by Amos Talshir
Dr. Thomas was willing to do a lot, perhaps even tell Charlie about the failure of his love life. Was there a chance that he could appeal to the heart of this smiling man on the turf, with a woman who loved him by his side? To cause him to open up to him and save him from these sixty dim years, ever since he was sixteen? What else was left for him to lose in his life? Here under lockdown, without the pampering home in which he ensconced himself, without the Doctors’ Club padding his plethora of free time with chatty, smoke-filled meetings, what did he have to lose? The fate that had abused him throughout his life had brought him to this lockdown so that he could attain love for himself. He would reveal his misery to Charlie. He knew that Charlie was planning to escape with his son. Perhaps they would leave Veronica or Rose behind. Perhaps Charlie would do the most important thing in his life for him. Dr. Thomas was determined to make use of this last chapter in his life to find love.
43.
Veronica wrapped her arms around Charlie’s neck, sweating from the effort of her fitness routine with Rose. Rose said goodbye to them, telling them she was in a hurry to return to watching the baby, Veronica and Charlie’s son, whom she had left under Simon’s care. Veronica kissed Dr. Thomas’s cheek. She would never forget that he was the one who had delivered her son, here at the stadium.
Veronica and Charlie turned toward the restroom lounge. Dr. Thomas followed them. Veronica had gotten used to the doctor’s proximity. She explained to Charlie that it was always a good idea to have a doctor around. Later, she began to feel that special thing that she didn’t really understand. Dr. Thomas looked at her and Charlie in a way that made her feel that he simply wanted to be around love. Even if the love wasn’t his—at least he would be in the company of lovers.
Charlie, too, had gotten used to the doctor’s presence. He did a lot for them, and if he thought he could learn from them, he was welcome to it. Veronica would have liked to talk to Charlie about it when they kissed in the mysterious darkness they sought out for themselves in the stadium’s burrows. To tell him the doctor might be going too far when he tailed them like he did. But Charlie did not talk. She was even more keen to tell Charlie that she was finally happy. She didn’t have to pack small suitcases for sudden trips to conventions and conferences of doctors and bankers who ran away from their wives only to return to them later. She was happy because she wasn’t scared of what her mother was thinking about the fact that she didn’t have a man of her own. She was happy because she had her son, who was hers alone. She felt so good here; but how would she say that to Charlie, who was so eager to escape from here, and didn’t want to talk?
“We used to talk a lot,” Veronica told Charlie.
Dr. Thomas noticed that the two had paused in the curve of the dark tunnel and found a hiding spot for himself in one of the fire hydrant nooks. Charlie stroked Veronica’s curly head and smiled.
“That’s not true. I was never much of a talker.”
“You were, Charlie. When we first got to know each other, you talked to me and explained how to bathe at the sink, remember?”
“That doesn’t count as talking,” he said.
Veronica edged her body closer to his.
“You actually told me where I should wash. Remember how you told me to wash everything, and to take off my underwear too, and you shielded me with the scarf?”
“That’s nothing,” he said.
She brought her thighs against his.
“And you also taught me how to wipe everything with my bottom T-shirt, and you told me to splash water in my armpits to freshen up.”
“Right, I remember.”
“You see that we talked a lot?” Veronica said in the darkness of their hiding spot under the stand. “You’d talk to me at night when we were going to sleep in our seats, and you taught me the best way to sleep sitting up, and you put your hand under the back of my neck and asked me a lot of times whether I was comfortable.”
“That’s true.” Charlie savored the warm, quiet scent of her body.
“A lot of times, you asked me if I was comfortable, and in the morning you also asked me if I’d slept well. Every morning, you asked me if I’d slept well. No one had ever asked me that many times if I’d slept well, Charlie. And you asked me if I wanted to bathe, right, Charlie?”
“Right,” Charlie said.
“Charlie, tell me again how you hold it in and don’t breathe.”
“I don’t feel like talking,” Charlie mumbled, kissing her fragrant neck.
“No, no, Charlie, tell me again how you dive and fix the engine.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“How you touch the propeller and know it hasn’t gotten tangled in a net,” Veronica said, breathing heavily. “Tell me, Charlie, how you hold your breath and take the sprocket out. Tell me, Charlie, how you don’t breathe.”
“I remove the driveshaft that connects to the engine and pass my finger along the sprocket,” he said.
“Yes, Charlie, I like it when you tell me how you hold back.” Veronica disengaged her mouth from his chest, inhaling and filling her lungs with cool air. “And you dive down again and replace the sprocket and insert the shaft in the engine. You hold your breath and install the propeller over the sprocket too and surface for air.”
“No, Veronica, I hold my breath longer, and before I surface for air, I spin the propeller with two fingers, to make sure it’s spinning smoothly.”
“I love you, Charlie. You see how much we talked?”
“You’re right, we talked a lot,” Charlie said, laying his head on her shoulder, which smelled of sweat. Veronica told him she loved talking to him, and not just sleeping with him, and Charlie agreed it was important to talk, because he knew that he and Clara had drifted apart because he didn’t have anything to say to her. Maybe because they hadn’t wanted to talk about Simon, who was so sick, and they were afraid that talking about the disease would scare them. Maybe because they didn’t have a language in common, they didn’t talk at all.
