The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

20

A mighty fortress is our God, sang Gretel in her mind, hearing the voices of the choir in the church of the town where she had been born as she stood behind the counter in the bookshop. Painted on the wooden gallery-front were Bible pictures, pink faces, blue and scarlet robes, too much colour, leaving a taste of marzipan in the eye. The three crosses on Golgotha, black sky, grey clouds. The Resurrection with many golden beams of light, Jesus in white gooseflesh. Potiphar’s wife, lusty, opulent, clutching at Joseph.

From deep despair I cry to thee, sang the choir in her mind. The dead nobles in the crypt beneath the altar were only acoustics now. Sound-absorbers, however gauntleted and sworded, fierce in battle and the chase, dead wives virtuous beside them. Silent they were below the altar, but clamorous in stone monuments in the sanctuary, praying in stone effigy, noisy with stone silence in the hymn. From deep despair I cry to thee, Lord God hear thou my call. The street outside the shop moved slowly in its daily march of buses, cars, pedestrians. ‘Do you sell ball-point pens?’ a lady asked.

‘No,’ said Gretel. ‘Try the newsagent at the corner.’

‘Greeting cards?’

‘No,’ said Gretel. ‘Sorry, books only.’ Apple cores came into her mind. Why apple cores, what apple cores? Brown apple cores in the autumn in a neighbour’s garden. Yellow leaves and she scuffling among them, squatting to eat the apple cores dropped there by someone else. Baskets of apples at home. Why had she wanted someone else’s brown cores? How old had she been? Five, perhaps, or six. Her earliest memory. What did Jachin-Boaz dream of? What waited for him in his sleep? What waited for him outside in the early morning? How could he go out into the street and come back with claw-marks on his arm? What was the meat for? Something that he was afraid of. Something that could kill him. Something that he wanted to be killed by? A man could not be completely a liar in his lovemaking. Jachin-Boaz made love like a man who wanted to live, a man who wanted her. How could he be so full of life and so full of despair? His face above her in bed was easy and loving, the morning face before the dawn was haggard, haunted.

‘Perhaps we could have lunch one day soon?’ That was what he had said to her that first time, after buying a book on string quartets. She had had another man at that time. Wednesdays and weekends. It isn’t that I don’t want to marry you, he said. It would kill my mother if I married a girl who wasn’t Jewish. Right. Here’s another one. Perhaps we could have lunch one day soon. Yes, let’s have lunch. My people killed six million of you. He had brought her a single rose. A yellow one that day, red ones later. She had talked about her dead father. No one else had asked about her father, invited him from the silence. He had kissed her hand when he said goodbye outside the shop. This was not, she had felt, going to be Wednesdays and weekends. She wanted to belong wholly to a man, and this man’s quiet face was claiming her and she was afraid.

Now his haunted face awoke beside her every morning. A mighty fortress, sang Gretel in her mind, imposing her will on the choir. The sound surged into a lion-coloured roar, a strong river of violent… what? Not joy. Life. Violent life. I knew that I’d be happy with him, unhappy with him — everything, and more of everything than ever before in my life. Something there is that won’t die. A mighty fortress is our something.