair, the color of smoldering embers, falls smoothly around her shoulders. Her shoulders are like two slightly raised mounds of ivory, one a little higher than the other (why?—I wanted it that way), and a sliver of shadow falls from them and tapers, warm and flickering, between her breasts. Her eyes are calm and good, and her eyebrows are raised questioningly. Her chin is made to support the entire range of smiles I need, as the occasion requires, without adding to them or detracting from them.
Her appearance: a sea that has suddenly frozen—a sea of stillness and motion.
In the beginning she wore red sandals on her feet, and she would float above the roof. I said to her, “Come down and stand on the roof.” She came down a little, but her sandals still didn’t touch the roof. I made her white sandals and said to her, “Come down and stand on the roof.” She refused and said, “The white will get dirty on the roof.” I made her gray sandals. What did she do? She threw the sandals away and came down on to the roof in her bare feet, smiling at me. Perhaps she did this to demonstrate a degree of independence. Anyhow, I stared at her with angry loving eyes.
She had wonderful hands. One day she came to me wearing dark gloves. I almost threw her out. She giggled, and the gloves faded away like a shadow. Perhaps like the shadow in my heart.
Before I married Leah everyone was sure I would marry Anath. Anath was very pretty—the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. Her mother told me, “You’re getting a treasure, make sure you know how to keep it.” I understood she wasn’t exaggerating. Leah wasn’t pretty, she was even a bit ugly. But her great suffering had spun a fine thread of grace across her face. When sorrow came upon her, she would close her shutters on the world for a day or two. There were thick books of suffering in her heart, and at times I would help her leaf through them.
That evening I had to decide between their two houses—and in both of them they were waiting for me. I can’t say this didn’t please me—to be the one waited for, the one with the choice in his hands. I should add that for a long time I had done all I could to make sure that the decision—which meanwhile I had postponed again and again—should remain my sole prerogative. And when the time came, and they were waiting for me in both their houses, in both houses on the same day and at the same time—whose house should I go to? Anath was the paragon of all virtues. Her beauty alone was enough to set me trembling. Nor did she lack understanding, status, wealth, manners, graces.
It was a rainy evening and I was wearing my best clothes. I was close to the street where Anath lived. I could see the house with its glass-enclosed verandas. Currents of water swirled along the street, lapping up against the curb. I thought of my new shoes. It would be a pity to ruin them—they would probably get soaked as I crossed the street. I couldn’t walk into Anath’s elegant home, where her fastidious parents were waiting for me, in slimy shoes. I took a shortcut through a side street, and suddenly found myself outside the window of Leah’s tiny room.
I made Lysanda just as I wanted her. And no water threatened to soak my shoes.
V
When Batia first came to him, she surprised him in the toilet. He was seated leaning over that drainpipe, listening to the familiar sounds from the Schturz apartment, for example, the measured steps of Mrs. Schturz leaving the house, or the sweet twitterings of Nili and Lili calling him to come down. He sat on the stone step of the shower, sweating, tense, disheveled, his face aglow. No, it wasn’t exactly a position he liked to be seen in. She was big and preposterous; so big that if he had known some magic phrase that could have whisked this strange woman away, out of his sight, then—well it’s doubtful he would have spoken it.
For, apart from the fact that she was not entirely alien—there was a book in her hand, one of his, he believed—she carried her high bosom, in its gray wool sweater, with pride, and her smile took in her protruding, determined chin and illuminated her tiny, gleaming teeth, which were rooted there like an inexorable statement.
Naphtali, slightly confused now, set his hands to work. He ran one down the drainpipe, picked up a few things, opened a tap and closed it. It was impossible to move. The woman was everywhere. He raised his head to the window and said that he had lost something and that he was looking for the something he had lost.
The visitor collected her smile and asked what he had lost. But Naphtali walked quickly out onto the roof, where he met the sun in the sky, and this dispelled his confusion. The woman’s eyes were big, brown, and protuberant. He had a distinct feeling that if she was to get angry or excited, or if she fell in love, the eyes would leap out of their sockets. This disturbed him. She was also slightly, very slightly, cock-eyed—though in such a way that her gaze didn’t wander out to the sides but closed in on whatever she saw. It was this—as he discovered later—that was largely responsible for the fact that in anger she looked absolutely furious; in pity, like the Mother of the Savior; in happiness, gleeful; and in sorrow, as though about to commit suicide. Her blonde hair was cut short, her nose and ears were small and neutral.
He said, “Sit down.” She said, “Thank you, here’s the book,” and went to the edge of the roof to look out at the sea. I saw that her thighs were broad, almost bursting out of her narrow skirt, and the joints of her knees looked warm. I walked up to the bougainvillea, holding a pair of pruning shears. Lysanda stood facing me, smiling. I ignored her and looked at my watch. Five to four. And at four I had to be with my little ones.
Batia said, “You’ve got a nice roof.” I said, “Yes,” and she walked quickly up to the stuffed wildfowl and let out a “Hey” of surprise and said, “It’s practically alive, and you don’t even have to feed it.” “You don’t have to feed it,” I said, “because it’s full of straw.” She laughed and exchanged glances with its tiny, glinting eyes. The wild bird’s head was mounted on its long neck in such a way that while the left eye looked downward, the right one looked up at the sky.
With her finger she prodded a sharp, resilient feather that jutted out of its tail and said, “I wish I had one like it.” “What next,” I said to Lysanda, “What next.” Lysanda said, “What next.” Batia said, “Thanks, I knew you wouldn’t turn me down,” and hurried to the banister of the roof where she looked down and said, “You can get dizzy up here.” Then she said, “It’s wonderful to live on a roof,” and shook her head, and with the book that was in her hand described a circle across the sky, and I saw there was something attractive about her forehead.
Batia spoke about Buki and said that she was sick of his stories. When she’s alone in a room, she often wants the ceiling to vanish and the sky to lean down to her. “It’s so near the sky here,” she said. “Near enough to make you dizzy,” I said. The plants had bowed their heads and shrunk, and the bougainvillea had donned a sad olive color over its gay blooms. All the lizards had disappeared from the roof. I got angry and said, “Enough to make you dizzy.”
I looked at the door to the roof. It was open. It had been open when Batia invaded the place. My little ones, Nili and Lili, had left it open when they left and I had not closed it so I could hear the sounds of their little feet.
Batia didn’t look at the door; she laughed. Already I felt that her skin was very thick, and though her laugh reverberated all over the roof, her skin didn’t breathe at all.
She looked at the pavement and said that from up here you can’t see the sweat and dirt. She sometimes dreams, she said, that she’s up somewhere high, and she sees people as small as cats. “Like mechanized dolls,” I said. “Like poor little mice,” she said. “Like poor little cockroaches,” I said. “Like mechanized cockroaches,” she said. I agreed with her and she agreed with me and at that moment we saw that the world was a shameful world and her tiny hand rested miserable and helpless on my arm.
Yes, her hand was tiny, completely out of proportion to her big head, her firm chin, her short neck, her broad thighs and her breasts which were also resting on me, and not only on me, but on all the roof in all their abundance. The sleeves of her sweater were rolled up to the elbows and the skin of her arm was covered with a fine, pale down, like the skin of my mother’s arm, may she rest in peace.
“Come on, Yakoko,” rang the voices of the little ones downstairs. They called me “Yakoko.” It was a sign of their affection. “Yakoko” was the Srulik’s nickname, he was the son of the news vendor on the corner. He wears a cloth hat on his head winter and summer, and makes funny faces for the girls. Actually he makes faces at everyone, and no one can guess his age. A wave of sweetness spread through my stomach. I looked at my watch. It was half past four. Batia went inside the room and I went in after her. She rummaged around my books and said that Kierkegaard is a good writer and it’s obvious that he suffered a lot and stuff because he loved Regina. I said to her that he had loved not Regina but through Regina. “What do you care if I love you,” he had said. Batia stood up, faced me, pursed her lips almost painfully and called out, “No. He loved her and that’s why he was so miserable.” I said to her that Kierkegaard said that love consumes the lovers. She narrowed her gaze on me in anger and contempt, and the corners of her lips drooped down in disgust and she was unable to say a word. Then she moved away and fled to the window.
I said to her, “See that other window down there?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “See the table with the white tablecloth with two candlesticks on it and two lit candles in them?” She said, “I can’t see a thing except an old, boring, musty room,” and turned around to straighten the pictures on my wall. Then I said, to pacify her, “What I meant to say to you before was that Kierkegaard is a cry to God.”
Batia sat down on the bed, serious, her lips pursed, her chin firm, her eyes frozen. I should have offered her some coffee, but it was already half past four, and at half past five Mrs. Schturz comes back home and receives visitors and the little girls chirp and call, “Yakoko, come on down!” I sat in a chair opposite her, and Batia started to speak and said that there is a kind of sadness in the house and all at once she feels that here thought is superfluous. Her big bosom rose and fell as she said that she gets terribly frightened when, at times, she feels this way, as if she were losing her common sense. I said, “Perhaps it’s because there isn’t enough light in the room,” and offered to turn on the light. “No,” she said, rummaged in her handbag, took out a cigarette, lit a match with a trembling hand, and said that the smoke of the cigarette gives her back her common sense. I brought an ashtray and said that even common sense doesn’t always make sense. And Naphtali Noi sat next to her, held her free hand in his, and laughed into his liver as he told her the story about Peretz and the rooster.
Peretz and Naphtali used to go hunting together. Peretz was a he-man type, with big hands, a dirty mouth, and the strength of an ox. There was nothing false about him, and as a result everybody liked him and he liked everybody. Peretz loved three things—a good hunt, a hearty meal, and a healthy woman with meat on her bones.
One day they went hunting near Nahal Reuven and caught nothing but a few marsh birds. It was raining, and they wallowed in mud and were as hungry as wolves. They came to the game warden’s hut and held a council. Marsh birds cook very slowly and one can die of hunger before they’re ready to eat. Peretz winked, went out, wandered to and fro, crowed a few times, and came back holding a handsome rooster, rich of plume, plump of breast, with a comb that stood erect like the crown of a king.
A spirit of fun came over Peretz, and instead of cutting the rooster’s head off with one swing of a knife, in the usual way, this is what he did: He took his scout’s knife out of its sheath and wiped it on his handkerchief. Then he looked at it in the dim light two or three times, like a professional butcher, to make sure the blade was sharp and smooth and flawless. Then he gathered the rooster’s wings to its back and held them in one hand, pulled back the crowned head of the bird and blew into the feathers of its neck very religiously till he had cleared a space, mumbled something resembling a blessing and with his other hand passed the blade of the knife over the rooster’s neck. Then he threw the rooster out into the rain to wash the blood away, wiped the knife and returned it to its sheath.
Peretz had a sure hand. He never needed to aim twice at any fowl or porcupine or wild pig, and never needed to strike more than once with his knife to separate a foot from a leg or a neck from a head whenever he prepared a bird for the pot.
Everyone enjoyed watching the slaughtering. The game warden set up a paraffin stove with a pot of water on it and Peretz turned to the door to bring in the slaughtered bird, when, to everyone’s amazement, there was the rooster standing on the windowsill, eyes as bright as daggers, its comb erect as a coronet, and at that very moment it let out a clear call, an angry, powerful, regal “Ku-ku-ri-ku.” There was a single drop of coagulated blood on its neck, like an ornamental drop of amber.
All of us started back in horror, Peretz most of all. That day he did not eat the meat of the marsh birds with gusto, in his usual manner—he ate like one whose throat was held in a vise. After a few days Naphtali discovered that Peretz was sick. “It’s nothing,” Peretz said to him when he visited, and tried to laugh. “My neck hurts a bit, that’s all.”
To cut it short, Peretz died. The hospital said it was cancer. According to common sense he died of cancer. But, as I said, common sense doesn’t always make sense. “By the way,” Naphtali concluded his story, “the rooster is still alive and has fathered a lot of chicks for his master since that day.”
Batia pulled her hand away from Naphtali’s and quickly left the roof and the house, Naphtali laughed into his liver and lit his pipe. Then he half closed his eyes and said slowly, “At last we’re alone, Lysanda.” “Are you sure?” she asked. Lysanda stood leaning against the wall, her eyes half closed. “What do you mean, am I sure?” he demanded angrily, “Batia’s gone, isn’t she?” “Is she gone?” asked Lysanda. “Of course she’s gone, and good riddance.” Lysanda moved her thighs gracefully and opened her eyes the tiniest crack and whispered artlessly—just as was necessary—“And you didn’t give her the key?”
