108
MARK MIRSKY
How many hysterical daughters of Israel have clasped their crucified
bodies and begged to dance as the brides of Love?
Simone, I honor your lust. It cannot be refuted. Only, listen,
I hear your father's voice.
The second father of the human race, the first lawyer. The
Almighty comes to terms, makes a covenant, the rainbow. Man
will
not be destroyed again. So begins human dignity, a contract, two
parties responsible, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all the parties will sign
for their children, i.e., this document.
Noah's document anticipates the Jewish people. The deal on
Sinai, law, a code. A case.
And what was the covenant of Ham's children, those happy–
go-lucky drinkers? Child sacrifice. Their Baal demanded the ecstasy
of human flesh. "There shall not
be
found among you anyone that
maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire." In that
line of Deuteronomy I read the dread of my fathers about marriage
as they passed into a land of cannibalism. Bad memories of Isaac's
narrow escape. No wonder the crucified body of Christ aroused suspi–
cion, any laceration of the body a tendency, backslide into the maw,
human sacrifice.
And Canaan's daughter, Egypt, whom Simone hymns as the
Tree of Life. It wasn't only ecstatic possession the Jews were rubbing
against on the Nile, it was mass slavery, Osiris-Horus, or whoever
the Pharaoh claimed as his impersonation, could impose upon sub–
jects in the name of the state, a form of tyranny that the Fiihrer only
flirted with.
Noah, in the Jewish commentaries, is not a saint. "And Noah
was pious in his generation," but, says Raschi, the eleventh-century
scholar, "What a generation!" Beyond the flood, Noah relaxed, an
average life, an occasional spree. The Zohar claims that Noah's
drinking caused death to re-enter the world. This seems farfetched
even in mystical terms. What is curious about the scene
is
the very
lack of drama, Noah lying naked but stupefied, Ham gaping silent–
ly, his brothers walking in backwards, without a word, not looking,
covering
him.
The punishment which comes
is
not immediate. It
lies in the future as if Noah
is
only an apt doctor predicting where
such traits of character
will
lead. "Cursed be Canaan, a slave of
slaves he shall be unto his brethren."
