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“I’m going to open a café,” Yarón happily told his wife and her parents.
“Fine!” Yarón’s father-in-law was pleased.
He was happy that at last his son-in-law had decided to do something after a year and a half collecting unemployment and spending his days in front of the computer without doing anything.
“A café?” interspersed his mother-in-law. “You could work in your field. Why did you study philosophy and literature? Can’t you teach? A bar isn’t respectable at all.”
“Don’t worry. Just tell us what you need and we’ll help you,” interjected her husband, who right away got pinched under the table.
If they only knew what I have in mind...thought Yarón, they would have the scare of their life.
The idea Yarón had was like anything else, an idea emerging from deep necessity. He didn’t know where to get over his rage. When he was in the army he used to go out to a small woods near the base, where he would toss Coca-Cola bottles at the trees and scream until he could no longer do it. Now, married with two little children he could only scream at the children, which he did not want, or at his wife, but he couldn’t do that because he was afraid of her. He also realized that the good life was going away by the minute and the pressure Dana’s parents exerted over him was starting to bear fruit. How could he give up the five bedroom flat on Arnona Street, with paid babysitting and the car that had been a wedding gift? It was not about the money. He loved Dana, but he had certainly gotten accustomed to the quick, easy money.
Rage Café. That is the name he had thought of for his café. “At the Rage Café you can let out your rage.” Slogans began to fill his head.
“Have a doughnut and let out your rage.”
“Why be infuriated in silence? You can scream as you like here.”
“Anything goes, except hitting.”
“Yell all you like at the waiters and the owner.”
“Don’t hold anything back. At the Rage Café everything gets let out.”
Etc...
Most of the slogans were just garbage but I will find something. He didn’t explain anything to the family. He only indicated to Dana that he had an original idea that would be successful.
He spent three months remodeling the café at 13 Rabin Street. He could have done it in less time, perhaps a month, but he decided that if he was going on account of his wife’s family, it was better to cut off the past very slowly to get used to the idea of going back to work.
He published an ad in the newspapers and many young men and women began coming to his office.
The first thing he would say to the prospect was:
“Oh, you’re garbage! Why do you want to work here?” He was physically a delicate-looking man so at first it was hard to be convincing. Soon he began to wear dark glasses and to make fierce expressions to see how the person before him would react.
Most of those who came just backed off.
“We’ll find somewhere else.”
“Nobody will hire you anywhere because you’re worthless.”
Others remained at the table, or responded:
“Garbage yo mama,” said one Yacov Segal.
“Right, get out of here. You shouldn’t talk like that to your boss.”
“I’ll leave when I damn well please.”
“Come on, get out of here. I don’t have time for fuckers like you.”
The interesting ones were those who responded to the insults as though nothing happened.
“But you look absolutely disgusting,” said Yarón to David Lapidot. “Why should I hire you to work here?”
“I really need this job. I can improve. I will try.”
“Improve? You, improve? Look at you. You’re so ugly...”
Actually, he was a tall, rather good-looking young man.
“I know I’m ugly, but I am fast, very fast. I know how to work. I dedicate myself completely to the job.”
The conversation continued like that for a bit until he told him:
“Fine. Now I will tell you the secret. In my café, everyone who wants to, can scream and shout as he pleases at the wait staff. The waiter must always beg pardon for everything, even that his mother is still alive, everything. Agreed?”
“And the salary?”
“Minimum wage plus twenty percent of the sales will be divided among the wait staff. The prices will be high compared with other establishments.”
“I don’t know...”
“It could be a lot of money if the business gets going.”
“We can try it.”
“I want a small, well-coordinated team.”
D-day arrived. The first day three people came in. Yarón showed them an elegant menu with an explanation about the café.
Client’s rights:
The client is always right, especially when he is not.
The client may shout at the wait staff. He may insult them or say whatever comes into his head.
The client may not hit or touch. Violators will be severely punished.
The client may insult the owner and their supervisor.
A dissatisfied client is a good client.
At the Rage Café we like it when customers are never satisfied.
All the prices are in shekels and the tip is not included. We recommend not leaving a tip because the service always leaves something to be desired.
The waiter is your servant. Make him run all over however you want. But remember:
The client must pay for whatever he sends back to the kitchen, even if he is right. Rights and rage do not go together.
Remember: to let out your rage costs money. When the time comes to pay, it can be critical.
At first people were unsure.
“You maniac!” shouted a young girl with a vaguely sarcastic smile. “Did you see this fried egg? Change it at once and stop smiling like that.”
“You idiot girl!” Said a man in a tie. “Why don’t you go and work the streets? That would suit you.”
Before the week was out the “Clients Rights” had been published in all the local weeklies and people began to pour in. By evening a long line had formed outside the café.
“It’s expensive, but it is worth every céntimo,” said Samuel to his companion when suddenly a waitress dissolved in tears as a brown skinned man behind her shouted “What a shame our parents were not liquidated in the Holocaust you disgusting Ashkenazi. I would have burned you too if I could have.” Shmuel wanted to hit the man but right away a security guard was on him: “Anything goes but hitting. Understand?”
