The Celestial Gate

by Avital Dicker

  “The instructions are to wait five minutes,” she whispered, half to herself. The man said nothing and continued tapping the white window frame.

  Yam was curious to see the result, but the scene faded now, and he found himself back in the room looking at the big, irritated Indian.

  “Wait, I want to know the result!” Yam, curious, exclaimed to the Indian, only to receive a snort of derision in return.

  “Seriously? You’re the baby they’re supposed to have. To know the result, you have to decide if you want this family or not. What’s so hard to understand? You decide whether the result will be positive or negative.” The Indian used two of his arms to scratch the remaining other two and seemed satisfied with his small victory.

  Yam felt like tearing all four arms from the Indian’s body. Why, out of all the clerks in heaven, had he received the most annoying one of all?

  Yam summoned all of his self-restraint and tried to ignore the unbearable clerk and concentrate. The decision he was about to make would affect the entirety of his next life. He definitely wasn’t going to go with the first family he’d seen – the plump and sweaty group with the pair of exhausted parents. It’s true that sometimes it’s better to be born as a second or third child, because usually by then your parents have loosened up a bit. Firstborns always have a harder time.

  He remembered the last birth and the huge forceps that had yanked him out of the cozy warmth of the womb. For a whole month he had a huge, cone-shaped bump on his head.

  No. That family in the forest had enough children already, and it looked like they were struggling as it is. Besides, he really wasn’t interested in being bullied by older siblings or being genetically predisposed to obesity and male-pattern baldness. He vetoed the first family.

  Choosing between the two other couples proved to be much more difficult. Yam remembered previous reincarnations when all the families he’d been offered were either dreadful or miserable, and he had to choose between the lesser of two evils. This time he was lucky to have two good options.

  Yam was touched by the last couple he’d seen. They clearly longed so badly for a child. He wished he could wipe away the sadness from the woman’s eyes and make her laugh again.

  “Help!” The familiar, irritating, Indian-accented voice interrupted his thoughts. Yam found it hard to stifle his satisfaction at the sight of the chubby man entrapped by his own four arms tangled up. Yam reached out and wrenched one of the Indian’s four arms free and the cloud stretched backward. Then, suddenly, without warning, Yam released his grip. The Indian was flung spinning through the air and, as he hit the wall, he let out a scream.

  “I choose the couple on the beach,” said Yam. He could almost smell the salty drops of water in the girl’s hair. They aren’t rich, he thought, but they’re still young and, anyway, a child should be born out of love and joy and there had been plenty of that on that beach. Besides, for better or worse, Yam had always been an incurable romantic. That’s just how he was.

  “It’s about time,” said the Indian with a sigh of relief. A moment later everything faded and the room disappeared.

  Down on Earth

  On the white sofa, the man with the crewcut hugged his sobbing wife. “Next time, sweetheart, I promise,” he whispered into her chestnut curls.

  The overweight mother chuckled with relief into her mobile phone. “Thank God I’m not pregnant,” she said cheerfully into the device and happily kissed the toddler bawling in her arms.

  Amalia was pale. “I’m pregnant,” she said to the man sitting opposite her at the café. He was silent for a long time and then excused himself to go to the bathroom. Amalia waited and waited, but he never came back.

  Anise

  Anise smiled at the sight of the blonde clerk opposite her who couldn’t stop sneezing. She had two noses and noisily blew them both.

  Something has to be done about these clerks; the situation is getting more ridiculous with each incarnation, thought Anise, and sank, amused, into the soft chair.

  She closed her eyes, dimly hearing the familiar speech that was repeated over and over again every time she was back here. The same old explanation on having to choose one of three families, with a half-hour slot to observe each of them before making a decision. “Half an hour per family,” said the runny-nosed blonde. Nothing ever changes here, thought Anise. She wondered where Yam and Mor were right now and what she’d have to do to find them. She remembered entire lifetimes that had been wasted on Earth when they failed to find one another.

  This time she promised herself she wouldn’t forget or give up. This time, once and for all, she would find a way to break the endless, pointless cycle. Time and time again, she’d been emptied of all knowledge before going down to the confused humanity below, while in the here and now she had all the knowledge of the universe at her fingertips. She just couldn’t understand God. So much suffering could have been prevented.

  This time she would find them, Yam and Mor, and she’d find God too. She sure had an awful lot to say to Him.

  He was probably so busy that he hadn’t even noticed that the system wasn’t working. But she’d find a way to meet Him and explain to Him that things had to change.

  Anise shuddered as she remembered her last reincarnation. She’d been born into a poor family in Thailand that sold her for a few pennies. At fourteen, she was already married off to a forty-year-old man who used to beat her mercilessly.

  One day, he broke her nose and shoulder. Luckily for her, that day he forgot to lock the door as he normally did. After he left the house, some neighbors called an ambulance, which took her to the hospital.

  Through the ambulance window, she watched the distraught faces of the neighbors who’d found her fading into the distance. She knew her face was swollen and covered in blood but she didn’t feel any pain. She was just so happy to get away from her violent husband who had imprisoned her for years. After the doctors treated and bandaged her, she took advantage of the first opportunity that came her way and, while the nurses were occupied, ran away from the emergency room.

