A
Cracked Icon
by Elisha Porat
Translated from the Hebrew by Eddie Levenston.
A Cracked Statuette
In the summer of seventy-nine,
Sheltered in the shade, on a step in Market
Street, in the shop of a Christian Arab,
While my hand was stroking the halo of hair
Of a graven statuette -
A startling voice suddenly broke out,
A young announcer begging, pleading: hurry, whoever is able,
Whoever is near, run to the tower
Of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher -
Through the lattice you may know her:
Wrapped all in black but her hair is fair,
And her car still pulses below her.
And when I arrived - I was late -
With those who were called to her aid,
The helpers, the radio was screaming,
And all the city was frozen, holding its breath -
Already she lay there, stretched out in the square:
Innocent, beautiful, and wrapped all about in the shining
Radiance of a cracked statuette.
Translated from the
Hebrew by Asher Harris.
In the summer of `79 I went to Jerusalem for a few weeks to complete a piece of
literary research. I had started the work, a bibliographical study of the life
and writings of some forgotten Central European Jewish poet, about three years
earlier. I had tried, I had toiled, I wanted very much to finish the work but I
hadn't succeeded. Lack of concentration, the first signs of fatigue, symptoms of
the serious illness that was lurking in my body, though I knew nothing about it,
this was what undermined my health and prevented me from finishing the work I so
much wanted to see finished. Or rather, I wanted to be rid of the man, this
wonderful Jewish poet who died so suddenly in the prime of life, as they say.
Actually I checked and discovered that he was exactly fifty years and three days
old when he collapsed and fell on the steps of the national theater, in the
heart of the capital city of his central European homeland. His personality and
the vicissitudes of his life gradually took over my own life and work, leading
me to neglect my religious studies and the many pleasures it promised me, my
free classes at the University where several well-known book-lovers awaited me,
and the interesting discussion groups that took place in various forums on the
chilly Jerusalem evenings.
I thought I would go back for a few weeks to the same cramped students' lodgings
where I had spent my University years. But as soon as I entered the office at
the entrance to the building, I realized it wouldn't do. The chief secretary, an
old acquaintance of mine, who always amazed me with her marvelous memory, her
offhand recital of my identity card number and date of birth, had been replaced.
The pleasant maintenance engineer seemed to have been discharged and there were
unfamiliar smells
coming from the locked kitchen. No one in the dormitory remembered me. The
entire building had been renovated, and was all steel and glass. When I went up
to the second floor to take a quick look at the small synagogue, I couldn't find
the carved wooden table where I used to sit with the others who arrived late for
prayers. So I went into town and found myself a long narrow little room, a kind
of cell with standing room only. I put down the few belongings I had brought
with me and the old woman, a member of the family from whom I had rented the
room at a considerable discount, was very happy to see me. She remembered and
reminded me of the good days many years ago when I had been a rash young soldier
who had very much alarmed her and her late husband. The ideas I had then, and
the dangerous tricks I would get up to in the divided city!
I sat with her for a while, sharing with her a supper of cheese and toast, and
hurried off to the National Library, straight to the reading room, to continue
where I had left off three long years ago.
On my way to the library I saw other people in a hurry. It was Friday morning,
everybody was rushing somewhere, and I didn't notice pay any attention to the
excitement of some who passed me by. On a counter in the entrance lobby there
was a display of English books for sale and for browsing and I was reminded of
the short trip to Europe that my wife and I had decided to make. I was having a
lot of trouble with the preparations for the trip and had made a lot of
arrangements in order to reach the Italian coast on a cheap ferry. But I had
left her to take care of all the details and asked her not to bother me in
Jerusalem. I promised that as soon as I had finished, which would be long before
the New Year holidays in the autumn, I would come home and help her complete the
arrangements for the journey. I stopped by the counter and stretched out a hand
to one of the English books, but the crowd gathering in the entrance lobby
caught my eye. There was a party of
teachers clustered together and a group of panicky young girls all shouting at
one another:
"Has anyone seen Hagar? Has anyone seen Hagar?"
Even I, who happened entirely by chance to be in the Humanities building on my
way to the reading room in the library, and was not a student in any department,
not even a Jerusalemite, was asked several times: "Have you seen Hagar? Was
Hagar here?"
I didn't answer the questions and continued on my way up the path. No, I don't
know any Hagar, and who on earth is looking for this lost Hagar, on a bright
summers day, on a Friday morning, with the Sabbath already threatening to close
the library, stop the traffic in the streets and shut down the whole town? Out
of the corner of my ear I heard snatches of conversation between the frightened
girls and the people on the paths. "Why should I have seen Hagar? What did she
lose at my place? Has something happened to her?" And again the girls replied
fearfully "Its several days since anyone heard from her."
