The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973) Read online

  Boaz-Jachin walked formally down the middle of the hall in the light of the moon that shone in through the skylights. He stopped in front of the dying lion-king silvered with dim moonlight, leaping up at the chariot that forever bore the king away.

  Boaz-Jachin unrolled his drawings, took stones out of his pocket to hold them flat on the floor.

  Boaz-Jachin laid his first drawing on the floor before the lion-king. In his drawing, as in the relief before him, the lion had two arrows in him, two spears at his throat.

  “The arrows burn like fire and our strength is fading,â€� said Boaz-Jachin. “The spears are sharp and killing. The turning wheel bears us on to darkness.â€� He took the second drawing, laid it over the first. “One of the arrows is drawn,â€� he said. “The flesh that bled is whole, unhurt.â€�

  He laid the third drawing over the second. “The second arrow is drawn,â€� he said. “The darkness is fading. Strength is coming back.â€� He laid the fourth drawing over the third. “The first spear lies under our feet. The spearman of the king is empty-handed,â€� he said.

  He laid the fifth drawing over the fourth, then stepped back. In the moonlight the lion-king’s eyes looked out at him from the shadow of his brows.

  “The second spear, the last weapon, the spear of the king, lies under our feet,â€� said Boaz-Jachin. “We rise up on the turning wheel, alive and strong, undying. There is nothing between us and the king.â€�

  The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973)

  -9-

  The city was quiet, the birds were singing, and the sky was losing its darkness. The clock said half-past four. Jachin-Boaz could sleep no longer. He got out of bed, dressed, made himself a cup of coffee, and went out.

  The street was wet, and on the pavement lay wet blossoms from the trees that overhung the railings. The street gleamed under the blueish light of the street lamps and the blue before-dawn light of the sky. A crow cawed, flapping slowly overhead to settle on a chimney pot. A taxi hissed softly down the street, passing once, twice, over manhole covers, double-clanging each time. A telephone kiosk, like a large red lantern, lit the drooping blossoms of a chestnut tree.

  Jachin-Boaz’s footsteps had an early-morning sound. His footsteps, thought Jachin-Boaz, were abroad at all hours. Sometimes he joined them, sometimes not.

  Ahead of him were the river and the dark bulk of the bridge under its lamps against the paling sky. Jachin-Boaz heard a manhole cover clang, and found himself waiting for the second clang that would be the sound of the lifted edge dropping back. He had heard no cars passing. There was no second clang.

  He looked back over his shoulder and saw, less than a hundred feet away in the blue dawn, a lion. He was large, massive, with a heavy black mane. He had lifted his head as Jachin-Boaz turned and now he stood motionless with one paw on the manhole cover. His eyes, catching the light of the street lamps, burned like steady pale green fires under the shadow of his brows.

  A church clock struck five, and Jachin-Boaz realized that he had heard the lion before he saw him. The hairs on the back of his neck lifted, he felt deathly cold. He had heard the lion first. There was no hope that this was like the newspaper headlines, the mind playing a trick on the eyes.

  A taxi entered the street, approaching the lion from behind. The lion grunted and turned, the taxi made a U-turn, went back the way it had come. Jachin-Boaz did not move.

  The lion turned towards him again, his head thrust forward, his eyes fixed on Jachin-Boaz. He seemed not to move, but only shifted his weight slightly and was closer than before. Again, and closer.

  Jachin-Boaz took one step back. The lion stopped, one paw slightly lifted, his eyes always on Jachin-Boaz. The thing is not to run, thought Jachin-Boaz. The lion seemed to be gathering himself. Surely he’s too far away to spring, thought Jachin-Boaz. He took another step backwards, trying to move as subtly as the lion had done. This time he saw the rise and fall of the lion’s shoulders, the sliding of his heavy paws.

  Jachin-Boaz, backing towards the bridge, had reached the corner, his eyes still fixed on the lion. To the right and left behind him lay the road along the embankment. He heard a taxi coming over the bridge, turned his head just enough to see that the FOR HIRE sign was lit. He raised his arm to signal, pointing along the embankment.

