Hold on to the Sun

by Michal Govrin

  He fixed his eyes on the corner of the ceiling where the walls met. Spiders scurried there on thin legs. On a normal day armed with a broom, he would probably have gone out to do battle with them from the top of the kitchen table, on which he would have stood the stool with the drawer where he kept shoe polish and brushes. But now he greeted the busy life on the ceiling with a certain pleasure.

  The weight was concentrated in his chest. He stretched so that the folds of his body would not inhibit the stirring, and tried hurriedly to steal a breath in order not to tear anything with a too sharp movement of his ribs. In the end he dozed off with his limbs sprawling. A thin line of spittle trembled between two bubbles on his protruding lips.

  When he woke up his body was drenched in sweat. The heaviness in his chest had intensified and even before he unbuttoned his shirt he knew that something unnatural had happened. And indeed, in the middle of his chest, from the head of a yellowish swelling, rose a stem topped with two elongated tiny leaves. The little stem trembled slightly at the touch of the edges of his shirt and sprang up straight. Around it on the expanse of his chest grey hairs fluttered and a few pimples were scattered between his nipples. His chest rose and fell, quivering slightly, and his breath flowed undisturbed.

  After a moment the tickling began again in another spot. The area swelled and hardened quickly. And when Berenov blinked his eyes for a moment, a deep, zigzagging groove appeared in the growth. Immediately afterward a folded sprout pushed up from the slit, unsheathed its head from between two leaves, and stretched toward the ceiling.

  A week later, a fierce, prolonged fire broke out on the island. This time the flames spread along the range to the chain of mountains in the south. For three days the fire raged, despite the efforts of the firefighters, whose brightly colored uniforms testified to the waves of different conquerors who had ruled the island.Their commander arrived from the mainland after two days, and furiously summoned help over the burnished telegraph instruments. But owing to the bad roads, the fire-engines—their bells tinkling as they drove—arrived only after the fire was over.

  The next day the reporters arrived from the mainland, and on the same plane a geological research team and reinforcements of high-ranking officers. The reporters settled down in the inn improvised in one of the village houses and took down the words of the sweating fire-brigade commander. But their efforts to make the villagers talk were in vain. The doors of the houses were locked, and their blue shutters remained closed all day long.With no one to gather their petals, the rose bushes bloomed in the sun-whipped gardens and there was not a soul to be seen next to the bougainvillea hedges nor under the wasp-covered mulberry trees. When the reporters finally succeeded in cornering the old man in whose house they were staying—on his way out into the yard to relieve himself—he gazed vaguely at their loud attire and finally mumbled, “It should have come a long time ago. Yes. Yes. A long time ago.”

  The growth on Berenov’s chest advanced steadily. First the stems rose to the height of a lawn, and then some of them burst forth and branched out. His body burned in a fever of burgeoning growth. The rest of the activities of his life slowed, almost coming to a standstill.

  It must have been after two or three days that he decided he had to wash himself. By supporting himself with both hands on the back of the armchair, and thrusting the upper half of his body forward, he began his journey to the bathroom. Still wondering at the strength of his arms, he straightened up and stood on his feet. On the way he panted for breath, and leaned on the furniture in front of him. He crossed the dark passage and fell with outstretched hands on the frame of the bathroom door. He gripped the iron basin, and when he got his breath back, the sight of a hollow-cheeked face with a slight greenish tinge, flashed back at him from the mirror.

  After a blur of time (now a number of actions of different duration slipped from Berenov’s memory, so that he skipped from situation to situation without any clear idea of what had happened between them) the iron bath was full, and he found himself sunk in it up to his chin. The film on top of the water was torn by branches, while on either side of the tub supple grasses spread, trembling in the water. When he pushed his feet against the bottom of the bath, he could slide on the moss covering his back, and he was grateful for the intelligence of the growth which had not concentrated all its might on his back, and thus did not make it excessively difficult for him to lie down.

  He had never dried himself so carefully in his life. Branch after branch was honored by a toweling. He was especially careful in blotting the water from his feet. Sitting on the edge of the bath, leaning slightly forward, he did not skip a single patch of green between his toes.

  Getting dressed was difficult. He gave up the idea of putting on his underclothes, and when he pushed his legs into the cloth cylinders of his trousers he was careful not to harm the branches. Owing to the concentrated growth in his armpits and on the muscles of his chest, he had to exert himself to get his arms into his shirt sleeves. During one of his clumsy attempts, his muscles betrayed him, and his arm knocked stiffly against his chest. A stream of vapors burst from the crushed branches. His head spun, and he fell to the floor.

  When he came to, the bathroom was full of warm liquids. Berenov felt faint again. When he recovered his strength, he moved his body and started back to the room. On the way he fainted again for an unclear length of time. With a final effort, whose details were vague to him, he lifted his body and sank between the arms of the green plastic chair.

