The road to the house passed over a small wooden bridge. Years ago a small wadi flowed under the bridge, and even the ancient water had stopped flowing in it. Between geranium, jasmine, rose, and violet bushes the gentle chirping of rare birds was heard and in the small pool in the center of the yard crowned with thick evergreens, gray and white ducks floated, and one swan who looked arrogant and strange in the musty dank garden.
The Captain's friend was old, wrapped in a cloak that may once have been white. The man put on a pince-nez and his face looked like ancient parchment. For a long time, the two of them walked, hugging, among the bushes and whispered together in a language none of the guests understood. Then they stopped, the Captain put his hand in the old man's sash, hiccuped, thrust a paper-wrapped package into the sash, which the old man took in his hands, sniffed like tobacco, smiled, and then the two of them hugged with masculine savagery, the old man's face was so glowing and joyful that even Rebecca felt a slight stab of bliss in her belly. The old man came to Boaz, called an Arab boy wearing an abbiya, who had stood all the time in the shadow of the ancient marble pillar swathed in ivy that climbed up it to a locked window whose recess was more imagined than visible. The boy entered the house and came back with a tray and handed out cold juice and tasty ice cream. After they listened to the bird, which the Captain claimed was called a bird of "the real opposite," which repeated the same chirp one hundred fifty times an hour, without the slightest change, the old man, who was holding Boaz in his clasped hands, said: I've got a document that will suit him, Mrs. Schneerson, and he hugged Boaz's shoulders and Boaz smelled a smell he later knew was the smell of death. Rebecca wanted to say something, Mr. Klomin straightened up and his face turned gray, but the Captain put a nervous but agile finger on her lips and whispered, so Mr. Klomin would also hear: Everything's fine, there's no baptism, let me take care of things, money and God are my business… The old man disappeared into the house. Boaz and the Arab boy threw stones at the swan, and as Rebecca was trying to assess the brigades of Klomin's Hebrew army against the odor left by the moldy old man, a peacock sallied forth from the bushes. The peacock proudly bore a gigantic colorful tail and it looked to her as if it were desired by the sun and the trees, indulged and arrogant, and the birds stopped chirping and then she thought about Joseph and about Boaz and her insides cramped as if she were giving birth to Boaz, and then the old man came back, hopped on his feet that touched and didn't touch the pebbles of the stream scattered on the paths, held out a parchment scroll to Rebecca, grabbed Boaz, who approached him with the Arab boy standing on the side and smiling with teeth that were almost black, and then he turned to the Captain and said: I do this because of our Lord the Messiah and because of the great patriots who fought in the bold battles of our homeland, and to Rebecca he said: Dante Alighieri Boaz Schneerson of the house of Tefanus, in the name of an ancient hero, Ella the Tyrean, who delivered his mother from the claws of a cruel potentate and granted her his eternal youth and his delicate manhood and appreciated her as a slave of the church and an angel of the hosts of the Lord, Dante Alighieri Benedictus Boaz Schneerson, hallowed by being your legal son and the fruit of your loins. And you Rebecca Schneerson confess here and now before me and before the living God that there was never any doubt in your heart that this child is your son, your flesh and blood! And this lad will be your son from now on forever. Amen. Rebecca, who had never been eager to say words of prayer in the Promised Land, said "amen" in a soft voice, and the man said, If there is anyone here who wants to protest or who does not agree let him now raise his voice or forever hold his peace… And then Mr. Klomin yelled, all flushed and fervent: I, I object, and the old man smiled at him, tried with all his might to hear Klomin's yell, and said: If so, I see there are no objections? And Mr. Klomin now shoved the Captain closer to the old man and yelled into his ear: I, I'm his grandfather! And the old man delayed a moment, a moderate atrophied smile caught at the corner of his mouth, and said: Since there are no objections, I hereby declare Boaz Dante Alighieri Benedictus the legal son of Rebecca Schneerson. May it be His will.
