Sunday, July 30, 2017

Tale 5 - Chosen Family - Joshua - First Half and Change Heavily Revised

Brazilians have Carnivale, New Orleans and the French have Mardi Gras, Russians have Shrovetide, Germans have Schmutziger Donnerstag, Sweden has Semla, Lithuana has Uzhgavenes, Indians have Holi and Duwale, Iranians have Norwuz, Japanese have Higan. Every corner of the world seems to have a Vernal Equinox Festival whose origins predate Purim by hundreds of centuries. Drinking, dancing, dressing, a bacchanale of life to usher in the new spring's regeneration when the noumenal world of No End becomes so full of light and essence that it has to contract some of its enduring majesty into empty space so that, in a divine leap, the shattered, phenomenal realm of sense and sensibility can grow in the hope that some essence of it can yet again leap back to the world of no end. 

"For fuck's sake don't bring your friends to this."

"Nu? Why not?"

"It just encourages Tateh. Nu?"

Every weeknight after mishpocheh dinner, they'd talk for a few hours in the Katz basement, and she now spoke to in secret to her secret best friend more than to any school friend, not a secret for her sake, but a secret for his. Even with their family's detente, how would his mishpocheh react to knowing that Simcha was spending every free moment in the almost windowless basement of an halakhic shiksa. Meanwhile, Kristina had taken up with a thirty-two year old junior professor at Berkeley named Dan Krentzman and was rarely seen around the house anymore. 

"He wants to make a scene. He wants the whole city to see this and know we're here. Nu?"

"But it's gonna be fun!"

"Nu? Who cares? It's just going to end badly for everyone. Nu?"



Bethany loved Simcha, just as she did all her friends, she just wasn't sure she could stand him. He seemed to think nothing of being so cynical, so stubborn, so argumentative, indeed, he seemed to love it. He acted as though making fun of everything she loved was the most generous thing in the world a person could do for his or her friends. And he more negative he was, the more need she felt to court his approval. She couldn't stand him for making her seek his approval, she couldn't stand herself for needing him to support her, and she couldn't stand him again for making her feel the need to be supported by him. And yet she loved him, as though there was instant understanding of the rules of a game that was as utterly strange to her as it was completely familiar to him. This inner irritation was utterly new, and gnawed into her intestines like termites into trees. For her life's first time, she had to confront that not only did she disapprove of someone she loved, but that this person may disapprove of her too, yet still love her back. Around Simcha, from Simcha, because of Simcha, love was suddenly intermingled with dread, pettiness, anger, belittlement, cynicism. Would love, could love, ever feel the same again? 

On week 1 after they started hanging out, while Ian Greyling is in the bathroom he says:  "Don't get mixed up with this guy, nu? He's an erotoman and a shikker!" Week 2, Alenna and Vicki are in the next room and he says: "Nu, don't invite your yenta friends too often while I'm here. They don't like me nu? and I wouldn't like them if I knew them better." She saw Vicki hesitantly enter the room as he finished the sentence and had to wonder for weeks if Vicki'd heard. Week 3, he says outright to Kristina "Nu, all Bethany's other friends play at being korvehs, but you're the real thing! Nu?"

Simcha would complain endlessly, Bethany would appease without end. Bethany would confide unreservedly, Simcha would tease without reservation. Both of them derived something they did not realize they needed until they met one another. Simcha replaced Kristina as her confessor, and she was his replacement for Talmud which he studied with the insatiate curiosity of a Talmid Khakham. 

 When they first began hanging out, she would ask him, almost annoyed that he never made the transition, to translate these unfamiliar words that he spoke as though this linguistic porridge was all the same language. But the more she heard them, the more she realized she could guess infallibly. There was an onomatopoetic quality to all those weird Jewish words you never got from all those other languages of which her exchanged houseguests would teach her. But whereas Kristina spoke a language which seemed to have a word for everything, Simcha's language seemed to have an infinity of words that seem to precisely mean only themselves

Confiding was not something Simcha needed. He had the inwardness of a cartoon character because whatever was on his mind he spoke aloud as though there were no option to keep it in. He seemed to have no secrets. Bethany, on the other hand, always thought she was confiding in those she loved, yet there were limits to the soul states this descendent of Puritans had ever expressed aloud. For the first time, she was allowed to articulate that essential anxiety which Mary's can-do spirit never allowed the possibility of existence either in her or in her daughter: 'What if my plans go wrong?' 'What if the people I know are not what they seem?' 'What if my friends aren't my friends?' 'What if I end up choosing the wrong career?' 'What if the loves of my life are not really loves?' 'What if my family won't always be there for me?' Did she ever ask 'what if?' before she met Simcha?

Pessimism was a responsibility to Bethany, not a state of being. If another person was sad, they needed to be cheered; if she was sad, she required a person to cheer. Her kishkes had the urge to leave every person and place more luminous than she found them in her DNA. But even Simcha's brighter moods seemed tinged with a bitterness she neither understood nor fathomed. She didn't resent him for this, she respected his right to feel any way he liked, how else could she cheer him up? But what if she no longer had the morale to be the cheerful person others needed?

Simcha only encouraged this essential darkness which lay dormant in Bethany's personality until she was fifteen. He asked the most pointed, personal questions of and about her as though there was nothing unseemly about it. Even if he seemed to dislike her friends, even if he seemed to hold a kind of contempt for her family, he wanted to know everything about them - a whole of experience of which all his experience until that point was unaware. 

Bethany thought every possibility would end in something better, Simcha thought every uncertainty would end in catastrophe. Simcha was seemed to relish his anger, he enjoyed striking out at a world that left him, left his family, left his people without the essential hope for this world that she was taught from the earliest age was necessary to create the world we long to see. To Simcha, there was no hope for this world, only the next world where Hashem would smile on the tzuris we undergo for preserving his Torah. 

But about what precisely did Simcha have cause to be so aggrieved as all that? This uncertain mystery simply a source of speculation as fascinating for her as the outer details of people's lives seemed to be for him. Yes, Simcha was deformed and alienated, though nowhere near to the extent he thought was. He had a loving family, a God in which his faith was unshakeable, and such a God certainly knew he was not lacking for self-belief. Being the perfect daughter of a doctor and a minister as she was, Bethany could not be more concerned with healing the world if she tried, but she seemed to know innately that mysteries do not exist to be solved. The fact that some essential details of life were beyond her ministrations did not trouble her. But for Simcha, the mysteries of people seemed to exist only to be divined. The universe in all its microscopic majesty was a tree growing citruses to be squeezed, a sea with oysters to be slurped. Would he be happier if he didn't want to know so much about everybody? Would I?


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It's Purim, it's Alamo Square Park, it's time to get so drunk you don't know the difference between Haman and Mordechai. All Bethany has to say to her friends is that there will be free hard liquor and three quarters of the San Francisco Friends high school will show up, and so do half the adults from the Church of the Holy Fellowship. Not that Unitarians celebrate Fat Tuesday, but when Bethany tells Mary that Rabbi Freylik's terrified nobody'll show up for Purim, Mary suggests that the Freyliks can turn their Purim party into a combined Purim and Mardi Gras, Bethany makes sure Simcha tells Rabbi Freylik and Simcha's father jumps at the suggestion. 