“What key?”
“The spare key, the one you keep hidden in the box.”
I rubbed my forehead with my hand and remembered. Yes, I had given her the key and forgotten. She wanted to sit on the roof in the evenings when I was away at the newspaper. She won’t disturb me, she said. She respects my work, she said. That’s all she’s asked me for.
And now Batia has a key to my roof.
VI
I woke up in a cabin. I knew it was a cabin right away because I had to grab hold of the bed above me to be able to stand up steadily and get dressed. Above the bed above me was another bed and above it another bed and above that one yet another bed, and so on; the beds were arranged tier upon tier upward and I couldn’t see the highest one. My brother said something in a soft, fatherly tone, and I knew I had to hurry. Something great was in store for me.
I started walking quickly, and I suddenly realized that I was wearing nothing but my underpants. But I had gotten dressed in the cabin! I hurried back to the same place but found no cabin, nor any other structure. Nor did I remember what the place looked like and I wondered at this, and also at the fact that my brother, who should have been by my side, was not by my side.
I knew they were waiting for me and I didn’t know where to go. I heard a voice and turned around and saw before me a huge marsh full of puddles. I stood up on my toes so as not to dirty my new shoes. I could see myself from the side and laughed at myself mockingly: he worries about his shoes but doesn’t worry about drowning. A man called something to me from across the marsh, but I couldn’t hear his voice. He was big and strong and I was certain I knew him, and a weakness descended over my head and my feet. I knew the man had a strong voice and I was afraid to hear it. He gestured with his hands. When I passed by him he didn’t notice me, just kept waving his long, rake-like arms.
I increased my pace, dragging heavy clods of earth in my shoes. People passed to the right and to the left and paid no attention to me. I didn’t see their faces, but they were wearing white shirts and spotless white trousers, and they walked with a confident step. I felt they were not my friends.
I began to doubt if this great thing had anything to do with me at all, and I couldn’t understand what I was doing here. The big man appeared again in front of me and it was impossible now to see his face, for he was entirely black with mud, and he waved his long arms around in circles, one after the other, like the sails of a windmill.
I was very cold and I shrank up. I brought my shoulders down to my thighs and my back into my stomach and pitied the man as if he were me. When I awoke I was still stuck together, shoulders to thighs and back to stomach, and with all my strength I pressed myself back into the dream.
I was frightened.
VII
One night I got home from work after midnight to find the light on in my room. In the light was Batia, at work fixing up the house. My flat is a small one, and its furnishings are few. In the kitchenette are a paraffin stove and a few utensils. In the main room are a low Arab tea table, a straw armchair, two stools, some bookshelves, two or three pictures, and the bed. And at the foot of the bed a white bearskin. The room has an alcove in which stand my work table and a chair. Batia had done everything she could with this space to give it form, a form that I could not grasp. The furniture surrendered to the touch of her hands. I felt that I could go.
But the exit was guarded by Lysanda. On her face was one of her most beautiful smiles. This smile would pull her thin lips and straight teeth up toward the bulge of her cheekbones, leaving, in the space between her teeth, a darkness warmer than all love. Lysanda. She wasn’t jealous. In her, everything was covered up and wide open at the same time. I knew that if I raised my hand to hit her, it wouldn’t connect. This filled me with joy.
I sat down and sucked on my pipe. Lysanda loved my pipe. At times she would weave around in its smoke. I don’t know why I suddenly asked about the aristocratic-looking man who had come to ask if this was where I lived and if I was me, had looked at a stuffed bird and then left—perhaps because I saw a squashed cigarette butt in the square ashtray. Who had smoked that cigarette before I got home? It couldn’t have been Batia. None of her lipstick was on it. Batia answered hurriedly, “Why do you ask?” “I just want to know.” Batia said, “He just came by. Just like that. ‘To see,’ he said.” I said, “And he didn’t ask if Naphtali Noi lives here?” She answered as if in on some kind of joke, “Didn’t ask at all. Interesting, isn’t it? He didn’t ask at all.” She pursed her lips mischievously, and her knee shook. I drew in some smoke and said, “But he already knows I live here and that I’m certainly me. He just came to have a peek in.” “Yes, yes, he came to have a peek and left straight away,” she said. “He came to peek in? Pity I wasn’t here.”
“Buki said you’ve got a nice flat,” she said. “Buki?” I asked. She said, “Buki. He came, had a peek, and went.” Buki? I wondered. “So it was Buki,” I said, and controlled my anger.
Batia poured. It was Cointreau that I had received as a holiday gift at work and hadn’t opened. Yet the bottle was no longer closed, nor was it full. She must have offered some to whoever was here, what’s-his-name, Buki. Buki was a smart, bright fellow, a bit of a political climber with some Bohemian affectations, and Batia was his girlfriend. His girlfriend in between times. I had nothing against Buki. The earth can bear all types of creatures on its surface without crumbling. But I couldn’t drink the liqueur.
Batia said, “Smell it.” I smelled it. It had the scent of citrus buds, the scent of Lysanda’s hair. “Now let’s drink,” said Batia. “It smells good,” I said, “it’s a pity to drink it.” “Don’t say that, don’t say that,” said Batia, her eyes flashing nervously, her lips closing severely. Lysanda smiled at me through the windowpane. I closed my eyes and emptied the glass with one gulp, and a harp with silver strings stretched across Lysanda’s face.
“Lysanda,” I said.
Batia said, “Not all at once. You don’t drink Cointreau all at once. You take it in slow sips to prolong the pleasure.” I drank my second and third glasses in slow sips, and Batia told me that when her husband, the sailor, used to go on long voyages—and this was the first I heard that she had been married and that her husband had been a sailor who used to go on long voyages—he would send her Cointreau and flowers for her birthdays. On her twenty-second birthday her husband the sailor was off on a long voyage and he didn’t send her Cointreau and flowers. She sat on a chair on her porch for hours without moving. A friend came to visit her, another sailor, Giggie, they called him, and he had a bottle of whiskey. They drank the whiskey without talking. They finished the bottle and Giggie turned it upside down, picked her up in his arms, and carried her to the bed. There he undressed her, spread a blanket over her, and went away. “You know,” she began, but didn’t go on, and her eyes hurt to look at me. She took my right hand between her two hands and then laid the three hands on her knee. Her knee was not too soft and not too hard. It had been a long time since a woman’s knee was so close to me. I wanted to breathe in the scent of my pipe, the scent of the calmness, the scent of lonely frightened hours. But the fire in my pipe had gone out and I needed both my hands to relight it, and a film of dark and nervous sadness misted over Batia’s protuberant eyes. I couldn’t pull my hand out of hers.
She may have sensed my confusion. It’s a wonder that she sensed my confusion through her thick skin. Gently she gave back my hand and went out onto the roof. I heard her laughter rolling there like little stones dribbling down a slope. I went out onto the roof after her, with the bottle in my hand. The roof was moon-wrapped, and rocked like a boat, and in the corner the antenna rose like a mast. With a little black bird on top of it. I drank from the bottle, but not with great pleasure. I have never been really drunk. If I was able to get so drunk I’d forget, it’s almost certain I would live not on a rooftop but in a cellar.
Batia looked at the wildfowl. It nodded its head, and Batia nodded her head and laughed a broken laugh through open teeth and called to it, “Pretty pretty,” and said she was laughing at the thought of the rooster and my dead friend Peretz. I understood that the story of my dead friend Peretz and the rooster amused her a lot. Passionately she kissed the edge of a feather in the stuffed fowl’s tail, and made two rounds of the roof without speaking. Then she made another round and I sucked studiously on my pipe, and she came up to me and looked into my eyes. Her eyes were bloodshot like roses. The night was warm and pink and the moon infused everything and the smoke from the pipe spread slowly from side to side without the strength to rise. I leaned my nose toward Batia’s eyes to see if they really had a smell and Batia pressed them to my lips. Then we stood together and watched the lights going out all over the city and listened to the periods of stillness, to the sweat sinking into the streets that curled like wounded crocodiles. Suddenly it was sad. Batia looked at the ink-blue strip of sea and said, “You know, the sky’s really close up here.” I didn’t want to look at the sky. I was glad the moon permeated everything. I was glad the smoke of the pipe spread outward and then fell down. “Like it’s resting on the roof,” Batia continued, “resting on my hair,” she continued, “on my shoulders.” She shrugged her shoulders.
Batia’s shoulders were thick and Lysanda’s shoulders were delicate. Batia’s neck was strong and her hair short, while Lysanda’s neck was thin and fragile, and her hair was smooth and flowing. “You can just stand here and look forever,” she said. “Yes, yes,” I said, “the sea’s salty. You can feel its saltiness on your lips.” “I love to feel its saltiness on my lips,” said Batia, and licked my lips. I licked her lips. Lysanda breathed a scent of citrus buds into my ears, and even my little finger rose to greet her. “Lysanda,” I said. “Who?” asked Batia. “I’ll fix some coffee,” I said. “No, no,” said Batia, and her chest was heavy on mine. We were both the same height. All I had to do was to bend down and I would feel the warmth of a living, breathing bosom on my face where I could chew on the scented sting of a childish citron till my teeth went numb.
Batia didn’t scream. She patted my head sympathetically and suggested we have some coffee. The night was heavy, compressed. Like Batia’s skin, I thought. She has a skin that never sheds blood, I thought.
We had some coffee and sandwiches that Batia prepared, and finished off with more Cointreau from the square bottle that was rapidly emptying. And, feeling good, what with the Cointreau and the salty cheese sandwiches and the moon pouring down into our eyes, we began to tell each other things—details of our lives, large and small. Batia told me about her house of horrors—that’s what she called her home—where they were all afraid to open the door, because every time the door opened, a new disaster entered—and her interlocutor sympathized and said, “Yes, yes, that’s the way of the world.” And she told about a dream she once had of becoming an actress, so that she could disguise herself as someone else and so fool the next disaster and escape it, till she began to believe that she really could change her appearance at will. And Batia laughed a very lonely laugh. And why are people so . . . I don’t know what, not this and not that, it’s enough to really make you cry. And she said that she liked the smell of his pipe. At the same time she tied his tie for him and said that every tie she ever tied always came to nothing (“A knotted tie lasts longer,” she says). “It’s degrading,” she said, with great seriousness.
“Yes, yes,” her interlocutor nodded his head, and Batia tells him that she doesn’t love by halves. She gives herself, all of herself, in love. There could be no doubt about this—her breasts swung as she spoke, as if striving to burst out, and her heart was jumping around behind them. “Believe me, Naphtali,” she said to him, “believe me, I love people, I’m built that way, I’m simply built that way.” A yellow moth climbed onto her chest. One of those moths that go anyplace where it’s warm. Through the smoke of his pipe he could see, on the window between the room and the roof, a pink lizard doing hunting exercises with a darting tongue. “I love people,” said Batia. “Yes, yes,” said Naphtali, “I love animals too.” “You do?” asked Batia.
He told her that he got on fine with animals. Whatever can be stuffed, he stuffs. Spiders, butterflies, ants, lizards, and cockroaches aren’t very good for stuffing. And there’s no need for it, either. It’s nice to see how well they get along. An ant will never get eaten up by another ant, unless it’s dead. Cockroaches too, as long as they’re alive, can run around in complete freedom among ants, and the ants won’t touch them or try to harm them, except, perhaps, for a slight pull on one feeler or another, just for fun. Or sometime they might also turn a roach over on its back, for then it would be in their power. And it’s true that lizards swallow live butterflies, but they do it very gracefully.
“Cockroaches,” continued Naphtali delightedly, “are very charming little creatures that appear to have many legs only because of their great sensitivity—that is, they actually have only six legs and two feelers, each one very delicate and extremely sensitive, so that the slightest motion sets them trembling and then they flutter about in all directions, as though warding off evil spirits. It’s the same with the divine Buddha, who is depicted with eight arms or more. Did Buddha the man have eight arms? But we never have enough arms to keep ourselves safe. It’s wonderful to see a cockroach being carted away for burial,” said Naphtali. “The ants never make a mistake. Eight ants, no more and no less, bear it away, one to each leg and to each feeler. Those with the feelers lead the procession. I don’t know if there’s a master of ceremonies, but the corpse is carried slowly and silently, with a kind of sacred sorrow. It never drags on the ground. It is carried as if floating on air.”
