A Jew of Persia
Helprin, Mark
A Jew of Persia Mark Helprin snhetah hrepa s,d ea tnnrsidee bd oa tfor me eo txhupanlatt cwoalvde its t aanttdo soielvde trh cer brolucek corfe hveaasvseen. Hane dh mthoeu hnotuasine irno...
...Very few men, at least not the likes of me, can beat the Devil...
...And most importantly, I could do nothing to the older one across the gorge who in complete safety had his rifle aimed at my heart...
...You see, he vowed to kill me with a razor, and I have never been to a barber in my life...
...A Jew of Persia Mark Helprin snhetah hrepa s,d ea tnnrsidee bd oa tfor me eo txhupanlatt cwoalvde its t aanttdo soielvde trh cer brolucek corfe hveaasvseen...
...And there was not much else, at least as he thought of it twenty and more years later...
...Afterwards they hate us because they think we have tricked them...
...screamed Yacov, as he like the trained soldier he was vaulted over the kitchen table to his father's side, wincing in mid-air as he heard several dozen springs, nuts, and molded pieces of his gun jangle onto the floor...
...Najime had crouched like a hunter among the rocks, and was staring out the window, j aw hanging open...
...Meanwhile his brother had begun firing his rifle and had hit my donkey, who went down on one knee...
...Naturally the troops themselves exacted a small extra-legal tax, but that was looked upon as inevitable, as a sort of toll...
...I had the finest sword and dagger in the village...
...He wore an old double-breasted pin stripe suit, the stripes hardly visible, the cloth rough, deep, and blue...
...On top of the sacks we put false containers which made it seem as if we had a donkey loaded with dried dung...
...And one day this violent wind was blowing through Ha Tikva, at least for Najime and his son...
...You are not such an old man, you know...
...I was paralyzed...
...FROM A DOVE OF THE EAST A N D OTHER STORIES BY Mark HELPRIN TO BE PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC...
...That was the angel's fall, and he often inflated himself with longing, letting the remaining Persian words circle around by themselves in his head, reluctant to talk to others whose dialects were not the same...
...Although we were rich in many things and close to God, we were nevertheless a poor village...
...I took a silver bowl and some trays from the sack and put it over my head and them over my body, remaining there quite comfortably for another half hour eating lamb and pears and wincing at each shot and ricochet...
...So I thought, this is a man, not a tree, and I am going to kill him...
...You dog-headed baby, you cackling jackass...
...He was disgusted and perplexed...
...A policeman turned to him and said, "What do you mean, shaking your head no like that...
...As soon as little brother saw my clothing he lost all fear, because knowing that I was a Jew he did not think there was a man underneath...
...On the other side, to balance the load, we placed a sack of dried and smoked meats, cheeses, and dried fruits...
...After a good night's sleep and a meal, I set out...
...I have won...
...They handcuffed Najime to the chair, and began to write in their books the statements of all concerned...
...I knew exactly what to do...
...M e a n w h i l e , stories had been spreading about the newcomer...
...The one with the flat chin and half-grown beard...
...When his father came in and took off his coat, the son was reverentially silent...
...You don't believe that they were really crazy...
...Even were he not there I could not have gone in any but one direction, straight into his little brother, who was by no means little...
...W e were doing well, and the animal's brown legs were steady and not shaking as they would have done had he been other than a donkey and smart enough to fear heights...
...Goodbye Yacov my son...
...Either he will come here, or I will go to him...
...But usually it is they who have tricked themselves...
...It seems he had arrived from nowhere with a large wagon full of the finest avocados...
...The dust will rise about me...
...Then he seemed to be like a bandit again, with the almost pitiful exaggerated bearded chin, and he called out to me: I am going to hunt you down and cut your throat with a razor...
...N u ? " said the stocky ex-sergeant...
...He caused otherwise friendly murderers to fight among themselves, shoot, miss, and kill innocent bystanders...
...Then the little brother ordered me to spill out my sacks for him...
...Before him was a street of hard-packed dust lined with sterile date palms, tin shacks, dogs, and chickens...
...I know...
...He knew that an idea of victory could come either deliberately or on the air...
...In the distance he saw the tops of a few skyscrapers, and closer, a row of palms which caught a sea breeze never to reach him...
...He picked the richest of them all and told him to run and get his daughter...
...He had powers, but they were limited...
...Closer still was a series of old concrete buildings which had been built with sea water a generation or more before and which like lepers had been losing bits and pieces ever since...
