Visiting Poets at Charlotte's Web
ELISHA PORAT CONTINUED:
The Andalusian Ideal of Beauty
One: here is a palm tree, green, tall,
a provider of shade. Two: here is a lemon tree,
sweet smelling, wild, heavy with white flowers.
Three: and here we have the red rose. Which is the blood
that nests in the garden, above the flowing creek.
On its thorns even the hardest hearts
are caught and sliced in two, the better to nourish
the twin soils: which are the warm golden
soft silk that rests above a silvery
hillside. Dark and damp, a leafy threesome.
Here is a final sum: in which is included an erect
palm, the lemony scent pouring like juice,
and the thick thorny blood of the rose running
into the culvert, washed in the heat of the afternoon, then
clotting, soaking the dusk, to percolate slowly up the wall.
Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner
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Soil and Love
As I lean over the foundations of the new house,
I scoop some soil into a loving hand, and bring it
to my mouth. I taste its texture as if I am tasting
creation, inhale its aroma into quivering
nostrils; like in that photograph, of days
gone by. And like my father, I close my eyes
and whisper words, repeat them like an ancient
mantra: clay, loam, sand; names, names,
and earth swallowed by treacherous ground water.
And then I hesitate, afraid to open my eyes:
I know the gaping hole will never
be filled, it will stay forever in my heart,
will not close, cannot be filled by one man alone.
Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner
Eternal Servant
_____________________________________________
Women never come to terms
with the constant widening of
their hips; in their wiliness
they try to cheat the nature of woman:
cutting on the bias, camouflaging,
lengthening, in denial of the natural
law of the flesh. But I am
an eternal servant of your body,
I am happy when it thickens
and happy too when it narrows:
a beloved place, a sad source,
from whence I came, and to which,
alas, I will never return.
A Tourist, Passing Time
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To Tikva and Amos Efroni
"Pardes Huri" was uprooted long ago,
the communications channel bordering it
has been covered for years. And in the ruins of
the hill that was then called "Tlel"
rain, wind and war have erased
the impression made by a
crooked old steel pole
against which I leaned, exhausted,
to doze in the intervals between shellings.
"A tourist, passing time", I say
to the beautiful proprietress and
so sign in her guest book. My fingers
betray me and my heart is burning,
and once again I am seized by that
forgotten tremor, in the ambush that revealed
itself, under the thicket, between
the columns of the bridge forever seared
into my memory. I erase and correct my entry:
"A tourist, whose time is passing." And as she
secretly watches I am baptized
once again: in a scalding baptismal
font, filled with the sweat of paralyzing
fear, immersed in the memory
of my first baptism by fire.
________________________________________________________
Elisha writes the most innovative and genuine short stories that a writer
could put out in the world today. Every story gives a feeling of involvement
and a great understanding of life around him. He has the magical ability
to place you at the scene of real life.
CGMair 2011
______________________________________________________
A BULLET FIRED
by Elisha Porat
translated from the Hebrew by Alan Sacks
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When I was sent home after my long hospital stay, my limbs had no strength. My hands had lost their flexibility and the slightest effort hurt. My legs also were very weak. After walking a few steps in my room or on the veranda, I had to lie down again. Even raising my body onto the bed was difficult for me. I would sit on the mattress and move my leaden limbs, one at a time, towards me and onto the bed. I needed both hands to lift my legs and both legs to bring in my hands. A friend who saw me in my weaken state said, "Don't give up. You should start strengthening exercises right away so your body won't atrophy".
I was very worried. Several weeks had already passed since my heart attack and I wouldn't regain some of my strength for several more. Later, through all these days, I wouldn't move my body or build my muscles. I could only stretch out utterly helpless on the bed, unable to rise from it. I realized again what a poor guide fear makes. Without properly considering the matter or even asking my doctor, I rashly started doing the vigorous exercises I had done when I was well. But I couldn't raise my body. I couldn't fool it this time. The excruciating pain that immediately resulted cut me down to size.
My hands hurt so much I couldn't even change the station on the little radio by my bed. My legs ached to the point that every trip to the bathroom and the shower became a journey of affliction. I didn't know which way to turn my back. It hurt all over, from my neck to my buttocks. My muscles became tight and defiant, constantly sending sharp jolts of pain through me. Each time I lowered by legs from the bed and tried to put on my slippers, I fell back exhausted on the verge of tears.
I lay awake at night. My back ached and I couldn't fall asleep. If I say that I secretly cried in the faint glow of the bedroom night light, I wouldn't be exaggerating. Piteous, pathetic citing spells, anxiety, unanswerable questions. I shifted from the bed to the armchair. I heaped up pillows and built a rampart of blankets on the sides of the bed. Nothing helped. I couldn't find a position in which my body could sink into sweet sleep. And if I did find such a position for several minutes, fresh, new aches, unlike any before, would immediately assail me. These new messengers of pain bedeviled me ad nauseam until I broke into sudden, dry, body-wracking sobs, swallowing shameless tears while cursing the modern medicines and my incurable, ancient body. Eventually, I would return to my restless, spasmodic nights.
How long will I suffer like this? I asked myself. How long will I remain this shell of a man too weak to control his limbs? And who had assured me that things would change for the better? It seemed to me during my hours of agony that my condition actually was worsening. How will I be in another month? Next year? Will this torment and humiliation go on forever?
Then I remembered the small revolver hidden in the secret dresser drawer. A beautiful piece, an Italian, 22 caliber longbarrel model. I don't know why I thought of the gun during my tortured nights. Sure, I'd had perverse thoughts unclear even to me. I have a fear, which I hesitate to commit to print, that my time as a healthy man in full control of his body had not only passed but brought to mind the hidden revolver. In several open but disjointed talks with my wife, I wondered weather the little gun had been moved. These questions obviously worried my wife, who immediately warned me against wayward thoughts and rash actions. But she didn't touch the gun. Was it different for her, too, to accept the changes in my body? Had she still failed to notice the lost use of my limbs? Had she never considered, as I had, the great significance and danger of the small gun in the dresser? Did she suddenly have the same inkling I had of new depths that had never crossed her mind before? Had she finally realized, just as I had, the need to put this threatening toy out of the sick man's reach?
The gun, however, was in its place. No one had touched it, swathed in the same old shirt of soft, fraying cloth, since the day I'd returned from the hospital. Since the gun was wrapped in cloth, I couldn't work the holster zipper. The clips were strewn nearby. I'd forgotten only the location of the box of bullets, but the ammunition didn't interest me during my first days home from the hospital. I was as happy with the small gun as a boy with a prize toy. I drew the pistol from its wrapping, wiped away the fine layer of grease and discovered anew a gun fancier's pleasure in weapons. The Italian workmanship was splendid, the staining flawless and the ease of grip excellent. With few parts, no gun was simpler to take apart and assemble. Cleaning the gun, disassembling it and examining the trigger and sights distracted me from my pain.
I suddenly brimmed with so much renewed strength, I was able to lie down on the edge of the bed across from the large mirror in the bedroom wardrobe. Relieved of my suffering, I simply indulged myself in a childish love of my revolver. I gripped it in my hand, waved it, spun it around my extended finger. Where had all my pains gone? I behaved like a teenager. Behind the shelter of my locked door, I carefully aimed the gun in my small room at the image of myself reflected in the mirror. I closed one eye, opened it again and then squeezed the trigger ever so slowly. After that, I inhaled deeply into my chest and then vigorously blew the air out of my mouth just as I had seen in the movies, when you don't know whether to be awed by the wanted man's bold heroics or to laugh at his infantile terror.
Finally, I pulled the trigger. A bullet suddenly discharged and my reflection in the wardrobe mirror splintered. The bullet pierced the thin wooden door, rustling my wife's dresses hanging inside the cabinet. From the bedroom wall came a muffled thud. Did this actually occur during my recuperation or might I here be confusing this with an embarrassing event that occurred some years earlier? Inside the wardrobe swirled a small cloud of dust. In panic, I imagined smoke also rising from the barrel of the revolver in my hand. But my eyes deceived me. The acrid smell of gunpowder permeated the room with the aroma of scorched cloth.
