by Amos Talshir
Rose looked at Simon as he reached out for the baby and felt sorry for herself. This young man that she loved so much was so genuine, while she was so artificial and confused with her complicated love. Was this her first true love? In any case, she loved this boy. He had taken care of her and was seeking any possible way to escape to his mother and sister. He loved his father. She had no one to miss; she didn’t want to escape. She told herself a story about saving her country, but she had no one to miss out there. She had thought David, whom she had been with ever since she could remember herself, had been her first love, until she had realized they had been playing at being the king and queen of their resistance movement, which had nothing to do with love. She didn’t even have a first love. She would have liked Simon to be her first love; he was the one she truly loved. He took care of her, giving her everything he had.
Simon had grown up in front of her eyes, and from day to day. Ever since he had covered her as she lie naked on the pitch, she had seen him mature into the man of her dreams, so different from David and the resistance group. They were all so noisy, argumentative, opinionated and challenging the entire world. Idealists like her in a cynical world. Simon was focused on his personal abilities, doing what he thought was best, using his own powers, connecting, loving and faithful. He had quietly covered her with his blanket, had given her hot chocolate that he had brought from home, and had taken care of her as no one had dared to do before him. Later he had kissed her in the burrow in which she was hiding, imbuing her with the only hope that had proved helpful—the hope of staying alive.
Now he was older and talked even less, focused on his bats, which might prove helpful in a way that only he understood as the old world collapsed and a new order was forced upon them. Simon persisted, with himself and with the bats.
Rose sat down next to Simon and he looked at her and smiled. She kissed his scraggly beard and he lowered his eyes. She couldn’t stop thinking about the role that fate had allotted her: she was the only one who could give him love in the years he had left in the locked-down stadium, but she was withholding it from him for the sake of the resistance. In order to save her country, she could not join him.
By now, Simon had stopped looking forward to the nights of love with Rose in the depths of the burrows. She had explained to him that she couldn’t relinquish herself for his sake. Perhaps he had understood, she thought. But how could a nineteen-year-old boy understand that the woman who loved him refused to fill up with his love? He respected her despite the youthful passion that threatened to erupt from him, while she was yearning to be near him, making the person who had saved her life miserable.
Simon sat the toddler down beside him and showed him the bat swaying upside-down in the cage. Rose stroked Simon’s beard and asked him whether he was mad at her. Simon was focused on the intense interest the toddler was exhibiting in the bat. Rose wanted to kiss him; she so wanted to know whether the taste of the hot-chocolate kiss had been preserved in the last three years, but she knew it would not be fair of her to give Simon false hope. She tried to capture Simon’s attention; perhaps she would still explain to him that she couldn’t go on not loving him.
Simon discovered something that was intriguing him about the interaction between the baby and the bat: invisibly or inaudibly, the baby’s motions evoked a reaction of drawing close and identical motions from the bat, and vice versa. The baby responded with smiles. Suddenly, Simon shifted back in his chair and wiped the drops of perspiration from his forehead. His eyes opened wide and he stifled an amazed exclamation of discovery.
Rose hugged him and shook his head, towering above her. Simon wrapped his arm around her shoulder while his other hand continued to hold the baby. He buried his bearded face in her neck and mumbled cryptic words about sound frequencies. Rose didn’t understand but savored the sudden proximity, and tears of joy filled her eyes. I simply love him, she told herself. I can’t stand it anymore. She stroked his long hair and asked him again and again what was going on with him. Simon tried to calm down and managed to emit even more disjointed syllables, which didn’t make any sort of sense she could figure out. She started to laugh, asking him to calm down and explain it, and her tears wet his beard.
“It’s unbelievable,” Simon told Rose. “I once read about this possibility, but I couldn’t believe it could happen.”
“What’s going on? Tell me.”
“Only if you stop crying. You’re making me sad. My mom would also hug me and cry and make me sad.”
“Why was your mother crying?” Rose asked.
“She was constantly afraid I’d be disabled. She couldn’t believe I’d recovered. But why are you hugging me and crying?”
“Because I can’t love you, and I love you.”
“You’re confusing me, or else I’m not really understanding your language.”
“You do understand me, Simon. I do love you, but I can’t make myself miserable, or make you miserable.”
“I don’t understand that.”
“You’ll never understand it. Just know that I love you with all my heart. You fill me up with so much love, that you don’t leave me any energy to do anything with my life. I owe you my life, you’re the most generous person I’ve ever met and will ever meet, and you’re just a boy. You’re the bravest man in the world and you don’t know you are. My body belongs to you but I can’t be yours although it’s what I want most of all, because I can’t fill up on you. I owe my life to my future and you’ll run away from the stadium and go back to your mother and sister. I’d like to take care of you all my life, but you’ve got Charlie, and he’s the best caretaker you could have.”
“Don’t cry. We had a little hot-chocolate love and we’ll have other loves, and maybe even each other.”
“Tell me what you discovered that made you so excited,” Rose said.
