Muck Read online

  5

  THE OLIVE TREES OUTSIDE seemed to be growing at full speed. All of a sudden, a branch would put out a leaf; within minutes, a fruit would ripen as a bird flew by above and was followed by more birds, who streaked through the skies like the tip of a brush dipped in black ink, inscribing something with the clouds as background, but moving too fast for us to discern the shape of the letters. Jeremiah shaded his eyes with the palm of his hand, and the birds’ shadow slipped between his fingers. He couldn’t remember whether the light rail stopped next to the Potsherd Gate, because he didn’t remember whether there was a gate with such a name in the first place; he wasn’t in the habit of visiting the Old City that often, and he worried about boarding the train for fear of encountering once more the wrath of that prophet.

  Guinea pigs and other small creatures scurried between the trunks of the olive trees. Jeremiah bent forward to pet them. He discovered to his surprise some breadcrumbs in his pocket, which he fed to the sparrows bunched together on a branch. A triplet of crows flocked down, and he fished out of his shirt pocket a fistful of sunflower seeds for them too. Directing his voice to the small animals and the birds, Jeremiah said: Do not be afraid of the King of Babylon, of whom you are afraid. Be not afraid, says the Lord, for I am with you to save you and to deliver you from his hand, and I will grant you mercy, that he may have mercy on you. The crows nodded. The guinea pigs diligently licked their fur.

  He turned away from the olive grove and set out for Queen Helena Street, leaving behind him a trail of crumbs. Over there, where the public-broadcasting buildings once stood, in a lane where the radio security guards used to like to kill time and the broadcasters and technicians would stroll by, nodding their heads, a little falafel stand was established after the earthquake: Queen Falafel. Whenever the blind vendor heard a new customer passing by, he’d turn to him and say, in a questioning, semi-querulous tone, even before offering him, as was his custom, a single free falafel ball: You’re standing here on Helena the Queen, but you don’t know the first thing about Queen Helena. And nobody knew. Nobody. And even if someone knew, the person would say, You’re right, I have no idea. That was the ritual over there. Some would ask, Isn’t she Miriam the Hasmonean? Others said, just for the hell of it, She was Herod’s wife, no? And the vendor would serve up the sample falafel ball and nod sadly at his customer’s general ignorance. Jeremiah entered and asked for a falafel. Hunger yawned within him like a small pain. He hadn’t touched a thing at his mother’s; his parents were in the habit of taking hours to prepare their salads, and he couldn’t wait any longer. The vendor asked, And Queen Helena? And Jeremiah answered: Queen of Adiabene—that’s in northern Assyria. She converted to Judaism with her son King Monobaz. Distributed figs to the poor of Jerusalem when she arrived on a pilgrimage. Her coffin— But the vendor cut him off and said: Enough, shut up, Jeremiah, have a falafel ball, it’s piping hot. For a minute I didn’t recognize your voice. If I wanted to hear a lecture, I’d go to the university. Boring us to death with Queen Helena—everybody here knows the story. And Jeremiah laughed, and pulled a hundred-shekel bill out of his still-moist sock. The vendor ran the bill between his thumb and fingers and said: One hundred shekels for a falafel—what have we come to? The end of days. Have a drink, too, and take another half portion. I don’t have any change. Jeremiah said, Keep the change, and the vendor said, No, no way. And someone dressed in white priestly garments pushed his way through the line and said, Hurry up and give us half a portion for a hungry priest on his way to serve the Holy. And the vendor answered him, as he would always answer: We don’t have half portions. With us, a portion is two pitas, and half a portion is one whole pita. What should I put in your half portion? And the priest said, Everything. But the vendor wanted to make things difficult. Define everything, he said. Heap on the cabbage, the priest said, and also— But this cabbage, the vendor said, this cabbage. Did you ever think about cabbage? Anybody ever give it some thought? How a leaf covers a leaf covers a leaf covers a leaf? One wing concealing another, and all in the shape of a ball. Did you ever wonder, as a priest, why we use the same word in Hebrew for both cherubim and cabbage? And one of the soldiers said, Cabbage? Number one reason for soldiers’ farting in the barracks. The vendor said: That’s real funny. What causes farting is your lousy digestive system, not the cabbage. Why don’t you check out your stomach, your bowels, your spleen? I can see with my blind eyes that you have an inflammation down there, a fire. You eat dead animals, and then you blame some innocent cabbage. Stop stuffing dead animals into your intestines; eat falafel with a salad every day, believe me. Sabich without an egg. Spinach burekas. Lentil soup with lemon and cumin in winter. Beans with rice and roasted pine nuts. There’s plenty to eat in the world, plenty—there’s no need to keep slaughtering. I’m also talking to you, holy priest-o. You want to tell me you all still really believe God digs the smoke of grilled meat? Haven’t we made just a teeny bit of progress? The priest kept silent, and the soldier picked at something spicy. And Jeremiah thought of his sister, and her intestines bloated with bad blood, and felt nauseated. Oh that my head were waters—and he bit into the pita—and my eyes a fountain of tears—he bit into the falafel balls—that I might weep day and night—he clutched the spicy falafel—for the slain of the daughter of my people.

