Mr. Mani (40 page)

—It is a light, Father, in which two different lights contend, a tawny, free-flowing one from the desert and a bluish one born from the sea that slowly ascends the mountains, gathering the light of the rocks and the olive trees on its way. They meet in Jerusalem—imbibe each other there—subsume each other there—and conjoin at evening into a clear, winy glow that settles through the treetops branch by branch and turns to a coppery red, which—reaching the tip of the window—inspires the worshipers to leap to their feet and bellow the closing prayer in a great wave of supplication that washes over the frozen world. Meanwhile, Mani was seeking to outdo the cantor—to outsing him—to outshout him—while little Mani and all the children joined in with loud cries, working themselves up to a fever pitch that abated only with the sounding of the ram's horn—which made me most happy, because I knew that as of that moment my homeward journey had begun. Are you listening?

—The prayer ended and large watermelons were carried into the synagogue and sliced and handed out to the worshipers to assuage their thirst. In the courtyard outside we met the womenfolk and wished one another a good year, after which we started slowly home, where we had a light dinner that filled us at once. People were already knocking on the door—women come to give birth after waiting for the holy day to end—and the Swede hurried below to admit them while Linka changed out of her white dress and went down to mop the floor and be of help. I went over the next morning's travel arrangements with Mani, who made some remark and added with a laugh, “But you will not go—I will have the Turkish army arrest you—I have come to like you too much.” His making a joke of it made me feel better, as if he had already come to terms with our departure. Are you listening?

—In the morning a wagon came to pick me up at Jaffa Gate. Linka was sitting in it. I saw that her belongings had dwindled drastically. She had left most of her clothes with the Swede to give away to charity. She was pale and her eyes glistened redly as though after a big cry. Mani, on the other hand, seemed quite content with himself. He sat calmly by the driver, a heavy winter overcoat on his knees. If I had had my wits about me, I would have know what to make of that coat instead of simply staring at it blankly.

—Because since Beirut I have kept going over the clues, real and imaginary, that he gave us, until there is nothing that does not now seem a clue: the way he looked at the wheels of the train in the station—his asking the stoker how fast it could go—the seat he chose for himself...

—Yes, Papa dear, that was the first surprise. Instead of saying good-bye at the station, he boarded the train and informed us that he meant to see us off at the ship. In my innocence I assumed that he planned to take a carriage back that same night, which was the reason for the overcoat. I was actually glad that he was coming along, because I too found it hard to part from him and from Jerusalem, which vanished all at once behind the first downhill bend. Are you listening to me, Papa?

—No. But your head was nodding a bit—I thought that perhaps you had dozed off. I know that this has been wearisome for you, but I am nearing the end now—in fact, that is what I began with. Are you listening?

—We pulled into the station in Jaffa, where a crowd was rushing noisily about, and set out immediately for the port. Once again he began scolding our haste to depart. “But you have seen nothing yet,” he said. “Do you think Jerusalem is Palestine?” We could spy our ship in the distance—I must say that this time my little consumptive from the
gare
had outdone herself and ordered us a big Austrian steamship. The three of us were rowed out to it in a lighter manned by singing Arabs who flung us on deck with heave-hos. We were received there graciously and shown to two most pleasant cabins, from which we proceeded to the dining room for a late lunch, elegantly served us by a galley crew that plied us with great quantities of wine. Linka was wan and silent—rather withdrawn—and Mani and I had to joke with each other by ourselves. “What will you do on the waves without me?” he asked. “Who will see to your tranquillity pills?” The overcoat lay on a chair beside us like a big, hairy, faithful pet. We went on deck to have a smoke and a look at the white houses of Jaffa with their great minaret. The waves lapped at the ship. More lighters kept coming all the time, and the boatmen sang and heave-hoed their frightened passengers onto the deck while Mani looked on with an ironic, slightly mocking expression that I had never noticed in him before—that made me think of a first Mani slowly bursting open and discharging a second one from its midst. We sat for a long while, enjoying the cool, moist breeze and letting the afternoon hours slip languidly by while the last of the passengers arrived. We discussed the recent days—the clinic—the big Swede—young Mani. All of a sudden I took some coins from my pocket and asked him to buy his children gifts from us, especially the boy. He listened with a preoccupied air as I told him about our excursions together—about how his son worshiped him and craved his presence—about how fortunate it was that he would now have some time for him. At last he said: “
He
at least will know what he is craving for; I crave a father I never had and of whose existence I know so little that each time I seek to catch a glimpse of him in my son, I see not the young man who was killed in a brawl before my birth in the walled city, but the wily old face of my grandfather, standing before me in his black rabbinical clothes.” Linka sat there half-listening, as if she knew our talk was but a masquerade; she kept gazing out to sea, where the sun was now being punished with a fiery death. She was still very pale; she never touched the glass in front of her. She was waiting—without a word—for the farewells. Are you listening? Are you?

