City of Blok
William Collins & Sons 1988
Flamingo paperback 1989

HISTORY, DICKHEAD!
- Gamal Abd-el Nasser, leader of the Egyptian revolution of 1952, no less, died of a heart attack in 1970, three years after suffering the defeat of his people in the Six Day War of 1967. Remember? Those Were the Days, We All Were There, et cetera ... Anwar el-Sadat, the peasant son of Upper Egypt, became the new President of Egypt. Within three years the bastard had launched a surprise attack against our Hallowed Homeland, Israel, October 1973, resulting in the recovery by the Gypos, Goddamn them, of the western part of the Sinai peninsula occupied by Israel in that '67 War. But Anwar el-Sadat, give him his due, always said of himself. `Each step I have taken over the years has been for the good of Egypt, and has been designed to serve the cause of right, liberty, and peace.' Ach, so. But the advent of Menachem Begin to power in Israel boded ill for Anwar's dreams. Severe shock waves rocked theJewish State. Menachem's supporters rejoiced, freed, as they saw it, from the Shackles of Socialism. But the Left feared that the tyranny of the blackest clerical-reaction was at hand. Toothbrushes were packed at the first sign of the midnight knock at the door. But it was, as always, just the downstairs neighbour, desperate for a borrowed yoghourt. A deadly pall of apathy soon descended upon our land. Parliament failed to be dissolved, the tread of jackboots was tardy, the prophets of doom were confounded, for the moment, onerous currency laws were rescinded and MONEY, so long locked in the cage of Labour's national discipline, was LIBERATED! Huzzah! Bravo! Dollars gave song, deutschinarks took wing, francs, sterling and yen chirruped in the unexpected light of day, kronenskipped as deer, Jordanian dinars danced as rams-MONEY! like a rare, intoxicating liquor, flowing in hitherto parched wadis, gurgling into concealed wells dug by some in shrewd anticipation... and the river became a flood, and the flood a deluge, and inflation doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and not one fucking plank of a shitten Ark in sight, until, one cold November day, AD 1977, Anwar el-Sadat, deciding to materialize his long-cherished vision and throwing caution to the winds, suddenly descended upon the airport of Tel Aviv-Lod in his Egyptian presidential jet to offer PEACE to the Israeli people! Shock! Joy! Confusion! The Israel Army band played the Egyptian national anthem, Anwar el-Sadat and Menachem Volfovitch Begin embraced. The millennium has arrived!

But Avram Blok was unaware of this as he lay plugged into the intravenous drip at the T-t State Mental Hospital, undergoing a routine relapse. Teams of nurses turning him to prevent bedsores; he was like a barbecue that would never be done. Displaying no flicker of interest in history until that November night, one hour after Anwar el-Sadat's touchdown, when everyone was glued to their television sets observing the unbelievable new dawn - PEACE - the long yearned for, virtually abandoned dream, made reality by the motorcade of limousines flying the flags of Israel and Egypt, belting down the Lod Jerusalem highway and entering the Holy City from the west, above the ruins of the old Palestinian village of Lifta, past the tall new buildings of the Apartotel and the Jerusalem Hilton, down the twisting turn of the century old lane of Jaffa Road, past the marketplace of Mahaneh Yehuda, the street now lined with people rushing out to view the miracle they had given up hope of witnessing, Jews weeping in their joy at a glimpse of a Pharaoh come to pay his respects to the descendants of Goshen, his brown hand waving in the snappy late autumn air, the flash of his white teeth, the beaming Begin beside him, hard-boiled citizens weeping before their TV screens, while Blok, waking alone in Bed Number 15, Ward 6, suddenly rose, scorning the vital prop of his wheelchair, slithered silently along corridors he could not remember, carrying his drip in his hand like the rod of Moses, closing unerringly in upon his target: the unguarded staff kitchen. Lo! Opening the fridge, emptying a half full pitcher of milk and devouring the cheese and tomato sandwiches the head nurse was keeping for the long night-shift hours. Gobble, gobble, gobble. He ransacked the frigidaire, tearing into cold chicken, spooning out ajar of pungent Telma mustard. Removing the drip carefully, he placed it in the freezer. And the stalactites of the new dawn . . .