  The soldier told the blind vendor’s hired hand, I’ll take two orders, one with white cabbage, the other red. He stepped out of the booth cautiously, his hands loaded with cabbages. I don’t get it, the vendor said, the cabbages are either green or purple, so why does everybody say white cabbage and red cabbage? You say, Lay on some white cabbage, lay on red cabbage, and I’m telling you, even with no eyes to see with, it drives me crazy. You asked for white cabbage? There’s no white cabbage in the world. You asked for red cabbage? I don’t have any. People ask for what doesn’t exist; this is what I’ve learned from cabbages. His employee was all the while hacking at cabbages of both colors for the portions for the priest, who kept pointing with his finger at what and what not to fill his pitas with. The soldier asked: What’s that music? I’ve never heard classical music in a falafel stand. The blind man said: It’s coming from the rear; I worked in the record library before the earthquake. You know that the public-broadcasting radio building used to stand here before the earthquake. I was in the record library when the earthquake struck. Jeremiah already knew the rest of the story; he’d heard it told many times. Old records fell and cut the falafel man’s eyes and blinded him, and the public-broadcasting people offered him the corner stand as part of his compensation. No one really believed that he’d manage to prepare falafels without being able to see, but he stuck to it; his grandfather had sold falafels in the Old City, and after the earthquake and the accident, he suddenly got it into his head that he needed to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps—his grandfather who’d been expelled from the Old City during the last war—and not only in order to savor the taste of those falafel balls every day. For years, he’d tried to re-create the taste of the old man’s falafel and salad and failed. He’d change the mix every couple of days, and was the first to taste and make adjustments, but would always say, Tasty, but Grandpa’s it isn’t.

  A black cabbage dropped and rolled away, and Jeremiah bent over to pick it up. And, thanks to one of those flashes of insight in which we see the disaster that’s about to befall us a split second before it actually arrives, a yelp burst out of Jeremiah a moment before he managed to strain his back. He froze, his hand stretched out toward the loping cabbage, which was gaining momentum down the steep lane; he was scarcely breathing, his face contorted partly in pain and partly in astonishment that he’d done it to himself once again: It’s happening to you once more, you’ve gone and pulled a muscle in your back, and now you know all too well that you’ll be out of commission for several days. Meanwhile, the cabbage kept on rolling down Helena the Queen and burst against a boulder. A jackal trotted out from between the ruins of the public-broadcasting buildings and looked
at Jeremiah for a moment. He wasn’t going to eat his pita, even though the blind vendor held it out to him, waiting with boundless patience for him to take it; Jeremiah said, I’m sorry, I can’t eat, I’ve thrown my back out, I’ve got to lie down right away.

  With stifled moans, he dragged himself into the ruined radio-broadcasting compound and slowly lay down in the shade of one of the walls. Broken records and compact discs were scattered everywhere. He tried to move his legs to the right and left, using some of the Feldenkrais exercises his mother had taught him in order to relieve the pain. Ponderous piano music could be heard from within the ruined building where the record library had been housed; then again, maybe the music came from the falafel stand. He saw crates of tomatoes and pickled cabbage and gallons of cooking oil. Lying down alleviated the pain, but Jeremiah knew that as soon as he tried to get up it would return. He again forgot all about the Potsherd Gate, forgot all about the jug. He didn’t remember that he was forgetting.