“But what he said is worse than hitting.”
Meanwhile the Brown skinned man looked at his companion and said, “I would have paid a thousand shekels to say what I said. For two hundred it came out cheap.”
“Disgusting hick,” Shmuel said.
Shmuel’s companion made a gesture and they left.
“Don’t you know who that is?” she said. “That is Yacov Bengigui, the most famous Moroccan poet in the country. I will publish that in the paper tomorrow. All the Moroccans are the same pile of trash.”
Yarón’s earnings increased rapidly but problems began to emerge from everywhere. People insulted religious Jews, leftists, Arabs, Moroccans, Kurds and Ashkenazi’s. The most frequent statement was: “What a shame they didn’t do away with you in the Holocaust.” “We have to burn all the Arabs” “Hey baboon!” “What Moroccan cave did you crawl out of?” and similar things.
And these are the problems that were caused:
Political: Politicians began to share their opinions about the decadence of Israeli society and lack of values. A proposal was made to pass a law to close the café.
Security: Increasing numbers of guards were needed to prevent physical fights.
Money: As the money increased everybody wanted to work at Café Rage. It was being rumored that the waiters earned more than twenty thousand shekels a month.
Yarón received death threats.
Client petitions: Primarily requesting sections where waiters could shout at customers but not the reverse.
Attempts to buy: Some international companies were interested in buying the idea to create an international franchise: RAGE.
Yarón’s wife: Dana began to feel rejected by Yarón, although on the other hand she was satisfied with the great quantity of money that was coming in and in a few months had become richer than her parents. She evicted her mother from the home.
There were other problems but Yarón dismissed them as “normal problems associated with success.”
––––––––
THE FOURTH DAY
Yosef Ruti, that was my most famous name. You can see it in the history books. The last thing a man like me needs is to become famous or well-known. That is like seeking out problems that are difficult to carry. I always had money from the first hundred years when I was a carpenter for royalty. There were a lot of gold and silver coins at home which I knew very well how to hide in all kinds of hiding places in Sefarad and in Morocco.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Lisbon, Portugal, a large number of “Marranos” lived in the city because, after the uprisings of the sixteenth century, hundreds of children had been captured and baptized on the king’s orders.
The Jews managed to lead a double life: Jews at home including praying at synagogue- and showing a Christian face in public, a number of them even attended church services on Sundays. Jews on Saturday, Christians on Sunday.
The problem then was that those “Marranos” began to forget their Judaism and some married Christians. On the other hand, the church and the king decided to require that Jews give up the transition period they had been promised and had to decide if they wanted to be Christians and live like everyone in Portugal, or Jews, in which case they must leave the kingdom. But leaving the kingdom was not such a simple matter. Where to go? To Sefarad? To the sea, which in those times was loaded with pirates, and presented its own dangers as well? I understood the importance of that moment in 1580 and I went to work to save them. Basically it was the first Jewish agency and thanks to this action, you are alive, and you are a Jew.
I took quite a bit of the money that I had and took the name of a prosperous businessman. Then I went to see the King to propose that I buy the grain crop of the kingdom at a good price. I bought the grains and I distributed them all over Europe, selling most of it to Portugal, England, which, back then owned Tangier, and to the Vatican. That is how I formed solid relationships with all those who had influence over the King. I did this for several years straight, and by so doing I made not a little money and I became one of the most famous businessmen of the times. I came and went at will in the court of the King of Portugal, Alfonso III, the King of Morocco, Abd al-Rahman, as well as the Pope and the king of England. So it was at the beginning of 1600, I began to take Jews from Portugal to Tangiers on my ship. They arrived at Tangier and from there rapidly fled to Tetuán or to Fez, where the Jews had organized their reception, to see to their needs and instruct them in the true and correct practice of Judaism. The Portuguese clergy didn’t like what I was doing and therefore tried by any means possible to detain me and convince the Vatican to put an end of my activities. They couldn’t do that because both the Vatican and the King of Portugal, who depended on my services, to be able to distribute grain to their subjects, had issued me a special Passport. In reality, it was impossible to do anything to me. I was a one-man free-trade zone.
Over three years I transferred nearly all the Jews that wanted to leave. That is how Jewish Tetuán was born. There had been a pirate Tetuán in the fourteenth century but it had been destroyed. And only with the arrival of the Jews in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did Tetuán flourish anew as a city.
How I disappeared that time is a funny story. Back then I had so many enemies that I looked for a double who I paid handsomely to throw my pursuers off the track. One day, on returning from Gibraltar, I found that the man had taken over my identity and told everyone that he was me.
Only my wife could tell it was not true, but it had been a year since he had died. It happened when I had finished transporting all the Jews, so I let him take advantage of everything. All I wanted to do was to disappear and I went to Tetuán as though I were one of the “Marranos.” Under a year later it became known that the new King of Morocco had decided to confiscate all of Yosef Ruti’s property and condemn him to death. People said that my double went crazy and at the gallows began to scream that he was a Muslim, that he had simply taken my place. It looks like that is how I escaped death.
