Early the next morning they went to the port. The valises stood at the jetty with the boats, Nehemiah said some harsh words to Joseph Abravanel, who was dressed in white, and paid a few cents less than what was demanded. He haggled and Rebecca had never seen Nehemiah haggle. Afterward-as agreed in advance-he put her on the boat, since he had to load the valises on another boat. Rebecca stood on the boat, she couldn't sit down. Something in her was still steeped in an incomprehensible dread. The ship tooted and she trembled. She wanted to weep, but she had no tears. She wanted to go back and couldn't now. The sailors raised their oars and pushed the boat. They jumped on a big wave and Rebecca saw Nehemiah standing and looking at her, but because of the strong light, his face was clearly seen despite the distance. And even though she was scared, she didn't yet know what she was scared of.
Banners and flags rose and fell on the masts. Rebecca thought for a moment about eight years of tears. Nehemiah stood on the shore, the rising tears on his face were incomprehensible in view of his erect and aristocratic stance. Something was ruined and she didn't know what. He looked so bold and tense that in a little while he would leap and rush to battle. Nehemiah vanished behind some shed, and right at that moment she grasped what was liable to happen and started yelling, but the roar of the sea swallowed her yells, she started hitting the passengers and they were alarmed and the sailors rowed her back to shore and she jumped off and ran in the shallow water and everybody looked at her and silence reigned and she came to the corner of the mosque just one minute after Nehemiah, with eyes wide open, but without seeing a thing, took out a gun, aimed it and shot his temple.
Very slowly Nehemiah collapsed onto the ground he had sworn never to leave. When Rebecca came to him he was still trying to touch the Land and his body was already dead. People gathered around Nehemiah. And Rebecca lay there with her mouth stuck to his, trying to make Nehemiah breathe, until they separated them and dragged her away from there and carried his body to one of the sheds. The ship tooted again and Rebecca looked one last time at the ship waving its flags, and very slowly she started walking toward the dead body of her husband. Clotted blood was stuck to his lips. The gun was still in his hand. The Turk wanted to write down something, but she told him: There's nothing for you to write, he's been buried here for nine years.
She touched his forehead and said: You shouldn't have done that to me, Nehemiah, and an awful anger, an anger steeped in love, rose in her and overcame her, and she gave into that anger and let it twist her face, and the Turk who saw her was forced to fall and then to run from there as if he had seen the sun coming out of a hole in his pants.
At the funeral, in Roots, she stood silent. Nobody dared approach her. Ebenezer, who stood not far from her, was also silent. She didn't shed a tear. They don't deserve that, she thought, but she also knew that there were no more tears inside her to weep even if they did deserve them. Ebenezer said the orphan's kaddish and Rebecca went back home, closed the windows and the doors and said: No mourning, nothing. Nobody will come in here.
On the last day of mourning, Ebenezer finished carving two heads of wood. He called them Father and Mother, one of the heads was Rebecca while the second was Joseph Rayna. And then Rebecca assaulted Ebenezer, broke his carvings, and started a successful farm.
My friend Goebbelheydrichhimmel.
Tape / -
About two weeks ago, I returned from a visit to Israel. Because of the heavy fog in northern Germany, we were forced to land in Copenhagen. A freezing rain was falling and it was impossible to see a thing. We took a cab and went to a small hotel near Herdospladsen. I called Inga, who by the way sends you warm regards. She came immediately and as usual didn't leave us alone. She fed us at a small, and I must say excellent, restaurant not far from the hotel. Then she informed us she was taking us to a party at the American ambassador's. When we got to the ambassador's house there were only a few guests left, including an Israeli, a native of Copenhagen, who fought in the war of independence in Israel, returned there in the fifties, lived there, worked as a journalist for an Israeli newspaper and for a Danish newspaper and was now the editor-in-chief of Politikan, his name is Pundak, a pleasant and wise man of principle who can formulate things in a way that isn't harsh, doesn't place perplexing full-stops, a cultured man in the old sense of the word, an excellent editor and a fascinating conversationalist. His wife Suzy is a woman with a profound bubbling in her, whose rare common sense, existential perplexity with a thin patina of a smile that's liable to be broken any minute spread over her face. There were also a few writers there who are familiar to you, too. Herbert Pundak saved me from an unnecessary conversation with an American colonel who thought that now that I returned from Israel we had a lot in common. He and I, thought the colonel, understand those Jews. I didn't want to quarrel as soon as I came, and the ambassador, who, by the way, is a German Jew, came to us, and looked too cordial for me to cause a diplomatic incident. I felt tired. The trip in the morning to Lod Airport, parting from the friends I had made there, the flight, the trip to the hotel, the dinner with Inga, and now the party, all that dropped some heaviness that I couldn't yet get away from for some reason. So we sat in a big pleasant room and sipped punch. I sat in a big comfortable fine leather armchair, across from me above a fireplace was a big black wall. I turned the chair around a bit, the color of the black wall turned blue a bit, and then, when I heard the editor of Politikan explaining something about Israeli foreign policy, and the ambassador trying to argue with him, I saw the face of the Fuhrer looking at me above the fireplace and I shuddered. Inga, who sat next to me, asked what happened, and I said: What's missing on that wall is the picture of Hitler! My knees buckled, I felt as if my blood ran out. I was sorry for what I had said, but I really did see the Fuhrer looking at me in that splendid room. The ambassador got up, stood over me, Renate sipped punch, he looked at the wall in silence, and said: Were you here then? When I said I had never been here in my life and didn't understand why I had said what I did, the ambassador came to sit down next to me, stroked my knee, chomped on a cigar and then lit it, and also lit the cigarette I took out of my coat pocket, and said: You're sure? I said: I'm sure. Funny, said the ambassador, this was the house of the governor Werner Best. A decent navy man, and his assistant Diekwitz, also a navy man, who informed the underground of the expected expulsion of the Jews, and afterward the house was transferred to the Americans, and here, on that wall, until forty-five, was a picture of the Fuhrer, and the armchair you're sitting in was there at that time, only with different upholstery, of course. Next to it is a trap door, the governor was sensitive to explosions and under this room, which is an addition to the original house, a big shelter was dug. He'd sit here, smoking, drinking wine, with the opening next to him leading to the shelter…
On the way back to the hotel I saw a crowd of Wehrmacht soldiers marching along those ancient and beautiful streets in the winter gloom. At the hotel, I drank more wine. Renate wept at night, wrote a postcard to a woman she had met in Israel, fortunately I love Renate too much to give my opinion on her foreignness. After thirty years of marriage she told me that night of all times about her youth in those days when you and I would shoot at low-flying planes, did you know, that when Renate heard that the Fuhrer committed suicide she wounded herself and had to be put in the hospital, and back then the hospitals were crammed to the gills, weren't they? The next day, the sky cleared up and we flew home.