[122]
We saw a beautiful woman during the Days of Awe. She glanced from behind the screen of the women’s section like a half moon revealed through a cloud.
With the blowing of the shofar our hearts were split in two and we fell in love with her. The prayer books and holy ark swirled in the space of the synagogue, like in a painting by Chagall. Every so often the screen was shifted and her face would appear then vanish. Lines from hymns were scattered, like Lego pieces, in the air.
Finally we couldn’t stand the screen any longer and went up to the edge of the women’s section and stared toward the swarm of kerchiefs that moved like a field of wheat in the wind. We didn’t see her, and nonetheless union with her was brought about, facing away, so that the world would go on. Otherwise, it would have returned to the darkness that preceded the chaos and void, and the voice.
In a certain sense one might say that at that moment we created the doors and frames through which people pass, and the vast range of possibilities within the kaleidoscope we call life.
[123]
Yesterday we came home and wanted to die. But then we remembered the laundry marks that are put on clothes (the letter nun for Nahman and for Shalom Nehemkin also a nun, though a shin would have been more appropriate) and our spirits revived.
There’s great vitality in laundry marks and in people who put them on each article of clothing. And later, at a large laundry, clothes are sorted by these marks and returned, clean and pressed, to their owners.
These are the things that require our attention in a novel. So that the clothes of the main character won’t get mixed up with those of the minor ones. Especially in a serious novel. Imagine what would happen if, in the middle of the action (when critical things were taking place), the main character was running around with a shirt three sizes too small for him. No one would take the book seriously.
Or picture a novel in which a man walks around in a woman’s clothes and a woman is wearing the clothes of a man. On second thought, such a thing is entirely plausible (and even called for) in a novel where all the main characters are transvestites. But these sorts of novels are quite rare, and as a rule it’s wise not to mix up the clothes.
[124]
Today is Christmas. We’re thinking about virgin births. Unlike that Portuguese writer, Saramago, we believe in the sanctity of that moment. There wasn’t an infant in the world, and suddenly there was.
And we too are the product of a virgin birth. We were born twice. First when a woman of flesh and blood delivered us in the ordinary manner. Later, like everyone, we were wiped off the face of the earth with the people who were sent to the ovens. And if we’re alive, we are — like some sad kind of miracle — among the babies now in the ground, or far above in the place where the smoke from the chimneys ascended. Beyond history.
[125]
The counting did in fact begin, as the Christians have it, with the birth of the infant Jesus. But it concluded with the birth of Adolf. We were given just 1,889 years of life.
Now we’re in the age of ash. Beyond time. As though in a game that has come to an end. There’s no more movement on the field. Just kicks toward the goal. Everything only seems to be. A thin wash of color covers it all, and beneath that — blackness.
Only giraffes remain. Mountains. Wisps of clouds. Celestial bodies. Woods. Bodies of water and shells of men. Europe, apparently. Hallucinations. A real sun rises over nothing.
[126]
We know that we need to say something amusing now. Some sort of joke. Or an anecdote. Something about a great love.
How, in spite of everything, the world renews itself. Phone books, for instance. Countless men and women brought together, and one could call them all.
We remember how, when we were little, maybe in sixth grade, we’d flip through the phone book and look for funny names. We found the name Dr. Ochs and called the number and when a man answered Yes (with a German accent) we said: Moooo. .
Which is how every ox finds its mate. And the male chiropractor a female chiropractor. A male accountant a woman who also manages accounts.
We remember how, in those days, we’d visit each other on Raleigh bikes (with a bell) and ride together to the river. Girls with names like Tzila would shake their heads and their braids would fly in the air. The soles of the teachers’ feet would sweat, because they were wearing leather shoes even during the summer (they’d come from the Holocaust), and if there were empty places they’d be filled up at once with oranges and tangerines.
[127]
Everyone came for a brief while and went with joy to his death.
And how did they die? One way or another. Shamaya Davidson, for instance, who was an English teacher, tried to hurdle a low barrier. Just two rows of cinder blocks. He completed the first part of the jump, which is to say, up to the point where the body begins to return to the ground. But instead of landing, he kept on rising through the air.
There was also a Hebrew teacher. He was walking down the hall and suddenly died of happiness. We’ve heard that in the old farming cooperatives people would slip between two heavy books, as though they were flowers, and press themselves dry. In Tel Aviv, people would lie (when they felt the moment was nigh) down beneath a café table, and the waiter would put a piece of cream cake on their belly.
And there were people like my grandfather, Isaac Emerich, who took off their clothes and got into bed, and thus, quietly, slept while they were dying.
[128]
We’re extremely proud of the previous chapter. It’s a shame we can’t show it to our dead relatives.
Then again, we could go to a specialist who calls the dead back to this world and speaks with them. We knew a man like that once, but he died, and now we need someone to bring him back as well. Maybe we should look in the yellow pages, under the listing “Spiritual Practice.”
Imagine that we’re trying to bring Aunt Edith back, and by mistake we summon Attila the Hun. Or Ben Gurion. What would we say? Sorry to disturb you? Better to let them be and wait until we ourselves go to them.
On the other hand, it’s possible that we’re already dead and that the world we see around us is in fact the world to come, and the government bureaus and the government itself are a kind of photographic negative of the previous world, but we just don’t know it.
Once we knew a woman who was always saying, “Oy, I’m dying.” Maybe she knew more than it seemed.
[129]
This might be the last book that we’ll write. I wonder how it will end. What its final words will be. Joyce, for example, finished his final book with the word the.
We’ve always thought it extremely strange that movies (and books) end with the word End. Moreover, sometimes the definite article’s added.
Maybe we’ll end with another word altogether. We’ll do what we did when we were little. We’ll shut our eyes and open the dictionary (or some other book) and put our finger on one of the pages and the word that our finger lands on will be the last one.