Oneiron

  Shlomith had embraced Ditsa, Noam’s mother, as she wept after seeing her son disappear into his grave wrapped in shrouds from head to toe. Five dead, a five-fold measure of sorrow, and Shlomith couldn’t help remembering what Ditsa had said to her before the war, just after Shlomith arrived, when she was still curious and full of unrestrained enthusiasm. “Do you really think we believe they’d choose the kibbutz if we didn’t specifically train them to?”

  Father Kibbutz always knew best. Little kibbutzniks shouldn’t think too much. Little kibbutzniks should relax and enjoy being spoonfed codes of heroism and a sense of duty, and heaped servings of energetic functionality. Sometimes, in extreme circumstances, someone might run into the path of a bullet, but when you thought of the whole, this sacrifice was insignificant.

  Isn’t that right, Ditsa?

  Isn’t that right, Noam, Yoel, Gidon, Yoske, and Ben-Zion?

  These are the questions Shlomith digs up after Malka’s birth. She digs up Ditsa and scrapes away the layers concealing the rhetorical question this woman posed to her for some reason during her first month at Methuselah: “Do you really think . . .” Layer by layer Shlomith scrapes bare June 1967, Noam and his four companion’s funerals, and all that agony, and the lump inside her grows. It grows and grows and bursts when Malka turns two years old.

  At first Shlomith tries to be careful. Demurely she asks whether she can spend more time with her children than the last two hours they’re awake each day. But that isn’t possible. The central committee won’t give permission. Soon Shlomith is slipping into the infants’ house when no one is looking to see her daughter—in the morning, at midday, at completely inappropriate times. She plucks up her courage and sneaks into the nearby toddlers’ house where Moti and the other children his age are and where Malka and her group will be moved in the coming weeks. She peeks into the rooms and watches them at play, but she’s careless and gets caught; then “the problem” is discussed at the next general meeting.

  But Shlomith has looked deep into her children’s eyes and seen a glimmer of light that has yet to be extinguished from Malka’s gaze. There’s only one option: Shlomith has to save her children. At least Malka.

  “Do you want Malka to end up in Neve Ze’elim?”

  Another new day’s evening has come, and the nightly display has begun on the porch of the white stucco house. Zmira shouts herself hoarse, resorting to the theatrical pathos of ghetto life, which shouldn’t exist in her any more after thirty years of life at Methuselah. But Shlomith has an exceptional ability to get on people’s nerves. Shlomith is insufferable, and that’s why it’s completely possible that her daughter will end up in Neve Ze’elim, an institution for disturbed children located in Ramot HaShavim. This is what Zmira believes, and so does Dovid, who, with his last shreds of melodramatic emotion, the ones Methuselah hasn’t managed to root out yet, bellows:

  “Malka is my child too, and I say enough is enough!”

  Shlomith-Shkhina looked sadly at the boy from Vanity Fair. “For all practical intents and purposes, I was driven out of Methuselah. I did everything I could to take my children with me, but they wouldn’t give them to me. I went to Tel Aviv, which is the largest city near Methuselah, and tried to file a police report. The police said they had no authority over the kibbutz central committees and that I would have to contact the kibbutz central federation. And of course the central federation defended Methuselah’s approach. I worked in Tel Aviv for a while as a waitress, while I tried to negotiate with various authorities without success. In the end I was ready to kidnap my daughter. But when I went to visit Methuselah, neither of my children even seemed to recognize me. That was how well the kibbutz had brainwashed them! I don’t know of any other organization that effective . . . I lost that battle 10–0. I returned to New York in February, 1974. The rest is history.”

  The Vanity Fair reporter’s pen raced even as the tape recorder ran. Cheeks red, he recorded key words, creating a framework for structuring the long interview captured on the tape. The final sentence with which Shlomith ended her kibbutz tale he wrote down in full: “After that experience I have never—and let me emphasize the word never—wanted to be normal, to conform to any norms, ever again.”