—But there were no farewells, that much you know. When the last call rang for the last lighter taking visitors back to shore, his movements grew suddenly lethargic; he cocked his head as if he had not heard, spread his coat out on the seat beside him, and said, “You have chosen a fine ship, but the waves are the same waves; I had better sail as far as Haifa with you to see how Efrayim makes out with them. This overcoat of mine will keep me warm on deck at night, but have no fear—I won't be going all the way to Europe with you.” I saw Linka's eyes open wide with horror; Mani beckoned to one of the deckhands, gave him the coins I had handed him, and looked down just in time to see the last lighter slip away from the ship and head back for the shore, which now began to wobble slightly. The houses of Jaffa shook a bit as if struck by a mild earthquake, and the green orange groves on the hills staggered backward. You see, Father, that ship was so quiet—its motion was so imperceptible—that we appeared to be standing still while an invisible hand tugged Palestine to the south, so that the land—now cloaked in darkness—floated slowly away as we observed its extraordinary motion. “Well, then,” said Mani, regarding me with a melancholy smile, “how is your stomach?” More to himself than to me, though, he whispered without waiting for an answer: “But what should be wrong with it? The fear, after all, has left you.” Are you listening, Father? Are you?

—You are fading out, Father. I can't see your face. No, don't fall asleep on me; don't leave me all alone. Wait ... wait ... We sat silently on deck, wrapped in our blankets, watching the black land drift slowly by. The moon set. The stars flared up. Linka fell into a deep sleep and began slipping out of her chair, so that we had to take her down to her cabin. Mani helped me. Suddenly, feeling his hand against mine, I knew we were engaged in a wordless struggle for her...

—For Linka.

—Linka ... are you listening?

—Give me some sign that you are ... don't keep so vindictively silent. There is—there was—no sign of dawn yet; the only illumination came from the lighthouse in Haifa, whose beacon revolved on a treeless hill in the dark shadow of a Carmelite monastery. The ship cast anchor at a distance from the city, whose little white houses, all neatly arranged in rows, were still swaddled in morning mist. The two of us stood on deck. Mani made me promise not to wake up Linka, and I thought: at long last we are saying good-bye! We waited for a launch that brought out some German Templars, each of whom the captain welcomed aboard in Austrian. Mani stood near him in his large overcoat, which made his dark silhouette look bigger and stronger, as if there were a second Mani inside it, embracing the first. The last of the Templars came aboard, and the deckhands waited for Mani to lower himself into the launch before raising anchor. All at once, though, he said to me: “You know, I have an urge to see Beirut. Of course, I haven't been there for twenty-five years, but you still won't find a better guide to it than me.” And that was when I felt my heart sink, Papa, because I realized that we were fated to have him follow us all the way to Europe—to Cracow—to Hasula—to Jelleny-Szad—to this corner—to the sofa by the fire—right into our beds. Are you listening? Give me some sign!