Batia began to shiver. “I’m cold,” she said. “Actually I’m not cold, but I’m cold,” she said, and grabbed his hand nervously. Then she put down his hand and picked up a glass of Cointreau and her teeth knocked against the glass.
The night glowed with a sort of hidden warmth, and Batia told him about her limbless friend—who had had both legs amputated—a good-looking and intelligent young man. She enjoyed talking to this friend. They would sit in a café, or in his room, drinking coffee and talking, talking and laughing. A pure friendship. One day she rang his doorbell and heard his voice: “The door’s open.” She pushed on the door. It was indeed open. In the room, on the sofa, lay her friend, naked as on the day he was born. Though not exactly as on the day he was born, since he was limbless after all. His body was red and his stumps stuck up into the air. “This is me,” he said. “Now spit on me!” he cried savagely.
Batia sunk her head into her shoulders as though trying to protect herself. The moon had gathered itself up higher and farther, and a sort of coarse and frothing mouth seemed to be chewing the roof. The night was about to be torn to tatters. I was afraid to raise my head. It was good to feel Batia’s broad thighs and her heavy legs kneeling on the roof.
“Yes,” said Batia, and her knees wobbled from side to side, her chest exposed to me. I was on my knees and was afraid to raise my head. The night was vanishing into the distance, and the expanses that were opening up behind it made me dizzy. Or perhaps it was the liqueur.
“How could you?” I asked.
“I was afraid of him,” she said. I put my head down on her stomach. “I was disgusted by him,” she said.
“Her stomach is very soft, Lysanda,” I said.
“His stumps were sticking up,” she said.
“I’m drunk, Lysanda,” I said.
“Like swollen tendons,” she said, and wrapped her arms around me.
“Her skin is thick, Lysanda,” I said.
“I wanted to die,” said Batia, and a wave of life shook her thighs.
“How could you?” cried Naphtali and clung to the nipples of her breasts like a hungry baby.
“I wanted to kill him,” she said, and clung to me too. “I wanted him to die inside me,” she said. “I wanted him to feel good,” she said, “I wanted him to live,” she whispered, “I wanted to give birth to him anew,” she breathed. “I wanted to create him anew,” she dreamed and groaned.
When Naphtali came out of her she said, “When he was in me I thought that when he came out he would come out whole and healthy.” She smiled. You could see her smile. The moon was fading, about to die, and the sky was open to receive the first light, like a wounded jaw opening a doctor’s eye. Her hair was short and as dry as straw. Her neck was thick. And her eyes as empty and thick as her skin. No blood flowed from it. It’s true, I wanted there to be blood. Living, flowing blood, like the leaves of the poppy. My fingers twitched about restlessly.
Batia raised herself and, without bothering to straighten her clothes, wound her arms around his knees. That’s quite unnecessary, thought Naphtali. He had thin knees, which looked as though they were fresh from the womb, and they were shaking a little. Batia fell asleep. A light nasal snore poured out of some opening in her skin. The roof was full of it. A light laughter burst out from somewhere nearby. Perhaps it’s Lysanda laughing. I’ll leave this place, he thought.
Now I’m leaving this place, he thought, and lowered his tired head into Batia’s lap.
VIII
Let us return to my two sweet little gazelles, Nili and Lili (and with what joy I return to them), the two tiny candles of my life, always alight and ready to receive my thick bewildered face. Yes, very bewildered these days.
I washed my flesh delightedly. Until I heard the whistling voices of my little darlings: “Come on, Yakoko. Come on, Yakoko. Come down.” And I went. And how I went.
But first I put my orange shirt over my trousers, the shirt with the four pockets, two on the heart and two on my hips that were now jumping for joy, and in each of the pockets I put toffees and sweets, so that wherever my beloved ones sent their little hands they would find them. And they, my little dears, would fill my pockets with ash and cigarette butts from their father’s ashtrays, and banana peel and watermelon seeds from Mrs. Schturz’s kitchen garbage. And with their tiny feet jumping their voices would ring:
Yakoko my koko
Go get us some choko
Yah kee yah koko
Yah koko riko
and they would laugh till they could laugh no more. And when they could laugh no more, they would throw things at me, anything in reach, and kick me with their little feet, and finally, gasping like delighted puppies, they would jump onto my knees, each onto her own knee, Nili on the right one (she is the firstborn) and Lili on the left, and they would both call out:
“So tell us, what happened to the witch?”
“I’ll tell you the story from the beginning,” I said. In any case, I had forgotten the story I had told them yesterday and the one I had told the day before yesterday and the one I had told the day before that. To tell the truth, it’s the same story in different variations.
“From the beginning,” twittered my little darlings. The skin of their arms and thighs was thin and transparent. Looking at it, all my demons became angels, and all the witches fairies.
I tell them the story about the king who never laughs. For the king loves the girl of his dreams, who appeared to him once in his childhood, and since then he has never laughed. He never laughs, but the people of his kingdom laugh. So he makes terrible trouble for them, beats them a bit and hits them and shoots them and hangs them on trees for the wind and the crows. And my little ones shudder on my knees happily and impatiently. And the miserable, laughing people of the kingdom bring before their king who never laughs a young orphaned shepherd girl (one of those young orphaned shepherd girls who were meant to marry princes) who says she saw, in the cave in the woods, a beautiful maiden combing her long hair in front of a mirror lit by two candles. And the king who never laughs immediately commands that the beautiful maiden be brought from the woods—and all the time I’m thinking where and how to fit the witch into the picture, for a story without a witch is simply not a story for my two little angels; at times their eyes light up as if they themselves were two little witch-girls. And here I sin a mighty sin against poetics and change the plot midstream: the king’s men accompany the little shepherd girl, but it is not a beautiful maiden they find in the cave in the woods—it’s a witch. They bring her before the king. And the witch says to the king (as she caresses the owls on her arm with long veiny fingers), “I shall fulfill your wish, O King, and I want neither silver nor gold, for what would a witch do with silver and gold. But do this: set aside a room for me in your palace, with a mirror and a candle and nothing else in it, and at one minute after midnight come down to the room, and you shall find the maiden your heart desires. Only swear to me that you will not touch her, not even with your little finger.”
The king swears, and when the hour comes and the beautiful maiden is standing before the king, all bathed in light—the beauty of his dreams—the king forgets the oath he has sworn, and approaches her and touches her with his hand. That, really, is how I meant to tell it to my eager little listeners. But instead of this Naphtali Noi said to them, “As soon as the king who never laughs saw her, he began to laugh. And he laughed and laughed, laughed so much until—” I felt a tightening in my throat and began to cough and splutter.
“Till they got married,” continued Nili and Lili. Little demons.
“No,” I said. “No. The king just touched her and right away the beautiful maiden turned into a witch.”
“The witch from the woods?” asked my darlings and squirmed on my knees in excitement.
“Yes,” I said.
“With no teeth in her old mouth and lots and lots of wrinkles?” Suddenly their position on my knees became uncomfortable to them. They looked at me out of their big eyes, slowly slid down from my knees and then looked at each other with great seriousness. Many, many sights passed through their sad eyes. Then, as though everything had become clear to them, their eyes lit up again and in a sudden outburst Nili cried:
“A witch like Aunt Kapusta.”
“Yes, like Aunty Kapusta,” repeated Lili.
“Who’s Aunt Kapusta?” I asked.
“Come on, Yakoko, come on, Yakoko,” they shouted and pulled me by my two hands and dragged me out onto the staircase, and led me down one flight and looked into the keyhole of a door which bore a small copper plate with the inscription RACHEL KAPUSTA.
I looked through the keyhole and saw an old woman lying on a bed, covered up to her neck with a clean sheet; one hand which poked out of the sheet was hanging down and the other was pressing a picture to her heart with thin contorted fingers that looked very long in their thinness, and her face was yellow and her mouth open and empty of teeth. Her lips, her nostrils, did not move, and her hand was still over her heart. There was no doubt—the woman was dead. I was confused. Dead people always confuse me. They never listen. The little girls got frightened suddenly and held each other tightly. Maybe they saw something on my face. I told them to call their mother, to show this to their mother. I tried to imagine Mrs. Schturz’s face, so swollen with life and energy, when she looked through the keyhole.
I wanted to put my hand into my pocket. But my pocket was stuck shut with chewing gum. The naughty creatures! What a fluttering of life there was in that chewing gum.
IX
Batia has a big chin. Big and powerful. Maybe the Creator’s hand slipped, for somehow this firm chin doesn’t fit in with Batia’s abundant—and sometimes painful—femininity. I sometimes feel that her chin is descending on me, reaching for me from every part of Batia’s body. It is what the French call de trop. Not just the chin—she is all de trop. All of her. My whole Batia. A bath of mercury. A bed of roses. A tomb of sweetness. A man walks along and smells flowers, then walks along wallowing in mud and smells flowers, then walks along wallowing in mud and no longer smells flowers, then walks along and is just—wallowing in mud. But, during those first days, between Naphtali and Batia there was only the smell of flowers.
Perhaps I wouldn’t have sunk myself into her so deeply, up to my very fingertips, if, on leaving the joy-nest of my little doves Nili and Lili, I hadn’t looked through that keyhole and seen Mrs. Kapusta lying there so dead. That had been death in all its ugliness. There was nothing alive around her. Not even a fly resting on her open mouth. She had lain there for days and nobody knew. Then you leave the house and you’re afraid to shut the door behind you; you hear footsteps at night, in the silent street, and you’re afraid to turn your head around; you see the wind descending on your roof—Oh, my sweet little tomb! Orgy of forgetfulness! My honey pit! Slow bitter dribble of time!—Batia’s breasts drip it into my flesh. And to what shall I compare her smell? To the bittersweet smell of the citron. The citron is a holy fruit. It is kept for the sacred rites in a glass case itself resembling a breast. It rests in cotton wool, and babies’ fingers are always reaching for it, and small mouths are always drawn to its tip.
Batia spread out uncaring as the earth, her big eyes open. If two pits were to yawn open in the earth, they would look like her two eyes at such moments. She lay as if unaware of her two treasures, the golden juice of her nipples, the wondrous white substance (her breasts had never seen the sun or the air and were as white and submissive as cotton wool). And his lips burned like desert sands. And then, in all its apathy, the wonderful earth began to quake and open wide its mercy, and his teeth tightened like the teeth of a hyena on a chicken’s neck.
And a little eye looked on from the side, laughing.
X
This little eye of Naphtali’s, that peeps out at the moments of greatest excitement to laugh its nasty, mocking laugh—that little eye was very busy these days. But the eye was one thing, and Naphtali another. And the proof: Naphtali Noi’s face and behavior in those days.
His face was a sort of good-heartedness. Lukewarm, lackluster, a kind of comfortable dullness. The light that used to hide deep in his eyes and give them the appearance of being turned inside out moved to the corners now, and his eyes grew clear. At the newspaper they began addressing him by his first name, and when in absentmindedness he overlooked some spelling errors, the typesetters were pleased (fewer corrections) and the editors became angry and made remarks about this to him without polite preliminaries like, “Mr. Noi,” “We have noticed,” and, “Perhaps you could—” which they had had to employ previously. Things went so far that one day the office boy came up to him, slapped him on the back, and said, “It’s hot today.” And Naphtali replied, “Yes, it is.” For it really was hot.
In those days his thoughts began drifting toward a new subject to write about an article, to which he mentally gave the title, “Erotic Elements in (Primitive) Israelite Symbols and Myths,” and what he was really getting at was Sukkot, the feast of Tabernacles, but not the entire Feast of Tabernacles, just the Hosannah prayer of the Feast of Tabernacles, and not the entire Hosannah prayer, the waving of the palm branch and the citron in the Hosannah prayer—that holy union of the erect palm branch and the oval citron. He had already written the title at the head of a blank page, and at one point he even drew a citron under it with its nipple a point. But for some reason he had turned the page over. Those were lazy days, spent in a comfortable stupor.