OK, so no ones heard from her, what could happen to a nice young girl like the
bunch getting in my way? She must be sequestered with some keen, impassioned
young lover, who wont let her go and join the Sabbath tour she had arranged with
her friends. After all, I was a young man once myself and I too once enjoyed the
taste of a close encounter with a young woman who wouldnt let me go, and I
couldn't just get up and leave her. When we relaxed for a moment and glanced at
the clock above the bed, we saw that the Sabbath was over, as though it were
just one brief moment of love.
As I walked along I remembered one of my friends who used to retire from the
world with his girl friends for days on end. When his anxious mother failed to
make contact with him by telephone, because he was deep inside his beloved and
couldn't be bothered to answer the telephone, even though he knew, most
certainly knew that it was his worried mother on the line, he would make fun of
her in the passionate ears of the girl on fire beneath him, "Really, she knows
no limits, now she's going to call my brother and later, if there is still no
reply, she'll ring the department office", and when he was in the mood he would
imitate for us, just as he imitated his mother for his girl friend, the reply of
his brother, who was a little slow of
speech and took his time about replying. "What do you want of him, Mother? Let
him have a good time. He's probably holed up somewhere with a girl. No, Mother,
I'm not going to be the one to interfere and spoil his shabbat...."
Walking quickly, I got away from the noisy crowd of panicky students and the
teachers from their department who were running around, restless and anxious,
among them. Obviously they had planned to go on a trip together on the Sabbath,
or had been asked to go and hold an intensive seminar on symbolism in the
Kabbala in one of the new young settlements, thirsty for arcane Jewish
mysticism. And, as usual, the bus was full, the driver was getting irritable,
the teachers were impatient, and of course she was the one, Hagar, according to
what I had heard when walking past them, there must be something about her that
I hadn't managed to catch in my rapid progress, she was the one who was late.
Notorious for being late, a congenital laggard, just the same in the youth
movement, or maybe just a student with no self-discipline, always the last to
arrive at the parking lot.
As usual, my imagination continued to play, she's a very attractive girl,
something very special, as they say about such girls, who are on the go day and
night, "ethereal types," not searching for obscure manuscripts on the Kabbala
and its symbols, but making plans for their own "idiosyncrasies." Whatever will
distinguish them, at first glance, from the ruck of noisy students, here in the
capital from their backwater on the coastal plain, who form the majority in the
Faculty of Humanities, especially in those departments that teach Jewish Thought
and Mysticism.
I entered the library, skirting the permanent exhibitions and the current
temporary exhibits in the lobby, glancing into the cafeteria to see if the
guardian angels of the Sabbath, always in such a hurry to close down the coffee
machines, had got there before me, and went up the wide staircase to the reading
room and my own desk, under the new pair of fluorescent lights that had recently
been installed. Everyone was busy in town with final preparations for the
Sabbath and it was only lunatics like me, enslaved by unfinished literary
research , who put off welcoming the Sabbath to the very last moment. The books
I had asked for from the nice librarian, who always blushed whenever I went up
to her to ask for a book, whose face was full of tiny pimples that she tried so
pitifully to conceal under a layer of cosmetics, were already waiting for me on
the edge of the shelf, stacked one on top of the other, to make it easy for me
to carry them to my desk She gave me a shy smile through her blushes. "Why are
you fixated on such an obscure poet?" I could see in her eyes the question that
she didn't ask, "and why do you bother me, always when I am on duty, with
hunting for references to him?"
I turned towards her but didn't bring my mouth too close to hers, lest she be
repelled by the smell of garlic I had brought with me from the coastal plain. I
lowered my voice, as though sharing a secret with her, as if to say "never mind,
make an effort, I'm not a selfish monster like some that you know. I won't
forget you, my dear librarian. I shall praise your assistance in my forthcoming
article on the rediscovery of this obscure poet. And not just in a footnote,
like the more famous professional writers who sit with you here in the reading
room. No, I shall cite your name in my short introduction. I shall add a word or
two, a warm expression of gratitude, and you will know I have not forgotten
you."
I sat at my desk and arranged in front of me everything I would need in my work
for the next few hours. Also the tiny radio that my wife had bought for me
before my last spell of reserve service, so that "I could hear the sounds of the
approaching peace" and the detailed account of Saadats visit to Jerusalem. I had
a terrible habit, that I couldn't get rid of even when in the reading room, of
switching on the radio every hour or so in order "to hear the news," even when I
knew that nothing new could have happened and the news readers would just go on
repeating the same old stuff. Actually it was the jingle that preceded the news
that I could never get used to hearing without a quickening of the pulse, a
dangerous increase in blood pressure every time it stole into my awareness.
During the war years and afterwards I abstained totally from the radio and all
its chit-chat. I simply boycotted it, as my wife put it, out of a childish rage
I was unable to control. It was the same damn radio that called on me to report
for duty with my unit that Saturday night, the sixth of October, a Sabbath I
shall never forget.