Ordinarily, charedim, even Chabadniks, would wretch at the idea of any interfaith celebration. But these are no ordinary times for Chabad. The 92-jahr-alt Rebbe has been unable to talk for two years, he had a stroke while praying at the last Lubavitcher Rebbe's graveside that left him completely paralyzed on his body's right side. The fact that he dwells on with seeming permanence and one foot in the world to come leads to ever greater speculation that Der Rebbe is the Moshiach. 

Nobody's in charge of Chabad right now and every Rabbi is jockeying for position. Every Lubavich shaliach has to make his own rules. Rebbe Freylik has big plans for whatever new regime is coming with the Rebbe ascends to Olam Ha'Ba. If nobody shows up for Purim, Ori will have have to explain to the Schlichim coming into town from elsewhere on Purim to check on his progress why they've travelled across the country for so few new members. Nu, what they don't know about how we get people to show up can't hurt them. These schkotzer idolworshippers don't even celebrate Mardi Gras, no goyisher brokhes, no crucifixes, they're just gonna pay for a jazz band, fah deh masks, fah deh hula hoops, and fah deh beads. These ahkoo'im promise they won't bring meat, and they're even gonna bring their own liquor, cuz all dey do is trink. So even if a hundred or two goyim show up along with one or two Jews, what reason to complain? 




ET: Almanac


We had an iron rule that one should never buy anything imported, anything foreign, if it was possible to buy a locally made equivalent. Still, when we went to Mr. Auster’s grocery shop on the corner of Obadiah and Amos streets, we had to choose between kibbutz cheese, made by the Jewish cooperative Tnuva, and Arab cheese: did Arab cheese from the nearby village, Lifta, count as homemade or imported produce? Tricky. True, the Arab cheese was just a little cheaper. But if you bought Arab cheese, weren’t you being a traitor to Zionism? Somewhere, in some kibbutz or moshav, in the Jezreel Valley or the hills of Galilee, an overworked pioneer girl was sitting, with tears in her eyes perhaps, packing this Hebrew cheese for us--how could we turn our backs on her and buy alien cheese? Did we have the heart? On the other hand, if we boycotted the produce of our Arab neighbors, we would be deepening and perpetuating the hatred between our two peoples. And we would be partly respnosible for any blood that was shed, heaven forbid. Surely the humble Arab fellah, a simple, honest tiller of the soil, whose soul was still undefiled by the miasma of town life, was nothing more or less than the dusky brother of the simple, noble-hearted muzhik in the stories of Tolstoy! Could we be so heartless as to turn our backs on his rustic cheese? Could we be so cruel as to punish him? What for? Because the deceitful British and the corrupt effendis had set him against us? No, this time we would definitely buy the cheese from the Arab village, which incidentally really did taste better than the Tnuva cheese, and cost a little less in the bargain. But still, on the other hand, what if the Arab cheese wasn’t clean? Who knew what the dairies were like there? What if it turned out, too late, that their cheese was full of germs?

Germs were one of our worst nightmares. They were like anti-Semitism: you never actually managed to set eyes on an anti-Semite or a germ, but you knew very well that they were lying in wait on every side, out of sight. Actually, it was not true that none of us had ever set eyes on a germ: I had. I used to stare for a long time very intently at a piece of old cheese, until I suddenly began to see thousands of tiny, squirming things. Like gravity in Jerusalem, which was much stronger then than now, the germs too were much bigger and stronger. I saw them.

A little argument used to break out among the customers in Mr. Auster’s grocery shop: to buy or not to buy Arab cheese? On the one hand, “charity begins at home,” so it was our duty to buy Tnuva cheese only; on the other hand, “one law shall there be for you and for the stranger in your midst,” so we should sometimes buy the cheese of our Arab neighbors, “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And anyway, imagine the contempt with which Tolstoy would regard anyone who would buy one kind of cheese and not another simply because of a difference of religion, nationality, or race! What of universal values? Humanism? The brotherhood of man? And yet, how pathetic, how weak, how petty-minded, to buy Arab cheese smply because it cost a couple of mils less, instead of cheese made by the pioneers who worked their backs off for our benefit!
Shame! Shame and disgrace! Either way shame and disgrace!

The whole of life was full of such shame and disgrace.

Amos Oz - A Tale of Love and Darkness

Saturday, July 29, 2017

Tale 5 - Chosen Family - Joshua - A Little More


Brazilians have Carnivale, New Orleans and the French have Mardi Gras, Russians have Shrovetide, Germans have Schmutziger Donnerstag, Sweden has Semla, Lithuana has Uzhgavenes, Indians have Holi and Duwale, Iranians have Norwuz, Japanese have Higan. Every corner of the world seems to have a Vernal Equinox Festival whose origins predate Purim by hundreds of centuries. Drinking, dancing, dressing, a bacchanale of life to usher in the new spring's regeneration when the noumenal world of No End becomes so full of light and essence that it has to contract some of its enduring majesty into empty space so that, in a divine leap, the shattered, phenomenal realm of sense and sensibility can grow in the hope that some essence of it can yet again leap back to the world of no end. 

"For fuck's sake don't bring your friends to this."

"Nu? Why not?"

"It just encourages Tateh. Nu?"

Every weeknight after mishpocheh dinner, they'd talk for a few hours in the Katz basement, and she now spoke to in secret to her secret best friend more than to any school friend, not a secret for her sake, but a secret for his. Even with their family's detente, how would his mishpocheh react to knowing that Simcha was spending every free moment in the almost windowless basement of an halakhic shiksa. Meanwhile, Kristina had taken up with a thirty-two year old junior professor at Berkeley named Dan Krentzman and was rarely seen around the house anymore. 

"He wants to make a scene. He wants the whole city to see this and know we're here. Nu?"

"But it's gonna be fun!"

"Nu? Who cares? It's just going to end badly for everyone. Nu?"

Bethany loved Simcha, just as she did all her friends, she just wasn't sure she could stand him. He seemed to think nothing of being so cynical, so stubborn, so argumentative, indeed, he seemed to love it. He acted as though making fun of everything she loved was the most generous thing in the world a person could do for his or her friends. And he more negative he was, the more need she felt to court his approval. She couldn't stand him for making her seek his approval, she couldn't stand herself for needing him to support her, and she couldn't stand him again for making her feel the need to be supported by him. And yet she loved him, as though there was instant understanding of the rules of a game that was as utterly strange to her as it was completely familiar to him. Her inner irritation at him was unlike anything she'd ever known, and gnawed into her intestines like termites to trees. For the first time in her life, she had to confront that not only did she disapprove of someone she loved, but that this person may disapprove of her too, yet still love her back. Around Simcha, from Simcha, because of Simcha, love was suddenly intermingled with dread, pettiness, anger, belittlement, cynicism. Would love, could love, ever feel the same again? 

On week 1 after they started hanging out, while Ian Greyling is in the bathroom he says:  "Don't get mixed up with this guy, nu? He's an erotoman and a shikker!" Week 2, Alenna and Vicki are in the next room and he says: "Nu, don't invite your yenta friends too often while I'm here. They don't like me nu? and I wouldn't like them if I knew them better." She saw Vicki hesitantly enter the room as he finished the sentence and had to wonder for weeks if Vicki'd heard. Week 3, he says outright to Kristina "Nu, all Bethany's other friends play at being korvehs, but you're the real thing! Nu?"