- Hey, Avremel, don't you recognize your own father? I know, it takes some doing, doesn't it? I've thought of turning all the mirrors in the house to the wall, as they do in Dracula movies. Your mother wanted to come, but she's still not well enough, Avram. Life is a large, coarse toilet brush, just rubbing our substance away. We can soon visit you as ghosts, clanking our chains, ringing our bells - Unclean! Unclean! It's a problem putting it in words... Often as you're sitting there, or when you were stuck in the bed, I sat thinking at you... mental telepathy, they take these things seriously nowadays. What made you laugh once now makes you cry. What can a father say? I tried my best. One always thinks - my son will be a better man than I. You look back at your own life and cringe. The errors! But despite it all... At least we shook ourselves out of our own graveyard. Europe, ruins, rubble, despair. A new country, we thought, new truths, new values. Not an ignoble thought, what do you say? Pass the orange juice? Na, take it, boy, they tell me you're suddenly eating everything. Excellent. Yes, we let you go your own way, didn't we, free of the umbilical cord... You went abroad, you saw the world outside. And still, you came back to us. You have to admit that. And what did we give you as a homecoming present? The October War. It nearly broke my heart. But now they say Peace is round the corner. Miracles and wonders in our time! Sadat and Begin kissing-that was a sight. It's been a long time coming ... It's President Carter, apparently, who pulled the strings. He's the one who says he's born again. A chance you have too, eh, Avremel? From a new womb - zoom, afresh!...

Your old friend Avi still asks after you, all the time. He says he'll try to come next week. He has a new girl friend now, a social worker. Life does go on, outside these walls ... New faces, as old ones drop out ... Your old flame Nili, remember? No, perhaps not... she stopped coming about two years ago. Marriage, children, responsibilities. And your film making friend in Los Angeles, Yissachar, he hasn't written for some time… But Avi, Avram, that's solid gold - friends of your childhood don't just vanish... Still banging his political drum, out there, you know, Peace Now, et cetera. Mazel tov. They demonstrated, in support of Begin. I never thought I'd see the day. Perhaps, despite the wars, the conflicts, all the hatred, there's a healing process after all ... It's working out with you, isn't it? We shall win through, asargelusha! The Blokkian Way! Survival, what do you say?

- All right, Avram, pretend you don't know me. Who the fuck cares anyway? Want me to jog your memory? This Is Your Life?sexy dreams in the old schoolyard... the stagnant pool of old pirate ships... early erections... flaccid falls... Shall I warble your Bar Mitzvah portion? Never mind, the waggon rolls on. Me Avi, you Avram. Ug. Comprende? This red-headed lady on my right here is Esther. She is the new star in our firmament. Esther, meet Avram Blok, partner of my mishandled youth. The one that got away, almost. Ah, do I perceive a twinge? You're not fooling me, Avram, the old Blok stirs there: the old Adam seeks Eve. Cherchez la fetnme fatale, preferably with a fat dowry, villa and Volvo, first hand. We have none of those for you. But there is a spare mattress, in our apartment, when you decide to get out of here. Spring yourself from this cemetery, schmegegge! You've been here long enough. That bed has your outline, we could take a wax impression of it. Come on, you son of a bitch! Grab a ticket out of this dump! We need you out there - the Blokkian eye that sees all and takes no prisoners! Your time is up, schmendrick! Arise, Sir Avram! Ding, Ding, Ding! The fucking alarm clock is ringing!

...And Esther... the full moon face, crowned with flaming red hair, grey eyes, ivory smile... She presses her hand on his knee. He extracts a handkerchief and blows his nose. Both his visitors applaud.

DING, DING, DING!
...Nevertheless, the continuation of his night journeys, slow advances, followed by regression... Genetic propulsion, struggles in the womb, the attempted abortion of nations... landscapes of snow, with burning barracks... gas chambers breached by the cannons of advancing Tartar forces... Blok, clambering desperately over mounds of corpses... brightlycoloured buses drawn up by the warehouses as tourists fire on all cameras... click, click, click, at Blok as he waddles, naked through the snow, teeth chattering, eyes bulging, desperately trying to conceal...

DING, DING, DING!

In the morning, his frostbitten feet placed in a tub of boiling hot water by his room-mate and fellow patient, Tsimmes, an old Rumanian incarcerated for folio de doute and chronic aphasic dissonance. The old man, thin as a beanpole, twisted as a mismade pretzel, rubbing Blok's feet with a sponge as he nonchalantly whistles a defunct grapefruit commercial:

If I were only a peeled grapefruit,
If I were only a peeled grapefruit,
A pretty girl would eat me up,
If I were only a peeled grapefruit...

