In Babylon. Marcel Moring

he hears a heavy drone, as if the very earth is shaking. The trees tremble, snow tumbles from the highest branches, the night is filled with sound. The old man looks up, and there, standing before him, is the holy billygoat. Enormous. The biggest billygoat he’s ever seen. His curved black horns reach to the stars. The man claps his hands to his eyes and starts praying. But the holy billygoat bows his head and says: Cut off as much of my horns as you need for a new tobaccobox. Trembling with awe, the old man takes his knife and cuts out a piece of the gigantic horns. He thanks the creature and runs the rest of the way home. Nobody believes him, of course, but from that moment on, each time he opens the tobaccobox, people flock around him and cry: Doesn’t that tobacco smell delicious! Where did you get it?’

      Yankel stared into space. ‘Schloime and I knew the rest of the story: after a while everyone starts going to the billygoat to get a piece of horn for a tobaccobox, until finally the goat is walking the earth without any horns at all. But Menachem Mendel said: “I am that billygoat. You carve up my horns to make boxes in which the tobacco will smell as delicious as that of the first man who saw me. But has anyone ever asked themselves where that smell comes from? No one. You search, you hunt, you explore. You think: To find the billygoat, one must suffer. Or: One must be humble. Or you interpret the billygoat’s every word, every movement, and think: The world is a whole, everything is connected to everything else, or you think that seeing the billygoat is some rare privilege. Nonsense, all of it. I ask you: where does that smell come from, what is it made of?” Schloime and I shrugged our shoulders. “I’ll tell you,” said the rebbe. “That smell doesn’t come from the billygoat, it doesn’t come from its horns, it has nothing to do with the encounter between the goat and the old man. That smell is in us, we smell what we are.” Schloime shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said, “why can’t we smell that smell, or –” and then he looked at me, “why doesn’t anyone ever smell anything but stinking hides?” The rebbe lifted a pile of books off the chair behind a large table and put them on the ground. He sat down and gazed into the light of the oil lamp. “That is because, Schloime, we only think we can smell. We walk past the house of a hide trader and what do we smell? Hog’s piss, tree-bark, rotting hides. That is also what we smell when we talk to Schloime Kreisky because he, and his father and his father’s father, have spent their lives surrounded by hog’s piss and tree-bark and rotting hides. But do we smell Schloime? Do we smell the life he leads? Do we smell his soul? No, we smell only what is around him, what he holds in his hands, what lies about in his yard. The smell of Schloime himself, which is heavenly and sweet like cinnamon, is masked by whatever else wafts our way. And we allow this, just as we allow the world to churn in our eyes, but never really see, just as we open our ears to every random scream, but never really hear.” The rebbe stared straight ahead and closed his eyes. “The secret,” he said, “is not to smell, not to hear, and not to see, and then, when all roads to the mind are closed, to open the heart and make the world anew, to see it anew, hear it anew, smell it anew.”’

      Yankel looked at Rivka. She swallowed hard.

      ‘Rivka,’ he said, ‘never call a person what he seems. Try to hear his true voice, smell his true smell, and see his true face.’

      The girl nodded.

      ‘And another thing,’ said Yankel, turning to his wife, ‘the kugel’s burning.’

       Who’s There?

      WHEN I AWOKE, the fire had died down to a smouldering heap. I got up from my chair and began piling wood on top of the remains. There was still enough life left in the red embers at the bottom of the hearth. The chimney drew the glow through the new layer of wood, and five minutes later the room was lit red once more by a roaring fire. I did my best to keep it low, but the draw was so strong that the flames shot into the chimney on the least provocation. In the hall, the door was still rattling. I picked up a few large chips of wood and walked out of the library to go and secure it. On the threshold, I stopped. The library had been heavy with the twilight of closed shutters and drawn curtains, so I hadn’t realized how dark it was outside. Here, in the hall, the sky behind the windows above the door was blackish-grey. An ominous, dull rumble echoed. From this close it was as if the wind itself had fists and was pounding on the door, demanding to be let in. Without knowing why, I looked up, at the barricade. I didn’t expect to see anything, no translucent ghost, no wild apparition in tattered robes with streaming black hair, yet my gaze was drawn to the first floor. Then I heard a voice. It came from far away, muffled. It was a voice that no longer had the strength to cry out, yet cried out all the same. I shook off my hesitation, ran to the door, and turned the key.

      A vortex of snow and cold flew in, wrenching the door handle out of my hand. I was pushed backwards. The freezing air tore at my clothes, flakes whirled around my head and I heard nothing but the howling, raging, whistling and wailing of the wind. Just when I had got my foot behind the door and was about to push it closed again, a dark figure blew inside.

      Nina lay on the marble floor like a fallen bird. She wasn’t moving. Her lips had a bluish sheen and her face was nearly as white as the snow that caked her jacket and legs. She had no shoes on and her stockings hung in shreds around her ankles. I took her in my arms and carried her into the library, where I lowered her into the armchair in front of the hearth. Then I ran to the hunting room. There, in the big linen cupboard, I found the sleeping bag Uncle Herman sometimes wrapped around his legs when he felt like sitting outside on a chilly night. The thing smelled strongly of mothballs. Back in the library I peeled Nina out of her coat and slid her into the downy envelope. She didn’t move; she didn’t even shiver. I threw more wood on the fire, took a candle and went into the kitchen, where I pushed open the outside door, filled the percolator with snow, and put it on the back of the stove. As the water bubbled up, gurgling and sputtering, I stared out the window. Now and then there was a lull in the endless storm and I saw the garden glowing blue in the moonlight. But then the wind would scoop up some snow and hurl it towards the kitchen and the dark hole above the lawn would turn white. I leaned over the sink and peered into the darkness. The drifts under the window and against the garden house were at least three feet high by now.

      The water in the percolator began to turn brown. I got out mugs, spoons, and sugar and went into the hunting room. In the cupboard, Uncle Herman’s old clothes lay in neat piles waiting for someone who was never going to come back. I chose a pair of corduroy trousers, a jacket, thick woollen socks, and a jumper. Then, the clothes under my arm and mugs of hot coffee in my hands, I returned to the library. In the cabinet where Uncle Herman kept his liquor, I found a bottle of Irish whiskey. I poured a generous swig into the coffee. Nina was sitting in the chair by the fire, the sleeping bag up to her chin. Her eyes were open and her teeth were chattering loudly. I held the mug to her lips and helped her sip.

      I had barely had time to think since she blew in. Now the first questions started coming. How, why? How long had she been pounding at the door? Why had she left? And then returned? What would have happened if I hadn’t heard her? I put the mug down on the table next to my half-eaten meal and looked her over.

      ‘Cold. I. Thought. I. Was. Going. To die,’ she said.

      I kneeled down in front of her, unzipped the sleeping bag and pulled her feet towards me. ‘These stockings will have to come off.’

      Her head sagged jerkily downward in slow, stiff arcs. Her eyes were open wide, the pupils deep holes in the sparkling green of the iris.

      I slipped my hands under her skirt and tugged so hard on the pantyhose that she nearly slid off the chair. She kicked feebly and wriggled her way back up.

      ‘Can you put these on yourself?’ I asked. I held up Uncle Herman’s clothes.

      ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ She got to her feet, shakily, stepped into the trousers and pulled them up.

      ‘Better take off that skirt.’

      She nodded.

      ‘That coat, too.’

      When she had changed and was sitting in the chair with a fresh mug of