The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

3

It was late at night in the city where Jachin-Boaz lived now. He lay awake looking at the pinky-grey night sky framed in his windows. Always in the night sky here was the reflected glow of the great city. He moved his arm to light a cigarette, and the girl who lay with her head on his chest rolled over in her sleep, trailing her hand down his body. Gretel. He said her name in his mind, leaned over to look at her sleeping face, turned back the blankets to admire the graceful length of her, smiled in the dark, covered her again.

Jachin-Boaz watched the smoke drift in the dimness of the room. He thought of stories, fairy tales from his childhood, in which a young man went out to seek his fortune in the wide world. Always the father was dead at the beginning of the story, and the young man went out with his few coins, his crust of bread, his fiddle or his sword. Sometimes he found or won some magic thing along the way. A map, perhaps. Jachin-Boaz bared his teeth in the dark but did not smile.

Now he, Jachin-Boaz, was the old man out in the wide world seeking his fortune, the old man who wanted a new story and would not agree to be dead. The young man was left at home to be a shopkeeper and the companion of his deserted mother. Jachin-Boaz saw in his mind his wife’s face, looked away and saw the face of his son Boaz-Jachin outside the shop window, shaded by the awning, looking into the shadows at his father and smiling.

Jachin-Boaz got out of bed. Without turning on any of the lights he walked into the next room. His desk was there, and on it lay the master-map that he had promised to his son Boaz-Jachin. By the light from the window he could see some of the routes and places marked on it.

Jachin-Boaz, naked in the dark, touched the map. ‘There is only one place,’ he said, ‘that place is time, and that time is now. There is no other place.’ He ran his fingers over the map, then turned away. The sky was lighter than before. Birds were singing.

‘I never let him help me with a map,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘Sometimes he wanted to do a little of the border, but I never let him do it. He showed me little dirty maps that he had made, and he wanted praise. He wanted me to like his music, wanted me to be pleased with him, but I never said what he wanted to hear. And I left him sitting in a shop, waiting for the bell to jingle at the door.’

Jachin-Boaz went back to bed and wrapped himself around Gretel. In the mornings now he woke up with an erection.