by Lavie Tidhar
There are no more takeaways, no more late-night ice creams, no more hot showers, no more safe drinking water, no more relaxation. There is vigilance and fear and caution and memories of what had gone before, which are best suppressed. The nights are very dark. There is no more Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Education, Minister of Security, Minister of Justice, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Internal Affairs, Minister of Energy, Minister of Tourism — none of these things exist, and you are the government and the courts and the rabbinic authority, justice and security are yours alone to make.
There is no more before, and there is no more where.
There is only now, only here.
There is only you.
MORDECHAI: TWO
The first place I needed to get to, on arriving in Tel Aviv, was my warehouse, containing my collection of rare artefacts — I had planned to make a museum out of it, though naturally this admirable goal now had to be postponed. It was conveniently located in the basement right under my mother’s apartment at the north end of Weizmann Street. It was quite a long way to go by foot from the University train station, especially as everything became more and more ruined and distorted the farther I went. In the beginning, there was only the occasional collapsed building and the remains of some overturned cars, and the major difficulty was the darkness, as none of the streetlights were working. I saw unsteady light coming from behind some buildings, but didn’t think it’d be smart to investigate, or even to use the flashlight I had brought.
I couldn’t help noticing there was absolutely no one in the streets, nor was there any other sign of life. The noise the train made must have been heard at least five kilometres away, but nobody came to investigate. All was quiet.
It stayed that way until I got to Namir Road and, thinking happily for a moment that about half the distance was already behind me, I first noticed the bonfires.
There were considerably fewer buildings in the western part of Tel Aviv than I remembered, but on top of every one of them there was a fire burning. This was beautiful to see, even amazing, but not as wonderful as the reason I could see all those buildings from my rather low vantage point: this part of the city was now spread upon the low slopes of a mountain.
It vaguely reminded me of a volcano. There has never been an actual volcano in Israel, unless you count pre-history or, God forbid, you happen to get into one of Aharon Reueli’s lectures, in which case you are swamped with false evidence that there was one, Mount Sinai, and then wish that a volcano would erupt right there and then, to kill the lecturer and, mercifully, yourself, so as to avoid permanent brain damage. I could swear the slopes I was seeing were becoming steeper and steeper the higher they were, but above some point there were no fires anymore, only the feeling of something huge and impossibly tall, a new kind of darkness hovering above numerous specks of light.
As I crossed Namir Road, the main highway coming from Haifa, which was now abandoned and without a single car to be seen, I thought of how this reminded me of Yom Kippur. It’s the only day of the year when nobody — well, almost nobody — uses any vehicle other than a bicycle, and everyone, especially the children, walk freely in the streets and on the roads, supposedly asking forgiveness of God and of their friends for sins they’d committed during the previous year, and which they’ll be happy to commit again in the new one. It’s an eerily quiet day. This was an eerily quiet night.
I hoped that Tel Aviv hadn’t become a religious place just because of some perfectly explainable unnatural occurrence.
*
As I continued west I started noticing people. At first only hints, faint noises, monstrous shadows on broken walls, quick flickers of light, something which sounded like a heavy object being thrown into a dumpster. Then, from the roofs above me, talking, laughing, shouting. Then, almost silently, someone small, perhaps a kid, went running past me and disappeared behind a corner. I quickly hid behind a barrel half-eaten by fire, and not a moment too soon, as a gang of five men shot out from somewhere nearby and ran after the fugitive.
I became very careful after that, which slowed me down.
*
When I finally got to my warehouse all was quiet around me. It was already very late at night or, if you like, very early in the morning. The bonfires on the roofs were still burning, but there were no more voices to accompany them. Everyone probably went to sleep. I needed a good night’s sleep myself, but first I had to make sure nothing had happened to my collection.
The first two floors of the building seemed intact. The third just wasn’t there. This meant that some of the neighbours, whom I’d known since I’d been born and had grown up with, were probably dead, which was fine with me. It also meant that there was no bonfire on the roof, which was good. At the moment, I didn’t need any kind of attention.
I entered mom’s apartment, which was on the ground floor, using my own key. I was still living with her when I left Tel Aviv, and I saw no reason to find anywhere else to live, even in the current conditions. I didn’t want to wake her up, though — her method of questioning could have been taken straight from the Spanish Inquisition — so I went very quietly, in the dark, down the stairs to the basement’s steel-reinforced door, unlocked it, went inside and locked it again behind me.
My hand, by reflex, pressed the light switch. Nothing happened, of course. Either the lines were severed by whatever happened here a year ago, or the city was deliberately taken off the power grid. Instead, I turned on my flashlight. I inhaled deeply. Until then I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath.
The secret journal of the Rabbi of Safed. The prayer book which was held by whoever it was who’d built what we call today Noah’s Ark. The yet undeciphered writings of the Kinneret Cult. The wooden staff Moses had used to part the Red Sea. And documents, numerous precious documents, copies of items held in museums, articles by archaeologists and historians. Everything was there, in my specially made locked cabinets.
