Noga and I pretended. I needed her in some way that's hard for me to grasp. Menahem was dear to Noga, she was tormented by what was happening. Only later did she understand that he didn't get the letter ending their relations. Henkin was mourning too much, his committee, and we remained together, I and he with Menahem because he stopped consoling us. Noga has a noble firmness that Menahem was the first to discover. And effortlessly, completely naturally, she played Henkin's daughterin-law. She had one love to give that she exhausted on Menahem. Maybe only somebody who invented a new Menahem could have penetrated her armor, that secret I never understood. Only somebody who pretended he loved her before, saw her picture that Menahem had in the war (Boaz told her that story and she didn't believe it) and fell in love with her there, maybe even caused Menahem's death out of love, only he could have touched her so deeply.
For a while, Boaz thought he would be the last survivor of his regiment. Like his father he thought he'd be some Last Jew, and he went back to the settlement. Then he was idle. He thought, Who were my parents? He was searching for something, didn't know what. He had money, he didn't have to do anything. He wanted the days to pass and to pass with them, he met Henkin and got a borrowed father, he sold a borrowed son, he stole Noga. He pressed and she gave in. I told her: In my house you won't sleep with Boaz! I couldn't bear it, I was afraid of what Henkin would say and how he'd respond, now, he thought, Noga could be proud of Menahem. She stroked me with her gentle hands and said: You're right, Hasha.
And Henkin didn't see. A new son he discovered and nothing interested him. Only later on, two years later, when Boaz and Noga were living together and Boaz came to Henkin and told him: I faked the poem, why didn't you see the three fake k's, the land mines I buried for you, why didn't you notice? I saved him, he didn't save me! When he said that-and he said that because he thought Noga was beginning to love Menahem again because of the stories he created-only then did the tumult take place that I told you about, Henkin's decline, Noga's suicide attempt, and then Boaz turned into a vulture.
Even in all that he's not exactly guilty. At least with you, I have to be honest. We were living in hell. Noga got pregnant. She couldn't see Henkin, she had cheered him with long walks along the Yarkon River, she couldn't see that proud man ridiculous as he was in the days when he read his poem to every bereaved father and mother at the parties at the Shimonis. In some way that may not have been clear to her, she pushed Boaz to tell Henkin the truth. Indirectly she shattered Henkin's delusion. That was a second death of his son, Renate, and that was hard. Boaz then believed purely and simply that he did kill Menahem, the more she refused to believe, the more he believed, and when she talked about Menahem's beauty and his virtues, he yelled at her and hit her. When Noga found out what happened, she came to Henkin and told him: Boaz is lying, Menahem did write the poem, but Henkin whispered to her: Why didn't you tell me you were Boaz's girlfriend? We were close, why didn't you tell me? And he looked at her, he had known her for years, loved her, and said to her: Noga, you don't know how to lie! And she thought he would do something, came to me trembling, I told her, Look, little girl, he's a strong man, Henkin, an old-line Zionist, he was in the Labor Brigade, he experienced hard things, he'll recover, she talked to him some more and he couldn't answer and threw a chair at her. She was hit and went outside. Then she brought him flowers. Boaz came and said to her, What right do you have to talk to Henkin about me, why do you interfere in my life, you want Menahem back? He's not with me anymore either, and Henkin heard, Boaz went into his room, all night long they talked. She sat with me and we drank sweet vermouth. Two big drunks. In the morning Boaz came out and slapped her face. In the room Henkin sat with the poem, more broken than I'd ever seen him, and then Noga got up, and said to Boaz: You know what, you can go to hell, and she left. After she had gone, I sat, my head splitting from the drinking at night, Henkin got up and walked to the seashore and went into the sea with his shoes and clothes, and it was winter then. In the morning Boaz came back and Henkin woke up and asked with a weary face, anxiously: Where's Noga? He said: She died, Boaz, she died. I told him: Stop, the two of you suffered blood, and the two of us went out to look for Noga. Then I recalled the cave. In the world war, Menahem and his friends, especially Amihud Giladi, who lived in the house where Ebenezer now lives, would hide tea and rusks and stones there to be partisans and fight the Germans who were then in El Alamein, they wanted to build a fortress on the hills where the Hilton now stands. Noga knew the old cave, she called it "Menahem's cave." I told Boaz: She's surely in Menahem's cave. That was a mistake, he was offended and said, What do you mean, what cave, we've got our own places, what do you mean, Menahem's cave. I told him: At least she can be there, but he didn't want to believe it, wanted to go to other places, at night he looked in all the places and didn't find her and there was nothing left for him to do but go with me even though he didn't want to believe, I dragged him to the cave and he didn't even know where it was, and Noga was there, had swallowed pills, we dragged her to the corner of Jabotinsky, took a cab and went straight to Hadassah Hospital, they pumped her stomach, and she aborted Boaz's son, the grandson of the Last Jew!
We sat there, Noga and I, Boaz was miserable, more miserable than I had ever seen him and he told me that he didn't kill Menahem, but he should have killed him, and who did he tell? He told me that! And Noga said: I'll never give birth now, and then I wept too. And then Boaz's business developed and she helped him. She told me: He is what he is, and I love him. And she helped him, but everything began with Henkin, he went to his committee, years before, read them Menahem's poem. And then he brought the Defense Ministry into the picture, and Jordana the Yemenite who fell in love with Menahem, and that business that flourished.
Tape / -
A few words about words. A vulture is an artificial bird, with a broad wingspan, a twisted beak, the vulture is the hawk, the falcon, the bearded vulture. Vulture is a general name for all birds of prey and also the name of a specific bird, the precise identity of the vulture is not known, I, Ebenezer, what do I understand about vultures? In that winter, among corpses, didn't a man stand there named Hans Kritacal who is today a teacher in Hamburg? Five Ukrainians with axes beheaded thirty-two children, and he didn't stand and recite a poem?
What sadness is spread over everything here.
Tape / -
From the letter of Obadiah Henkin.
… And I don't know whether to be glad about your offer or to be sad. For a long time I've lived beyond gladness or sadness, so let us say that I accept your offer, or perhaps it was my offer? To cooperate in writing the book between two experienced writers, each on his own, something that may never see the light of day. In your last letter, along with Renate's beautiful letter, you write me that you wrote to Samuel Lipker (Sam Lipp) in America and about the answer you got. I think that answer is indeed important and I translated it into Hebrew.
You wanted to know what exactly I call "the external additions."
Among the books Ebenezer knew by heart (aside from those we've already talked about and catalogued), is also a treasure that can't be known exactly. In addition to the report of the Institute there is material (about a million words) whose sources are not known and yet are quoted from books. In other words, this isn't personal knowledge by this or that person, but knowledge taken from books (through people, of course) whose identity I can't verify. I shall list some of those books that may be most important to us: