by Amos Talshir
After Clebber’s death, Veronica had stopped her visits. The president, who missed her, asked Rose to talk her into coming back to dance with him. Rose told him Veronica had still not gotten over the loss she had suffered when her partner had died, and Simon could not hide his amazement in response to this fabrication. He was learning more and more elucidating chapters about women’s influence over men. Certain men, perhaps, but he assumed women could influence most men in one way or another. He was even willing to admit to himself that his attraction to Rose had displaced his longing for his mother from his thoughts. As for the mourning Veronica, Simon asked himself whether she had already gotten over Clebber’s death when he noticed her disappearances with his father. What was behind a woman’s behavior, and were things the way they seemed? A constant sensation of both a thing and its opposite accompanied him when he tried to figure out Rose’s attitude toward him. Above all, he was aware of the fact that it was still too early for him to be dealing with these questions. This doubt was particularly prominent in regard to his ability to get to the root of the matter when he tried to understand what had actually happened between his mother and his father. His temporary conclusion was that not only did he not understand what had happened there but that they, too, did not understand what had happened to them. From there, it was a slippery slope to the unsubstantiated conclusion that men and women never understood the root of their relationship, and that this was a lucky thing. Because that might be the magic of the mystery stirring between a man and a woman, which did not exist in any other relationship. His computer games made no attempt to deal with this magic, or even to imitate it.
The president, tired of his solo dance, invited Simon and Rose to accompany him on a refreshing walk on the pitch. Before they could respond, he began striding vigorously, in the manner of leaders certain that everyone will straggle along in their wake. Simon took advantage of the president drifting away and secretly took hold of Rose’s warm hand. It was obvious to him that he could count on her when it came to handling the president. It was also clear to him that the more the president desired to dance with Veronica, the more he would be interested in their company as well. First and foremost, Simon had learned another element regarding women’s influence on men, even when their world had fallen apart, and perhaps particularly due to this fact. He couldn’t stop thinking of his mother and father. Simon thought he was already entirely over the emotional aspect, after experiencing Charlie and Clara’s breakup; that was what he believed, but he was also willing to consider the possibility that he was wrong. For some time now, he had shifted his focus to navigating his relationship with each of them—how not to hurt Mom but also be very considerate of Dad. Because, after all, the kids—he and Emily—had stayed with Mom. But he was more concerned with the question of whether Dad and Mom realized that he understood their breakup. The immense gap between them, the difference that was once the secret of attraction and was now an abyss of separation. Simon could imagine his mother beginning to realize that he understood. But Dad lived in a world of denial. Dad behaved as if he and Mom were still together. For the children’s sake, of course.
The pace of the president’s steps was impressive. Thomas, the doctor and minister of health, could not catch up with him, and neither could the other members of the entourage. Rose and Simon took advantage of this situation and stuck to the agile president’s sides. When he sensed them walking beside him, he embarked on a sentimental confession about the wonderful sensation of walking among the members of his people. He was swept up in a grandiloquent speech about his secret desire to be one of the commoners. About how, his entire life, he had been deprived of the pleasures of a simple life and direct contact with real people. Now he was finally fulfilling his true dream of being an integral part of his people.
Rose begged his pardon, the irony in her voice searing even the innocent Simon, reminding the president that he had been the one responsible for the deaths of thousands of people when he rose to power. Furthermore, she pointed out to him, apologizing for her comments once more, after seizing control, he had attacked two neighboring countries, turning their citizens into refugees who had formed the entire workforce facilitating the clean and orderly state of the Spanish Coalition.
“If you’re already bullshitting us, I preferred your romantic nonsense about your mistresses,” Rose said.
The president looked at her and smiled while keeping up his rapid stride. He complimented her on her political observations as if subtly dismissing them, then stopped abruptly.
“You’re forgetting that in order to help our Spanish countries come together and protect the values of Spanish culture, sacrifices must be made,” he said and resumed hurtling forward on the turf, the wings of his tatty jacket catching in the breeze.
“Your honor, Mr. President,” Rose called out after him.
“Fredo,” the president said. “Call me Fredo.” He wagged his finger at her.
“Fredo,” Rose said, strolling effortlessly beside him on her muscular legs, “you now have an actual opportunity to be an integral part of the real people.”
“What is this opportunity?” the president challenged her.
“The chance of helping us,” Rose said.
The president suggested they sit down to rest on the grass after managing to evade his entourage, which had lost them among the tens of thousands of fans strolling on the turf.
“How could I help you? I’ve become an idle old man taking a pleasurable stroll on the lawn on a sunny day and reminiscing about his sweethearts.”
“Too bad that all of you ex-tyrants don’t think about that when you’re still in control. Why don’t you imagine the day when you’ll be like the rest of us? Why doesn’t it happen when you’re still holding the reins of power?”
