A Savage Flower

by Judith Weinstock

  He doesn’t say a word. Just unbuckles his belt, unzips his trousers and lowers them down with his underwear following suit, not taking off any other items of clothing. Shoes, shirt, everything remains on his person.

  Dana looks at him with shock, and sees how he lifts up her long dress in one swift move, covering her face, confidently releases her from her meant-to-be-released lacy underwear, and then sprawls his entire stature, and delves himself into her harshly, forcefully, as he is.

  A barrage of rocks pound her from within. A merry-go-round lifts her with incredible speed to a Ferris wheel, then lands her back down to a hard gravelly ground.

  And it’s over.

  Eyal. The intellect. The witty. The pleasant conversationalist.

  Caveman.

  He lies next to her silently, catching his breath. Then he zips that which requires zipping, straightens the messy shirt, and walks over to the bathroom.

  “Want something to drink?” he asks as he returns calm, collected, cool.

  She doesn’t. She’s embarrassed, covering her naked body with the dress, trying to organize her thoughts. He walks over to the fridge, takes out a bottle of water, pours into a glass and gulps down.

  “Alright, well if you don’t want anything, then I’ll leave now.”

  And walks out.

  Dana deliberates whether or not this can be called rape.

  She may have wanted him, yes, but not like that. She wanted Eyal. Not that savage who forcefully dragged her, covered her face, delved into her depths, and without looking at her for a single moment, reached his shore, left a vacant boat there and walked out.

  But she knows. It isn’t.

  After all, she had prepared herself. Her bed. Her body. Laid out the backdrop. Gave thought to the music. The perfume. The wine.

  The knowledge is hammering into her. She’s replaying all of the details. His scent. The strong arms. That masculine force that came out of nowhere, paralyzing her.

  And suddenly she wants him to return.

  Her caveman.

  14

  They rubbed their hands together in blatant pleasure at the romance between Dana and Eyal, which was to grow and develop in the following months.

  David and Professor Doron Sadeh.

  Elbowed each other joyously as though they were naughty children, winked at each other like parents who had successfully paired off their children.

  Why, actually?

  Dana often ponders this question. Why, really?

  Eyal is a perfect lieutenant. Theirs. Of course.

  True. She knew. Efficient. Thorough. Follows every order meticulously. An avid fan. A devout believer in the gradual, exhausting yet certain ascend up the pure-intellect spiritual ladder, though not necessarily moral, put before them by David, for he is beyond good and evil. His feet on the ground and his head in the heavens. Yes, Eyal is a devoted and enthusiastic subject of King David.

  And it’s true that she too had become an obedient partner, marching confidently and as blind as a bat after David’s charm, which had filled her with a meaningful sense of purpose.

  She too belongs.

  Clearly at that point she didn’t yet have a shadow of a doubt that her caveman, the brute who had wielded her in what seemed to her as an immaculate example of authentic primal masculinity, instinctive and eruptive, was in fact externally operated by King David and his deputy Doron, with detailed instructions, organized and gradual, that would reach their predictable end, a carefully-planned destination, with that same instinctive spontaneous combustion on top of her bed’s fragrant sheets.

  Only, there was nothing spontaneous there. Within their relationship. She knows that now.

  Not the pregnancy. Not Orr. Not the wedding.

  Because she obviously wouldn’t have married Eyal were it not for the pregnancy. Brute or not.

  Not her.

  It had always been clear to her that she’d never get married. She wasn’t destined for that. She loathed them. All of those correct families. Those fine-families.

  Mom-Dad-and-two-children, neatly combed and well-mannered, like her and Hila.

  In a small house in the suburbs. One box in front of another. In straight rows. Dana isn’t going to be like everyone else. Surely not like her mother and father.

  The loathing had repeatedly flooded up her throat, choking her like all of those times she had seen herself being sucked into her parents’ mold.

  The banality. The impersonality. The dull patterns of everyone.

  Everyone.

  Her mother, who had made a career for herself. Come on, really. A bunch of educational clerks.

  Bloated by self-importance. Donning respectable pant-suits, sporting prim hair, self-conceived as opinionated, rule formulators, educational-regulation regulators, new curriculums which always become outdated by the following year, when the governmental ministry’s chiefs change during the new elections, and a new minister, and a fresh CEO, and new rules, and meetings upon meetings. All exhaustingly predictable.

  Honking geese. Gullible.

  Then they return to their homes, flocks of them, extract squashed feet from elegant high heels, toss aside the obligatory jacket, loosen a button in their tailored pants, make themselves a cup of coffee, ask Dana-you’re-home-did-you-eat-how-was-school, thus fulfilling their maternal obligations, in what they must view as the epitome of quality-time, probably also as quantity-time, and turn to complete the endless unimportant phone calls in which they didn’t get a chance to chatter between 08:00 and 16:00.

  And Dad. Oh, Dad. He must be the ultimate dream of all those herds of women.

  Here he is, Ilan Neveh. An impressive, educated, handsome, successful man who brings home the paycheck. Right?

  What more can one need.