  The taxi turned right as it came off the bridge and pulled up beside Jachin-Boaz. He was still facing the lion, with his back to the taxi.

  The driver slid the window down. “Do you want to go backwards or forwards?â€� he said.

  Jachin-Boaz felt for the door handle behind him, opened the door, got in. He gave the driver the address of the bookshop where he worked.

  The taxi pulled away. Through the rear window Jachin-Boaz saw the lion standing motionless, head lifted.

  The taxi hummed along smoothly. There was full daylight now, and there were other cars ahead, behind, on both sides. Jachin-Boaz leaned back. Then he leaned forward, lowered the panel in the glass partition between him and the driver.

  “Did you see anything back there where you picked me up?â€� he said.

  The driver looked up at Jachin-Boaz’s face in the rear-view mirror and nodded his head. “Proper big one, weren’t it?â€�

  Jachin-Boaz felt giddy. “Then why didn’t you … Why didn’t you …â€� He didn’t know what he wanted the driver to have done.

  The driver looked straight ahead as the taxi hummed through the traffic. “It’s nothing to me,â€� he said. “I thought it was yours.â€�

  The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973)

  -10-

  After offering his drawings before the lion-king Boaz-Jachin burned them on the plain where the lions had been killed. He took a large metal trash basket from the refreshment stand, put his drawings in it and set them afire.

  He expected the guards to see the flames, and stood near the spectators’ hill where he would have a chance of dodging out of sight when they came. No one came. The flames leaped up, sparks and flakes of charred paper drifted over the plain, the fire died quickly.

  Boaz-Jachin climbed over the chain-link fence again, walked back to the town, and slept in the bus station.

  He felt cosy in the bus going home. He felt cool and easy, clean and empty, as he did after making love with Lila. He thought of the road to the citadel of the dead king, how he had felt walking on it each time. Like the lion-hunt hall, it was his place now, printed on the map of his mind. Its daylight and its darkness were in him now, its crickets and its barking dogs and stones. He could travel that road when he liked, wherever he might be.

  When Boaz-Jachin got home his mother was out. He was glad to be alone, glad not to have to speak. He went to his room and took out his unfinished map. He put Lila’s house on it, the last king’s palace, the plain where the lions had been killed, the hill he had sat on, the road he had walked, and the two bus stations.

  His mother came home and made dinner. At the table she spoke of the difficulties of managing the shop, of her constant tiredness, of how little she was able to sleep and how much weight she had lost. Sometimes Boaz-Jachin saw her face waiting for a reply but he could not always remember what she had been saying. Her face became strange to him, and he became strange to himself. Again he felt empty, but it was not the easy emptiness that he had had in the bus. It was as if something had gone out of him and now he must follow it into the world. He was restless, and wanted to be moving on.

  “Why?â€� said his mother.

  “Why what?â€� said Boaz-Jachin.

  “Why are you looking at me that way, I said,â€� said his mother. “What are you thinking about? You look a thousand miles away from here.â€�

  “I don’t know,â€� said Boaz-Jachin. “I don’t think I was thinking about anything.â€� He was thinking, maybe I’ll never see you again.

  Late that
night he went down to the shop and looked at one of the big wall-maps. He looked at his country on it and the place where his town was. He ran his finger over the smooth surface, felt the lines of seeking that led from his town and other towns, his country and other countries, converging on a great city far away across the sea. His father, he thought, would be there, and with him would be the master map he had promised to Boaz-Jachin.

  He went to the office, opened the cash box. It was empty. His mother, then, had noticed the absence and return of the money that he had taken the other time. Boaz-Jachin shrugged. He had enough money of his own to live on for two weeks or so if he slept rough, and he had his guitar.

  He packed his rucksack, put his map in it, took his guitar. He left a note for his mother:

  I am going to find my father and get my map.