At times, in the sweltering hours of the afternoon, after Batia’s return from work and after a hasty meal, as they lay naked in their acidic sweat, Batia would beg him to read her what he had written in the morning. Batia could not know, of course, that Naphtali had not written a thing in the morning—not this morning, nor any of the previous mornings, since the day they had become intimate. She was certain that just as she had improved his life as a whole, she had given momentum to Naphtali Noi’s creative spirit; and it is probable that had she known the truth, she would have become very distressed, like a person making an unappreciated sacrifice. Naphtali was very cautious about this, and he would read her extracts from his various writings—things he had not yet published or that he had not yet gotten ready for the press. And when he reached a point in his article that seemed a little unfinished, unclear, obscure, she would raise the upper part of her body, so that her two citrons, swollen with life, would part from her trunk, and she would look at him, her confused treasure, who had so much wisdom, though of a strange kind, and her big eyes would narrow a little, as though looking at him straight from the very wellspring of pity and grace. And her confused treasure, who all this time was still reading, hearing nothing but the sound of his monotonous voice, could already sense his dream dispersing, and all his body strained and stiffened and swayed toward her in thanks. Later she would pick up the crumpled and moist pages that still smelled of sweat, straightening them out carefully and scolding him: “Why don’t you look after them? Look after them. These pages are very important.”
“Ve-ry im-por-tant”—these two words twisted slowly and incomprehensibly in his consciousness, and he understood that he had to get up—this was what Batia wanted—and taste the apple tart she had bought on the way home, and drink some sweetened lemon juice from the refrigerator. Afternoon “tea” spiced with light conversation. Hers, about her circle of acquaintances, and his about the world at large. Batia greatly admired his words, and kept asking for more of them, while her foot tapped the floor with a real thirst for knowledge; then all the alternately smooth and mossy, shady glades of her body that appeared through her bathrobe were as still as a sunny landscape at noon. At times like this Naphtali would make an effort to swallow all his yawns and disinterest, so as not to anger Batia.
“You know what time it is?” she asked suddenly, and her face widened out in a smile, to show him how quickly the hours had passed without being noticed. Naphtali knew what time it was from the calls of Nili and Lili down in Mrs. Schturz’s apartment: “Come on Yakoko / Why don’t you come Yakoko / Bad boy Yakoko—” If he goes down to them he will tell them that the sad king married the beautiful maiden. The time was a superfluous question. He had put his wristwatch down on the little tea table (which Batia had brought) and forgotten it was there.
Each morning they would rise with the birds that filled the roof with their twittering. (“Birds make love in the morning,” said Batia.) Then they would have breakfast. Batia would wish him a productive day’s work, and go off to work herself. After her heavy footfalls had died upon the staircase, he would go back to bed and drowse. In any case he was in no mood for doing anything. Two owls lay on their backs with open bellies, ready for stuffing. Their heads were off and lay beside them. Before meeting Batia he had wanted to liberate their neckless heads from their bodies and to have them “bobble” in the air upon spiral necks; now he looked at them in confusion. He passed the wildfowl and didn’t look at it—he only dusted its tail a little. He watered the flowers and plants without thinking. He didn’t test the soil with his finger to see if it was dry or not, if he had to add a little water or a lot, if it was necessary to break up the dry crust of topsoil. And of course he pruned nothing, nor did he try to improve creation by giving new form to those colorful life forms. Mornings like this he would chew on his little pipe, the bowl of which looked like the head of a bull whose horns, he thought, in the fog of his mind and the glare of the sun, resembled two proud moustache ends rising up from under his nose.
He withdrew inside, closed the shutters, and in the ensuing dimness came across Batia in every corner—in the hairpins she had scattered everywhere—on the bookshelves, the tea table, the floor, the bed and the bathroom—in the transparent black petticoat that lay bundled up like a kitten on the straw stool, in the sweet and acid smell that mingled with the smoke of his pipe and filled the room with titillating dreams.
He would sit for long hours at his worktable, pipe in mouth, pen in hand, with a blank sheet of paper before him. He would sit like a still and silent statue, a memorial of a some ancient life. At other times he would slip along with the bony fingers of light through the slits in the shutter that looked like the slots of a mailbox. Then he would jump up, fall full-length on the couch and wrap his head—oh the shame of it—in Batia’s petticoat.
Every evening he would come home and climb up the stairs and play a guessing game with himself. He tried to guess if Batia was at home. Of course he knew that Batia was at home, but the game filled him with a pleasant tension, and when he heard the heavy breathing, or at times the snoring, of his Batia, the tension relaxed, and, also breathing heavily from climbing the stairs and from something else as well, he would call, “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.” Batia would wake up and without opening her eyes would tell him what he would find in the refrigerator (“Egg salad and a leg of chicken / Stuffed peppers / Kidneys with potatoes but heat it up a little”).
At times when he got home he would be bothered by a strange smell, the smell of cigarette smoke. Of course Batia also smoked, but this was not her smoke, this was not her smell. Then he would stop short for a moment in the doorway, like someone trying to get to his legs to march into the line of fire, and then he would go in, without asking any questions, but his appetite would diminish to a startling degree. And the little eye would look on from the side, a little larger and more amused than usual.
XI
Batia told me about a nightmare she often had about a man and a candle. The man is her father, and the candle—a lit candle in his hand. The dream pursues her, she said. An innocent pigeon put its foot down on a flowerpot on the roof. The flowerpot, which had not been standing very firmly, swayed, the pigeon flew off, the flowerpot fell and landed on an empty pail, and the empty pail, at this late hour after midnight, gave out a sound like the clashing of cymbals. Batia’s body shuddered, her breath stopped, and all her fingers dug into my shoulders as though she was holding on for dear life. She was thoroughly panic-stricken. She shook a little and kept opening her mouth as though trying to say something, but didn’t make a sound. I switched on the light. After she had calmed down and caught her breath, she told me her dream.
In her dream she is sleeping in a small room, perhaps in a tent. (Her mother had told her that when Batia was a little girl they had been very poor and had slept in a tent. Her father, so Batia’s mother told Batia and Batia told me, had left the house and had never been heard of again.) Suddenly she senses that her father is standing on her bed and looking at her. And warmth fills her, together with a touch of fear. She says, “Hello, Papa, have you come back?” And he says, “Yes, my daughter, I have come to take you.” And then she feels that her mother isn’t in the room and she says, “But turn on the light, Papa, I can’t see a thing.” And then she’s already certain that her mother is gone, and her father lights a candle and raises it slowly, and she wonders at the fact that as he raises the candle she cannot see his hand. But she can clearly see what he’s wearing—a kind of hairy, brownish Arab robe. And when he raises the candle up to his face she recognizes his pipe (Batia’s mother had told her that her father smoked a pipe and sat around all day thinking and doing nothing), and his pipe is fixed between two rows of bared teeth, and in the place of his eyes are two black holes and his face is the face of a skull. And she is terribly frightened, because she thinks that Papa is sick and she wants to call out, “Mama,” but she can’t shout. Here she always woke up and had to try out her throat to see if she still had a voice.
Not the most pleasant dream, but even though it was generally accompanied by the blind fear that she would no longer be able to talk or to sing (Batia liked to sing sentimental ballads), it didn’t really seem that she was struggling with great dread. Her vitality, which was de trop, like everything else about her, kept her safe on all sides, and horror stories were, to tell the truth, just a harmless amusement for us both. The story of her love for the young man with the stumps was no less horrible than the dream, and perhaps packed more of a punch; but it was, at any rate, more complete, more aesthetic, to Naphtali’s anti-naturalistic taste. I would perhaps have preferred it had her father lived in Jerusalem, say, and had met her and told her that on this or that night he too had dreamed, and in his dream he was standing on Batia’s bed and looking down at her. Or perhaps—and this is particularly appealing to me—if she had dreamed that her father turns to her mother and says, “Chana, light the candles,” and her mother lights the candles and passes her hands over them in blessing, and only then, when she moves her hands away from the candles, is the skull revealed.
That night I slipped out of bed very cautiously, so that Batia wouldn’t notice, and went to the kitchen window that looks out onto the wall of the house next door. The house was plunged in the darkness left by a high and squeezed-dry moon. Shadows lengthened—a yellowish-gray wall and square black windows. One of them was the window through which I always used to see the round table with its white tablecloth and burning candles. The table was where it always stood and the cloth wasn’t exactly white, but I could imagine it was white, and the two candles weren’t exactly alight, but I could imagine they were alight—a very thin light, coming from them like a reflection off of copper. Suddenly I was afraid that they might actually be out and that I was only imagining they were alight. How well I knew this cursed feeling—fear—this feeling I had known before I met Batia.
The next day I waited patiently beside the drainpipe in the bathroom, and as soon as I heard first the yawns and then the other sounds of Mr. Schturz leaving the house, I put my pipe down, filled my pockets with sweets, and rushed down to the Schturz apartment with all the speed that my characteristic restraint would allow my feet. I met my two little ones like two tugs at my heart, my little forgotten darlings, so wonderful, so gazelle-like. Even the angry and resentful gaze of Mrs. Schturz (That weird babysitter from the roof! She entrusts her children to him, and he, ungrateful creature, stays away for days, and ruins the best hours of her day!) made no impression on him.
But after he had picked himself up from the floor of sweet tortures, on which the little ones had rolled him hither and thither with graceful kicks—a few kicks for him and a few for the doll with the golden plait—he went up to their large window and looked out.
The window opposite, in the house next door, was shut. The shutter wasn’t closed—perhaps it was broken. The window frame was very old, with nail marks in its corners, the paint was peeled off in various layers, like a window that had been painted many times until it had finally been left alone, and through the dusty pane he saw a round table. That was all. There was nothing else there, no candlesticks and no candles, and of course—no light. It looked like a room in which no one had lived for a very long time. On the other hand, on the wall of Mrs. Schturz’s bedroom, opposite the window of the closed house, and at the same height, hangs a painting of lighted candlesticks. I don’t know how Mrs. Schturz feels about this innocent painting, but it moves my heart to see it. The candlesticks, of silver, are exquisite, and the candles are white as cotton wool and the two flames are yellow, oleaginous and radiant. It seems that the artist didn’t skimp on the paint here, and the gray around the flames only makes their light stand out, and it’s the tiny bed lamp that stays on all night next to the picture that casts their reflection onto the old window of the deserted room opposite. Actually I could have discovered all this a long time ago. If I had wanted to.
So Batia had been right, that first night when I showed her the lighted candles. She had laughed and said there was nothing there. Hadn’t she seen the reflection of these good, humble, real candles there in the window? She almost certainly must have seen them and understood; her laugh had been nervous—perhaps she had remembered her dream—and I didn’t notice it at the time. In any case I was angry with her that she hadn’t seen what I had seen. That it should turn out like this—that it was I who saw what she had seen!
I hurried down to the entrance of the house and moved my mailbox. I used long steel nails. Next to it hung a list of the tenants of the house, floor by floor. On the second floor a straight line had been drawn, perhaps with the aid of a ruler, across the name of Mrs. Kapusta. She had certainly been buried by now. I walked to and fro on the roof, ferreting around among my materials and examining my owls, my fingers like tensed strings. I exchanged one pipe for another—the pipes that sat so cozily in their nests, each one awaiting its turn, had a strange effect on my palate now, and the roof seemed to let go its stubborn squareness, and to burst and leak out from its corners. I decided to put things in order a bit.
First of all I picked up Batia’s black petticoat, which was resting like a slovenly old hen on the stool, folded it nicely and put it away in the cupboard.
XII
“Who knows the nature of fear? A man walks along like any other man, in a street like any other street, with its vehicles and people and noise, and then he sees a little gray pebble and he kicks it; the little gray pebble is turned over on its back—and it’s a beetle. Lying on its back, little and gray, waving its little legs in the air.
“I deliberately didn’t begin with examples that speak for themselves, like the sight of lightning, the sound of a stifled cry at night, an empty sleeve hanging on a washing line, a shadow passing across your face (perhaps your own), the sound of footsteps in an empty street (perhaps your own), and so on and so on. I deliberately did not bring up any of these and brought up an imaginary pebble. Just to show that fear resides in the dust of the earth.
“Leah once said to me that a child closes itself in a square and is afraid to come out of it. He screams when the square is forced open. At times without a sound, for he is frightened. Toys in squares, cubes, hopscotch on the pavement, the squareness of rooms, etc. I said to her, ‘I think that adults are the same—a man grows, and the square grows with him.’”
Why did I write this? Anyhow, the roof I live on is square-shaped.
XIII
I read somewhere that a woman can sniff you out just as well in a heap of garbage or in a pile of peacock feathers. Tonight my Batia sat up looking at me until my eyelids started hurting. I was forced to open them. “You weren’t sleeping,” she said.