Who knows, perhaps if he hadn’t let himself be seen, nothing would have happened to him. Maybe that was his punishment.
It was during that time frame that the saga of the Benzimra family that you belong to began. I married the first Sol who gave me seven sons and three daughters, from which come all the Benzimra. Then I simply disappeared on a commercial expedition, something very common in those times.
WHERE ARE THEY TAKING YOU, MY SON?
“I don’t know. There is a cloth over my eyes. It is a long trip.”
“I hear the water.”
“Where there is water, fire cannot burn you.”
“My memory is burning.”
“What do you see on the cloth?”
“I see the only two words in Hebrew that my mother taught me, Shemá Israel.”
“Pronounce them every day to remember them, and teach them to your children, they will take you again to your people.”
“I can’t come back papa. You know very good and well that this is a one-way trip, not a circle. There is no exit.”
THE FATHER
I judge myself every day. Did I really do the right thing when I decided to go back to Málaga? So that my children would be Jews? What else could I do? In Israel, no matter who I asked, I was always up against a brick wall. Everything I tried ended up with me hitting insurmountable obstacles. Samuel worries me a lot but perhaps he is good. People say that when a boy goes to the army he learns a little about life and becomes a man. He spends the day staggering around with all kinds of friends, going to the beach, from the beach to home, who knows if he would be capable of completing his studies. How much can a man weigh his actions, I can’t regret it now. Now I am here, and here I will die. They will bury me in Málaga. This is closer to Tetuán than to Jerusalem. Who knows if perhaps someday they will expel us from here too? Maybe this will be changed into the neo-Nazi common market. They will get rid of us in different ways. We thought that if the influence of Christianity in Europe weakened, anti-Semitism would lessen. But precisely when Christianity evaporates, a new anti-Semitism appears, scientific, demonic, and pagan. Compared with this, Christian antisemitism was child’s play. And now we think that if Europe unifies, the danger to minorities will decrease, especially the Jews. Wrong. No, no, we can’t really be sure of anything. The communist Jews also believed that in a secular state they would be protected and then, communist antisemitism also began. Expulsion, death, and a nomadic life awaited us at every corner. We take with us, just as we take the coin purse in our pocket, and if I thought the answer could be Israel, that, also, was motivation for other migrations, return to Sefarad. Who could have imagined it there in Tetuán? My mother would tell me “Israel is not for us. It is a lovely state, a lovely country, but it is not for us. We can only live in Sefarad.”
It seems that, like always, she, half senile, was right. She was old, but she was right. The two years I spent there wasting time are a joke... At myself. . . No matter what I did was reason for humiliation. Everything humiliated me. Even going to the café, ordering a pizza, or a combination plate. Getting on a bus, travelling in a car, seeing how people were squashed together in those pieces of metal placing their lives in danger to demonstrate one is not stupid, everything humiliated me. I felt suffocated all day long. But perhaps, as Coti said, I was too egotistical and sacrificed the future of my sons for my own well-being. Perhaps here, in one or two generations, there will be no Jews. But after living two years in Israel, I ask myself: Why is it so important to be a Jew? What have they done with this country? For this they have remained Jews for two thousand years, just to create this economic chaos? Maybe yes. Maybe in reality this is the achievement. I don’t know. Maybe this is the goal. I don’t think these people are very smart, at least as a people, they do everything backward or against themselves. One thing is certain, out of all this ruckus some people important to humanity, and they are just half Jews, even less. Just when they assimilated, or their contact with Judaism is scarce, great Jews emerge like Freud, Jesus, Teresa de Jesus, or maybe Cervantes. It could be that the tension of the guilt feelings that makes one distance oneself a little more from the Jewish people is what produces Jewish genius. Certainly during the hundred years of Zionism not one of our writers has deserved world acclaim while in the countries of the diaspora dozens of them have flourished. Isn’t that surprising? Generally national revolutions make great writers but here precisely the opposite occurs. Maybe what gave us an Isaac Bashevis, a Woody Allen, a Bob Dylan, an Edmond Jabés and an Allen Ginsberg was precisely that: feeling guilty for not participating in the Zionist revolution, they set themselves to sewing sutures between Judaism and assimilation. Surely my son Samuel would have fainted if he had known that I once dreamed of being a poet, but now I won’t be. I will sell my textiles in the city of Málaga just as the Benzmira family has always done. Textile merchants for generations. I have closed the circle of Tetuán to Jerusalem and back to Málaga to be a textile merchant. Isn’t that a very strange thing? It’s as though one can never renounce one’s destiny? Will my son also be a textile merchant?
PATRICK
I was born in Oran. My father was born in Oran. My mother was born in Oran. But I am from Tetuán. I can’t even say I am an immigrant. Nobody in the family could think we are French or anything other than Tetuanies. Although we lived so far from Tetuán, not really. My grandfather, Samuel Benzimra son of Mesod Benzimra and Clarita Yovel left the Jewish ghetto in 1866. That was four years after the Spaniards returned to Spain. The reason was simple. There was no more room in the ghetto and Jews were not allowed to build new houses. The streets were increasingly stuffed with people, so, well, the rich, who could buy a house in Tangier, in Gibraltar, or in Oran left the city. And the poor, who could not buy a house, had to go to faraway places. Every so often, an epidemic would break out. They called it the tithe. Because of it a tenth of the Jewish population would die.