Did I really turn pale when my wife wrenched the smoking gun from my hand? Were my hands really shaking? Did I grind my clenched teeth on one another? Was I laboring to breathe? Has my small pistol been absent from the room since that unfortunate discharge?
It seems to me that all these things and more are nothing but memories. Long ago, in the peak of health, I once really did sit opposite the large mirror in the wardrobe, cleaning my gun after an enjoyable time hunting rabbits in the groves. I was careless for some reason, loaded the gun and aimed it, entirely in jest without any sinister intentions, at my forehead reflected in the mirror. I forgot loading the gun, drew a bead and fired. Or perhaps that didn't happen. So many years have passed and my memory often misleads me. And there are no marks in either the room or the wardrobe. it's impossible to recognize anything since the renovation. Maybe I only wanted to clean the barrel. Maybe I put a round in the chamber and forgot that I was at home, not in the groves nearby horsing with a friend. And maybe it was a case of plain criminal negligence here, you can call it unintentional recklessness. I just don't remember anymore.
But my wife's best dresses, in fact, were damaged. Luckily for us, the concrete back wall blocked the bullet. Oh, I diligently searched for it that day, but I didn't find it. I remember removing all the dresses and shirts and emptying the wardrobe. Bored in the wall was a small hole spewing a puff of plaster. I should have given the wardrobe a good cleaning to wipe it from view and erase the conspicuous traces left by the mysterious shooting.
Several weeks later, I happened to find the flattened lead slug. I was sitting down, excited as usual by the sight of my wife's body while she dressed in front of the pierced mirror. As she shook her blouse, the bullet dropped to the floor. I pounced on it at once, thrust it before my wife's astonished eyes , and said, "You see, we've rounded up the last witness to the crime." I kept it for a long time in my drawer among the odds and ends I've saved from critical periods of my life. The holy lira note of a Hasidic rebbe given to me, at the crossing to Lebanon, by young Habadnic members vociferously evading their army service; a checked card with letters I couldn't read, which I received in the Galilee as an amulet from a righteous beggar at Honi's Cave in Hatzor; an old jackknife that I swore I wouldn't pull out of my pocket until the war ended; and other such things. When I started to arrange my drawer some time ago, however, I couldn't find the squashed bullet. Had it known that I would need it so much during my painful months of recuperation, it might have done me a favor and not disappeared somewhere between the cracks.
In my mind, I can't decide whether I harbored a secret, demented notion to perform that quaint act of negligence. Nor do I know whether my sudden need for my small revolver signaled that I was about to do something wicked. I'm not brave enough for that. But my wife clearly remembered the shattered mirror and the burning hole in her dress. My flimsy explanation - that I had planned to start hunting rabbits in the groves again to aid my recovery -- didn't satisfy her.
Several days after handling my gun, I wanted to withdraw it again from its niche and play with it awhile to distract me during a relapse. The hidden drawer in the dresser, however, was empty. The unzipped holster, made of coarse, stiff canvas, was nowhere to be found. When I asked my wife what had become of my small gun, and whether she could imagine how hurt I was when I discovered it missing, she only said: "Don't worry, it's not lost. It's here. But we've taken it away until you get better. It's alright, you'll find it when you're stronger. We've just moved it to a safe place. So you won't be tempted again, God forbid, to blast your reflection in the mirror."
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The Screeching of the Jackdaws
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The screeching of the jackdaws now
in the winter, gliding blackness
like the ghosts of the young men,
whose faces also rise
to the treetops. Perched on
the branches, the jackdaws screech
as if hunted, suddenly
quarrelsome as if sensing
the young men, the warmth of their breath.
Entangled in the night
air, plunging finally:
wings folded back, empty
throated. Resting as if betrayed,
silent without protest.
Tomorrow they will take off and fly
away, they will not stay.
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At the Field Hospital
Those who were born, like me, in that fateful year
spend their lives looking for their fellow travelers:
A baby transported on the floor of
an armored bus, and a young mother
shielding it with her body;
a traveler who has traversed his life
but left his heart behind
quivering at the bus depot.
Let me remind you of something:
we were but a year old then
when the fate of the world was decided in
a bloodbath: Bathe, Scream, Bleed.
Cryptic words, evil, inscribed
on an ancient amulet.
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Among the Photographs
On Memorial Day I wander
among the photographs: the taut black
ribbons entwined with flowers,
candles flickering under the images.
From within the white strips of writing,
I watch as their fingerprints
emerge, their laughter,
their secret whisperings bursting out at me.
How very different things could have been
with them, among them, in the heat of their breath,
and not so soft and silent,
like now, without them.
The Young Students
"The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard
in the still houses..."
Archibald MacLeish
On Memorial Day I enter the classroom.
"The young dead soldiers ..."
I read to the young students,
my voice echoing in the stillness of the room.
They hang their eyes on my lips,
and a familiar fear strikes me:
I am the one who knows,
I am the one who remembers,
I bite my lips and cry.
And so I flee the classroom.
The eyes of the young students
boring through the stillness of my silent brain.
Speak to me, children.
How very necessary it is now
that your voices be heard.
Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner
SCAR OF PRIDE
1 .
Once, in the summer of 1946, I accompanied my father on a visit to Tel Aviv. Before the trip, Father, a proud, reserved man; was beside himself. Yehuda, his best friend, had arranged a meeting with Natan, the wonderful Tel Aviv poet, and the prospect gave my father no peace. He was tense and irritable and quick to lose his temper. When he passed his hand over my smooth boy's cheek, he wasn't aware of what he was touching, and when he stroked my unruly curls, he didn't notice what he was stroking.
In the Tel Aviv street, Yehuda was already waiting for us. Father put his arm round Yehuda's shoulder and Yehuda pulled Father close to him and they were as happy as if they hadn't met for a long time. Father sat me down at the table, and in childish contentment, I leaned my elbows on the sticky oilcloth. Flies circled sluggishly above puddles of spilt coffee and in the remains of sweet lemonade. Father and Yehuda found plenty to drowned talk about so I began to look around . A rain of overripe berries dropped out of the deep shade of the ficus trees, bursting on the table and under it, and spattering stains of inky juice all around. The numbing summer heat engulfed me. The cars racing along the street at my back, the cries of hawkers, the bustle of passers-by, the clatter of hooves as horses passed pulling their carts of kerosene or ice, all these assailed my ears like the clacking of castanets. And within the shimmering bubble of heat, the drone of the sultry street mingled with the staccato conversation of my father and Yehuda.
Of all the people who surrounded my father in the days of my childhood, Yehuda was the only one whom my father truly loved. Looking through the eyes of my childhood, misted over with the dried-up tears of memory, I can still see my father mellowing and changing whenever Yehuda entered our house. Despite the years I still recall how the familiar layers would fall away one by one, and how a different man would emerge from the sloughed-off skin, a man I didn't know at all. Father's hands, cracked and furrowed from work in the fields, work from which he allowed himself no respite, became as soft as a gentleman's. His tanned face paled like of those wild creatures which change color according to their one surroundings. His abrupt, peremptory way of talking became gentle, uncertain. Suddenly he would turn from giving orders to asking questions. When Yehuda was around, Father would lose his decisiveness. To this day I am still amazed, still waiting to get over my wonder.
Father greeted Yehuda who had quickly stood up as we arrived. I had the impression that he saw our approach, slow and ponderous, as that of country yokels. He waited until we came right up to the table diffident before embarking on the formalities of welcome. He signalled something to the waiter and immediately a number of large glasses were set on the table along with a jug of cold water which tinkled like a bell. Father asked Yehuda for some soda-water as well and Yehuda turned to the waiter in his gentle manner, "We ordered soda-water too, didn't we?"
The wonderful way in which Yehuda half acknowledged, half ignored my presence filled me with astonishment even in those days of innocence. It was as if with one eye he saw all of me, my whole being with all its childish elements, while the other, half closed, saw nothing but my soul, which, in the fullness of time, would blossom into the essential me. He would blink and stare in my direction as if he were weighing up what he saw. What that one eye surely saw was nothing but a child, not really grown up enough to sit with the adults. On the other hand, no doubt, the other eye seemed to guess at a young man who would often search his memory in an attempt to recapture the long-lost years.
