Oneiron

by Laura Lindstedt

  She doesn’t lap at her champagne like Irina, and she doesn’t forget her glass on the table like Ženja, who has such a compulsion to needle and taunt people that she doesn’t have time to drink. She doesn’t pour herself glass after glass of wine and lemon soda like Zina, or sip prettily from her own glass whenever she remembers, like Maruska, who instead of drinking is always filling other’s glasses—until she suddenly pipes up and says, “I apologize if this question feels intrusive, Polina, but Serjoža and I have been wondering about this together. I guess we can say it out loud now?” Serjoža nods, his large protruding ears wagging. “I’ve also talked to Irina and Oleg about this. We’re all a little worried about you, Polina.”

  Then Zina raises a finger. “Maruska, come on!” Zina’s face is red with irritation. “This is my going-away party!” Angrily she looks at Maruska and for some reason starts stuttering for the first time in ages. “Couldn’t we t-t-talk . . . about this some other t-t-t-time?”

  But Polina has no intention of talking about this anytime. Staggering, she stands and flamboyantly takes her sable fur coat from the back of the couch and pulls it on. Striding to the door, she yanks on the knob, yanking and kicking and almost falling with the opening door into the yard. The door then groans and crashes shut.

  The courtyard is large, and the gate is a fair distance away. There’s a shortcut across the piles of snow. Polina decides to take the shortest path. She speeds up and launches into the nearest drift. The snow is surprisingly deep. Polina sinks to her knees and continues by crawling . . . Her left boot sticks and slides off . . . Polina doesn’t notice and continues on . . .

  Oh no, Polina. There you are. In the snow.

  How do we get there?! I have to get there in time!

  Think of the warmth you talked about. Think of the warmth that came over you. Think of the bright, divine light. Try to remember that!

  I only see snow and darkness . . .

  You’ve opened your eyes! Close them. Now.

  The Polina in the air closes her eyes, and soon they both start to hear a rustling as the hems of the heavy, sable coat rub against the snow. Sweating in the coat, Polina struggles forward, over the snow bank, scooping the snow with her hands, churning with her knees. Rustling, groaning, groaning, rustling, until finally, after an interminably long time, she reaches the top of the snow pile. Panting, she stands and raises her right hand in a sign of triumph.

  Then she falls. She falls completely inside the pile of snow as if plunging into water.

  Dear God.

  How is that possible?

  Inside, deep inside, is an abandoned snow fort. A hollow space into which Polina slips, straight-legged, as tightly as a knife into a sheath. Behind her she pulls more snow, which seals the opening and edges and fills the cavities caused by the fall. Polina is completely and utterly stuck. When she tries to move, her body only drills more firmly into the blanket of snow.

  For a moment, just for a fleeting moment, the situation amuses Polina.

  Then she realizes that she can’t laugh.

  She opens her mouth and tries to scream. Of course her voice doesn’t carry at all. She is surrounded by plowed, hard, stratified snow, three hundred kilograms per square meter; no sound can get through that. Polina’s cry stops cold at the wall of snow touching her face.

  Polina tries to move one more time. She struggles, thrusting her stuck arms upwards. They don’t budge even a centimeter. The toes inside her remaining boot wiggle when she moves them, but her bootless foot is already numb with cold. Her knee won’t move. Her head won’t turn. Polina begins to tire. Her breathing slows, and the air she blows out now is already cool. The snow her warm breath has melted in front of her mouth begins to freeze.

  The Polina in the air speeds up. Her jelly body contracts and expands in pulses as she attempts to pump herself full of explosive energy. She has to get to where she is! To where she will still be breathing for a few more seconds . . . Polina tumbles forward rapidly toward the snow bank but rebounds like a soft ball.

  Polina, stop!

  Shlomith! Help! I can’t get into the snow!

  Calm down! You’re just wasting time!

  What can I do?!

  I’m going to say this for the third and final time: think of warmth. Think of bright, yellow light.

  How will that help? That was Maimuna’s death in the desert. I’m dying in freezing snow!

