Muck Page 11

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  AND SOMEONE SAW THEM TOGETHER several days after they met and said to her: The king’s brother, no less. Ha—good for you! And Noa, who didn’t have the faintest idea about Mattaniah’s family, of whom he never spoke, said: What nonsense! He doesn’t even have a brother, and certainly not a king. His mother’s Assyrian, anyway—haven’t you read his poems? Do you think the king’s brother would live in a rented apartment in Abu Tor? But she immediately called him up, and Mattaniah admitted his royal origins with some embarrassment. Filled with joy to realize that she really hadn’t known, he sheepishly explained his story and his tattoos. That’s the end of that, he thought to himself. After two, three days that had been pretty terrific, he’d finally met someone who hadn’t known a thing about him, who looked at him and accepted him and his poems for what they were, and didn’t make fun of the cuneiform on his pale skin but even got excited by it, who understood his body, his need to build up his muscles, not as some sort of scrappy belligerency, but as a form of cultural aspiration. Right away she saw what he had wanted to say, to cry out, all those years, but couldn’t manage to express, and so wrote it out on his skin and body instead, and she understood that he didn’t pump iron in order to beat anyone up but, rather, to make himself look like a picture, like a stone relief in a palace in Nineveh—in order to be, with his body itself, part of a world in which the presence of kings and gods and winged creatures is made palpable all around. We must grant ourselves at least the minimal right to be alive and active in such a world, because there’s no other world worthy of human habitation, and poetry isn’t possible in any other world, Mattaniah said to her and to others. Our world is a world that’s on its way out, on account of the changing times, on account of the fact that history has begun to replace mythology, and on account of the soldiers and politicians who have begun to replace the People of the Name and the heroes and the giants and the sons of God. What’s left now? The King of Assyria, the King of Babylon, the King of Egypt, buying and selling, giving and taking, subclauses in standard contracts; neither God nor an angel nor a prophet, only their pale replicas. Mattaniah didn’t want to be a copy, and didn’t want to be pale, either. And he told her: Take, for example, that Jeremiah—I noticed that you were sitting with him at the Bookworm. I’ve known him since we were ten. We weren’t close, but he was always like that—skinny, unkempt, stooped, bursting with thoughts and talk, rat-a-tat, palaver here, palaver there, self-intoxicated, exhilarated by his own thoughts, gazing at the moon at night and listening to the bugs singing to the moonlight, that sort of thing. I mean, I’m not putting it all down, I’m just saying, take a look at yourself, man. You’ve got a body; show it some respect. You’ve got a pair of eyes; they’re not only there to gaze up at the crescent moon. And you’ve got a phallus—a gift!—so, please, go ahead and use it properly, not just to piss out a little trickle now and then, and from a squatting position at that. If you want to live a full life, it’s not enough to read books, you have to clothe yourself in them, Mattaniah told Noa, even though he imagined she’d tell him that she was through with him, because of the hush-up on his part. After all, he’d have told her soon enough about his origins, and would also have explained why it had taken him so long to say anything.