If any friend should read me now, if he knows Spanish or if some day my works are translated into French, surely they will think I am insane. What do I have to do with Spanish? What has happened to me that brought me to write my family history in Spanish, the history of a Ladino family? Why don’t I write it in French? But if Partik is very French, What is up with the Spanish? They will continue repeating that I was born in Oran, that I was raised and studied in French schools and that I have lived in Paris since age six. This book will be the explanation for my friends and loved ones.
Why, at the age of thirty eight, do I abandon a language which I know well and go back, or rather I put myself to learning from scratch the language which my grandfather and grandmother spoke? I don’t even have the ‘ñ’ on my typewriter and I mess up the accents and the ‘z’ and the ‘s.’ Someone will have to correct all this. After having spent so many years in Paris and two in Israel, after having studied in Jewish schools, now, in this tiny studio on Pereire Street, sixth floor, no elevator, each morning I go to buy a croissant. In Spanish they call it a media luna. I don’t know why I trouble my brain during the few hours I have of free time trying to write a book in Spanish as though there were not enough books in Spanish.
I want to hear again the songs my other used to sing to me to put me to sleep. I want to hear my grandmother telling me stories about Tetuán in a mixture of Spanish, French and Haquetia.
I want to again hear the words which calmed me, words in Haquetia not possible to translate to any other language.
It is what I do every day after work. I come here and write all the words in Haquetia and in Spanish that I hear. All those words what make me feel connected with Oran, Tetuán and Granada. I can’t say it makes much sense, but neither does the twentieth century. Nor human history. I don’t understand why my grandfather never returned to Tetuán or as many did, to Spain. Why? So that his great grandson might continue speaking Spanish in an Arab/Muslim state governed by French and with a majority of French speaking citizens. I don’t understand Spaniards. Why, as many think, did they not grant Spanish citizenship to the Jews of Tetuán in the nineteenth century? Those Jews still saw the queen of Spain as their queen. They still saw Isabella, the last Catholic, as the seat of authority. This, even though they had been herded out of Spanish territory like cattle. There are many things I don’t understand, especially the two years I spent in Israel. My parents sent me there but they stayed in France and now, retired, spend most of their time in Spain, not in Israel. Like many argelinos who’s Zionism consists in complaining about those who leave Israel and spend their retirement by the sea in Netanya or in Tel-Aviv. I have never understood what I am doing here in Israel and much less why everything seems strange. Because I have always been a Zionist but everything was oriented toward the wrong place. I understood that when I read a booklet by Marcel Cohen in Ladino, I understood deep within, what I wanted was to go to Spain, not to Israel. In the book Cohen tells that at the start of the century some Zionist delegates had gone to Thessaloniki and in their after report said it was impossible to convince them to emigrate to Israel because what they wanted was to return to Spain.
And today I want to return to Spanish. The language is my territory. I can carry the Spanish language anywhere.
My Spanish can subsist without the Inquisition; it is Spanish without Christians, without Marranos and without persecutions. In my heart of hearts I can place a Spain that never existed and that maintained its language through the roads of the diaspora. That is why I have read all the writers I like best in Spanish: Borges, Huidobro, Vallejo not in translations into French, or English, a neutral language which I used to write my first poems inspired by Bob Dylan. Also I have written something in Hebrew, a language I have always known, including, perhaps, the first language I saw written in the plain synagogue in Tetuán. But only in Spanish do I feel the heartbeat of the language, its past and its future.
SAMUEL
Who would have believed it? But really, who wouldn’t have believed it? We went on living our daily lives forgetting completely who we would have to deal with. We believed the Sasportes were strong enough to protect us. Here we are, in the same eternal boat, in the eternal Mediterranean, in 1669, and again it’s about the Spaniards that now want to kick us out of Oran. So, now where? To Tetuán? They say we can’t go there either. The Spaniards and the pirates lie in wait in all the corners of the coast around Gibraltar. Spanish ships, as though we were the enemy, not them. Probably, unknowingly, we are the pirates. We are the theological pirates for the Christians. Wherever they go, they run into us. We who believe in our religion, in our God and who do not kneel in vain, nor pointlessly.
They say we should go to Niza, to Italy, always in the Mediterranean, Málaga, Oran, Tetuán, Niza, Yafo, and Acre. And why never to our own land? It would be better to die there than to keep traveling around everywhere. My father used to tell me that times would change, that we would arrive there, to OUR land. He was referring to Spain. He said that if we could get along with them in Oran, we could go back to living together. He was lucky enough to die with that hope three months before that sudden expulsion. Thankfully he didn’t see us in the pirate ship, on our way again to exile, toward a new city where we could construct our lives and from which our children and grandchildren would be expelled.