  Unfortunately, it turned out that life outside on the bustling streets of Bangkok was not much better.

  Anise shook off the unpleasant memory of her last journey. It had been brief. At the age of twenty-six, after years on the streets and the beatings, poverty, and drug abuse there, she’d decided she’d had enough and attempted suicide.

  Toward the very end, she finally met Mor in the form of her attending doctor at the hospital. For the first time in her life, someone treated her kindly and, for that one single moment, she was happy. Only, it had come too late. She had gone through too much already and didn’t want to go on living. That time around, Yam was nowhere to be found.

  Anise promised herself she would not forget. This time, she’d find a way to remember. She could never understand why up here everything was clear and available, but as soon as she was back down on Earth she forgot everything. What’s the point of going through so many lifetimes just trying to remember what she already knows here and now? she wondered. It’s not just stupid, she thought, it’s cruel.

  The blonde cloud next to her was sneezing incessantly. Anise tried to ignore her and focus instead on imprinting the memory of Yam and Mor in her soul. They were part of her. The best part.

  A series of forceful sneezes interrupted her thoughts again. She smiled at the sight of the blonde with two runny noses and the confetti of used tissues covering the floor and pushed the button in front of her. The scene darkened and then lit up again.

  Anise was straining her eyes, trying to see through the heavy fog that lay like a blanket on the thickly growing trees, when the silhouette of a woman dashed past her, just a few inches away. The woman looked frightened.

  The woman ran down a narrow path, then veered aside to continue running through the dense forest. Anise saw her silhouette now and then mov
ing among the thick branches.

  She could hear someone breathing heavily in the dark. A hulking man suddenly burst through the trees and stopped within inches of Anise. His demeanor was intimidating and Anise winced even though she knew he couldn’t see her.

  The man’s eyes swept the forest form side to side in search of the woman. For a moment Anise was relieved, thinking that the woman had managed to shake him off and escape. She breathed a sigh of relief, but then heard someone thump, followed by a cry of pain.

  The woman had stumbled over a tree root. The man grinned with satisfaction and slowly started making his way to the helpless woman, like a hunter approaching his prey.

  Anise held her breath and looked in horror at the face of the woman lying on the ground. No. She didn’t want to see even one more second. She pushed the button as hard as she could and only when the scene disappeared was she able to breathe again.

  “You should have waited to see what happened between them. Things aren’t always what they seem,” scolded the blonde in a schoolteacher’s voice, blowing her pug noses.

  Anise, still shaken from the violent scene, didn’t respond. This time, even the big brown mole that sat on the tip of the longer of the blonde’s two noses couldn’t make her smile. The last thing she wanted was to have a conversation now. She pushed the button again, and the blonde disappeared.

  This time she found herself in a room with a vaulted, domed ceiling, almost like that of a church. The walls were painted white, and a colorful landscape painting was hanging above the large double bed that stood in the center of the room. The view through the small window was breathtaking: a mix of minarets and spires rising from mosques and churches built indiscriminately side by side.

  A young woman in a long black dress, a hijab covering her face, stared at the floor as she leaned against the opposite wall.

  The tall blond man facing her lifted his hand to his chest and said, “Michael.”

  “Sual,” the young woman replied in a soft whisper, her eyes still staring bashfully at her feet.

  The young man slowly extended his hand and gently removed the scarf. She made no objection. Her long black hair came loose and cascaded over her shoulders in lush waves.

  The man gently reached out his palm and lifted her chin. She slowly raised her eyes and smiled shyly.

  “Hi,” he said in a clear mid-western American accent. Anise could feel the tension in the air between them. But the woman still had a kind of sadness in her eyes that cast a shadow even over this beautiful moment. Anise wanted to hug her. The young woman raised her hand now and slowly began to undo the buttons of her dress.

  Anise wanted to see more but instead found herself staring once again at the under-the-weather blonde, who was now brushing her hair in front of a mirror. Something about that odd couple intrigued her. A blonde American and a religious Muslim. Something just didn’t fit.

  The blonde sighed to herself in the mirror. “I’m sick as a dog and there’s no one to take my shift.” She turned around. “How do I look?” she asked, straightening her skirt.

  Anise, answering in the most pleasant tone she could muster, said, “Look, it’s impossible to know anything from just half an hour. How do I know who they are or if I’ll be happy with them? I know it’s not standard practice, but could you please let me have a teeny-tiny extra peek?”

  “I understand you, but you know the rules and there’s nothing I can do,” replied the blonde, continuing to apply her pink lipstick. “Besides, why don’t you stop thinking so hard. You know thought is only one tool in your chest. All knowledge is available to you here and now, and if you listen, you’ll know. You’re concentrating on your thoughts and you’re not using the other tools you’ve been given, like your feelings or intuition. You don’t need words here. Concentrate and just let it come…” The rest of her sentence was cut short by a rapid-fire succession of sneezes.

  Anise didn’t understand what the blonde meant, but the room, the chair, and the stars disappeared once again.

  This time she found herself in a child’s room.