But the books engaged my attention, the time flew by, and my own life became
entangled with the life of this forgotten Jewish poet, whom I had rescued,
together with his few poems, from the pit of oblivion into which he had sunk. I
learnt too late what every apprentice biographer learns in his first year. I
found the experience pleasant, the occasional loss of our own painful, familiar
identity that we carry around with us all the time and immersion in the life and
personality of someone else. Even though the pattern of his life is a
fabrication and his troubles are not real and his pain is not mine. But I also
knew that reawakening to my own life was guaranteed and the wonderful workings
of the soul are aware, as though pre-programmed, when the time has come to
awake. And when the contagious magical life of this forgotten poet, this other
importunate, invasive creature, threatens to stifle the soul of the supportive
biographer. In other words, my soul, and if I were to remember to go over all
this with the librarian, she would surely express an amiable surprise: when
exactly should one bring this sweet illusion to an end, this sense of merging
both life and destiny? But before I could raise my eyes to her and ponder her
response, my tiny radio gave a sudden squeak and the familiar six preliminary
signals before the news severed me from my work I looked at her and listened.
2.
Suddenly the voice of a young newscaster, seemingly a novice, a voice I didn't
recognize, burst forth from the tiny radio and with dreadful excitement - even
my tiny radio was scared - urged listeners to hurry, hurry, anyone who could,
anyone close, anyone who knew the alleys of the Old City. For a moment I thought
this was some wild radio stunt, trying to ape a rescue
with the help of a radio alarm. I had heard of all kinds of staged leg-pulls and
stunts, broadcast without warning, that had wreaked enormous havoc. It was hard
for me to detach myself from the endearing coils of my poet, and I almost turned
off the radio. But the voice of the young newscaster trembling with emotion,
would not let his listeners go. He was no longer urging, he was imploring,
almost sobbing: "Hurry, hurry! Anyone who can, anyone close by. Anyone who knows
the high tower of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. In the Christian Quarter of
the Old City, to rescue..." Hey, I said to myself, this is serious, this is a
genuine alarm call, not just a stunt, a staged leg-pull.
And the newscaster didn't stop. He tells me, she has climbed up to the tower,
you can easily see from below. You can identify her through the credentials. She
is wearing a black jacket light, summer material, long trousers with a flapping
top. And most important, she has long bright fair hair tied together with a
shiny black ribbon. You cant miss her. And her car, a small German car, a yellow
Beatle or whatever it is, is parked below. She can also be identified by means
of her German car. How did she squeeze it in there, in that maze of narrow
alleys in the Christian Quarter? Goodness knows, the voice of the announcer
trembles as he calls repeatedly to his listeners to hurry to her rescue. To this
blonde beauty in black, before she throws herself off the tower of the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher, down on to the stone square below.
I listened tensely to the newscaster, I had already decided to gather up my
books and pack them for my pimply librarian. I am, after all, fully conversant
with the maze of alleys in the Old City. Its not just that I've walked around
there a lot, conducted tours for visitors, strolled there a thousand times.
About a year ago I took part in a special course arranged for enthusiasts who
are expert in the mysteries of the Christian Quarter. And if this novice
newscaster - I can visualize his trembling hands, his wide eyes and his knees
knocking nervously against the hard studio table - if he is calling for speedy
assistance, it's me he has in mind! If he expects good citizens of Jerusalem to
rise and hurry to rescue the young woman, he means me! Even though I'm not a
Jerusalemite. If he is begging, through his quivering microphone, for a safety
net to be stretched out below the dread tower, he means me! Why am I hanging
around here, with my pile of books, embroiled in the life and works of some
forgotten poet, when soon a blonde flower of beauty will be writhing there
below, her hair bound in a shiny black ribbon? Why am I loitering in this
peaceful reading room, when in the next moment a black trouser-suit top of light
summery material may be flapping in the wind above the trousers and the shapely
ankles?
I rose from my place and broke all the rules of silence in the reading room. I
ran to the blushing librarian, dragged the trolley and loaded all my books on
it, shouting at the few readers in the room: "Are you all deaf? Cant you hear
the alarm call on the radio?" And when they rose in surprise and asked "What
alarm? We cant' hear any siren," I continued on my way to the exit. "Never mind
that its Friday. Shabbat can wait. It won't begin yet, Don't be afraid, come
with me, they are calling for you. Lend a hand in the rescue of the young
woman." As though the Sabbath would wait for the rescue of some suicide, or I
had the authority to delay its entry. I left in a hurry, avoiding the
slow-moving elevator, dashing down the stairs towards the exit. "Come and help,"
I shouted to everyone in my way, "lend a hand! The safety net has to be really
taut." And they gazed at me as if I were a lunatic, wandering at large around
the paths of the campus, at noon on a Friday in the summer, the summer of '79
almost six years after that accursed shabbat, the sixth of October, that I can
never forget.
