The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

6

Boaz-Jachin had completed his first drawing. It was an accurate full-size copy of the dying lion and the two arrows and the two spears that were killing him.

Now by transferring the lines of that drawing to another sheet of brown paper he made a second drawing. It was the same as the first except that one of the arrows was no longer in the lion. It lay on the ground under his hind feet as if it had missed him.

As he looked at the photograph from time to time Boaz-Jachin began to pay more attention to the wheel. He remembered the stillness of the original stone under his eyes and under his fingers when he had touched it. Always and always the leaping dying lion never reaching the splendid blank-faced king for ever receding before him, for ever borne away in safety by the tall wheel for ever turning. It made no difference that the king was now as dead as the lion. The king would always escape.

‘The wheel,’ said Boaz-Jachin aloud. Because it was the wheel, and the wheel was the wheel. The sculptor had known it and now it made itself known to Boaz-Jachin as its turning took away his father and his map and brought the dark shop and the bell and the door and the waiting. Boaz-Jachin was sorry that the wheel had made itself known to him. He wished that he had not recognized the wheel.

Boaz-Jachin shook his head. ‘Biting the wheel is not enough,’ he said.

The door of his room was open, and his mother appeared in the doorway. Her hair was disarranged and she seemed unable to compose her face. There was a knife in her hand. ‘Still the school project?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘What are you doing with the knife?’

‘Opening letters,’ she said. She paused, then said, ‘Don’t hate your father. He’s sick in his mind, sick in his soul. He’s mad. There’s something missing in him, there’s an emptiness where there should be something.’

‘I don’t hate him,’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘I don’t think I feel anything for him.’

‘We married too young,’ she said. ‘My house, the house of my mother and father, seemed to be crouching over me. I wanted to get away. Not to the place in the desert where the money went, not to that place that was a lie, that place that would never be green. They sat in the living room listening to the news on the radio. On Sundays the pattern of the carpet filled me with despair, became a jungle that would swallow me up.’ She passed her hand across her eyes. ‘We could have made our own green place. I wanted him to be what he could be. I wanted him to be the most and the best that he could be, wanted him to use what was in him. No. Always the turning away, the failure. Always the desert and the dry wind that dries everything up. I’m not ugly even now. Once I was beautiful. The night that I knew I loved him I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. I knew that he would make me unhappy, give me pain. I knew. Your father is a murderer. He killed me. He took away your future. He’s mad, but I don’t hate him. He doesn’t know what he’s done. He’s lost, lost, lost.’ She went out, closing the door behind her. Boaz-Jachin listened to her footsteps going irregularly down the hall, down the stairs to her room.

He finished the second drawing and went down to the shop to get another sheet of brown wrapping-paper. Most of the maps on the walls had been slashed with a knife. Drawers had been pulled out and maps scattered on the floor.

Boaz-Jachin ran up the stairs to his mother’s room. The knife lay on the bedside table. Beside it stood an empty sleeping-tablet bottle. His mother was asleep or unconscious. He had no idea how many tablets had been in the bottle.

‘Biting the wheel is not enough,’ said Boaz-Jachin as he called the doctor.