The home itself surprised me enough. Not only because it was so unlike the Giladis' home but because for some reason I expected meager furnishings, as if Ebenezer's belonging both to Marar and the Holocaust required some obvious trigonometry, but in the room we entered through the corridor there were black shelves with birds carved of wood as if they wanted to fly. And a wonderful cabinet and a gigantic grandfather clock. And between the clean furniture made like ancient works of art and marvelously preserved, there was nothing but an emptiness emphasized more than appeased. As if the spaces of the house were deliberately filled with life, there was no dust, no spider web, no grain of sand, only a thin volatile smell of Lysol that had dried long ago, of scorching, of pungent sweets and flowers taken out of a vase. The white walls, the glowing neon light, everything looked like part of a stage set, like a home that has no life in it but is cleaned constantly and awaits some spectacle that's about to take place. The grandfather clock struck now, a beautiful Gothic cabinet polished with purplish, maybe dark red, lacquer, some romanticism, some jest of the last creations of nonexistent worlds, my neighbor dressed like a buffoon stood there next to the giant bear and not far from him stood a woman, tall, her hair really bluish, her eyes leaden, her expression strange and yet painful, without a smile, as if she were trying to defend her buffoon. The German shook Ebenezer's hand and said, Oh, thank God, and Renate smiled at the woman, who didn't hold out her hand. Ebenezer smiled at me, clapped his hands without a sound, and Renate said: We came! And she sat on a chair whose back was covered with puffed pillows, and above hung two chandeliers, one beautiful, adorned with crystals without electric light, while the other, simple, only one strong neon light, illuminated the room, and Renate didn't look alone in her chair and blended in with the general atmosphere. Ebenezer went to the grandfather clock and when he separated the German from the clock, the writer sat down and pulled out another cigarette and lighted it and I tried to understand from my wife what was going to happen. On Ebenezer's face was a smile I had sometimes encountered on the faces of students caught red-handed, a painted pleading smile, and my neighbor suddenly shut his eyes, with the expression of a puppy dog, he stooped over a bit, illustrated on the wall, between the grandfather clock and the cabinet, and started reciting something, in Polish. When I raised my head I heard the numbers of the trains of Warsaw and their schedules, I was perplexed, I had read about the Last Jew, and yet, there was something so perverse in his appearance, so unsuitable, his wife stood there like an orphaned question mark, the grandfather clock swung its pendulum, the writer shut his eyes, inhaled smoke, tossed the unextinguished cigarette into the ashtray shaped like a ship's porthole, and Renate's embarrassed, Ebenezer crouched, a little Jew of contemptible humility, trying to please, and Renate yells: Enough, enough, and the writer says: Ebenezer, no! And he tries to continue but the writer yells, No, no! And I try not to look ashamed, try to sit, my wife looks at me understandingly, as if at long last cooperation between us has returned, some form of the shared and full Ebenezer's melody sounded like a prayer of the first part of the night, nocturnal Psalms in a study house, I didn't know what to say, the writer looked angry, and then Ebenezer stopped, his body shaking like an epileptic's, stopped shaking and he started laughing, he said: No? Not because of that? And I thought about the hours he had waited, about the days, about the daughters he asked for, I wanted to show the German that there was some picture album here of the daughters he claimed Ebenezer didn't have, and Ebenezer straightened up, pulled his clothes, picked up a bottle standing on the table illuminated by a strong light and drank from the bottle without pouring into a glass, and said: Excuse me, and took another swallow and gave the bottle to the German, the German drank a little and took out eyeglasses to read the label. The German said, I understand, I understand, and Ebenezer said: Fine vodka that, the best, and the German read the label again, drank again from the bottle (didn't wipe the mouth of the bottle) said: Good vodka, like a song, and Ebenezer said: You're quoting me, and the German said, I always quote you, Ebenezer…
When the two of them gave me the bottle I refused. I said I had drunk enough for one evening. I looked at my wife. For some reason she didn't react to my words but held out her hand, took the bottle, tasted it, and smiled, she didn't even grimace. Everybody accepted her sipping as obvious, the little radio played some tune and my neighbor said in French, What a sweet sin! The music will cover everything, and Germanwriter smiled, poured a shot glass, raised it said in Hebrew "L'Chaim," and drank. The eyeglasses he had taken out before to read the label were still on his nose, small ones, the kind worn by old tailors on the end of their noses. The two of them emptied the bottle in five or six glasses one after another in marvelous acrobatics, they made the shot glasses fly into their mouths, swallowed the sharp vodka without batting an eyelash as if they were trying to wet the kidneys and liver, I really envied their ability to drink like that. My wife now sat with eyes shut wrapped in the black shawl, I wondered what she was thinking about. When we stood at my son's grave I also wondered sometimes what she was thinking about.
And then the two men started talking, the two women and I were silent, Renate sipped a small glass of sherry from time to time and the tall blue woman gave us cookies and tiny tasty pastries and later some cold beet borscht. The two men talked about the German's investigation of the Last Jew, the book he wanted to write, and I, the "great" scholar of the man, was silent. I tried to ponder the chain of events taking place before my eyes, I thought of the stormy winter day when I came back from my daily walk on Ben-Yehuda Street, not so long ago, it was raining hard, and I was soaked, trying with all my might to hold onto my hat so it wouldn't fly away and then I saw Ebenezer standing in the garden and watering. It was so surprising that I forgot it, a person watering a garden in a downpour, maybe that was the first time I saw him and I didn't yet notice him, and then the rumors about the Giladis, the stories about the real estate agent sniffing around in the street, I recalled how one day in a meeting at the Shimonis, I thought of the new garden and then Mrs. Shimoni said something about the science of widowhood and bereavement, she talked about a curriculum to be proposed to the Ministry of Education and to be taught according to her by widows and orphans. She said she had discussed that with a famous psychologist and the psychologist wrote a monograph about the Israeli theory of bereavement, how "the togetherness" of committees like ours dulls the pain and maybe people should be taught before the disaster happens to them to spare them the hard years we all went through until we found a way to live with the disaster…. I thought then about the garden, maybe even then I pondered the Last Jew, I thought she was talking about how (like her) you grow plants against solitude, how you buy dolls jumping out of cigarette boxes (or plastic vegetables), against pain, how you move out of your house and start talking about the deceased-as she put it-in the present tense! And then the poem written by Menahem was mentioned and it was said that poems and essays and letters should be filed long before death, children should be taught not to throw away things like poems, essays, photos their parents can use afterward, and I was terrified and shouted but they didn't pay attention to me and yet there was some relationship to me in those things since I was the person who found a poem by his son and they didn't know that the poem wasn't written by Menahem and how the sex kitten of our dead looked at us then and I thought how that dark plot was hatched to blend us, to bring here a Last Jew who would touch what was concealed in my yearnings, I thought about Friedrich, the Germans' son, did he die by electricity or gas, suddenly that was really important…