“I was sleeping,” I protested. I was a little angry at her because I was ashamed of having pretended to be asleep. Apart from that, a little while ago I had seen Lysanda—she hadn’t come to me for weeks and I hadn’t even felt her absence—she seemed a bit ashamed and I didn’t know if it was because of me or herself. She had been dressed like a page boy. “I was sleeping,” I said.
“Maybe,” said Batia and smiled affectionately, “but your eyes tell me a different story.” “How can you see that in my eyes?” “And I see something else too.” “What?” “Fear.” “Fear?” “And hate.” “Hate?” “Hate’s better than apathy.” I relaxed and embraced her. I’m not sure, but maybe I really did want to embrace her. Anyhow, that way she couldn’t look into my eyes anymore.
“You can’t sleep, my poor darling,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You want to kill me,” she said all of a sudden. “Why don’t you take a pill or something,” she continued in the same even tone. She bent the upper part of her body over my face, and it looked heavy and brown in the dim light, like a hibernating tree, and she wiggled it from side to side, and the tips of her nipples tickled my eyes, my nose and my lips. Lysanda in her page-boy clothes had no breasts at all.
“Please don’t,” I said.
“Maybe you’re cold, you’d better get under the blanket so you’ll feel warmer, you’d better cover yourself up, you’ll feel warmer and then you’ll be able to sleep”—and she continued rocking her torso over me to a singsong rhythm like: “In the surge of the seas in the blaze of the days in the burn of the brine with the burden so blind on the waters—”
“Lysanda,” I whispered with closed eyes. The rest you know.
XIV
I looked into the bathroom mirror. An old mirror, slightly cracked. The face that looked out at me was pleasant and cheerful, almost jovial. As though it enjoyed looking at me. Like the face of a cook delightedly watching you gobble up a dish he’s prepared for you, imperceptibly imitating the blinking of your lips and the leaps of your Adam’s apple and the tension of your jaw and temples and the raising of your eyebrows and the fluttering of your nostrils. A round, satiated face—one could almost say good-looking. Curly hair close to the head like a Greek wrestler’s. An intelligent forehead, a straight nose, big bright eyes, though a little too bright. I don’t like a satiated face, and when I pass one in the street I look away.
But here, in the mirror, it even appealed to me a bit. I put my pipe in my mouth and took it out, because it pleased me to see how this face, as it spread its lips around the pipe, took on gravity without losing any of its spiritual beauty. You could sit down to a pleasant chat with someone like that, a chat garnished with pleasant platitudes, and you wouldn’t expect to hear any startling innovations—or even any slightly depressing ones—such as those lavished upon the few, the very few, who happen to find themselves in Naphtali Noi’s presence.
But then I look into the mirror again and see that in the corners of his eyes a little man is drowning in a vast sea. (Ha, fear!) The face is transfigured. A short sharp crease from the nose to the corners of the mouth. The upper lip pulling inward, as if bitten from inside. The right eyebrow raised as if surprised, and two purplish crescents of cheek, in which the eyes are fixed, trembling with a slight twitch, so slight it’s barely noticeable.
XV
One morning Batia woke up sick. That same morning I got up with a wondrous sweetness flowing through my bones—something that rarely happens to me. A forgotten dream permeated my flesh and I didn’t know what it could be. I only remembered that in the middle of the night I had gotten up, and it was dark. I had tried the light switch in the doorway to the bathroom but it hadn’t worked. I had gone out onto the roof, taken a candle out of my toolbox and lit it. There was no light in any of the windows on the street, and the street lamps were out. Must be a power failure, I said to myself. A slice of moon was alight above. I raised the candle toward the moon that now looked like the apple that Mother Eve had taken a bite of.
The flame flickered. I was sure Lysanda was breathing on it with her scented breath. There is something wonderful about candlelight, something ritual, magical. I remembered that in my childhood I saw an Indian fakir concentrating his gaze on the flame of a candle till he fell down open-eyed in a holy trance. And in fact they buried him in that position and when they took him back out of the ground he got up and shook himself as if coming out of a dream.
That was at the circus. I could understand that man. My Lysanda—a black velvet sash around her waist, two tiny golden crescents dangling from the nipples of her pale, transparent cup-like breasts—was standing behind me. Unfortunately I was unable to develop this pleasant scene further because I was in a hurry to see to my other needs. When I came back from there, I stopped by Batia’s bed and covered the flame with my free hand.
Two or three fine jets of light fell on the sleeper’s face. One of them grazed her eyelids. Batia’s breathing stopped for a moment, and then she burst into short, panic-stricken yells. I put out the candle.
In the morning Batia’s face looked pretty bad: a blue line under her eyes, cheeks burning, and the pupils of her large eyes were darting around nervously.
The sight of her face frightened me not a little and I asked her how she felt.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said. She asked me to see if there was anything in her throat. I saw nothing except for the uvula that was jumping up and down as if it didn’t feel at home in there. I told her that I couldn’t see anything special. She told me that on waking up she had felt pains in her throat, as if there was lead in her windpipe. She drank some coffee and felt a little better. “My head,” she said, “phew! I can’t remember when I had a headache as bad as this.” I caressed her head and said, “It’ll pass, Batia, it’ll pass.” “’Course it’ll pass,” said Batia.
Her amazing optimism touched me. “We can’t let this wonderful head hurt,” I said and caressed her head again.
She placed her head against my chest and said in a different voice, “Something happened.” “What?” I asked. “Something,” she said. “Something terrible?” I asked. “Something terrible,” she said, “I had the dream with the candle.” “With the candle?” I asked. “With the candle,” she said, “and I was sinking, sinking—” And Batia grasped me tight with both her arms.
I removed her arms from me quickly and said, “We can’t just let you be sick. I’ll call the doctor.” True, Batia and I are not legally married. But it’s a fact that in every way we live like a married couple. She lives in my home—I mean our home. We share our meals, our incomes, our sheets, and almost every afternoon we exchange opinions on all sorts of things. And if I don’t look after her when she’s in trouble, who will? I may have been a bit rough the way I tore myself out of her arms, but I’m sure Batia will understand that only my concern for her made me get up so quickly from the bed—on which she’ll be able to rest and relax now, all by herself—and made me rush, without waiting for breakfast, to the doctor’s.
XVI
The first crack in the wall is a bad sign; not only don’t you expect it to go away, you fear its expansion, you dread another crack, and another, and so on—until the city comes to evacuate the ruins.
At first sight there seems to be no connection to the progress of Batia’s illness. True, in the first days her situation was serious. The doctor ordered complete rest and prescribed some medications, and I trudged from drugstore to drugstore. Her little plans, her pretty hopes, to get up, to go out, to get some fresh air, to do this or that, the plans that Batia wove under the influence of her medicine—fell to pieces in the long hours of pain that came more and more often as her drugs wore off.
But Batia hoped. Her chin may have sunk a little, but she hoped. This optimism was doubtlessly her strong point. It seemed that she had adapted herself to the miserable rhythm of her sickness: medicine brought on hours of relief, hours of relief brought on hopes and plans, hopes and plans brought on long hours of suffering, and then—the redeeming angel, Naphtali Noi, appeared, with a new medication in hand. And at times—yes—with a little present as well, to sweeten her suffering a bit.
What didn’t I bring her during those days, during that first week of her sickness: a plaster monkey, a clay jug, a clown carved out of wood, and once I even brought her a silver-plated copper bracelet, which fit her wrist and completely and amazingly covered an ugly scar dating back to her childhood games, when, for lack of decent toys at home, she had mostly played in the junk and refuse outside their house. I do not deny the science of medicine, but this bracelet conquered Batia’s pains no less, and perhaps more, than the drugs. And, I may add—also gave some pleasure to Naphtali, who for a long time had grown weary of looking at that scar, which reminded him of a rough seam in one of his mounted animals.
Gradually there was a slight improvement in her health. The nightmare left her, and although her fear of it disturbed her rest, particularly at night, her voice began to get clearer. At first her voice sounded like a rusty shutter wrenched out of place. Then her windpipe opened up completely and let it out at last. She touched up her hair and face a little and went out for a walk—and I gladly encouraged her in this.
As is usual in cases like these, the doctor only bothered to look in after she’d began to recover. He advised Batia to get plenty of fresh air and warned her against getting excited. As he said this, the doctor was looking at me. And I did keep her from getting excited, to the best of my ability. To make it clear to her that I intended to carry out the doctor’s instructions, I got myself a folding bed. Sometimes I even had to use little tricks: an urgent meeting that I would invent when Batia wanted to shower me with her everlasting love; or, “Just a moment, I left my pipe burning on the table, it might start a fire,” in response to the battle cry of her flaming body. “Health above all!” I would say to Batia.
At times Batia would come back from her walk with a light and excited flush on her pale face and a glow in her eyes, and she would look at me and leer shamelessly. I will not deny that the thought that I had finally taken her out of the arms of that politician-son-of-a-shopkeeper, what’s his name, Buki, delighted me now and then. But on second thought I found that it was not this which really filled my heart with joy, but something more exalted, something that was rooted in the fact of Batia’s being both mine and someone else’s, or Batia’s being only mine and afterward only someone else’s, and after that some other person’s again, and so on, and after all that—Batia returning to my roof to shudder at the sight of the stuffed wildfowl with one eye looking upward and the other down. Of course Naphtali always retreated to his second thought, in which everything became a riddle, every riddle a challenge, and every challenge a tiny dread. And at times a great one.
The box of materials and tools was never closed now. The roof had become a studio. I pulled apart a little mountain swallow (that my former teacher Sternik had sent me in a moment of conscience) that looked like a trident, and stuck four additional wings on it; I didn’t know where to put its little head. I spread a kind of canopy, like a bat’s wing, over the ribs of a pigeon and hid its head among its feathers; I didn’t know what to do with its legs. I gathered feathers and, carefully selecting the shapes and the colors, put them together in the round tail of a fan. It was a wonderful combination of shapes and colors. I stuck it up on the antenna post at the corner of the roof. Perhaps the wind would blow through it. But I wasn’t satisfied. I sat for hours, enclosed within myself, still, unmoving, praying voicelessly, till I got up and extracted a fiery orchid made of strips of colored plastic and threads of steel wire out of the swollen belly of an owl. I put it up as a sentry, to keep away the noises of the street, the voices of the earth. I liked watching its flaming wings flaring and fluttering in all directions. But the sight of its plastic skin and iron depressed me. The last straw.
In those days Naphtali Noi devised many ruses in order to call forth all his creative powers. He refrained from eating and drinking during working hours. From time to time he washed his hands, soaked his forehead, trimmed the nails of his fingers and toes. In his mouth he held an unlit pipe of coarse oakwood, neither painted nor varnished, with its bowl pointing downward. He removed all Batia’s things from inside (hid them in the cupboard) and before he had fathomed why he was doing it he moved his work inside off of the roof, and closed the doors and the shutters. The days were hot, and he sweated a lot without the windows open, and the more he sweated the more he bathed his skin in cold water and scrubbed his body with clean towels, till the stench of cleanliness refreshed his spirits. After all this, particularly after finishing some new piece of work, he would find himself standing from time to time with arms drooping beside his body, like unwanted limbs, his head fallen on his chest, looking but not seeing, thinking but not knowing about what. No, not like this. Not like this.
In this state he would stand for hours without moving; his innards slowly flowing and pouring away—kidneys, liver, stomach, lungs, heart—and he growing shorter and smaller, with his skin fluttering and trembling and his tiny hand seeming to want a large strong hand to hold on to. But no large hand would reach out to him, and the hours of weakness would come to an end not like a sponge being, squeezed slowly dry, but all of a sudden, like the slamming of a door, and Naphtali Noi would resume his work where he had left off, fending off his desolate hours as one fends off a grain of dust with a flick of the eyelid; yet the grains of dust gather and settle on your shoulders, layer upon layer, and the more the eyes of your spirit rise, the more your shoulders lower and slump.
XVII
I had expected better treatment from the dream purveyor. After all, I’ve been a good client of his. Thousands, yes, I say this without exaggeration, I have dreamed thousands of dreams at the expense of hours of sleep, and so—naturally enough—of repose. There are those who ask dreams questions and dreams answer them, they say. Then there are those who the dreams question, and so they answer or try to answer. My dreams—what are they?—floating shadows, an invisible tumult, vanishing smoke that leaves a smoldering in the eyes, a bitter and sometimes icy smoldering on waking. Wisps like tails, slipping through my grasping hands. Burlesques.