...A heavy nickel guard, curved inward, made it seem like a small sword...
...I have one advantage...
...7 ^ he stranger then moved into the family house, sold it that evening at a great profit even though everyone knew the city was about to tear it down to build a melon exchange, and pooled his considerable assets to buy up all the salt in Tel Aviv...
...Yacov was inside, having heard out the window of all the strange events in the barber shop...
...In the presence of our Rabbi and the elders he commanded us to collect our gold, our silver, our jewels, our coins, and bring them to him in the capital on an appointed day...
...I will be fierce...
...Ienr we wineterer imt oilfkte-ehnaodu bgehe nto a t sraawp yaenrd, tthhreo oupgehn c aoiur.n stole tshsa his body was as intensely powerful as (he would say) gunpowder in a brass casing...
...Tell m e . " "Shut up...
...He can kill effortlessly, but he must kill me as he said he would because I would not fear otherwise...
...And both father and son heard the bakers screaming, " I t rises...
...he looked like a madman from an entirely different civilization...
...I was to go alone in order not to attract attention, but fully armed, as there were many bandits in those mountains at the time, and probably still are...
...Then the big brother began to fire many bullets, quite accurately I must admit, but they all went into the poor dead animal in front of me...
...They were bandits, and each one had a rifle...
...Yacov reached out to touch him as if to make sure he were really there, then got up to turn on the' light, which blinded them both...
...This pass is essentially a vast gorge with paths cut into the rock walls on either side...
...I did it once, and now I'll do it again...
...But Najime went on anyway, as he often did, saying, "There are two main things which balance out the loss, two main things...
...said Yacov, "What are you going to d o ?" "Shut u p !" "Why shut up...
...Help me to resist it, not that I would be evil myself, but that one of its principal parts is to appear as right and proper...
...I could run for half a day at a time up and down the valleys, and raise beams alone which five men together would not approach...
...From this point, his dealings became unknown to the people of Ha Tikva, except that it was known that he had somehow gained control of the area's crime...
...Najime walked every day to the seaside, and stayed there from noon to evening, smoking his pipe and staring at the white foam of the waves and their curling, like his smoke...
...Surely this was something his father had imagined long ago on a terrifying day and night in the mountains, and yet even if not entirely consistent, it was convincing...
...Let me think for a while...
...I was dressed poorly, my weapons hidden...
...I could not believe my eyes, and rubbed them...
...I had never killed a man, and I found that I could not move...
...I dared not tell them what had happened for fear that they would go mad (those peasant soldiers living alone on mountaintops were really crazy, believe me), but they took me in for a night...
...Najime replied, "That man is not their friend Amzaleg...
...He believed me, and was going to let me pass when the other one, on the far side, said, Look in his sacks, little brother, for I think there is gold there...
...But I must think about this, because if I am right he has become so skillful in evil that we may even be dealing with the Devil himself...
...Since avocados were out of season, he sold them at a very high price and was almost immediately transformed from beggar to prosperous merchant...
...But from then on he would elaborate no further, and any inquiry about (directly) the Devil, or (indirectly in order, he thought, subtly to pry out the secret) the strange condition of having fur in the eyes, brought Yacov a hard slap in the face and a long stream of expletives in mountain Persian...
...W e l l , I don't scare that easily, so when darkness fell I cut the treasure from the donkey and pushed him off the ledge, as if to bury him...
...I made sure the sacks were evenly balanced, put a blinder on his right eye so that he would look only at the path, and said a prayer...
...Just dung for fires, I said...
...The wind, at least it seemed to me, was trying to blow the donkey's body off the path...
...You said there were t w o ." " I can't tell y o u ." "Why not...
...He then went to the razor drawer, picked out a very large razor with a transparent ice-blue handle, and began to sharpen it...
...The barber's manner was casual but somehow very mechanical and automatic, as if he were teaching young barbers...
...That man...
...And that is something I have wanted to discuss for a long time, but later...
...It was cast from the best Swedish steel, which the smith had purchased from a Russian...
...Najime dropped back into the chair, feeling like a man who has just beaten the Devil...
...Once you have chosen a side you must stay with it until the end, about an hour's travel, because a sane donkey would not walk backwards with no room to turn...
...I have spent a lifetime waiting...
...be thought for a while and then said, That makes sense, Jew, and then very casually went to the sack of dried fruits and meats and began to go through it...