In any event, Simcha wouldn't let her know why he seemed to think everything she suggested would end in catastrophe. Pessimism was a responsibility to Bethany, not a state of being. If another person was sad, they needed to be cheered; if she was sad, she required a person to cheer. Her kishkes had the urge to leave every person and place more luminous than she found them in her DNA. But even Simcha's brighter moods seemed tinged with a bitterness she neither understood nor fathomed. She didn't resent him for this, she respected his right to feel any way he liked, how else could she cheer him up? But about precisely what did Simcha have cause to be so aggrieved as all that? It was simply a source of fascinated speculation. Yes, he was deformed and alienated, though nowhere near to the extent he thought was. He had a loving family, a God in which his faith was unshakeable, and such a God certainly knew he was not lacking for self-belief. 

 When they first began hanging out, she would ask him, almost annoyed that he never made the transition, to translate these unfamiliar words that he spoke as though this linguistic porridge was all the same language. But the more she heard them, the more she realized she could guess infallibly. There was an onomatopoetic quality to all those weird Jewish words you never got from all those other languages of which she taught herself as much as her exchanged houseguests would let her. But whereas Kristina spoke a language which seemed to have a word for everything, Simcha's language seemed to have an infinity of words that seem to precisely mean only themselves. 

Simcha replaced Kristina as her confessor, and she was his replacement for Talmud which he studied with the insatiate curiosity of a Talmid Khakham, and asked the most pointed, personal questions of and about her, the friends of hers he disliked, the family she thought she knew until he demanded details of her background she neither knew nor thought her parents did. Being the perfect daughter of a doctor and a minister as she was, Bethany could not be more concerned with healing the world  if she tried, but she seemed to know innately that mysteries do not exist to be solved. The fact that some essential details of life were beyond here ministrations did not trouble her. But for Simcha, the mysteries of people seemed to exist only to be divined. The universe in all its microscopic majesty was a tree growing citruses to be squeezed, a sea with oysters to be slurped. Wouldn't he be happier if he didn't want to know so much about everybody?

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It's Purim, it's Alamo Square Park, it's time to get so drunk you don't know the difference between Haman and Mordechai. All Bethany has to say to her friends is that there will be free hard liquor and three quarters of the San Francisco Friends high school will show up, and so do half the adults from the Church of the Holy Fellowship. Not that Unitarians celebrate Fat Tuesday, but when Bethany tells Mary that Rabbi Freylik's terrified nobody shows up for Purim, Mary suggests that the Freyliks can turn their Purim party into a combined Purim and Mardi Gras, Bethany makes sure Simcha tells Rabbi Freylik and Simcha's father jumps at the suggestion. Ordinarily, charedim, even Chabadniks, would wretch at the idea of an interfaith celebration. But these are no ordinary times for Chabad. The 92-jahr-alt Rebbe has been unable to talk for two years, a stroke leaving him completely paralyzed on his body's right side. The fact that he dwells with one foot in the world to come leads to ever greater speculation that Der Rebbe is the Moshiach. Nobody's in charge of Chabad right now, and every Lubavich shaliach has to make his own rules. If nobody shows up, Rebbe Freylik will have have to explain to the Schlichim coming into town from elsewhere to help him why he's been so unsuccessful attracting new members. Nu, what they don't know about how we get people to show up can't hurt them. These schkotzer idolworshippers don't even celebrate Mardi Gras, no goyisher brokhes, no crucifixes, they're just gonna pay for a jazz band, fah deh masks, fah deh hula hoops, and fah deh beads. These ahkoo'im are even bring their own liquor, cuz all dey do is trink. So even if a hundred or two goyim show up along with one or two Jews, what reason do we have to complain? 


ET: Almanac

For years we had a regular arrangement for a telephone link with the family in Tel Aviv. We used to phone them every three or four months, even though we didn't have a phone and neither did they. First we would write to Aunti Hayya and Uncle Tsvi to let them know that on, say, the nineteenth of the month--which was a Wednesday, and on Wednesdays, Tsvi left his work at the Health Clinic at three--we would phone from our pharmacy to their pharmacy at five. The letter was sent well in advance, and then we waited for a reply. In their letter, Aunti Hayya and Uncle Tsvi assured us that Wednesday the nineteenth suited them perfectly, and they would be waiting at the pharmacy a little before five, and not to worry if we didn't manage to phone at five on the dot, they wouldn't run away.

I don't remember whether we put on our best clothes for the expedition to the pharmacy, for th phone call to Tel Aviv, but it wouldn't surprise me if we did. It was a solemn undertaking. As early as the Sunday before, my father would say to my mother, Fanta, you haven't forgotten that this is the week that we're phoning Tel Aviv? On Monday my mother would say, Arieh, don't be late home the day after tomorrow, don't mess things up. And on Tuesday they would both say to me, Amos, just don't make any surprises for us, you hear, just don't be ill, you hear, don't catch cold or fall over until after tomorrow afternoon. And that evening they would say to me, Go to sleep early, so. you'll be in good shape for the phone call, we don't want you to sound as though you haven't been eating properly.

So they would build up the excitement. We lived in Amos Street, and the pharmacy was a five-minute walk away, in Zephaniah Street, but by three o'clock my father would say to my mother:

"Don't start anything new now, so you won't be in a rush."
"I'm perfectly OK, but what about you with your books, you might forget all about it."
"Me? Forget? I'm looking at the clock every few minutes, and Amos will remind me."

Here I am, just five or six years old, and already I have to assume a historic responsibility. I didn't have a watch--how could I?--and so every few moments I ran to the kitchen to see what the clock said, and then I would announce, like the countdown to a spaceship launch: twenty-five minutes to go, twenty minutes to go, fifteen to go, ten and a half to go--and at that point we would get up, loc the front door carefully, and set off, the three of us, turn left as far as Mr. Auster's grocery shop, then right into Zechariah Street, left into Malachi Street, right into Zephaniah Street, and straight into the pharmacy to announce:

"Good afternoon to you Mr. Heinemann, how are you? We've come to phone."

He knew perfectly well, of course, that on Wednesday we would be coming to phone our relatives in Tel Aviv, and he knew that Tsvi worked at the Health Clinic, and that Hayya had an important job in the Working Women's League, and that Yoga was going to grow up to be a sportsman, and that they were good friends of Gold Meyerson (who later became Gold Meir) and of Misha Colony, who was known as Moshe Kol over here, but still we reminded him: "We've come to phone our relatives in Tel Aviv." Mr. Heinemann would say: "Yes, of course, please take a seat." Then he would tell us his usual telephone joke. "Once, at the Zionist Congress in Zurich, terrible roaring sounds were suddenly heard from a side room. Perl Locker asked Harzfeld what was going on, and Harzfeld explained that it was Comrade Rubashov speaking to Ben Gurion in Jerusalem. 'Speaking to Jerusalem,' exclaimed Perl Locker, 'so why doesn't he use the telephone?'"

Father would say: "I'll dial now." And Mother said: "It's too soon, Arieh. There's still a few minutes to go." He would reply: "Yes, but they have to be put through" (there was no direct dialing at that time) Mother: "yes, but what if for once we are put through right away, and they're not there yet?" Father replied: "In that case we shall simply try again later." Mother: "No, they'll worry, they'll think they've missed us."

While they were still arguing, suddenly it was almost five o'clock. Father picked up the receiver, standing up to do so, and said to the operator: "Good afternoon, Madam. Would you please give me Tel Aviv 648." (Or something like that: we were still living in a three-digit world). Sometimes the operator would answer:  "Would you please wait a few minutes, Sir, the Postmaster is on the line." Or Mr. Sitton. Or Mr. Nashashibi. And we felt quite nervous: whatever would they think of us?

