TWILIGHT ~ Night
פסח: מלאך המוות | PESACH : MALAKH HA-MAWETH
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL. Past midnight, slightly cooler. The sweltering heat lingers though, so dawn will bring no respite with an unwelcome forecast hitting thirty-five Celsius by 5am.
The wide open windows warmly invite the sounds of this troubled city, teeming with life even at this hour, the occasional siren, bins being emptied in the street below, the noise of the street-cleaning cars whirring up to the fifth floor balcony, and with them a gabble of Hebrew and Arab chatter ... “Drinks Binyamin. Your turn tonight.”
“I know, I know, five minutes Ikraam. I’ve got them in the ice box; let me just finish off this kerbstone. The kebab store was busy again by the state of this sidewalk…!” trailing off in a giggle.
Each waves to the other, their good-humoured banter making Maximilian wonder upon the stupidity of it all, as he draws on a Time Filter, watching Binyamin and Ikraam from the balcony. Maxim ponders ...
The whole damned world thinks that all Jews and Arabs are at each other’s throats, one lot swearing to drive the others into the sea, and all that; yet here he watches two workmen doing the same work, as a team, and meeting nightly for their diet coke or Fanta!
Why?
The concert went well, and Max reflected upon his good fortune to be schooled by two fellow countrymen, great conductors in their own right, catapulting his career as a Konsertpianist. The winner of many international competitions in his teens, his career seemed guaranteed with tonight’s performance of Rachmaninov, critics writing that Maximilian Baumgartner’s rendition seemed to find a hidden dimension within the score.
Tchaikovsky and Beethoven performances are scheduled in the coming year in Oslo, Liverpool, Frankfurt am Main, and negotiations are already well underway for a U.S. Tour. In particular, is his desire to perform Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto from the wartime film Dangerous Moonlight.
His growing international repertoire, widely available through a variety of internet music providers, had not prepared him for the dirt and grime of trolls, those who would write the most incredible messages on social media about his hands, his deportment, his ‘filth of beauty’.
Caius, his agent, more a father figure to him, listened quietly. His advice - never flippantly given - the oft-quoted proverb: ‘treat it as water off a duck’s back Maximilian’. Easier to agree with than to actually make use of. Hell, why should my sexuality be an issue?
He squeezed the dying embers from the zigarette and looked at his hands. Smooth, gentle, long-fingered, dexterous, stretching an octave and half again for those especially challenging compositions, he remembered his promise to give this habit up. Caius had been candid. Max, if you persist in this you could, and probably will, ruin your career.
He checked himself, a silent rebuke within, and picked up the box of TIME 20 Filter King Size strangled the nineteen filter tips and with irritation threw them across the balcony but missing the refuse chute. As he walked across to pick them up he recalled that other proverb from Caius. Maximilian, a man without self-control is like a city whose walls have fallen down!
*
Smiling as he looked down at Binyamin and Ikraam sitting on the pedestrian wall housing the palm, putting the world to rights, each talking together, each wildly gesticulating as if conducting their own symphonies ... Ikraam glanced up, Maxim waved, Binyamin too glanced up, and suddenly all three laughed and waved, Binyamin and Ikraam sending up a harmonised shoulder shrug We know, we know, it make no sense don’t it!
A brief moment, a second, when it seemed that we could solve all our differences, the endless gate-crash upon ordinary people the world over, of arrogant ideologies and the plain-honest-to-god-madness of every religion known.
Like a war between nymphs, each religion demanded that only their fairy story was the correct fairy story. The clash of religions and ideologies.
He stepped back into the wide bedroom, giggling to himself as his friends took up their symphonies with renewed vigour ... No Binyamin. You’ve got to stop all this building. Gaza is being strangled. Then Gaza fires its rockets, and then come the air strikes, or the assassination. It can’t go on like this Bin.
I know Ikraam. I know, I know. But the politicians on both sides - Jew and Arab - are still that obstinate three millennial pair - Yizkah and Ishma-el. Idiots, the both of them.
Yes Binyamin, yes. Come on, we’d better get back to work. The politicians need people like us. At least WE can sit down and talk …
Yes Ikraam, AND work together.
Another set of giggles breezed up on the night air.
Maxim slid the glass half shut and lay back down.
As Aaron stirred and rolled over, Maximilian stroked him gently and pulled the loose sheet over Aaron’s arm to shield him from the sudden Mediterranean temperature drop - that coolness, all too brief, that presaged another day’s furnace. Aaron murmured a soft half-sleeping תודה ‘to-daa’, and squeezed him before drifting on.
***
1 July, 2022
All Rights Reserved
LIVERPOOL
© 2023 Kenneth Thomas Webb
Digital Artwork by KTW
[i] Pesach - Passover - חג פסח
[ii] Malakh Ha-Maweth - The Angel of Death - מלאך המוות
Author Note
I well recall, on one of my visits to Jerusalem, standing in King David’s Tower. It was one of those moments where history seems to lift oneself and sweep back thousands of years even though this tower has been destroyed and rebuilt by conquest many times since the original was built around the 2nd Century BCE (200 years BC).
Maximilian
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
