Simantov

by Asaf Ashery

  Rachel dismissed the affair in her characteristic, laconic manner.

  “We got married. It wasn’t successful.”

  This statement alone could furnish enough material for a lifetime of therapy.

  “Why is it so urgent to read the cards now?” Larissa cut short her musings.

  “Another woman disappeared.”

  Larissa sat down, her face suddenly all business. While Mazzy cleared the desk, Larissa retrieved her deck and started to shuffle.

  “What is the question you want to ask?”

  Mazzy settled on a two-pronged approach.

  “Is it connected to the case that the head of the Special Investigation Unit is trying to solve?”

  This was precise, professional and relevant, and would allow her to put the doubts and misgivings behind, focusing on the investigation itself. Larissa in the meantime counted the cards and announced them in a rigid, uninflected voice as she laid them down on the desk. The first card was placed in the center.

  “The two of swords.”

  A blindfolded woman sitting on a shore, holding two intersecting swords over her shoulders. A crescent moon is seen over her left one.

  “There is a conflict. Could be a misunderstanding, lack of communication.”

  Mazzy wondered if this was a reference to Hagar Abizu or to herself. Larissa’s next card held the answer.

  “High Priestess.”

  The Papess sits on a simple throne, between the black and white pillars of an Egyptian temple, a crown of moonbeams on her head and a crescent moon at her feet. She is wearing a flowing blue gown.

  “This is female power, wisdom, but there are also horns, which are masculine, and aggressive. They surround her but she’s too sure of herself to mind.”

  Mazzy had the feeling that the priestess was fixing her eyes on her, but her train of thought was soon cut short as the next card was thrown down. The tempo increased.

  “The two of cups.”

  A man and a woman holding cups underneath a caduceus and a winged lion.

  “Five of Wands.”

  Five young men in colorful clothes fighting each another with sticks. Another card was whipped out.

  “Knight of Swords,” pronounced Larissa, unable to maintain her monotonous voice. A glint of a smile seemed to light up the card reader’s frozen face. A knight on a white horse brandishing a sword against an azure blue sky streaked by a white cloud.

  Mazzy, too, stifled a smile. The cards proclaimed unceremoniously what was usually merely implied.

  The card pointed to her recent past, with the two-dimensional figure of Yariv quite pronounced.

  “The Hanged Man.”

  The familiar figure of the upside-down man, hovering between heaven and earth on a cross, was a surprise. Mazzy was no expert on Tarot, but over time she had absorbed and memorized the figures of the Major Arcana. The Hanged Man urges you to reexamine previous decisions, to look at things in a different way. The letter Tau formed by the branches of the tree symbolizes the confusing state of the world, torn between the material and the spiritual. This was a feminine card stressing prophetic powers, and since it was placed in the future section of the spread, Mazzy interpreted it as a good omen.

  The next card was less optimistic. A figure in a black cloak examining three overturned cups, their precious liquids spilled to the ground, and behind the figure two upstanding cups and a castle in the distance.

  “Five of Cups.”

  Mazzy was running out of time, and of cards. The General Theme card had been declared.

  “Ten of Pentacles. Reversed.”

  “What does it mean?”

  Larissa looked at Mazzy as at an impatient child who doesn’t yet know the proper way things are done, but the urgency in Mazzy’s voice made the card reader spit out the words quickly and gruffly.

  “When the card is reversed it means that the system is collapsing. This is a card of wealth, resources, and power. The hierarchy is changing, shifting. The generations don’t understand each other. What you remember is correct, what you think about isn’t. This may be related to the girl and her mother, but not a one-to-one correlation. It is general. It’s bigger than the girl and the Judge’s wife.”

  The detailed reply had its effect and Mazzy kept quiet. She let Larissa finish without further comment. The next card was the Eight of Cups, picturing a pilgrim walking away from a pyramid of cups, on a mountainside with a full moon above him.

  The final card was the Chariot. The reader now focused her attention on the message that the cards delivered. She sought the general picture, seeking tortuous paths between past, present, and future.

  “Your cards show many things. In your head you ask about the present, but the answers are about the past. You have swords there, but the answers should not come from the head but from the gut, from the heart. Look how many cups you’ve got here.”

  Mazzy had a few questions, but this was not the time to be distracted by her own complications; it was time to act professionally.

  “You also have a lot of moons. That means time, forward movement. Maybe the message is that we need to hurry. There’s a lot of flow, circular movement, madness you can’t stop. If you add this to the Hanged Man then you get a lot of womanpower. You must take command of this investigation. This is where it’s going. You also have wings twice, once in the future card. A messenger is trying to tell you something.”

  “What about the last card? The result?”

  Larissa tapped her finger on the Chariot card. A princely figure driving a pair of sphinxes, one black and one white. Here, too, Mazzy noticed representations of the moon: crescent moons adorning the charioteer’s breastplate. There were wings, too, on the front of the warlike chariot, and on both sides, turrets of a walled city.