...I'll tell you, assuming that I'm alive, by tomorrow night...
...And . . . ?" " T h a t ' s a l l , " said Najime, "what e l s e ?" "What is the second reason...
...J y this time it was dark: no more J^J light came in through the louvres, and the old man had been talking into the night for longer than he thought...
...No sir, I said, you cannot make me do that, even if you kill me...
...And it was for a very special purpose, very special indeed, so I thought so hard my head began to boil and the veins in my hands stood out...
...I looked at him through a little space between the donkey's neck and the ground, and I cannot adequately describe what I saw...
...B u t no bandit had ever struck there, simply because were he to have done so and encountered greater force he would have had no way to escape, and besides, the place was dangerous enough just to traverse...
...I am going to the synagogue,and then to the barber...
...You can't tell m e . " They had had this exchange a hundred times a hundred times, and always with the same result...
...H e wasn't the Devil...
...His first book, A DOVE OF THE EAST AND OTHER STORIES, will be published by Knopf in September...
...When the man returned with the beautiful young girl she went wild with desire for the hideous old man and asked for his wrinkled hand in marriage...
...I will follow you anywhere on earth, in these mountains, on the seas, in cities, anywhere...
...Are you crazy...
...Yacov glanced at the metal pieces on the floor and then at his father...
...At this I imagined as best I could that he was a branch on a long timber which awaited trimming before being sawed into logs...
...I'm your son...
...This is not crazy...
...All of our gold and silver including everything from the synagogue itself filled only one sack on a donkey...
...Najime had sharpened it over the years, and especially carefully the night before...
...What have you got there, Jew, said the one closest to me...
...You can't do this...
...The knife was so sharp that he feared for the scabbard...
...All this in the Ha Tikva was sometimes struck down by the Hamsin, and more significantly, sometimes blown onto another course by winds of war and death and change...
...The finest quality leather had become smooth and black over the years from the oil of his hand...
...He was smart though, because he began firing into the rocks, which broke into shrapnel and bloodied me all up...
...He winked...
...But of course we are as strong as anyone else, and because of that we often give them big surprises...
...W e l l , " said Najime, " a s a precautionary measure I shaved this morning as cleanly as I could, and that seemed to make no difference to this 'barber.' But that was just a precaution, for any barber might have been tired, and overlooked i t ." "Then how did you know he would be there...
...It was this barrier which allowed us to follow our own desires freely, and yet because of it the bandits were also free and they plagued us...
...H e has false sacks of dung, he yelled to his brother, and then began to lay out the meat and fruit against the wall of the path next to the donkey...
...Ha Tikva was awakening from a week of hard work and about to await the sunset and fine food of the holiday...
...What are you talking about...
...So put your gun away...
...These things were so deep and wonderful that they could bear telling a thousand times a thousand times...
...Of course he knew that the boy, knowing no other country, brought up as it were in a sewing box, would never sense except in the airy sadness of dreams what Persia had been like, and that since he had become a sergeant in the army and had been in battles he had learned his own lessons and only tolerated his strange father, although he loved him, for his father was a rough peasant who had walked halfway across Asia from deep in the past, and the young man already had a small car and a telephone of his own...
...He said that the Jews of the world were in the midst of returning, that the ingathering of the exiles was about to begin, that all the Jews of Iran, and India, the East, and the West, were giving their treasure...
...The more big brother danced and fumed,, the higher the wind became and the more the donkey moved bit by bit, almost i m p e r c e p t i b l y . After a while big brother seemed to get tired, the wind died down, and darkness began to fall...
...How clever they were...
...The first is that I have come to a Jewish country where I can live as a Jew (although you know I lived as a Jew there too), and have helped to build the third commonwealth, a new land for us...
...Then, even though it was dark, I almost ran over that path all the way to the army station...
...You know me, and your life will be far worse than your death, which will be a well of terror...
...At the end of the pass was a government station full of troops...
...I heard a hissing of air as he fell into the blueblack darkness...
...Once inside he went directly to one of the old chairs and sat down, asking for a shave...
...Amzaleg is probably in bed with stomach troub l e . " The two remaining barbers looked at one another, confirming the presence of a madman...
...Certainly he had not seen the Devil...
...But he could not say them even once to his sons, for they did not know Persian, which he had almost forgotten, and his Hebrew was of the shacks and hot streets and blood-guttered markets...
...He was only a half devil, perhaps the son of the Devil and a human woman...
