Mr. Mani (51 page)

It was then, my master and teacher, it was only then, sitting wrapped like a ball on the bed in that freezing room while seeking in the little looking-glass to make contact again with her shadow, which was traced with exquisite delicacy by the moonlight in its own furry ball, that I felt how my sorrow and pity for my dead son, who was lying naked beneath snow and earth on the Mount of Olives, were deranging my mind, and I wished I were dead. Because, knowingly or not, we had gulled him with a paradox that compelled him to produce his
idée
as a consolation in his solitude. I could feel it, that solitude, clutching me in its deadly grip, and I wished to atone for it, even though I knew that to be worthy of such atonement I first would have to die with him, would have to lie naked beneath snow and earth too and let myself be slaughtered like he was. And so, Rabbi Haddaya, layer by layer I began to strip off my clothes, until I was standing naked in that frozen room, in that locked, vestigial house, facing a looking-glass that was facing a looking-glass, thinking back to the night I sent him forth out of myself and preparing to take him back again. He was turning among the old graves on the Mount of Olives, he was icy and shredding, his blood was ebbing from him, his flesh was ebbing and being eaten away, and as I drew him back into myself his seed flew through the darkness like a snowflake and was swallowed inside me until we were one again, I was he and he was me—and then, by solemn virtue of his betrothal in Beirut and of his holy matrimony in Jerusalem, he rose, and went into the next room, and unballed the ball, and possessed his bride to beget his grandson, and died once more.

 

And died once more, Rabbi Shabbetai, do you hear me?

 

And so I too roundaboutly, along an arc bridging the two ends of Asia Minor, entered your bed, señor, a bed I had never dared climb into even as a lonely boy running down your long hallway in my
blouson,
scared to death of the cannons firing over the Bosporus. Now, in Jerusalem, I slipped between your sheets and lay with your Doña Flora, thirty years younger, in her native city, in her childhood home, in her parents' bed, smelling your strong tobacco in the distance, giving and getting love that sweetened a great commandment carried out by a great transgression. At dawn, when old Carso knocked on the door to take me with him to the Middle Synagogue for the morning service and the mourner's prayer, he scarcely could have imagined that the bereaved father he had left the night before was now a sinful grandfather.

 

If we undo this knot and that button over there,
señor y maestro mío,
and loosen the ties, perhaps we can calm the growl in your sore tummy with a little massage, so that the rice gruel cooked for you by that fine-looking young Greek can arrive at its proper destination. I hear little steps behind the door. Perhaps the Jews gathered outside the inn are afraid I am absconding with Your Grace's last words and are so jealous of our ancient ties that soon they will demand to be admitted too. And yet I have not come to amuse myself with Your Grace but to ask for judgment. Because when I returned from the synagogue, I was certain that Tamara would already have fled back to her father Valero's home, so that I wondered greatly to find her not only still wrapped in her mourner's shawl and blowing on the wet coals to make me breakfast, but looking taller and lighter on her feet, with no sign of the infection in her eyes that had clouded them all summer. The beds were made like plain, respectable beds; the floor was sparkling clean; the looking-glasses were covered with sheets as they were supposed to be. I ate, took off my shoes, and sat down in my mourner's corner to study a chapter of Mishnah. She followed me in her slippers and sat down not far from me. And when she peered in my eyes, it was not as a sinner or a victim, but as a fearless judge who wished to determine whether I was made for love.

I said love,
señor y maestro mío,
and even though, Rabbi Shabbetai Hananiah, your eyes are shut and your breathing is inaudible, I can feel your flesh tautly listening beneath my massaging hands. I beg you in your lovingkindness, be with me now, for I still do not know what the judgment is on such love, which began to blossom that winter. Does it mitigate my sentence or compound it? For it was not something that I sought for myself, and had she risen that morning and gone back to her father's home, I would have said nothing. But she remained with me, and all of Jerusalem was so frightened of the great snow brought by the Russian pilgrims that we would have been totally forgotten had not old Carso come every morning to take me to the Middle Synagogue, or to the synagogue of Yohanan ben-Zakkai, and had not Valero and his wife Veducha, along with Alkali, and the Abayos, and a few other acquaintances, come late each afternoon with their pots and trays for the prayer and to talk about the marvels of the snow. And in the evening the consul and his wife would come too, and sometimes they brought the Ishmaelite murderer with them, and they talked about my dead son and his sufferings into the night, until all sighed and lit their lanterns and went home. And then I sent old Carso home too, and spent the night getting deeper into love. And when the week of mourning was over, on a clear, sparkling day, we climbed the Mount of Olives to say farewell to him for the last time, surrounded by a great crowd of family, rabbis, consular attendants, and my son's Ishmaelite friends, and I saw that a little piece of white ice had remained at the head of the grave like a stubborn casting of the dead man's seed upward through the earth, and my spirit rebelled and I cast her out of me, falling faint among the gravestones for all to see that I too craved such a death. What says Your Grace to that?