I cannot remember how I reached the Old City, how I passed all the flowers and
the traffic-lights, how I suddenly arrived, with the tiny radio strident in my
breast pocket, ceaselessly broadcasting the appeals of the newscaster, whom I
had begun to like. I cannot remember how I suddenly found myself leaning against
a wall in shadow, next to a steep step, in the heart of the market area, in the
souvenir shop of a Christian Arab who lived in the Quarter. I remember only how
my hands reached out for the carved icon of a saint that was lying there, I
don't remember his name, with long blonde hair circling round his head like a
radiant halo. I remember holding the icon in my hands, fingering the shape and
feeling the halo of hair painted in crude colors. I remember touching every
irregularity in this piece of carved wood. And the young announcer urging me
constantly to leave the shelter of cool shade and emerge into the hot summer
sun. To leave the concealment of the stairway and run to the square below the
church tower, the square of the Holy Sepulcher. I do not remember whether I had
any anxious dialog with the newscaster in my bosom, or whether it only seemed to
me that I was breathing heavily, after an exhausting rush up the stone steps,
surrounded by other puffing runners. All the would-be rescuers summoned by the
radio alarm.
I remember that on the way I passed a small German car, its engine running. I
even forgot at that moment that this might be Hagar's small car. Who on earth is
Hagar? What Hagar are you talking about? I came to a halt in the middle of my
run, a little way past the car, and struck myself sharply on my sweaty forehead.
Hagar, you idiot, is a name you have heard before this morning, you just didn't
take it in. It just passed you by. Hagar, of course, I remembered now, that was
the student who was late for the rendezvous. And I thought it was just a normal
lateness, of a habitual latecomer, and laughed at the group of students
clustered in the entrance to the Humanities building. Yes, and now the
newscaster was annoying me, what did he mean, a Beetle? This could mislead the
rescuers. Just now I ran past a car, I'm sure it was simply an old Golf. Like a
know-it-all I admonished the newscaster in my breast pocket. As if this could
help in the rescue. What difference could it make to the tower of the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher, or to Hagar, intending right now to plunge to her death,
what kind of car is waiting for her there below? what difference it make?
But, I repeated to myself, as though this was a sentence I had to learn by
heart, every sound and syllable exactly right, it was a Golf, an old Golf. A
German car, certainly, a small one for sure, but you have to be accurate when
people are running with intent to take part in a rescue. As though I were to
make a mistake and call the taut safety net a safety mattress. How could you
rescue anybody with a little old safety mattress? When the square of the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher is so large?
And then, after some delay as became clear later, a rescue squad was properly
organized. The out-of-breath volunteers who, like me, had come running from all
corners of the city lent a hand and stretched out a safety net. The whole town,
preparing for a summer shabbat, held its breath. The alarm calls from the radio
ceased, the noise of commerce died down. No siren was heard and in the blue sky
above the church tower not a bird was to be seen. I couldn't even hear the sound
of the engine of her small car. What a wonderful moment of stillness and
compassion reigned in the city. Perhaps, if it had lasted a little longer, she
might have been saved. Perhaps she would have lent an ear to the frozen
stillness that had seized the city.
Perhaps she would have paid attention to the hundreds of thousands of people
around her holding their breath. And perhaps she would have reversed the order
of that fatal sequence of events: first tucking in the ends of her flapping
upper garment and tightening her wide trousers. Then firmly tying up her flowing
golden hair with the black ribbon. Then, passing her pale tired hands across her
face, she would light the long cigarette inserted in the cigarette holder she
loved to smoke. And finally coming slowly down the slippery stone steps of the
church tower, with the crowd of people who had responded to the alarm call
giving a tremendous sigh of relief from below the holy grave. Then going
straight to the Golf, that old car, whose engine all the time had not stopped
running for her. And I and all the volunteer rescuers and the goodhearted
newscaster who had been so touched by her fate even though, like me, he had not
actually known her, would have placed the safety net around her shoulders and
wrapped her in it.. Just as we wrapped blankets round the burning soldiers who
survived the flames in the days that followed that accursed Sabbath when the
October War began.
And once again I don't remember exactly what happened. I remember only that I
was late arriving in the square, like the rest of the rescuers. For some reason
I was clasping the carved icon in my hand. Had I brought it all the way from the
souvenir shop? How is it that the shop owner hadn't taken the statuette from me?
I could already guess what would happen in the end. I had seen too many similar
endings during that October, nearly six years ago. I tightened my grip on the
carved wooden statuette. There was nothing to do: she already lay spreadeagled
in the square of the Holy Sepulcher. How beautiful she looked lying there, how
innocent in the black shroud she had wrapped about herself, her black costume of
light summery material. She was swathed in a bubble of radiance that rose above
her. A bright glow that halted the rescuers for a few moments before they fell
upon her and began the attempt at resuscitation. The glow that arises from
statuettes, from carved icons of saints, from enlargements of the pictures of
frozen beauties.
