His wrist, coloured like his neck, came out of his thin white arm, presented itself as the wrist of a boy. Forget the years, said the wrist. This is how I used to lie on the coverlet when someone else was the man and I was the boy. I had nothing in my hand then, I have nothing in my hand now.
The doctor sat in a chair by the bed. He wore a dark suit, open sandals over dark socks, looked at his watch, looked at the father’s face.
‘The hospital’s twenty miles away,’ said the farmer to Boaz-Jachin. ‘The ambulance was out, couldn’t get here for hours. The doctor came, did what he could right here, said not to move him now.’
The farmer looked at the doctor, pointed to Boaz-Jachin’s guitar.
The doctor looked at the father’s face, nodded.
The mother came in with coffee, fruit and cheese, while Boaz-Jachin tuned his guitar. She poured coffee for the doctor, for her son and Boaz-Jachin, then sat in a straight-backed chair, her hands in her lap.
Boaz-Jachin played and sang The Welclass="underline"
By the well in the square
See her waiting daily there …
The sound of the guitar, round and expanding, moved out from him to the standing-up walls, came back into the centre of the room, said to the walls, Not you. Beyond you.
The father’s breath whistled in and out unevenly the same as before. When Boaz-Jachin sang the refrain the mother walked to the window and stood before her reflection on the night:
Dark is the water, deep is the well,
Who will give tomorrow’s kisses none can tell.
Boaz-Jachin sang The Orange Grove:
Where the morning sees the shadows
Of the orange grove, there was nothing twenty years ago.
Where the dry wind sowed the desert
We brought water, planted seedlings, now the oranges grow.
‘Did you bring in the tractor?’ said the mother to the son.
‘It’s in the shed,’ he said. ‘His eyes are open.’
The father’s eyes, large and black, looked straight up at the ceiling. His left hand was moving on the bedside table.
The son stood over his father’s moving hand, watched the finger spelling on the dark wood of the night table.
‘F-O-R …’ he read. The finger kept moving. ‘“Forgive,”’ said the son.
‘Always the humorist,’ said the mother.
‘Benjamin he forgives,’ said the son. ‘Always.’
‘Maybe he meant you,’ said the doctor.
‘Maybe he’s asking,’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘For himself.’
Everyone turned to look at him while the father died. When they looked back at the father there was no sound of breathing, the eyes were closed, the hand on the table was still.
Boaz-Jachin spent the night in the room that had been Benjamin’s. In the morning the mother made the funeral arrangements and the son drove Boaz-Jachin to the port.
They travelled all day, stopping halfway for lunch in a café. The son had shaved and was wearing a suit and a sports shirt. It was evening when they came to the port. The sky showed that they were at the sea.
They went down steep cobbled streets towards the water, came to the open cobbled quayside of the harbour, and cafés with red and yellow light-bulbs strung outside. Lights of ships and boats tied up at piers and lights of quayside buildings were reflected in the water.
The farmer took folded money from his pocket.
‘No, please,’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘There shouldn’t be money between us. You gave me something, I gave you something.’
They shook hands, the van pulled away, climbed the cobbled streets back to the road away from the port.
Later, when Boaz-Jachin marked his map, he found that he had only the name Benjamin to give to that family.
17
Jachin-Boaz had fainted again when he got to the flat. Gretel called an ambulance, and he was carried to it on a stretcher.
At the hospital admitting office Jachin-Boaz said that he had fallen against a spiked fence while drunk. He told the same thing to the nurse who cleaned his wounds when she questioned him. When the doctor came to sew up the worst cuts he too asked how Jachin-Boaz had got them.
‘Spiked fence,’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘It seems to have lashed out at you with tremendous speed and force. Dragged its spikes right down your arm too. One wants to be careful about provoking fences like that.’
‘Yes,’ said Jachin-Boaz. He was afraid that he would be locked up as a lunatic if the truth were found out.
‘It didn’t happen to be a spiked fence near the tiger cages at the zoo, did it?’ said the doctor.
‘I didn’t see any tiger cages when it happened,’ said Jachin-Boaz. For all he knew there could be heavy fines involved, revocation of his work permit, even his passport. But certainly no one could prove that he had been interfering with the tigers.
‘I suppose in your country they have a certain number of strange cults, strange rites,’ said the doctor.
‘I am an atheist,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘I have no rites.’
While the doctor stitched up Jachin-Boaz’s wounds an orderly called the zoo to enquire whether there had been any disturbances having to do with tigers, leopards, or other large felines. The zoo had nothing to report.
‘I shouldn’t be surprised if he was wearing an amulet of some kind,’ said the doctor after Jachin-Boaz had gone, ‘but I didn’t think to look. They come into this country and they take advantage of the National Health Service, but they cling to the old ways among their own.’
The orderly said to his wife that evening at dinner, ‘There are things going on at the zoo that the ordinary citizen knows nothing of.’
‘Among the animals?’ said his wife.
‘Animals and people — how much difference is there if it comes to that?’ said the orderly. ‘Cults, sex orgies, the lot. Our immigration policy wants a good overhauling, and that’s the long and short of it. Our way of life can’t stand up to this foreign influx indefinitely.’
‘But foreign animals, you know,’ said his wife. ‘What’s a zoo without them? Think how the children would miss them.’
Gretel and Jachin-Boaz both stayed home from work that day. Jachin-Boaz rested in bed, his arm wrapped in white bandages. Gretel looked after him with soup, peppermint tea, brandy, custards, strudel. She cooked and baked all day, thumping and banging in the kitchen and singing in her own language.
When Jachin-Boaz had come home all bloody that morning he had fainted without an explanation, and in the ambulance had begged to be excused from going into the matter just then. Gretel had become aware of his early morning departures from the flat, but she had said nothing. If he needed to go out at quarter to five every morning she would not question it. She had been terrified by his bloody return this morning, had listened, unquestioning, to his spiked-fence story at the hospital, and continued to ask no questions. Her no-question-asking stalked through the flat like a tall silent creature that stared at Jachin-Boaz all day.
For most of the day Jachin-Boaz could do nothing but concentrate all his energies on holding himself together. The snaky black and brilliant panic that had surged up in him when he had closed his eyes in the presence of the lion had torn away the sodden rotting cover from a well of terror in him, and into that well his mind dropped like an echoing stone.
He cowered under the covers, hugging himself and shivering with a chill that soup and brandy and peppermint tea could not take away. When he look around the room his eyes could not take in sufficient light. The day, however it varied from sunny to grey, had less than normal light in it. The twilight was appalling. The lamps when lit seemed feeble, unavailing. His terror stood up strong in him while he lay down. What brought him back to here-and-now was worrying about more beafsteak for the lion.