THE GRANDFATHER
I don’t understand why you have had to tell me this now minutes before being moved out. Or, perhaps I do understand but that doesn’t justify it. You wanted to avenge yourself for mama and I would again be the victim. Couldn’t I have lived forever without this chilling knowledge? How can I now look at my mother? Is it her fault? No, it’s not her fault at all, but her father’s. How could she be responsible for the actions of her father? Why must I be tormented with this now? Is it impossible to erase this knowledge? Throw it in the recycle bin and send it to hell? No. It’s impossible. From no one I know I am a descendent of ...I can’t even think the word, I’m not capable of thinking those words. Maybe I should have understood that something was not right when, at age four, I showed a lot of interest in what the Germans had done and then mama gave me strange answers. But I couldn’t think that my grandfather...I had been told that it was unknown who my grandfather was. Now, yes, it was known. Sometimes mama would be happy for me to read so much about the Nazis. Sometimes she told me I shouldn’t do it. “It’s a morbid subject. Better to forget it.” Sometimes she said the opposite, “must not be forgotten, we can’t forget it. We must always keep it in mind.” And at others: “Are you reading those Nazi Holocaust books again?”
Evidentially, I didn’t pay much attention to that. But today, a posteriori, I can relate it all. “How could I talk to mama today? What is different? I had decided not to bring up the subject with her but that is the first thing I did when I saw her.
“Papa told me about grandfather.”
She remained silent for quite a while.
“Perhaps it’s better that way. Now you know, and I have a weight off my chest. Now I don’t have to be afraid of the day when you find out, the way I did when one day, walking down the Street with my father through the streets of Sao Paulo, somebody shouted ‘Nazi!’ You’re a Nazi! You killed my brother. I remember you, Dr. Steiner!”
“Steiner?”
“Helmut Steiner. That was his name. I was ten and I already knew what the word Nazi meant. My father was a Nazi.”
“What happened then?”
“My father didn’t want to run the risk so right away we moved to another, smaller, city and he was a doctor there until he died.”
She was silent again.
“From that moment on, my life changed and when I learned to read, at twelve, I was only interested in reading books about the Holocaust and Judaism.”
“What was he like?”
“Our grandfather? He was a tall, distinguished man, a good father. I don’t remember him ever shouting at me nor even telling me ever that I had done something wrong. But I quickly understood that that wasn’t worth anything because it was about the assassination of thousands of persons.”
“My grandfather a Nazi!!! I couldn’t believe it. And a distinguished Nazi...I couldn’t even pronounce it. And now what? Am I the grandson of a Nazi or an Israeli Jew? What am I now?”
“Is that like discovering that our mother was a whore?”
“What are you saying? What does that have to do with it?”
“Were you a whore too?”
“No, don’t worry. I wasn’t. I don’t know why I said that. I’m really sorry. I went too far.”
“What did he do there?”
“He was a doctor. I don’t know everything because he didn’t talk to me about it. The only thing he said over and over was “Things aren’t that simple.” And he always said that if he had to go through it again he didn’t know if he would be able to do something different. He didn’t have any money to flee. He was a young doctor who came from a family that was not rich so the easiest thing to do was to be a military doctor,”
“Didn’t he save any Jews?”
“No, he wasn’t a hero. He did what he was told. He sent the sick to their death and the well to work. He was a small screw in the mechanism.”
“A screw maybe, but small? There were no small screws there. That was a mechanism with big screws.”
“And then, at age sixteen I understood that I had to be a Jew. I went to see the rabbi in Sao Paulo to tell him that I had to be a Jew. I had to be. I had read the story of the grandchildren of Aman who were converted to Judaism when their grandfather tried to annihilate the Jewish people. And then I understood. I understood that there was only one path: to be a Jew. I told my father. He didn’t say anything. From that moment he shut up. I think he agreed with me. I remember I told him I’m converting to Judaism because the Jewish people are right. These are the people who are the most right on earth. I agree, that was an eccentric response, but it was the one I understood. From that moment he didn’t speak to me again. He hardly talked to anyone. Three years later, the same week as I had my conversion ceremony, he died of a heart attack. One year later I emigrated to Israel.”
“Mama, can you stop talking to me about those things? The more you tell me the more shocking everything seems.”
THE FIFTH DAY
Come. Today you will put on the phylacteries. Rashi himself wrote those phylacteries. Since then they have been mine. Not a letter has deteriorated or faded. A great miracle. Look: They are tiny. Not large like those of today. They are authentic phylacteries. Take them like this: the leather cord in the left hand. I see that you at least know how to put them on correctly, not like your cousin who studied in a secular school in Israel and I had to teach him how to wear them. And they call it the land of the Jews. In the Diaspora there was not a single Jew who did not know how to wear the phylacteries, not even the intellectually challenged. Perhaps there were some among the Ashkenazi, but not one of us. Not in Sefarad. Not in the Atlas mountain range. Even the deaf knew how to do it. Here is the book of prayers, the Sidur, Read the Shemá.
