Yours, Adam Navon
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Ebenezer and Fanya R. are walking along the seashore. Fanya is hopping, picking up snails and examining them. Ebenezer is trying to estimate the distance between himself and the turret of the mosque in Jaffa, and says: Jaffa is a rock. Jaffa of sundown. Jaffa of magic. Jaffa of abandoned smells. Let go of the snails, the sea wept them, nothing will influence me anymore. I dreamed a war will break out, I read the dream in a book that hasn't yet been written. That's what they say! The sea will be filled with blood. There's no iodine for blood of the sea.
In the distance a woman stands and yells at a child: Don't go in the water, Boaz. I told you not to. Listen, if you drown, don't you dare come back home.
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Henkin reads Germanwriter's letter to Hasha. Germanwriter is going to Italy and from there he'll come. Henkin says: What will we do with Friedrich? And Hasha is silent. Henkin says: How, how, and Hasha says Shhh, Henkin. You're disturbing the rustle of the waves.
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Boaz Schneerson: It's not just Noga. I live in a world I wasn't prepared for. And I'm half an orphan. Do you pity me? You're laughing! Jordana is woven of silken death, what are you woven of? They taught you to forget where you came from. At night, before sleep, an old nun read you sayings in Latin. You spat green blood. What exactly happened? Did you really find your dead father? Did you write a letter to the judge? The judge wrote to me. He wrote: In terms of morality, Noga Levin is right. So here you are, proof that you're right! The Last Jew, not our "last Jew," let him go into that sea, when he's thrown out. Let him throw up his hands, let him yell "I was right," and let him drown. What does it help to be always right? I'm not always right, but unlike you, I don't make Boazes miserable. Germanwriter is coming, Henkin's waiting for him. Your father never waited for another daughter, when he waited, he waited for you. The writer comes here to buy guided missiles produced by the military industry, rifles started with clothespins, Jewish genius, plastic tank turrets, dream-penetrating laser beams, water from the Jordan to alleviate material exhaustion-like planes that lost their fighting ability-sea sand to pulverize limbs, Jewish grenades to disperse student demonstrations, a philharmonic orchestra with stainless steel spires, the German leopards are supplied with soap made in Israel and in exchange they send us gas masks. What battle are the lords Herod and Mendelssohn preparing for us? The German command will buy Hebrew tents, go to Henkin, loathe him in my name…
And Sam Lipp-
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Sam Lipp came to the old Ben-Gurion airport. When the plane extinguished its engines, the stewardess woke him up and said to him with a smile: I think we've arrived. He picked up his valise, brushed his hair, and got off. After a short bus trip, he came to customs. A policewoman hidden in a giant wooden basin stamped his passport; he walked slowly to the exit. Except for the valise in his hand, he hadn't brought anything with him. When he went outside, a hot wind blew and the light was still clear. In the distance he could almost love the ugliness surrounding everything like a wreath of thorns.
He got into a cab, stretched out, and said: The Hilton, Tel Aviv. He peeped out and through the windshield, the trees started becoming clear, the narrow road became more familiar, barbed wire fences posted in his mind between houses and boulevards faded away, he recalled that when he slept in the plane he dreamed he was walking on Baron Hirsch Street in Tarnopol carrying two challahs. Now, awake, he seemed to see the roads to Tarnopol. The driver was listening to music and smoking a cigarette. Hebrew words on the radio became familiar. Syllables he didn't know before became a surer texture, for some reason he was afraid of history, the structure of time, the molecules of relative time as opposed to absolute time. He thought: Melissa is waiting for me at the corner.