  She didn’t dump him, however, but came to him at once in a taxi, and sat facing him and told him that she understood perfectly, that she, too, during her time in Moab, sought out the same sort of connection, and idol worshipping had been nothing less than the desire to touch the sacred, and not only verbally. She told him, Make use of Him. When he didn’t understand, she said, It’s a quote. He still didn’t get it, and then she explained it to him. She had a silver statue of Baal Peor in her motley shoulder bag, while in the closet where he stored his bodybuilding contraptions Mattaniah kept a pair of life-size statues of the god Ashur and his consort, Ishtar. It was possible to order surplus statues from some archive in Babylon, and this is what he did. Mattaniah told her, Ishtar is the queen of the heavens, and he left the god Ashur in the closet and took out Ishtar, and stood her up beside the bed, next to Noa’s statue of Baal, which she placed on a sheet of plain brown paper. Her idol was only ten centimeters high, and his goddess was practically as tall as a human being, but this didn’t bother them. They laughed and tumbled onto the bed and, under the protection of the two gods, they made love fervently. Afterward, she rolled them both cigarettes, which they lit up on the balcony, and they both petted the dog, and she told him they were a king and queen without a palace and without servants, a king and queen in strict confidence, without pomp and without honor or flattery. He went to his study, cut her a crown from ruled paper, and stapled it together, then returned to the balcony and crowned her. Tukulti whined quietly, and she called him our prince and placed the paper crown on the dog’s head. A few days later, she moved into Mattaniah’s place. Her hair, which had been shorn in Moab, began growing back, and her body, which had been awfully skinny from eating nothing but roots and beans, began to fill out a bit. In no time, it was brought to their attention that she was pregnant. Mattaniah and Tukulti would accompany her daily to her stall near the Potsherd Gate, and sometimes they would stand in the not-too-distant distance and gaze at her, in all her splendor, as she leaned over the counter and arranged cups and jugs on the bright embroidered tablecloth.

  At the end of workdays, they’d come and pick her up at the gate, and the three of them would walk home, circumventing the outlying neighborhoods. They’d tarry on their way, to get some food and even to feed the strays and alley cats. And one day she stopped in her tracks in the middle of the street next to the box containing the security system for a haberdashery on Jaffa Road. With the light rail noiselessly gliding by them, she told him, I remembered a dream. And they walked on in silence, and she said: You were onstage at a literary reading. There were all sorts of journalists and photographers—you must have written something good. And you sat there onstage in your red sweater, and, strange, you were without a single tattoo, but it was you, no doubt about it. And you spoke quietly and nicely, but you suddenly got stuck—you were missing a word and you couldn’t find it. And there was some sort of gadget, Noa said—pointing back to the shop’s alarm box—on which it was possible to type words. And I knew the word you were looking for, she said, but I can’t remember it now. So I started typing the word, and my fingers shook, and I got confused, and I typed the wrong letters, and the word wasn’t broadcast, and you were still there onstage, sitting like you wanted to hide from yourself. I’m sorry, she said, glancing at him, and Mattaniah told her how, back when he was a kid, two days after he’d gotten sick and thrown up in bed—in bed, he stressed, and not in the bathroom, which would of course have been better—his mother, Hamutal, told him: You’re someone else. You’re not Mattaniah. And he lifted his astonished eyes and asked, What, you didn’t give birth to me? And she told him, in a completely matter-of-fact tone, No. The next day, he went up to her and said, Mother, listen, I really am the same boy.

  * * *

  ONE DAY, AS THEY REACHED BEIT HAKEREM on one of their walks, Tukulti, contrary to his usual practice, jerked his leash toward a side street, and they followed him. They were deep in conversation, and Mattaniah didn’t notice that they were being led to the end of Broch’s yard, which the Muscle poets had named the Deathyard. Tukulti planted himself opposite the gate and wailed like a baby, but Mattaniah tugged at the leash and told him: No, no, on no account are we going in here, this is the Deathyard, do you want to be swallowed up in the Deathyard? There are open sinkholes here. Let’s scram. They had to drag him away. Mattaniah was certain that the critic was peering out at them through a curtain or some aperture, even though the house was as silent as a grave. Noa didn’t understand what the fuss was about, so Mattaniah said: He’s a literary critic, more or less senile. If he comes out, he won’t let us go for an hour or more; he could stand there for six hours easy and recount the entire history of his critical oeuvre, and what success he’s had in
Germany, and how in France thirty translators are working on his complete works, including the reviews he wrote in the children’s and youth papers when he was seven years old, and how the Swedes are bonkers over his book on Agnon, and how in Ecuador—of all places!—there’s already a school of thought that’s influenced by his book on Kafka, and how in the West there are already other schools influenced by the Ecuadorian school, and in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for example, any research on Kafka is indebted to his book, that is to say Broch’s book—Mattaniah had a hard time stopping—except that, in all innocence, they believe they’re merely continuing the Ecuadorian project. In the heat of his peroration, Mattaniah didn’t notice the door opening a crack, but Tukulti did and tensed up. Mattaniah saw a white foot sticking out of the crack, and he told Noa, Let’s get going, he’s coming out; we’ve got to get out of here. And they fled, whooping joyfully, even as the house shoe—like the snorting snout of a mole returning to its hole—retreated and vanished into the pitch-darkness of its lair.

