In Babylon. Marcel Moring

slowly began to realize the significance of Uncle Herman’s words.

      That was probably the most important day of my life. Not only did I learn that you had to mistrust talent if you truly wanted to discover anything, I also realized that I had stumbled upon an outlook on life which may or may not have been Uncle Herman’s, but which certainly seemed worth a try.

      And so I wrote my fairy tales and the longer I wrote, the deeper Uncle Herman’s strange paradox sank in and the harder it got. By the time I was eighteen I couldn’t do a thing. If I had to make a shopping list – the household chores had been divided up and I was the cook – I spent an hour at the kitchen table mulling over the correct sequence of butter, cheese, and eggs. It was the year when we ate almost nothing but omelettes and pasta with red sauce. I had long since stopped writing fairy tales by then. I cooked, stared at the pans on my stove, the sauce bubbling, the eggs setting, the garlic browning and the blue steam rising from the slow-warming olive oil, while inside me, the words formed mile-long caravans that trekked through the desert of my authorship.

      The fact that it turned out all right in the end, I owed to Uncle Chaim. One night I was sitting in my room, reading, when he stepped out of the bookcase and posted himself next to my chair.

      ‘Kabbala …’ he said after a while, breathless.

      ‘The Zohar,’ I said.

      ‘Forbidden,’ said Uncle Chaim. ‘Not until a man is forty.’

      I rubbed my sandy eyes and bowed my head. ‘Nuncle,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you once tell me I was the eldest?’

      He tore himself away from the book in my lap and looked at me. ‘A good memory,’ he said, ‘can be a blessing. And a curse.’

      I closed my book and let my head sink down onto the back of my chair. ‘I know, Nuncle, I know. But it’s there and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

      ‘The head,’ he said. ‘Must be covered. With Kabbala, always covered. Always.’

      I nodded.

      Uncle Chaim waited while I stood up and got my yarmulke from the shelf of Jewish books.

      ‘Good,’ he said. ‘But now: why?’

      ‘Why Kabbala?’ I shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m just looking for the path to enlightenment.’ I realized that I sounded somewhat bitter. Uncle Chaim had heard it, too.

      ‘Write, child. Don’t read. Write.’

      There was a stumbling noise behind us. When we looked round, we saw Magnus standing by my bed.

      ‘You’re still awake,’ he said.

      I spread my arms.

      He walked towards us. When he was standing next to Uncle Chaim, he cast a quick glance at the book in my lap. He pursed his lips and looked at his uncle.

      ‘Write,’ said Chaim again. ‘A writer writes, he doesn’t read.’

      ‘Cooks eat, too,’ I said.

      Uncle Chaim shook his head. ‘To keep from starving. To taste. To know. But not to while away an evening.’

      ‘He can’t write anymore,’ said Magnus. ‘He’s searching for True Writing.’

      ‘Isn’t any,’ said Uncle Chaim. ‘Just stories.’

      Magnus drew himself up. ‘Flaubert said …’

      ‘Shah! That’s after your time, Magnus. And before his. Nathan only has to worry about himself. He has to do, not think. Listen. Two men are on their way from one town to another. Just happen to meet. One rich. One poor. Time for the evening prayer and one of them recites the Shemona Esrei, from memory. Long. Very long. The other man puts his hand over his eyes. Recites the alphabet. The first man laughs at his companion: “You call that praying, you ignorant fool?” The other man says: “I can’t pray, so I give God the letters and he makes a prayer out of them.” That night the first man falls gravely ill. As if his life is pouring out of him. Cries out to God: “What have I done to deserve this?” He hears a voice that says: “This is because you mocked my servant.” The sick man says: “But he couldn’t even pray!” The voice: “You’re mistaken. He could pray, for he did it with all his heart. You know the phrases and words, but you’re all mouth and no heart.”

      He’s right, I thought. The motivation is important, too.

      And so, by way of a detour through the Kabbala, which I read because there was nothing more I could do, I dug out my old stories and got back to work. Two years later my first collection of fairy tales was published.

      The beginning.

      There are so many beginnings.

      Beginnings?

      Beginnings.

      Six. All six, somewhere else. All six, at a different moment. And for a clear understanding of our history I shall have to tell them all at the same time.

      Uncle Chaim’s beginning began in the spring of 1648, that of his nephew, Magnus, in the autumn of that same year. My father began in 1929, midsummer night. Uncle Herman’s beginning, I’d place in 1945, in the springtime. Zeno began when he ended, in 1968, and I myself have only just begun, this morning. Out of the plane, blinding snow everywhere, the pier a white catafalque, and the travellers shuffling, groping their way inch by inch through the wind-driven curtains. This is Holland, but the wind is Siberian and the snow, from distant polar regions. Cold, my children, cold as a terrible dream about explorers lost in the wilderness. Roald Amundsen travelling on foot to the South Pole. Nobile, stranded with his dirigible. Scott and his starving, frozen men, waiting to die. We lean into the wind, our coats held closed at the throat, and struggle through the snowstorm. Come. Come, we’re off. To the beginning.

      

      ‘I don’t know what sort of bottle this is,’ said Nina, ‘but it looks intriguing.’

      It was as if my chair had suddenly shot forward, like someone sitting in the car of a roller coaster, the long-drawn moment of motionlessness at the top of the rails and then, bang! down he goes. A tremor coursed through my body, so violent that Nina ran to my side. The manuscript lay around my feet like a landscape of ice floes.

      ‘N?’ She laid her hands on my shoulders and bent forward, her face close to mine. ‘What is it? Everything all right?’

      ‘Huh.’ I couldn’t speak. The breath sank in my chest and I leaned my head on the back of the chair. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was lost in thought. I …’

      ‘For a moment I thought you were sleeping.’ She put the bottle on the table between our two chairs and crouched down in front of me. ‘You were sitting here, completely limp,’ sliding the papers together, ‘but I could see you had your eyes open, so …’

      ‘I was far away.’ Uncle Chaim, Magnus, Herman, Zeno – they echoed in my mind, they were like wisps of smoke, slowly dissolving. ‘Very. Very far away.’ I shut my eyes and breathed deeply. ‘I’m back now,’ I said, when I had opened them again.

      ‘N?’ She left the manuscript for a moment and put her hands on my thighs. She looked at me closely. ‘Have you ever had this before?’

      ‘I’m a fairy tale writer,’ I said. ‘It’s my business to be far away.’

      Nina jumped to her feet. ‘Why the hell can’t you Hollanders ever give a straight answer?’

      ‘Yes. You’re right.’ I reached for the pile of paper and began putting the pages in order. When I turned round Nina was sitting cross-legged, her arms folded, in her chair. ‘I’m sorry. Yes, I’ve had it before. Many times. But it’s got worse. Has its advantages, though.’ I picked up the bottle she had brought in and looked at the label.

      ‘What kind of advantages?’

      ‘Sometimes I get lost in a story.’

      ‘What