  Polina Yurievna Solovyeva: stop doubting! Believe me, and believe your own memories. You died experiencing divine love. You said so yourself! How did it go in Russian?

  Divine love?

  Exactly.

  Well now. Think of that. Think of this: you’re in the cold snow, but you feel warmth and you see light. You’re losing consciousness, and you can’t feel your extremities any more. There are no fingers, no arms, no toes, no calves, no thighs. Nothing you could use to move. To push. To kick. Only the pulsating center part . . .

  BooŽEStvennaya LjuBOF . . . BooŽEStvennaya LjuBOF . . .

  You feel a tingling that isn’t located in any specific place . . . Polina, I sense it! I feel the throbbing: the throbbing of your heart! Do you feel it?!

  Shlomith, I can’t feel it! I still can’t feel it!

  Try again: say “BooŽEStvennaya LjuBOF!” Say it over and over. Say it! Say it now!

  BooŽEStvennaya LjuBOF . . . BooŽEStvennaya LjuBOF . . . BooŽEStvennaya LjuBOF . . .

  Polina, listen. The tingling is everywhere. Not in your limbs, not even on your skin. “Skin”, “head”, “limbs”, “index fingers”, “little toes” . . . these don’t exist any more. You are one with the universe. You see a bright light even though your eyes are closed. The light calls to you. It’s a promise of warmth like down . . . no hardness . . . nothing hard ever again . . . no bruises . . .

  No hardness . . . no bruises . . .

  You feel no fear. All your fears have melted in the warmth. You’re full of trust. You don’t have to fight any more, Polina. There’s only love. You can submit!

  Shlomith’s coaxing, clearly delineated, even commanding thoughts begin to bear fruit. Suddenly before them is a whiteness, a pure whiteness. Whiteness like a silver screen full of light that the projector might fill with pictures at any moment. They feel themselves moving forward. They move through the white. They pass small bits of trash, cigarette butts, and branches broken from trees. They pass a small shovel buried in the snow, a red one that might have been used to finish the arch of the cave. A weak, barely audible thumping guides them: tu-tum, tu-tum, tu-tum. A heart in the bowels of the cave. The closer the beating takes them, the more powerfully the whiteness begins to tremble, until they arrive as if entering the center of a buckskin drum. On one side of the drum-skin waits Polina, whose strength is fading, the Polina who can’t get oxygen any more because a frigid crust has formed in front of her mouth.

  I see lips!

  I see them too!

  Lips through the ice!

  I see a face! A nose!

  It’s you!

  Then Polina’s heart stops beating. Complete silence. No more vibration of the drum head.

  I can’t move any more.

  Try to push through the crust somehow!

  I can’t.

  Sometimes the impossible stays impossible. Polina’s strength of will is no weaker than the others’—she has simply arrived too late, and tardiness has consequences. The lips visible through the crust of ice begin to fade, the face begins to lose its shape, and the nose and eyes disappear by degrees.

  Shlomith.

  What?

  I don’t believe this any more.

  What?

  I see white.

  I see white too!

  No. I see a different white. The white where we were before.

  You can’t be serious.

  I am.

  How do you know it’s that white and not this white?

  Guess.

  It doesn’t pulse?

  No, it doesn’t pulse. Doe
s the white where you are pulse?

  No, not any more.

  Well, go on and guess. How do I know that I’m there again?

  Does it feel different?

  I don’t feel anything.

  So tell me already! I don’t know!

  There’s something here.

  Someone’s there?

  Yes.

  I can’t see anything.

  I guessed as much.

  Far in the distance Polina sees a heap that is undeniably human: a small, dark-haired child. When Polina squints hard, she thinks she can tell that the heap is a girl and that the girl is wearing a red dress with white circles. The girl has started to draw Polina toward her. Closer, tugging and tugging, because the girl needs help. The girl won’t survive without her.

  Polina, what’s happening now?