  Everyone waited for the next fire as for a decisive battle. The jewel of the firefighter’s preparations was the small yellow plane ready on the shore next to the hut with the wireless equipment. When the alarm sounded, the plane was supposed to fill the container bulging from its belly with seawater, and in a quick flight to the mountains empty the water onto the flames. For the last few days the yellow plane and its pilot had been a magnet attracting the children of recent immigrants who lived on the coastal strip. In the villages, however, high on the mountain roads, the news of the plane was received with indifference. Although there, too, everyone was waiting for the return of the flames.

  The fire broke out unexpectedly on the northern range. It seemed that the tongues of flame were mocking the firefighters by advancing underground toward unexpected places. Soon the flames were visible in the distance, and immediately afterward the sight was also confirmed by the state of the art instruments, which went on ticking and registering as they were dragged to the fire.

  This time a large crowd gathered. The geologists stationed themselves next to their measuring tools. The new settlers hastened up the mountainside, but owing to their inexperience they ran most of the way and reached the ridge out of breath. The fire brigade officers with bristling mustaches paraded among the crowd, and waited for the airplane. The last to arrive were the reporters who took up their places in the first row, close to the flames’ frontier.

  The plane crossed the line of the ridge. Its yellow belly glittered in the sun and sprayed a trail of water behind it. In front of the fire zone, which had spread to the valleys in the meantime, the plane circled once and once again, waved its wings at the spectators, and then leaped toward the flames.

  The plane’s container opened its flaps as planned and dropped a heavy column of water. But the tongues of fire, which shrank for a moment, leaped up again more fiercely than ever, and almost licked the flaps of the container. The plane, relieved of its weight, rocked, and the water sprayed wildly around it. The waves of heat buffeted it as if it were a kite whose strings had become entangled. And in the end it turned it over, with its nose pointing to the ground. With water still pouring from its yellow wings, the plane sank swiftly into the flames.

  The fire stopped raging four days later, and only when the piles of smoldering embers in the area cooled were the rescue teams and the reporters able to go out to look for the plane’s wreckage. But to their disappointment, the little plane and its pilot had disappeared, as if the whole
commotion had nothing to do with them at all.

  At the same time the geologists continued their measurements along the coastal strip, followed by an ever lengthening trail of immigrants, who had begun to discover disturbing signs in their fields facing the sea. After a week of observations the geologists were able to confirm their suspicions. But the rumor that the island was sinking had already spread even before they published their findings. The immigrants, who had despairingly watched their fields being covered with seawater, hurried to pack their bundles—well-trained in wandering—and did not wait for explanations. The researchers turned to the reporters and informed them emotionally that everything indicated the presence of a rare phenomenon, hitherto known only in theory, of the rapid sinking of longitudinal folds which foretold, without the shadow of a doubt, the beginning of the era of the great sinking of the crust of the earth . . . Hot on the heels of the reporters the geologists, too, quickly folded up their measuring instruments, and on the narrow road on the way to the airport they were already mingling with a stream of immigrants, tourists, and government officials, all escaping as fast as they could from the sinking island.

  The little airport, usually so sluggish, was humming with rescue planes which had arrived from the mainland. In the waiting hall the counters of the single kiosk had long been emptied, and people elbowed their way to the exit without standing on dignity. In the hubbub of desertion, nobody paid any attention to the young men who alighted from the planes with a stern, concentrated step. Long after they had already left the skies of the island behind them, the passengers’ commotion continued unabated, and none of them turned to look at the vanishing mountain ranges or wondered about the destiny of the islanders in their blue-shuttered houses in the mountains.

  What happened next Berenov found hard to explain to himself in his usual terms. His thoughts swelled unnaturally, like bladders, and were slowly dragged, sometimes toward his spine and sometimes in the direction of his legs, where they remained for a long time. His efforts to sharpen his eyes resulted in semi-opaque sight, as if his lids had already turned into whorls. But Berenov no longer needed these means of communication in order to abandon himself to the rustle flowing through his boughs. In all the branches the splashing of the sap grew louder, and the fleshy leaves burst from their skins and gave off a constant swishing of friction and whispers.

  The green plastic armchair bent beneath the burden of the foliage which had already covered most of the room. The branches surprised the spiders out of their webs, some of them blocked the door, and the first of the dark leaves began pushing their way outside through the slits in the blinds.

  Retrospectively, it was hard to estimate how much time had passed, the growth intensifying, until Berenov’s door was torn down. He himself had already sailed beyond the realm of words. And even if possible, it is doubtful that he would have agreed to talk.

  Fragmentary evidence alone survived the last fire—a few aerial photographs of the burning island, and stories full of contradictions by sailors somewhat the worse for drink, who at the time were on the deck of a ship crossing the island’s horizon.

  From these sources it appeared that a stir of preparation was felt in the mountain villages before the flames broke out. In the yards, baskets were filled with fruit and decorated with flowers. Embroidered white shirts, smelling faintly of sawdust, were taken out of the chests, and from the villages little, white-clad processions set out to climb to the mountain peaks. The flames, which had already begun to billow in the virgin forests at the heart of the island, pursued the climbers, and it sometimes seemed as if they were advancing in one united camp.