  12

  THE FIRST SLAP HURTS THE MOST, the cop told him. The first slap is like a frightening trapdoor that opens onto a new world. Jeremiah, who’d never been slapped—neither by his parents nor by anyone else, maybe only by his sister once or twice—got smacked even before the interrogation began. The slap was dealt by the duty officer in the police station, for no particular reason, with much the same attitude as someone greeting his fellow man. After the slap, which was meant to soften him up, they took down his details, and his fingerprints, and they filed the article on the king’s palace with its incriminating note in the margins, while the cop who’d arrested Jeremiah completed his report in the proper form, the tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth and tickling his mustache. Jeremiah waited next to the vending machine, before which a policeman would stop every once in a while to slip in a coin and remove a can. He sat there with one hand shackled. The vending machine had a sort of handle crudely welded to its side, and he was handcuffed to the handle, which he now realized was the fixed spot where the apprehended were always made to wait, alongside the machine, and that the handle had been welded there specifically for handcuffing. His cheek stung. And the visions and voices from that same early morning came back to him, the pot and the almond tree and the angel, but it was three o’clock now, and all the revelations had vanished, or he at least didn’t feel their presence anymore, as though all at once they’d abandoned him. Instead of the thrilling sensation that had overwhelmed him at the onset of that day, after the vision of the bulging pot and of the almond, and even after the smashing of the jug, he felt empty and dispirited, although as yet he didn’t quite grasp the gravity of his situation. This morning God spoke to you, he’d reflect later on, and all it took was a cop’s palm to blot out all the glory of His speech. He tried to awaken the presence of the voice and God, so that He might appear and save him from the vending machine, or at a minimum imbue him with inner faith and endurance and peace, but nothing came, nothing at all, and the voices and the face of the angel that several hours earlier were alive and present within him turned into a mere memory, like the memory of a dream, alien and distant. He was filled with the humiliating thought that he’d been sent on his mission only to be abandoned as little more than prey for the police, and his cheek ached from the duty officer’s slap, which happened not to have been that hard but which nonetheless made it clear, to his dismay, that he’d been abandoned, at least for the moment, and even if—best-case scenario—this desertion was part of the plan, all that he had to hold on to were those same visions, and who knew whether they’d ever return, and who knew whether they weren’t just a dream or a psychotic attack, on whose foundations he’d now be forced to go on living, fighting a losing battle from the start against forces that were doubtlessly far more powerful than himself, though he still had no idea exactly who and what they were. And he hoped for another sign, for nothing more than another small sign, so he would have the strength to go on. But no sign of any sort appeared.