“I discovered that Veronica and Charlie’s baby can also hear the bat’s sound frequency, and the bat can hear the baby with its sonar. I’m the same way. It’s a trait that runs in certain families, one in a hundred million.”
“So why is that important?”
“You could train him.”
“You’ve been trying to train the bat for a year now.”
“No, I’m training the baby. It’s easier to train the baby than to give instructions to a bat.”
Rose couldn’t stop her tears. Slow and pleasant, they flooded her eyes. She held herself back from grabbing Simon and sucking in his lips in a kiss that would stop the fullness that threatened to disconnect her from everything else in the world. All her thoughts and desires were erased when she drowned in his smile, succumbing to the memory of his cup of hot chocolate and the blanket he laid over her naked body. And now he was sharing his discovery with her: a baby who transmitted bat language. How far away this boy could take her from everything that seemed so important to her. Far from the revolution, from the resistance and from the stadium.
46.
After three years of planning their escape, Simon had decided that everything should be set and ready, other than the timing. The sequence of events had taught him the impossible logic of timing. He had mapped out the route of burrows that would lead them out of the stadium, the loading capacity of the bats that would carry Veronica and the baby over the sea. He precisely planned out the maximum length of the swim for which he and his father could carry Rose on their backs to the ships at the heart of the sea. But he would leave the timing to chance. After scheduling the failed escape attempt on the anniversary of the revolution, under cover of the mass dance party, he understood that this topic should stay open. However, this required him to be alert to possibility. He would continue training the bats to obey Veronica’s baby’s sound waves. He would continue convincing Rose to join them, but he would decide on the crucial moments based on events: a bloody war between the locals and the visitors breaking out suddenly with no advance warning, or a reb
ellion by the sharpshooters. Whatever will be—will be…
In the meantime, Veronica’s baby had been nicknamed Batman. No one called him by the name Veronica had given him, Stadium. Baby Batman learned to summon the bats according to Simon’s instruction, and the bats would comply, grabbing on to the clothes on his tiny body and carrying him in flight formation to their exit burrows under the stands. There, before the rocky opening that was supposed to take them out to the sea, stood Rose. According to Simon’s practice instructions, the baby would let out the cry that was inaudible to the human ear, and the bats would drop the baby into Rose’s arms.
Simon insisted on the need for endless practice. Rose agreed to take part since it was her chance to spend time in Simon’s company, and baby Batman was ecstatic to fly swiftly over the stadium in the darkening hours before lights-out. The fans didn’t notice the baby hovering at night, dangling from the bats’ talons. They had other concerns. Veronica was busy with her massive dance classes, which left Simon lots of free time for training with Batman, Rose and the bats.
Rose welcomed Simon by leaping into his arms, along with baby Batman, whom the bats had dropped into her arms, as they had been trained to do. Simon was elated over the success of the practice session. Rose allowed the baby to play with the bats circling around him, trying to pet them with his little hands. Simon watched the bats from afar so as not to drive them away. The baby rolled around on the burrow’s rocky floor and the bats created a protective umbrella around him. Simon knew it was the particular sound the baby produced when he would tickle the baby under his right toe. The baby would let out an inaudible shriek of laughter. This shriek was the bat’s command to fleetly carry the baby off and bring him to Rose, stationed far away from them, as they had been trained to do. Occasionally, Simon would change Rose’s location in various burrows, and the bats would find her and place the baby in her arms.
Simon sat down next to Rose and the two of them watched the baby and his pet bats. He was sitting next to her, and his big smile encouraged her to kiss him more and more. She was shaking in excitement by his side and wanted to sleep with him and conquer his love. He was sitting and smiling, focused on the baby and the bats.
“Do you know how much I love you?”
“You don’t love me,” he replied. “You want to love me.”
“You set a trap for me, Simon. You’re training the bats to bring the baby to me, which is supposed to force me to join the escape. You know I belong here. I can’t run away.”
“What does that have to do with your love for me?”
“I don’t want to let you down. I can’t sleep with you and then let you down.”
“You mean you don’t want me to run away without you?”
“I guess I do.”
“Well, then, why are you saying it like that?”
“What does it matter how I’m saying it?”
“That’s politics, that’s not love. Either you love me or you don’t. Do what you’re thinking, don’t think what you’re doing.”
“Simon, I love you. At your age, it’s natural that it’s so important to you to sleep with me. Over the years, you make love more than once, and the first time becomes more meaningful. I don’t want your first time to be with me—the girl who’s going to let you down and won’t run away with you. We’ve got the hot-chocolate kiss. I’d rather you remember that.”
“You’re just being evasive,” Simon said.
“No, Simon. I was with you, I was yours in kisses and hugs that were better than sleeping with you. We don’t have to sleep together to love. I was happy to be yours, but I’d rather not be left behind when I’m your lover. It’s better to be left as a friend than as a lover.”
Baby Batman fell asleep in a pit created by the dripping of water in the burrow. The bats were already hanging from the rock ceiling over his head, late to depart into the dark of the roofs over the stands.