I could visualize this single line that connected Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and via Tel Aviv the rest of the world. The line wound its way over wastelands and rocks, over hills and valleys, and I thought it was a great miracle. I trembled: what if wild animals came in the night and bit through the line? Or if wicked Arabs cut it? Or if the rain got into it? Or if there was a fire? Who could tell? There was this line winding along, so vulnerable, unguarded, baking in the sun, who could tell? I felt full of gratitude to the men who had put up this line, so brave-hearted, so dextrous, it's not easy to put up a line from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. I knew from experience: once we ran a wire from my room to Eliyahu Friedmann's room, only two houses and a garden away, and what a business it was, with the trees in the way, the neighbors, the shed, the wall, the steps, the bushes.

After waiting a while, Father decided that the Postmaster or Mr. Nashashibi must have finished talking, and so he picked up the receiver again and said to the operator: "Excuse me, Madam, I believe I asked to be put through to Tel Aviv 648." She would say: "I've got it written down, Sir. Please wait" (or "Please be patient"). Father would say: "I am waiting, Madam, naturally I am waiting, but there are people waiting at the other end too." This was his way of hinting to her politely that although we were indeed cultured people, t here was a limit to our endurance. We were well brought up, but we weren't suckers. We were not to be led like sheep to the slaughter. That idea--that you could treat Jews any way you felt like--was over, once and for all.

Then all of a sudden the phone would ring in the pharmacy, and it was always such an exciting sound, such a magical moment, and the conversation went something like this:

"Hallo, Tsvi?"
"Speaking."
"It's Arieh here, in Jerusalem."
"Yes, Arieh, hallo, it's Tsvi here, how are you?"
"Everything is fine here. We're speaking from the pharmacy."
"So are we. What's new?"
"Nothing new here. How about at your end, Tsvi? Tell us how it's going."
"Everything is OK. Nothing special to report. We're all well."
"No news is good news. There's no news here either. We're all fine. How about you?"
"We're fine too."
"That's good. Now Fanta wants to speak to you."
And then the same thing all over again. How are you? What's new? And then: "Now Amos wants to say a few words."
And that was the whole conversation. What's new? Good Well, so let's speak again soon. It's good to hear from you. It's good to hear from you too. We'll write and set a time for the next call. We'll talk. Yes. Definitely. Soon. See you soon. Look after yourselves. All the best. You too.


But it was no joke: our lives hung by a thread. I realize now that they were not at all sure they would really talk again, this might be the last time, who knew what would happen, there could be riots, a pogrom, a blood bath, the Arabs might rise up and slaughter the lot of us, there might be a war, a terrible disaster, after all Hitler's tanks had almost reached our doorstep from two directions North Africa and the Caucuses, who knew what else awaited us? This empty conversation was not really empty, it was just awkward.

Amos Oz - A Tale of Love and Darkness

Friday, July 28, 2017

ET: Almanac

They're getting themselves killed again and when they get themselves killed we have to shrink and lower our voices and mind not to laugh even at some joke that's got nothing to do with them. This morning on the bus when the news was coming over the radio Issam was talking in a loud voice and laughing and the Jews in the front of the bus turned around and gave us a dry sort of look, and at once Hamid, who's always so serious, who reckons he's responsible for us even though he's not our boss officially, touched Issam, nudged him with his finger, and Issam shut up right away.

Knowing where to draw the line, that's what matters, and whoever doesn't want to know had better stay in the village and laugh alone in the fields or sit in the orchard and curse the Jews as long as he likes. Those of us who are with them all day have to be careful. No, they don't hate us. Anyone who thinks they hate us is completely wrong. We're beyond hatred, for them we're like shadows. Take, fetch, hold, clean, lift, sweep, unload, move. That's the way they think of us, but when they start getting killed they get tired and they slow down and they can't concentrate and suddenly get all worked up about nothing, just before the news or just after, news that we don't exactly hear, for us it's a kind of rustle but not exactly, we hear the words but we don't want to understand. Not lies, exactly, but not the truth either, just like on Radio Damascus, Amman or Cairo. Half-truths and half-lies and a lot of bullshit. The cheerful music from Beirut is much better, lively Arab music that makes your heart pound, as if your blood's flowing faster. When we're working on the cars that they leave with us the first thing we do is switch off Radio Israel or the army wave bands and look for a decent station, not a lot of talking, just songs, new and attractive songs about love. A subject that never tires. The main thing is to have none of that endless chattering about the rotten conflict that'll go on forever. When I lie under a car tightening brakes the music in the car sounds like somebody walking over my head. I tell you, sometimes my eyes are a bit wet.

I don't exactly hate the work. The garage isn't such a bad one, big enough not to be always tripping over one another and getting on everybody's nerves. My cousin Hamid isn't far away, he pretends to ignore me but he makes sure they don't pester me too much. But how can I tell them, I wanted to go on studying, not work in a garage. I finished in primary school with very good marks. The young student teacher was very pleased with me. In Hebrew classes I even used to think in Hebrew. And I knew by heart maybe a dozen poems by Bialik, though nobody ever told me to learn them, something catchy about their rhythm. Once a party of Jewish teachers came to the school to check up on what we were doing and the teacher called me up to the front of the class and I stood there and recited by heart two verses from In the City of Slaughter, they nearly dropped dead on the spot, they were that impressed and maybe that's what the teacher intended, he wasn't exactly a great lover of Jews. Anyway, I could have stayed on at school, the teacher even went to my father to try to persuade him, "It's a pity about the boy, he's got a good brain." But my father was stubborn, "Two studious sons in the family are enough for me," as if we're tied together with a rope and if one goes to college it makes the others educated too. Faiz will be finishing medical school in England soon, he's been studying there for ten years already, and Adnan's going to the university next year, he'll be studying medicine too, or electronics. And I'm the youngest so I have to work. Somebody's got to earn a bit of money. Father's decided to make me a master mechanic like Hamid, who earns lots of money.

Of course I wept and cried and pleaded but it didn't do any good. My mother kept quiet, she didn't want to get into a quarrel on my account, she couldn't tell me why it was Adnan and Faiz and not Na'im, she couldn't say it was because they were the children of another woman, an old woman who died years ago and Father gave her his word before she died.

It was so hard at first getting up in the morning. Father used to wake me up at half-past four, afraid I might not wake up by myself, and I really didn't want to wake up. Darkness all around ad Father touching me, pulling me gently out of bed, sitting there and watching me getting dressed and eating breakfast. Leading me to the bus stop through the village that's just beginning to wake up between electric lights and firelights through side streets full of mud and puddles among donkeys and sacks. He turns me over to Hamid like.a prisoner. They put me on the cold bus with all the other workers, Mother's homemade bread in a plastic bag in my hand. Slowly the bus fills up and Muhammad, the driver, takes his seat and starts running the engine and shouting at late comers. And I look through the steamed up window and see Father sitting there hunched up under the awning. A wrinkled old man wrapped in a black cloak raising his hand to everyone who goes past, starting to talk to somebody but all the time watching me sidelong. And I used to get angry with him, laying my hand on the rail in front of me and pretending to be asleep and when the bus started moving and Father tapped on the window to say good-by I'd pretend not to notice. At first I really did sleep the whole journey and I used to arrive at work dead tired. Yawning all the time and dropping things. Always asking the time. But after a while I began to get used to it. In the mornings I woke up on my own and I'd be one of the first to arrive at the bus stop, sitting down not far away from the driver, no longer feeling sleepy. At first I tried taking a book with me to read on the way but they all laughed at me, they couldn't understand it, me going to work in a garage with a book, and a book in Hebrew at that. They thought I was crazy. So I gave it up. I couldn't concentrate anyway. Reading the same page over and over again but not taking it in. So I just look out at the road, seeing the darkness disappear, the flowers on the mountains. I never tire of this route, the same route day after day, an hour and a half there and an hour and a half back.

