Free B002FB6BZK EBOK by Yoram Kaniuk Page B

and put it in the ashtray, waited until Noga gave her a box of
matches and lit a match, burned the paper along with the handful of hairs
and then Noga got up, kissed me on my forehead and said, I love you, old Henkin, caressed Hasha Masha, who shut her eyes, giving her face an expression of pleasure and regret, and left the house.

    I went outside, I looked at the brilliant sea, I found an old teacher looking at a wall he had painted with his own hands and he was ludicrous in his
own eyes, superfluous vis-a-vis the silence of Noga and Hasha Masha, I said
to myself, utter a song! Hasha Masha lived the moment and every moment
was final, a tumult that begins and ends. Menahem is a foundation, not a
display window ...
    My neighbor is smiling now, maybe he's also reading my mind, this moment is his! The water flows in the hose and I watch the stream of water,
blended in it, flowing with it and then I'm finished on my neighbor's contours of pain and my pain is suddenly opaque, as if a miracle happened to
it. But it doesn't let me flee from myself.
    Go, he said, go, Mr. Henkin, it's important for all of us.
    Who's all of us? I asked.
    He didn't answer. His stream was sharper than mine. His water was
more concentrated, and he enjoyed the sight of the water flowing from
him, absorbed in the hollows, mixing with the organic mulch, annihilating
the desolation the Giladis had left behind. There was an arrogant and malicious meekness in him, I thought, as if he were protecting himself, even
from me, as if he were connected to the deed he was doing and to a possible escape from himself, he was routed and protesting at the same time.
    All of us is a lot of people, he said, all of us is me, it's the woman who
lives with and is married to me ... here in the north, he said, the wind is
humid, rusts, in the south the air is dry and purer.
    In the south?
    He didn't hear my question. He said: I'm not used to the north, the air
makes me sick.... I was amazed at the use of the word "north" applied to
Tel Aviv. I didn't understand what south he meant, and then, to add perplexity to my perplexity, he said: Near Marar the smells of orange blossoms were
preserved in the clear thin air for a month after they finished blooming.
    Since I didn't know what to ask, I said, You were in the south? From
my words you could have thought I was talking about Sudan or Ethiopia.
I thought about Marar, it was an Arab village I used to pass by years ago on
my way south. The village was destroyed in the war my son fell in. I hadn't heard the name of the village since 'forty-eight. Boaz surely passed by
Marar on his way to the settlement where he was born and where he returned to see his grandmother. The village was destroyed and not a trace
remains of it except for a paratrooper memorial erected at the foot of it
years later. I didn't have time to think when he said: Yes, the sand sticks
to everything, the wind isn't harmonic, sometimes it is, sometimes it
isn't, degree of dryness against degree of humidity, here is not the south,
Mr. Henkin, and Boaz should have known that and protested, my neighbor's stream of water was now sparkling in the bright light of approaching dusk, and in the extracted sword blade flashed a bold rainbow full of
colorful impulsiveness. Who are you meeting tonight, Mr. Henkin, he
said more than asked.

    A writer, I said and added with a thoroughly inappropriate apology: I was
invited to a reception and haven't yet decided.
    An Israeli?
    No, I said, anger rising in me now: a Hebrew writer doesn't hold receptions. Too bad, said my neighbor with genuine grief that filled me with wrath
because naivete, ignorance, and stupidity sometimes infuriate me more than
simple belligerence. I don't know a lot, Mr. Henkin, said my neighbor, do
you know what it means to be a person who has no life history? A man without a history? Not knowing anything but what you don't have to know. I ask,
I don't mean to irritate. Now I really