When his bags came from the port, Ebenezer went to Tel Aviv and bought the Giladi house. When Boaz came to see him, Ebenezer said: Samuel, and fainted. For three days Ebenezer wept in a closed room and thought. After he came out of the room he almost knew things he hadn't known before that he knew. Boaz, who was disappointed, didn't show his emotions. He was scared as never before in his life. Fanya R. told him about her daughters. Their skin, she said, was grafted onto the body of a German who was burned in a tank. But when Ebenezer tried to understand who Boaz was and how he wasn't Samuel, Boaz said: Never mind, it's not so important, he left the house, and when he got to the corner of Hayarkon Street, he entered a yard and banged his head against a wall for a long time.
Mr. Klomin, who envisioned the meeting between Boaz and his father, began to feel a certain closeness to his grandson, maybe because time wasn't working to his advantage now, as he put it, or because Dana became concrete before his eyes the moment Ebenezer called his son Samuel.
Once every two weeks, for years, Mr. Klomin and Captain Jose Menkin A. Goldenberg would meet in Tel Aviv to discuss their party affairs. Most of the people who had joined them over the years had died or were in old people's homes or in hospitals and had stopped being interested in the renewed Kingdom of Israel. A gigantic yoke of keeping the flame, as he defined it, fell on Klomin, and became heavier from year to year. The return of the last son gave him certain hopes that inconceivable things were happening. If Ebenezer came back, he said to the Captain as they walked in the street to their regular meeting place, all kinds of things can happen, he said and didn't elaborate. The two of them were up in years now. Whenever they'd walk in the street they'd discover a new city they hadn't known before, partly because they forgot. Suspicious-looking cars passed by and stopped at traffic signals that had just been planted on street corners. Mr. Klomin meditated aloud about the connection between the words grief and brief, dissect and connect, brave and wave, and then they went into the small old-fashioned cafe where they had once prepared the great revolt against the British Empire. They sat down in their regular places at the back window behind a gigantic bush that had turned gray over the years. Hidden from the eyes of passersby, they sat and whispered to one another. The Captain's uniform had faded long ago, a new replacement hadn't come. His once elegant hat looked shabby, even though he took such devoted care of it. He was already starting to forget for rather long periods why he ever had to go back to Egypt. As a sign of the passing years, he said to Mr. Klomin: I don't edit a French newspaper anymore, and Mr. Klomin, who had never believed the Captain had ever edited a newspaper in Cairo, thought to himself a bit, looked at the damp walls, the red plastic chairs, and said: Maybe you really didn't edit a newspaper for many years. The Captain's praise-wreathed past had faded with the years, bereft of that importance that had once been ascribed to it. And one of the two said, they didn't remember anymore which of them said it: Maybe we have to turn over a new leaf? And the Captain adjusted his folds that had grown flaccid, drank the thin coffee, and a shriveled old waitress, who remembered her youthful grace through them, said to her replacement waitress: Those were giant years, you felt electricity in the air, and what secrets they whispered there, and the new waitress came to them, bored, asked if they wanted anything, offered them the famous cheesecake and they laughed, in unison they laughed, and said: Us, cheesecake? Sometimes toast, not today, and then they gave in and ordered nut cake and said it was good, even though it had stood four days on the counter waiting for a defeated and hungry army, she pulled her apron, wiped a table that was already clean, looked bored toward another table covered with crumbs, and sat down to look at the street.
When the Captain, drinking coffee and chewing the hard nut cake, thought of what he had left of the past he had almost managed to live, he sank into depression, he thought of Rebecca, he thought of dark schemes he could no longer invent, and then a tear pearled in his left eye and he said to Mr. Klomin: But the memorial to Dante Alighieri I do have to erect.
It was because of the memorial, he said a few minutes later, that I came here fifty years ago, wasn't it. Mr. Klomin, who looked like a routed war hero who couldn't have been invented by the Captain even in his good days, pondered to himself: Boaz builds memorials, and here respected and unhesitating stands an ancient and firm fifty-year-old expectation. Not fair, he said sadly, really not fair…
Around them, people are selling and buying diamonds, exchanging earrings for foreign currency, and Menkin Jose Captain says: I've got a dim sense we won't succeed in establishing your kingdom, Klomin. And Klomin drinks the coffee, chews the unchewed cake, and says: The Prophets win again, Captain. He said that so sadly that tears filled the Captain's eyes. To the three hundred sixty letters he wrote to British commissioners, leaders of Israel, its ministers, noble American, French, and British leaders, chief rabbis, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, King Saud, the Prime Minister of Nigeria, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union in New York and Left Poalei Zion in Brooklyn, no answer had come, except one, short and laconic, from Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion wrote: I read your letter carefully, if we build our state with innocence, boldness, faith and wisdom, we shall be redeemed. Until we do we will not be redeemed. Respectfully, David Ben-Gurion.
Mediocrities are always celebrated here, said Klomin, great minds are stoned to death. The gigantic figure of the kings is corrupted by frustrated poets, the Bible is written testimony to the greatness of great dreamers despite its tendentious values… Everything's a lie, Jeroboam the Second was a great king whose figure was reduced by poets, and Jeremiah who called for betrayal and throwing up your hands gets a whole book. The Russian Revolution of nineteen five failed in Russia and succeeded here. Secular Hasids devoid of real greatness believe in the miracle drug of hackneyed rhymes. They started with a demonstration against Nehemiah Schneerson and now they're building a state of shopkeepers and an oppressed kingdom. We, Captain, we're the last ones who see what could have been. A great historical moment was missed, now maybe it's too late. I intend to write one last letter, Captain, added Mr. Klomin in a loud voice and the old waitress, who hadn't yet taken off her apron, recalled the stormy days of the great revolutions and wonderful arguments, I'll write a six-hundred-page letter: The last will and testament of one who thought up the state. I'll write what reptiles they are! How they turned possible redemption into a new ghetto, or in the words of the poet Tshernikhovsky, "The Lord God conquered Canaan in a tempest-and He will be imprisoned in straps of tefillin!" My letter will be testimony of memory and a memorial to Dana my daughter, guilt of Samaria against love of Zion!
But he'll erect my memorial, said the Captain, who had stopped listening to his friend's speech some time ago. I'll call the last letter the will and testament of the last Jews, said Klomin, my grandchildren will read the letter as we read Herzl's prophetic writings today. After they parted, the Captain stood with a South American firmness and the old waitress came to him, held out her hand, and said, I've served you for thirty years now and today I'm retiring, I just wanted to say what an honor it has been for me to serve you, she burst into tears and ran away. The Captain, who tried to wipe a tear from his eye, discovered to his surprise that his eye was dry. He walked along the street slowly, turned right, and ran right into a tree. His sight was failing now, but his honor didn't allow him to wear eyeglasses, and he walked to Boaz's house.
Climbing to the roof was hard for him, but he rested on every floor, wiped his sweat and the pathetic image of the waitress was still stuck to his eyelids. For thirty years she had served him and he hadn't noticed her. When Boaz opened the door, the Captain walked in and was caught in the last light fluttering on the roof and touching the leaves of the trees and plants and herbs that Noga planted in flowerpots and barrels. A few chairs and an old easy chair stood there. The Captain sat down in the easy chair, and said: You could have been my grandson but in the end I did succeed in being your godfather.