So Yehuda hopped around me, yet also hovered somewhere else nearby. When he shook my hand, it was as if it wasn't a real hand of flesh and blood that he held loosely, and when he patted me on the shoulder or tweaked my nose, it was as if he were tweaking a paper doll and not the real me. Then, embarrassed, I cringed from his caress, flinched from his touch and retreated to the other end of the table. Deep inside me some tune or other sang to itself in harmony, "The kids say that your father is strong and he can knock this little Yehuda down easily." When terrifically I had finally shrunk back into the furthest chair at the edge of the pavement, that childish song of vengeance was still singing in my heart, and my contempt for this milksop was clothing itself in clearer words and music.
At that very moment this same Yehuda, with the absent-louder mindedness that goes with insight, turned to my father and warned him loudly, "That boy of yours had better be careful! He's too close to the street and the traffic is crazy." But father merely waved his gentleman's hands and let them fall on the rough wooden table, on the stained oilcloth cover.
2 .
Yehuda, a small likeable chap with a genuine ability to bring kindred together, tries to make the waiting pass pleasantly. He regales my spirits with the name of each passerby, and the vague image I recall with difficulty from my confused memory is of him dancing about, wiping the sweat from his Khaki shirt, moving swiftly from chair to chair, shuttling there and back around Father and throwing backward glances towards the table as if he were being scolded. Father remains haughtily, almost aggressively silent and refuses to be mollified. What has he got in common with these intellectuals, skipping about in their open sandals? What are these actresses to him, prancing along the street in their skimpy dresses? What, for that matter, is Yehuda who knows each passerby by name and eagerly holds forth on the wonderful talents of them all?
Father remains silent and waits in stubborn awe for this Tel Aviv poet to whom Yehuda has promised to introduce him. None of Yehuda's offerings is acceptable, neither the brilliant notions that one nor the incisive opinions of the other; neither the astonishing of new book that left Yehuda amazed by the power of its language ("The language, do you hear?") nor the obscene gestures of the British occupying troops, nor even the gut-wrenching article that pits ("pits, you against the lofty moral principles of the workers' movement understand?") the fossilized, vacillating morality of the petite bourgeoisie. And what else can I say that I haven't yet said? But Father refuses to soften. Haughty and silent, he sits there at the table, haughty enough, as Yehuda told me years later, to destroy himself, and he tightens his hand round the heavy water glass leaving Yehuda not the smallest crack to creep through.
Later on, when memories break free from the bounds of time, I try to disentangle scenes, words and sounds from the jumble, but I find it difficult to arrange the events in any sort of sequence. If only I could at least grasp the main points. If only I could be sure that the outlines had not blurred, but even of that I am not always certain.
Natan suddenly appears, actually materializing out of the street, with a buoyant, lifting step. Father stands up immediately, tipping his chair in doing so. It tilts sideways and almost falls. The water glass slides along the tabletop. Father stands quite still and turns pale, paler than I ever remember. He moves foreword a little to shake hands, but Natan's left hand avoids Father's grasp. It is shaking uncontrollably as if his arm were not joined to his shoulder, as if he had a life of its own, as if its trembling could not be stilled. Natan is wearing Khaki trousers with a Khaki shirt worn outside to give the impression of suit. His eyes take us in at a glance, pass over the three of us and move on to rake the street. It is almost as if he has been invited to meet someone else who hasn't turned up so he is forced to wait and sit with us for a while. Really, only for a minute; and if he has consented, it is only out of respect for that fine fellow, Yehuda.
These yokels from a distant Kibbutzim, an all-pervading smell of brimstone clinging to them, are as excited as children in his presence. They actually force into the hand that doesn't tremble pieces of paper, extracts from earnest articles, so damp with excited sweat they're nearly colorless, illegible, and formless. Ah, how tiresome is their love. Yehuda capers around him.
"Sit down, Natan. What would you like, Natan? Natan, I'd like you to meet my friend from the Kibbutz. My kindred soul, my twin-spirit who works himself to death in the hot and steamy realm of manual labor. And this little boy is his son who has accompanied his father to the city. They have taken the trouble to come all this way to meet you because I promised that you would find a moment for them. They admire your poetry and wanted to meet you so much; just a short meeting, nothing like 'the man who came to dinner!'"
3 .
A pause - the flow of memories is dammed for a second. Then, the flood-gates open once again and the tide surges through. The tension breaks. We all laugh. People who have crowded round the table for a moment laugh with us. Suddenly I feel Natan's roving look rest on my face. I show my young even teeth in a smile, trying to ingratiate myself with this strange man in whose presence Father has become so pale. Over the reaches of time, from the depth of that elusive image, I seem to remember that after that the conversation went more easily. There were even smiles.
Natan constantly exchanged greetings with passerbys. Some approached our table, snatched a few words, put in a quick plea, shook hands, smiled at Yehuda, waved a friendly finger in the direction of Natan's gleaming forehead or shot inquiring glance at Father's heavy form. Yehuda now would not allow the conversation to flag. He tended it with wirds and revived it when it suddenly languished. From time to time he darted as severe look at Father as if urging him, "Come out of your shell, man. Don't be a bumpkin. You wanted to meet this fellow, didn't you? Wasn't it because of him that you bothered to come all the way from your distant Kibbutz with the boy, who only cramps your style anyway. Don't be boring, that 'holier-than-thou' face, as if someone had forced you to descend from your Olympian hights to consort with the untouchable."
Well, himself, that's how Natan was. The sleeves forever frayed at the elbows, the pullover unravelling, the compulsive untidiness. How thin he is close up. What fire flashes again and again from the depth of his eyes. Even in the white light of summer noon in Tel Aviv, his forehead shines, while from his wizened throat comes the cry of a whole people.
Father sits drawn into himself as if remembering the words he wrote in our Kibbutz broad sheet not long before, when Natan's new poems had first appeared. Father had been like one possessed, stalking in his room like a caged tiger. He was unable to sleep because of what he called "an inner quaking". The poems had gripped constricted his heart. Or maybe that's not exactly how it was. Maybe I am and getting mixed up between my memories and what Father really wrote. The beautiful girl who used to recite law, in a thrilling voice read Father's article together with the poems at one of our Friday evening meetings. Sitting there in the large brightly-lit dining room, I felt a childish pride swelling within me. Such a proud reserved man; I felt that I was one with him, come what may. I would stand by him, and the two of us, shoulder to shoulder, would move forward together against the whole world.
Suddenly Natan's slightly hoarse voice broks in, "Take care, boy! Don't lean so far back. You're going to fall right into the path of the traffic." But Father was sunk deep in a vision he saw in his water glass and didn't hear what Natan had just said. He didn't notice the danger so close behind me and didn't even raise his head to look in my direction.
4 .
Drunk or not, Natan was now in full spate. He supported his trembling left hand with his right. His glance darted from Yehuda to Father and back to the street, where it followed the young Jewish soldiers passing by, again and then returned to us. The man might have had two faces. All the while, Yehuda, a dwarf by comparison, was trying in awed revenge to get a word in edgeways. Of course, it wasn't long before the subject of morality was forcibly dragged in, where it became confused with the state of the worker's movement. And the things Natan said when he was drunk! Even the "god of the elephants" was invoked to buttress his arguments. Truncated sentences trembled from his lips like the trembling of his hand. He would type his poetic outpourings with his right hand while his treacherous left would twitch and shake until at last it would be cast to aside like some unless object discarded on a rubbish-heap.
In this business of poetry Father was a fervent but taciturn admirer. Moreover, he respected Natan as he respected no other man. But when it came to a question of the labor movement or the murder of the Jewish writers in Russia or morality in general or the issue known as "The music of the mortars," Father had pronounced and trenchant opinions of his own. So while his pallor heightened, signs began to appear of that anger, that tempestuous fury that both Yehuda and I feared.