  The letter Shlomith left on the table of the Kibbutz Methuselah dining hall as she left the kibbutz early on the morning of February 13, 1974

  Shlomith-Shkhina falls silent (and prepares)

  “Why Do We Drool Over Shlomith-Shkhina?” asked the Vanity Fair headline in gargantuan text, and the answer was probably clear to everyone who read the piece. People drooled over Shlomith because she did what everyone wants to do deep down: she turned her life into art. She transformed even the smallest details into part of her enormous, sometimes megalomaniacal persona. Nothing went to waste; everything was utilized. Might this not be everyone’s innermost dream: to live so that even the most insignificant decisions and thoughtless acts effortlessly stream into the great flow of Decisions and Acts? With every fiber of her being, Shlomith was an Artist, 24/7. Not many are capable of that. Shlomith-Shkhina was a necessary valve, an air pressure gauge. If there had been no Shlomith-Shkhina, someone would have had to make her up.

  “And what happens next?” asked the reporter, who could see in his mind’s eye how this fascinating sixty-year-anniversary interview should end. And he got what he wanted:

  Shlomith-Shkhina raises her gold-rimmed teacup to her rouged lips, takes a final sip of oolong tea, and smiles mysteriously from behind the cup. “There’s a performance I’ve been planning for a long time, and I think it’s time for me to complete it now. It isn’t without risk, and preparing for it won’t happen overnight.” Shlomith-Shkhina’s eyes twinkle mischievously. She shakes her head when I ask if she can describe the project in more detail. “All in good time.”

  I can’t avoid the thought that we’re in for something historic, something epic, lyrical, and tragic all rolled up in one package. A package named Shlomith-Shkhina. Contenting myself with the sly smile of the goddess, I shake her hand. She’s in a hurry to get to the Brooklyn Museum for the opening of the Annie Leibovitz photo show.

  After the goddess has left the building, I remain sitting on the stark white, leather sofa of the VIP room of the restaurant. All those stories . . . It feels as if I have spent a moment living under her skin, as a woman, as a Jew and an uncompromising artist. It feels as if a piece of me has left with her. And I am left waiting for the performance she will deliver sometime soon, once again revolutionizing the concept of performance, breaking the limits we haven’t even imagined yet. Thank you for existing, Shlomith-Shkhina.

  The Converse boy was right. Shlomith’s final performance, which was given in 2007 in the prestigious Jewish Museum, aroused much discussion. However, the arguments were exceedingly simplistic, a far cry from the intellectualism of the 1980s and light years away from deconstructionism—no one was taking paradox and turning it over, shaking it, and tearing it apart to see what was inside. The discussion turned almost entirely on the morality of art. Amateur freelancers wrote about the “boundary conditions” of the presentation, which triggered a full range of feelings in the audience: aggression, shock, pity, fear, anxiety, anger, and even malicious pleasure. They talked about the relationship between art and sickness, about where the line of being compos mentis ran, about whether the “community” should intervene in an artist’s suicidal undertakings and how. The arguments decomposed into their prime factors: what would have given the community in this case a right to intervene, to interrupt the process, to commit the artist to care against her will? Wasn’t America a free country? Couldn’t individuals do whatever they wanted to themselves?

  The newspaper sales were excellent, especially the tabloids with their appalling paparazzi photos. Someone had been tipped off about Shlomith’s project, and they secretly followed her as she prepared for her performance. The photo captions were sensational. A rail-thin Shlomith-Shkhina jogging along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade: “
She can barely stay upright!” A deathly pale Shlomith-Shkhina in Café Mogador in the East Village: “The eggplant dip won’t go down!” An emaciated Shlomith-Shkhina in a driving wind on her way home on the corner of Fifth and Sixth Avenue: “What’s she carrying in that bag?!” A weepy Shlomith-Shkhina standing shakily on the steps in front of her brownstone home, her pockets turned inside out, her house keys missing: “Shopkeeper reveals, ‘She only bought one single orange!’”

  But we don’t have any reason to join in the howling of the headlines. Especially at this point, now that the flimsy froth of topicality has receded back to where it belongs once the artificially maintained vortex has ceased spinning. (Can you still hear the echoes of the jingling of the cash register?) When that sudden spume has settled as sediment you wouldn’t even want to touch with a toe. (At this point, some wiser than us talk about “decency”.) Then—now, in other words—we tight-rope walkers of eternity turn our gazes up, toward the bright light. We feel a warmth toward which we move with eyes shut tight. We sense the gulf beneath us, but we are not afraid because vertigo is a fundamental part of this dance.