I moved away slowly from the circle of rescuers. I was redundant here, there was
no longer anything useful I could do. When I turned round I could see a huge
crowd closing in on the remains of Hagar Reichenstein. The rescue teams and the
curious had come together and surrounded her in a tight circle in the center of
which she disappeared from sight. Some photographers even had arrived, eager
tourists and police photographers. But I had seen everything I needed to see. No
doubt the charming announcer on the radio in my breast pocket had seen it all
with me, since he had fallen completely silent and once again you could hear the
roar of the city and the crowds swamping the bubble of quiet in the church
square. The sound of sirens was deafening, the engines of the rescue vehicles
thundered and the police loud- speakers blared at a peak of intensity. I came
slowly down the stairs, past the pools of shade towards the souvenir shop of the
Christian Arab who lived in the Quarter. No one noticed me as I returned the
cracked icon to its place.
3.
The following Sunday some funeral notices were published in the morning
newspapers and I, who until the previous Friday had never heard of Hagar
Reichenstein, began with the help of the newspapers to follow her on her last
journey. Already by noon on Friday the news had spread that Hagar had jumped to
her death from the high tower in the Old City. A further item of
news was published, that during the Thursday night she had made contact, without
giving her name, with the psychological counseling service of the Municipality.
There wasn't much written about her last conversation with the consultant on
duty, but it seems the Jerusalem branch was really struck by her distress. They
even sent a mobile emergency unit to her, with two volunteers who had a
prolonged conversation with her to calm her down. What did they talk about with
her for so long? What did Hagar tell them? The newspapers also reported that
things were in a mess in the local branch, consultations were not recorded or
listed and it was difficult to know what was the real nature of her distress. In
the local Jerusalem newspaper, which at that time was just beginning to appear
regularly, a young journalist wrote that everything was against her: the
consultants on duty did not realize that she remained set in her decision to
jump from the tower, even after their long conversation with her. The emotional
appeals of friends, on the radio, by telephone and face to face, including my
novice announcer, were of no help. And members of her family, whom the
journalists were quick to locate, said what they found most distressing was that
even though Hagar was in such anguish she had not turned to them.
I returned to my books and my unfinished research at the library. As I
approached the desk, my blushful librarian beckoned to me, drew me aside a few
paces and said how awfully sorry she was about what had happened on Friday
morning.
"Who could have known?" she said, "I'm sorry we behaved with such lack of
feeling towards you. If we had known...."
I thanked her for what she had said and said that I too was sorry, I myself had
not known how much I would be moved by the fate of the young student. And when
she had once again loaded the trolley with the books I had ordered, I added that
ever since the war I had not always been responsible for my actions. Sometimes
surprising things happened to me, like the startling short cut that had brought
me into the Christian Quarter. And strange meeting on city steps, weird visions
I had had since the War, not only by night but sometimes even in broad daylight,
by the huge windows of the national library. She blushed again as she leaned
over the books and told me that already on Friday morning, when she heard the
news bulletin, she had realized where I was rushing off to in such unseemly
haste. She even thought, judging from the brief and imprecise details supplied
by the radio, that she had known poor Hagar. She must have seen her more than
once at the Lending Desk of the reading room.
After the sad funeral held in the village of her birth in the south of Israel,
rumors about the life and work of Hagar began to find their way into the daily
newspapers and weekly supplements. And I developed the habit of clipping from
the newspapers any items dealing with her life and death, and collecting them in
a special file which I kept together with my large file of bibliographical
research. I asked my wife to help me collect the clippings, but she was not
enthusiastic and asked me quietly whether this was my latest crazy fad. Like
many of the inhabitants of our small settlement, she was acquainted with a
gifted young scholar who had become so totally enslaved by his collection of
newspaper clippings that he made life hell for the whole family. But I knew this
could not become a chronic, long term obsession; how long could the local press
go on writing about the death of a beautiful young woman? So I mollified my
wife, saying "never mind, it will pass." I meant both my own craze of collecting
clippings and the distasteful rummaging in the life of Hagar Reichenstein which
the press, primarily the weeklies, was pursuing with such unhealthy delight.
There seemed no end to the things published about her after her death. That she
was an absolute prodigy among the students of kabbalistic symbolism and in the
privacy of her modest apartment had written an outstanding book on the secrets
of Jewish mysticism. A book the likes of which had not been written or conceived
since the great days of Professor Gershon Sholem. On those enlightened nights
that she lived through one after the other - to quote the woman journalist in
the local Jerusalem newspaper I had so much difficulty in obtaining, it was
snapped up so quickly - there had been revealed to the late lamented Hagar
awesome secrets and the most amazing arcane explanations, of a kind that no one
previously, neither the teachers nor the students of the department, nor any
independent scholar had imagined and certainly not committed to writing.
Furthermore, the journalist reported, her doctoral dissertation - which she
would concentrate on from time to time and leave in the hands of one secretary
or another in order to devote herself to one of those wonderful whims that I
have no space to enlarge upon here - was worth its weight in gold. And here was
this one distressing matter, the exact nature and convoluted development of
which neither the eager journalist nor her innocent readers succeeded in fully
understanding, a sad question that led to the loss of a doctoral dissertation of
rare quality - and there is grave doubt whether it will ever be recovered. It is
also doubtful whether readers can be found with enough sense to gain
enlightenment from a careful reading, or who will remember the brilliant student
of such amazing yet mysterious beauty. She who made discoveries that seem not to
have been in accord with her power of understanding and drove her to throw
herself to death from the tower of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, no less, in
the center of the Christian Quarter, in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem.