  In the distance the island shores looked like gigantic embers cast into the waves. Intermittently the sea retreated from the fire and the sparks, and then it rushed back and swept boiling rocks and lumps of earth into its depths.

  On the peaks circled by walls of fire, the island elders moved, nodding their heads and waving their hands, and behind them followed the young men, the women, and the children in a tight chain. The elders quickened the tempo, and behind them the youngsters’ bodies pulsed rhythmically in a circle, in the flickering white of their embroidered clothes.

  The burned pieces of land were rocked by the waves until the ashes were washed away. And when they sunk into the depths of the sea the fire, too, subsided.

  The experts, quite rightly, raised their eyebrows and dismissed this unreliable evidence, together with the testimony of the sole surviving islander—an old man who had accidently remained behind on the mainland. He mumbled something about a city hidden in the ocean depths and about the gates of water and fire which would break open in years to come.

  The scientific publications of that year omitted these details. But they definitely confirmed the fact of the disappearance of the island and its population—the last remnants of a society which had degenerated due to the debilitating influence of living continuously in the shade of forests.

  When neighbors tore down Berenov’s door, the room was full of a dense forest smell. This is not the place to dwell on the details of the manner in which he was evacuated. All that needs to be mentioned is the day, a particularly hot one, of the funeral itself which was attended, in spite of everything, by all those who honored the memory of Berenov, the clerk and loyal citizen from the third floor. To the embarrassment of the mourners, the gigantic coffin did not fit into the black van and was loaded onto its roof. When it was opened next to the grave, the green monster was once more revealed, and the mourners, overcome with nausea, stifled their retching in their handkerchiefs.

  None of those present could possibly have guessed that the shudder which passed through the foliage at that moment was not simply the stirring of the leaves in the breeze, but the convulsion of joy which seized hold of Berenov when his leaves merged at last with the fertile land, for whose warmth he had so greatly longed.

  HOLD ON TO THE SUN

  Some of the old neighborhoods of Jerusalem give me rather a strange feeling as I pass through them, as if they existed only for as long as I traverse them, springing up mysteriously from somewhere or other, my own imagination, perhaps, or even memories predating my birth, to stand there before I enter. Quickly the laundry is hung out on the long balconies, and children in black caftans come out to resume their games. The silence that always prevails after I pass has led me to the peculiar conclusion that behind my back, alley by alley, the neighborhood vanishes. This, too, is the reason for the habit which I have formed of never turning my head, and never looking back at these places.

  For years I have refrained from expressing this feeling, even to myself, and when it sometimes awoke in me, even after I had emerged from these neighborhoods into other streets, I would reject it as firmly as a man dismissing the legends of some distant land and time. What finally led me to spend days on end examining it—without, however, solving the riddle—was the following incident, which did not, apparently, happen by chance nor was it by chance that it happened where it did happen.

  At the time I was busy working on my study of the history and sources of Jewish liturgy, comparing ancient versions of the daily evening prayer. I was vaguely aware of the existence of another old Prayer Book, which I had grounds to believe might contain, if not exactly a different version, at least a rare interpretation of the evening prayer and the time appointed for its recitation. The reference was hastily jotted down on an old index card, dating to a period before I undertook my study, which accounts for the slipshod nature of the notes. I may have copied them inaccurately from a manuscript, or taken them down during one of the lectures given by my late teacher who passed away many years ago.

  According to my notes, this interpretation of the evening prayer refers to the light of the moon as it was before it was shrunk, and instructs believers to say the prayer with special rejoicing, “You should follow the sun in its sinking and the moon in its rising,” and say with devout intent: “With wisdom Thou openeth the gates of the heavens, and with under
standing Thou altereth the seasons.” And when you say, “Thus hast Thou created day and night,” you should concentrate intently on the words ‘Day’ and ‘Night,’ and attach all your joy to layla, Night, which is a resorting of the Hebrew letters of yahal—“He will illuminate”—and the extra letter “L.” And you should attach your joy chiefly to that “L” of layla, which has the numerical value of thirty and stands for the darkness in the moon on the thirtieth day of the lunar month. The above is the secret of the impregnation of darkness by yahal, which is the light of the Seven Days of Creation, the Everlasting Light.

  And the interpretation states furthermore that a believer should perform this deed in great secrecy, so that nothing at all of it be divulged. And he should exert himself greatly in its performance, so that he gain the upper hand over others who conspire falsely and delay the opening of the gates of Heaven. Such ones give rise to dissension between the sun and the moon and seek in their sin to stop the seasons in their appointed rounds and to bring, God forbid, a different light into the world.

  And at the end of these notes I found, to my great astonishment, the following: There are some who say that a believer should start right now combining the morning, afternoon, and evening prayers. As if the words of the Prophet had already come to be, “The sun shall be no more thy light by day, neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: But the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light.” And I do not know whether these words actually figured in the old Prayer Book or were no more than a supposition on the part of my late teacher, or perhaps even my own part in those distant days.