For what can be the meaning of the dream I had about Mrs. Kapusta being carried to her grave, and suddenly it’s not she lying in the coffin but Batia! And Batia raises her head and smiles at me and I calm down the angry pallbearers and assure them that I stuffed her with first-grade seaweed. Silly. And it was such a long dream. Then I woke up. And that’s all I remember.
Or this wretched memory from another dream. Shouts: “Lysanda!” And the shouts are coming from a number of directions at once. But whichever way I turn my head—she’s not there. And Mr. Schturz’s eyes, cold and furious, staring at me incessantly. And I know they’re dangerous. Or: I am looking at a suitcase, a crowd and me. All of us are looking at it, but somehow the others are looking at me as well. The suitcase is my mailbox—that’s obvious to me from the start. But I feel it is also more than that. Not a mailbox but a trap, a mine, a snare. And the others wait. That’s all I remember of that dream. By the way, a special sort of letter, precise in style and correct in all the rules of syntax, was stuck on to my mailbox a few days ago. I couldn’t say exactly when. A letter of warning. I don’t remember what I did with the letter. At times I feel that the boundary between dream and reality is growing more and more confused, and this makes me rejoice. Yes. Anyhow, I shall write about the letter later.
One dream I do remember. A short, humble dream that, when I awoke, rested patiently on my eyelashes. And it is still there—on my eyelashes. On the eyelashes of my being, which flutter so much these days. I stumble over feet in the dreams and the feet are in felt slippers and the slippers are soft and creased like a hippopotamus’s head. And then, very frightened, I hear a man’s voice. I don’t remember what the man said, nor could I reach him because of the crowd. I wanted to help him find me. He passed by me and I was afraid he would pass me by. I called something to him but I don’t know what it was. Perhaps he didn’t hear my voice or perhaps he did hear my voice but didn’t see me. I hurriedly lit a candle. I knew that by candlelight he would recognize me.
And now to that warning letter. A few days ago—as I said, I don’t remember exactly when—I went down to inspect the position of my mailbox. I had grown accustomed to finding it in a different place each day and I will not deny that in this I found a certain pleasure. But now for the first time I found that the name Naphtali Noi, which I had written on the box in small but tidy letters, had been crossed out with a line that was neither straight nor tidy, as if meant to cross out more than just my name. And if this was not enough, over the whole front of the box hung a square sheet of paper, carefully printed in block letters, and it was clear that it had been copied out a number of times.
It began by stating that in spite of previous warnings (what warnings?) I had continued to put up my mailbox in a position that blocked the light switch to the staircase from the view of people entering the house. As a consequence, the letter claimed, the electrical connection had been damaged (aha—the long nails!) and now the light on the staircase was out of order, endangering everyone who entered the building, tenants and visitors alike, who now faced the risk of falling over in the dark and breaking their legs. And so they threatened me with legal action, “unless, sir, you immediately repair the electricity and leave your mailbox in the place we have designated. The Tenants.” And then followed the names of all the tenants, floor by floor, from the bottom to the top. Not a name was missing.
It is unnecessary to say that first of all I put the mailbox back in its original place. But I did not touch the warning letter. As a proofreader, I was pleased with the neat and precise lettering of the petition. I appreciate a beautiful thing, even when done by people who wish me ill, who draw a line, a crooked line, across my name, across my very existence. I fled to my roof.
XVIII
I have learned something that’s given me a shock. All those days that Batia walked around pale and anguished and out of breath, all the days of her sickness, when I cared for her, brought her medicine, and obeyed the doctor’s orders not to touch her, to keep her from undue excitement; all those days, I say, and particularly in the evenings when I worked late—Batia would meet Buki and make love with him. I must admit, this in itself was not what shook me. Nor was it the fact that these trysts took place in my flat, my rooftop flat, and, as it seems—on my bed—the bed of my fears and dreams. The creatures of my spirit—the wondrous stuffed birds that ornament my square roof—are my witness that I did not hold a grudge against my poor, good-hearted Batia. There was something novel in the fact that my Batia—yes, mine, in spite of all—that it was she who told me about it, in great agitation, with her own lips. But, actually, that wasn’t what shocked me, exactly. I should describe these things in their proper order. Evening. Heat. Sunset. Facing the sea. The moon has not risen yet, but its footsteps resound on the roof (my last moon—mysterious—cruel—). Naphtali, bare-headed, barefooted, in ragged trousers, his shirt torn at the shoulder, a pipe in his mouth, works, completely absorbed, on his stuffed birds. He burns something, breaks off his humming, takes the pipe out of his mouth, backs away from the work of his hands, approaches again, wipes his forehead with a trembling hand. His eyes suddenly glitter with a brilliant flash of cunning, of madness. But it passes. Lysanda is hidden behind the bird. Naphtali mumbles something. Lysanda answers him from inside the bird. Naphtali calls to Lysanda. The door opens. Batia.
Batia thought that I didn’t see her. That’s what she claims. But I definitely saw her come in. I can even describe her clothes and the look on her face. She was wearing a cocoa-colored pleated dress, long and wide (her feminine instincts led her to cover her heavy thighs with flaring skirts), and a cream-colored blouse that hung on her two breasts as on two coat hangers. But her face was pale under its layer of makeup. Stains flowered over the skin of her face and over her neck. Like fragments of shadows tugging on her flesh. Within a few moments, even before deciding where to lay finally the handbag that swayed from side to side in her hand, she was already immersed, and I with her, in a raging sea of words, frothing with shame, confessions, pain, incitement. She said that she wants a shower, that she’s tired, that she’s had enough, that I never listen, that we’ve got to eat something, that my scarecrows are taking up more and more room and there’s no space to move around in, that I never listen, that her throat hurts, that she saw a black cat, that I never listen, that she’s frightened, that everything’s getting more expensive, that it’s been a wonderful day, that her aunt got a shock when she saw her, that the whole house is upside down, that I never listen when she talks.
I listened. I went on working, true, but what else could I do? What she actually meant to say was that I don’t see her, that I don’t look her in the eyes. She meant to say that I don’t speak, that I don’t participate in her conversation. That I don’t participate with her. But all at once I asked if anyone had been in the apartment. Perhaps I meant to ask about the strange fellow with the beard, the comb seller, who had said he would come and hadn’t come. I asked about him from time to time, without thinking. It had become a habit. But that was enough for Batia. That was the signal.
Immediately she thought I was asking about Buki. Or she decided that I believed that that was what she would think, so she could launch into that flow of words, that ecstatic confession, so ridiculous and scorching, and, as I said above, shocking.
I already mentioned her ridiculous lovemaking with Buki, so we can skip most of her pathetic speech, and come directly to the shattering revelation that set off the real alarm in Naphtali, alerting him, weighing him down, maddening him, breaking into his being, which till then had been full to overflowing with noble thoughts of his taxidermy and visions and Lysanda. Batia continued:
“No. Buki didn’t hate you at all. He envied you. He worshipped you. He talked about you so much. He used to say that you have great potential and it’s a pity you’re letting yourself fall apart. Your talent, he used to say, ‘Naphtali’s talent is fantastic. But he’s losing touch with reality.’ That’s what Buki said. You need a woman, he said. Women are real, he said, are you listening? Yes. That’s what he said. He was lying on his back, pleased with himself and with me. He went on talking about you with envy, hero-worship even, till I started getting a bit curious about you. Very curious, in fact. More fool I. And Buki lay there on his back full of satisfaction. It made me sick. All men make me sick when they’re satisfied. But you were hungry, you’re always hungry behind that calm, round moon-face of yours. Maybe that’s what made me moonstruck. I wanted to wrap you up, to swaddle you in me, till you forgot the hunger, do you hear, till you forgot your hunger and found me everywhere. Everywhere. I was a fool, a fool. You remained hungry, and I—I got dizzy.
“Oh, my head, my head—never mind. It’ll pass. Everything passes. I want you to know everything. So—yes, Buki. Buki used to say, ‘I wonder what Naphtali Noi is doing now, in his loneliness. Thinking about a woman? Nonsense. If he is thinking about a woman, then it’s about one that hasn’t been born yet. It’s possible that now Naphtali Noi is developing a new thesis in that sharp mind of his: that, say, one can, in one’s thoughts, be in many places at once, and so why should one bother to move around? And that’s just how he’d think about a woman,’ too. I remember his words, because he used to repeat them so many times that they exhausted me and I thought to myself that if I go to Naphtali, all the spirits will flee his roof and he’ll be mine, all mine. For what does a man need?—A woman. It’s only if he has no woman that he invents spirits. And I could see my Naphtali suffering, in agony, with no one to look after him, going around like a bum, forgetting to eat his meals. And who but I, do you hear, I, who have suffered so much and have so much love to give, who but I, who am bursting with love, who but I could give him such true love, such great, frank, honest love, who but I could make him a nest to live in with security, honor, peace? Are you listening?
“Yes. I think you’ve started to listen. You’re even smiling. Your hands are down and your cheeks have swollen in an evil, wicked smile. I can see right into your thoughts. Me and my spirits and Buki the famous ladies’ man, and I took her from him, just like that, without any effort. What’s that—pride? That’s not very nice. Really, it doesn’t suit you at all. Leave the pride to the poor bastards down there. I’ll let you in on a secret, and it’ll be the shock of your life. You didn’t take me from Buki. Buki, you hear, Buki sent me to you. What’ve you got to say now? Nothing, eh? Sure. But your mouth’s all shrunk up around your pipe. And your hands have shot up into the air. But they’ll stay there, I’m sure. You won’t raise your hands to me even when I tell you that Buki sent me to share your bed with you, to put it as nicely as I can. What a fool I was. I came. No. I ran to you.
“Buki asked me: ‘You won’t be unfaithful to me, even with Naphtali Noi, will you?’ I lied to him: ‘Of course not.’ Then he sent me to you, to ask for a rare book. You remember. Then I found out that he hadn’t even looked at the book I brought back. I asked him, ‘Why did you really send me?’ He said, ‘I wanted to know how he lives.’ I said, ‘What else?’ He said, ‘And so on.’ I said, ‘And so on what?’ He said, ‘I don’t know myself.’ I said to him, ‘You, Buki, you who weigh every word, you didn’t know?’ He told me, ‘Maybe I did know and I’ve forgotten.’ I said to him, ‘Try to remember.’ He said, ‘One doesn’t have to tell everything one thinks.’ I said, ‘If you don’t tell me then this is the last word we’ll say to each other.’ He said, ‘I wanted him to have a woman.’ I said, ‘You wanted me to be his mistress.’ He said, ‘God forbid.’ I said, ‘Then you wanted him to love me so that he would envy you.’ He said, ‘Yes, yes.’ That’s what he said, the worm, the liar. So I said, ‘That means you meant me to be mistress to both of you.’ He said, ‘No, no.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, no, no. Not to him or not to you?’ He said, ‘No, no,’ and embraced and kissed me, the clever rat, and thought I wouldn’t understand from what he said that he wanted to bring you down to his level, to be your partner, so that you’d become dependent on him, on him, when he isn’t even good enough to kiss the little toe on one of your two white feet. He thought he’d be able to use you like a light switch, to turn you on and off as he pleased. And I was supposed to be the switch, operated by his handsome, masculine hands. Oh, Naphtali, my friend. You remember how I came to you—”
Allow me to stop here. The same sense of sinking, of irritation, overcomes me again in writing these words, as it did then. Oh, good people (I hope that at least one police officer and one police inspector will read these pages)—you surely expected that I would finally take this burning pipe out of my mouth and stuff it along with its smoldering tobacco into the devilish jaw of that Jezebel; or that at least I would throw her out, helping her to descend from my roof with a shove that would set her rolling down the sixty-five steps that lead to the earth, to the street, to the sewer, to her Buki with his “handsome, masculine hands”; or perhaps that I would stuff her, like a bird. I would fill her with sawdust (according to the instructions of Sternik, my teacher)—not with seaweed—as I do with my glorious birds—glorious, though unfinished. Oh, yes—unfinished!
Good people! All I can do now is to ask you to hold back your great contempt. And perhaps to light a candle. Please, respected policemen, when you read these pages—the writings of a man who no longer hopes for anything—read them by the light of a candle. For here is what I did to Batia: I embraced her. Yes, I embraced her, caressed her, petted her. And I almost cried. This is how it went:
(Batia continued) “And I was supposed to be the switch, operated by his handsome, masculine hands. Oh, Naphtali, my friend. You remember how I came to you with that book by—what’s his name—”
“Kierkegaard,” said Naphtali, and quickly shut his mouth as if wanting to pull the word back.
