3
I was listening to the war between the Arabs and the Jews. I wanted to go fight and die because she was so ugly to live with. My shoulder was bad either from helping the mason carry stones or gritting my teeth or both. Gritting my teeth from looking at the wreck of beauty and living inside of hatred and keeping to my side of the bed and always screaming no this can’t be my life inside my head. I listened to the news every hour. I couldn’t move. The war went on. Where was our miracle?*1
I heard myself talking to Anthony. I was talking about the Jewish Heart. We were on either side of a small table on the terrace. He was talking about the World Heart. I was talking about Jerusalem of Flesh and Stone. He was talking about Jerusalem of the Mind. It was a sunny morning in October. We were drinking Ovomaltine at a small wicker table I had brought from Athens long ago.
I said we live in a finite world. At least we live in a double world. We do not dwell in the realms of air. In this world the spirit is anchored in the mud. Jerusalem is not only a Christian hymn. It is the Capital of the Refugees. Is it really? Is it really?
One of us was talking. Our wives brought us Ovomaltine. The drink of meta-physicians. I said I’m only arguing to prolong this pleasant conversation. I know what I’m going to do.
He said it’s easier to go than it is to stay. The excitement of war against this ordeal of warmth and monotony. Going is the easy way. Going is an alibi. We’re not meant for the easy way.
I’m going I said.
I’m going too he said.
The landscape he said.
The war I said.
Whatever you say.*2
My wife, what rays and wires and ethers connect us. What ribbons and trajectories, bold and fine as air routes, leaping in clean arcs over regions, moods, languages, one end sunk into your chest, one end into mine. What channels of intense air trembling to a signal. Like eyes aimed at stars, like the alloy of eyesight and starlight. What missions of spirit sperm rush through the glass air toward the lunar egg enthroned within your skeleton, all shadows and here is the shadow brood of hatred, love, remorse.
A dog is barking urgently on the black mountain. Perhaps you can hear him in your sleep. A black, slug-like insect came down the wall as I tried again to get back home. A bell has begun to ring. According to some religious schedule it must be the end of the night.
Whatever you say.
Put on the radio. Light up a cigarette. You are a normal citizen, after all. Fiddle among the stations. Find a good tune. Not the opera. Not the static. Not the passionate Arab violins. Not the armour-plated symphony. Not the shy French rhymer of birds and boats.*3 Turn off the radio. You can hear the wind again. Light up another cigarette. Lean forward. You’re grown up. Jiggle your knees. Your penis isn’t giving you any trouble. You are not aching with desire. Try the radio. The Greek is alright. It’s midnight now. The governments are speaking. Try the silence again. Your government is speaking. It won’t resign.*4 It won’t vomit. It won’t wake up your wife and bring her smiling into the room all warm to say, I had a dream. We were married under a wave. The child is awake.
Turn on the radio. They are actually playing Deutschland Uber Alles. Someone who sounds like Dylan. Italian news. Glenn Miller on the Voice of America.
I said, Because it is so horrible between us I will go and stop Egypt’s bullet. Trumpets and a curtain of razorblades. Organ music.
She said, that’s beautiful. Then I can commit suicide and the child falls into strangers’ hands.
What you did to me, she said.
What you did to me, I said.
The lonely, we said. The nights of hands on ourselves. Your unkindness, we said. Your greed. Your unkindness. Your bitter tongue. Give me time. You never learn. Your ancestors. My ancestors. Fuck you, I said. You shit. Stop screaming. I can’t stand it. You can’t stand anything. Nobody can live like this. In front of the child. Let him learn. This is no good. Yer fuckn right it’s no good.
This kitchen was once beautiful. Oil lamps, order, the set table. Sabbath observed. That’s what I want. You don’t want it. You don’t know what I want. You don’t know anything about me. You never did. Not in the beginning. Not now. In the realms where this marriage was sealed, where the wedding feast goes on and on, where Adam and Eve face one another, the foundations are faultless and secure, your beast hair flares like black fire upward and your breasts, now in maidenhood, now in motherhood, drawn down my face, our hunger blessed by sun and moon, a ring of dancers round the house where within the room is hid, where within the bed is undone, whereupon the hunger’s joined, where within the one speaks himself expressions yet unknown.
I’ll be on my way.
I went down to the port with my wife. On the way down I accused her of continuing her relentless automatic assault on the centre of my being. I knew this was not wise. I meant only to rap her on the knuckles and direct her attention to her habitual drift toward bitchiness but I lost control. There is no control in these realms. I became a thug. I attacked her spirit. Her spirit armed itself and retaliated massively. I’m glad you didn’t pack for me. You always slow me down. I can’t be an acrobat when you’re around.