Father's rage was finally ignited over nothing. He was on his feet, pacing up and down, head down as if about to butt, his tongue dry with anger. Yehuda was in such a state that he began to call upon the god of elephants to arise and take pity on them. Had Mother been with us, she would probably have thrown herself at his feet, clung to the legs of the table and cried to them from the floor, "I'm not moving until you two make it up." But Mother wasn't there and Yehuda, squeezed between the two of them, didn't know which way to turn.
"OH! Mountain strikes mountain, peak clashes against peak." There was Yehuda, dancing around them, pulling at their sleeves, trying to calm them down. The table shook. Chairs went flying. Curious passerbys began to gather and Yehuda suddenly stopped hopping about, folded his arms and, grinning in embarrassment, said to me, "Two toreros tearing at each other. Two bulls taking each other on. Ah, well, there's a time and place for everything. Toreador and bull butting each other!"
When Natan was drunk he could say some very cruel things. "You had better go on, you lot, all of you, go straight to the youngsters. I call on our unspoiled youth, the ones you haven't yet managed to ruin. Let them turn their backs on you, I say. Or go appeal to the children, not yet stained by sin, as someone once did, long ago and far away. What do you mean by 'the music of the mortars,' eh? What do you know of the pen that was smashed in Moscow? Words you aren't capable of understanding! All you can do is chew them around and then spew them out to defile the well you drink from!"
Father was in a ferment. I couldn't take my eyes off him. I understood the smallest movement of his face, the merest clenching of his fists. He was wrecked with fury. Never in all my life had I seen him so agitated. The table got in his way and he pushed it aside with a violent gesture. Roughly, he kicked the chair backwards. The glass slid along the table and Yehuda was almost crushed under Father's great hands.
Suddenly the two of them advanced towards me, boxing me in at the end of the table. In the heat of the argument, the shouted exchanges, the faces grimacing in sweaty rage, I sat there at the apex of a converging triangle. I could smell their clothes. I could see the sweat seeping through their Khaki shirts. Then, without realizing it, I felt an overwhelming urge to press myself to my father's shoulder. I leaned backwards slowly, unshackled by earthly laws of weight and gravity. The Tel Aviv poet in his drunken anger hurled at Father the accusation that the worst of them all, the absolute bottom of the barrel, the amateur journalists in remote Kibbutzim whose writings reeked of brimstone and who did more harm with their narrow-mindedness than fools did with their simple-mindedness.
Father was stunned; a furrow of pain appeared on his forehead and he began to writhe like a wounded animal. Yehuda, charming little Yehuda, realized that the whole encounter was collapsing in chaos. Suddenly time stopped and froze. In a drunken haze, Natan cried out, "The boy! He's going over! Look out! Oh, right under the cars!"
As if caught in a globe of light, within a bubble of time held still for a short moment, I see Yehuda running round the table and crying to Father, "Oh, the boy! Oh, my god! He's fallen." The noise of a car swamped over me and I was engulfed by a great darkness. An overwhelming sense of distress that I hadn't risen to stand by my father, shoulder to shoulder, clutched at my heart. Afterwards an enveloping silence fell and I saw hurrying flecks of white, specks of brightness, flowing blood, for I had fallen backwards right under the wheels of a car.
5 .
Two crossed stitches, clearly visible on my cheek today, are the only ones left. If you look closely though, you will see faint signs of the others. If you were to draw a line joining all the stitches, you would trace a diagonal scar running the length of my right cheek from the chin to a light path between temple and eye. Whenever I am carried away by a fit of temper, the scar takes on its original redness. If I run my finger along it to try and soothe the smarting, I can see once more three heads bending over me. And yet I find it hard to remember. Who exactly was leaning over me? Who was talking? How did the quarrel end? And who was it that whispered above my bandaged face, "This red scar had such a cruel birth." Then there were the kids who teased me in the Kibbutz children's house, "Scar face! Scar face!" And that reserved man, my father, standing by me when I came to. And the flickering memories of the hospital. Whenever I make a serious effort to piece together the shards of memory, I am confronted by a jumbled mass of veiled moments, time snatched away, never to return.
What happened when I fell? Was I run over and was that how I acquired this scar of pride? And then, after I had been extricated from between the cars and carried off in my father's arms, and after Yehuda had summoned help, and after Natan had stood alone in the confusion wondering why he had argued so wickedly in the presence of a child and at the very edge of a menacing street; after all this and everything else that followed, I had to undergo the ordeal of facing my mother's searching gaze, still answering all her questions and trying to restore some kind of order to my memory of the muddled events.
Lying there convalescing in my white bed, I had go to over and over the whole affair from very beginning. How could I have deserted my father in the cruel argument with Natan? What had happened to those vows about "Shoulder to shoulder?" and "Father and me against the whole world?" and "We shall never be defeated if we stand together?" How is it that they came to nothing and I kept none of them? What about that nasty habit my mother was always scolding me for, of tilting my chair backwards 'till you could hear the crack of rusty screw and split wood? How could I have left Father complaining alone between Yehuda prancing about and Natan looking way beyond him? Why didn't I jump to the front of the table, mountain clashing with mountain, toreador butting against bull? Then, when I felt the inner compulsion to pour out my words, I sat up straight in bed, the white bedclothes slid off me and the scar that cuts diagonally across my face leapt out.
Against my pure father I set that drunken poet. I have no weapon to attack him with - only my beating heart, words that will stay with me all my life, memories that will never fade. The sight of my father standing downcast in the face of the gross drunken attacks of the Tel Aviv poet fills me with a depressing sense of helplessness at not being able to do anything for him, and leaves a weight on my heart over the long years. The pain slices through my cheek and catches my heart because I did not do what I should have done such as biting through his Khaki trousers like a puppy gone berserk. Don't little ones have their own ways of fighting: teeth, weak finger-nails, childish screams, something?
Sitting there in bed I read again those simple artless words that Father had written in our modest Kibbutz paper. I pored over them for a long time. They contained a kind of sad beauty that was not easy to understand. Was it really so strange that Natan, hasty, haunted by drink, did not have the eye to perceive nor the heart to care for them? Through the shimmering bubbles of time I go over the few lines again. "The throat of a whole people; the cut throat of a whole people bleeds from the throat of the poet. Drops of anguish and blood."
"Mountain against mountain!" Yehuda's voice roars in my ears. A sea of sparks flies up; the smell of scorching. The memory of one of those three sitting round a cafe table in that Tel Aviv street in the summer of the year one thousand nine hundred and forty-six, in the shade of those dark ficus trees, is branded into me for all the days of my life, and this memory goes with me as I am gathered up from between the screaming brakes and burning tyres, from the melting asphalt of the steaming midday street. So when father, as always, unconsciously passes his large hand over my healed up scar of pride, and I, as always, take countless oaths of loyalty, time stands still in its cycle and I look within, deep within its secret depths that have long since faded away, and through my childhood eyes I see how this reserved man who may not even have wanted to meet that wonderful poet Natan, turns pale with pride. On the table between them pride lies dishonoured, while the heart of a child bleeds. Then at the far end of the table, at the menacing edge of the street, the little boy defies the laws of physics. Leaning back on the chair until the bolts snap, he does the only remaining thing and throws himself into the path of traffic.
A SHORT FAREWELL LETTER
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To my Hebrew, my own sundered, grated Hebrew:
There, in my forgotten, distant childhood
You were placed inside my ear, imprinted
In my finger, poured upon my neck.
Now, goodbye: I am sinking, forgotten
You go on, not turning your head.
Fare you well, my bellwether.
Now lock on, my distant one, to
The neck of a tender boy, weigh heavily
On the heart of my successor.
© 2000 Elisha Porat
Translated from Hebrew by Asher Harris
___________________________________________________________________
Old Age
__________________________________________________
I who was a ram in Jerusalem
A young man of lean muscles in Jerusalem
Skipping and lusting on the stairs of Jerusalem,
Now calculate every step every stride
Up toward the love~dens that have forsaken me.
I slide clumsy on the slope
Rolling down with Jerusalem stones,
Clutching like a desparate survivor the memory of my youth:
A forgotten lesson from the classroom
About a cruel and precise law
Of the sloping plane.
translated from the Hebrew by Aura Hammer
©Elisha Porat
Elisha Porat Second Poem and Story Page
The Andalusian Ideal of Beauty
One: here is a palm tree, green, tall,
a provider of shade. Two: here is a lemon tree,
sweet smelling, wild, heavy with white flowers.