I went up to the lending desk and showed my librarian what was written in the
newspaper. As usual she blushed a little, then bent down and took a bunch of
newspaper clippings from a hidden drawer, laid them down in front of me and
said: "Take them, theyre yours, I collected them for you." And when out of the
blue I invited her to come with me to the cafeteria and talk at leisure about
the life and death of Hagar Reichenstein, who day by day was taking up more and
more space in more and more newspapers, she agreed, handed over responsibility
for the shift to her colleague and accompanied me down the wide staircase to the
cafeteria. Once again we passed the permanent exhibition of the library, the
temporary exhibition, and she said that but for her untimely death, Hagar
Reichenstein might also have seen her brilliant studies exhibited in the glass
cases. I said how very sad I was not to have known her during her lifetime, but
only for a moment or two after her terrible death. For what I had heard about
her since her death had become public knowledge had made me very curious. The
librarian giggled - or maybe it only seemed that way to me - and said she had
heard that quite a few men had fallen in love with her. And some, according to
current gossip in the University, had come away from the encounter wounded and
dismayed
We sat down at a small table in the cafeteria and I remarked that there was one
person I very much felt to be missing from our table. She asked who I had in
mind. I told her about the fine young newscaster on the radio who had been so
gripped by anxiety. The one who had broadcast a non-stop alarm call from his
station, from the moment the studio had known about her disappearance. It was
his words that had jolted me out of the pages of my research on the previous
Friday morning. Were it not for the quiver in his voice, his insistent message
and the tone of grief it is doubtful whether I would have abandoned my forgotten
Jewish poet. Immersion in the details of his life and work had driven from my
mind the sorrow I had carried with me since that accursed war, since that
shabbat, the sixth of October, six years ago. And she said I reminded her of
someone, Yosef Goren by name, who since the war had been publishing agonised
poetry in the weekly literary supplements of the newspapers. "Yosef Goren?" I
said, "Are you sure his name is Yosef Goren?" and she said "Of course, I
remember his poems very well. His name is Yosef Goren. Why? Do you know him?"
I hastened to change the subject of our pleasant conversation back to Hagar
Reichen- stein and her "ethereal" character, avoiding the question that had had
startled and embarrassed me, not even letting her know that yes indeed, I really
might know who he is. Maybe I do know this agonized poet she had mentioned,
Yosef Goren.
We drank the wretched cafeteria coffee and I asked her whether she too had a
small German car. And she said, "Yes, now I remember, the newspapers mentioned
her yellow Beetle, that was waiting for her with its engine running." And I
said, "Listen, Miss Librarian, you have to be accurate. It wasn't a VW. It was a
rotten Golf." "Yellow?" she asked. I don't remember, I surprised myself,
"really, I no longer remember."
I asked her if she could sit with me a little longer and she said yes and I told
her about the two marvels that had happened to me on that day. The first was my
flight across town, straight from the reading room to the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher, no small distance, if you measured it exactly you would find it was
several kilometers. But it was the second marvel that vexed me more and I told
the attentive librarian about that too. The carved wooden icon, the statuette of
the Christian saint with the crown of golden hair, that remained in my hand
after I had left the Arab shop in the alley. And afterwards, I have no idea how
it happened to me, I suddenly found myself with a cracked icon in my hands.
Standing over Hagar Reichenstein, already prostrate on the ground of the Church
square, for the volunteer rescue team, ready to hold out the taut safety blanker
beneath her, never arrived on time.
"Late," I suddenly said aloud, and people turned and looked at us. "Late, they
always arrive too late to rescue anybody."
"Don't get so upset," said the librarian, "I can see how upset you are."
"Yes, I said, "after all the things I saw during the war, when I see anything
comparable, I get upset again." Our inability to save lives, our terrible
impotence has haunted me for almost six years.
She said nothing and I had nothing to add. With difficulty I managed to control
the sudden shivering that had started again. We drained our lousy coffee to the
dregs. I knew she was about to rise and apologize, she was sorry but we were
already late, she must run back to the reading room. Her colleague must be
getting anxious already, waiting for her. I nodded, I had known that this was
exactly how she would behave. Unheard, I thanked her for the good moments she
had granted me. Moments of consolation, that I so much needed after that Friday
morning. I stood up after she left and my gaze fell on a young man hurrying
briskly across the entrance hall. And I thought that that was exactly what the
young newscaster must look like whose voice had so shaken me.
4.