  “We have here a struggle between spirit and matter, between man and woman. You see a lingam under the wings? It’s a symbol of the unity of the male and female. Some say that the ancient Egyptians knew about the yin and yang – this is why one sphinx is white and the other is black. We have a battle, but also victory. Great force that comes from above. And then there is something that I don’t get.”

  “What?”

  “You have twice two and twice five in the reading. Two always comes before five. This may mean something, or it may mean nothing, but it is no coincidence. The cards are trying to say something, but I don’t understand exactly what.”

  “Anything else?”

  Unusually tired, the reader shook her head. Observing sweat on her brow, Mazzy leaned forward and examined her, almost putting her hand on her shoulder; but then she remembered that Larissa did not appreciate gestures of love or sympathy.

  Larissa rummaged through her bag and took out a small cardboard box containing tobacco and rolling paper. She rolled herself a cigarette and lit it. Mazzy kept looking at her intently. This time the reading had been particularly hard on the reader.

  “Never mind. This will pass soon.”

  The card reader drank from the bottle of mineral water she always carried in her bag. The water in Israel was not to her liking. You never knew who poured what into your glass. The cigarette dangling from Larissa’s mouth only added to the exertion. Mourning for her brother had left black circles under her eyes. She looked as if she had just finished an obstacle course or a long night of lovemaking. Mazzy compressed all the sympathy and guilt that Larissa’s appearance aroused in her into one simple question.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sure. I just want to go home.”

  Mazzy sighed. She called a cab and, making sure Larissa took it, handed the driver a note. Then she went back to her office. Perhaps it was time to call the subject of the question she had posed to the card reader. The less important question, presumably.

  “Yariv?”

  “Yes?”

  “Mazzy here. I had a session with Larissa. We read the Tarot cards.”

  “And?”

  “It’s not clear cut. There’
s a struggle between men and women, something like yin and yang. A circular motion that has to do with time. It may result in an ultimatum that could have already been issued, except we haven’t been told. The hierarchy is changing, there’s a shift in the balance of powers involving a generation gap. Maybe it has to do with the Judge’s wife and his daughter or with the lawyer. I’d like us to examine this further.”

  “OK.”

  “Your place or mine?”

  As soon as the words came out of her mouth she could seed the smirk on his face. She would have to be the responsible adult in the room.

  Yariv said nothing.

  “Well?”

  “I’ll come over.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Here at the crime lab. They’re still processing the findings. You have to be on Doron’s back if you want credible results, something that will hold water.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “Except that your experts don’t testify in court.”

  That was true. And infuriating. Exactly the way “they” would do things.

  “Fine. Let me know if there’s anything new.”

  She waited in her office, mulling over the possible interpretations of what the cards had presented.

  THE THIRD GATE

  ETERNITY

  THE FIFTEENTH DAY

  TWO WEEKS AND A DAY OF THE COUNTING OF THE OMER

  “And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord and said, I will persuade him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith?”

  1 KINGS 22:21

  Barakiel’s scalp tingled. He thought his hair was itching, but he knew that was impossible. It had nothing to do with his shorn hair or the fact that his roots were dyed black. He itched inside and out. Even his wings, tucked inside his chest cavity, were itching. It wasn’t physiological; he knew the sensation, and what it heralded. The first time he had felt it was before the gate was closed and they went down.

  The second time was when he met Hagar. He tried to ignore her, but couldn’t: not her, or the itch.

  Barakiel tried to calm down; it was natural to feel like this when the return to Heaven was so imminent. He had a peculiar feeling, and not just because of the unpleasant itch. He was sitting in the middle of the theater, acutely aware that on this side of the stage there was not a single man or woman that resembled him.

  The only one who did was Sahariel, waiting behind the scenery for the right moment.

  The gala night was in homage to Milka Umm-Alzabian.

  The British troupe had grown around her, and this daughter of Lilith looked like a natural for that role. They had started as a marginal troupe, a fringe theater, but a string of well-orchestrated reviews and a carefully selected repertoire brought them to the top.

  The “Alternative Shakespeare Company” came on stage, with Milka as its uncontested star. In a program entitled “Evening of Tragedies,” Barakiel had just watched a modern dance version of King Lear, a gospel adaptation of Othello that sorely tried his patience, and died a thousand times during Julius Caesar. Saharel had elected to watch Hamlet and Macbeth.

  Milka Umm-Alzabian had a pivotal position in this important theatrical enterprise; Saharel paid a hefty sum for someone to give up their coveted tickets.

  The audience finished clapping, and a hush descended on the theater. The empty stage suddenly filled with thick smoke. A wind blew in from the north, billowing into a big cloud that gave off sparks of electricity. Such a sound and light extravaganza was unexpected, even in an “alternative theater” performance like this.

  Sporadic applause from Shakespeare aficionados was heard in the hall, but mostly the surprised audience stared expectantly at the cloud-shrouded stage. A curly haired, stern looking critic turned on a penlight and started scrawling on her pad.