For the previous two years he had watched over Blok, wheeling him about the asylum, helping the ward nurses turn him over thrice daily in times of relapse, clipping his beard, toe and fingernails, occasionally rubbing Doctor Jochem's Hormone upon his bare scalp, in the vain hope of vegetation. He had also taken charge of Blok's singed scrapbook, saved miraculously from the fire which had gutted his previous haven, the Moses Klander Institute. Guarding it zealously from prying psychologists, updating it, with the help of other fellow patients, by the meticulous pasting in of blood, urine and faecal test forms, discarded cigarette packs, matchbox covers, bubble gum wrappers, bus tickets dropped by visitors, and available random cuttings from the local ethnic newspapers, L'nformation, Uj Kelet, Viata Nostra, Letzte Neues, and from the main Hebrew press:

COCKROACH PLAGUE AT BEN GURION AIRPORT.
ZOO WORKERS HELD IN THEFT OF GORILLA'S TV.
PHILIPPINES ARMY SUCCESSFULLY EXPLODES COCONUT BOMB.
SECURITY FORCES KILL DOG-CATCHER BY MISTAKE.
THE SURGEONS SAT ALL NIGHT BY THE STRICKEN SHEEP'S BEDSIDE.

Heart Failure: An individual who receives a plastic heart forfeits his status as a human being, Chief Rabbi Goren said today. Anyone who kills an individual with a plastic heart, the Chief Rabbi ruled, could not be accused of homicide.

In the margins of which Tsimmes had written: `Nobody is a peeled grapefruit.'

- But we tried, Avremel! We did our best! Escape to the Land of Milk and Honey! Jasmine and myrrh and mutant grapes big as watermelons borne on the shoulders of our spies ... Ministries of Agriculture, Justice, Education, Defence, even Without Portfolio ... Ministries of dreams and Historical Destiny ... loyal followers of the Patriarchs ... Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Theodor Herzl, David Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin ... saints and seers, prophets and loss ... and people thought they were mad too ... ! Theodor Herzl, Avram! There was a lunatic for you - the great obsessive, but what a Vision! Theodor Herzl, Avremel, Our Founding Father, the man who caused us all to be here ... another Budapest boy made good too, isn't that a thought to conjure?

WHO AM I? WHAT AM I? HOW DID I GET HERE?

Theodor Herzl, schmegegge! Vienna, Schnitzler and Schriftsteller! The self-confessed ham who once wrote, at the apogee of his visions: `If I think of it, I still remain the dramatist ... picking poor people in rags off the streets, putting fine costumes on them, making them perform for the whole world a wonderful pageant of my own composition…' Our latter-day prophet, knocking on the doors of sultans, czars, chancellors, with that black beard, those mournful eyes... the anti-semites denounced him as the Prince of the Exile, the power behind the Elders of Zion, but it was all just bluff and bluster, magician's tricks, dramatist's wiles... although They called our bluff, pretty soon... The Jewish State, Avremel - who would have believed it! Who could have believed we'd come so far! It only shows you never know how thin the margin is between madness and sanity, success and failure, fame and derision, to be embraced by all, or spat out...

DING, DING, DING!

If you ill, it is no fairy tale ...

The daily routine. Dawn reveille. Drugs and mush. The thin smile of day nurses. Avoidance of night floor vomit. Sopping rags wielded upon a hairless broom. Corridors of grey and peeling plaster. Bending of one's ear, by Bed Number 9: Don't believe them, they'll rob you blind... I had it all, and now - nothing, you're left sucking your own banana… Offers of escape routes, through underground tunnels. The mystic and the occult, unveiled. Beware fucking by the ear! The five-year backgammon game in Ward 11. Look out for Saporta, he shits on God in the toilet! Repent! Book your seat in the next world! Discount tickets, the front row at the Resurrection! Guaranteed, or total refund! Eleven o'clock, drugs and mush again. Educational TV. Reams of silence. Incomprehensible monologues. TV and mush. Drugs and mush. Lights out. More night cries. Flatulence and disinfectant. Unattainable chemical slumber... The only break in the round: the Friday evening siren, ushering in the Holy Sabbath: The area air raid alarm, always used for the purpose, being situated on the hill above the hospital: Blasting out like the wail of God whose balls have been stepped on, at several hundred decibels, vibrating the walls, rattling the windows, sending the faint-hearted crashing into closets, careening under beds. Blok's Rumanian room-mate, Tsimmes, regular as clockwork, rushing everyone towards the bunker. `Syrians at eight o'clock!' he cries, pulling the sleeves off idlers. Bulky minions of authority subdue him, as the pious melt away to prayer.

The old paratroopers' saying: You go up, you come down. You go up, you come down. Boring!

There must be more to life than this.
They released Blok from the asylum.

 

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