  From a certain distance, inside the record library, he heard someone talking, apparently into his phone. But I don’t know what to do, I’m telling you, the voice said. I’ve been driving that scooter you sold me—yeah, you, don’t play dumb with me—for how long now? And I keep hearing a sort of whistling coming from the front variator, or more like the sound of a plane taking off, so I decided today to find out what’s going on, yeah? So I opened the belt cover. And I took out the front variator. I looked and looked. And I noticed the crankshaft rod that connects to the variator, yeah? At the end of the rod there are supposed to be these sorts of teeth that engage the cogwheel in the kick? So what do I see? The teeth are completely eaten away! That’s something, isn’t it? That ever happened to you? I’m not blaming you, why are you shouting at me right off the bat? I have no idea why and how! I’m a wreck, I’m telling you! How’d the teeth get eaten away? Then it hit me—hey, I’ve got a crankshaft from my late brother’s scooter, which is just sitting around waiting to be taken apart! Question is, how do I change the crankshaft? How do I remove the magnet from between the coils? The voice at the other end of the line answered what he answered, and the man said: So you’re saying change the crank and it’ll all be okay? Remove the magnet with a gear puller? But where can I get a gear puller—what am I, a mechanic? A good gear puller costs some five or six hundred shekels, if not more! What, Boris has a gear puller? So talk to Boris. Why should I have to lose business? This envelope’s special delivery, okay? Right, right, for the palace for sure, I go up and down there fifty times a day—I’ll bet that’s how the teeth wore down. So talk to Boris—what? No, where am I? I’m at the falafel place by the radio, they give me a free order every day, the suck-ups.

  Jeremiah shut his eyes, and the owner of the scooter apparently started to eat, since the voice went silent. Jeremiah dozed off, and when he opened his eyes the angel was there, sitting on a stack of dusty old records, and he wore on his head a black motorcycle helmet with flame stickers. Jeremiah recognized the angel’s eyes behind the slit. And he was afraid, because once again he remembered, and realized he’d been putting off the purchase of that jug at the Potsherd Gate for too long. He told the angel defensively, I was hungry, I stopped for a minute for a falafel, and then my back went out. The angel said, Don’t move, stay here for a while, and he removed his helmet, and Jeremiah was so taken aback on seeing his face—for it was a completely different angel now—that he jumped, despite being flat on his back. And a stone dug into his lower back, and he gasped, unable to take a full breath. The angel said: Good, relax, it’s sprained; there’s pressure on the nerve. It’s the domino effect. It hurts—you’ve got to rest. Forget the jug; there’s no hurry about the jug. What you need is a hot-water bottle, not a jug to smash. You’ll buy the jug, but not now. For now just lie down, there’s plenty of time. Jeremiah moaned in pain. In the midst of the pain caused by his wretched back, he also realized he had no way of getting out of this place; he had foolishly wandered into the deserted ruins of the public-broadcasting buildings, and no one was going to pass by for who knew how long, and who in the falafel stand would hear him even if he hollered? It was pretty far away, and there was a constant racket over there anyhow. He tried to relax and breathe, enveloped by the nauseating smell of frying; again he moved his knees to the right and left while turning his head in the opposite direction. He’d left his shoulder bag at the falafel stand. If only he could manage to reach it and then pop a tablet of Arcoxia, which he always kept in his bag, maybe he’d manage to crawl home in a couple of hours. You yourself are now a broken jug, the new angel told him. Should the smashed jug envy the new jug? Jeremiah asked: Can you save me from this? The pain’s killing me. I’d get right up and head off to buy the necessary item. The angel said, You’re not listening to me, you’re not listening, you’re only making it more difficult for me, I’m saying the exact opposite, I’m saying jug, jug—forget about the jug, okay? Jeremiah said, But before— And the angel-helmet said, There’s no before. Before—before’s dead. But suddenly the angel with the helmet vanished, and the bedside angel appeared, and a 120-milligram tablet of Arcoxia was resting on Jeremiah’s tongue, and he swallowed it with cold water that seemed to gush into his mouth, and the bedside angel went up to him and placed the motorcycle helmet on Jeremiah’s head, and in doing so brushed his shoulder blades with two fingers. He stuck the helmet on backward, with the visor at the back of his head, and Jeremiah opened his eyes inside the helmet.