But even if you persist in your silence, my master and teacher, measuring me with narrowing eyes, you must know, Rabbi Shabbetai, that I could not die then, for first I fell ill and ran a high fever and was cared for by the motherless widow of a bride, who looked after me with wondrous composure, with great patience and aplomb. She refused to put me in the hospital of the Italian nuns and insisted on keeping me at home with the help of the consul, who came every day with all the produce of the market. He would look in on me in my room too, and ask how I was in the few Hebrew words that he knew, which were all quite sublime and Prophetic, and whose British accent so alarmed me that it made my fever worse each time. Tamara, though, had the good sense to keep him from me, and by the first month-day of the death, Rabbi Haddaya, I was able to hobble with a cane to the graveyard and consecrate the tombstone that had been erected. And when the “Lord, Full of Mercy” was sung opposite the yellow walls of that drear city while a raw winter wind cut to the bone, I felt most certain, Rabbi Haddaya, that I had succeeded in preventing any future disgrace. That is, if that month of mourning had been started by the two of us, it was now being ended by us three.

 

The world would have its Manis after all.

 

And thus, my master and teacher, the months of child-carrying began. The days flowed slowly in Jerusalem, which was battling the winter winds that fell on it from the coast and from the desert. By now the whole city was pining for summer, even if no one knew what plague the summer would bring first. And meanwhile, all of Jerusalem went about feeling sorry for my Yosef, who would never see his own son, and most appreciative of his foresight in taking care to have one. No one wondered that Tamara and I were constantly together, because everyone knew that we were linked by the approaching birth, which was outlined for all to see and approve of by the lovely little belly she paraded in front of us. The consul, especially, took a great interest in it and allotted it a modest consular stipend of one gold napoleon payable on the first of each month. And indeed, without it we might not have made ends meet, even though I did my best to keep up my business, mixing my spices from Salonika, which were strong enough to retain their special flavor, with local ingredients and selling them in the hours before the afternoon prayer in the Souk-el-Lammamin or the Souk-el-Mattarin while Tamara sat by my side. Against her black clothes, her large eyes shone so brightly that passers-by hurrying down the lane sometimes thought that two lanterns had been suddenly beamed at them and turned around to ascertain the reason. And though I did what I could,
señor y maestro mío,
to persuade her to stay home and spare the little embryo the noise and tumult of the street, she insisted on coming with me everywhere, most gracefully bearing herself and her belly in the afternoon breeze. She showed not the least sign of illness or fatigue, and even her eye infection was late in arriving that year, as if the child in her womb were shielding her from all harm. “Dr. Mani,” I called him in jest, regretful that I could not carry him too as a cure for whatever ailed me. And when spring came, and even the ancient olive trees alóng the Bethlehem Road broke into bloom, I could not keep from thinking,
señor y maestro mío,
that if my motherless little widow of a bride, the look-alike of her renowned aunt, was following me around everywhere, this could only be because she had been brazen and thoughtless enough to fall ever so slightly in love with me, thus atoning, though no doubt unwittingly, for my unrequited love in Salonika in the year of Creation 5552.

