What kind of parents were we, in utter darkness, not seeing, not hearing, not sensing our children.
And we did hear, actually. We spoke. We travelled. Celebrated. Lived. We were good parents. Yes. Truly.
All this time, we were. We saw.
So right.
And how I gave up on that offer of a promotion which I had so desired, just because I was scared not to be sufficiently present in Dana and Hila’s lives. How I always preached against the mantra of “children’s quality-time” in favor of quantity of time.
And Ilan. Constant father. Available. Attentive. Supportive. Non-judgemental.
Both of us.
What is happening to us.
Cayrona Beach 2017
6
Dana’s scared.
She’s sitting by herself on the white sand, the green canopy of a vast treetop shading her pale bare feet, her toes burrowed within the sandy grains, dark sunglasses tinting the turquoise waters in front of her in hues of gray.
Thousands of miles of water separating her from the world left behind.
She’s thinking.
And trembling. Not from the chill.
Trembled all night long. Alone. In the wooden bed, on the grass mattress.
Eyal didn’t sleep with her in it, of course. Orr didn’t either.
I’m on my own, she thinks, perhaps I’ll see him today. And perhaps not.
They told her that he went to Puerto Viejo. Errands. With Dori and David. The village needs to be expanded. We’re pretty crowded in here already. Buying more lands. And more.
Dana knows that she has to get up and leave. She’s late already. Must get to the shared kitchen and work.
Yams, potatoes, black beans, corn, they won’t peel themselves.
That’s what they keep explaining to her. Over and over again.
At first, with restrained reverence. Like, let’s work together. Still, Eyal’s wife. Second in command to Doron, second in command to God.
Later, when Eyal slightly releases the sector borders, shifting and opening the fences indicating and protecting their shared familial territory, the restrictions are breached. All who desire may enter and tear off a sliver of her dignity.
She is now permitted for all.
Like the natives’ slender arrows, dipped in orange poison, that she and Eyal saw when they visited the village of straw huts once, near the Existential College, she is hit by the words sent into the open space of the room, the poisonous, mocking remarks. About her clumsiness. Her lankiness. Her attitude at the Gatherings, and in the kitchen.
If Mom could see me now.
Or Hila.
A PhD in law. Ha.
Leaning over a giant pot of floating corncobs. Not knowing whether to turn the flame higher, or turn off the simmering bubbles.
“What are you doing, daydreaming? You’ll burn us all.”
Meital angrily grabs the giant stirring spoon from her hand, flips the cobs over and over again, not even looking at her, and turns off the flame.
“You’re better off peeling the yams.”
Dana obeys silently. Submissively steps towards the peeling surface, a large wooden table, peers into the tub of yams spotted with mud, sits on the long bench and begins the peeling.
Her fingers ache.
“Here, let me teach you a trick,” Meital suddenly reconciles. Sits next to her, takes a yam, lays it on the wooden surface, grabs the sharp knife, and swiftly slices the yam’s width, circular pieces upon pieces, in front of Dana’s bewildered eyes. Then lifts a circular piece and in one casual move, peels off the thin round coating surrounding it.
“See? You peel one piece at a time. That way you don’t have to waste your energy on an entire yam.”
She hands Dana the knife, pushes the remaining pieces her way, and walks off towards a group of laughing young women at the corner of the kitchen. Dana quietly peels the exhausting orange pieces. This way really is easier.
She’s about to throw up all over the wooden surface, over the peels, over all of this orange mess.
She’s completely filled by nausea. Flooding through her entire body. From her feet to the tip of her scalp.
But she’s continuing. Auto-pilot. Knife. Yam. Circular pieces. Peeling. She won’t throw up here. Knife, yam. She’ll finish and leave.
Sure. And where will she go.
She doesn’t even know to which direction. And she has no money. And no passport. And nowhere to go. And no words even, in this language of theirs.
And no Eyal.
And she doesn’t have Orr.
So much lack.
And in the evening they’ll all sit together for the Gathering again, and pound into her. Point at her and laugh. All of them. She knows. That’s how every evening Gathering goes.
Once they return from the orchard, from the fields, from the sewing room, the laundrette, the workshops, they eat something, shower, don their white robes and hurry to the Gathering. She’ll sit there, pretending to be focused and intrigued. But they’ll send those familiar sharpened arrows at her.
Or worse. They won’t even see her.
And even if David doesn’t return this evening, there are others.
King David has a delectable voice. When he speaks to you, you can sense magic. His voice caresses you, envelops you with pleasance, floods you with the cushioned softness of clouds. And nothing else exists.
Not his strange appearance, not his exaggerated royal manners.
Nothing but the sweetness of the words trickling towards you, over you, delicately. Honey streaming as though it were the river’s flowing waters.
One time, she can’t recall when, ages ago, years, when she was still just Professor Doron Sadeh’s pretty student, Dori’s, she spent a cold night in a small Jerusalem room, dimly lit, with candles and fragrant incense, listening to His Majesty, who was still just called David at the time, and became captivated.