—In Beirut—it was noon now—all the passengers were invited to go ashore and enjoy the city until evening, when we would sail for Stamboul. Mani—his overcoat draped over one arm; the stubble of a beard on his cheeks; his hair looking grayer than ever—seemed—for the first time—to grow confused; his movements had become almost unrecognizably slow, as if he now were running on another—an infinite—time. We literally had to pull him ashore, where we stood by the wharves amid a crowd of passengers, many of them from other ships, looking for a cab. The hansoms kept trotting splendidly by, one after another, festooned with bright frills and bells; Mani, however, let all of them pass until at last he hailed one that was drawn by a coal-black horse. “Why, here is our lost steed,” he said with a smile, putting Linka and me in the back seat, which was spread with a colorful Persian rug, and seating himself up front by the coachman, his broad back facing us like a threat, although one that was aimed at himself. For the first time since leaving Katowice and taking the night train to Prague, I felt Linka clinging to me for protection. She had turned back into a girl—the jackknife, Father, that had sprung all its blades was now neatly folded again. Are you listening?

—We began driving through the city, which Mani was less interested in showing to us than in sating his memories with. It was for him a nostalgic reunion with places he had not seen for a quarter of a century; he discussed them intensely with the driver, who stopped from time to time to point something out to him or to dismount and pilot him into some little street or entranceway, leaving the two of us forlornly sitting in the hansom, parked in the middle of some marketplace or courtyard and surrounded by a lively motley of Arabs. We could not have known that our Mani had finished writing his drama—had added the stage directions—had cast the lead—had even picked his audience—and was now only looking for a place to set up his theater and put on the play. You are not listening to me! Will you listen?!

—Because when the carriage wheels raided at last over the rails of the railway line, he stopped the driver and got out wonderingly. You see, there had been no trains in Beirut when he had left it. At once he ordered the coachman to take us to the train station, as if it were there that the dispute between us would be settled. It was late afternoon now, and the first frail wisps of dusk streaked the sweet, strong Mediterranean light. When we reached the station, we saw that it was not far from the sea, in which our Austrian steamship was lolling regally. An unfamiliar flag was being run up on it. We entered the station house, which was as small as the one in Jerusalem but dirtier; in the space in front of the tracks some white-gowned Mohammedan pilgrims were hurrying to board a narrow-gauge train that was only a few cars long and still had no locomotive. There was no urgency, however; on the contrary, there was a sense of calm, which was heightened by the slow pacing of two Turkish sentries along the tracks. They had deep scabbards strapped to their sides and were lazily chewing on their mustaches while looking scornfully at the passengers. I could feel all eyes rest on us as soon as we stepped inside. A railway official came over to see what we wanted and Mani saluted him. “
Yahud,
” I heard whispers around us, “
yahud.
” Yes, we were
yahud,
Mani assured the crowd at once. You could see that the place appealed to him, and when he heard that the train outside was bound for Damascus, he ran his glance over the soft clay hills as though someone important or beloved were waiting for him there and began to walk along the tracks in the wake of the Turkish soldiers. Only now, though, do I understand that—in the yellow squall of time closing in on us—the one passion left him was to set up the theater he had been traveling with for so long and to augment the audience brought by him from Palestine with the Turkish soldiers—the returning pilgrims—even the railway official, who had begun following him, determined to ferret out the true motives—were they really intending to take the train?—of the European tourists. But Mani was not about to tip his hand. “Well, well,” he said, coming back up the rails with a look of perfect composure, “so there is a railway line here now too. Who knows, perhaps in a few years you will be able to take a train straight from Jerusalem to that Oświ[ecedil]cim. of yours without having to brave the sea!” All of a sudden he stepped up to Linka and hugged her fiercely, then took her hand and kissed it front and back—you might have thought that the lust of that Polish
pan
from Basel had gotten into him. “Will you not leave her with me?” he asked me a last time, an odd, unrecognizable look on his face. I laughed nervously and said, “She is not mine.” “So you say,” he accused me bitterly, “and yet you are taking her from me. Let us say good-bye, then. The coachman will take you to your ship and I will take the train to Damascus. I never have been there. It is said to be a beautiful city.” And with that he asked us for money. He—who had never even spoken to us about money before: It was not clear how much he wanted, or if he was referring to a loan or a gift, and I began to hem and haw ... are you listening?