  Anise looked at the collage that occupied most of the wall, almost entirely made up of newspaper cuttings with photos of famous pop bands. On the floor lay a jumble of clothing, leftover food, and some books and notebooks. Loud, gravelly-sounding rock music filled the room.

  The teenage couple in front of her was in the throes of clumsy groping and fondling, which Anise thought resembled wrestling more than caressing. Shaken, she looked at the girl, who didn’t look a day over fifteen, and the overly enthusiastic boy next to her, sporting a red pimple on his right cheek. He was, at most, a year older, Anise thought.

  The boy took off his T-shirt and began to unbutton the girl’s pink shirt.

  No! She most definitely didn’t want to see this. Anise quickly pushed the button and blessed the darkness that enveloped her.

  Back in the room, Anise sank into the armchair, took a deep breath, and tried not to sound angry. “These can’t be my options,” she said.

  But the blonde was too busy trying to close the zip of her evening dress and didn’t seem to be listening. “A girl pregnant at fifteen? Seriously? A baby whose mother is still a baby herself?” Now Anise raised her voice in anger. “How can this be one of my options? Will you stop dolling yourself up for a minute and explain what choice I actually have? All you have to offer me is a choice between bad and worse. She’s a little girl who hasn’t even finished high school. Of course I can’t choose her. I’ll ruin her life and she’ll ruin mine.”

  “I don’t make the rules,” replied the blonde indifferently. “What do you think of this dress? How do I look? You’re last on my list for today and I have a date.” She giggled gaily and blew her longer nose again.

  “Where the hell is God?” asked Anise, becoming annoyed.

  The blonde put some tissues into her handbag. “You have to decide and I have to go,” she said impatiently.

  Anise’s eyes darkened with anger. “We both know that I don’t really have a choice. Of the three options you’ve shown me, only one comes close to acceptable.”

  The blonde smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but just like you, I’m a small cog in a big wheel. And now it’s time and we both have to go.” She smoothed an invisible crease in her dress. Anise wanted to say something, but her mind was a blur, and, in an instant, the room had disappeared.

  The woman from the forest sighed with relief as she sat on the therapist’s couch. “At least I am not pregnant,” she said to the psychologist in the leather chair, who nodded sympathetically. “I would never have been able to love this child,” she stammered, and the psychologist pushed a box of tissues toward her.

  “We’ll get through it together,” she said softly to the young woman looking at her with eyes swollen from crying.

  Mother and daughter smiled with relief as the doctor handed the teenage girl a prescription for contraceptives.

  Sual tightened the hijab around her face and bowed her head. She told no one about her pregnancy; she now feared for her life.

  Mor

  “My name is Claudia,” said the beautiful woman who had entered the room wearing a smile that exposed a set of perfect white teeth that lit up the whole room.

  A woman with silvery hair gathered neatly into a bun at the base of her neck crossed the room with small, quick steps, her heels clicking sharply on the floor, to offer Claudia a manicured hand. “Nice to meet you, dear. Theo simply cannot stop talking about you,” she said in Italian with a hint of a foreign accent.

  “Ah! The two women I love most in the same room,” the young man said with a proud smile, eyes gleaming with happiness and an arm embracing Claudia’s slender figure.

  “Theo, enough,” Claudia scolded him playfully, her cheeks blushing.

  Mor couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the young woman’
s glowing face. Something about this woman melted his heart. She was beautiful. Her sleek black hair fell wild and free over her shoulders, the look in her big brown eyes exuded kindness, and Mor thought that if she so wished, she could melt the glaciers in the Arctic, or at least what was left of them. This woman filled the room with joy. He could almost feel her body heat and her arms encircling him in a scented embrace.

  Theo also seemed completely captivated by his young wife.

  A young woman came running in barefoot and flopped down at the dining table. “I thought I was the woman you loved most,” she teased Theo with a smile and propped her bare feet on the seat next to her.

  “This is my sister, Sharon,” Theo smiled, his hand not leaving Claudia’s waist.

  “Sharon, take your feet off the chair,” scolded the silver-haired woman.

  Sharon rolled her eyes. “Mama, enough. I’m hungry,” she said brightly and, without pausing, reached for the salad bowl.

  “Well, call Papa,” the mother replied.

  “Here I am,” said the striking man with silver-grey hair who opened the door just then.

  A racket and wide smiles filled the room, and Mor’s taste buds were aroused by the sight of the fresh bowl of pasta being passed around the table.

  The cheer around the food-laden table was almost too perfect. Theo spoke about his new appointment at the embassy, everyone began talking at the same time, and wine glasses were raised in toasts.

  Mor was moved by this family, but it was Claudia who really touched his heart. He was enchanted by her contagious joy. There was something about this woman; something pure that radiated from her like an aura, and he longed to feel the warmth of her arms around him, enveloping him in a refreshing perfume. She would be the best mother he’d ever had, he thought with longing.

  Theo and Claudia were the first couple he had seen, but Mor had no need to see any more families. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he wanted her, Claudia. In his next reincarnation, he was going to have a wonderful childhood. He deserved to finally have one of those.