“Yes, Kierkegaard. That’s right. You’re listening, Naphtali. I knew you were listening. And I asked you if all his suffering was because he loved Regina so much, and you said, ‘Yes. He loved her to the very limit of self-sacrifice.’”
“I said,” said Naphtali, taking the pipe out of his mouth. Always the same mistake. She always makes the same mistake. “I said that he loved not her, but through her.”
“Yes, that’s right; and you said that Kierkegaard said that great love demands sacrifice.”
“I said that Kierkegaard said that love consumes the lovers.” He chopped out his words as if he were chewing gravel.
“Yes, till death,” she said. “Till death. At that moment I felt that if a sacrifice was needed, then this roof was the most suitable place for it. I couldn’t speak. I could feel my heart beating in my legs, my throat, in all my body, everywhere. From that moment I was lost and happy. It sounds funny, I know. But believe me, Naphtali, it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me. And now I’m tired, tired.”
She cried. Her full body shook heavily, helplessly, as if everything in it had been exhausted, and rough streaks of color rolled down her face. They made her amazingly ugly, dirty, like a clown. The stains sharpened her edges, her chin grew smaller, her lips spread outward and pursed inward.
Naphtali held her hand. “Don’t cry,” he told her, “don’t cry.” Her big bust seemed to be trying to hide, to shrink inward, but it could not. They went inside and Batia fell onto the bed. Naphtali sat next to her and patted her on the back. Her skin was soft now. How had the tears reached that far? All the hardness of her skin seemed to have thawed. Naphtali caressed her back and her neck. Batia laid her head in his lap. “Your hand is hard,” she said into his stomach, “you work hard,” she said between sobs, as if that was what she really wanted to say to him. “Hold me tight,” she added. He held her tight and caressed her back, her breasts, her lips, her thighs. They met him like old friends—with excitement, with a little leap. “Hold me tight, tight,” she said. Her weeping was no longer helpless. And her body, in every place touched by his hand, his chest, his lips, filled with a new strength—actually, the old strength—and swelled up against him.
This contact with a life he could not control annoyed Naphtali. You must rest, he told her.
“Don’t go!” She said. He did not go, but his hands were already gone. They floated above her body. “I’ll bring you your pills,” he said. “You’ve got to watch yourself.”
“No,” she said, with a fresh outburst of tears. He tried to get up and sat down. Again he tried to get up, upset.
“Now your man is getting up,” said Naphtali as he got up, “and is going to bring you your pills. And you’ve got to rest. To have a good, long rest. And your man has to go. What did I want to say? Yes. Your man has got to put on his shoes. Because if your man goes out into the street without shoes everyone will laugh at him. Like, for example, a left shoe isn’t a right shoe, and the other way around. But your man will come back, of course. So what did I want to say—the street. The street is near and far. So why am I going out into the street? Yes, your man is going out into the street to bring you some nice things. I’ll bring you a doll in a scarf of silver stars and we’ll call her Lysan—Lys—Lysandrella. Hell, whenever I put on this shirt it loses a button. Never mind, we’ll put on the black shirt. Today’s Wednesday, the fourth day, I’ll shake the sleeve and the moon will come out. It’s late, it’s already half past six. I’ve got to hurry to the newspaper.”
XIX
I found myself in a mischievous mood. At the newspaper everyone laughed. I had never been so amusing. I’m a fairly serious person, short but quite stocky and as Batia put it (in Buki’s words)—I don’t like to move around too much. But that evening (the last one!) I was brisk and agile and worked like a demon. Trains, whole trains of words passed under my eyes. Underground trains. The entire print shop is doubtless made up of a network of underground passages, and even the neon there only deepens their darkness. I told them that. I felt light and free, like a man who finally knows that this is it. The compositors laughed. I told them that they were miners, and I wound my shirt around my head and tied it on my forehead like a miner’s safety helmet with a torch. His highness the foreman, always gloomy, was angry that I was distracting the compositors from their work, but afterward he also laughed, though reluctantly. For I told them that they were moles, and I took off a shoe and showed them how a mole scratches, rubbing the end of my chin rapidly with the sole of my foot. Actually the sole of my foot was itching, but before this I had never taken off my shoe in public to scratch it. I was really amusing and sociable. And even with all that I did my work properly. Only once, or perhaps twice, did a bright green light appear in the wrong place on the rails and the train of words plunge off and explode.
On the way home I had a strange vision, as if I was peeling off my shadow, as if I could see my shadow moving away from me. It was on the corner of the streets that turn, one toward the beautiful Anath’s glass verandah, and the other, through narrow lanes, to Leah’s room. The road had been repaired and tarred, and the crossing was marked with cat’s-eyes, and I really enjoyed walking across. I was certain that even on rainy days, slimy deep waters no longer filled this road. I walked across, light as a smile, and then I saw my shadow passing and continuing along the road to Anath’s house. And the street, in which cars were passing and people were walking below lighted windows, suddenly seemed to me to be empty, very empty, verandahs hanging on the foreheads of houses, empty verandahs, and behind them square shutters.
I went into a small bar. This restored my spirits. Partly thanks to the brandy, but largely thanks to the barman. The walls were painted with naked Eves, flowers, snakes, and fig leaves, and the barman spoke to me in praise of faith. “It’s like this,” he said to me. “There’s guys who believe in the evil eye, there’s guys who believe in cards, and guys who believe in luck. You don’t believe in anything, mister?” I believed him, and told him so. He poured me a glass. I began to like this man and wanted to say something good to him in return. I pointed to the bald heads and the flowering Eves and said to him that in the true Garden of Eden, the flowers grew straight out of the people’s heads. I could see that my words made a strong impression on him, for he looked at me with eyes huge.
It was already after midnight, and the moon, having crossed the frontier of midnight, had begun blowing out puffs of mist, as light as smiles. Naphtali looked up, also light, light on his feet, like someone whose feet are borne by the inspiration to act. He climbed the steps in darkness, so that the light would not distract him, and as soon as he stepped onto his roof he knew that she was there, bundled up in the corner of shadow that the awning cast in the moonlight.
He opened the door to his room carefully, and without switching on the light, tiptoed across to the kitchen.
“Are you there, Naphtali?” He heard Batia’s voice in her sleep.
“I’m here,” Naphtali whispered, and took the square bottle of Cointreau out of its hiding place. He heard Batia’s breath stop for a moment and then return to the quick, mad rhythm of the world of dreams.
“I’m here,” he smiled mockingly, and sneaked back out onto the roof—he and a friendly shadow and the burning brandy between his fingers (because actually, the Cointreau was all finished a long time ago), closing the door cautiously on Batia’s breathing and on Batia. Then he poured two glasses, downed the first in one gulp and spread the wings of his nostrils to expel the scalding gasp that then flooded his body. He poured another and gulped it down on top of the first, to catch the first up in the second and dissolve it deep in his blood. Then he wiped his mouth and looked at Lysanda’s full glass. There was a white gleam on its face. He filled his own glass a third time and said, “L’chaim!”
And as he was raising the glass from the table, the white gleam leaped up and moved to and fro, as if Lysanda’s lips had touched it.
“L’chaim,” said Lysanda.
The moon donned a hat and puffed out its coiling wreaths of mist, its face swollen with satiation. Disgraceful! He wanted to shout to the moon: “Get off my roof!” But he was ashamed to do it in front of Lysanda, who was hiding in the shadows. And to give himself spirit, he threw the contents of her glass down his throat and his ears expanded and listened. “I knew you’d come back to me,” said Lysanda. “Yes,” he said. He heard the ripple of her gown as she moved from side to side on her seat, and her voice was like velvet upholstery. “Come out of the shadows, Lysanda.” Instead of answering she laughed, and her laughter reverberated as in a crystal glass.
“Come out into the light, Lysanda.”
“I’m scared,” she said.
“Where have you been all this time, Lysanda?”
“By your side,” she said.
“Were you jealous of Batia, Lysanda?”
She laughed.
“Why are you laughing, Lysanda?”
“I knew you’d come back to me,” she said.
“How did you know, Lysanda?”
“Both of us knew,” she said.
“Conceited!” he called.
She laughed.
“Come out into the light, Lysanda.”
“I’ll come out into your light,” she said.
He went up to his toolbox and opened it. Inside it were seaweed, nylon skin, saucers of paint and glue, springy steel wire, and feathers. Plenty of feathers. Some that had been left over from birds he had stuffed, and some that he had collected. Gray feathers and colored feathers. When his hand touched them, they breathed. And in among them was a long bag, and in the bag—candles. In the flame of the candles he would do fine lead soldering, and with the wax he would fill in cracks and crevices.
He took out a candle and stuck it into a little copper holder that he then put on top of a box. Then he straightened out the wick and lit it with a match. He stood up, bent down his head, and passed his two hands over the flame. The flame settled down into the wax, melting a few drops, and then blazed up with a flash, sending up a feather of smoke, rising blue, assured and wonderful, like a citron illumined from within. Then he passed his outstretched palms over it in two opposing circles, and saw how the shadows separated and fled. This is my light. “Where are you, Lysanda?”
“I’m here,” she said. Her voice rang out from the jasmine shrub. He looked at the jasmine shrub that till then had been flowerless and thin—for several weeks he had not attended to it properly—but now had sent forth blossoms, like tiny tongues. Lysanda was not there. She laughed from by the bougainvillea, covering her face with one of its branches. He looked at the bougainvillea. One of its branches was moving, but Lysanda wasn’t there, she was already laughing from somewhere else, in fact she was laughing from a number of places at once.
He paced slowly, candle in hand, and surveyed his taxidermy (how I hate that word: “stuffing.” A crude, nauseating sound; good enough for Sternik perhaps. Whenever I say stuffing, something cuts through to the depth of Naphtali’s romantic soul, an echo, a better term, something with grandeur, beauty, enchantment like naphtoloides—naphtilides—phtylides—phtylyandes—phtyly-sandes—). The roof was drunk with moonlight, and his creatures, washed in the dull gleam, wavered slightly. Their rough joints, seams, and gluings could no longer be seen. Good, Lysanda’s fingers caressed them. He would call her and she would come out to him.
Like one who delays his delight in order to enhance it, he went on preparing himself fastidiously. Out of the toolbox he pulled a gray, prickly Arab robe, which he had bought on one of his trips and had only worn once, as a carnival costume on Purim.
He put it on now and tied a brown rope around his waist. Then he placed a mirror in front of his face, and by the light of the candle messed and tangled his hair; he took a paintbrush, dipped it in dark brown paint and continued the line of the eyebrows around his eyes; he fixed his mouth by painting a line above his lips and another one below them—both of them reaching from ear to ear—and joined them to each other with straight lines. “Dance, Lysanda,” he cried.
Lysanda danced. And Naphtali Noi, the sole master of this primeval empire, calmly put his tools back into his box and lit his pipe with a suitably ritualized gesture. He took the candleholder in the palm of his hand, placed it on the floor in the center of the roof, put a piece of kindling into the flame till it too caught fire, lit his pipe with the burning piece of kindling and with long, deep puffs, sent circles of aromatic smoke swirling hither and thither. Then he sat down, poured himself a glass, and sent its contents down to rest beside its predecessors. They met each other with love inside him. “That’s nice, Lysanda, yes, Lysanda, go on, Lysanda.”
How shall I describe Lysanda? How shall I describe this rebellious daughter of my blazing imagination, this creature of my loneliness and fear, the princess of my dreams, a thousand faces and a single essence? Oh, words, sententious, treacherous words—what shall I do with you? Cut out my tongue, hangmen, find me a new tongue, poets, a new language, with no words, no voices, no voice, a language of dust and wind—Lysanda! Anath’s bright, dark face, the color of rice and shimmering grain, dreamy eyes radiating warm mist like a cot, but God, please, not with her sharp little nose jutting out so unbearably straight, I’ll press in your nose a bit so it won’t jut out so repulsively . . . Sit down in the sun like a little animal—naked, brown, tanned—lick your lapping tongue over that little stain on your right thigh while a shady trail of salt quivers along your spine and melts Naphtali’s dry tongue in turn . . . Come up out of the anthropology books with huge conical nipples and burst into a wild breast-dance of adoration for your lord and maker who sits here on a low stool with his pipe swinging between his teeth in never-ending love and hangs copper bells on the pale pink nipples of your breasts . . . Lash your flowing hair over your thighs like whips woven by the hands of your cruel master, who laps up the wonder of your curving flesh in helpless passion . . . Press your precious, cool, slender neck to the goatish forehead (in its scholarly disguise) of your lord, while the broad back and close-cropped hair of the good Batia seek, in stubborn generosity, the kisses of his weary lips . . . Melt, with your soft, lilac-scented breath, the sounds arising from Batia’s sleep and imparting, in all their earthy candor, the tastes of the dishes of our last humble meal. Feverish imagination. The final fluttering of a dying memory.