They are yours. These phylacteries are yours. They are a gift from a distant grandfather. When I see you, you and my son, I see many of my sons, all alike, the phylacteries are yours, forever. You have to take care of them as though they were gold. At one time I had some that our rabbi Tam had made but I lost them. So keep them and wear them every day and when the bad spirits try to control you or some catastrophe stalks the world, just show them and it will pass. That is what happened to me in the Amazon when I went to visit an elderly son, I found myself facing three drooling lions and then I took out the phylacteries and the lions went away. They also help with snakes. They especially helped me one time when some Indians wanted to kill me because I was white. They left me alone in a tent and there I put on the phylacteries and waited for them and when they came they began to cry and shriek and they went to see the tribal chief and then they started honoring me like a king and touching the phylacteries. That is how I saved myself many times. From thieves, pirates, Christians, Muslims, and pagans. That is how I saved myself innumerable times.
If you’re about to ask me something, don’t. Never until today have these phylacteries been apart from me. It is the first time I have given them to anyone. I am sure you know why. I am getting ready to leave this world. Nobody can live a thousand years, one day for God, and my joints hurt. I have been through the forties, the fifties, and sixties since the last cleansing crisis, which was the hardest of all and this means I will not be renewed like before. I will not return to being young. Now I am like any person, I will live one year more, or twenty, and I will die. Sometimes it seems to me that a thousand years are too many years for one person to live. And sometimes I think it is not enough as I still have so many things to do. A man doesn’t just leave the world with only half his passion in hand. Let us suppose that after a thousand years I have three quarters of my passion in my hands. There remains the last quarter. And that part increases from year to year
––––––––
I have had a full life in spite of having had to go from one place to another, like Cain, without a mark on my forehead. They were exodus of compassion without justice in spite of everything. Whoever is not born and then dies in the same place has no consolation. Maybe I’ll go to Lucena to die there. Perhaps I’ll die here, within a week, by the sea. However it may be, you will come to me seven days before I give up my soul.
You think that with the years, you will know more. But what you know you can’t explain it or transmit it. And what you don’t know you can talk about for hours. You need to know that the teachers who know will never talk about their knowledge. Perhaps they will allow you to understand it on your own if they are good teachers. Take this. I’m giving you the bag of phylacteries. It has the inscription of Shmuel Benzimra, my son, and one of your distant grandfathers. Everything is sewn by hand, white letters on white cloth all in pure silk. Now you have the great responsibility of saving the phylacteries and the bag for future generations. I am very tired from all that I have seen and that I have not seen. This century is what has tired me the most perhaps because I don’t have the strength to continue to put up with so many changes, endless changes. The most difficult has been the creation of the State of Israel. All the hopes were dashed. That was the worst blow to us since expulsion from Sefarad. From gentlemen we became slaves. That’s why your father returned to Málaga. But you know that already. He can’t bear the humiliation, the looks, and the shameful words. But I know you will return to Jerusalem. And you know it too. We must forgive. But how much can we pardon? We forgive the Christians, including the Germans. But I don’t know how we can forgive the humiliation of the Ashkenazi’s. It is possible that Zionism is the cause of my joints aching. That precisely, not the Holocaust, nor the expulsion, nor the sacrifice of Lucena. Precisely among everything Zionism has become the sharpest pain. But I don’t want to talk to you about this because surely you have hard it many times from the mouths of your uncles and your father. Even our mother who always sees things through rose colored glasses. This is not what I want to talk to you about.
Distance yourself from rage like from the fire. Distance yourself from the Ashkenazi’s if you want your soul to remain pure and always distance yourself from lies. Those will only cause you more pain and more blows. If you see these before you, flee. Don’t try to overcome them. War only feeds them. The struggle against pain is what causes pain. The struggle against lies causes more lies and the struggle against Ashkenazi’s causes more humiliation. When you see them on the street, cross to the other side of the street. Greet them politely and continue on your way.
When you want to marry, go seek a bride among the girls of Tetuán. And only if you can’t find one, go North to look and don’t give up your search until you find the woman who will accompany you. You will find her. Desperation brings a cloud. Don’t let it grow. Because in the end, the cloud will cover you up.
There were times when I would see death every day. In times of pestilence, At times four friends would die in one single day. My wives died in my arms. My children in my embrace. And I was among them unable to die. In those days death was a consolation. In those days death was a shield from the suffering, from seeing others die. I know that many didn’t die from disease, but so as not to see the dead. I patiently picked them up, especially the little ones. I took them to the cemetery and there I dug a tomb for them. I didn’t know their names, but I made it. In less than a month I buried four of my sons and my wife. But Samuel, always know that a few survive calamities and continue to multiply. And in this family they are always called Shmuel or Samuel. For some reason they are the strongest and you are made of the strongest. Probably not always because an uncle of yours named Samuel died young. This also happened but I see that you, Samuel Benzimra, you are among the strong ones. You are made from sturdy stuff and nobody can beat you.
And there were radiant, beautiful days, when I was a carpenter for kings and nobles in Sevilla there I could earn five gold coins every day for the tables and chairs I created for them. Some are now in museums and palaces. This money is what saved your family in Portugal. I always hid it well under an olive tree. Because the olive tree will not steal. To the contrary, it generously gives us olives and oil in abundance.