...So if one reached the entrance he assumed himself safe from attack...
...Even from that distance I sensed something about him which frightened me, and the donkey was very agitated in his presence...
...His stories have appeared in THE NEW YORKER...
...But it was different with a man...
...I t ' s him...
...Najime was sitting on his chair, listening to the BBC Arabic service (of which he understood nothing) and looking out onto the street...
...But seeing that the older man was in a good frame of mind, to say the least, he cautiously asked, " H o w did you know he was the barber...
...When people asked him, as they did, where he had gotten so many thousands of avocados he said that his brother had a farm in the desert, where it was so hot that he could grow anything he wanted year round, even at night...
...Their eyes have done the tricking...
...They looked at one another in confusion, but then the older one said, Little brother, we can also rob madmen...
...They invariably stopped in front of the house of Najime the Persian, the old sawyer, where the stranger sat from eight-thirty to nine-fifteen turning his feet to the front and then to the back again and again, and laughing a very ugly laugh that made children run to their mothers and rats race into their darkest tunnels — only to crash headlong against one another...
...I will strike when you think you are safe and comfortable...
...But he knew also that ideas of victory which seem to travel on the air alight always on the shoulders of those who have been laboring in thought...
...News came that the ship had been sunk by the Lebanese...
...Halfway through I saw two men, one on each path...
...The next morning, Najime arose and put on his best clothes...
...To everyone in the shop (by that time about 350 people, various animals, hawkers and vendors of every description, prostitutes plying their trade, entertainers, musicians, etc., etc...
...The little old man on the street, in appearance a cross between a beggar and a mushroom, turned into an alley and vanished...
...The blade itself was about a foot long, double edged only a few inches back from the tip in a fluted curve...
...He picked up his son and threw him across the room onto the bed, ran to close the shutters, bolted the door, and stood there in chevrons of light...
...There were after all two of them, each with a rifle and a knife...
...It was this pass which kept the railways, armies, and telegraphs from our village...
...it had come to me in a flash...
...This life of his came to be like the fall of an angel, and yet by the tenets of his belief he believed himself lucky...
...You see he was not afraid of me because I was a Jew...
...What had been a simple ordinary bandit was suddenly something most different...
...With tears in his eyes, the father gave consent...
...I can walk through walls — nothing can keep me out — and when I cut your throat I will be laughing and wild with pleasure, and you will be frozen like a board, unable to move as the razor glides...
...He had spent a good deal of his life sharpening blades...
...But one morning as he and Yacov both were shaving in front of a copper bowl filled with boiling water, he clenched his fist around the razor, lifted his eyes, and said, "Aha...
...What is the second reason...
...Were he to wait until dark, the darkness would shield me from his fire...
...That is not the w a y , " said Najime, "either the gun would explode or you would miss and kill a friend...
...Instead of his crooked, ancient, and vast stone house with ether forcing its Mark Helprin is a young writer living in Boston...
...My natural inclination was to travel on the left, with the gorge on my right, and since the animal's left eye was best, that is what we were forced to do...
...You see, he has undoubtedly grown in powers, but so have I. Like you, I probably would have wanted just to go and shoot him, and maybe then, when he and I were younger, I would have had a fair chance...
...For during the previous few weeks the bread in Ha Tikva Quarter had not risen...
...Look at all he has done and can do...
...And I was unafraid, until I looked under the curve of the donkey's neck and saw big brother...
...My suspicion was confirmed when I noticed that he had no wedding ring...
...What's with you...
...Later, after he had been released by the police, Najime went home under what seemed to be lighter and cooler skies...
...The salt merchants got together and put all their capital into a large order of Turkish salt to be brought on a ship they purchased as a consortium...
...After I had thought of what to do it seemed so simple and obvious that I laughed out loud, and it echoed in the gorge...
...Were he to move back to where I had begun he would have given me an hour's head start, during which I could easily get to the army base...
...He began to dance around the room, singing, jumping, and prancing, because he had solved his problem...
...He looked up and said, I am going to eat well, but I am also going to kill you, for if I don't kill you I will have no appetite, and he laughed...
...Up and down the rock walls sparks flew, and as he gesticulated and mouthed the words of evil animals a hot wind came through the crevasse, and hot drops of rain, and then thunder...