“We believe we’re doing the best we can and are willing to kill anyone who stands in our way. But only some of us are given the chance to realize how wrong we were. You are right, my dear girl. There’s something very simple that most of us don’t manage to do when we’re in control. We don’t manage to continue resembling the people we rule over. The odd thing is that most of us, at least according to my perception, intended to do so. I thought my name would go down in history as someone who brought happiness to his people. I suppose I managed to do the opposite, in an almost absolute manner. I don’t know why this happens to us, why it happened to me. During the days when I fought against the corrupt regime with my crew of followers, I believed not only that I would bring joy to all my people, but I was also convinced that I would remain the same person I was before seizing control. Today I know that I did not remain that way even for one day of my reign. I console myself with the opportunity given to me to realize this. Here, in the stadium, I was privileged enough to live as one of the common people once more, and to realize the mistake of my life. Others wake up in their bed with their throat slashed or are tossed in jail, like I did to my predecessors. I can stroll in the sun and even dance sometimes. How I would love to dance more, to dance with women till the day I die.”
“How pathetic, my dear Fredo, just an old man who wants to dance,” Rose challenged him. “For just a moment, you could buy into this pretty image of an old guy in a shabby suit, adept at various dances of seduction. It really makes you feel like forgetting all those long years when young people were killed in unnecessary wars whose importance you touted. It would be even better to forget all those young people whose murders you ordered because they wouldn’t take part in your unnecessary wars. Now that the Others have caught your place, you’re so eager to dance with the ones that survived the years of your regime.”
“My dear, you’re right, and apparently, it can’t be otherwise. Quite a measure of hypocrisy is required in order to rule. More than that, I detect this quality in you as well, and it’s not by chance that you were a member of a resistance movement that dreamed of toppling the regime. You, too, have the traits of passion, s
entimentality, and the rebellious, turbulent urge to believe that you know how to do it better. How to bring happiness to people. Let me remind you that you were cynical enough to run naked to attain your goal. And as someone who has deposed tyrants from their rule in his past, I aspire to tell you that you ran naked in order to seize control, even if you were calling for the liberation of the world. Would you be willing to wholeheartedly defend the move you made? Is sacrificing your body a more justified action than going to war?”
“I sacrificed my body for a cause, while you sacrificed other people to be killed in a war which, for the sake of the discussion, I’m willing to concede that you truly saw as justified. If you had led your people into war, as previous military leaders have done, leading their nation into battle while putting their own body at risk, I would have been willing to sanction the comparison. Could you perhaps explain to me why, for example, you didn’t dance in the sun with your citizens when you were a dictator? If you had danced with them, maybe it would have been more difficult for you to send them off to die in the war and oppress them in their own country.”
“Rose, I wanted to dance with people. I love inviting a girl I meet for the first time to dance. I thought I would continue playing soccer after I seized control. That I would win and lose and the game would result in happiness or sadness. Unfortunately, running the country brought me to play at a war where people get killed.”
“I’ve always really wanted to confront a leader like you, a ruler who determines the fates of others, for once in my life, and to understand what happens to people like you. Are you so different from us? Does that sense of self-importance come from within you or does it envelop you along with the role? Does that dignified callousness go to sleep with you at night, or do you take it off and place it on your nightstand the moment you put on your pajamas? Why does it happen to all of you? When you rule the country, you’re so full of yourselves, talking about a mission and divine ordinance, and it’s only after you’re deposed that you resume talking like human beings and realizing what you really could have done for other people. When you were in power, you gestured dramatically in front of the microphones and rolled your eyes piously to heaven, and now you just want to hold a woman in your arms and dance. Why does that happen to you only when you’re deposed and become useless?”
“I’m sorry, Rose. Apparently, once we seize control of the country, we lose control over ourselves. You can jump all over what I have to say, seeking fuel to reignite the fire in your resistance movement, or you could ask yourself whether it wouldn’t happen to you. Are you not made of the same stuff of idealistic revolutionaries who turn into tyrants? What is missing in your life to prevent you from devoting yourself to your beloved or to your family, sending you into scheming and intrigues instead? Did I not find proper satisfaction among my family and close friends, and therefore yearned to rule those who were distant from me? How will your life look after your meeting with me? After I’ve revealed to you what will one day rise like a towering cliff, from which you will have to leap into love or war? Both of them summon danger and uncertainty. I am very disappointed in myself, and I was certain I would be different. I was filled with depression when I visited my predecessor in the jail where I tossed him, and he told me he had also thought he would continue behaving like one of the common people when he deposed his own predecessor. Unfortunately, the Others, who have seized control as well and put us all under lockdown, also believe they will behave like common people. It’s not going to happen.”
The president tried to rise from his perch on the grass. Rose managed to quickly stand up and extended her arms to help him up. The elderly Fredo tucked his long, greasy hair behind his ears, making an effort to get up under his own steam.
“I feel humiliated enough without relying on your help like an old fossil. I still want to be of use to you,” he said, straightening his wrinkled suit.
“It would be very helpful to us if you told us what was going on outside,” Simon requested.