At the end of the summer, just before the religious holidays, I completed my
unfinished research project. The bibliographical inquiry into the life and work
of the poet with whom I had become so involved, for so many weeks of study, did
not yield the results I had hoped for. I also had unexpected difficulty
translating his Central European use of language, the heavy, turgid style, so
remote from Hebrew. I marveled at the way this foreign Jew had succeeded in
translating modern Hebrew poetry into his own language whilst I, a
Hebrew-speaking Jew, had difficulty in understanding the off-putting jargon he
called his mother tongue. I was also disappointed in the archival resources of
the National Library. I wore myself out and made enormous demands on the staff,
and spent several hours ransacking the cellars, which I was allowed to enter in
defiance of the strict rules of library administration. All in vain. I could not
find his book of translations from modern Hebrew poetry. I had to make do with
several surviving long-winded articles and some scraps of text laboriously
gleaned from obscure journals. But the more disappointed I became with what I
discovered of his work, the more I was impressed by the ups and downs of his
life. I found out about his contacts with well-known poets of the period, his
abortive attempts to take his place in the center of literary activity in
Palestine and in the diaspora. Above all, I uncovered his devious relationships
with the women in his life.
I parted from the old lady, the member of my family, from whom I had rented the
"cell with standing room only," and packed my belongings. My stack of cartons
filled with books stood waiting for the van and I sat in the small kitchen
chatting with her, exchanging pleasant memories of the far off days when I was a
brave young soldier in the disputed town. She recalled stories of my night
patrols carried out beyond the ultra-orthodox neighborhoods. And I reminded her
of a forgotten incident which at the time had very much upset her. We ate the
toast she had prepared for me, with loquat jam she had made herself and tea
brewed from herbs she grew in the garden. I told her how I had become involved
in the life and work of the forgotten Jewish poet and how I had wasted precious
weeks on him during the past summer. She consoled me, saying I might be wrong.
The character of the man might yet come across in my work. "Apart from that,"
she added, "there are always surprises. You may go home and find the lost book
waiting for you on the table...."
The van arrived, I loaded my belongings and exchanged parting kisses with my old
kinswoman. I was touched by what she had said, I felt she had tried to ease my
disappointment. "I hope you are right," I said before going down the stairs, "I
hope the little book really is waiting for me on the table."
I visited the reading room of the National Library for the last time, to say
goodbye to the young librarian who had been so helpful to me in my work. As I
crossed the lobby with its exhibitions, I remembered the question she had asked
me about the melancholy poet Yosef Goren. For a moment I thought perhaps she had
mixed him up with an unimportant, uninteresting literary critic with a similar
name, whose fatuous criticism had filled the pages of the literary supplements.
But she had not meant the critic, I knew quite well which Yosef Goren she had in
mind. His excellent poems of memory, recently published, had captured the
attention of the cognoscenti.. Fine poems, sparse and lucid, there was hardly
anything comparable to be seen in the literary journals. I could see that she
was not only a devoted, conscientious librarian but also a keen reader of the
modern poetry of suffering that had appeared since the war. I thought it might
be nice on my part if I praised her for her taste in poets. But I refrained,
after the frank discussion we had unexpectedly had in the cafeteria I couldn't
say anything to her that was artificial and insincere.
Although she had been the first to get up and had rushed out of the cafeteria in
order to relieve her colleague on duty at the lending desk of the reading room,
I knew that her feelings had been sharp and exactly the same as mine, after my
embarrassing uprush of emotion, the war memories that suddenly returned at
inappropriate moments, the trembling of my hands that threatened to recur, the
final picture of Hagar Reichenstein, spreadeagled in the I approached her desk
to say goodbye. She stood up when she saw me and went to the nearby wall, a few
short steps, so as not to disturb the studious peace and quiet of the readers. I
asked her to cancel all the documents that had been issued in my name, the
regular and the temporary readers ticket, and to settle all my debts to the
library. Also to destroy all records of my transactions in the library during
the weeks that I had been in town. "I love rubbing out and destroying papers," I
told her. She said she was glad to know me and the reading room was waiting for
me, whenever I continued my research.
I was almost ready to publish a preliminary article, the first of a short series
I was planning about the forgotten poet I had rediscovered, which would appear
quite soon in one of the journals. She asked me not to forget to send her a
xeroxed copy of the article, even though the Periodicals Room was just outside
the door, opposite the elevator. I promised not to forget and if possible - and
I hoped it would be, because she certainly deserved it - I would dedicate a few
words to her, specially written on the xeroxed copy of the article. She suddenly
smiled at me and the tiny spots on her face vanished completely when she smiled.
She said she too would not forget me, "the obsessive newspaper clipper," and
would collect for me any newspaper items the subject of which was Hagar
Reichenstein and her terrible death.
I did not dare to exchange kisses with her, as I did with my relative, though
she was certainly kissable. We shook hands, and I walked backwards, my eyes
fixed on hers, just like in the films, until I stumbled against the automatic
door at the entrance to the reading room.
I went back home to the coastal plain and worked on editing the few works of the
poet that I had found in Jerusalem and almost managed to free myself from the
story of beautiful Hagar Reichensteins death. But the charming librarian was as
good as her word and sent me envelopes stuffed with clippings from newspapers
that never stopped telling the sad story of the promising student of Kabbalah.
