He didn't even know how to formulate the question. I liked that.
Staged regards, I said, embarrassed.
He said, Who? And now some tone of violence was heard in his voice, which Boaz would explain to me later, was in my voice when I told him to come to my house and bring Menahem's poem, a violence of those pressed to the wall who don't have any more words.
I told him: I've got a neighbor, he asked me, in fact he didn't ask but demanded, really, to deliver something to you and what he wanted to deliver to you is hard for me to deliver, courtesy obliges me to forget his request, while another obligation, a higher one, obliges me to tell you…
He smoked another cigarette and I knew I couldn't avoid it, I saw that in his eyes, the lighter was crushed in his gigantic hand, I thought of talking to him about lost wars, but I said: My neighbor said he's the scion of somebody named Secret Charity which means in German…
I understand the name, he said quickly, what did he say?
He said to tell you, that scion… He's the son of his great-grandson, he said in German, now he tried to smile, stubbed out another cigarette in the ashtray, and when he lifted his finger, I saw that it was stained with ash, he looked at me for a split second, took the lighter out of his hand, moved it to his other hand, lit it, I waited but he didn't take a cigarette out of the delicate case, and only raised his hand pensively and again tried to smile, like somebody caught red-handed he put down his hand put out the lighter and put it in his coat pocket. I said quickly: He asked me to ask you to give him back his daughters! I felt the blood drain out of my face. I was afraid to look at him. He gazed a bit, his eyes slowly shut, tense, a long time passed and maybe the time was short and I only imagined that it was long, and then he said in a voice that suddenly sounded as if it came from the other end of the room: Maybe that's why I came here, for somebody to ask me for his daughters.
For some reason I believed him, there was no pleading in his voice, no asking for forgiveness, no evasion. He said simply what, maybe, he had to say. I looked at the picture of the Shimonis' son, the room disappeared, I no longer saw the people. Our association was total, isolated, and then the German said to Henkin who builds castles in frail air: Ebenezer didn't have daughters, Mr. Henkin, like Samuel Lipker, his adopted son, he sells lampshades that weren't made from his parents!
Something in me revolted, even though I didn't understand the meaning of the words, I was filled with a vague longing to run away. I remember the first time we went to see my son's grave. When I stood at the gate of the cemetery I wanted to flee. As if my son was waiting for me there. I thought about circles; I go outside my room and there is no Giladi, a new neighbor lives there, works a garden, talks about north Tel Aviv, I then investigate the history of the Last Jew, and the Last Jew I investigate is named Ebenezer, why did he ask me for daughters he didn't have? Ebenezer, the one I investigated, didn't have daughters, he had a son, the son's name wasn't Samuel Lipker, what's the connection to Marar, to Boaz Schneerson, to Germanwriter? From what side does the sea die near my house, an old man once asked me on the seashore during an evening stroll, how are you sure that Hitler is dead? Did you see his body? How do you know? Germanwriter is talking and I'm listening to him slowly through my thoughts; they held a meeting for me at the Writers' Union, he said, it was hard, what I saw that morning at Yad Vashem was still echoing in me, not that I ever wanted to forget. They spoke, and something brings you close but nevertheless an accusation was heard in their words, what could I tell them? That I've already spent years investigating the history of the Last Jew, the great-grandson of Secret Charity? No, don't say a word, Mr. Henkin, I know what you do, so I asked to meet you, wait, maybe you don't know or you didn't know that Ebenezer Schneerson is the Last Jew.
Schneerson? I asked and felt my legs growing cold.
Schneerson, he said, your neighbor! Look, Mr. Henkin, I'm so sorry but he doesn't have and didn't have daughters! At that meeting with the writers one writer spoke excitedly; he said: We live in a world where people walk around who at night dream dreams that terrify them, he meant meThis is a land woven of nightmares of two hundred, three hundred thousand people and this venom of theirs is the texture of our life, he said, the foundation of this tribe that stands with a flag in hand under eighty meters of water, and then he said to me: Here's my friend, acquaintance I would say, his name is Boaz Schneerson, he thought he lost his father in an awful disaster, but his father, whom he didn't know at all, returned after forty years, and they don't know one another….
