A woman’s impious plea for rain yields calamity in Merav Zaks-Portal’s short story “Happy Now?”, our pick for this week’s Translation Tuesday. Drawing upon the Talmudic story of Ḥoni HaMe’aggel’s rain prayer, our protagonist ensconces herself within her own circle of protest in hopes of similarly ending a drought. Our protagonist’s lofty but aggrieved voice accentuates the story’s humour, though it also provides an ironic moral lesson, cleverly toying with the cliché when it rains, it pours. We’re also treated to a more concrete lesson: never leave your stove unattended.
They sent this message to Ḥoni HaMe’aggel: Pray, and rain will fall. He prayed, but no rain fell. He drew a circle in the dust and stood inside it
(Taanit 23a, The William Davidson Talmud)
I stir in the electrified air all around me. Prickles in my hands hint at coming rain. I lubricate my raspy throat with my tongue and wait. Wailing birds zigzag in the sky, carving across the canopy of blue hung out to dry by some careless housewife, pockmarked with cloud droppings. Electricity tingles in my hands, legs, bristling the blonde spikes of hair I’d pampered myself with. The news cricket claims the lack of rain is here to stay. Unless something drastic happens, he stresses in his tele-prompter voice, this will be declared a drought year. I entwine, then, abandon an onion to the fire, and go out to the garden to ring-a-ring o’ roses.
The earth is scorched, a cat pants in the shade, its tongue lolling. Wild pansies despairingly clasp each other in a flowerpot. With my kitchen knife, I lovingly draw a generous circle. I will remain inside, like Honi the Circle-Maker. Pleading, I will remain here until the heavens yield, cleave, bring a downpour on our heads. Honi, I beg, throw us a hint, grant me some wisdom. What am I, a long-haired, narrow-minded woman, to do? But Honi is silent, not a word, and I am still encircled, and the sun climbs the ladder of hours in sticky, yolky-yellow, stopping for nothing. And why would the sun, that son of a bitch, even care about some Honi-woman stranded in a circle, begging for rain, just a little, even a crumb, so she can go inside and weave back the day that was suddenly undone by the resolute-toned radio transistor. “Here is the news.”
Now she, which is I, is stranded here in this circle, and the onion gets burned in the kitchen, and the phone screams in its cradle, and I draw catastrophes in my mind, spreading their reeking wings and migrating through the phone lines and into my house, into my circle. Three rings and it is silent. I’m here again, all alone, cat to my right, pansies to my left, blue skies above, empty, unyielding.
Bastards.
Fucking bastards.
I kick the skies with my voice. What do you care? A drop of rain, that’s all I’m asking for. But they just don’t care.
The cat draws gently nearer. He senses, so it seems, that his mistress has completely encircled herself today, and wishes to rescue me from my encirclement. I thank him and send him back to his corner. I have a mission here, Sir, and I am determined to carry it out. I consider retreating to my kitchen lair, to rescue the onion, add a little paprika, a spoonful of tomato concentrate, a cup of lentils, finely chopped celery, and lots of water. I’ll give it, the soup, half an hour, then add a cauliflower head, broken down to florets, and half a cup of rice. Before becoming a rainmaker, I used to prepare a mean lentil soup. But now the newscaster’s dry voice is burbling in my ear again. He, too, is desperate for water. And I better trace my circle, tighten its soil a bit, straighten its lines, give it a nice coil with my knife, and I stay.
I’m here to stay, I scream at the bruised heavens. Let’s see you now, come on, bring it! The dotty clouds fail to cover the pissed-off sun that is making my scalp smolder. A hat? You haven’t even taken a hat, you dumbass! Who goes out in the sun without a hat? Who circles a circle without a head covering? Did Honi have such troubles too? I try to find out with the sources, but they are stubbornly mute. Suddenly, gray clouds make their way to me, whiffing sharply of bonfires and ovens, the smell of catastrophe-heralding birds gently tickling my maw—but I am a she-Honi, and I safely stand here. Occasionally, I place my furrowed hand over my eyes to shade them, then squint my gaze against the sky, and there’s nothing yet. But here, despite it all, clouds draw near, very near, they travel to me from inside the house, thick and swollen, and the cat runs off with strange alertness, not to the roof as he usually does, but to the carob tree whose flowers carry a heavy sperm-like smell, dirtying the whole yard up. Including my circle.
And water! Suddenly my circle is flooded with water, my head is all wet, my blonde spikes lie down and I’m pirouetting in a circle, trampling the earth and raising my head to lick my fill of raindrops. But there’s no water in the sky. The heavens persist in their obstinacy, and an insolent, oversized hose splashes a jet of water at my house, my onion, my lentil soup.
“Move away, you lunatic!” I hear. “Scram! Get the hell out of the yard.” A fireman, dressed, head to toe, in a purposeful soot-stained uniform, screams at me. “The house is on fire, can’t you see?”
See? Of course I see, and I laugh. You gotta laugh.
And I also hear the voice erupting in the circle, and the cat drawing nearer, asking, “Are you happy now?”
Translated from the Hebrew by Yaron Regev
Merav Zaks-Portal is a writer of poetry and prose. Her first novel: Horizon of Angels, was published in Hebrew on April 2016 in Yedioth Ahronoth Books. Many of her short stories and poems were published in leading literary magazines in Israel. Zaks-Portal is a literary translator (English to Hebrew). Born and brought up in one of the biggest kibbutzim in Israel, she currently lives in Tel Aviv with her partner and children.
Yaron Regev lives in Israel. He is an author and translator, equally comfortable writing in Hebrew and English. His publications include two graphic novels, Ghosts of Love and Country (2019) and Descartes’ World (forthcoming), an upcoming YA fantasy series called The Door Behind the Sun, and several adult novels. More information about his work can be found in Hebrew on his website, asgardtranslation.com.
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