Part 20 (2/2)

He uncovered his eyes to the saddening rim of sunset. The tugs were eating away at the river like larvae in a braid of old wool. It was half-dark below us, but the brows of buildings were notched with golden scars; their long windows flared. The last light yearned behind a far high gas tank, which took the horizon like a silver lung set poignantly afloat. In the house a sound ceased; the air-conditioning had been switched off; it had grown cool; too early it smelled of evening and of September. Suddenly a single cough of my mother's needled the dusk, as audible and sharp as an insect-sting. Enoch sat refusing, denying, maneuvering his rutted neck like a sultan or king awaiting in unbelief the nightingale's note.

”I think she's coming out here,” I said.

He appeared for a moment to crane toward the possibility of my mother's step, attentive: but no, it was his own voice he was all at once singularly open to, and only that. He listened to it briefly without speaking.

”You don't know what I mean,” he said at last. ”A pity, a pity. You ought to know.”

”I ought to know,” I doubtfully admitted.

”You think history is a sort of bundle one generation hauls off its back to launch onto the next. Every twenty-five years or so the bundle gets heavier and heavier. n.o.body dares to throw it off and walk away and leave it behind. Even the heroes are afraid to stand naked without it; even the cowards think it somehow or other contains civilization. But those are not the facts. Those are not the facts.” He raised the tremulous middle finger and stared it down until it steadied. ”That isn't what history is. It doesn't keep on acc.u.mulating without conscience forever and forever-don't think the universe wouldn't choke on the glut of it all! It stops to clear away and begin again.”

”Like Noah,” I said. ”Noah and the Flood.”

His cautious eye took me in curiously: to see if I were on his side or not.

”That was vengeance,” I said appreciatively. ”But what about all those poor giraffes and donkeys and pigeons who hadn't done anything wrong and couldn't get on the ark and had to die all the same, just because it was a historical necessity for man to be wiped out?”

”A wicked generation,” he observed. ”Still, not so wicked as ours.”

But I ignored his emendation and pressed for more. ”The giraffes too? At least admit the giraffes were innocent.”

”All right, the giraffes were innocent. So were the donkeys and pigeons, if that's what you want.”

”Then it was a mistake,” I said complacently. ”The whole Flood was a mistake.”

”A mistake,” he a.s.sented.

”G.o.d's mistake,” I noted. ”A historical error.”

”But an acknowledged one. G.o.d acknowledged it,” my stepfather insisted, ”when he swore there would never be another Flood in all the rest of history.”

”There!” I exclaimed. ”And he's stuck to his word. That proves you're wrong.”

Enoch said, ”I'm not wrong.”

I had another try at dialectic. ”But if there hasn't been another Flood since, it means that G.o.d has taken vengeance out of history, doesn't it?”

”No. It means he's put it in. He took vengeance away from man when he punished Cain; and he took it away from himself when he covenanted against making more Floods. And instead he gave it to history. Believe me, G.o.d doesn't have that power any more! It used to be 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,' meaning man had no right to it, but now it isn't even G.o.d's. G.o.d has abdicated-it's what I said, G.o.d's become an atheist. It's history that's the force! It's history that avenges and repays! It's history that raises the dead! And when we talk of redemption it's history we mean!”

He stopped; my mother stood on the threshold.

”Then you are waiting for the Messiah,” I murmured once more.

He looked at his wife and answered without consciousness of any irony. ”The Messiah and I wait together. The Messiah waits too.”

”Waits for what?” I had to say; plainly it was what he wanted.

His reply was quick. ”Revenge,” said my stepfather. ”Revenge on Europe. We wait for that.”

”And if it doesn't happen soon?”

He nearly smiled. ”Well wait anyhow.”

”Then you'll wait till the conversion of the Jews!” my mother threw in with unprovoked perturbation, shaking the loosened tail of her shawl: two or three of the Taj Mahals curled round her neck. ”You'll wait till the dead come running out of their graves!”

”Why not?” he said, calmly enough. ”Haven't you come running out of your bed?”

”I had to hear,” she confessed. ”I had to hear what you were saying.”

”We were talking about Noah's ark,” I volunteered, and since this was the precise but incredible fact, suddenly laughed. ”There's a riddle about that,” I finished obscurely, not sure I remembered it: but even if I had, my mother would have interrupted the telling of it. And then I felt foolish at having wanted, childishly, to tell it.

”My eye you were!” she said. ”You were talking about the Messiah. I distinctly heard Enoch say the Messiah. I suppose it was some sort of blasphemy.” Her teasing was half merry and half grim. ”When it comes to the Messiah you won't find Enoch any different from all the other Jews. They won't admit the Messiah's already come.”

”Evangelist Allegra,” Enoch said.

”Jews are a very stiff-necked people. -That's a Bible phrase, you know,” said my mother. ”They always want religion their way.” She swung round the cactus pots and stationed herself behind Enoch's chair, encircling his head. Her fingers scratched along his jowl. ”Ouch, you haven't shaved. You never shave when you don't work. You're simply too lazy. Grow a beard and you'll be a patriarch, you know that, Enoch? I mean you would if you had any descendants.”

”It's quite enough for me to have had ancestors,” he said.

”You see!” she cried. ”Racial pride! You're all alike!” She turned to me to pursue her odd comedy more emphatically. ”Next thing he'll remind me how my ancestors were running around in the forest primeval with their bodies painted blue when his were-were I don't know what.”

”Writing the Commentaries on the Commentaries,” he mildly supplied.

”Well, what did it get you anyhow?” she sniffed. ”The ghetto, that's all.”

”The ghetto,” he said in a voice familiar with its lines.

”That's why you talk of revenge on Europe. All those beautiful cathedrals! All those saints! And for the sake of a single little misplaced tribe, you'd throw the whole thing over!”

”A pogrom against the gentiles,” he summed it up. ”Try to live till that day; it's as good as immortality.”

But her good humor was inexplicably thick with danger. ”Now you're talking like a Jew. Don't talk like a Jew, Enoch.”

”How shall I talk?”

”I don't know. Not that way.”

”Was I muttering from the Zohar all unawares?”

”Not that way,” she said again. ”You sound-” She gave a great calloused sigh. ”You sound separate.”

He pulled her round to him. ”Well, not from you, Allegra.”

”What I mean is, don't talk religion.”

”I never talk religion. I only talk metaphor.”

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