And, in the iron safe, when I opened it — the Hanukkah oil container.
It was all there.
Amid all this, sighing in relief, knowing that everything was going to be all right now, I fell asleep without even noticing.
*
A sound invaded my dream. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was quite insistent. I opened my eyes. All was quiet for a moment. The basement was still very dark, but I sensed daytime. It was hot, and little slivers of light came in through the gaps in the doorframe. I stood up slowly, got my keys, went to the door and started opening it when the sound returned.
It was a man, and he was shouting.
I N T E R L U D E
It’s peaceful on the roofs, one need never come down to the ground. They migrate across the rooftops, a world of dark solar panels no longer working, of abandoned washing never collected from the lines strung under the sun, of barbeque pits and deck chairs no longer inhabited, a wide and open world occupied on one side by the endless sea, on the other by the mountain rising high overhead. They migrate across the rooftops, setting up their tents each night on top of a new building. They hunt the birds that come and settle here, the rats that live inside abandoned buildings, trade self-grown food with the below people, sometimes. Sometimes they catch some of the strange fauna that seems to have come down from the mountain. You learn to love the sensation of peeing from a height, expressing at once your freedom and your contempt for the world below. Titles no longer matter up here. Nor job descriptions. A man could have been an accountant in a previous life: now he is a hunter, a leader of his own small tribe. The babies who are born need never experience street level. They collect rainwater and brew alcohol from fruit when they can be found. There are a lot of things one can find on the abandoned rooftops of Tel Aviv. Sometimes it seems many denizens of that city had never left their apartment blocks, had made entire lives for themselves within, and above. There are storage rooms up here, and some of its hold can be traded. Some roof-people aren’t nomadic. Some live on one roof in
great green gardens, tiny self-contained Edens they will protect at all cost. The people above are a different people, a new people, and they look after their own.
SAM: TWO
They’d been waiting for me on the Kibbutz Galuyot Interchange. It was my first indication of how bad things had turned out in Tel Aviv, of how far civilization can collapse, and how quickly. They had surrounded me before I could pull out the Desert Eagle. Hands frisked me, stripped me quickly and efficiently of everything I had. Then they turned me over and I got my first look at them.
“Who dis bird hia?”
“What colour gang him wearing? Me no know dem.” They spoke a language of their own, a Tel Aviv argot of the sewers. It was a mix of English from bad Hollywood portrayals of Pacific islanders, and net-speak, and the sort of Hebrew teenagers use. There were about ten of them.
They were all mounted on scooters.
The scooters were painted in slashes of red and white. The men sitting on them had similarly painted their faces. The scooters all had 50cc engines. As I watched, two of them ran to the jeep and began emptying its oil tank. “Dis hia, like, million dolla!” one of them said.
“You, me, everyone rich,” the other one agreed. They were very efficient. The oil was transferred into two-litre plastic Coca-Cola bottles, and these in turn were distributed amongst the riders.
I said, “Listen, you’re making a mistake. I’m from outside. I’m here to help you.”
“Outside! He one crazy mathafucker. Outside. Why he go tellem outside for? Making the boys dey are crazy. I think kill him.”
“Kill him!”
“Kill him for sure, or — ”
“Yes?”
“Sell him to the Templars?”
“You fucking crazy, man? They’ll — ”
“Sure, but — ”
I said, “Hey,” and didn’t get any notice. “Hey!”
“What you want, crazy man from outside?”
“Who are you people?” I said. None of them was over twenty-five. Spotty faces. Red and white uniforms. A horrible thought invaded my mind and I said, “You’re delivery boys?”
“Who you go calling that, boy!” someone kicked me in the ribs. “We is de nambawan gang, Ayalon Highway Chapter, the Street Racers Clan. Why you go talk rubbish like dis, you don’t know is dangerous? Close-up you dead, man.”
“Look,” I said. “Can I stand up?”
“Stand up, sit down, soon you dead same-same.”
I stood up. They watched me. I said, “Don’t you people speak normal Hebrew?”
One of them, on the far left, young kid with glasses, raised his hand. “Actually,” he said, “well, of course we can speak the old language, mothafucker. If only to establish a working relationship with the tradespeople.” He smiled at me. “But we choose not to. Do you have a problem with that?”
I said, “No.”
“It really is quite easy to pick up, you know,” he said, smiling. “There’s even an old guy from the university who comes around every once in a while to talk to us. He says he’s a linguist, though I think” — and here he switched to their pidgin again — “he like look of boy hia, name of him SpeederManTwo, he want to take boy hia for ride, you savvy?”
“Fuck you!” a boy on the right said. I guessed he was SpeederManTwo. I wondered what happened to SpeederManOne. “Why you go make talktalk like dis? You want fight?”