  He told Dana that he had once dreamed of becoming an innovative-architecture lecturer. A Technion researcher, at the same place that he himself had studied for his degree. Big deal. And he never fulfilled that dream.

  Sure. Not enough money.

  A mother like hers requires much more than the paycheck of an architecture lecturer at the Technion.

  Dressing right and properly costs money. Constant maintenance, face, hair, figure, costs money. A panicked fleeing from the age chasing her, costs a lot of money. Injections, corrections, peeling. Money. Money.

  So farewell, Technion.

  Welcome, real-estate entrepreneurship.

  No, thank you, really. Anything but another dull home like Mom-Dad’s. Not her. Not Dana. It’s all predestined, and still I won’t agree to it.

  And she really didn’t want to get married, but she still finds herself standing there, just like everybody else, in a white dress and bride’s veil, with that ridiculous female Rabbi, in her shiny blue dress, reading out their marriage contract from a scroll, reciting poetic lines to her and Eyal and handing them red wine in a filled goblet to sip, beneath a canopy of white flowers.

  Strange, she can now recall that she and Eyal had even exchanged a few smiles, beneath that canopy.

  Because she didn’t have many other options.

  The truth is, she had wanted to have an abortion.

  Motherhood was absolutely not part of her plans.

  But Eyal was irrefutable.

  No.

  An inexplicable paternal joy had suddenly come upon him. Exulted. A kind of masculine pride.

  He had managed to bring pregnancy upon the beautiful Dana. And he wants the child. And they will have a child. And a wedding.

  Dana is embarrassed. Eyal wants. And the thing that really tipped the scales, David was very excited.

  Why, actually, Dana was to wonder in the coming days. And she was to realize, too. His Royal Highness had foreseen the conclusive click of the handcuffs locking around her. Doctor Dana Neveh was sacrificed and affixed to the c
amp.

  And that was final.

  He applauded when Eyal gave him the news, and shared the joy with Doron.

  He imparted the secret of the joyous discovery with the team of chosen few, and the entire group celebrated by drinking, patting on the back, with a victorious jubilation of intoxication lasting late into the night, which had included, Dana clearly remembers, flirtations, mutual undressing, and moans in the dark. She lost Eyal within the darkness that engulfed them. For a moment she thought that she saw his head resting on an exposed stomach, but she wasn’t sure.

  Mom and Dad, innocent and ignorant, happy. This is the day we’d been waiting for.

  Mom immediately calls all of her social circles, and Dad arranges for her and Eyal to get a garden apartment in one of the complexes he’s building in Tel Aviv, not far from their family home.

  It seems that all of the pools of happiness in their vicinity are filling up to the brim.

  Except for hers. She remains empty and wilting. Not that Mom, or anyone else, notices. Do they even see her? She wonders.

  But everyone agrees that the wedding celebration was perfect.

  And then Orr enters her life, and everything changes.

  A miracle has happened to her. A total miracle.

  15

  The moment that David brings the idea of the Existential College’s village to the group, a dream is planted within Dana. Growing inside her and blooming. Suddenly lighting the coming times in a new hue, bright and blinding.

  David is the one planting the seeds of the vision within them. Describing in detail each of their pleasant wooden huts, scattered among the green trees of a thick forest, at the white shores of the ocean.

  They will live there peacefully and lovingly to the sound of the waves arriving at the shore.

  In the evenings, at the end of their work day in the nearby city, or in the fields that they themselves will cultivate, they’ll meet for the Gathering, play, listen to music, drink wine, learn the King’s doctrine, and prepare for the big day.

  Dana had begun dreaming back when she was still Professor Doron Sadeh’s student. Dori’s.

  He tutored her during her PhD.

  Once their tutor-student contact ripened into call-me-Dori-that’s-how-everyone-calls-me, they expanded the limits of their fertile academic-contemplation lot to the comfortable bed in her apartment, to the luxurious hotel room in Milan, during the international law conference, to less luxurious hotel rooms, ones she had never known existed, which still didn’t prevent the two from deriving a great deal of satisfaction within them.

  And then he invited her to the first Gathering with David.

  Dana arrived at the warm Jerusalem hall, built on top of a seemingly-dull office building, and witnessed the sights.

  The dimming of the lights, the candles, the scent of incense, David sitting on a stage, filling an armchair with his body, speaking from up-high to the group scattered over the rugs, the low couches and sitting corners, indicating to the two with his head towards two available pillows to sit on, and continuing to talk.

  Dana remembers herself trembling.

  From his dimensions, from the huge magnified eyes through the thick lenses of his glasses, the mane of hair framing his face, the utter contrast between all these and the pleasant voice produced from within him.

  She momentarily closed her eyes and felt herself bewitched. David’s voice taking her towards an unfamiliar magical path, pulling the heart through concealed forces. And the things he says arrive from somewhere else.

  He sounds gentle. Humble. Serene. Trickling delectable words in an immaculate and pleasing diction, at times almost sounding like a melody to her. And yet not getting carried away with blabbering. He occasionally pauses. Stops, shifts a piercing gaze across those scattered beneath him, ensures the level of attentiveness and calmly continues.