Rebecca looked at the old man. His serenity in contrast to Mr. Klomin's yelling became foggy and then his eye was covered with a cold metallic glint. Klomin tried to yell, but he too fell mute at the sight. The two Arabs from Marar bristled where they stood. The old man sank into the ground until he was no longer seen. Later on Mr. Klomin (who then filled his mouth with water) would say: The ground was loose because under the building there was certainly an ancient excavation and he sank into it, maybe it was a graveyard from the period of the kings of Judah, Mr. Klomin would add, during the summer they lived in the coastal plain, maybe it was a center of magnetic heaviness, and Rebecca's hungry look turned to a spear point of the yearnings of two thousand years united in her and she didn't know and sold her grandson to the bosom of foreigners and her ancient blood was then roused to avenge her and foreigners who plot evil against us and the magnetic center turned into an archaeological incident because of the forgotten grave of a Hebrew king. Rebecca laughed, and said: He seeks kings everywhere, simple Jews also lived in this land, Klomin, kings lived in palaces. And Mr. Klomin, sunk in glowing contemplation of the future of the new-old Israeli kingdom, said in embarrassment and longing for the great moments that had all apparently been before he was born and he had already despaired of finding them in his life, that if a person understood the great moment in which he lived, he could experience things beyond time and place.
Rebecca didn't want to hear about the graves of ancient kings. She saw a gentile sinking into the ground. The Arabs were willing to swear to it with a thumbprint. She still remembered Nehemiah's war against the prophets. In her heart she laughed at the poor men who always fight wars that were decided long ago. Boaz remembered the peacock and the old man who disappeared into the ground. Never did he accept his adoption by Rebecca as more than a sufficient reason to torment her or love her as the only person he knew whose loyalty to him he never doubted. She was mine, my mother and my father betrayed me, he said to Noga.
The next day, Boaz had to stand before a big crowd at the community center and tell how the old gentile sank into the yard and disappeared. Some of the founders who limped to the community center shook their heads. Rebecca didn't come. Horowitz's daughter shouted: She always was a witch and always will be… Nehemiah knew that and so he died, she taught Aryeh to play the piano.
Tongues began wagging freely and used what Boaz told. There was no television back then, Noga, Boaz will say later on, and there was still fantasy in the air. She killed the mare of the baron's official, yelled an old woman whose false teeth fell out of her mouth from enthusiasm and her son had to search for them among the feet of the old people that smelled of powder against prickly heat and cow dung. She killed Nehemiah and Dana, she hates us, she lives in the settlement and closes herself up. Germans played for her on the piano during the war when they burned cowsheds of All's Well and Meshulam, her Captain is a spy for the Armenians and Americans and he's a Greek like we're Turks. She injects milk hormones into her cows so they'll win the contests. Her chickens are bewitched and lay eggs nonstop and don't even have time to eat. When the bull sees her he immediately mounts all the cows in the barn. Boaz burst out laughing and the others also felt they were talking nonsense and laughed, in fact nobody was really afraid anymore. Even the exact description of the old man sinking into the dirt wasn't very scary, Rebecca no longer aroused in them more than an enormous need to describe their life as a certain miracle in which she was the leaven. They remembered the Wondrous One and Nehemiah as if they were her lovers. Lately, they were filled with yearnings for Ebenezer. After all, Ebenezer was the first son of the settlement who had changed in their eyes into a mysterious and miraculous tale. As they looked at the birds he left behind they began to be filled with forgiveness for the child they were never able to understand. They didn't forget how he walked in the rainswept street with Dana's body in his arms. His image grew to dimensions it had never had before, and as his death grew more certain, his qualities became more refined. A wood carver turned into a wondrous sculptor. And then it was also decided unanimously to call the community center built by Nehemiah in the name of his dead son and they put a wooden plaque up at the entrance and carved on it: Community Center in Memory of Ebenezer Schneerson Who Knew Wood in Its Distress.