He spoke about himself. How he had reached them. Where he had come from. Where he was headed. His heavenly voice swept her away, and she felt herself soaring.
Just like that. She floated and glided above everyone in the small room. Seeing David and Dori from above through the incense fumes. Lightly floating in space, as though she had departed from her own body, occasionally sensing other beings floating up there with her, encasing her with vast love.
David continued, sharing his secret with them.
He’s not like them.
He’s an other. Arrived from unfathomable distances. Crossed through remote universes, various time dimensions, numerous foreign districts of other solar systems.
He coats himself with an invisible cover, in order for his body not to be damaged or shattered by the lightyears through which he had crossed during his voyage to them.
It’s been known to happen, alien spaceships exploding from the movement’s thrust, never to return to their home planet.
The unique coating provides him with a hyperspatial existence. A supreme existence.
That’s what he said.
He has boundless compassion and wisdom. Beyond human. Inconceivable to the flesh and bone, the settlers of this trivial planet, Earth.
And he came here to save them. The chosen few.
Because soon, the time will come when they will be allotted twenty-four hours to get out of here. Immediately. Before their planet becomes annihilated and pulverized to dust, along with all of its dwellers.
They, of the chosen group. They are the only ones to be saved. And he, David, will train them. Spiritually and tangibly. So that they’re worthy. David had been especially trained for this mission back there, at his distant planet.
But in order to succeed, they must detach themselves from their biological families. From friends. Acquaintances. Destined. In order not to disturb the spiritual leve
l to which they shall be summoned.
Because they must elevate themselves spiritually. Understand. Become enlightened.
A special landing site, customized for alien spaceships, is being prepared for this very purpose in a faraway location, soon to be revealed. A landing strip distant from any populated areas, and yet constantly guarded.
Thousands of dollars are needed for guarding the landing site, monthly.
That’s what he told them.
And then Dana felt herself descending from her floaty glide through that Jerusalem space, among distant universes, collapsing onto the narrow chair in that crammed, pungent room.
And at once, she became Dana the student again, who suddenly saw bills of money, floating and flying up like confetti all through the room.
King David will always go back to the issue of the price. Because there is a price. To each and every item. To each step. To each action.
Dana then pulled out her wallet, the one filled weekly by the graces of Mom and Dad, counted a few bills and silently handed them over to the Caesar.
He grabbed her offering, stuffed his fisted hand into his pocket without bothering to count, and pulled it back out empty.
Then he gave her a piercing look. From top to bottom. Nothing was missed out.
Her smooth black hair, shiny. The long lashes, lowered, the white shoulders, the milky skin. The curves of the chest. The thin waistline.
He then passed a tongue on his dry lips. His eyes sparkled behind the lenses.
Dana suddenly felt a wild and unconstrained force growing and rising within her, trying to burst out, pulling her forward. Remove the screen, discover more. Understand. Spread her wings.
Fly away. To another world. Wondrous. Far away from here.
But when she transferred that gaze from within her and onto that strange man, she shuddered.
For the first time among the many that she will experience in the coming years.
7
Eyal’s coming back.
Dana sees him, wearing a white robe, like Dori’s one, standing near the entrance to the laundrette, laughing with Vered.
Vered is new here. Arrived from New York. Born in Jerusalem, and immigrated with her parents to Boston when she was in high school.
Her father’s a professor at Harvard. Her mother’s something like that too.
“Something like that too,” she tells everyone in a belittling manner, when she arrives for her first Gathering. A brand new acquisition of Eyal’s. From his errand trips.
He hunts them, male and female, on sidewalks and in pubs, motels and campuses, in New York, in San Jose, in Quito, in Bogota, turns to them and chats with smiley wit, in English, in French, in Hebrew, in Spanish. With piercing eyes, with soft conversations about distant spiritual worlds, with implied wooing that leaves ponderings of was-there-wasn’t-there.
Vered speaks Hebrew with an American accent, with a rolling ‘R’. Tall, fair-haired, large dimensions, and laughing.
Everything here makes her laugh. The waves, the foam, the laundrette’s steaming boilers, the hanging up of white clothes, the laundry whipping her face as the wind shifts direction. When the clouds pile up, gathering tightly together, covering the blue above with a black blanket, pouring buckets of rain down, and disappearing once everything around is drenched in water, leaving the blinding sun with the labor of drying. Nothing makes her flinch, Vered, surely not labor, she’s a hard worker.
During her few days here, she already manages to change skin tone and gain streaks underneath the scorching sun, now tanned like an island native in a straw skirt. Her fair hair bats away in the afternoon breeze, and her laughter precedes her, a flag at the forefront of the camp.
Vered isn’t pounded during Gatherings. No arrows of mockery dart her way when she speaks and laughs, she seems to Dana like a wild animal having been liberated from her cage. Intoxicated by the sea, the sand, the forest’s green, the sun-drenched labor, as blistering as it may be.
