The door opens and he can't see very well because of the glowing light from the open window. He doesn't say a thing, looks at somebody he may have to struggle with again. A locked yard with a tree and a hook and a bird, and distant music rises in his brain, he enters, and after the door is locked behind him, in the lobby a well-dressed, tall, heavyset man gets up, pays for his coffee, looks at the small light bulbs on the control board of the elevator, and leaves. Far away from there sits Rebecca Schneerson, facing a grove of almond trees, measuring herself in the windowpane, cleaned for her by the great-grandson of Ahbed and she wants in vain to touch the source of her prayers that could once make such a strong hatred throb in her that she gaped open a hole in the universe. Now she hurls empty looks and doesn't even hold the flyswatter anymore and she drinks wine as she sits for the men who couldn't make her forget the sweet smell of Joseph, who almost kindled in her her heavy and needless betrayal of love, and she thinks: Who am I waiting for, as if a pesky fly came and reported to her on the state of the farm, on crops that grew nicely, on a northwest wind, and she wants to know what's happening in a place where she doesn't know that anything is happening. She doesn't know that Boaz and Samuel are meeting now, she doesn't know that something that took place years ago, when two young men met and struggled, a struggle she really didn't pray for, is now reaching its conclusion. And Jordana, who dusted three thousand books waiting for her with pictures of eternal youths, returns to Henkin's house and teaches Noga and Renate how to clean the bluish rust off ancient coins, how the liquid forces the ancient letters and the ancient images to be exposed, and Renate looks at the countenance of Emperor Hadrian and sees how his face grows sad, how those features waited for her on the sands of Caesarea for two thousand years and nobody touched the countenance. A wind blew, rain fell, and after all those years coins emerged that were lost absentmindedly by some Roman soldier, who hasn't been among the living for ages, for Renate and Noga of all people, and now Jordana is cleaning them with a stinking liquid and the countenance of the Emperor Hadrian grows clear, and Noga, maybe, tries to listen to the voice of Boaz's ancient blood that has gushed up in her now too, and she thinks: Where did the blood disappear that poured here, on the sands, for thousands of years, the blood that went deep into the center of gravity of the earth, a place where Rebecca dug toward the sky, with the awful anger that pervaded her and is now starting to fade, as if after more than ninety years of life in a place where she didn't want to live, the anger is starting to be a needless, almost ridiculous embellishment, and you don't know who to be angry at anymore and you can't even be angry at yourself anymore, and so, Noga thought of her lovers, of Jordana who loved Menahem and Boaz, and now is maybe in love with Friedrich and will soon paste his pictures in the album and under each picture she'll write in her fluent handwriting: Place, date, general description, so she'll be able to look at his volume without opening it again, to guess the dim, grim force of time that doesn't turn hair gray anymore, and flows without moving, and Jordana goes to Menahem's room, turns on the television, wants to weep, tears seek her eyes and don't find them, and then she breaks the screen, but the ice cream man's ear-piercing music is heard outside and nobody hears the smashing blow, and Fanya R. yells: Stop it! We don't want ice cream! And the wrinkled man goes away routed, with his ice cream, and there aren't any children here anymore to sell ice cream to, says Hasha, and Jordana sits Henkin down and talks with him about renewing the activity of the Committee of Bereaved Parents and tells him that everybody is waiting for him and he has to do things, travel, search for new sites, the pain has to be extinguished, she knows, she gave birth to a dead son and she knows, she also broke the screen and Henkin sits and listens, looking at the beautiful Yemenite woman. What's happening there in the room, thinks Germanwriter standing up in the lobby of the Hilton, what's happening to them there that I can't guess, and Henkin thinks of what Jordana said, wants to answer her, maybe turn everything back, go back to the starting point, stand before his son a moment, and say to him: Menahem, you don't have to write poems, if you don't want to. Hasha Masha says you're a man of the sea. Henkin knew that no lad who came from Hasha Masha's womb would believe that Henkin who says those things really means them, and he can despise himself until he smiles at Jordana who strokes his hand and tries to lead him to battlefields where others fought for her and for him, and suddenly he says with a contempt that once was in Hasha but she doesn't have it now: Why don't you make love with something like a television, but she isn't offended now and moves to the agenda, he's going to tell me about the locomotive salesman, that sonofabitch, she said to herself, he thought that because of my love for Menahem he bought me for life, and I'm free to love whoever I want, she said and laughed, and Noga saw the laugh caught on her face like a wounded bird and she tried to get up, but her legs were heavy and she didn't get up, and Renate went to put on water.
Henkin thinks: That strange Yemenite woman, she endured everything and remained dry, from all the rain of death she remained dry, and Rebecca sits in her room, Ahbed paces back and forth, and she thinks: Something's happening, and then a distant rage passes through her-not her own-one that went astray and passed through her on the way to her sources, from her toenails, which once stood at the river and let it pierce the girl she was, to give up everything so she could be angry at herself, stumble on mastery, live a life that contradicted itself, so that her life was a betrayal of her desires, to take vengeance on herself, on the desires she didn't really have, and she said: Somebody tells me up yours, somebody enters the room, does to me what Nehemiah did when he committed suicide on the shore of Jaffa, and when I was born the sun went out and a rooster didn't die, deaf Joseph went to bring a new sexton to the city, the rabbi of Lody who caused Napoleon's defeat at the gates of Moscow, but the house of the Last Jew is still locked despite the sudden shouts of that prompter Fanya R., the windows are slammed shut, the repainted shutters are closed, the antenna sways in the wind, and in the hotel the tall beauty queen sits down, in a purple dress and a white collar, next to Germanwriter, who's about to leave, and says: So what will be? Germanwriter, who thinks of avenging that moment when everything takes place, the moment when two men meet and you don't know what happens to them, looks at the local beauty queen who was international and came back to her scale, wringing her hands, and he notices that she's removed the red nail polish and her fingernails are also pale, and he thinks: Did she really kiss the Ambassador of Peru, did a whore from Hayarkon Street really sleep in his bed on the seventeenth floor, as that really was important to what happens to the writer deep in his heart, where there were once stories that wanted to be written as he used to tell Renate, and the beauty queen sits and starts gnawing her nails, looking to the side, stealing a scared look at the writer, and gnawing. He thinks: Let me have a hand, and he says: Let me gnaw, and she says: Why not, and he gnaws one fingernail and wants to laugh in the hotel lobby. He gnaws, Germanwriter, the queen, a fingernail…
And he thinks about the hotel, about Henkin sitting in his house now, letting his thoughts roam free, pondering shelters, about Eva in the shelter when Goebbels comes and tells the Fuhrer: The queen of Russia is dead, and Goebbels doesn't mean the queen of Russia, who managed to get routed at the last minute by King Friedrich for whom my son was named, he means Roosevelt, the miracle that may still happen…