Three: and here we have the red rose. Which is the blood
that nests in the garden, above the flowing creek.
On its thorns even the hardest hearts
are caught and sliced in two, the better to nourish
the twin soils: which are the warm golden
soft silk that rests above a silvery
hillside. Dark and damp, a leafy threesome.
Here is a final sum: in which is included an erect
palm, the lemony scent pouring like juice,
and the thick thorny blood of the rose running
into the culvert, washed in the heat of the afternoon, then
clotting, soaking the dusk, to percolate slowly up the wall.
Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner
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Soil and Love
As I lean over the foundations of the new house,
I scoop some soil into a loving hand, and bring it
to my mouth. I taste its texture as if I am tasting
creation, inhale its aroma into quivering
nostrils; like in that photograph, of days
gone by. And like my father, I close my eyes
and whisper words, repeat them like an ancient
mantra: clay, loam, sand; names, names,
and earth swallowed by treacherous ground water.
And then I hesitate, afraid to open my eyes:
I know the gaping hole will never
be filled, it will stay forever in my heart,
will not close, cannot be filled by one man alone.
Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner
Eternal Servant
_____________________________________________
Women never come to terms
with the constant widening of
their hips; in their wiliness
they try to cheat the nature of woman:
cutting on the bias, camouflaging,
lengthening, in denial of the natural
law of the flesh. But I am
an eternal servant of your body,
I am happy when it thickens
and happy too when it narrows:
a beloved place, a sad source,
from whence I came, and to which,
alas, I will never return.
A Tourist, Passing Time
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To Tikva and Amos Efroni
"Pardes Huri" was uprooted long ago,
the communications channel bordering it
has been covered for years. And in the ruins of
the hill that was then called "Tlel"
rain, wind and war have erased
the impression made by a
crooked old steel pole
against which I leaned, exhausted,
to doze in the intervals between shellings.
"A tourist, passing time", I say
to the beautiful proprietress and
so sign in her guest book. My fingers
betray me and my heart is burning,
and once again I am seized by that
forgotten tremor, in the ambush that revealed
itself, under the thicket, between
the columns of the bridge forever seared
into my memory. I erase and correct my entry:
"A tourist, whose time is passing." And as she
secretly watches I am baptized
once again: in a scalding baptismal
font, filled with the sweat of paralyzing
fear, immersed in the memory
of my first baptism by fire.
________________________________________________________
Elisha writes the most innovative and genuine short stories that a writer
could put out in the world today. Every story gives a feeling of involvement
and a great understanding of life around him. He has the magical ability
to place you at the scene of real life.
CGMair 2011
______________________________________________________
A BULLET FIRED
by Elisha Porat
translated from the Hebrew by Alan Sacks
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When I was sent home after my long hospital stay, my limbs had no strength. My hands had lost their flexibility and the slightest effort hurt. My legs also were very weak. After walking a few steps in my room or on the veranda, I had to lie down again. Even raising my body onto the bed was difficult for me. I would sit on the mattress and move my leaden limbs, one at a time, towards me and onto the bed. I needed both hands to lift my legs and both legs to bring in my hands. A friend who saw me in my weaken state said, "Don't give up. You should start strengthening exercises right away so your body won't atrophy".
I was very worried. Several weeks had already passed since my heart attack and I wouldn't regain some of my strength for several more. Later, through all these days, I wouldn't move my body or build my muscles. I could only stretch out utterly helpless on the bed, unable to rise from it. I realized again what a poor guide fear makes. Without properly considering the matter or even asking my doctor, I rashly started doing the vigorous exercises I had done when I was well. But I couldn't raise my body. I couldn't fool it this time. The excruciating pain that immediately resulted cut me down to size.
My hands hurt so much I couldn't even change the station on the little radio by my bed. My legs ached to the point that every trip to the bathroom and the shower became a journey of affliction. I didn't know which way to turn my back. It hurt all over, from my neck to my buttocks. My muscles became tight and defiant, constantly sending sharp jolts of pain through me. Each time I lowered by legs from the bed and tried to put on my slippers, I fell back exhausted on the verge of tears.
I lay awake at night. My back ached and I couldn't fall asleep. If I say that I secretly cried in the faint glow of the bedroom night light, I wouldn't be exaggerating. Piteous, pathetic citing spells, anxiety, unanswerable questions. I shifted from the bed to the armchair. I heaped up pillows and built a rampart of blankets on the sides of the bed. Nothing helped. I couldn't find a position in which my body could sink into sweet sleep. And if I did find such a position for several minutes, fresh, new aches, unlike any before, would immediately assail me. These new messengers of pain bedeviled me ad nauseam until I broke into sudden, dry, body-wracking sobs, swallowing shameless tears while cursing the modern medicines and my incurable, ancient body. Eventually, I would return to my restless, spasmodic nights.
How long will I suffer like this? I asked myself. How long will I remain this shell of a man too weak to control his limbs? And who had assured me that things would change for the better? It seemed to me during my hours of agony that my condition actually was worsening. How will I be in another month? Next year? Will this torment and humiliation go on forever?
Then I remembered the small revolver hidden in the secret dresser drawer. A beautiful piece, an Italian, 22 caliber longbarrel model. I don't know why I thought of the gun during my tortured nights. Sure, I'd had perverse thoughts unclear even to me. I have a fear, which I hesitate to commit to print, that my time as a healthy man in full control of his body had not only passed but brought to mind the hidden revolver. In several open but disjointed talks with my wife, I wondered weather the little gun had been moved. These questions obviously worried my wife, who immediately warned me against wayward thoughts and rash actions. But she didn't touch the gun. Was it different for her, too, to accept the changes in my body? Had she still failed to notice the lost use of my limbs? Had she never considered, as I had, the great significance and danger of the small gun in the dresser? Did she suddenly have the same inkling I had of new depths that had never crossed her mind before? Had she finally realized, just as I had, the need to put this threatening toy out of the sick man's reach?
The gun, however, was in its place. No one had touched it, swathed in the same old shirt of soft, fraying cloth, since the day I'd returned from the hospital. Since the gun was wrapped in cloth, I couldn't work the holster zipper. The clips were strewn nearby. I'd forgotten only the location of the box of bullets, but the ammunition didn't interest me during my first days home from the hospital. I was as happy with the small gun as a boy with a prize toy. I drew the pistol from its wrapping, wiped away the fine layer of grease and discovered anew a gun fancier's pleasure in weapons. The Italian workmanship was splendid, the staining flawless and the ease of grip excellent. With few parts, no gun was simpler to take apart and assemble. Cleaning the gun, disassembling it and examining the trigger and sights distracted me from my pain.
I suddenly brimmed with so much renewed strength, I was able to lie down on the edge of the bed across from the large mirror in the bedroom wardrobe. Relieved of my suffering, I simply indulged myself in a childish love of my revolver. I gripped it in my hand, waved it, spun it around my extended finger. Where had all my pains gone? I behaved like a teenager. Behind the shelter of my locked door, I carefully aimed the gun in my small room at the image of myself reflected in the mirror. I closed one eye, opened it again and then squeezed the trigger ever so slowly. After that, I inhaled deeply into my chest and then vigorously blew the air out of my mouth just as I had seen in the movies, when you don't know whether to be awed by the wanted man's bold heroics or to laugh at his infantile terror.
Finally, I pulled the trigger. A bullet suddenly discharged and my reflection in the wardrobe mirror splintered. The bullet pierced the thin wooden door, rustling my wife's dresses hanging inside the cabinet. From the bedroom wall came a muffled thud. Did this actually occur during my recuperation or might I here be confusing this with an embarrassing event that occurred some years earlier? Inside the wardrobe swirled a small cloud of dust. In panic, I imagined smoke also rising from the barrel of the revolver in my hand. But my eyes deceived me. The acrid smell of gunpowder permeated the room with the aroma of scorched cloth.