  But Shlomith’s cry doesn’t reach where Polina is, far from the snow, far from Shlomith. The farther Polina goes, the faster her jellyfish body begins to change, begins to return to the way it was, begins to become more determinate and full. It is as if someone decided to splatter color inside the weak outlines, Polina’s own creamy white and slightly atopic skin, and vivid red lips. All the receding details rise to the fore and take on their natural shades again: the areolae their pinkish beige, the crimped hair its mahogany brown. Varicose veins bulge from her shins and begin to turn blue. Lumps of fat appear on her ample belly, and a straight navel squished by the lumps slides into place like a slice of a knife.

  The closer Polina comes to the girl, the more dreamlike her previous memories of the seven of them become. Shlomith, Maimuna, Wlibgis, Ulrike, Rosa Imaculada, and Nina with her pregnant belly cease to exist. The places Polina has visited to see off her otherworldly sisters, the half-worldly spaces, are wiped away and disappear.

  Shlomith sees her friend receding from her and can do nothing. The Polina in the snow bank is as dead as a stone, and the rippling jellyfish Polina missed her death and must therefore return.

  All that remains is the snow, the body, and Shlomith who has to continue on her own, who whispers into the emptiness, perhaps more to herself than to anyone:

  Farewell, Polina.

  BLACK: THE WAY OUT

  Shlomith, farewell!

  I felt it the moment the applause ended, although I didn’t immediately understand what it was. It was you, hunger. You wanted to cancel our agreement.

  Just a moment ago I thought I was part of something greater than myself. Then my presentation ended. I began to cry, which was a surprise to everyone including me. For a moment I felt as if I was crying for all the sorrows of the world, mine and yours. Then it was over. The invisible curtain between me and the world closed again, and I was left alone.

  You kept me alive for so long. I’m thankful for that, of course. Without life there is nothing, and nothing really is nothing. This can be difficult to understand, but that’s just how it is: without you, hunger, I wouldn’t have existed for so long. You helped me carry on.

  If I could still feel sorrow, I might be sad for you. You gave me your all, you fought by my side, but as soon as the task was complete, I was ready to abandon you. There’s only one way out: surrender, healing, and enlightenment. That was what I had claimed a moment ago.

  My assistant, Katie McKeen, quietly stole up and draped a loose black caftan over me so I wouldn’t catch cold. I’ll never cease to admire how considerate she is, and the way she blends that with an energetic, irrepressible, and brisk yet discrete practicality. Katie can clothe a naked person just like that, with everyone watching, without calling any attention to herself. Still she doesn’t treat me like a mannequin in a display window. She bears the caftan before me like a fine tablecloth, shakes the tentlike garment open, and gently passes it over my head. She pulls my trembling arms through the sleeves and looks me in the eyes. I nod: Thank you, Katie. She slips my feet into downy soft slippers, pats me encouragingly on the shoulder, and retreats behind the curtain to wait.

  I have drained myself to the point of death in order to reach the heart of it all.

  For the past forty-five minutes, I’ve uttered statements that half of me sincerely believes. That’s no small deal. Some people spend their entire lives saying whatever crosses their minds. I, on the other hand, have had the opportunity to take the measure of my thoughts and deeds. That’s why I can endure half of me protesting and shouting, “Stop, you idiot! Get down off that stage!”

  Did this come as a surprise to you? Why is it so difficult for you to understand that everything, absolutely everything, is subject to suspicion as long as there is life, and still a person can be one hundred percent serious, one hundred percent in love, one hundred percent faithful?

  We can cancel our agreement, I can accept that. But give me one more moment. I want to say my goodbyes in peace.

  I would say: I love you, Katie McKeen. If I could, that’s what I’d say. My faithful assistant, my servant. I didn’t receive warmth like that from anywhere else during the final years of my life.

  I would also say: I love you, Moti and Malka. That will never change.

  I would say: Mother, I love you too. Almost all mothers can be loved, and you weren’t even close to the most difficult.

  I say:

  Farewell, Maimuna!

  Farewell, Nina!

  Wlibgis, you who left in anger, farewell!

  Rosa, Rosa the forerunner, farewell!

  Goodbye, Ulrike!

  Farewell, Polina!

  We were quite the madcap group, weren’t we? We were fiercer than the legions of death! If I could feel anything, I’m sure I’d feel longing. Pure, numinous longing mingled with no shade of darkness or involuntary renunciation.