  As she prepared for her performance, Shlomith felt the obedient movements of the rope beneath her running shoes. “She can barely stand upright!”—that claim isn’t even remotely true. Shlomith barely touched the ground as she ran along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade! Despite her thinness, she was more confident and stronger than she had ever been in her life. (Dexamfetamine sulphate 5 mg x 3 helped with this somewhat.) Shlomith’s eighteen-mile run each Sunday would have aroused jealousy in any serious runner training for a marathon. Along with intermediate stops, her jogs took from eight in the morning until six at night. The purpose of this ten-hour slog was to hasten her arrival at her target performance weight of thirty kilograms and dropping to the “very severely underweight” BMI of twelve percent.

  The nights were difficult, full of aimless, fleeting, tinny tatters of thought. The emaciated artist tossed and turned in bed more than ever, like a cog rattle on a stick. A terrible grating noise echoed in her skull. Despite the occasional protestations of the radiator, the house was silent; only the familiar background noise of the streets, like the sighing of waves, built up a sound barrier in which it was, theoretically, safe to sleep. But the bed spun and the ratchet clattered, thoughts grating and bringing a taste of blood to her mouth. Sleep remained distant. Maybe it was the sound of hunger, her hunger’s toothy, idiophonic warning rattle?

  How to travel eighteen miles in ten hours without muscles

  Although Shlomith’s experimental life is beginning to approach its end, we must accompany her on her final Sunday ritual jog. We must tread it at least once with her. Shlomith traveled this route alone eight times during the summer of 2007. Which is a significant accomplishment when one takes into account that she covered each mile more or less by force of will, without muscles, which would have made the journey much more pleasant. Shlomith wasn’t alone on her jogs, so there’s no reason to pity her for that. She was in the company of reflections brightened by dexamfetamine sulphate, and these did not permit a single beat of cog rattling, crushing doubt, or grating questions. Every now and then Shlomith moved in that most unreachable of states, pure thoughtlessness; there was only movement and feet barely touching the ground.

  However, for the sake of truth it must be said that her Sunday jogs also entailed enormous amounts of suffering. Shlomith vomited bile at the bases of the trees lining the streets. A number of times she felt an almost unbearable physical pain, a scorching in her stomach, faintness, and vertigo. But that’s just how it is. Like beauty, there is no art without suffering.

  So we depart with Shlomith on her final run, not out of pity, and not even as guardian angels, but rather as guides. We do not accompany Shlomith for her own sake (she knew her route by heart), but for the sake of posterity. In case some other maniac (a performance researcher from Japan? Ireland? New Zealand?) gets it into her head to tread the same path Shlomith did to reconstruct the route. In case she attempts to experience something similar to what Shlomith-Shkhina might have experienced during the summer of 2007.

  Shlomith started in Park Slope, from the corner of Fifth and Sixth Avenue. She headed up Sixth Avenue until she reached her old home on Carroll Street. That long street transected nearly all of Brooklyn from the water to Lincoln Terrace Park. Shlomith didn’t particularly like Carroll Street. It awoke unpleasant memories, feelings shaped like hatches and dresser drawers—departures, returns, failures, struggles. And precisely because of that she had to travel this route time and time again. Shlomith wouldn’t be Shkhina if she hadn’t decided to go to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade by way of Carroll Gardens along its eponymous street. At this point Shlomith was still walking and warming up her “muscles”.

  This route, as long as a year of famine and weighed down with hostile memories, would likely have overwhelmed a person with less strength of will, especially since endorphins were no help at this point in the jog, since nature’s hormone haze wasn’t churning yet in her brain. But Shlomith was made of sterner stuff.

  Occasionally Shlomith sprints and then continues walking, running and walking in turn, warming up, preparing for what’s to come. She looks grotesque in her black running tights and form-fitting sweat-wicking black running shirt. She attracts alarmed, horrified gazes in the twenty-eight degree Celsius heat; people stare at her as if at a freak of nature. But we don’t care about those gazes now. We aren’t kin to the paparazzi.