  With a kind of natural authority, confident, taken for granted.

  He speaks about the universe.

  Describes distant planets. Foreign worlds. Other lives. Aliens inhabiting hidden planets, in no way resembling life on our Planet Earth.

  He too, David, in no way resembles humanity. Because he isn’t from here.

  The beings of this planet of yours, he shares the secret with them, are at a dated developmental stage. Different. Dissimilar consciousness threshold.

  And then he tells them about the dream. The yearned-for place. A village. To be only theirs.

  There they will establish the Existential College. There they will enhance their conscious tools of wisdom, and prepare themselves for the fatal day.

  Because Earth has been sentenced to annihilation.

  And that has already happened in the past, yes. Of course. Millions of years ago, everybody knows. It had been annihilated many times before, Planet Earth.

  By fire. By freezing. By ice. By water. And it will happen again, of course. Global warming. Icebergs melting. Typhoons and tsunami floods. Asteroids.

  The signals are already cautioning. The day will come when spaceships from far away will extract those worthy of saving.

  Yes, he knows that these things sound strange now. Fictional.

  They must trust him on this. Completely trust him. He understands that it’s difficult for them to accept. Perhaps right now they’re in doubt. But if they doubt it now, they may be too late, and miss it.

  And that’s precisely his mission here, with them. That’s what he had been destined for. When he arrived here from faraway worlds.

  Dana became enchanted. Dori gleamed with satisfaction. He worshipped David devoutly. Picked group members for him, and helped nurture the slowly-growing royal court in Jerusalem.

  Dana was a very worthy pick. Serious. Smart. Talented. Beautiful. Moderately wealthy. He knew that David would be pleased.

  Because Dana fulfilled all expectations. And beyond. She hadn’t dreamed, during her innocent past, that her exhausting PhD tutored by Professor Doron Sadeh would transform so swiftly into a bizarre bond of brief intercourses, a bond difficult to unravel, but once that chapter ended, Doron became a vital step for securing her place within the group.

  By the time Dori’s passion had slowly died and evaporated, she’d already proudly exhibited her Doctorate, and had also become a full-fledged member of the Existential College group.

  The question marks, the ponderings, the inner deliberations, only reached her after some time had already passed.

  And when David, in great detail and with a ravishingly colorful presentation, revealed before them their village on the distant shore of Cayrona Beach, the village that was to save the chosen ones, Dana smiled to herself.

  Little doubts had already begun murmuring within her. Whispering vexing thoughts of heresy in her ears. Nibbling at the edges of the sublime monument she had almost finished constructing within her, for King David.

  But she felt very clearly that the village, the beach, the primal forest, the ocean’s forces, the new beginning, would save her.

  Not a spaceship.

  She won’t require extraction. She won’t fly away to distant planets. Won’t look to exist within other beings.

  The village itself shall be her salvation.

  And strangely, she smiled with relief.

  Cayrona Beach 2017

  16

  Utter stupidity.

  She can see things clearly now. What a fool she’d been back then.

  Now she’s an obedient subject of a dazed kingdom, trapped within its web without the ability to leave.

  And Eyal.

  And Orr.

  In silent stealth, Dana manages to reach Orr’s boarding home window.

  In the mornings, before daybreak.

  Presses herself motionless against the window at the back of the building, its front surrounded by a sturdy fence, with nothing but grates and a mos
quito net separating her from the children asleep in the room, and listens.

  She hears deep sleep breaths, occasional mumbles, a little burst of sobs, one time she heard “Mommy!” But she didn’t know which child had cried out.

  And she can’t make out Orr through the shadows.

  Once dawn breaks, she runs off.

  She will come up with an escape plan from the village. She’s certain. In the meantime she’s gathering thoughts. Collecting details. Potential escape routes.

  They exist, she knows that, and she’ll discover them.

  She just needs to check the safer options. Because they’re two, she and Orr. And the way must, of course, be completely safe for Orr.

  Eyal may have really filed for sole custody, and perhaps he hasn’t.

  Dana tends to think that he just tried it out for size. To see how she reacts. To scare her. And she isn’t reacting.

  Years of keeping thoughts within her head, gathering and compiling any emotions inwards, into herself, presenting cool composure outwards, even when she’s burning inside, have given Dana the advantage - entirely singular within her array of disadvantages, she chuckles to herself - of a fixed expression, cool, undecipherable, against Eyal’s blatant threat of revoking her motherhood.

  She doesn’t show panic, doesn’t give away anger, doesn’t shed a tear, the way she did that day when Orr was uprooted from her. That will never happen again, she promises herself.

  Eyal fumes at her calmness. He repeatedly brings up memories from their first days as parents.

  How she had placed Orr in the crib and refused to breastfeed her.

  Dana doesn’t react.

  From a distance, she sees herself leaning on a special breastfeeding pillow her mother had bought her, serving her full breast to the baby, the baby hastily pouncing on her nipple, and the nipple falling out of her little lips time after time. She tries to put the nipple back, the mouth, the milk flow, but the baby screams a terrible cry and fervently refuses.