  “The Alternative Shakespeare Company blew us over with an innovative, pyrotechnical interpretation of the encounter between Hamlet and his father. Four figures on unicycles burst out of a cloud of smoke. After a short display of acrobatics, the actors presented a stunning and inspiring spectacle. With gigantic wings attached to their backs, the four ran around the stage filling the air with the divine text of William Shakespeare; clearly something original and pregnant with meaning was occurring. The actors wore commedia dell’arte masks representing a lion, bull, and eagle; only the actor portraying the ghost – as could be inferred from the sign around his neck – wore a white human mask with a long nose, in the style of the capitano. Excellent lighting created an aura around the actors, investing them with celestial radiance. The felicitous choice of Hamlet, the prototype of modern tragedy, was greatly appreciated by the audience.”

  Barakiel stopped reading over the critic’s shoulder. He could not fathom her meaning and wondered if it was because she was a human, a woman, or a theater critic. He turned his eyes back to the stage.

  “Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, be thy intents wicked or charitable…”

  The actor playing Marcellus wore the bull mask. The critic’s pen worked furiously. Milka continued to exhibit her artistic credo.

  “Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life in a pin’s fee; And for my soul, what can it do to that, being a thing immortal as itself? It waves me forth again: I’ll follow it.”

  Only now that the words had come out of the mouth of Lilith’s Daughter did he grasp the subtle irony that so delighted Saharel. He watched her arguing with her friends, insisting on following the ghost, and appreciated the irony too.

  “Have after. To what issue will this come?”

  “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

  “Heaven will direct it.”

  Barakiel shot looks in the direction of the stage and the wings. As the fifth scene progressed, the activity and the noise intensified, with the shifting of props and the muffling of footsteps. Between the folds of the curtain he discerned a female figure dressed in gray rags, presumably one of the witches from the next play in the program. The tattered rags reminded him of another unearthly creature, the one from Seder night who turned their world into total chaos. On stage, the lines followed one another, and the Hamlet segment was about to end.

  “O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!”

  “And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come…”

  An old man next to him coughed audibly, causing the actors a momentary distraction. Four pairs of masked eyes stared at the row where he sat. Barakiel imagined it was Saharel reciting the last verse from behind the stage.

  “The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!”

  Thunderous peals of applause unfurled. Milka hurried backstage to change. The troupe celebrated her theatrical achievement by including her in every scene, though not always in a leading role.

  The clapping subsided only when the three witches came on stage. One crone asked the others to help her wreak vengeance on a sailor’s wife who refused to share her chestnuts with her.

  “I will drain him dry as hay: Sleep shall neither night nor day hang upon his pent-house lid; he shall live a man forbid: weary sev’nights nine times nine shall he dwindle, peak and pine: though his bark cannot be lost, yet it shall be tempest-tossed. Look what I have.”

  That was the cue for Barakiel to get ready. The tingling in his hair intensified. A drum roll from the edge of the stage cut short the imminent panic attack. The moment had come. There was no room for shilly-shallying.

  Whatever was shall be, be it eternal life or death.

  Milka uttered her last verse. The three witches murmured an incantation, lifting their eyes. Barakiel was afraid they might notice Saharel lurking between the beams and the curtain ropes.

  “The weird sisters, hand in hand, posters of the sea and land, thus do go about, about: Thrice to thine a
nd thrice to mine and thrice again, to make up nine. Peace! The charm’s wound up.”

  Barakiel shot up from his seat, ready for action. If Saharel made a mistake, he’d have to correct it.

  Saharel flew down from his perch, spreading his wings, and to Barakiel it seemed as if all eyes were focused on his comrade. In the hushed hall, all he heard was his own heartbeat. A gleaming bright light blinded the audience and thick smoke filled the air. Barakiel saw his accomplice grab Milka, then sprinkle a handful of shorn golden hair over her. Milka collapsed, but Saharel seized her by the waist before she hit the floor and carried her upward, disappearing into the forest of ropes and lighting equipment.

  The star of the evening was no longer on the stage. Milka Umm-Alzabian had vanished into thin air.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A peculiar sensation, born of a mother’s instinct, again caused Rachel to wake up with a start and gasp for air. No mother is immune to anxiety, but this kind was reserved exclusively for her one and only daughter.

  There were nights when she could justify the fear.

  When your little girl is asleep in the adjacent room, an invisible umbilical cord winds its way from your bed, through the hallway and over the rug, straight to the center of the tiny brittle universe, which is your offspring. It was the tugging of this invisible cord that made Rachel’s stomach turn and alerted her to possible danger. Rachel could not dismiss her premonition as hormonal imbalance or unfounded anxiety.

  She knew; she had experience.

  The invisible cord became a hissing serpent.

  It was a recurring nocturnal vision, but she was not dreaming; the vision did not originate in her mind. It was transmitted by bursts and spurts, open spaces, unfamiliar scenery, being hoisted from the ground and hovering in the air. Burnt feathers drifting slowly to the ground; an acrid smell in her nostrils. Looking down she saw scorched earth and smoldering embers whose blue flames were fanned by a wind. In front of her a huge white cloud spewed tongues of fire and flashes of electricity. Four figures on unicycles emerged from the cloud, with huge wings that blocked her view. She was dragged upwards, disappearing into what looked like the masts of a galleon or a forest of ropes.