Well, that is, up to not so long ago. The olive was the strongest tree but nowadays, because of industry, even the olive trees sicken. They have sicknesses from the modern world. Fewer than the others, because it is stronger, but it, as well, is ill.
Don’t worry. In a few days you will understand everything. And then you will be able to go play in the sea. How wonderful it would be if this sea were today a sea of games. Before, warships set sail from here. Pirate ships sailed the sea terrorizing us. Before, the coast was full of Jews who went seeking a new place of refuge and were sunk into the sea. Then the sea was the largest Jewish cemetery until the Germans came and changed our ashes into a source of our thoughts. But then, who knew that even being devoured by a human being could be an acceptable death? The Talmud says there are nine hundred three kinds of death. So we are not equal, not even in death. There are nine hundred three kinds of death and our people have tried all of them. We were drowned in the sea. We inhaled gas. Our heads were cut off. Our children were burned and they were eaten. What has not been done with our lives?
Here where after many, many years the Greeks fell, Babylonia fell, Syria, and Rome, and the British Empire, and France and we are world’s fifth great nuclear power. We survived, just a few Jews, carrying a certain Book, We did not renounce it. Never. Samuel, my son, never renounce the Book. Take it with you wherever you go. It matters not if you are religious or secular. Do NOT renounce the Book. It is fundamental. It will nourish you, as much if you know it or not. From it you will receive air to breathe. Not from the gentiles. It will satiate your thirst, not the faucet; from it you will eat your fill, not from the trees. Take it with you always. Also the phylacteries and the bag. It is the Book.
I’m not preaching to you, my son. Now you are young. I know that in an hour you will have forgotten my reproaches and recommendations. Young folks can’t learn from their elders until they have tried things for themselves. And now that the generations have gotten muddled. Sometimes young folks know more than the elders and rightly so. I know I am boring you. YOU would prefer to hear stories about kings and the Amazon, but I also know that one day in the country, under an olive tree in a few years, one day you will remember what I have told you today. And then you will say: Now I understand what Lucena told me.
SHABAT SHALOM
Menashé Benzimra left the synagogue angry because his son Samuel had arrived late, almost at the end of the service. The only thing he did not look forward to was arriving home. It was one o’clock in the afternoon and he didn’t want his wife after him trying to calm him down, something that made him very nervous. Another Saturday without smoking. Disgusting Saturday! What I need now is a cigarette. What an annoyance! He went to the bar next to the synagogue the “Oceano” and on entering he was greeted with “Good morning Mr. Benzimra.” The waiter, who knew him, asked him if he wanted squid tapas. “Yes, and a brandy, please.”
Right away one of the fellows who attended synagogue approached him, Yitshak Wahnish, who also ordered squid and a glass of red wine.
“You here?” said Wahnish.
“You say that like I‘m not here every Saturday. Why should I go home?”
“I thought that perhaps you would go to see “sajená.”
“She’s not in Málaga today.”
“You look worried.”
“It’s my son. He wants to be a writer. You hear? He wants to be a writer. Young folks are insane. Insane I tell you. What would he live on?”
Menashé was getting worked up and Wahnish thought he’d better do something to calm him down.
“It’s not THAT terrible. One can live on that. He could write for a newspaper, or be a published author like Julio Llamazares, or García Márquez, or like... There are a lot of guys who live writing books. Why not?”
“Seriously? Look how many crazy guys out there tried to write and made nothing. Nothing from nothing.”
Soon, the waiter told Menashé he had a telephone call.
Here, He thought.
“It’s me, Marisa. I decided not to go.”
“Are you ok?”
“I’m fine,” she sighed. “Just a little tired. I’ll be a lot better when you get here. ”
“I’ll be there right away. I really miss your hands.”
Menashé quickly said goodbye to Wahnish, who understood very well who had called and he smiled “So the sajená is back.” Menashé didn’t answer and went out onto the street with a smile on his lips. Marisa lived a few blocks from the synagogue; five minutes on foot. But that day Menashé felt tired and took a little more than ten minutes. Also he was huffing and puffing due to the cigarettes that he couldn’t smoke that Saturday.
She gave him a big hug and he hurried to remove his clothing. Without saying hardly anything he threw himself face down waiting for her to massage his back. That was one of the few worldly pleasures Menashé was disposed do anything to enjoy, including tolerating his hypocritical wife’s looks intended to calm him down. Life itself acquired meaning the moment Marisa put her hands on his back. She began by soft taps to either side of his spinal column. Menashé dreamed then of being on a tall mountain under a great tree and surrounded by a herd of goats. Then she began to press all over his body and Menashé nearly dozed. But now it was Marisa who wanted war. She turned him over and began to delicately suck his member. When she saw he did not awaken, she gave him, as usual, a light nip. He awoke at that moment and saw her, nude and lovely, and thought of the wife, in the woman she had been twenty years before, in how beautiful she had been back then, how her body had broken down until it seemed to be another, heaps of fat in strange places had filled her body. Her breasts had fallen, her grace and passion had disappeared. The same thing would happen to Marisa, he thought, in a few years, if she married and had children or, even if she didn’t have them.