At four o'clock in the afternoon we're already standing at the bus stop waiting for Muhammad's bus and from all over the city the people of our village and villages nearby are assembling, construction workers, gardeners, garbage men, kitchen workers, manual laborers, domestic help and garage hands. All of them with plastic bags and identity cards ready at hand in shirt pockets. Jews get on the bus too, Jews of all kinds with heavy baskets, most of them get off at the Acre Road. And in Acre more Arabs get on and some Jews as well, a different kind, immigrants from Russia, and Moroccans too. They hardly understand Hebrew. And on the way the Jews thin out and the Arabs too and in Carmel the last of the Jews leave the bus and only Arabs are left. The sun on our backs is nice and the road flies. Haifa disappears from the horizon, Carmel is swallowed by the mountains, the electricity pylons thin out. No smell of Jews now. Haifa disappears from the horizon, Carmel is swallowed by the mountains, the electricity pylons thin out. No smell of Jews now. Muhammad tunes the radio to a Baghdad station that broadcasts verses from the Koran, to entertain us. We go deeper into the mountains, driving among orchards on a narrow road twisting among the fields and there's nothing to remind us of the Jews, not even an army jeep. Only Arabs, barefooted shepherds in the fields with their sheep. Like there never was a Balfour Declaration, no Herzl, no wars. Quiet little villages, everything like they say it used to be many years ago, and even better. And the bus fills with the warbling of that imam from Baghdad, a soft voice lovingly chanting the surfs. We sit there hypnotized, silent at first and then crooning softly along with him.

A. B. Yehoshua - The Lover

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Tale 5: Chosen Family - Joshua - First Half Revised and Slightly Expanded Draft


Brazilians have Carnivale, New Orleans and the French have Mardi Gras, Russians have Shrovetide, Germans have Schmutziger Donnerstag, Sweden has Semla, Lithuana has Uzhgavenes, Indians have Holi and Duwale, Iranians have Norwuz, Japanese have Higan. Every corner of the world seems to have a Vernal Equinox Festival whose origins predate Purim by hundreds of centuries. Drinking, dancing, dressing, a bacchanale of life to usher in the new spring's regeneration when the noumenal world of No End becomes so full of light and essence that it has to contract some of its enduring majesty into empty space so that, in a divine leap, the shattered, phenomenal realm of sense and sensibility can grow in the hope that some essence of it can yet again leap back to the world of no end. 

"For fuck's sake don't bring your friends to this."

"Nu? Why not?"

"It just encourages Tateh. Nu?"

Every weeknight after mishpocheh dinner, they'd talk for a few hours in the Katz basement, and she now spoke to in secret to her secret best friend more than to any school friend, not a secret for her sake, but a secret for his. Even with their family's detente, how would his mishpocheh react to knowing that Simcha was spending every free moment in the almost windowless basement of an halakhic shiksa. Meanwhile, Kristina had taken up with a thirty-two year old junior professor at Berkeley named Dan Krentzman and was rarely seen around the house anymore. 

Bethany loved Simcha, just as she did all her friends, she just wasn't sure she could stand him. He seemed to think nothing of being so cynical, so stubborn, so argumentative. He acted as though making fun of everything she loved was the most generous thing in the world a person could do for his or her friends. And he more negative he was, the more need she felt to court his approval. She couldn't stand him for making her seek his approval, she couldn't stand herself for needing him to support her, and she couldn't stand him again for making her feel the need to be supported by him. And yet she loved him, as though there was instant understanding of the rules of a game that was as utterly strange to her as it was completely familiar to him. Her inner irritation at him was unlike anything she'd ever known, and gnawed into her intestines like termites to trees. For the first time in her life, she had to confront that not only did she disapprove of someone she loved, but that this person may disapprove of her too, yet still love her back. Around Simcha, from Simcha, because of Simcha, love was suddenly intermingled with dread, pettiness, anger, belittlement, cynicism. Would love, could love, ever feel the same again? 

"He wants to make a scene. He wants the whole city to see this and know we're here. Nu?"

"But it's gonna be fun!"

"Nu? Who cares? It's just going to end badly for everyone. Nu?"

Pessimism was a responsibility to Bethany, not a state of being. If another person was sad, they needed to be cheered; if she was sad, she required a person to cheer. Her kishkes had the urge to leave every person and place more luminous than she found them in her DNA. But even Simcha's brighter moods seemed tinged with a bitterness she neither understood nor fathomed. She didn't resent him for this, she respected his right to feel any way he liked, how else could she cheer him up? But about precisely what did Simcha have cause to be so aggrieved as all that? It was simply a source of fascinated speculation. Yes, he was deformed and alienated, though nowhere near to the extent he thought was. He had a loving family, a God in which his faith was unshakeable, and such a God certainly knew he was not lacking for self-belief. 

In any event, Simcha wouldn't let her know why he seemed to think everything she suggested would end in catastrophe. "Don't get mixed up with Ian Greyling, nu? He's an erotoman and a shikker!" "Nu, don't invite your yenta friends too often while I'm here. They don't like me nu? and I wouldn't like them if I knew them better." "Nu, all your other friends play at being korvehs, but Kristina's the real thing! Nu?" When they first began hanging out, she would ask him, almost annoyed that he never made the transition, to translate these unfamiliar words that he spoke as though this linguistic porridge was all the same language. But the more she heard them, the more she realized she could guess infallibly. There was an onomatopoetic quality to all those weird Jewish words you never got from all those other languages of which she taught herself as much as her exchanged houseguests would let her. But whereas Kristina spoke a language which seemed to have a word for everything, Simcha's language seemed to have an infinity of words that seem to precisely mean only themselves. 

Simcha replaced Kristina as her confessor, and she was his replacement for Talmud which he studied with the insatiate curiosity of a Talmid Khakham, and asked the most pointed, personal questions of and about her, the friends of hers he disliked, the family she thought she knew until he demanded details of her background she neither knew nor thought her parents did. Being the perfect daughter of a doctor and a minister as she was, Bethany could not be more concerned with healing the world  if she tried, but she seemed to know innately that mysteries do not exist to be solved. The fact that some essential details of life were beyond here ministrations did not trouble her. But for Simcha, the mysteries of people seemed to exist only to be divined. The universe in all its microscopic majesty was a tree growing citruses to be squeezed, a sea with oysters to be slurped. Wouldn't he be happier if he didn't want to know so much about everybody?

ET: Almanac


The Kaiser was an old man. He was the oldest emperor in the world. All around him Death was circling, circling and mowing. The entire field was already cleared, and only the Kaiser, like a forgotten silver stalk, was still standing and waiting. For many years his bright hard eyes had been peering, lost, into a lost distance. His skull was bare like a vaunted wasteland. His whiskers were white like a pair of wings made of snow. The wrinkles in his face were a tangled thicket dwelt in by the decades. His body was thin, his back slightly bowed. At home he shuffled about. But upon going outdoors, he tried to make his thighs hard, his knees elastic, his feet light, his back straight. He filled his eyes with sham kindness, with the true characteristic of imperial eyes: they seemed to look at everyone who looked at the Kaiser, and they greeted everyone who greeted him. But actually, the faces merely swirled and floated past his eyes, which gazed straight at that soft fine line that is the frontier between life and death--gazed at the edge of the horizon, which is always seen by the eyes of the old even when it is blocked by houses, forests, or mountains.