The group surrounds her, wrapping itself around her devoutly, with blazing eyes, following her, wanting to bask in her light, to become infected by her laughter.
Dana can’t help but feel a slight (slight?) prick of jealousy.
That’s precisely how she, Dana, wished to be.
A liberated wild animal. Freed from its normative, bourgeois, familial, academic chains, galloping unrestricted through white-blue-green open spaces.
With her little cub, Orr, barefoot, tanned, and nude of rules.
How long will it take Vered to feel the same as her? When will they extinguish Vered? When will they tie her with their transparent chains, invisible to begin with, later converted into paralyzing iron shackles, just like Dana’s? And perhaps they won’t manage to overcome her? Perhaps Vered will manage to escape?
Dana’s trembling again.
Has David returned with Eyal?
Hoping that she won’t be presented to him again as an offering today.
Eyal becomes exceptionally generous when he brings a young woman or man, new, to the group.
Especially when they’re attractive, like Vered.
He then casts upon himself the figure of a masculine knight, protective, witty, spiritual, his mouth firing bursts of insights.
And Dana sees with her very eyes how Vered begins to step upon the familiar path, treaded by the many Vereds who preceded her, towards Eyal’s sickly-sweet enchanting source.
Soon. It will come soon. She’s almost there. Eyal knows. Dana knows. From afar.
Only Vered, such an innocent girl, suspects nothing yet.
On such nights, Eyal presents her as an offering.
He’ll soon approach her, her spot by the pile of peeled yams, his head and eyes familiarly directed towards the management house, David’s home.
He’ll hint at her.
She’ll pace back to their shared hut, barefoot on the still-cooling evening sand, and lay alone in their double bed.
Submissive and obedient, her eyes shut.
The hut’s door will open wide, His Majesty’s huge stature will fill the space, and he’ll kindly step down from the heavens, onto her.
8
The body that’s now gaped-open to David isn’t hers.
She’s exited her body again, outwards, floating above, observing their two bodies, grabbing onto each other, limbs over limbs, entwined, drenched in sweat, on the bed.
Every time she’s served to him like that, she swiftly disconnects herself.
She learned that at the very beginning. How the outer-body hovering numbs the piercing pain. Dulls the senses. It isn’t she who is currently squashed under the king’s tremendous weight. There, in bed, is another woman. A stranger. She doesn’t even know her.
It started back then, when he first came to her.
When it still seemed that Eyal possessed a sliver of shame.
Within Dana’s closed eyes are fast-forwarded projections of that distant Gathering, during the genesis of Cayrona Beach.
Eyal was sitting next to her, scanning over the rows of crowded gatherers, all focusing on King David’s every move. Eyal’s eyes occasionally pausing over a new face, and finally resting on Guy, who had recently been picked out of a backpackers’ hostel in Bogota.
Guy seemed to be listening attentively. His long and smooth fair hair spread over his forehead, shoulders, over his amber eyes then fixed on David.
Dana noticed Eyal surveying him with growing intrigue. When they got up to drink herbal tea, Eyal rushed over to him, patted him on the back and said something inaudible.
From that moment on, he didn’t leave Guy’s side for the entire evening. They approached David together, whispered sweet secrets, and went out, the two of them, to the dark beach, while she retired to the hut and fell asleep on the straw mat.
She had still waited up for Eyal
that night, for him to return and join her in their plain wooden bed.
In the morning, he enthusiastically told her about the wonderful bond created between him and Guy.
“Like soul mates!”
He was excited. Eyal had never considered Dana to be his soul mate.
“You don’t understand how much knowledge he holds within him, Guy. Encyclopaedias. I’m telling you. He’s a marine biologist. Can you believe it? So young. Knows loads about the sea. He’s studying a huge variety of marine organisms. Corals. Reefs. Lots of things like that. Combines lab work with going out to sea. Diving. Sailing. Everything. Right now he’s studying all sorts of reciprocal effects between the sea and the land. Imagine how much that can help us here in the village. What a man.”
Eyal always bursts into this sort of verbal flood, gushing, when he feels a little bit guilty about something, Dana knew.
But she just listened. Eyal hasn’t expected anything more from her for a long while already, and in any case, she can’t contribute much to the conversation.
During the following days, the pair became inseparable.
During the nights too.
Dana dared to enquire about the nights.
Eyal was enraged. She doesn’t get it at all.
And what does it even matter. He’s not her property. She hasn’t registered him onto her name. He’ll sleep here, and he’ll sleep there, and over there too, with whomever he desires. Women. Men. She’ll never get it anyway.
Homoeroticism.
His eyes sparkle with excitement.
“Just like David always says, after all, Plato knew: to lay with a woman is a physical gratification. Laying with a man, an elevating, honorable and spiritual gratification. And I’m not saying that I did-or-didn’t.”
But if he’ll want, he’ll want. And Dana fits that Israeli conservativeness so well.
That petty nosey gossip.
A Savage Flower Page 4