  He went to Lila’s house and slipped a note under the door:

  I thought that I would ask you to come with me but I have to go alone.

  Boaz-Jachin walked out through the sleeping town, past the palm trees and the square where the jet of the fountain continually rose and fell, past dark shops and houses and dogs that went their several ways, past bright closed petrol stations. He walked out to the road, heard the stones of the roadside rolling under his feet, felt the night in the road and the morning that was coming.

  The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1973)

  -11-

  The taxi driver had winked when Jachin-Boaz paid him. So he didn’t see the lion, thought Jachin-Boaz. He saw that I was a foreigner and thought that I was drunk, and he was making fun of me.

  The lion was not at the bookshop when Jachin-Boaz got out of the taxi, nor was there any sign of him that day. Jachin-Boaz had been in mortal terror when the lion was stalking him, but there was a strange joy in him afterwards. Lions were extinct. There were no lions any more. But he had a lion. “I thought it was yours,â€� the taxi driver had said, having his joke with the foreigner he thought was drunk.

  He is mine, thought Jachin-Boaz. There is a lion, and that lion, real or unreal, has the power to accomplish my death. I know it. But he’s my lion and I’m glad that he exists, even though I’m in terror of him.

  Jachin-Boaz went to a nearby coffee shop and walked back and forth in front of it like a sentry until it opened. Thinking about the lion he felt himself walking differently, set apart from other men, marked out for a danger, possibly a death, that was unique. He carried himself with melancholy pride, like an exiled king.

  When the café opened he sat drinking coffee and looking out at the people who passed. He felt new and sharply defined, newly found by himself and fatefully alone among millions, as if he had just stepped

  from an airplane. Everything that is found is lost again, he thought for the first time. And yet nothing that is found is lost again. What is a map? There is only one place, and that place is time. I am in the time where a lion has been found.

  All day in the bookshop the lion lived in his mind. He had no doubt that the lion would appear again and he wondered how he, Jachin-Boaz, would comport himself at the next encounter. He did not know whether the lion was real in the sense that he himself and the shop and the street were real. But he knew that the lion could kill him.

  At home that evening he was very gay, and made love with Gretel suavely and greedily, feeling like an international traveller, a man of wealth, a connoisseur of wines. He went to sleep with the figure of the lion in his mind as he had seen him last — head uplifted in the first light of day, stern and demanding, like a patriotic duty silently calling.

  Again he woke up at half-past four. Gretel was sleeping soundly. Jachin-Boaz bathed, shaved, and dressed. From the back of the shelves under the larder where he had hidden it he took a paper-wrapped package, put it into a carrier bag. Then he went out.

  He walked down the street to the road along the embankment, stopped at the corner and looked back. He saw nothing.

  Jachin-Boaz crossed to the river side of the road and walked beside the parapet looking at the river and the boats rocking at their moorings. He passed the next bridge, and the sky through its webwork was brightening.

  It was this bright when I looked back at him through the taxi window, thought Jachin-Boaz. I wonder if he stops being there when it’s broad daylight.

  The sky over the river was massed with dark clouds and dramatic lights, like skies in marine paintings. The river ran lapping and gurgling by the wall. The road along the embankment awoke to cars in twos and threes, a cyclist, a running man in a tracksuit, a young couple walking, holding last night’s darkness between their close-together faces, their long hair mingled.

  Jachin-Boaz was tired, he had had too little sleep, his expectation seemed foolish now. He turned and walked back the way he had come.

  The young couple who had passed him were sitting on a bench, embracing sleepily. On the pavement beside them sat the lion, looking at Jachin-Boaz.

  Jachin-Boaz had been looking at the river, and was no more than five yards from the lion when he saw him. The lion’s head came forward. He crouched, lashing his tail. His eyes were mystical, luminous, infinite. Jachin-Boaz smelled the lion. Hot sun, dry wind and the tawny plains.