People thought Franz Joseph knew less than they because he was so much older than they. But he may have known more than some. He saw the sun going down on his empire, but he said nothing. He knew he would die before it set. At times he feigned ignorance and was delighted when someone gave him a long-winded explanation about things he knew thoroughly. For with the slyness of children and oldsters he liked leading people down the garden path. And he was delighted at their vanity in proving to themselves that they were smarter than he. The Kaiser disguised his wisdom as simplicity: for it does not behoove an emperor to be as smart as his advisers. Far better to appear simple than wise. If he went hunting, he knew quite well that the game was placed in front of his rifle, and though he could have elled some other prey, he nevertheless shot only the prey that had been driven before his barrel. For it does not behoove an old emperor to show that he sees through a trick and can shoot better than a gamekeeper. If he was told a fairy tale, he pretended to believe it. For it does not behoove an emperor to catch someone in a falsehood. If people smirked behind his back, he pretended not to know about it. For it does not behoove an emperor to know he is being smirked at, and this smirk is foolish so long as he refuses to notice it. If he ran a fever, and people trembled all around him, and the court physician lied to him, telling him he had no fever, the emperor said, “Well, then, everything’s fine,” although he knew he had a fever. For an emperor does not accuse a medical man of lying. Besides, he knew that the hour of his death had not yet come. He also experienced many nights of being plagued by fever unbeknownst to his physicians. For sometimes he was ill, and no one realized it. And at other times he was well, and they said he was ill, and he pretended to be ill. When he was considered kind, he was indifferent. And when they said he was cold, his heart bled. He had lived long enough to know that it is foolish to tell the truth. So he allowed people their errors, and he believed less in the permanence of the world than did the wags who told jokes about him in his vast empire. But it does not behoove an
emperor to compete with wags and sophisticates. So the Emperor held his tongue.

Even though he was well rested, and his physician was satisfied with his pulse, lungs, and respiration, he had had the sniffles since yesterday. He wouldn’t dream of letting anyone notice. They might prevent him from attending the autumn maneuvers on the eastern border, and he wanted to watch maneuvers again, at least for a day. The file on that man who’d saved his life, whose name had slipped his mind again, had conjured up Solferino. He didn’t like wars (for he knew that one loses them) but he loved the military, the war games, the uniforms, the rifle drills, the parades, the reviews, and the company drills. He was sometimes vexed that the officers wore higher hats than he himself, sharp creases in their trousers, patent-leather shoes, and overly high collars on their tunics. Many were even clean-shaven. Just recently he had spotted a clean-shaven militia officer in the street, and his heart had been heavy the rest of the day. But when he went over to the people themselves, they again knew the difference between rules and mere swagger. He could snap at certain ones more grossly. For in the army everything behooved the emperor, in the army even the emperor was a soldier. Ah! He loved the blaring of the trumpets, though he always feightned interest in the operational plans. And while he knew that God Himself had placed him on his throne, he felt upset in weak moments that he was not a front-line officer, and he bore a grudge against the staff officers. He remembered how undisciplined the retreating troops had been after the Battle of Solferino, and he had chewed them out like a sergeant and gotten them bac in line. He was convinced--but whom could he tell--that ten good sergeants are a lot more useful than twenty general staff officers. He yearned for maneuvers!

So he decided to conceal his sniffles and pull out his handkerchief just as little as possible. Nor was anyone to be forewarned, he wanted to surprise the maneuvers and all the people around him with his decision to attend. He looked forward to the despair of the civil authorities, who would not have provided enough police protection. He wasn’t scared. He knew very well that the hour of his death had not yet come. He alarmed everyone. They tried to dissuade him. He dug in his heels. One day he stepped into the imperial train and rolled toward the east.

In the village of Z, not ten miles from the Russian border, they had prepared his quarters in an old castle. The Emperor would have rather been billeted in one of the huts assigned to the authentically military life. Just once, during that unfortunate Italian campaign, he had, for example, seen a real-live flea in his bed but had told no one. For he was an emperor, and an emperor does not talk about insects. That had already been his opinion.

They closed the windows in his bedroom. At night, when he couldn’t sleep, but all around him everyone who was supposed to guard him was asleep, the Emperor, in his long pleated nightshirt, crept quietly out of bed and softly, to avoid waing anyone, unlatched the narrow wings of the high window. He stood there for a while, breathing the coolness of the autumn night and gazing at the stars in the deep-blue sky and the reddish campfires of the soldiers.

Once he had read a book about his life, which said “Franz Joseph I is no romantic.” They write, the old man mused, that I’m no romantic. But I love campfires. He would have liked to be an ordinary lieutenant, to be young. I may not be the least bit romantic, he mused, but I wish I were young! If I’m not mistaken, he went on thinking, I was eighteen when I mounted the throne. When I mounted the throne: that sentence struck the Kaiser as was the Kaisre. Certainly! It was written in the book that had been presented to him with the usual devout dedications. There was no doubt that he was Franz Joseph I! The infinite, deep-blue, starry night arched outside his window. The countryside was flat and vast. He had been told that these windows faced northeast. So you could see all the way to Russia. But the border, needless to say, was invisible. And at this moment Kaiser Franz Joseph would have liked to see the border of his empire. His empire! He smiled.

The night was blue and round and vast and full of stars. The Kaiser stood at the window, thin and old in a white nightshirt, and felt very tiny in the face of the immense night. The least of his soldiers, who could patrol in front of the tents, was more powerful than he. The least of his soldiers! And he was the Supreme Commander in Chief! Every soldier, swearing by God the Almighty, pledged his allegiance to Kaiser Franz Joseph I. He was a majesty by the grace of God, and he believed in God the Almighty, who hid behind the gold-starred blue of the heavens, the Alighty--inconceivable! It was His stars that shone up there in the sky, and it was His sky that arched over the earth, and He had allocated a portion of the earth, namely the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, to Franz Joseph I. And Franz Joseph I was a thin old man, standing at the open window and fearing that his guards might surprise him at any moment.

The crickets chirped. Their chant, as infinite as the night, aroused the same awe in the Kaiser as the stars. At times it sounded as if the stars themselves were singing. He shivered slightly. But he was afraid of closing the window, he might not manage as smoothly as before. His hands trembled. He remembered that he must have already attended maneuvers in these parts long ago. This bedroom likewise resurfaced from forgotten times. But he didn’t know whether ten, twenty, or more years had elapsed since then. He felt as if he were drifting on the sea of time--not toward any goal but erratically, on the surface, often pushed back to the reefs, which looked familiar. Someday, somewhere, he would go under. He had to sneeze. Yes, his sniffles! No one stirred in the antechamber. Cautiously he latched the window, and his thin, naked feet fumbled their way back to bed. He took along the image of the blue starry round o the heavens. It was preserved in his closed eyes. And so he fell asleep, under the vault of night, as if lying outdoors.

