Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, The by Hoban Russell

Author:Hoban, Russell [Hoban, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novel, Fiction
ISBN: 9780671783921
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1973-01-01T15:00:00+00:00

19

Jachin-Boaz’s wife, with her husband and son both gone, now considered the situation in which she found herself. In the first months after Jachin-Boaz’s departure she had gone through torments thinking of him in the arms of young and beautiful women. Wherever she looked she seemed to see only girls and young women, all of them so pretty that she wondered how men could choose among them. But she had talked to other women since, and the consensus was that men of her husband’s age often did what he had done, that after a few months or a year they yearned for the comforts and habits they had left, and, if allowed to, returned. She was determined to encounter such a possibility from a position of strength. She did not expect her son to come back, and made no effort to trace him. Nor did she attempt to locate his father. She concentrated her energies on the shop. She had long had her own ideas about how to run the business, and now she put them into practice.

She hired a girl to help her. She stocked paperback books, and made lively displays of them in the window. She worked up a line of fortune-telling maps for each sign of the zodiac. She took good-luck charms and cheap jewellery of an occult character on consignment from local craftsmen. She installed a palmist in the parlour above the shop – an elderly lady with jet-black hair and piercing eyes who was clothed entirely in black and turned over to Jachin-Boaz’s wife a percentage of whatever she took in. To create an atmosphere around her a coffee machine, tables and chairs were added, and regular coffee-drinkers appeared. A small ensemble of young musicians, playing folk songs and paid by the passing of a basket among the coffee-drinkers, attracted a larger clientele. Soon Jachin-Boaz’s wife took in more money in a week than her husband had done in a month.

During business hours she was comfortable, even gay. Sundays were bad. Sundays with Jachin-Boaz had often been depressing. Without him they were frightening. Alone at night she found her thoughts difficult to control. She washed her hair often and took many baths, luxurious with scented soaps and essences, but she avoided looking at her body. She looked at her face often in the mirror and felt unsure of how to compose it, what to do with her mouth. After not having worn her wedding ring for months she put it on, then took it off again. She began to read more than she had for years, and every night took sleeping tablets. Often she dreamed of Jachin-Boaz, and in her waking hours, however she occupied herself, there were thoughts of him most of the time.

Boaz-Jachin was in her mind less often. Sometimes he had seemed a stranger to her. They had not thought alike, had never been as close as she had expected a mother and son to be. Now he seemed less an absent son than an emptiness, an end of something.

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