“How sad for you, Charlie,” Veronica whispered.
“Does it bother you that I tell you about all that?” Charlie was appalled by the openness that had burst out of him.
“I love it when you talk,” she said. “Talk some more. I love it when you talk, especially after you sleep with me. I never liked it when men smoked after making love.”
Charlie told her that when they met on the beach, Clara would laugh endlessly with him, and he would talk to her in hand gestures, and at night, on the sand, next to the bonfire, she wouldn’t stop talking. She told him a million times how good it felt and said oh God again and again. “Yeah, she talked a lot,” Charlie said, when they made love on the sand and in the boat and on the bluff and in the water and when he taught her to swim long distances. She talked with a mouth full of saltwater and talked with sand on her lips and talked in screams to God when they made love in the house on the bluff and fell asleep along with him in the terrace overlooking the sea, as they embraced under one blanket.
Veronica sighed, excited, and began to wriggle under his body, which was crushing her against the rough concrete of the support post hiding them. “Charlie, you’re ‘the man of my life,’” she said in Spanish. She said I love you in French and you’re the greatest lover in the world in his own language, and he liked that better than anything else. And he didn’t mind that the doctor was watching them the entire time.
44.
Simon spotted people crawling upside-down under the roof of the stand. That was his bats’ territory, and there was no chance he would miss that type of suspicious activity. A twilight dimness covered the stadium, extending until the gleaming moment when the floodlights on the posts were turned on. This was the time for the bats to emerge from the burrows. The time for couples concealing the act of love. The time for resistance plots and the time of tiredness and loss of concentration among the sharpsho
oters. The end of the day. Simon noticed the crawling of six people who positioned themselves under the sharpshooter lying on the roof above him. Attuned to a signal that Simon did not manage to spot, the six managed to leverage their bodies on to the roof, like Olympic ground athletes, landing beside the drowsy sharpshooters.
It was hard to stay alert when you were immobile like a sharpshooter on the roof, Simon thought to himself. Using his telephoto lens, he could see the invaders’ arms raised, landing on the bodies of the sharpshooters. A barrage of single shots shocked the stadium. One of the sharpshooters managed to discharge his weapon before collapsing from the stabs of a knife directed at the parts of his body unprotected by the bulletproof vest. Simon saw his body tossed off the roof, along with the body of another sharpshooter, and then one more. At this stage, the sharpshooters who had not been attacked came to their senses and managed to shoot down the assailants. From that point onward, Simon lost his ability to track what was going on. The stadium began to rumble. People around him began to fight over hiding places, throwing themselves under the chairs. Stray bullets from the sharpshooters felled victims among those sitting in the top rows of the stands. Simon didn’t understand who was killing whom and who the assassins were, but he realized there were more people like him who were trying to escape. For some reason, it had been convenient for him to think that he and his father were the only ones contemplating escape. As if everyone else, a hundred thousand people, had resigned themselves to the fact that they would spend the rest of their lives trapped in a stadium, at least until something else happened. The thought that only he and his father were planning to escape had imbued him with the expectation of having a good chance. After all, if that was the case, they would surprise the guards, who were not anticipating such a move, quite easily. The entire purpose of their vigilance, he had thought to himself, was maintaining the peace.
The light poles were shining bright around the stadium, which had yet to go dark. The claw-arm trucks entered through the players’ entrance into the heart of the turf with a squeal of their tracks, then stopped, waiting for the bodies to be passed down to them. The shooting stopped, while the bodies of the stabbed sharpshooters and those of the assassins who had been shot were strewn among the people sitting in the stands. Everyone knew precisely what the authorities expected them to do. Those sitting in the stands knew they had to pass the bodies over their heads, like partiers at a music club, passing the stage divers overhead to the center of the dance floor. Anyone who did not cooperate would be considered to be disrupting the peace and would also be risking the consideration of a sniper’s trigger finger.
The bats that had flown away once the first shot was fired began to return to the scent of blood dripping on the fans’ shoulders from the bodies descending to the pitch. Charlie looked at Simon’s dejected face. It took him several seconds to disengage from Veronica’s frightened embrace as she clung to him, concealing the baby within their hug.
“Don’t be scared, Simon,” Charlie said.
Veronica stroked Simon’s hair, which had grown past his shoulders. She stroked him and kissed his cheek and kissed him again and caressed his face. Then she wiped away the tears rolling down his face, which was no longer sporting acne. Simon stood across from his father, his fists clenched, not even trying to stop his crying. Veronica’s caressing hand was pleasant and warm. He looked directly at Charlie, his chin trembling, shaking off the tears Veronica had not had time to wipe away.
“You don’t have to be so scared,” Charlie told Simon.
“Okay, Dad,” Simon replied and said no more.
The three of them and the baby hidden in their arms stood still within the commotion of the bodies and the helicopter hovering above them—trying to locate assassins or other potential escape attempts.
