MY PENTATEUCH
My Pentateuch
All writing is autobiographical;
However, one can write 'born in some
year in some place' and one can also
write 'Once upon a time there was a king,
and he had three sons'.
(Jorge Louis Borges)
Genesis
In the beginning there was the number. Blue digits, faded, tattooed in freckled skin, mottled by brown-yellowish stains and graying hair, bowed toward crackled skin, like ears of corn in the wind. As a child, I'd look at the muscular arm of my father and, again and again, recite the numbers: "seven, eight, four, four, six" . . . at first in a hesitant whisper, like a personal incantation:"seven, eight, four, four, six"… repeating over and over, repeating and shouting in a hacked syllabic rhythm.
A few years later I was swept by a linguistic-kabbalistic urge. The dictionary I consulted explained the word tattoo as "a drawing or a symbol etched into the skin mainly by puncturing or burning the skin and spreading into these lacerations an indelible paint. Tattoos are very common in various savage tribes, sailors and pilots, who usually engrave tattoos on their arms and chests. 'Nor print any marks upon you' (Leviticus 19,28)." But my father was not a sailor nor did he grow among savage tribes. "Father, is it true that you didn't want a number at all but were forced to have one?"
Father is silent, his face is sealed. The wrinkles on his brow and cheeks are like the drawings on the tattooed face of the Australian aborigine in the dictionary. Like a Kabbalist or a seer staring at numbers and stars, trying to penetrate beyond what is seen to the eye, I practiced deciphering the signs and secrets of the digits engraved in the flesh, as if they were dates of birth and death on a tombstone, or a code in a riddle.
I used to play with numbers, like a numerologist, and search for hidden meanings. "Father, are you alive because of the secret combination in blue that bestowed upon you magical powers - an open account in the checkbook of life?"
In time I became acquainted with additional numbers: in the identity card, in the passport, military ID, home and work phone numbers, bank account, but all of those numbers did not have the same compulsory, super-natural attraction, as did the "seven, eight, four, four, six" which binded to my father's image like a transparent and impenetratrable celluloid wrapping.