  Now I’m ready. Thank you for your patience. Let’s get going. Don’t delay. If I can still hope for anything it’s only that this won’t take long . . .

  Oh—was that it?

  Just a thump in the pit of my stomach: I wouldn’t even really call it pain . . .

  I’m sitting on a wooden stool. On a red cushion. I look myself in the eyes. I can see that I’m already looking through everything; I see that I don’t see anything any more. Viewed from a distance, for a few more seconds it still seems as if I’m ready to accept hugs and sign autographs.

  I hear the rustling. People have organized themselves in a line. Katie McKeen notices something now and takes a step.

  There’s only one way . . .

  My eyes snap wide. My mouth opens. I jerk, then slump. I don’t have time to fall off the stool because Katie’s hands catch me. Katie and a man with the look of a marathoner who has appeared next to her, lower me to the floor. The man begins CPR, and Katie talks into a radio, giving instructions.

  The noise and commotion in the hall begin instantly. The whole goddamn circus we’ve practiced so many times, just in case, swings into motion. From the beginning this has been obvious to everyone, including me: my body won’t necessarily hold out to the end.

  Katie McKeen is golden and quick despite the panic.

  All the people are fast, as if driven by the lash.

  If I could, I’d say: Calm down. I’m dead.

  Shlomith, farewell!

  Hunger Wins Out Over Art

  Controversial performance artist Shlomith-Shkhina leaves behind a legacy of contradictions

  SUZANNE LEBLANC

  Performance artist SHEILA RUTH BERKOWITZ, better known by her stage name Shlomith-Shkhina, succumbed to anorexia on August 16 at the age of 61. Unique to the case is that she died before an audience in the Scheuer Auditorium at the Jewish Museum at the conclusion of her lecture performance on connections between anorexia and Judaism. At her death, Berkowitz weighed 62 pounds.

  The technical cause of death appears to be heart failure. Although Berkowitz was quickly transported to a hospital, she could not be saved due to the poor health of her internal organs. Preliminary autopsy results reveal that Berkowitz’s heart weighed half that which it should have weighed.

  Sheila
Berkowitz was born in New York in 1946 and spent her childhood and teenage years in Brooklyn.Prior to her main artistic career, she played drums in a Fluxus-inspired band named Entropy.

  In 1967 Berkowitz married a Polish Jew, DOVID NIEWIAROWSKI. The couple soon moved to Israel to live on a kibbutz named Methuselah and had two children.

  Seven years later, in 1974, Berkowitz divorced her husband. She returned to New York and began her career as a performance artist.

  Berkowitz adopted the combination Shlomith-Shkhina as her stage name. “Shlomith” derives from the Hebrew word shalom , meaning peace, which also indicates perfection, welfare, and prosperity. “Shkhina” , on the other hand, has reference in Judaism to the feminine aspect of God, the presence of God.

  According to Jewish art specialist EVE KRONENBERG, this name evokes the idea that even God is not free from suffering. In the Talmud, the spirit of Shkhina is described as suffering along with her chosen people:

  Whenever Israel went into exile, the Shkhina [God’s presence] went along into exile. They went to exile to Egypt, the Shkhina went with them . . . They went to Babylon in exile, and the Shkhina went with them . . . And when they will eventually be redeemed, the Shkhina will be redeemed along with them.

  “The name Shlomith-Shkhina contains internal contradictions, and it also contradicts the content of Berkowitz’s art,” observes Kronenberg. “Of course this is intentional. Berkowitz’s work drew its power from unresolved ambivalence.”

  Berkowitz intentionally exposed herself to malicious attention and criticism, which was often uncommonly aggressive. Religious circles considered Berkowitz’s performances profane, while many in the art community saw her breaking of taboos as cheap attention-seeking.

  “She’s found the perfect recipe for getting publicity,” said one anonymous New York art critic in 2004 while the founding members of the New York Feminist Art Institute, MIRIAM SCHAPIRO and CAROL STRONGHILOS, were curating a 30-year retrospective on Berkowitz’s art at the Brooklyn Museum.