Did I really turn pale when my wife wrenched the smoking gun from my hand? Were my hands really shaking? Did I grind my clenched teeth on one another? Was I laboring to breathe? Has my small pistol been absent from the room since that unfortunate discharge?
It seems to me that all these things and more are nothing but memories. Long ago, in the peak of health, I once really did sit opposite the large mirror in the wardrobe, cleaning my gun after an enjoyable time hunting rabbits in the groves. I was careless for some reason, loaded the gun and aimed it, entirely in jest without any sinister intentions, at my forehead reflected in the mirror. I forgot loading the gun, drew a bead and fired. Or perhaps that didn't happen. So many years have passed and my memory often misleads me. And there are no marks in either the room or the wardrobe. it's impossible to recognize anything since the renovation. Maybe I only wanted to clean the barrel. Maybe I put a round in the chamber and forgot that I was at home, not in the groves nearby horsing with a friend. And maybe it was a case of plain criminal negligence here, you can call it unintentional recklessness. I just don't remember anymore.
But my wife's best dresses, in fact, were damaged. Luckily for us, the concrete back wall blocked the bullet. Oh, I diligently searched for it that day, but I didn't find it. I remember removing all the dresses and shirts and emptying the wardrobe. Bored in the wall was a small hole spewing a puff of plaster. I should have given the wardrobe a good cleaning to wipe it from view and erase the conspicuous traces left by the mysterious shooting.
Several weeks later, I happened to find the flattened lead slug. I was sitting down, excited as usual by the sight of my wife's body while she dressed in front of the pierced mirror. As she shook her blouse, the bullet dropped to the floor. I pounced on it at once, thrust it before my wife's astonished eyes , and said, "You see, we've rounded up the last witness to the crime." I kept it for a long time in my drawer among the odds and ends I've saved from critical periods of my life. The holy lira note of a Hasidic rebbe given to me, at the crossing to Lebanon, by young Habadnic members vociferously evading their army service; a checked card with letters I couldn't read, which I received in the Galilee as an amulet from a righteous beggar at Honi's Cave in Hatzor; an old jackknife that I swore I wouldn't pull out of my pocket until the war ended; and other such things. When I started to arrange my drawer some time ago, however, I couldn't find the squashed bullet. Had it known that I would need it so much during my painful months of recuperation, it might have done me a favor and not disappeared somewhere between the cracks.
In my mind, I can't decide whether I harbored a secret, demented notion to perform that quaint act of negligence. Nor do I know whether my sudden need for my small revolver signaled that I was about to do something wicked. I'm not brave enough for that. But my wife clearly remembered the shattered mirror and the burning hole in her dress. My flimsy explanation - that I had planned to start hunting rabbits in the groves again to aid my recovery -- didn't satisfy her.
Several days after handling my gun, I wanted to withdraw it again from its niche and play with it awhile to distract me during a relapse. The hidden drawer in the dresser, however, was empty. The unzipped holster, made of coarse, stiff canvas, was nowhere to be found. When I asked my wife what had become of my small gun, and whether she could imagine how hurt I was when I discovered it missing, she only said: "Don't worry, it's not lost. It's here. But we've taken it away until you get better. It's alright, you'll find it when you're stronger. We've just moved it to a safe place. So you won't be tempted again, God forbid, to blast your reflection in the mirror."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++==
The Screeching of the Jackdaws
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The screeching of the jackdaws now
in the winter, gliding blackness
like the ghosts of the young men,
whose faces also rise
to the treetops. Perched on
the branches, the jackdaws screech
as if hunted, suddenly
quarrelsome as if sensing
the young men, the warmth of their breath.
Entangled in the night
air, plunging finally:
wings folded back, empty
throated. Resting as if betrayed,
silent without protest.
Tomorrow they will take off and fly
away, they will not stay.
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At the Field Hospital
Those who were born, like me, in that fateful year
spend their lives looking for their fellow travelers:
A baby transported on the floor of
an armored bus, and a young mother
shielding it with her body;
a traveler who has traversed his life
but left his heart behind
quivering at the bus depot.
Let me remind you of something:
we were but a year old then
when the fate of the world was decided in
a bloodbath: Bathe, Scream, Bleed.
Cryptic words, evil, inscribed
on an ancient amulet.
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Among the Photographs
On Memorial Day I wander
among the photographs: the taut black
ribbons entwined with flowers,
candles flickering under the images.
From within the white strips of writing,
I watch as their fingerprints
emerge, their laughter,
their secret whisperings bursting out at me.
How very different things could have been
with them, among them, in the heat of their breath,
and not so soft and silent,
like now, without them.
The Young Students
"The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard
in the still houses..."
Archibald MacLeish
On Memorial Day I enter the classroom.
"The young dead soldiers ..."
I read to the young students,
my voice echoing in the stillness of the room.
They hang their eyes on my lips,
and a familiar fear strikes me:
I am the one who knows,
I am the one who remembers,
I bite my lips and cry.
And so I flee the classroom.
The eyes of the young students
boring through the stillness of my silent brain.
Speak to me, children.
How very necessary it is now
that your voices be heard.
Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner
SCAR OF PRIDE
1 .
Once, in the summer of 1946, I accompanied my father on a visit to Tel Aviv. Before the trip, Father, a proud, reserved man; was beside himself. Yehuda, his best friend, had arranged a meeting with Natan, the wonderful Tel Aviv poet, and the prospect gave my father no peace. He was tense and irritable and quick to lose his temper. When he passed his hand over my smooth boy's cheek, he wasn't aware of what he was touching, and when he stroked my unruly curls, he didn't notice what he was stroking.
In the Tel Aviv street, Yehuda was already waiting for us. Father put his arm round Yehuda's shoulder and Yehuda pulled Father close to him and they were as happy as if they hadn't met for a long time. Father sat me down at the table, and in childish contentment, I leaned my elbows on the sticky oilcloth. Flies circled sluggishly above puddles of spilt coffee and in the remains of sweet lemonade. Father and Yehuda found plenty to drowned talk about so I began to look around . A rain of overripe berries dropped out of the deep shade of the ficus trees, bursting on the table and under it, and spattering stains of inky juice all around. The numbing summer heat engulfed me. The cars racing along the street at my back, the cries of hawkers, the bustle of passers-by, the clatter of hooves as horses passed pulling their carts of kerosene or ice, all these assailed my ears like the clacking of castanets. And within the shimmering bubble of heat, the drone of the sultry street mingled with the staccato conversation of my father and Yehuda.
Of all the people who surrounded my father in the days of my childhood, Yehuda was the only one whom my father truly loved. Looking through the eyes of my childhood, misted over with the dried-up tears of memory, I can still see my father mellowing and changing whenever Yehuda entered our house. Despite the years I still recall how the familiar layers would fall away one by one, and how a different man would emerge from the sloughed-off skin, a man I didn't know at all. Father's hands, cracked and furrowed from work in the fields, work from which he allowed himself no respite, became as soft as a gentleman's. His tanned face paled like of those wild creatures which change color according to their one surroundings. His abrupt, peremptory way of talking became gentle, uncertain. Suddenly he would turn from giving orders to asking questions. When Yehuda was around, Father would lose his decisiveness. To this day I am still amazed, still waiting to get over my wonder.
Father greeted Yehuda who had quickly stood up as we arrived. I had the impression that he saw our approach, slow and ponderous, as that of country yokels. He waited until we came right up to the table diffident before embarking on the formalities of welcome. He signalled something to the waiter and immediately a number of large glasses were set on the table along with a jug of cold water which tinkled like a bell. Father asked Yehuda for some soda-water as well and Yehuda turned to the waiter in his gentle manner, "We ordered soda-water too, didn't we?"
The wonderful way in which Yehuda half acknowledged, half ignored my presence filled me with astonishment even in those days of innocence. It was as if with one eye he saw all of me, my whole being with all its childish elements, while the other, half closed, saw nothing but my soul, which, in the fullness of time, would blossom into the essential me. He would blink and stare in my direction as if he were weighing up what he saw. What that one eye surely saw was nothing but a child, not really grown up enough to sit with the adults. On the other hand, no doubt, the other eye seemed to guess at a young man who would often search his memory in an attempt to recapture the long-lost years.