  * * *

  HE HOVERED AT LOW ALTITUDE over the streets of Las Vegas at night. In the limousine cruising down the main street below him, he noticed a number of senior politicians. Minister of Finance Baalzakar was there, Minister of Defense Baalgezer, temporary Deputy Prime Minister Achmelech, King Jehoiakim, and other factotums, workers, eunuchs, and concubines. He was familiar with some of them; they’d studied with him in high school and had made their way up. The car was so big he reckoned it possible that the entire royal retinue and government staff was present, and that a ministerial meeting was taking place in the limo. And it came back to him that, indeed, as much had been reported: they’d all flown together to Las Vegas in order to relieve some of the tension in managing the last small war, or the one to come, or both—but what’s the world come to when an Israeli minister of finance needs permission from the attorney general just to try his hand at blackjack?! The minister was quoted as saying: I lose everything anyway, I won’t pocket a dime; my Swiss bank accounts are all empty, and inevitably the casino will guzzle everything up. I’m sucked dry in the casino, he roared, and then the media arrive and suck away what’s left! And everyone was reassured with a sparkling smile that they wouldn’t gamble away public funds, but everyone knew that the money they brought with them in black attaché cases was earnings from lectures—which is to say, bribe money allegedly earned fair and square and in accordance with the law. They’ve all suddenly become senior lecturers, brilliant rhetoricians. One mute minister received two hundred thousand dollars for a lecture he delivered in sign language, except that he spoke in Egyptian sign language, and his Assyrian auditors thought he was kidding them and didn’t understand a thing. One lecturer raked in millions for a forty-minute talk whose title was “My Opinions on Life.” The temporary deputy prime minister stuck his head out the window and then pulled it back inside and told someone—perhaps the king himself, who was sitting in front, next to the driver—Look, there’s Jeremiah the prophet, a gray crow flying over us. It chased after us all the way here. This greatly amused them all. One of the ministers dug a square chip out of his suit pocket and flicked it with his fat fingers at Jeremiah, as if he were tossing away a cigarette butt. Jeremiah swerved, but the token struck his face and hurt like a poisoned needle. Caw-caw, the deputy minister screamed, and the eunuchs laughed. The big car picked up speed, and Jeremiah flew after it until it disappeared into a huge underground parking lot belonging to one of the hotels. He could still see the face of Aaronson, the deputy minister of construction and housing, in the
rear window, pressed against the glass, as though someone had shoved him there.

  Jeremiah wrested out the black chip that lodged in his cheek like a razor. It was a one-dollar chip. He buried it in his pocket. Blood trickled from his cheek. There was an ice-cold water faucet in the street, but in order to get a drink you had to gamble for it. Engraved on the faucet were the verses Oh, they thirsted for water / like gamblers in the heart of the desert. Next to the faucet’s water tank was a small slot machine. The crow alighted on the faucet, inserted the chip, and rinsed his face, leaning his wounded cheek on his shoulder. Similar slot machines were everywhere you looked: beside street benches, at the bases of streetlamps, next to garbage bins, against tree trunks. The people who passed on the street spoke only of money: Yesterday—are you listening to me?—I said, I’m going to Vegas with a penny, and I stuck my penny in a machine, it was all I had in my pocket, and I ended up losing it, ha. And his friend said: I like to put up a minimum of one grand; I don’t feel comfortable playing with anything less … The casino respects me, gives me free drinks, flies me in, so I respect it back, right? I decided, let’s start with one grand, and then I heard myself say, five thousand. There was a bank across the street; its façade shone and flickered with thousands of colorful lights. Next to it was the Luxor Hotel, with its sphinx crouching there in the dreadful heat of the Egyptian desert of Nevada. This wasn’t, of course, the original Vegas, but a replica built by the Egyptians. The Eiffel Tower soared not far away, and a couple of pharaoh types ascended to the top in an elevator, to gaze down at the city in the gloom that spread beyond the last lit home into the depths of the desert and the night.