...And so they had continued to live out their lives in the Ha Tikva Quarter, a place where all the functions of human existence combined ungraciously and people were struck like bells in no chorus, camel bells upset and sad but active in contrast to the still green palms, a tree with a lisp in the wind and infinite patience, variegated sun shadows, shelterer of doves, the green rafters of Tel Aviv...
...And at these times the inhabitants paused in the struggle, and very like sailors on a coasting ship breaching a passage of high cliffs and tumultuous blue-green waters into an unknown gulf or sea, waited for the change, marking a point in their lives, aware of time and their part in it...
...They moaned and whimpered like dogs...
...They then described the killing in great detail, gesticulating, and glancing now and then at the body for fear of offending it with the color of their portraiture...
...The stranger was not to be seen, except on Friday nights, when a uniformed Cossack drove him through the streets in a lacquered red car...
...I knew that if I hesitated they would kill me, and that if I did nothing they would kill me...
...Hats would not fit on old men who had worn them for thirty years...
...Now let me think about it, as if I were trying to find a way to move a large timber through a small door of a little house...
...The barbers stated that this man had come to their shop and killed Amzaleg, who was a third owner...
...Then he stopped, thinking either that I was dead, or that if I were not he wasn't going to change the situation...
...I came close to him and said, keep the meat and fruit, eat well, but in God's mercy let me pass...
...Every robbery, every drug transaction, every prostitute, fell ultimately under his direction...
...It was said that beggars were envious of him, a beggar become rich, and so spread stories such as the one asserting that he sold avocados from his wagon for two weeks day and night and never seemed to run out...
...A hundred men threw themselves at his feet and begged to buy this wagon...
...Then I led him out...
...The handle was of leather washers, unusual for such a good knife since it deserved an ornamental grip...
...With the excitement of a fool who knows one small thing, Yacov asked his father, "If he were really the Devil, why could he not have flown across the gorge on the wind and killed you with his teeth, or have sent a snake from above to poison you...
...But in commissioning it Najime had not wanted that...
...I had only a sword and dagger...
...I could not stand the idea of haying the body of the man I had just killed next to me, so at further risk of losing all the gold and my life I picked it up and sent it flying in a wide arc into the gorge...
...On his head he carried a Greek straw hat with a chocolate brown band, and in his belt under the coat was the knife he had brought from Persia...
...Every barber in Israel wears a wedding ring...
...How many tens of thousands of times I had knocked off those thick branches with one stroke of my ax...
...But a young man is no match for him now...
...Well, they thought they had the mastery of design in that matter, but they hadn't...
...It was the day before a holiday and many people were dressed for the occasion even then...
...I can do that...
...The other path is completely inaccessible although only a stone's throw distant, because the gorge in between is easily a kilometer deep...
...I can't s a y ." " N o n s e n s e , " said Yacov, slamming the table with his fist...
...It rises...
...That little g u y ?" " Y e s . " "Well what about him...
...I was afraid of it for twenty-five years, but it stares me in the face at last and I feel like dying, and that is the only way to enter a fight...
...Naturally, I won most of the contests...
...Even if 1 lose he may leave of his own will, but there is no guarantee...
...said Yacov, who was himself now terrified like a child whose father is in danger...
...When in late 1948 he had stepped off a small ship in Jaffa, he had said to himself, Najime, it will be profitable to find the large oven which heats up the city, for there they are undoubtedly drying vast amounts of wood, and may need me to saw...
...Najime was silently shaking his head no...
...Honest citizens would suddenly kick a police officer, and when brought to trial full of regret and shame, find themselves able to speak only Japanese...
...Then I realized that I could not fool myself into imagining that he was a branch to be severed, because he clearly was a man...
...I am going, I believe, to do what you would have me do...
...Najime stood slightly bent in back of the closed wood louvres, looking calmly at big brother from the mountain pass of a quarter of a century before...
...Although I have not heard from you about this it seems the right thing to d o ." He came to the street of the barber shop and walked toward it, adjusting his knife...
...Najime had taken pains to do that just an hour before...
...They spent hours slapping each other's faces...
...Then when his son had pressed him for the second reason he had blurted out, "Because I saw the Devil, and he had fur in his e y e s . " He had started to shake, and the boy in the new uniform had seen the hair on his father's arms and neck stand up...
...Now listen, because the time has come...
...When you say 'I am a Jew,' they think you are weak...
...I must beat him down if only for the sake of the people of Ha Tikva...
...That is g o o d . " He stopped, beaming, and poured himself a glass of grapefruit juice from an old glass bottle...