He awoke punctually at oh-four-hundred hours, as he always did “in the field” (and that was what he called the maneuvers). His valet was already standing in the room. And the equerries, he knew, were already waiting outside the door. Yes, he had to start his day. He would scarcely have a moment to himself all day long. To make up for it, he had outwitted all of them that night by standing at the open window for a good quarter hour. He thought about that slyly filched pleasure and smiled. He smirked at the valet and also at the boy who now entered and froze lifeless, terrified by the Kaiser’s smirk; by His Majesty’s suspenders, which he saw for the first time in his life; by the tousled, slightly tangled whiskers, between which the smirk fluttered to and fro like an old, quiet, weary bird; by the Kaiser’s sallow complexion; and by his bald, scaling scalp. They didn’t know whether to smile with the old man or wait mutely. All at once the Kaiser began to whistle. He actually pursed his lips, his whiskers parted slightly, and he whistled a well-known melody, though slightly off key. It sounded like a shepherd’s reedy piping. And the Kaiser said, “Hojos is always whistling this song! I’d like to know what it is!” But neither the valet nor the boy could tell him, and by the time the Kaiser was washing, a bit later, he had already forgotten about the song.

It was a heavy day. Franz Joseph looked at the slip outlining his agenda hour by hour. The only church in the village was Greek Orthodox. Mass would be celebrated first by a Roman Catholic priest, then by a Greek Orthodox priest. The most strenuous duties of all were the church ceremonies. He felt he had to pull himself together before God as if facing a superior. And he was old already. He could spare me any number of things! the Kaiser mused. But God is even older than I, and his decisions seem as unfathomable to me as mine seem to the soldiers in the army. And where would we be if every subordinate could criticize his superior?

Through the lofty arched windows the Kaiser saw God’s sun rising. He crossed himself and genuflected. Since time immemorial he had seen the sun come up every morning. Most of his life he had gotten up first, just as a soldier gets up earlier than his superior. He knew all sunrises, the fiery and cheery ones in summer and the late, dreary, foggy ones in winter. And while he no longer recalled the dates, or the names of the days, the months, the years when disaster or good fortune had overtaken him, he did remember every morning that had ushered in an important day in his life. And he knew that a certain morning had been dismal and another cheerful. And every morning, he had crossed himself and genuflected, the way some trees open their leaves to the sun every morning, whether on a day of storm or a felling ax or deadly frost in spring or else days of peace and warmth and life.

The Kaiser stood up. His barber came. Every morning he regularly held out his chin, and his whiskers were trimmed and neatly brushed. The cold metal of the scissors tickled his nostrils and earlobes. At times the Kaiser had to sneeze. Today he sat before a small oval mirror, serenely and eagerly following the movements of the barber’s thin hands. Ater every little hair that dropped, after every scrape of the razor and every tug of the comb or brush, the barber sprange back and breathed “Your Majesty!” with quivering lips. The Kaiser didn’t hear those whispered words. He only saw the barber’s lips in perpetual motion, didn’t dare ask, and finally concluded that the man was a bit nervous.

“What’s your name?” asked the Kaiser.

The barber--he had the rank of corporal, although he had been with the militia for just six months, but he served his colonel impeccably, enjoying the goodwill of is superiors--the barber sprange over to the door, his bearing elegant, as demanded by his craft, but also military: it was both a leap, a bow, and a stiffening at once, and the Kaiser nodded benignly.

“Hartenstein!” cried the barber.

“Why are you jumping like that?” asked Franz Joseph. But he received no answer.

The corporal timidly reapproached the Kaiser and completed his work with hasty hands. He wished he were far away and back at the camp.

“Hold on!” said the Kaiser. “Ah, you’re a corporal! Have you been serving a long time?”

Six months, Your Majesty!” the barber breathed.

“I see, I see~ Corporal already? In my day,” said the Kaiser, as a veteran might have said, “it never went that fast. But then you’re a very smart looking soldier. Do you plan on staying in the military?”

Hartenstein the barber had a wife and child and a prosperous shop in Olomouc and had already tried feigning rheumatism several times in order to get out fairly soon. But he couldn’t say no to the Kaiser. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said, knowing he had just messed up his entire life.

“Fine. Now you’re a sergeant. But don’t be so nervous!”

So. The Kaiser had made someone happy. He was glad. He was glad. He was glad. He had done something wonderful for that Hartenstein. Now the day could begin. His carriage was waiting. They slowly drove uphill to the Greek Orthodox church on the peak. Its golden double cross sparkled in the morning sun. The military bands were playing the imperial anthem, “God Save.” The Kaiser stepped down and entered the church. He knelt at the altar, moving his lips but not praying. He kept thinking about the barber. The Almighty could not show the Kaiser such sudden favors as the Kaiser could show on a corporal, and that was too bad. King of Jerusalem: that was the highest rank God could award a majesty. And Franz Joseph was already King of Jerusalem. Too bad, the Kaiser mused. Someone whispered to him that the Jews were waiting for him outside the village. They had forgotten all about the Jews. Ah, now those Jews too! the Kaiser thought, distressed. Fine! Let them come. But they had to step on it! Otherwise they’d be late for the fighting!

The Greek Orthodox priest hurried through the mass. The bands launched again into the imperial anthem. The Kaiser emerged from the church. It was oh-nine-hundred-hours. The fighting was to start at oh-nine-twenty, Franz Joseph decided to mount a horse instead of climbing back into the carriage. Those Jews could just as well be received on horseback. He sent off the carriage and rode out toward the Jews. At the end of the village, by the start of the wide highway leading to his quarters and also to the battle site, they billowedtoward him, a dark cloud. Like a field of strange black stalks in the wind, the congregation of Jews bowed to the Kaiser. He could see their bent backs from the saddle. Then, riding closer, he could make out their long, flowing, silvery-white, coal-black, and fiery-red beards, which stirred in the gentle autumn breeze, and the long bony noses, which seemed to be hunting for something on the ground. The Kaiser sat, in his blue coat, on his white horse. His whiskers shimmered in the silvery autumn sun. White mists rose from the fields all around.

The leader of the Jews, a patriarch with a wafting beard in a white prayer shaw with black stripes, flowed toward the Kaiser. The Kaiser paced his horse. The old Jew trudged slower and slower. Eventually he seemed to both pause in one spot yet keep moving. Franz Joseph shivered slightly. He suddenly halted, and his white horse reared. The emperor dismounted. So did his retinue. He walked. His glossy boots became covered with highway dust, and their narrow edges were coated with heavy gray mire. The black throng of Jews billowed toward him. Their backs rose and sank. Their coal-black, fiery-red, and silvery-white beards wafted in the soft breeze. The patriarch stopped three paces from the Kaiser. In his arms he carried a huge purple Torah scroll topped by a gold crown with tiny, softly jingling bells. The Jew then lifted the Torah scroll toward the Emperor. And in an incomprehensible language his toothless, wildly overgrown mouth babbled the blessing that Jews must recite upon seeing an emperor. Franz Joseph lowered his head. Fine silvery gossamer floated over his black cap, the wild ducks shrieked in the air, a rooster hollered in a distant farmyard. Otherwise there was silence. A dark muttering rose from the throng of Jews. Their backs bowed even deeper. The silver-blue sky stretched cloudless and infinite over the earth.

“Blessed art though,” the Jew said to the Kaiser! “Thou shalt not live to see the end of the world,”

I know! thought Franz Joseph. He shook the old man’s hand. He turned around. He mounted his white horse.

He trotted to the left over the hard clods of the autumnal fields, hs suite behind him. The wind brought hiim the words that Captain Kaunitz said to the friend riding at his side: “I didn’t understand a thing the Jew said.”