You understand Mr. Henkin, there are a lot of people here, not Ebenezer, not him, who really believed that awful absurdity that I may be able to return their daughters to them, what I really came to do is to return Ebenezer's daughters even though he didn't have any daughters.
I listened, I thought about Boaz, about my neighbor, I tried to believe everything I was hearing, that I wasn't dreaming and indeed I wasn't dreaming, he said those words and I was silent and listened. I tasted the wine I saw in a glass standing nearby; it tasted disgusting but it cooled me. And I sipped the wine again. And the writer said: Ebenezer who's the son of the great-grandson of Secret Charity.
I said scion, I said.
Yes, the son of his great-grandson, he said without listening to me at all, he's waiting for me. In the special language of Samuel Lipker whom you may not know, he asked you, Mr. Henkin, to bring me to him. We should go, ah, this party is starting to weary me.
I poured myself another glass of wine. Jordana came to us and tried to smile, I couldn't respond to her, and the writer said to Jordana: Call Mr. Givon from the Foreign Ministry for me a minute, I want to tell him something, my legs are heavy and I can't get up. She looked at him and I looked in her eyes and they were empty. The man from the Foreign Ministry came and we, two tame dogs, we looked at him and didn't know him. I drank more wine, the Germanwriter also sipped and Mr. Givon, splendidly dressed fitting his position, bowed to us and my neighbor on the sofa said to him: I'm going with Mr. Henkin and Givon said to him, Fine, tomorrow morning at ten we'll come get you. Please don't forget the luncheon with the Foreign Minister…
From my perspective, the German's leg looked like a mountain. I looked at the fold of his trousers, which was sharp and precise, I saw a spear. Beyond the boulevard a light was gleaming and from some hidden window came rhythmical, distant music, I drank more wine until the glass I was holding remained empty and one drop rolled around on the glass and left a delicate trail behind, a small drop of blood, small as a miniature galaxy in the process of final destruction.
When I reconstruct today what happened then, I remember that I was amazed. I started drinking everything that came to hand, from half-empty goblets, from bottles on the table, while the German drank in a more controlled manner, like somebody who's used to drinking, munched roasted peanuts, and then I knew I was drunk. The writer begged pardon and said he had to go to the bathroom a moment, he wandered toward the corridor and I pondered something that had happened long ago, in my childhood. It was the night of the Passover Seder, I drank wine then and went out of the room, I went up to our attic, I found there the piles of my father's books, textbooks, reading books, sex books, forbidden stories including a small booklet titled The Tale of Reb Joseph de la Rayna and His Five Students by Solomon Navarro. The subject of it had a name that was destroyed, and I read it drunk and shocked, and later on, that story is etched so deep in my memory-and that was the one and only time until that evening that I got drunk-until I wrote the first study in the Land of Israel on the case of Joseph de la Rayna. In that story I found some apocalyptic meaning for our enterprise here. For the great spiritual revolt. As I said it was my first study and as far as I know that study of mine preceded many greater scholars than I. And to this day I keep a letter of congratulations from Bialik about that study of mine that was published in 1912. Once in a moment of anger I even called my son Joseph, and when he wanted to know why, I told him the story and back then I didn't have time for my son as I do today, and he, for some reason, copied the story into his notebook and from then on whenever he rebelled-and he rebelled so many times-he'd turn to me with his refreshing and open laugh and say: Henkin, I bring salvation and I ask him, how, by pinching a little girl's behind? And he told me something like: Why don't you say ass, Henkin, why behind or buttocks? And how do you know I don't bring salvation? And I try to explain to him the tragic, pathetic structure of the yearning for revenge the enormous need for salvation, for breakthroughs and breakthroughs, talk about chains, about the sense of impotence toward the creation and the sense of betrayal of the nation but in vain.