...Anyway, this is beyond you, Yacov, because it calls for the strength of the past, the power of memory, the resolve of an old man's history, and because you are stupid...
...Perhaps if I had been carrying just smoked meats or tools or my own money, I would not have been able to think out a way to beat them...
...I was afraid, and I knew that the minute I reached for my sword all hell would break out...
...Twenty-five minutes after the wedding feast the father died suddenly of what an autopsy later revealed as starvation...
...Maybe it's nothing at all...
...Najime left and crossed the street, nodding and greeting as was his custom...
...For several hours he had glided about the city in his boots of fur and leather asking passers-by in Persian, " W h e r e is the great o v e n ? " The passers-by, obviously ignorant of Persian, jaded by the sight of ambulant wolflike lunatic-looking Persians and Turcomans, would throw up their hands, shrug their shoulders, and say to themselves in Yiddish, He should only not kill me dear God...
...That is why he has grown old, and why I was able to beat him...
...alert as a young man hunting in the mountains he stood and prayed by the side of the road, since they were cleaning the synagogue...
...H e , " continued Najime, " i s an old enemy of mine from Persia who swore to kill me with a razor, and that was what he was about to d o ." " N o n s e n s e ! " screamed the two remaining barbers like twins, "That is Amzaleg, our friend and partner...
...The police came...
...Ifound myself at the entrance to the pass, thinking I was safe from bandits and even exempt from the soldiers' ' t a x . ' If the Grand Rabbi had treasure coming to him from all parts of the country, he had undoubtedly donated part of it to an official in the palace to make sure that it arrived intact...
...Then, when he was younger and worked at the timbers, he could by the pressure of his hands and arms break a heavy iron chain...
...Najime was left to spend the rest of his life pondering on whether he had beaten the Devil or just the Devil's son, and thinking about the clear air of his mountains and the championships he had been born to take in sawing, chopping, and many village games...
...Maybe we are dreaming...
...And when it was done, the long, flat, half-bearded chin was not that of Amzaleg the Moroccan barber, but of the big brother on the mountain...
...You can imagine how it struck us...
...T h r e e days from our village and any other I arrived at a great pass in the mountains, to which I had been only once before, as a child...
...I dropped my sword immediately and grabbed the lower half of his body, throwing it with all my might over into the gorge...
...Therefore, if I went to a barber, it would have to be him...
...H o w can you be sure he knows you are here...
...What do you know...
...in SEPTEMBER, 1975...
...While the police were summoned, a soldier who had witnessed the incident through the window entered the shop and pompously trained his rifle on Najime, who had an angelic look...
...My donkey had a bad right eye, which was lucky for me...
...The older man sat down, and after a short silence, began to speak in determined vision of the past...
...The other barbers and customers froze while their co-worker and barber of many years staggered in a halfcircle, and then fell face down on the floor...
...But one of his sons, well, that's different...
...Because of that I had great lungs, great balance, and great muscular power...
...The stranger bought what remained of their businesses for practically nothing, and went to the docks to meet the ship, which had not been sunk, but had doubled in size...
...I was a young man, the strongest in the village, at least among the Jews, because I sawed beams all day and had done so from the earliest I could remember...
...If I am to be robbed that is one thing, robbing myself is another...
...His eyes were red circular coals, but made of fur, and they flashed and glowed...
...Wonderful...
...He had come alone from Persia's mountainous north, where the air was cross-currented and symphonically clear, to Tel Aviv where air was obsolete and the entire city heated like potters' kilns in Iran...
...We attempted to borrow a rifle from the Muslims, but they would not hear of it...
...I am not afraid...
...I will fight," he said, upraising a still very strong arm, "and I will die, but 1 will use sword and dagger until they heat from friction in the air...
...What did he mean...
...O f course my s o n , " said Najime, "of course we'll wait, that's part of i t . " He expected the weeks to pass, and they did...
...His son looked at him with an habitual incredulousness...
...way shrieking through the cracks, and fires flickering, instead of sheepskins and earthenware pitchers of iced white wine, instead of the little synagogue where sawyers, sheepherders, and merchants watched the sun rise golden from a cradle of distant mountains and light gold chains coming triangularly from the ceiling, instead of tall candles, and contests of strength in the bitter cold, he found a tin shack almost melting, filthy sacks for a bed, no breeze, rationed food, a synagogue of brown Yemenites and Moroccans who were softer and soaking in Arabic and the desert and knowing a God who possessed another face than his rugged, whistling, clean, and mystic God of altitudes, hunters, and eagles' flight...