“The secret of youth is the great belief in escape,” the president said, patting Simon’s cheek. “I’ll tell you everything I know, but I don’t think it will encourage you. The Others have seized control of the regime, and have done it in a much more sophisticated manner than we did years ago, or than anyone has thought of doing throughout human history. The coup was coordinated among all elements seizing control of the entire continent, or at least the great majority of them. Not only did they coordinate the timing, but they adopted an identical tactic: simultaneous lockdown of all citizens present in sites that could be immediately controlled, and abandoning all the rest to the chaos raging in the streets. The centers of the takeover were the stadiums in which all of the Continent Cup games were taking place at the same time. It was an especially clever idea. In every stadium, in every country all over the continent, the heads of state and their core officials were caught in the VIP boxes. Those who were at their homes at the time are supposed to find the best way to keep on living. The new regime is only responsible for the citizens under lockdown. The rest, the people in the streets and the houses, will get by or die off. The citizens under lockdown, in terminals, malls and stadiums, will be the subjects of the new world. That’s all I know, as of now. I assume that in future years, more arrangements will emerge, if they exist. I can think of educational institutions and hospitals, or other familiar needs, but I’m thinking of the revolution from the perspective of someone who belongs to the previous one, just as it’s incorrect to think of the next war in terms of the previous one. The new regime believes in going back to basics, to simplicity, to the primal. I know that there’s no transportation, no planes, no mobility and no recycling. This entire conception minimizes the most significant factor in our current era, energy, the need for fuel. That’s the motivation for the overall revolution, and explains its purpose: putting a stop to the rising power of the Muslims, who control the fuel.”
The president took off his jacket, apologizing to Rose for allowing himself to loosen his tie due to the heat, which had squeezed beads of perspiration out of him. Rose looked impassioned. Her face was flushed with excitement over exposing the continental conspiracy. The president looked at her and smiled. Simon shook his head.
“You don’t believe in this nonsense,” the president said to Simon. “You think that, just like in computer games, all it takes is one individual, a unique person with a single need to set this whole process in motion, and that an overall theory, justified for the sake of humanity, will only be applied in retrospect.”
“What’s going on at sea?” Simon asked.
“That’s the best question you could have asked. The forces of the unified revolution haven’t managed to take over the sea. The ships and tankers that were at sea at the time continue to float on, some of them improving their required positioning in order to save fuel and maybe obtain more. In any case, their massive fuel tanks will only suffice for so long, and at that point sea entities will also become lockdown areas, but not under the control of the unified revolution. The sea is the free world, my dear Rose.”
“Fredo, where does the presidential escape hatch lead?” Rose challenged.
“Don’t hang your hopes on that, my dreamer friends. It leads the escapees east, to the exit near the presidential palace, but I have no doubt it’s also controlled by the Others thanks to the informers within my security forces.”
“And west of the stadium lies the sea,” Rose said.
“There’s no way out,” the president decreed. “I wish I could help more than I miss dancing with my sweethearts.”
30.
A horrifying scream was heard in the evening under the locals’ stand, when a man and a woman burst out onto the turf in a mad run, screeching like two crows that had just been slaughtered. It was amazing how two people had managed to produce a scream that made an entire stadium come to attention and take notice of their voices. The evening strollers on the
pitch startled and veered away from them. Their screams conveyed that they had found a body in one of the restroom stalls. This information stunned the masses like a lightning bolt striking all the residents of the stadium within a single instant. It turned out that the man and the woman who had visited the restrooms had found the body of a local fan sprawled out in a pool of blood, with a knife lodged in its neck. Instantly, the stadium lights went out, and the sharpshooters’ red beams began to roam over the heads of the crowd members, who fled hysterically to their seats. The claw-arm truck emerged from the players’ tunnel, its roaming headlights projecting a beam of light to mark the route of the medical vehicle’s arrival from the scene of the crime. The emergency vehicle drove into the restroom facility, accompanied by a shooting squad in helmets, which marched by its side. Within seconds, the medical vehicle emerged from beneath the stand once more, with the body laid out upon it. One of the victim’s arms flopped down, and the trickle of blood it left behind marked the vehicle’s route toward where the claw-arm truck was parked. The claw arm was directed toward the medical vehicle and plucked the body, which was tossed into the truck.
“Dad, look at the bats,” Simon told Charlie, bringing his telephoto camera toward him.
Charlie tilted his head toward Simon’s while Simon directed the lens toward the edge of the roof over the stand. The activity was clearly apparent, with an obvious commotion of wings and enhanced takeoff positions. Charlie, unprepared for the attack, threw his head back in fright as a massive wave of bats suddenly disengaged from their perch at the edge of the roof. They crossed the truck’s beam of light, landing on the trail of blood that had trickled on the grass. Hundreds of bats descended on the patch of grass, sating their hunger by licking the fresh drops of blood. The truck drove toward the entrance to the players’ tunnel, and the moment it disappeared, the sprinklers began to spray out immense arcs of water over the area of the pitch. The bats fluttered off in fright and, after a moment of chaos, returned in an orderly formation to the edges of the stand roofs.