The Kaiser turned in his saddle and said, “He was speaking only to me, my dear Kaunitz,” and rode on.

Franz Joseph could make no sense of the maneuvers. All he knew was that the Blues were fighting the Reds. He had everything explained to him.  “I see, I see,” he kept saying. He was delighted that the others believed he wanted to understand but couldn’t. Idiots! he thought. He shook his head. But they thought his head was waggling because he was an old man. “I see, I see” the Kaiser kept saying. The operations were fairly advanced by now. For the past two days, the left wing of the Blues, stationed a few miles outside the village of Z, had been constantly retreating from the cavalry of the Reds, who kept thrusting forward. The center held the terrain around P, a hilly area, hard to attack, easy to defend, but also vulnerable to being surrounded if the Reds--and this was what they were now concentrating on--succeeded in cuting the two wings of the Blues off from their center. Though the left wing was in retreat, the right wing never flinched, indeed, it graudally pushed ahead, showing a tendency to fan out, as if intent on circling the enemy’s flank. To the Kaiser’s mind, the situation was quite banal. Had he been leading the Reds, he would have kept retreating arther and farther, enticing the impetuous wing of the Blues to focus its combat strength on the outermost lines until he eventually found an exposed position between that wing and the center.

But the Kaiser said nothing. He was distressed by the monstrous fact that Colonel Lugatti, a Triestino, vain as, in Franz Joseph’s unshakable opinion, only an Italian could be, was wearing a high overcoat collar, even higher than was permitted for a tunic; nevertheless he displayed his rank by leaving that dreadfully high collar coquettishly open.

Tell me, Herr Colonel,” asked the Kaiser, “where do you have your overcoats made, in Milan? Unfortunately, I’ve totally forgotten the names of the Milanese tailors.”

Staff Colonel Lugatti clicked his heels and buttoned his overcoat collar.

“Now people could mistake you for a lieutenant,” said Franz Joseph, “You look young, you know!”

And he put spurs to his white horse and galloped up the hill, where, quite in keeping with older battles, the generals were stationed. The Kaiser was determined to stop the “fighting” if it lasted too long, since he yeaned to see the march-past. Franz Ferdinand would certainly take a different approach. He would favor one army, side with it, start ordering it around, and always win, of course. Where was there a general who would have beaten the successor to the throne? The Kaiser’s old pale-blue eyes swept over the faces. Vain sorts, all of them! he mused. A few short years ao he would have been annoyed. But no more, no more! He wasn’t quite sure how old he was, but when the others surrounded him he felt he must be very old. Sometimes he felt he was actually floating away from people and from the earth. They all kept shrinking the longer he gazed at them, and their words reached his ears as if from a remote distance and fell away, indifferent clangs. And if someone met with some disaster, the Kaiser saw that they went to great lengths to inform him gingerly. Ah, they didn’t realize he could endure anything! The great sorrows were already at home in his soul, and the new sorrows merely joined the old ones like long-awaited brothers. He no longer got annoyed so dreadfully. He no longer rejoiced so intensely. He no longer suffered so painfully. Now he did in fact “stop the fighting,” and the march-past was to begin.

They fell in on the boundless fields, the regiments of all branches, unfortunately in the field gray (another newfangled innovation that was not to the Kaiser’s liking). Nevertheless, the bloody red of the cavalry trousers still blazed over the parched yellow of the stubble fields, erupting from the gray of the infantrists like fire from clouds. The matte, narrow glints of the swords flashed before the marching columns and double columns; the red crosses on white backgrounds shone behind the machine-gun diversions. The artillerists rolled along like ancient war gods on their heavy chariots, and the beautiful dun and chestnut steeds reared in strong, proud compliance.

Through his binoculars Franz Joseph watched the movements of each individual platoon; for several minutes he also felt sorry to lose it. For he already saw it smashed and scattered, split up among the many nations of his vast empire. The huge golden sun of the Hapsburgs was setting for him, shattered on the ultimate bottom of the universe, splintering into several tiny solar balls that had to shine as independent stars on independent nations.

They just don’t want to be ruled by me anymore! thought the old man. What can you do? he added to himself. For he was an Austrian.

So to the dismay of all the chiefs he descended from his hill and began inspecting the motionless regiments, almost platoon by platoon. And occasionally he walked between the lines, viewing the new kit bags and the bread pouches, now and then pulling out a tin can and asking what was in it, now and then spotting a blank face and asking it about its homeland, family, and occupation, barely hearing the replies, and sometimes stretching out an old hand and clapping a lieutenant on the back. In this way he reached the rifle battalion in which Trotta served.

Four weeks had passed since Trotta had let the hospital. He stood in front of his platoon, pale, gaunt, and apathetic. But as the Kaiser drew nearer, Trotta began to notice his apathy and regret it. He felt he was shirking a duty. The army had become alien to him. The Supreme Commander in Chief was alien to him. Lieutenant Trotta resembled a man who has lost not only his homeland but also his homesickness for his homeland. He pitied the white-bearded oldster who drew nearer and nearer, curiously fingering kit bags, bread pouches, tin cans. The lieutenant wished for the intoxication that had overcome him in all festive moments of his military career: at home, during the summer Sundays, on his father’s balcony, at every parade, when he had received his commission, and just a few months ago at the Corpus Christi pageant in Vienna. Nothing stirred in Lieutenant Trotta as he stood five paces in front of his Kaiser, nothing stirred in his thrus-out chest except pity for an old man. Major Zoglauer rattled out the regulation formula. For some reason the Kaiser didn’t like him. Franz Joseph suspected that things weren’t quite as they should be in the battalion commanded by this man, and he decided to have a closer look. He gazed hard at the unstirring faces, pointed to Carl Joseph, and asked, “Is he sick?”

Major Zoglauer reported what had happened to Lieutenant Trotta. The name rang a bell in Franz Joseph, something familiar yet irksome, and he recalled the incident as described in the files, and behind the incident that long-slumbering incident at the Battle of Solferino. He could still plainly see the captain who, in a ridiculous audience, had so insistently pleaded for the removal of a patriotic selection from a reader. Selection No. 15. The Kaiser remembered the number with the pleasure aroused by minor evidence of his “good memory.” His mood improved visibly. Major Zoglauer seemed less unpleasant.

“I remember your father very well,” the Kaiser said to Trotta. “He was very modest, the Hero of Solferino!”

“Your Majesty,” the lieutenant replied, “that was my grandfather.”

The Kaiser took a step back as if shoved away by the vast thrust of time that had suddenly loomed up between him and the boy. Yes, yes! He could still recall the selection number but not the legion of years that he had already lived through.

“Ah!” he said. “So that was your grandfather! I see, I see! And your father is a colonel, isn’t he?”

“District commissioner of W.”

“I see, I see!” Franz Joseph repeated. “I’ll make a note of it,” he added, as if vaguely apologizing for the mistake he had just made.

He stood in front of the lieutenant for a while, but he saw neither Trotta nor the others. He no longer felt like striding along the lines, but he had to go on lest people realized he was frightened by his own age. His eyes, as usual, peered into the distance, where the edges of eternity were already surfacing. But he failed to notice that a glassy drop appeared on his nose, and that everyone was staring, spellbound, at that drop, which finally fell into his thick, silvery mustache, invisibly embedding itself.

And everyone felt relieved. And the march-past could begin.



Joseph Roth - The Radetzky March: Chapter 15