The sailors carefully put her down into the boat. Then the coffin was brought down and placed next to her. Her swollen belly and her husband in the coffin awed the sailors and they were afraid to look straight into the beautiful face of the woman to whom the Russian officer offered a flower before she was taken down from the ship. She despised their fear of the evil eye but in her heart she appreciated their pretense of indifference. She always loved events devoid of value that were played with too much importance. Someday she would tell Boaz that in the end a state is a flag with a land.
The sailors rowed vigorously toward the port and when she came to the shore, a Turk in a green uniform with a red tarboosh was waiting there, and behind him stood a barefoot Arab lad holding a somewhat torn parasol over the head of his master. The Turk was holding a truncheon in his hand and tried to smile at her. He stood in a vacuum strictly preserved by both Turks and Arabs. Wherever he walked, he was surrounded by that reverential vacuum. Behind him, near the wall of the big mosque, sat Arabs smoking narghilas; not far from them stood skinny horses whinnying and stamping their feet. A gigantic pile of oranges was seen, and behind it, against the background of a small shop, two skinned oxen were hung on hooks. The blood poured down to the ground, but because of the blinding light she didn't see the blood. Her slippery jumping made the Turk under the parasol bend down a bit, and he leaned aside with ostentatious exaggeration. He said in Arabic: A beautiful woman for a dead Jew. The Arabs who couldn't come close to him laughed in the niche of the mosque and one of them laughed and started choking. The smoke of the narghilas flowed into them like snakes. The Turk, maybe he thought they were laughing at him, hit one of the Arabs with his truncheon. The Arab fell, his legs got wound up in each other, and his white tongue twisted out. Two coals sprayed on his dress and somebody crushed a sharp-smelling lemon and put out the sparks. The Arab tried to laugh in his fear but the Turk farted in his face and the Arab swallowed the moldy air, lifted the sole of his foot, showed it to the Turk who was no longer paying attention to him. And he shouted: I'm your sole! And through his lifted foot and the truncheon that very slowly returned from its blow, Rebecca's skirt was visible to the Arab. The Turk withdrew, made room for the beautiful lady, and two barefoot sailors carefully put down Nehemiah's coffin. The Turk said with philosophical restraint, in French: We're born and we die. And he stared at Ebenezer who was still in the sixth month of his gestation.
A Jew in a white suit, and only when he got close did she see how dirty its cuffs were, approached and called the two sailors. From the distance, Rebecca had seen him wiping the sweat from his forehead after he took off the straw hat, and his watery eyes trying to hint something to her. When he started playing with coins he took out of his coat pocket and bouncing them one by one, she caught the lust the coins evoked in the eyes of the sailors and so she could calm down.
The Jew with her concluded the negotiations and approached her. Once again he took off his hat and said: Don't worry, madam, a room is waiting for you, if it can be called that, in a hotel, and tomorrow, the funeral will be held. And Rebecca said: I'm not worried, sir. I'll stay a while and then I'll go to America. The Jew wiped his sweat again, took out a chain of amber beads, played with them a little, and muttered: I don't care where you go, madam, or when. Jews come and Jews go. For me it's the same money. Permission for your husband's coffin is just as expensive as the return ticket you're going to buy from me. He didn't wait for her answer. Then he laughed. His laugh lacked symmetry and so it sounded thoroughly superfluous to her.
Joseph's hands rested like cotton on her body and were wiped out with the passing of his laugh. Now when she felt his sweat, she felt a certain closeness to him, maybe because he wasn't part of the wild vista of Nehemiah's longings either. If you need something, he said, don't hesitate to call me. Mr. Aviyosef Abravanel, everybody knows me! Scion of the house of David. When a kingdom is restored to Israel, after these ragamuffins, my son won't have to stand here and greet ships in corners bearing impending disaster, and his eyes flashed now, his pain changed into bliss. He didn't notice her contemplation or the change in her treatment of him, he was looking at Jews lying near the enclosures, waiting to board the ship depressed and despairing of the land, looking at the Pioneers who just came and who looked too excited and hungry for love of the Land that has no love to give, and he said: They don't know the laws of the exhilarating corruption of these Turks… their savagery, you've got to know how to make that baksheesh look delicate and cunning. When my son is king of Israel, guards will stand here in scarlet and silver, with flashing swords in their hands and the birds will sing verses from the Song of Solomon in Hebrew. The Turk with the truncheon now approached Mr. Aviyosef Abravanel. Mr. Abravanel put the string of amber beads in his pocket, lowered his face a bit, stooped over, and yet-and she saw that clearly-precisely measured his rigidity and the power of his money against the truncheon in the hands of the authorities. The Turk's look was both covetous and wicked. Mr. Abravanel's stoop was measured and the obsequiousness was precise. She didn't imagine how much she would enjoy that, she also felt stabbings in her belly, the pain passed and of all the names that rose in her mind, the last of them was Ebenezer. But Ebenezer was the only name Nehemiah intended for his son. She felt no love for the fetus in her womb. The stabbing belonged to Rachel's belly. The son who was to fill water jars for beautiful women of Bethlehem and to plow the land of his forefathers was only a proper and undesirable pause for her, for the disgrace she had brought on herself with her love for Joseph Rayna and her marriage to Nehemiah, two things, and she knew that well, that shouldn't have happened. Many years later, when she'd sit at the screened window with the flyswatter in her hand, looking joylessly at the almond groves she had cultivated, at her good citrus groves and vineyards, and Ahbed, the grandson or great-grandson of Ahbed, would put the big old fan in front of her and try to turn it on even though the generator was broken, she'd think of Boaz who was both her grandson and her son and would say to herself: How come Boaz, Nehemiah's grandson, would be the spit and image of Joseph Rayna? And the dark plot in her blood would then be poured into the tune that never let go of her, the tune of her secret unknown even to herself.