Now she was different. Days, weeks, of monastic seclusion with his stuffed animals had prepared him for this. He almost didn’t need his senses to detect her—his vision to see her, his touch to feel her breath, his hearing to listen to the tapping of her feet in her strange rhythmic dance that had motion but no movement, silence but no rest. How to describe this dance?
How to describe Lysanda’s dance? How to describe this dance, which first fired a flush through Naphtali’s flesh and then slowly took from him all sense of his body and left him a pair of transparent wings without a head, without legs (and, as it later turned out, with a ravenous beak) fluttering above the abyss. How to describe this coiling wave that surged from transparent fingertips through arms to shoulders, this fan of hair so dizzily flapping, this motion of clinging knees like twin pomegranates swinging from side to side, accompanied by the motion of Naphtali’s pipe, precise and unconscious, like the motion of stillness!
How to describe the way Lysanda, the child of my soul, was struck down, and almost collapsed in her execution of this all-dimensional exercise by a nasal snore, innocent but loud and obstinate, which escaped from Batia’s deep dream, plowed through the closed door, and reverberated between her dancing feet. What could Naphtali do! He gulped down a quick glass of encouragement and clenched his eyes shut to bring back Lysanda’s dance in all its original splendor. His hands were still, his pipe shuddered, his thighs were still. They waited. Then he felt the touch of Lysanda’s hand. It was resting on his shoulder. He had never felt her as close as this. His shoulder reached after the touch of her hand, as if enchanted. He got up and followed her hand, and bent down to the candle and put the candleholder with the burning candle on the palm of his outstretched hand.
Silently he opened the door inside, and the door opened silently (good, exacting Batia, who was always so careful, had oiled the hinges), covering the flame with the closed fingers of his free hand. Shadows separated out of the darkness and fled in panic to the walls. He opened his fingers a little and cast strips of light onto the bed where Batia lay asleep.
Batia’s sleep was deep and heavy. She lay on her back in a peace that was heartrending. A broad peace filled the whole bed. Her breasts, which had slipped out of her brassiere, flowed to the sides like tendrils spreading from a bared root. Her flabby biceps, folds of flesh, all seemed to express a desire to expand, to absorb, to swell. She lay there, a wife for a man, a mother for children, a good piece of earth, fertile.
Suddenly he saw that she was looking at him. Her eyes torn wide open, stricken with horror, looking for something on his shaggy robe. Naphtali moved his free hand away from the candle so that Batia could see better. The full candlelight cast a nervous flush over Batia’s face and two red roses seemed to blossom in her cheeks.
It was a wonderful sight. He had never seen her like this. Slowly he raised the candle to his face. Her face lit up for a moment as if recognizing something in the extinguished pipe that was stuck between his two rows of teeth. She raised her head and shook it about wildly, opening her mouth wide to say something, perhaps to scream. But her head fell back onto the pillow and the scream stayed inside. A mighty yellow, like the color of dough, spread across her face, her forehead, her neck. That firm chin of hers was lying there now like something abandoned. Her bosom was very still. A noble nipple lay at rest at some distance from her body. He expected it to bud out into a red flower, but it didn’t. Naphtali’s sensitive eyes hurt. It doesn’t matter, he consoled himself, I can fix her looks up later, with the right materials. I wonder if her last words, had they been heard, were words of love, he thought. Then he whispered sadly, “Lysanda.”
But Lysanda did not answer.
She’s hiding, the naughty thing, thought Naphtali. A sharp pain seared his shoulder, the shoulder on which Lysanda’s hand had rested, and where he no longer felt the touch of her hand. Little lead soldiers now came scurrying over to his feet.
“Lysanda!” he shouted aloud. His voice melted away without an echo and a great dread brought back the sense to his knees, his kidneys, his heart, his head. He turned around—no Lysanda. Wretched shadows rustled in the comers. He whispered, “Lysanda, come to me.” He dragged his feet out onto the roof: “Lysanda.” The chill of dawn cloaked the outside. Dew dripped down his stuffed animals, those miserable, squashed stuffed heaps of open seams and torn wings, beginnings that had not been completed, that would never be completed. His feet slipped on the mounds of tar.
“Lysanda,” he whispered voicelessly, helplessly, hopelessly, and dragged his feet back inside.
The candle fell from his hand, flickered on the floor and went out. Naphtali slowly took off the robe and laid it over the corpse, which now looked into his eyes—eyes that refused to face the morning—like Lysanda’s corpse—Lysanda dead—a pile of gleaming copper hair spread over her chest, still as a seashell. Then he dragged himself to the corner of the room, tucked himself into his own stomach, and lay there.
XX
I have written a poem. After everything else, that sounds ridiculous, I know. But it’s a fact.
As soon as I got up (it was already noon), I knew I wouldn’t be able to do anything else. I took a piece of paper and filled it with nice musical lines. Possibly it’s more of a song than a poem. The toolbox was far away from me and I barely had the strength to hold a pen, let alone a hammer. Lysanda’s death was so beautiful.
In fact, the beauty of death is greater than any other beauty, and of course a beautiful death is much better than a crude one. I know this is not well put. I’ll explain. The death of Mrs. Kapusta, for example, only filled me with disgust. Whereas I almost burst into tears on seeing Juliet dying on the stage. That was divine. But I wrote no poem then. My hands did not hurt then, apart from the usual pain of creation. And so I built a wondrous creature instead. One that has no name. But I made it of such a pure framework of lines that the seaweed, the plastic skin, the steel wire, the seams, the glue, and all the other materials were almost unnoticeable. And perhaps I did not make this creature at all, except in my imagination. My memory is so muddled.
Maybe it isn’t exactly a poem, these verses I have written. But this I swear—that it revived me like a strong drug, like the last cigarette of a man condemned to death. Ah yes—death again.
Of course, I knew this was the last thing I would do, like the last flutter of a bird with the hunter’s bullet in its heart (forgive the emotion). I shoved the page with the poem—or perhaps ballad—deep into the pocket of my shirt—one of the four pockets of my orange shirt that I used to fill with sweets and sometimes with toys whenever I went down to my little beauties Nili and Lili.
I went down to my little beauties, of course. As soon as I heard (through the drainpipe in the bathroom) the sleep-thick voice of Mr. Schturz, yawning as he said good-bye to his family, I went down to them. And my little ones, whom I had neglected of late, no longer twittered to me in their darling voices (“Come Yakoko, come on to us Yakoko,” and so on), but I came to them dragging my feet (when had I eaten last?). Mrs. Schturz vanished in a flash, and the little ones, whose sharp eyes immediately noticed my weak state, began kicking me with their little feet, rolling me over on the carpet, throwing their nimble hands at my face in glorious mirth, pelting me with the pits of olives and peaches—the remnants of their afternoon meal, which Mrs. Schturz had not had time to clear away before she rushed off. And the little ones danced around me and sang:
“Yakoko my koko
Go get us some choko
Yah kee yah koko
Yah koko riko”
Then they suddenly grew serious and commanded me to crawl from one to the other to try to catch them—little balls of fire—until my pockets were empty and the sweets were scattered all over the room. I sat like a discarded steak on the carpet.
“Why is she like that?” asked Nili, and looked at the doll with the plait. “Why is she sad?” asked Lili, and also looked at the doll.
“Yakoko bad boy,” said Nili, and Lili said, “You’re dead. Mama said you don’t come ’cos maybe you’re dead like Kapusta.”
I shut my eyes and pretended to be dead. I could have stayed there like that. Actually I don’t know a better place. But Nili and Lili ordered me to get up and tell them the story of the witch.
They sat me down on a chair. I sat down. My two little demons sat down on my knees. Nili on the right knee and Lili on the left knee. I told them about the King who never laughs and about the shepherd girl, who tells him of the beautiful maiden in the cave, and about the witch that is brought before the king and promises him that she will give him the maiden his heart desires at one minute after midnight, on condition that he sets a room aside for her, with a mirror and a candle, and the king promises her all this, and also swears that he will not touch the maiden, and all the people of the city mass around the windows of the palace, the shepherd girl among them. And at one minute after midnight the king goes into the witch’s room, and whom does he find facing the mirror by the light of the candle—
“The beautiful maiden,” says Nili gravely.
“The beautiful maiden,” says Lili.
“But where’s the witch?” asks Nili.
“Tell us about the witch,” pleaded Lili.
And I tell them how the king’s heart ached when he saw the maiden of his dreams and he forgot his oath and touched the maiden, just barely touched the maiden, and then—
“And then the witch came,” my little demons jumped gleefully up and down on my knees.
“No,” I said. “She went up into the sky. The beautiful maiden went up into the sky through the chimney.”
“And what happened to the king?” asked my little ones.
“The king went up after her,” I said.
“So she was a witch,” said Nili reluctantly.
“So she was a witch,” said Lili.
“Yes,” I said. “And all the people of the city went up after the king.”
“And no one at all remained in the city?” asked my little ones.
“Only the shepherd girl,” I said. “And she went back to the forest.”
“Tell us about the witch,” said Nili.
“Yes, tell us,” Lili repeated.
I dragged my legs apart. I was very tired. I took out the piece of paper from deep down in my pocket, straightened it out between my hands, and read:
The sky above loves Lysanda
The sky embraces Lysanda
Hallelujah.
All the city loved Lysanda
All the city followed Lysanda
As she rose from the chimney with a wail
Into the midnight’s veil.
He came to the empty city—
Lysanda!
Seeking the oracle of the caves—
Lysanda!
Then he caroused with skulls and with stones
And tickled the walls till they laughed
And burned all the city with plague and with song—
Hallelujah.
I did not cry. This was my poem. I called it “Elegy on the Death of Lysanda.” The lines twitched before my eyes, the letters scattered. Like at the newspaper, at times, when I get tired. I was very tired. Nili and Lili moved away from me, flew away from me like two winged demons. Where to? To the door.
And in the doorway stood all the tenants of the house, Mr. Schturz at the head, with a policeman next to him. And around them and behind them: Mrs. Schturz, Mr. Rabman and his wife, Mr. Gross, Mr. Paldi, Mr. Rockman, and their wives, Mr. Getz, Mr. Gurfink, Mr. Zabman, and their wives—all the tenants of the house. Nili and Lili embraced the stout legs of Mrs. Schturz and Mr. Schturz and clung to them. They looked at me with a queer strangeness, perhaps even with terror. The others also looked at me with strangeness, but not without curiosity. On the wall opposite me hung an old clock with huge hands and blurred numbers. I took the opportunity of finding everybody together here, hardened my weakened voice as much as I could, and, raising my hands, one toward the clock and the other toward the doorway, said:
Don’t tell the children the death of Lysanda!
Cover the children’s heads!
Stop all the clocks!
The fleshy hands of Mrs. Schturz spread themselves over the little girls’ heads, and the hands of Mr. Schturz pointed at me: “He broke the light switch on the staircase,” he said.
“On purpose,” said Mr. Zabman.
“We warned him from the start,” said Mrs. Gurfink.
“Yes, yes,” said the tenants.
“He has no consideration for others at all,” said Mrs. Rockman.
“Mrs. Fleischman sprained her leg—Mrs. Fleischman’s my cousin—because it was dark on the staircase,” said Mrs. Schturz.
“Yes, yes,” said the tenants.
“Take him away, constable,” said Mr. Schturz.
The policeman bowed and smiled at me pleasantly. “Come with me,” he said. A vast dread encompassed his smiling face. He looked like the comb vendor. Perhaps he was the comb vendor. The old clock on the wall ticked like the sounds of a train that passed a long time ago. He had finally come for me. I returned his bow and invited him up to my roof. But my legs had already started to die. Somehow I dragged myself after him.