...I knew he could not go forward for fear that the troops ahead would kill him, so you see I had turned what they believed to be their great advantage, the safety of the gorge, into my great advantage...
...I was a skilled a Jew of peRSiA —continued swordsman too, for there was no sword in the world which was not to me as light as a feather compared to my saws, sledgehammers, and axes...
...Yacov begged to be allowed to shoot him...
...It felt as though there were going to be a rainstorm, although there was not going to be one...
...I was not afraid of him until that point, because I had planned to stay there until dark and then carry the treasure to the army station...
...But his balance on the scaffolded logs had long before taught him of polarities, and he was well aware of the blessings of his situation...
...Because he is h e r e ." "Well, I think we should wait and see what happens...
...Yacov was sitting in the back of the room cleaning a submachine gun he had stolen from the army...
...COPYRIGHT 'r 1975 BY Mark HELPRIN...
...The one on the far side trained his rifle on me, while the other calmly awaited my approach...
...And Najime would continue on, still in search of the all-pervasive heat...
...He had its various parts and springs assembled unassembled before him ready to be oiled, and was about to begin work on the magazines when he was startled by the crash of his father's chair...
...It seemed to hang motionless at the top of the arc, and since the other had stopped firing in his horror at this I had time to grab the faltering donkey and pull him back onto the path...
...I was also quite frightened...
...Hane dh mthoeu hnotuasine irno cwkh,yic ith h awnitdh hinit —th ew shteonn es hliuktete awnh eitceh iocein tgw voa hlluenyd hree ceglogusd th...
...This was considered a foolish move, until several days later when news came from the south that the country's salt mines had become filled with hot poisonous gas from fissures in the earth...
...The soldiers I see are our soldiers, and that is good, and Hebrew is our language...
...But I was carrying the wealth of my father and my father's father, and of all my cousins, and of the synagogue in the village...
...T u r n him o v e r , " said Najime, hardly able to wait until it was done...
...This made me so angry that I pulled out my sword and with the most powerful stroke I had ever given (and the fast est), ten times as powerful as was necessary, I simply cut him in half...
...Dancers pulled their muscles...
...But his father's wells had been tapped...
...And then, I could feel his presence the way sheep in mountains can feel the approach of a hunter...
...They used to go around on stilts to scare away devils...
...Something was wrong in Ha Tikva...
...I must also have said sir...
...I didn't know for sure, but I took a chance...
...Two thousand years, and at last we were leaving our beloved mountains for the land of our fathers...
...But once at a wedding Najime had consumed three bottles of wine...
...W h o ? " said Yacov, staring in terrified sympathy at the familiar street...
...It became the topic of conversation at all the tables and in all the cafes...
...I n c r e d i b l e , " said the two barbers in unison...
...That is Devil's conduct, and I have encountered it before...
...And because he must kill me that way, he will not allow himself to be killed beforehand...
...They were married the next day...
...Within the white cloth Najime drew his knife, and as the barber approached with a look of boredom and sleep, Najime jumped from the chair, teeth exposed, the two sides of his mustache raised, and with a tremendously loud cry (the kind that used to go from one mountaintop to another), he stabbed the barber deep in his heart, pushing the knife right up to the hilt...
...You always say there are two reasons and then give only o n e ." " I know," said Najime, strangely upset, then retreating into his thoughts and memories like an old man...
...D e a r God, help me to know evil and to fight it...
...You know, you may have a point t h e r e , " said one of them just before the house collapsed, from termites said the newspaper, even though the house was made of stone...
...It seemed very strange that he should know that, and he too was rather strange...
...His chin had extended until it looked like the flat wooden pallet bakers use for taking bread out of the oven, and he was foaming at the mouth...
...O n e day a messenger came from the Grand Rabbi in the capital...
...A man suggested to his friends that the strange things which happened were only a concealment and distraction in the case of the stranger who had arrived and done so well so suddenly...
...What is it...
...To his eldest son Yacov he had often said, there is plenty of balance here for what was lost...
...So for a week he left every day, descending the stairs and walking across crowded boulevards, past great white ruins in the old part of the city, which was being leveled and cleared...
...The barber, a little Moroccan, began to lather Najime's face, already as cleanly shaven as a man's face could be...
...about their newly baked bread...
Vol. 1 • June 1975 • No. 2