  The first stage of the journey begins to take shape as Shlomith passes a familiar landmark. F. G. GUIDO FUNERAL HOME INC.— Family-Owned Business Since 1883. This signifies that only one cross street remains before Henry Street, where Shlomith finally has permission to turn, to change direction ninety degrees to the right. Now, however, Shlomith is forced to step off the sidewalk for a moment: the John Rankin House, a three-story red-brick Greek Revival building where the undertaker’s office established by the first Italian funeral director in Brooklyn is located, is completely surrounded by a film crew. The sidewalk is occupied by enormous, lighting equipment, scaffolds, cameras, and trucks with blue promises emblazoned on the sides: BUDD ENTERPRISES LTD. CONSULTANTS. EQUIPMENT LEASING. THEATRICAL TRUCKING. 212–421–8846. Before the bombastic front door stands a black hearse, model 1888. A heavily-built white horse is harnessed in front of the hearse; it snorts, shakes its head, and paws the asphalt with its hoof; clearly it would like to get moving.

  Shlomith circles the film crew on the other side of the road and ends up on Henry Street, which cuts through Carroll Street in a grid-like fashion and marks the end of the repulsive, winding, first leg of the jog. (Also, one more thing about Carroll Street. In point of fact, there are several places where it ends but then continues somewhere else, and you have to know those junctions if you want to stay on the same street. The city planners could have turned it into a joke and made cheeky little variations: Carol Street, Carrot Street, Carob Street . . . there’s nothing so amusing as getting lost in Brooklyn, in its deceptive small-town feel—how cozy!—and shabbiness, which make you feel like you’re almost where you’re going, that there isn’t any danger, even though in reality everything might actually be staged. Bill Cosby’s house isn’t really on Stigwood Avenue since no such street exists . . .)

  On the corner of Henry Street and Carroll Street, Shlomith gives herself her first reward. She walks into the corner store, CARROLL DELI & GROCERY—OPEN 7 DAYS, with its blue-and-white-and-red-striped awning that brings to mind baguettes and cheap red wine (perhaps the owner is a Francophile?) COLD-CUTS • BEER • SODA • FREE DELIVERY • 522–3257. Shlomith doesn’t buy cold-cuts or chocolate or lotto tickets; instead she pulls a few dollars out of the zippered pocket sewn into the back of her running tights and buys a bottle of Granini mango juice. She drinks it with relish and then continues running, now along Henry Street.

  The endorphins have begun cautiously flowing. The asphalt is no longer a sticky, black magnet that cli
ngs to her feet. The ground bounces her up as the linden-lined lane cheers her on, the wind rustling the green leaves in an encouraging cha-cha-cha! (At this stage of exertion, our starving runner’s hearing is extremely sensitive, but that passes. The sensitivity is followed by a feeling of blockage, as if her auditory canals are full of water. This is not a pleasant feeling, but fortunately her endorphin reserves are still pumping plentiful, nay increasing, amounts of the constituent elements of joy into her blood, helping her to endure the roar and even make that roaring sound like meditation music.)

  Shlomith quickens her pace. She’s in a hurry to turn toward the climax of her run, which she can reach in ten minutes of steady jogging. When Henry Street meets stubby Remsen Street, Shlomith turns left and dashes toward the seascape visible at the end of the road: the East River, where she could throw herself in and, theoretically, swim to the ends of the earth (Cuba, for instance). Shlomith passes a crooked yellow DEAD END sign, which is not meant for her but those with tires instead of feet, an engine instead of a heart, an exhaust pipe, carburetor, or radiator instead of a soul (who’s to know—a deep knowledge of the metaphysics of the automobile would require further study). Shlomith makes a brief spring and arrives at her intermediate destination: the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

  “She can barely stay upright!” What a monstrous lie. Shlomith floats along behind the rows of people sitting on benches squinting through sunglasses at the skyscrapers. Little girls run around squealing, playing tag; Shlomith lightly weaves past them without falling. The hexagonal blocks of the pavement look like gray honeycomb, the edges of some squeezing out a darker construction adhesive made pliable by the sun. The rows of cells are broken by arrangements of rectangular, partially broken paving slabs, and then the more evocative hexagonal shapes return with their honeycomb-sweet rhythm.