  Jachin-Boaz dared not move a single step. Never taking his eyes from the lion he reached into the carrier bag for the package that was there, let the bag fall so that both hands would be free. With shaking hands he unwrapped the five pounds of beefsteak he had brought with him. He threw it to the lion, almost falling as he did it. The meat landed with a wet and solid smack.

  The lion, still crouching, came forward and ate the meat, growling and staring at Jachin-Boaz. When Jachin-Boaz saw the lion eating the meat all courage left him. He would have fainted if the lion had not moved.

  The lion finished the meat and sprang at Jachin-Boaz. Jachin-Boaz, with a scream, flung himself over the parapet and into the river.

  He came to the surface choking and retching from the filthy water he had swallowed, and looked up as the current carried him swiftly on. He saw the two pale faces of the young couple above the top of the parapet, bobbing up and down and moving along with him. No lion.

  Jachin-Boaz swam close to the wall, letting the current carry him along to the concrete steps that came down to the water. There he dragged himself ashore, staggered up the steps, and stopped at the locked gate that shut the steps off from the pavement. He looked in all directions but did not see the lion.

  The young man and the girl were standing before him, faces pale, wild hair wilder than before. They reached forward to help him over the gate but Jachin-Boaz, still trembling violently, was able to climb over it by himself.

  “You all right?â€� said the young man. “What happened?â€�

  “Yes, I’m all right, thank you,â€� said Jachin-Boaz in his own language. “What did you see?â€�

  The young man and the girl shook their heads apologetically, and Jachin-Boaz said again, in English, “Thank you. What did you see?â€�

  “We saw you stop near us, unwrap some meat, and throw it on the pavement,â€� said the girl.

  “Then the meat jerked and jumped about,â€� said the young man, “and it tore itself up and disappeared. Then you screamed and jumped into the river. What happened?â€�

  “That’s all you saw?â€� said Jachin-Boaz.

  “That’s all,â€� said the young man. “Are you sure you’re all right? Don’t you need help? What happened to the meat? How did you make it do that? Why did you jump into the river?â€�

  “Are you a hypnotist?â€� said the girl.

  Jachin-Boaz, foul-smelling from the river and standing in a spreading puddle, shook his head.

  “It’s all right,â€� he said. “I don’t know. Thank you very much.â€� He turned and walked home slowly and weakly, stopping often to look behind him.

  The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russell Hoban(1
973)

  -12-

  Boaz-Jachin stood at the roadside. His rucksack was on his back. His black guitar-case, hot from the sun, stood leaning against him. The road shimmered in the heat. He was no more than fifty miles from home, and he wondered if his mother had sent the police after him. Cars whined past like bullets, followed by long stretches of emptiness and silence.

  An old humpbacked-looking open lorry loaded with oranges came puttering up and stopped with a mingled reek of petrol, oranges, and orange-crate wood. The driver leaned out of the window. He wore an old black felt hat from which the brim had been cut. What remained was too big for a skullcap and too small for a fez. His face had too much expression.

  “Where are you going?â€� said the driver.

  “To the seaport,â€� said Boaz-Jachin.

  “Get in,â€� said the driver.

  Boaz-Jachin got in and put his rucksack and guitar on the shelf behind the seat.

  “What’s in the guitar-case?â€� said the driver, raising his voice above the roar and rattle of the lorry as they pulled away.

  “A guitar,â€� said Boaz-Jachin.

  “It doesn’t hurt to ask,â€� said the driver. “It could be a machine-gun. You can’t tell me that everybody with a guitar-case is carrying a guitar. The laws of probability are against it.â€�

  “In the films I think the gangsters use violin cases,â€� said Boaz-Jachin.

  “That’s in the films,â€� said the driver. “Real life is something else. Real life is full of surprises.â€�

  “Yes,â€� said Boaz-Jachin, yawning. He leaned his head against the back of the seat and closed his eyes, smelling the petrol, the oranges, and the orange-crate wood.

  “Films,â€� said the driver. “Always the films are full of men with guns. Why do you think that is?â€