And then they all began to chant, their palms landing in rhythm on the scooters’ handles, and they shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”
I stared at them, and beyond the city rose, past the ruined highway, and for the first time I truly saw it, the burned-out, broken shell of a city, spreading out for miles in all directions, like a war zone that had been left to stand with no foreign-aid workers coming, a Kosovo, a Beirut, a Kandahar without CNN or Al Jazeera. And beyond the ruined city: the mountain, rising, dominating the skyline, and the sense of slow, immense things stirring, watching —
“Death race! Death race! Death race!” When I turned back to them they seemed to have forgotten all about me. The boy in the glasses and the other one were facing away from me on their scooters. The others surrounded them in a ring. A tall boy in a goatee was holding my Desert Eagle and pointing it at the sky. “One!” he said. “Two!”
“Tree!” they all shouted together, the boy with the goatee pressed the trigger, and the two scooters shot off along the highway. In a moment the others had revved their own miniature bikes and darted off after them, the whole herd making a sound like a cloud of mosquitoes. I heard shots being fired, coming from their direction and, a little later, saw a cloud of smoke rising far ahead. I wondered who won. They made me think of that book they make you read in high school, the kids who get stranded on an island somewhere, I can’t remember what it was called. It didn’t matter anyway. I think they made a movie out of it. I went back to the ruined jeep. The tires were gone. They must have scattered the road with glass or shrapnel. I picked up my backpack, still at the back of the jeep, and the Uzi, miraculously still there, and stepped off the highway, and into Tel Aviv.
I N T E R L U D E
Life is better now that the bosses are dead, and the phones too, and life is simpler, and it’s good to know all the skills you’ve worked so hard to gain on the job are coming in handy.
You may ride in a gang, but you only ride for yourself. That is the cardinal rule. You ride for yourself. That’s what he loves, the power, the control, as he rides the bike down the empty streets and knows people are watching him from their hiding places, watch him in envy because he has fuel, he has the bike, and in this new improved world he is king. You ride for yourself, but at the same time you ride with a gang, your friends, stronger than friends, your brothers, stronger than that — your pack. You hunt together in the quiet streets and if you see a looter come into your territory you ride him down and play with him, make him run, make him fall, and when you’ve had enough you tie his feet to a rope and the rope to the bikes and you all ride off together, carrying the garbage outside the border. You share everything with your gang — fuel, food, women — you sleep together, you eat together, you ride together. A lot of it is like back in the army, during basic training, but there are no bosses here, no commanders, everyone is equal, everyone is solitary king of the roads. You speak the language because it is your language now, it belongs to you, and each bike-klan has its own, and the ordinaries, the victims, the people who used to look down on you and phone for pizza and not tip — they don’t speak it, and when you pass by with the engines roaring they skulk and hide and fear you as you pass.
Life is better now, where everyone but you is dead. Life is simpler now, though you will never get to go on that trip to India with Yair, because he’s dead now too and there’s no way out of the city, and you will never go to the university, because there are no more classes and the university clan, with their unholy engine and their leader who is not quite there, who is not right in the head, who even the bikers fear even if they won’t admit it, the university clan doesn’t do admissions any more. But life is better now, a man’s life, and so you ride: you ride only for yourself.
MORDECHAI: THREE
I froze.
Behind the basement’s door I heard a second voice joining the first. Two men were arguing. The sound was muffled, but it was clear that at least one of them was very angry. I tried to put my ear to the door, but that didn’t help, I still understood nothing. Then there was a shout, close to the door, too close for comfort, but I still only caught one word. “Something something something, you something something, the Messiah!”
It was followed by what sounded like a punch being thrown, and something crashing on the ground. It could have been one of Mother’s old vases, in which case I hoped for whoever had broke it’s sake that he died before Mom caught him. He probably felt the same way, since immediately afterwards I heard him going up the stairs and, with a final “Something something — Messiah!” shout, opening the main doo
r and leaving without bothering to close it.
That, if my hearing hadn’t deceived me, left me with only one intruder in the apartment. This I could handle.
I walked softly to one of my storage cabinets, opened it, and took out a so-called article by Aharon Reueli. I always collect articles dealing with my field, even if they are written by idiots — a habit of mine which was now going to prove useful beyond its original purpose. Very quietly, I crumpled each page in my hands, until I had several paper balls ready. From another cabinet I dug out the wooden staff which Moses used to part the Red Sea. Perfect. Then I took my travelling bag, which I hadn’t even unpacked since the day before, and walked back to the door, slowly, only to realize that it might creak as I opened it. I left the staff and the paper balls there, went to the iron safe, unlocked it and took out the Hanukkah oil container. It still — miraculously — had oil in it. It was useful to the Makkabim, and now it was going to be useful to me. The real miracle was that the door’s hinges were exposed on my side, so that I could oil them, which I promptly did. Then I returned the oil container to the safe, and everything was ready for my big escape.