“A little more massage, please,” said Menashé. Those thoughts had occupied his mind so much that they impeded his erection. In spite of the fact she was aroused, and the only thing she wanted was for him to penetrate her, she complied because she always spoiled Menashé. There was never a great love between them, it was true, but every time they met, an infinite tenderness was created between them. To her, he, a mature man, gave her the security that with him everything would be ok. And to him, she gave him the illusion that he was not yet as old as he tried to make her believe.
Sooner than usual, Marisa told him she needed to go see her friend who was ill in the hospital and Menashé again found himself on the street at one in the afternoon. It was an hour and a half until mealtime and what he didn’t want was to go home or to see his son.
On the way home, at a slow pace, with labored breathing, he stopped for another brandy in the
‘El Mancebo’. This time he ordered a tapa of potatoes with mayo. He could hear his mother telling him he was too fat, even when it was totally untrue. In a moment he found himself in conversation with a man sitting beside him, Paco.
“They say that on the thirty first of December all the computers will stop working,” mused Paco.
“And why do you care?” enquired Isaac.
Paco shrugged. “To tell the truth, it’s all the same to me I don’t even know what a computer is, but they say there won’t be any water. I don’t know when water started coming through the computers but if there isn’t going to be any water or electricity, then I do care.”
“Seriously?” said Isaac. “Waiter!” “So, tell me when water started coming through computers. Don’t they get wet? I can understand electricity, but, water?”
“Another brandy?” asked the waiter.
“That’s enough brandy for today”, said Paco. “Come on, I’ll buy you a whiskey.”
“OK. A couple of whiskeys,” conceded Isaac.
This was, in the life of Menashé, the drop off, every Saturday. After the whiskey, came two more brandies, and ten more tapas: Spanish tortilla, shrimps, squid, and sometimes, crab. Paco, who was becoming interested in the water and computer situation, even asked other men who were seated at the tables about this important topic and finally came to the conclusion that the water arrived beneath the computers in separate pipes.
“It seems logical, “said Menashé, “But at the same time, it could be brought in above them.”
“This is exactly what it could be. The important thing is that it couldn’t be inside them, that’s what I say.”
Thus continued the conversation and Menashé forgot about lunch until they came looking for him. Through the years Samuel had become an expert at locating the places where his father spent his time on Saturdays.
Menashé arrived home. His wife showed obvious signs of anger. He was nearly drunk. Thus he could not control his behavior.
“Who had to put you in my life?” he ranted. “Why is God punishing me? Does anyone know? And you, Samuel: Do you still want to be a writer? Still? All you do is displease me, the whole family. None of you is going to be normal.”
Menashé realized there was a guest. The daughter of his brother and friend of Muriel, Sandra. “You’re here too? Look here, this is a girl who doesn’t bring shame on her father. I’m sure she doesn’t want to be a writer, and wants to go to university.” Samuel tried several times to get into the conversation to tell him that he had decided to study physics but it was not possible.
“I came here from Tetuán so you could be good and useful to society, not to shame my father nor my grandfather, Samuel Benzimra, the greatest product of the country, a walking encyclopedia. Wife, bring me the wine for the benediction. I don’t know who up above had the idea to put my life alongside yours. Look at you. You look like a sack from the market. Like those huge potato sacks the Moor would bring to our house in Tetuán”
“In spite of his drunkenness, Menashé realized he had gone a bit too far. He saw his wife Simi, crying, but now he couldn’t stop. “Look, look at you, and you, Luisa, do you want to be a writer too? Probably you, too, Salomón, son of our old age, you, who don’t yet understand anything, and much less what family of madmen you have found yourself in, at least you don’t yet want to be anything. Bring me the wine and now, quiet, everyone, to recite the Kiddush.
Alegría
The Jews call me the Christian, the Christians, the Jew. The “Marranos’ don’t talk to me. Only the Jews support me. My surname is Gonzalez, previously Galfón, before that, Bibas, before that, Benzimra. I sell kosher meat, a business passed down for twenty generations. They couldn’t do away with the business or with my family. It has always been known that only the Gonzalez family can sell kosher meat in Sevilla. Meat without blood. Without the blood of Jesus who is in heaven, meat with the dry blood of dead Jews or those at the point of death. I still have a Jewish cousin; one who always says he is from Lucena. He pities me and my Christian life. I have another cousin who converted just before his house was burned with his wife in it. He says she is a saint because she died for her faith. But what kind of faith leads someone to death? I am a Christian, but I am alive. That is Judaism. It is preferable to be a live Christian than a dead Jew. God has put us here to honor the life He has given us. When we all arrive up yonder we will learn who was right, and who was not. It could even be possible that the priest was right. Maybe in heaven there are only Christians. The only thing that has remained of my religion is the Kaddish which my father taught me because he didn’t have any sons and he asked me to say Kaddish at his tomb. I don’t even eat the meat we sell. Here everyone knows we are good Christians. Just like we were good Jews.
A LETTER