At the entrance to the hotel, he paid the driver. The exorbitant price didn't surprise him. When he came to the counter and said his name, the clerk dialed and a few minutes later a tall beautiful girl appeared holding a bouquet of flowers. She called a boy, put the one valise on a cart, and said to Sam: Welcome to the Hilton! And she handed him the bouquet with a ceremoniousness that seemed a little clumsy yet practiced. The beautiful girl said she was the representative of the public relations department and that the Hilton was proud to host him. She led him to a small room. He apologized for the delay (she muttered to herself that they had expected him a few days before), and after he signed the guest book studded with the names of the world's great, beginning with the signature of Ben-Gurion and then Frank Sinatra, he asked why it wasn't the other way around and Frank Sinatra didn't come before Ben-Gurion, and she tried to smile, but her teeth were too beautiful to waste on a meaningless smile, and they went up together to the seventeenth floor and he was put into the big suite. In one of the two rooms of the suite were bouquets of flowers sent by the American cultural attache, the national theater, and a telegram from the Minister of Education and Culture on a silver salver.
A basket of apples, flowers, cheese, biscuits, cookies, and crackers stood in the middle of the table. He picked up an apple and bit into it. The beauty put some notes on a big nightstand, opened the closed drapes, and he saw the lights of Tel Aviv. Sam said to the beauty: You're wasted in this temple, and she smiled a professional and polished smile. Then a person phoned and said he was the manager of the theater and was waiting for him at the airport, and he had just heard he had come and he was sorry, but he hadn't been home for five evenings when he had waited for Sam at the airport. Sam apologized; fatigue was leaking out of him in drops of sweat, and they arranged to meet the next day. The beauty checked the bathroom, Sam paid the boy who brought the valise and he wanted to pay her too, but the two of them looked at one another, didn't say a word and he said, Sorry, thrust the money into his pocket, and said: Thanks. She said: If you want anything call me and everything will be taken care of immedi ately. He told her: Everything's confused, something's messed up there, and he pointed toward the seashore where Ebenezer and Fanya R. were strolling slowly. Everything became shadows, his body shook, and she waited, something of the pain that filled him infected her. He offered her a cigarette she lit herself because his hands were shaking too much to light it for her, and she smoked the long cigarette he had apparently bought on the plane before he fell asleep. The room smelled of flowers, aftershave, and apples, and he asked her to sit down and she sat down and dragged on the cigarette and he asked why she was so beautiful, and she said with a modest smile that she had been a beauty queen, and he said That's it, how is it to be a beauty queen? And she said, You see, you work in the Hilton, and he smiled, but something in him didn't smile, wanted to flee, but he was stuck to himself and since he couldn't do anything, his hands waved, his face was pale, and then the beauty recalled that he had to record his personal details and she took a form out of her jacket pocket, and he recorded the details and said I should have filled out the details in Lebensborn, too, and she asked what was Lebensborn, and he told her: A hotel to improve racially pure kingdoms, and he filled out the form, and she took it from his hands and glanced at it, and asked the meaning of the word Gottglaubig he had written next to the word nationality, and he muttered to himself more than to her: One who has a real German faith, and she said, You must be drunk, no? And he said, I drank all the way, did you ever host Heinrich Kramer here, and she said she didn't know, but she could find out, and he said: Never mind, never mind, and then she stood up hesitantly, waited, put out the cigarette in the ashtray, and apologized, it was clear from her face how sorry she was that the crushed cigarette dirtied the polished ashtray, but he smiled at her and she wiggled out, beautiful, and he lay down in bed, looked at the ceiling, time passed, he didn't know how much, an hour, two, five, he munched on the apples, ate cookies, and thought which side does a fish piss on. Then he went to the bathroom and saw toilet paper and thought: That's Jewish toilet paper, and he was proud. Then he wanted to laugh at his pride, but his face muscles were impermeable to his will and not far from him, a plane flew low over Ebenezer's house and landed at the little airport near the big chimney, which he didn't yet know was Reading Chimney, and he said: I've got to be objective, think objectively, formulate, maybe there's also objective faith, objective theater, objective pain and disgrace, and thus he fell asleep for a little while and awoke and called the public relations department and was told that the beauty had gone home and would come back later to a reception for the ambassador of Peru.