But Your Grace must listen to me, he must listen and not sleep! Here, let me rub your weary bones a bit with some of this oil. Not that I have any reason to doubt the excellent intentions of Doña Flora and her attendants, Jewish or not, but I do believe, señor, that they are afraid that you will come apart in their hands, which is why they wrapped you like a mummy, swaddling band by swaddling band, until, God forbid, you were hardly able to breathe. Let us then, my master and teacher, remove the last of these ties without a qualm, because only a trusty old disciple like myself who has known your most unphlegmatic body for ages will not fear to hurt you in order to make you feel better. There ... that does it ... a bit more ... and now, Rabbi Haddaya, lie back and listen to how the
passer-through
who became a
stayer-on
was now a
beloved-of
in a Jerusalem that was being built from day to day, not always by us, to be sure, but always, with God's help, for our benefit—and there were times, I must say, when the love of that motherless widow both astonished and frightened me, because what could possibly come of it? “Why, I am a dead man, my child,” I would say to her every evening when we sat down to our dinner of radishes, tomatoes, and pita bread dipped in olive oil while the sun set outside the window and the muezzin sounded his mournful call. “I will go to Rabbi Haddaya in Constantinople and get leave to strangle myself like Saul son of Kish.” She would listen and say nothing, her big, bright eyes wide with tears, her little hands trembling on her belly, as if above all she wished to assure young señorito Mani that he need not fear the grandfather who had skipped a generation to sow him and was now threatening to miss the harvest. Then she would rise, go to wash the bowls at the cistern, and come back to make the beds, trim the candles, and take up the red blouse and
taquaiqua
that she was knitting for little Mani, never taking her eyes off me, as if I were already preparing the rope to hang myself. Now and then she glanced in the mirror over her bed to see what I was up to in the mirror over my bed. And thus,
señor y maestro mío,
from mirror to mirror I was so encircled by anxiety and love that I lost all my strength and began to flicker out like a candle. I went up to the roof to say good night to the last breeze of the day, which was winging its way to the Dead Sea above the last lanterns bobbing in the narrow streets, and when I came down again, I found her still awake, sitting up in bed. Unable to hold it back any longer, she burst out all at once into a great, bitter cry that I had to make haste to calm, swearing to her that I would not abandon her before the birth. And although, my master and teacher, she was firm in her belief that the final truth bound us together, even she did not know that behind that truth too yet another truth was hiding...

 

There, they are starting to bang on the door, Rabbi Shabbetai, they want me out of here. But I am not leaving until I have been given a clear judgment, even though “His son Rabbi Yishmael used to say”—is not that what you taught me, rabbi?—“‘he who judges not has no enemies.'” And he used to say: “Whoever is born, is born to die, and whoever dies, dies to live again, and whoever lives again, lives to be judged, to know, to make known, and to be made known.” Well, let us stir the fire a bit to warm this room, and raise the curtain for a look at the sky dropping low over their chapel of graven images, may they all rot in hell, and tell at last and in truth the final, the one and only story, the story of sweet perdition that recurs in every generation.

 

Quickly, quickly, though, because the banging on the door is growing louder, and soon,
señor y maestro mío,
Doña Flora and her men will come bursting in here. It is time, Rabbi Haddaya,
betahsir, vite-vite,
to come forth with the story that I have kept for last, the story of a murderer—because I have already told you,
señor y maestro mío,
that there was a bit of a murderer here—or,
si quiere, su merced,
a
man
slaughterer, a
shohet-uvodek
—to whom, ever since that first night, one felt drawn again and again in the crowded lanes of Jerusalem—in the souks, by the cisterns, gazing out from the gates of the city—by a lightning-like glitter of a glance—a wordless nod—an imperceptible bow—a casting-down of the eyes—a sudden shudder. Ah, how drawn—on the chalky hillside of Silwan, among the olives on the road to Bethlehem—so powerfully that sometimes one's feet stole of an evening to the consulate, to one of its literary soirées, to listen to some Englishwoman praise some British romance that no one ever had read or ever would read, for the sole purpose of staring wordlessly at the silent shade standing in the doorway and bearing the memory of my poor son—oh, rotting! oh, beloved in his grave! Yosef, my only one—who on that accursed night of snow and blood ... But who could restrain himself, Rabbi Shabbetai Hananiah, from running after him through the streets in an attempt to forestall an assault that was in truth a retreat, a provocation that was in truth a flight from the pain and punishment that he imagined twirling over his bed like an angry, patient carving knife? And it was thus that slaughterer joined slaughterer by the light of the torches of the Russian pilgrims, who were bellowing their piety on the stone floor of the Holy Sepulchre—thus that the two of them, the frantic father and the Ishmaelite friend, the aristocratic, mustachioed sheikh's son—linked forces to catch in time the
idée fixe
that in its passionate pride was about to turn on its own self and become the very prototype that it was searching for of the
Jew forgetful of being a Jew,
an example and provocation for all recalcitrants. For as he elbowed his way into the crowd of pilgrims that was excitedly tramping through the mud and snow, wary of being recognized by some excitable Christian who might inform on him to the Turkish soldiers surrounding the square, he was seeking, or so I felt, Rabbi Shabbetai, to forget us all—Salonika, Constantinople, myself, yourself—as if he had been conceived and born from the very floor of the church, rising up from the cisterns and the souk as
a new Ishmaelite
who had discovered that he was a forgetful Jew who might remember ... only
what?