“Do you think they stay here to watch over Batman?” Rose asked.
Simon didn’t know what to think. He wrapped the baby in his big shirt and hugged him to his chest. Rose stroked Simon’s head and pulled him to her to kiss him. Simon allowed her to kiss his lips at length while the baby adjusted his posture in his arms. They began to walk in the burrow toward the stadium so as to get situated before lights-out.
“If you don’t swim out to sea with us, the bats won’t know where to carry Batman,” Simon said without looking at Rose.
Rose tried to seek out his eyes, not understanding how suddenly everything had become so complicated. Everything that had been pleasant and exciting, open and yearning for touch, now turned into dozens of considerations and explanations. The mutual wonder, the magic of the encounter, the desire for a connection, the thrill of randomly touching a bare knee, suddenly became so complex. As if they had gone through years of attrition, layers of erosion that left no place for that love, the first one, of hot chocolate on the frozen turf. What would she give to return to the hot chocolate and to his blanket, concealing her nudity from his shy eyes? What would she really be willing to give to stand naked before him, not here and now, but elsewhere, where they could love and he could gaze at her body and she would take him to her and teach him to love her forever?
“Infinitamente soy tuya,” she told him. Forever yours.
“Ahora y siempre tuya”—yours now and forever, Simon replied. “I prefer that.”
Rose wanted to tell him that he was right, and that now was no less important than eternity. She wanted to tell him how much his Spanish had improved since he had spoken the inarticulate Spanish of TV sports announcers to her. She wanted to tell him she would be willing to give him everything after she completed her mission, after the resistance returned happiness to her people. But Simon had disappeared into the upper rows of the stand, the sleepy Batman in his arms. Rose was left standing along, embarrassed by the chatty romanticism in which she was trying to drown the dishonesty of her emotions. Simon had left her with all the squirming and the explanations, which were anything but love. The lights would go out soon, and she had to rush to her burrow under the stadium.
47.
“Go home, be masters of your own fates, go home.”
The cry sounded out of the dark sky, in a big, throaty, deep voice, in Spanish. “Go home!”
The call shocked everyone within the stadium. It came from within the cover of dark clouds. The eyes of the fans sitting sleepily in their seats looked up into the darkness, trying to pierce through the freezing dimness enveloping the stands. Those who had a hard time waking up lingered in their seats, startling awake when the big voice continued to talk constantly. The voice carried like an echo between the walls of the stands, repeating itself as if originating from several throats scattered among the clouds.
“Go home,” the big voice echoed. “There’s no one to stop you.”
Those just waking up asked their seatmates what the voices were, but the echo and the darkness prevented identification. It was clear to everyone that within seconds, the spotlights would hunt down the roaring disrupter of the peace. The voice was growing gradually hoarser, but the terrible energy charging it promised it would not fall silent. As it grew hoarser, it also deepened and grew stronger, until it resembled rolling thunder.
Charlie hugged Veronica, who wrapped the baby in her arms, swaddled in her shirts, which protected him from the cold. Charlie urged Veronica to lie with Stadium under the chairs, to hide away from the shots of the sharpshooters, who might panic. Charlie sought out Simon’s gaze, but his son was closing his eyes, listening to the voices.
Simon was convinced he recognized that voice. He had no doubt that it belonged to a man he knew well, from here, in the stadium. Someone who talked to him. A nearby voice sawing at his ears with its unique intonation. But there was something beyond the intonation; Simon tried to spot it and isolate it from the dim echo enveloping it, turning it omi
nous. Simon recognized the voice coming from the darkness. It was Dr. Thomas’s condescending voice.
The beams of the spotlights scanned the roofs of the stand with breathtaking slowness. The tens of thousands of audience members tracked the motion of the beams of light. The hoarse voice did not retreat or try to avoid discovery. It continued to thunder out its message, taunting the beams fumbling to hunt it down.
“That’s Dr. Thomas’s voice,” Simon told Charlie.
The beams of light converged from three directions, focusing on the form of a naked man standing on the roof of the stand, legs akimbo, fully displaying his skinny body. His gray hair fell to his shoulders, glowing in the light that had trapped him. He continued walking slowly along the roof of the stand, passing by the sharpshooters, who stood up from their perches, embarrassed by the naked man striding determinedly along the edge of the roof, his voice thundering out.
“All my life, I’ve yearned for love,” Dr. Thomas cried out. “Every day, I hoped to meet a loving gaze in the eyes of a girl or a young woman. It didn’t happen. At university, I so hoped for a meeting that would lead me to a loving woman, a student who would notice me at the dorms or at a club. They noticed me, they sure did, mostly my hunchback. But I always found myself ending the night in my own company. That was for the best, too. I persevered through seven years of academic studies and was the outstanding student in medical school. I received my medical degree and managed to give comfort and hope to my patients, keeping pain at bay and making lots of money as a specialist. But I wasn’t blessed with being loved.”