“Charlie, Simon’s not scared,” Veronica said. “He’s your son, and he’s not scared. He just misses his mother because of me. Because I stroked him, he misses her. You always miss your mom. I once wrote a poem about it. I called the poem ‘Even an Old Man Has a Mother.’ Have you ever thought that even an old man, really old, misses his mother? Everyone would like to have their mother next to them. But it’s impossible. If he died of old age, his mother couldn’t be there next to him. Charlie, don’t tell me I’m talking nonsense. Even if I’m stupid, I’m the mother of your son.”
“Don’t ever tell her she’s talking nonsense,” Simon said.
“I’d never tell her that she was talking nonsense,” Charlie said.
“I’m worried because there are more people who tried to escape. This’ll increase the sharpshooters’ alertness. Our escape is in danger, right, Dad?” Simon asked in a despondent voice.
“We’ll get away, Simon, and you’ll be with Mom and Emily,” Charlie said, hugging Veronica and the baby.
Charlie was trying to hide his emotional turmoil. It would be so simple if Veronica agreed to run away with them. Not really simple, but he would manage to carry her and the baby and swim for his life, to any distance necessary. After all, this was the thing he could do better than anything else. He had a chance to make use of the thing he was best at for the matter at hand. Veronica would love him for his ability and his sacrifice, and he would enjoy a new life of love and appreciation and would also be close to Emily and Simon. Simon liked Veronica as well, and Emily would adopt Simon’s attitude, that was certain. Simon had to live near his mother and Emily. Charlie was convinced that he had to live up to Simon’s expectations and stick to the escape plan. Yes, he had to run away with Simon, even if Veronica preferred to stay here with the baby. That doctor, the nutcase, would take care of her—Charlie tried to ease his conscience.
The bodies of the sharpshooters stabbed on the roof were gathered by the warriors dangling from the helicopter. Their calls in the local language, which Simon translated for Charlie, were still echoing. They were seeking the weapons snatched from the sharpshooters but did not dare land among the throngs of fans on the stand. They knew the risk of being lynched within the trapped mob. And now there were also firearms circulating among the local fans. These weapons would suddenly be utilized against the visitors; it was only a matter of time, Simon said. They had to escape.
The bodies of the fans hit by stray bullets aimed at the assassins were piled on the turf. Some of them were still exhibiting signs of life. Charlie spotted Dr. Thomas and other doctors gathered from among the fans, running around between the wounded and the dead.
“Dad, were you scared?” Simon asked.
“Less than the other times,” Charlie replied. “And you?”
“I really wasn’t, Dad. I feel okay with things like that. With what we did to the president, too. They know we did it, and that’s good. They don’t go near us.”
“Right,” Charlie said. “Dr. Thomas performed that service for us as well.”
From the top of the stand, Simon and Charlie watched Dr. Thomas, who was walking around the turf and tending to those wounded in the latest incident.
“We have to get out of here, and fast,” Simon said.
45.
Rose was strolling with Veronica’s baby, who was almost a year old. He was charmed by all the people around him. He especially liked to give her his hand and skip from seat to seat with his little legs. His tiny feet were shod in cloth shoes that Charlie had sewn for him from a tattered shirt. Charlie knew how to sew because he had learned how to repair fishing nets when his father was still teaching him things he didn’t know. Rose loved the baby, because he belonged to Veronica, who had been kind to her, but mostly because he looked so much like Simon. She guided the baby’s little steps so that he would lead her to Simon, who was sitting in the last seat of the last row closest to the roof of the stand. This was where he waited for the bats, which would emerge come nighttime, making use of the last two hours left before lights-out.
Rose yearned for Simon, but they weren’t meant for each other.
She had to stay in the stadium for the sake of everything she believed she could change, while Simon was waiting for the right time to escape. If she hadn’t nearly frozen during her naked run, she certainly would never have gotten to know him. But how would she be able to forget him after he escaped? How would she forget his courage in front of a hundred thousand people who had not come to her aid? How would she forget the blanket and the last hot chocolate he had given her? The hundreds of gallons of tap water she had drunk since the lockdown had not erased the taste of Simon’s thick hot chocolate.
The baby climbed up to where Simon was sitting, and Rose pretended he was dragging her along. When they drew near, Simon called out her name. She looked at him and saw how he had grown up in the last few years. He was even taller than his original considerable height and had allowed the hair on his head to grow and cascade down his slightly bent back, which threatened not to support the willowy body she so loved. His fingers were busy, as they always were, with various pocketknives and strings and little boxes, in which he put the bat leaders that he was training. He would release them once night fell, expecting them to bring the members of their colony to him. She loved Simon’s long, sparse beard and thought she would give a lot to caress his face, now free of acne. She remembered every red spot and every pimple on the face she had stroked passionately in the days of the hidden burrows, where she had tried to teach him to love her, but remained immersed in her passion. He might have been too young, she thought just as he waved his arms at her and the baby now. He would always remain the boy she hadn’t slept with even though she had truly wanted to. She would never sleep with him, although she truly wanted to. He had been too young, and now that he had matured, he would leave and she would stay. She didn’t want to lose herself missing him after she slept with him.