So Yehuda hopped around me, yet also hovered somewhere else nearby. When he shook my hand, it was as if it wasn't a real hand of flesh and blood that he held loosely, and when he patted me on the shoulder or tweaked my nose, it was as if he were tweaking a paper doll and not the real me. Then, embarrassed, I cringed from his caress, flinched from his touch and retreated to the other end of the table. Deep inside me some tune or other sang to itself in harmony, "The kids say that your father is strong and he can knock this little Yehuda down easily." When terrifically I had finally shrunk back into the furthest chair at the edge of the pavement, that childish song of vengeance was still singing in my heart, and my contempt for this milksop was clothing itself in clearer words and music.
At that very moment this same Yehuda, with the absent-louder mindedness that goes with insight, turned to my father and warned him loudly, "That boy of yours had better be careful! He's too close to the street and the traffic is crazy." But father merely waved his gentleman's hands and let them fall on the rough wooden table, on the stained oilcloth cover.
2 .
Yehuda, a small likeable chap with a genuine ability to bring kindred together, tries to make the waiting pass pleasantly. He regales my spirits with the name of each passerby, and the vague image I recall with difficulty from my confused memory is of him dancing about, wiping the sweat from his Khaki shirt, moving swiftly from chair to chair, shuttling there and back around Father and throwing backward glances towards the table as if he were being scolded. Father remains haughtily, almost aggressively silent and refuses to be mollified. What has he got in common with these intellectuals, skipping about in their open sandals? What are these actresses to him, prancing along the street in their skimpy dresses? What, for that matter, is Yehuda who knows each passerby by name and eagerly holds forth on the wonderful talents of them all?
Father remains silent and waits in stubborn awe for this Tel Aviv poet to whom Yehuda has promised to introduce him. None of Yehuda's offerings is acceptable, neither the brilliant notions that one nor the incisive opinions of the other; neither the astonishing of new book that left Yehuda amazed by the power of its language ("The language, do you hear?") nor the obscene gestures of the British occupying troops, nor even the gut-wrenching article that pits ("pits, you against the lofty moral principles of the workers' movement understand?") the fossilized, vacillating morality of the petite bourgeoisie. And what else can I say that I haven't yet said? But Father refuses to soften. Haughty and silent, he sits there at the table, haughty enough, as Yehuda told me years later, to destroy himself, and he tightens his hand round the heavy water glass leaving Yehuda not the smallest crack to creep through.
Later on, when memories break free from the bounds of time, I try to disentangle scenes, words and sounds from the jumble, but I find it difficult to arrange the events in any sort of sequence. If only I could at least grasp the main points. If only I could be sure that the outlines had not blurred, but even of that I am not always certain.
Natan suddenly appears, actually materializing out of the street, with a buoyant, lifting step. Father stands up immediately, tipping his chair in doing so. It tilts sideways and almost falls. The water glass slides along the tabletop. Father stands quite still and turns pale, paler than I ever remember. He moves foreword a little to shake hands, but Natan's left hand avoids Father's grasp. It is shaking uncontrollably as if his arm were not joined to his shoulder, as if he had a life of its own, as if its trembling could not be stilled. Natan is wearing Khaki trousers with a Khaki shirt worn outside to give the impression of suit. His eyes take us in at a glance, pass over the three of us and move on to rake the street. It is almost as if he has been invited to meet someone else who hasn't turned up so he is forced to wait and sit with us for a while. Really, only for a minute; and if he has consented, it is only out of respect for that fine fellow, Yehuda.
These yokels from a distant Kibbutzim, an all-pervading smell of brimstone clinging to them, are as excited as children in his presence. They actually force into the hand that doesn't tremble pieces of paper, extracts from earnest articles, so damp with excited sweat they're nearly colorless, illegible, and formless. Ah, how tiresome is their love. Yehuda capers around him.
"Sit down, Natan. What would you like, Natan? Natan, I'd like you to meet my friend from the Kibbutz. My kindred soul, my twin-spirit who works himself to death in the hot and steamy realm of manual labor. And this little boy is his son who has accompanied his father to the city. They have taken the trouble to come all this way to meet you because I promised that you would find a moment for them. They admire your poetry and wanted to meet you so much; just a short meeting, nothing like 'the man who came to dinner!'"
3 .
A pause - the flow of memories is dammed for a second. Then, the flood-gates open once again and the tide surges through. The tension breaks. We all laugh. People who have crowded round the table for a moment laugh with us. Suddenly I feel Natan's roving look rest on my face. I show my young even teeth in a smile, trying to ingratiate myself with this strange man in whose presence Father has become so pale. Over the reaches of time, from the depth of that elusive image, I seem to remember that after that the conversation went more easily. There were even smiles.
Natan constantly exchanged greetings with passerbys. Some approached our table, snatched a few words, put in a quick plea, shook hands, smiled at Yehuda, waved a friendly finger in the direction of Natan's gleaming forehead or shot inquiring glance at Father's heavy form. Yehuda now would not allow the conversation to flag. He tended it with wirds and revived it when it suddenly languished. From time to time he darted as severe look at Father as if urging him, "Come out of your shell, man. Don't be a bumpkin. You wanted to meet this fellow, didn't you? Wasn't it because of him that you bothered to come all the way from your distant Kibbutz with the boy, who only cramps your style anyway. Don't be boring, that 'holier-than-thou' face, as if someone had forced you to descend from your Olympian hights to consort with the untouchable."
Well, himself, that's how Natan was. The sleeves forever frayed at the elbows, the pullover unravelling, the compulsive untidiness. How thin he is close up. What fire flashes again and again from the depth of his eyes. Even in the white light of summer noon in Tel Aviv, his forehead shines, while from his wizened throat comes the cry of a whole people.
Father sits drawn into himself as if remembering the words he wrote in our Kibbutz broad sheet not long before, when Natan's new poems had first appeared. Father had been like one possessed, stalking in his room like a caged tiger. He was unable to sleep because of what he called "an inner quaking". The poems had gripped constricted his heart. Or maybe that's not exactly how it was. Maybe I am and getting mixed up between my memories and what Father really wrote. The beautiful girl who used to recite law, in a thrilling voice read Father's article together with the poems at one of our Friday evening meetings. Sitting there in the large brightly-lit dining room, I felt a childish pride swelling within me. Such a proud reserved man; I felt that I was one with him, come what may. I would stand by him, and the two of us, shoulder to shoulder, would move forward together against the whole world.
Suddenly Natan's slightly hoarse voice broks in, "Take care, boy! Don't lean so far back. You're going to fall right into the path of the traffic." But Father was sunk deep in a vision he saw in his water glass and didn't hear what Natan had just said. He didn't notice the danger so close behind me and didn't even raise his head to look in my direction.
4 .
Drunk or not, Natan was now in full spate. He supported his trembling left hand with his right. His glance darted from Yehuda to Father and back to the street, where it followed the young Jewish soldiers passing by, again and then returned to us. The man might have had two faces. All the while, Yehuda, a dwarf by comparison, was trying in awed revenge to get a word in edgeways. Of course, it wasn't long before the subject of morality was forcibly dragged in, where it became confused with the state of the worker's movement. And the things Natan said when he was drunk! Even the "god of the elephants" was invoked to buttress his arguments. Truncated sentences trembled from his lips like the trembling of his hand. He would type his poetic outpourings with his right hand while his treacherous left would twitch and shake until at last it would be cast to aside like some unless object discarded on a rubbish-heap.
In this business of poetry Father was a fervent but taciturn admirer. Moreover, he respected Natan as he respected no other man. But when it came to a question of the labor movement or the murder of the Jewish writers in Russia or morality in general or the issue known as "The music of the mortars," Father had pronounced and trenchant opinions of his own. So while his pallor heightened, signs began to appear of that anger, that tempestuous fury that both Yehuda and I feared.