  A woman entered the police station, her head covered by a scarf on which was printed a map of the world. Jeremiah noticed that her glasses were broken and that she was barefoot and was holding an empty bottle. When she entered, she strode right up to Jeremiah and asked him, Do I file a complaint with you? And he asked, astonished, Complaint? And she explained, For rape. Jeremiah said, Oh, I’m sorry, but no. And he jangled his handcuff. I thought you were a plainclothes policeman, she said. Otherwise, why would you be sitting here at the entrance to the police station? He said, No, no, I’ve been arrested. She said, Why? And he replied, I wrote something. About the king. She said, Who’s king these days, anyway? And he muttered in a low voice, The real king is Pharaoh Neco, but on paper—the king is Jehoiakim. She said, I hope they release you soon, and he said, This rape, it … it happened a long time ago? And she said, Yes, quite a long time ago, as far back as yesterday evening. He didn’t understand why she seemed so offhanded about it—he would have expected her to be agitated, shouting—but all he said was: Why are you barefoot? It’s not a good idea. Maybe you want something to drink? In the meantime, a policewoman approached her and took her to the duty officer’s counter. The duty officer opened a new file and commenced to ask the complainant a couple of questions, and he asked to take her fingerprints, but she put her hands on her head and refused to continue. I’ll only talk to a policewoman, she said, and only inside; you want me to tell you everything out here in the corridor, the smallest details? And the policeman said, Before you go in, you’ve got to give me your particulars, okay? It’s routine. The complainant said, Particulars? What sort of particulars? The word r-a-p-e has all the particulars you need. Yes, the policeman said, but who, and what, and where, and how, and why, and from when to when, and how much, and wherefore, and at what angle…? The complainant looked around helplessly. Jeremiah, his wrist beginning to smart from the handcuff, called out to the cop who had slapped him: Can’t you see she’s all by herself here? She’s got no one to comfort her. Leave her alone—enough already. And the cop said, Another word from you and I’ll fix your other cheek, too. The woman turned to Jeremiah and said, I cried all night, and none of my friends called. They’ve all turned their backs on me; they’re all my enemies now, from the moment they heard about the rape. I ran, she said, turning to the vending machine that half concealed Jeremiah, I ran, but they caught up with me, they shoved me into some alley. There were two of them—not one, two. I was a good-looking woman once, and now they’ve stolen all my beauty, they’ve wrung out all my splendor and all my beauty. I want my life back, I want to go back in time. And the cop hummed a popular song that went Come back, come back to the orchard, but the woman didn’t look at him, and continued talking to the vending machine, as it were, on which was printed a gigantic picture of a chilled-to-the-bone bottle sweating in the heat. Suddenly she screamed, Everyone had a peek down there, everyone—they saw everything—near the theater. And Jeremiah was sickened, because he remembered his sister screaming that same way, suddenly going berserk. A Xerox technician approached to reload the copier with paper, and the woman made room for him to service the machine. I’ve gone to the dogs, she screamed, and no one cares. I’ve gone to the dogs, his sister had said, and maybe the complainant, too—I’ve gone to the dogs. There’s no pain like my pain, the complainant screamed. It’s not a toothache, it’s not a headache, it’s not menstrual pain, it’s not lower-back pain, it’s not a pain in the neck, it’s not a stomachache, it’s not labor pains, it’s not the pain of a burn, it’s not the pain of a hammer hitting your head. Her voice got louder from pain to pain, and Jeremiah wished he could completely disappear behind the vending machine; indeed, he tried to squeeze between the machine and the wall, which was coated in oil paint, and rest his head there. The woman shouted at the duty officer: You slap around your prisoners; I read about you in an investigative report, how you were acquitted on reasonable doubt. Go ahead and beat me up, too—my pain couldn’t get worse anyway—sma
ck me, smack me, you big hero, smack me one, it doesn’t hurt, my insides are already scorched, my bones are already scorched, my entire nervous system is scorched, so your slap won’t knock me down and won’t hurt me.

  Banished, banished, I’m banished forever. I’ve turned into an eternal pariah. I saw waterfalls of blood, waterfalls in Canada of red rushing down! Policemen and detainees and lawyers stared at the complainant as she bemoaned the bitterness of her fate; they didn’t say a word, just gaped at her as if they were looking at a strange flowerpot. In the end, she spun on her heel and left the police station at a run. The duty officer said: Bravo, time to break it up, finita la commedia. Tomorrow there’ll be a repeat performance. And he knew what he was talking about, since the complainant had been dropping in for several weeks now, every day, at about seven in the evening, to deliver a more or less similar monologue before leaving the station without filing a complaint, All things considered, it breaks the routine, and the entire harangue, which she changes a bit each time, isn’t ever longer than three minutes, after all, so why not. The Xerox technician opened the paper trays and loaded up five hundred fresh sheets of paper, but as he made to rise he couldn’t straighten himself up: his knee had locked when he bent down.