Yoram Kaniuk - The Last Jew

The young man got off the bus full of soldiers and hoisted his kitbag onto his shoulder. The bus took off, ants returned from a reconnaissance mission bearing pieces of leaves and stubs of wood, he looked here and there and saw a house, went in and on the table were fresh vegetables, cigarettes, and sweet juices. A woman whose hair had changed from shiny black to gray sat him down at the vegetables and wanted to see him eat. He swallowed the fresh vegetables and smoked a few cigarettes and then he put a few packs into the kitbag and drank some sweet-and-sour juice. She asked him if he was hungry and he said no, no. Then a few girls appeared at the window on the way to a tent. He glanced at them and wanted to ask one of them a question but he didn't find the question and went on sitting. He tried to locate tangible memories in himself but everything was mixed up. Somebody he thought was a commander and wore a ribbon on his shoulder tab asked him a few personal questions and out of his kitbag the young man took papers he himself avoided looking at, and the man studied them, took out a payment chit, and gave it to him. And he said: You'll surely go home, but the young man didn't remember anymore if he had really thought of going home and suddenly he really didn't know where that home was, he only nodded, picked up the kitbag, got into the jeep parked in the yard, and waited. A driver came and asked him what he was doing in the jeep. The young man said he wanted to go, never mind where. The driver looked at him with shrewd amazement and said: All of you came back fucked up, then he bent over the steering wheel and whispered: My brother went, I'm going to Gan Yavneh. The young man said: Take me to Marar. The driver started the jeep and didn't tell the young man that there was no more Marar. When they came the mountain was empty. The young man stood in the road, put down the kitbag, looked at what was a village, and thought: I live not far from here, but the distance between him and his home was now almost imaginary, he started retreating like somebody who truly dreaded knowing who he was.

Late in the evening he came to Tel Aviv and slept near the sanitation workers in the central bus station. A girl coming back from work stepped on him and he didn't say a word. In the morning he ate a bagel and drank lukewarm tea, went to the boulevard, and walked all along it. When he came to a bench that suited him he put the kitbag down again and sat down. He sat without moving from nine in the morning until five thirty in the evening. Most of the time he looked at the house opposite. The balconies were empty.

Children paraded by, carrying a blue and white flag, singing. He felt hungry but he didn't get up. Opposite a window opened and a woman looked at the sky and then closed the window. The cars passed with a frequency that made him try to understand its rules, but he couldn't. He touched the money in his pocket and thought maybe it was time to get up and go. But he didn't get up and he didn't go. A few downcast people walked along the boulevard. They held their hands clasped almost boldly behind their backs and their faces were down. They looked pale but maybe also full of imaginary gaiety; they imagined they were happy. They stopped not far from him; one of them spoke of some great hour that had not been missed and he was glad about the words that sounded familiar to him. Then sights passed before his eyes that he wanted to forget and blood flowed from him and he planned the destruction of the house opposite. He'd place the TNT on the doorsill behind the security wall. Then he'd connect the detonator and then the red wire and the white wire and would retreat to the bench, hide behind the bench, and activate it. The house wouldn't cave in immediately, but would be opened and then, slowly slowly would sink. When he thought about the anonymous people who would die in the house he felt a distant affection for them, almost a yearning, and in the back of his mind the house was gaping and caving in, gaping and caving in, and he took a pack of cigarettes out of the kitbag and chain-smoked a few. Then, thirsty, he found the hose used to water the boulevard, turned on the faucet, and drank. A sanitation worker tried to stop him, but the young man looked at him with controlled rage and the worker thought: Another one who came back, why do I need troubles. The celebration was in other places.

He thought maybe he should have stayed in camp and eaten fresh vegetables another few days. The gloomy woman with silvery hair could probably have suckled him. Then he could have sung to her how they die in Bab-el-Wad. But he sits here on the bench on the boulevard and the day is nearing its end and he's not yet aware of anything profound, very important, bothering him. Somebody is sitting here on the bench, he thought, but who is really sitting here? The thick trees intertwined in the sky created a kind of gigantic purple bridal veil above his head. Their trunks were oval. The blossoms were also a bit blue. The kitbag was laid on the mown but almost dead lawn that smelled of mold and dying grass. He felt the wetness penetrate the back of the bench, which was eaten by old wetness that hadn't dried. The tree facing him was all gnarled, leaves dropped slowly like a gentle rain of dead children. When he opened his eyes after a strained doze, he saw the foliage and the purple blue and could make out the distant sunset hidden by the buildings, and then he could also sense the redness and even see tatters of it. The sky growing dim, that whisper through the purple and blue nimbus. Once again he made out the wall of the house opposite. The wall was yellowish and tending to rust. On the balcony a woman now stood and hung up her little girl to dry. The little girl dropped and then jumped up with a cheer on what might have been a lawn hidden behind a low concrete wall. And the little girl laughed. What should have been terror was a loud rejoicing squashed to depression by a black Ford and the young man on the bench felt a certain regret, something repressed in the back of his mind wanted to see a woman drying a little girl. The woman vanished from the balcony, a door slammed, another car passed, and from Habima Theater appeared a young woman in a golden dress ignited by the twilight with a certain delicate charm, somehow connected with the joy of the little girl on the lawn. She stopped, looked at him, bent over, his legs heavy, his face tilted a little to the side, and said: Boaz, Boaz Schneerson, what are you doing here, and he didn't grasp that she was talking to him. He got up, picked up the kitbag, and from his angle of vision, when he stood up, a green pin now appeared clasping the young woman's hair, her lips looked spread in an amazement she was afraid to express properly, the lips were now clamped hard, maybe as an attempt to defend herself, the theater on the right seemed shrouded in concave light, so maybe he burst out laughing. The young woman said: You certainly don't even remember my name, and he nodded. Then he said: Not your name and not my name, even though you called me Boaz. She said: Boaz, you fell on your head, and he answered: Yes, I fell on my head. Suddenly I'm on the boulevard, what's on at Habima? She averted her face, looked at the thick-trunked sycamores, the sandy square, the building enveloped in gloom, and tried to recall. Her shoulder holding a purse moved, the purse slipped to the ground, her hand clenched uneasily, she tried to bend down to pick up the purse and yet as if she wanted to stay erect, the little girl opposite started throwing a ball against the wall. The spots above the foliage became dark, on her finger a gold ring was seen shining in the light of the prancing sunbeam, and he approached her, looked at the ring, put the kitbag down on the ground, and started pulling the ring off the finger. She said in pain, Stop, you're hurting me, but he said, I have to take off the ring. The ring was small and stuck to the finger and the young woman who was supposed to run stood still; a tiny spot of blood appeared flickering on her knuckle. She reached out her other hand, grabbed hold of him, pulled him to her in an attempt to get away from him; her eyes were bloodshot, the sky now grew dark fast and her hair clasped in a green pin dropped onto her face like a wild screen, for a moment she couldn't even see, in that second he managed to tear the ring off and her finger bled and when she slipped, he grabbed the finger, licked it, and cleaned off the blood. She slapped his face and shouted: You're really crazy, Boaz Schneerson, you're a bad animal, but after he licked the blood from his lips, he said: You shouldn't get married with phony rings, that's what's killing me. She pushed aside her hair, pulled it back, picked up the purse, looked at her hand, felt dizzy, something seemed shaky even in her crotch, and she said: I'm not married to anybody, I wasn't wearing a wedding ring, once when I met you, you went to Hepzibah and bought me a cheap ring. It's funny you don't remember. You came from the settlement, maybe that was the same ring.