Read Online Drunken Angel (9781936740062) by Alan Kaufman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alan Kaufman
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examined it. âYou have calluses.
They make you work on your kibbutz, huh? Good for them! They are making you tough, hard, an Israeli! What do you do there?â
âI work in the fishponds.â
âThe fishponds!â She and Tsofnat exchanged quick looks, clearly impressed.
âYou know,â said Elia, âthey only take the elite to work in the fishponds. The commando types. They must have a very high regard for you.â
Later, Tsofnat took me to the summit of Mount Zion. As the sun descended I saw the entire ancient city of white stone turn a fiery gold. There and then I resolved, at all costs, to live in the seat of the ancient Jewish kingdoms and of the Bible, where David, the poet-ruler and outlaw, had bedded Beersheva, wrote his melancholic psalms, and wise Solomon composed his immortal proverbs as he bed-hopped among his thousand wives.
19
IN THE MANNER OF SUCH THINGS IN ISRAEL, AFTER hosting me over several weekend visits, Elia and Tsofnat decided, without any open discussion but by a kind of perfume-scented osmotic interchange of nods, sighing winks, moistening thighs, and trembling breasts, that I would leave the kibbutz, apply to study at the Hebrew University, and move in with them.
There was little ceremony about it, and I had the least say of all, one way or another. Besides, it perfectly suited me. Owned nothing but the clothes on my back, some notebooks and books, and the typewriter, my trusted old Smith Corona. Hadnât a cent to my name.
The prospect of living rent free in Jerusalem, the city of God, thrilled me. Of course, it was understood, if unstated, that their sole reason for housing me was as a marital prospect for Tsofnat, who had no suitors for miles in any direction and was drifting into misanthropy of a very real and chilling sort. Her suffering was there in her eyes, unmistakable: a dark stare of nightmarish childhood mental
injury incurred by an upbringing on a borderland kibbutz where, every night, for fear of marauding robber bands and terrorists, the children were rousted from sleep and hurried, under fire, into dark, fetid bunkers to await the outcome of the nightâs battle, never knowing whether the figure appearing at the door to retrieve them would be a kibbutznik or a pistol-wielding killer poised for rape.
These experiences had calcified into dank mental crawlspaces into which she retreated and where no one could reach her. In all likelihood, she would go mad. Were she to, I couldnât possibly lose. I understood my advantage as perfectly as any gold-digging gigolo: Elia, a divorced woman without any illusions about the prospects for her increasingly strange old maid daughter; Tsofnat, a daughter living under the perpetual unspoken critique of her still beautiful, talented, and charismatically fiery mother; and me, an American Jewish boy, twenty-six years old, broke, needing to make his way in a new country. I would, could, provide endless amusement, not to speak of social, emotional, esthetic, and sexual reliefâboth directly and vicariouslyâto two brutally lonely single women trapped with each other.
Everything was understood, but unstated. The ostensible purpose of my âingatheringâ into their home was patriotic. I was an immigrant Jew whose assimilation into the Jewish state they would jointly underwrite. I was a project. Obviously, I was too promising a prospect to have to endure the indignities and soul-bruisings of immigration in a war-embattled land.
My sacrifice for the homeland entailed eating vineyard grapes while seated at the feet of Mother Elia, learning the insiderâs history of Israel, while her mad daughter raced about the building she owned engaging in interminable, outraged lawsuits over plumbing fixture repairs, damaged walls, leaking roofs. At night, as Elia and I continued our conversational walk through history, Tsofnat,
dressed in a horrific gray maidâs dress with white trim, her hair stacked
They make you work on your kibbutz, huh? Good for them! They are making you tough, hard, an Israeli! What do you do there?â
âI work in the fishponds.â
âThe fishponds!â She and Tsofnat exchanged quick looks, clearly impressed.
âYou know,â said Elia, âthey only take the elite to work in the fishponds. The commando types. They must have a very high regard for you.â
Later, Tsofnat took me to the summit of Mount Zion. As the sun descended I saw the entire ancient city of white stone turn a fiery gold. There and then I resolved, at all costs, to live in the seat of the ancient Jewish kingdoms and of the Bible, where David, the poet-ruler and outlaw, had bedded Beersheva, wrote his melancholic psalms, and wise Solomon composed his immortal proverbs as he bed-hopped among his thousand wives.
19
IN THE MANNER OF SUCH THINGS IN ISRAEL, AFTER hosting me over several weekend visits, Elia and Tsofnat decided, without any open discussion but by a kind of perfume-scented osmotic interchange of nods, sighing winks, moistening thighs, and trembling breasts, that I would leave the kibbutz, apply to study at the Hebrew University, and move in with them.
There was little ceremony about it, and I had the least say of all, one way or another. Besides, it perfectly suited me. Owned nothing but the clothes on my back, some notebooks and books, and the typewriter, my trusted old Smith Corona. Hadnât a cent to my name.
The prospect of living rent free in Jerusalem, the city of God, thrilled me. Of course, it was understood, if unstated, that their sole reason for housing me was as a marital prospect for Tsofnat, who had no suitors for miles in any direction and was drifting into misanthropy of a very real and chilling sort. Her suffering was there in her eyes, unmistakable: a dark stare of nightmarish childhood mental
injury incurred by an upbringing on a borderland kibbutz where, every night, for fear of marauding robber bands and terrorists, the children were rousted from sleep and hurried, under fire, into dark, fetid bunkers to await the outcome of the nightâs battle, never knowing whether the figure appearing at the door to retrieve them would be a kibbutznik or a pistol-wielding killer poised for rape.
These experiences had calcified into dank mental crawlspaces into which she retreated and where no one could reach her. In all likelihood, she would go mad. Were she to, I couldnât possibly lose. I understood my advantage as perfectly as any gold-digging gigolo: Elia, a divorced woman without any illusions about the prospects for her increasingly strange old maid daughter; Tsofnat, a daughter living under the perpetual unspoken critique of her still beautiful, talented, and charismatically fiery mother; and me, an American Jewish boy, twenty-six years old, broke, needing to make his way in a new country. I would, could, provide endless amusement, not to speak of social, emotional, esthetic, and sexual reliefâboth directly and vicariouslyâto two brutally lonely single women trapped with each other.
Everything was understood, but unstated. The ostensible purpose of my âingatheringâ into their home was patriotic. I was an immigrant Jew whose assimilation into the Jewish state they would jointly underwrite. I was a project. Obviously, I was too promising a prospect to have to endure the indignities and soul-bruisings of immigration in a war-embattled land.
My sacrifice for the homeland entailed eating vineyard grapes while seated at the feet of Mother Elia, learning the insiderâs history of Israel, while her mad daughter raced about the building she owned engaging in interminable, outraged lawsuits over plumbing fixture repairs, damaged walls, leaking roofs. At night, as Elia and I continued our conversational walk through history, Tsofnat,
dressed in a horrific gray maidâs dress with white trim, her hair stacked
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