Father's rage was finally ignited over nothing. He was on his feet, pacing up and down, head down as if about to butt, his tongue dry with anger. Yehuda was in such a state that he began to call upon the god of elephants to arise and take pity on them. Had Mother been with us, she would probably have thrown herself at his feet, clung to the legs of the table and cried to them from the floor, "I'm not moving until you two make it up." But Mother wasn't there and Yehuda, squeezed between the two of them, didn't know which way to turn.
"OH! Mountain strikes mountain, peak clashes against peak." There was Yehuda, dancing around them, pulling at their sleeves, trying to calm them down. The table shook. Chairs went flying. Curious passerbys began to gather and Yehuda suddenly stopped hopping about, folded his arms and, grinning in embarrassment, said to me, "Two toreros tearing at each other. Two bulls taking each other on. Ah, well, there's a time and place for everything. Toreador and bull butting each other!"
When Natan was drunk he could say some very cruel things. "You had better go on, you lot, all of you, go straight to the youngsters. I call on our unspoiled youth, the ones you haven't yet managed to ruin. Let them turn their backs on you, I say. Or go appeal to the children, not yet stained by sin, as someone once did, long ago and far away. What do you mean by 'the music of the mortars,' eh? What do you know of the pen that was smashed in Moscow? Words you aren't capable of understanding! All you can do is chew them around and then spew them out to defile the well you drink from!"
Father was in a ferment. I couldn't take my eyes off him. I understood the smallest movement of his face, the merest clenching of his fists. He was wrecked with fury. Never in all my life had I seen him so agitated. The table got in his way and he pushed it aside with a violent gesture. Roughly, he kicked the chair backwards. The glass slid along the table and Yehuda was almost crushed under Father's great hands.
Suddenly the two of them advanced towards me, boxing me in at the end of the table. In the heat of the argument, the shouted exchanges, the faces grimacing in sweaty rage, I sat there at the apex of a converging triangle. I could smell their clothes. I could see the sweat seeping through their Khaki shirts. Then, without realizing it, I felt an overwhelming urge to press myself to my father's shoulder. I leaned backwards slowly, unshackled by earthly laws of weight and gravity. The Tel Aviv poet in his drunken anger hurled at Father the accusation that the worst of them all, the absolute bottom of the barrel, the amateur journalists in remote Kibbutzim whose writings reeked of brimstone and who did more harm with their narrow-mindedness than fools did with their simple-mindedness.
Father was stunned; a furrow of pain appeared on his forehead and he began to writhe like a wounded animal. Yehuda, charming little Yehuda, realized that the whole encounter was collapsing in chaos. Suddenly time stopped and froze. In a drunken haze, Natan cried out, "The boy! He's going over! Look out! Oh, right under the cars!"
As if caught in a globe of light, within a bubble of time held still for a short moment, I see Yehuda running round the table and crying to Father, "Oh, the boy! Oh, my god! He's fallen." The noise of a car swamped over me and I was engulfed by a great darkness. An overwhelming sense of distress that I hadn't risen to stand by my father, shoulder to shoulder, clutched at my heart. Afterwards an enveloping silence fell and I saw hurrying flecks of white, specks of brightness, flowing blood, for I had fallen backwards right under the wheels of a car.
5 .
Two crossed stitches, clearly visible on my cheek today, are the only ones left. If you look closely though, you will see faint signs of the others. If you were to draw a line joining all the stitches, you would trace a diagonal scar running the length of my right cheek from the chin to a light path between temple and eye. Whenever I am carried away by a fit of temper, the scar takes on its original redness. If I run my finger along it to try and soothe the smarting, I can see once more three heads bending over me. And yet I find it hard to remember. Who exactly was leaning over me? Who was talking? How did the quarrel end? And who was it that whispered above my bandaged face, "This red scar had such a cruel birth." Then there were the kids who teased me in the Kibbutz children's house, "Scar face! Scar face!" And that reserved man, my father, standing by me when I came to. And the flickering memories of the hospital. Whenever I make a serious effort to piece together the shards of memory, I am confronted by a jumbled mass of veiled moments, time snatched away, never to return.
What happened when I fell? Was I run over and was that how I acquired this scar of pride? And then, after I had been extricated from between the cars and carried off in my father's arms, and after Yehuda had summoned help, and after Natan had stood alone in the confusion wondering why he had argued so wickedly in the presence of a child and at the very edge of a menacing street; after all this and everything else that followed, I had to undergo the ordeal of facing my mother's searching gaze, still answering all her questions and trying to restore some kind of order to my memory of the muddled events.
Lying there convalescing in my white bed, I had go to over and over the whole affair from very beginning. How could I have deserted my father in the cruel argument with Natan? What had happened to those vows about "Shoulder to shoulder?" and "Father and me against the whole world?" and "We shall never be defeated if we stand together?" How is it that they came to nothing and I kept none of them? What about that nasty habit my mother was always scolding me for, of tilting my chair backwards 'till you could hear the crack of rusty screw and split wood? How could I have left Father complaining alone between Yehuda prancing about and Natan looking way beyond him? Why didn't I jump to the front of the table, mountain clashing with mountain, toreador butting against bull? Then, when I felt the inner compulsion to pour out my words, I sat up straight in bed, the white bedclothes slid off me and the scar that cuts diagonally across my face leapt out.
Against my pure father I set that drunken poet. I have no weapon to attack him with - only my beating heart, words that will stay with me all my life, memories that will never fade. The sight of my father standing downcast in the face of the gross drunken attacks of the Tel Aviv poet fills me with a depressing sense of helplessness at not being able to do anything for him, and leaves a weight on my heart over the long years. The pain slices through my cheek and catches my heart because I did not do what I should have done such as biting through his Khaki trousers like a puppy gone berserk. Don't little ones have their own ways of fighting: teeth, weak finger-nails, childish screams, something?
Sitting there in bed I read again those simple artless words that Father had written in our modest Kibbutz paper. I pored over them for a long time. They contained a kind of sad beauty that was not easy to understand. Was it really so strange that Natan, hasty, haunted by drink, did not have the eye to perceive nor the heart to care for them? Through the shimmering bubbles of time I go over the few lines again. "The throat of a whole people; the cut throat of a whole people bleeds from the throat of the poet. Drops of anguish and blood."
"Mountain against mountain!" Yehuda's voice roars in my ears. A sea of sparks flies up; the smell of scorching. The memory of one of those three sitting round a cafe table in that Tel Aviv street in the summer of the year one thousand nine hundred and forty-six, in the shade of those dark ficus trees, is branded into me for all the days of my life, and this memory goes with me as I am gathered up from between the screaming brakes and burning tyres, from the melting asphalt of the steaming midday street. So when father, as always, unconsciously passes his large hand over my healed up scar of pride, and I, as always, take countless oaths of loyalty, time stands still in its cycle and I look within, deep within its secret depths that have long since faded away, and through my childhood eyes I see how this reserved man who may not even have wanted to meet that wonderful poet Natan, turns pale with pride. On the table between them pride lies dishonoured, while the heart of a child bleeds. Then at the far end of the table, at the menacing edge of the street, the little boy defies the laws of physics. Leaning back on the chair until the bolts snap, he does the only remaining thing and throws himself into the path of traffic.
A SHORT FAREWELL LETTER
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To my Hebrew, my own sundered, grated Hebrew:
There, in my forgotten, distant childhood
You were placed inside my ear, imprinted
In my finger, poured upon my neck.
Now, goodbye: I am sinking, forgotten
You go on, not turning your head.
Fare you well, my bellwether.
Now lock on, my distant one, to
The neck of a tender boy, weigh heavily
On the heart of my successor.
© 2000 Elisha Porat
Translated from Hebrew by Asher Harris
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Old Age
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I who was a ram in Jerusalem
A young man of lean muscles in Jerusalem
Skipping and lusting on the stairs of Jerusalem,
Now calculate every step every stride
Up toward the love~dens that have forsaken me.
I slide clumsy on the slope
Rolling down with Jerusalem stones,
Clutching like a desparate survivor the memory of my youth:
A forgotten lesson from the classroom
About a cruel and precise law
Of the sloping plane.
translated from the Hebrew by Aura Hammer
©Elisha Porat
Elisha Porat Second Poem and Story Page