One journalist - I can no longer remember her name or that of her newspaper -
revealed that the late Hagar Reichenstein had been one of the lovers of the
visionary poet, the ascetic from Jerusalem whose poems were then so much admired
by young readers of poetry. I don't remember any more the exact details of the
story but it contained some intriguing, riveting sentences, such as "No, it was
not a story of passionate love but, it seems, just an affair of the spirit..."
Here the woman journalists intention was to devalue the conquests of the
visionary poet, to ridicule him and his love affairs which aroused
understandable envy among her readers.
Or another sentence from her article which was no more than a misquotation from
an interview with him that he had given to another well-known newspaper after
the sudden death of Hagar Reichenstein: "Most of his lovers were beautiful
golden girls, dressed with youthful simplicity and wearing sandals. There was
about them and their simple clothes a smell of Hashomer Hatsa`ir kibbutzim and
the pioneer youth movement... They made an effort to conceal their beauty until
they had climbed up to his attic in a Jerusalem side street. Which then
underwent an astonishing transformation. They had gone up to a physical attic
and lain down at his feet in devotion, by virtue of which he had gained entry to
an ethereal, feminine attic, climbing into it with their aid, right on to the
shapely limbs of his neglected objects of desire, these graduates of youth
movements and army service... And so on and so forth." But how could one know,
reading such a trivial load of rubbish from newspaper clippings stuffed into
envelopes and sent to my home on the coastal plain, how could one know what
really happened?
And in one of the clippings she sent me I found more weird nonsense: "These
beautiful girls, such 'ethereal' creatures, plucked from the department of
mystical Kabbalistic symbolism, paradoxically it was not enthusiasm and longing
for matters of Jewish tradition and its extensive literature that had them
hooked on arcane philosophy. Actually it was the delights of research and the
charm of rummaging among such occult subjects. And the delicate thrills of
meandering through the intriguing life stories of the creators of Kabbalistic
symbolism. Above all, what they found most endearing was their great teacher,
Professor Gershom Scholem, who introduced them to an amazing world of whose
existence they had been quite unaware... It was he who captivated them,
enthralled them with the power of his intellect, fixed them in the mold of
refined 'ethereal' creatures among those marvelous figures he expounded in his
classes and in the special seminars he devoted to them and held at home." And
similar stuff and nonsense and downright lies. Even I, who lived near the coast,
far away from the atmosphere of the Department of Kabbalah, could see how many
malicious misrepresentations had been planted in the report. I could not endure
the gush of rubbish that flowed from these newspaper clippings, I just stopped
reading them. But I took pains to thank the librarian who had not forgotten "the
obsessive newspaper clipper," both by telephoning her and in polite letters that
I sent to the library.
And yet I was plagued with doubt. Several unanswered questions continued to
worry me, even after I was no longer working on the legacy of the subject of my
research. I wondered whether the attractive Hagar Reichenstein had also been one
of those "ethereal" girls who smoked a pipe with a long, carved mouthpiece,
puffing smoke rings up into the air and stamping their feet with impatience in
the area outside the Jewish Studies building. Had she too, in the early hours of
the evening, panting, climbed the steps to the spiritual attic of the visionary
poet? The one the journalists who handled the story had labeled the "all-seeing
seer?" Had she too insisted on wearing her lugubrious all-black outfit because
she was a member of some secret association? One that the journalists referred
to only in hints and which, so they said, occasionally held wild orgies, in the
spirit of some notorious false messiahs?
Could I possibly be the fool who had risen from his desk in the reading room and
rushed madly off to the heart of the Christian Quarter in the Old City, just in
order to join the rest of the team summoned to the rescue of the beautiful young
prodigy? Was I the innocent who had run to help the young research student of so
much promise, tottering like a drunkard on the pointed tower of the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher? Wouldn't I have preferred, in retrospect, without even
admitting it to myself, to keep company with the blushing librarian and join the
holders of secret orgies?
How else can I explain to myself the small miracle that happened there, when I
rushed to join the holders of the safety net and found myself grasping a carved
icon I had stolen from the souvenir shop? And when my hand relaxed and opened,
and I saw Hagar Reichenstein lying spread out, lifeless, in the small square,
totally innocent of all the filth attributed to her by the newspapers, lovely
and glowing with the same frozen, dead radiance as the golden halo of the icon
in my hand, was I not envious of the visionary poet? When I held the statuette
in front of my eyes, I could see the crack in the skull. Narrow and clean.
Without a single drop of blood. A crack you could have mended with a fingers
touch, perhaps even restored to life.
© Copyright, Elisha Porat
All Rights Reserved.
author of the collection of short stories
The Messiah of LaGuardia at
http://www.artvilla.com/porat/epbkrevw.htm
author of the new poems e-book Growing Old at
http://shyflowersgarden.com/Press/growing_old_prev.htm