The shoemaker looked up at us as we passed his open doorway. This humiliation made me furious. I shoved a razor blade into her nerves. Her eyes changed colour. This was done by saying Jesus Christ, quickening my step slightly, minutely moving my jaw, rejecting the essence of her totally and forever. Half-asleep Old John saw us but it was no humiliation since he didn’t recognize me anymore and I no longer greeted him. Captain Mad Body saw us but it didn’t matter because he was mute and crazy and lived on the port and knew the shames of everyone. We were on the port, in plain sunlight between the masts and the shops. The horn, the boat was coming. I would have to travel without your blessing in the collapsed world. That’s the boat.
The Naeraia came in, its white decks above us. I know the name of a boat or two. Ropes were flying, uniforms flashing, everywhere haste advised and the threat of lost time. I stared at her as she became beautiful and calm. I would not get the blessing. The journey had an unclean start.
Once on the boat I was on the boat. I didn’t climb the upper deck to wave goodbye to one whose blessings were unconfirmed. She must take her dead blessings up the hill back to the house. When she got home she pinned a blue ribbon to the inside of my windbreaker, next to where the heart would be. She showed me this much later. Certainly a factor in my coming back alive.
I sat down next to a man who had done some work. There are always such people around to illumine one’s sloth. The modesty of this one was especially reproachful. His hands told me how lazy I am. His quietness told me how loud. His wrinkles told me how weak I am. His shoulders told me how proud.
We came to the island of Aigina, home of the pistachio nut, last stop before Piraeus. Anthony said that George said that at first you only want to look at the front of them but after a while you only want to see them from behind.
Stamatis boarded the ship at Aigina, a cunt-struck landowner from this very island. I asked him if he had any news of Lizette, an English inn-keeper of mutual acquaintance who had a sad reputation of biting into cocks, disinterested information of her existence being the mainstay of our accidental annual conversations. Yes, he had news, but not very pleasant news. She had come to Athens. She had contacted him. They had arranged a rendezvous but both turned up at different times due to a misunderstanding of clocks. Some time later when he called her hotel he was informed that she was not able to use the telephone. He summoned the hotel manager to the line and he was advised not to come to the hotel, it was not a pretty sight. Some weeks later he received a letter from Lizette, postmarked London, with a characteristically depressing explanation. Apparently she had been badly tortured by three Japanese tourists behind a restaurant. This was the first conversation I had enjoyed with Stamatis in a long time. Do you believe this preposterous story? I said to him.
It was amazing how clear-brained and happy I had become. Just a little sea between me and the creature of unbeauty and the world had begun to come alive. He stuffed a cigarette into an ivory tube and pretended not to hear me. We sipped our ouzos, perfectly content, giving nothing, two men of the world.
-Why aren’t you in Israel, he said, thinking he had me there.
-As a matter of fact, that’s exactly where I’m going.
-Really? Really? He stood up, delighted.
-I’ll go directly to the airport as soon as we dock. That’s what I’m doing here.
-Bravo, he said. Really. Bravo. Bravo. Bravo. Oh I’m so pleased. Bravo. Bravo. Bravo. Bravo. He seized both my hands in his and squeezed them with true enthusiasm and something like gratitude. Evidently I now represented certain old virtues which he cherished deeply. More than love of cunt did we share together. We were the shield, the men who defended. My house, his house. My land, his land. Because of this we were granted cigarette holders, loneliness, and the right to speak of women casually.
-You must. You must, he said.
-I know. I felt humble and doomed. His eyes seemed to be shining at an honoured corpse. The degree of his admiration had attracted more than several of our fellow passengers. These he commenced to address in Greek as follows:
-This man is travelling to Israel to defend his country against his country’s enemy. He leaves a well-appointed house, a woman and a child, all the comforts of his achievement. I wonder how many of you, if you lived let us say in Holland or Sweden in similar circumstances, would sacrifice your security and come back here, if the threat arose, to fight against the Turk. Bravo, Leonard. Bravo. Bravo. Bravo. With a contemptuous wave of the hand he sent his audience back to their private chamber to reconsider their cowardice, and we embraced. I must be doing something really stupid, I said to myself, to make another man so happy.
Skip Notes
*1 This is the manuscript Cohen typed on Hydra shortly after his return, published here for the first time. The entire document is too long to print in full, and parts aren’t relevant to this story, so I’ve taken the liberty—with great trepidation—of abridging the text to distill the narrative of his journey to Sinai. I’ve corrected a few grammatical glitches and altered some of the spacing for clarity.
*2 The character of Anthony serves an obvious literary purpose: he’s the voice of universalism, a believer in the “world heart” as opposed to Cohen’s “Jewish heart,” skeptical of the poet’s pull toward the state of Israel. But the reference is almost certainly to a real person, Anthony Kingsmill (1926–93), a British painter with whom Cohen was close on Hydra. Despite Anthony’s stated intention to come along, perhaps drawn by a desire to paint “the landscape,” he didn’t.
*3 A reference, perhaps, to Michel Polnareff’s 1969 hit “Tous les bateaux, tous les oiseaux,” or “All the boats, all the birds.”
*4 In Washington, DC, the Watergate scandal was at its height.