A Savage Flower

by Judith Weinstock

  Small and mousy, introverted. Almost unfelt. They say she was brilliant at university, took the fast-track to her MA studies, finished with honors and continued to more advanced degrees, found her way into Harvard, they say that’s where she had met Doron Sadeh, and was appended there along with him to the Jerusalem group of chosen few. Now she’s here, dwarfed and faded, blurred of identity, at their village, at the Existential College.

  Her voice is nearly inaudible.

  Dana is surprised by her sudden audacity. She can’t recall a single occasion where Yuli spoke out in public.

  “Yes, Yuli,” David encourages her.

  “I… I think I can bring ten thousand dollars.”

  “You think.”

  The King isn’t openly mocking her. Not yet. It’s as though he’s simply tasting the words, flipping and rolling them over his tongue.

  And Dana is already covered by anxiety. She knows. It’s coming.

  “You think. Right, Yuli?”

  “R… R… Right.”

  Yuli utters, stifled.

  “Ten thousand dollars?!”

  David gleams in exaggerated awe.

  He becomes filled with fake joy, and Dana notices a few smiles beginning to make their way over the faces of the captivated crowd, in anticipation of what’s about to come. The cat is amusing itself with the mouse.

  Dana feels herself recoiling. It’s about to commence. She’s already recognized the moment.

  “Alright, so Yuli’s thinking. Ten thousand dollars require some serious thinking, as we all know.”

  David doesn’t disappoint.

  A few brief bursts of laughter. Restrained. For now.

  Awaiting the development.

  “I’ll sell Mom’s apartment.”

  Yuli tries to validate her words by pulling out rabbits from a hat that isn’t really in her possession.

  Dana, like everyone else, knows that when Yuli, a single child to her widowed mother, had suddenly uprooted herself, without any prior warning, from her country, her place of birth and her mother’s home, and travelled to the country that His Majesty showed her, her mother collapsed from a stroke, lost consciousness, and is hospitalized at a nursing home to this day. Yuli filed for guardianship over her, but some mysterious relative, knowledgeable in the family’s inner workings, managed to get some sort of interim order preventing Yuli, at least for now, from laying her hands on her mother’s money and assets.

  David knows that very well too. Not that he hadn’t tried. He had tried numerous times, sending a seasoned lawyer to submit claims and responses, but to no avail.

  Now he’s starting to show signs of wrath. Reddening. His cheeks swell up.

  Beneath his glasses, his eyes are ablaze. “Wait. Have the people volunteering sums here also thought about how they’d get the money?”

  He thunders with rage. Directly addresses Yuli, who is paralyzed with terror.

  “I’ll sell Mom’s apartment…” he imitates her with a childlike voice, then swaps his pampered tone for a sudden roar.

  “The apartment that you don’t have, Yuli? Yeah?! That’s the one you’ll be selling?!”

  The leash has been undone.

  Laughter is now widely released through the crowd. Waves upon waves.

  “You see, Yuli, it’s awfully funny. Everyone can see the funny side here, and you see nothing, totally dense, and stubborn.”

  The laughter intensifies. The group members are squirming on the floor, choking with bursts of laughter that grow longer, deafening, filling the hall.

  “When my mother dies, she’ll bequeath it to me.” Yuli attempts with a voice permeated by tears.

  “She’ll die, she’ll die,” the Caesar consoles her.

  And the crowd roars with uncontrollable laughter.

  Dana feels that she’s on the verge of fainting.

  Under the cover of the roaring laughter and the general merriment, she quietly sneaks out through the back door. Takes a deep breath, and quickly marches to the beach. There, the round moon has already replaced the expired sun.

  In a moment, she’ll reach her mound. The bush, the red flowers.

  There.

  She’s arrived.

  Dim sounds emerge from there. Two men speaking quietly there. She can’t figure out what they’re telling each other. But she recognizes the voices all too clearly.

  Eyal, and the beautiful Jacob.

  Dana swiftly escapes from there, and runs towards the hut.

  18

  No one in the village knows his full name, and in order to tell him apart from the other Jacob in the group, “the beautiful” has been deemed to be his formal title, one which he undoubtedly and unequivocally deserves.

  His skin is bronze-hued, and when he smiles, a single dimple gapes within his cheek, somehow adding to his masculinity, surprisingly.

  Jacob the beautiful and the good-minded, liked by all of the village residents. He doesn’t put too much effort into winning over their affections. It comes totally naturally to him.

  He is indeed gorgeous, tall. Sturdy. His smile is permanently placed on his face. If not on his lips, then in his dark eyes, which always host a kind of don’t-take-me-too-seriously mischievousness.

  He doesn’t talk much, Jacob. Only attentively listens to others. Looks piercingly at those speaking, nods in agreement, occasionally asks for clarification, smiles, shows interest. Intrigued. Everything interests him.

  The group loves conversations with him. It’s nice to feel wanted and interesting, and with Jacob, everyone is wanted.

  Even Dana likes him.

  From afar.

  Because she’s also suspicious.

  From the moment Eyal picks him and brings him to the village during his most recent procurement trip, a handsome Israeli backpacker, who had stayed at a travellers’ hostel near the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, Dana notices something strange about him. Different. He isn’t like all of the other path-searchers in the group.

  Their group, Dana has known for a long while now, is compiled of molecules over molecules of searchers, wanderers, lost ones, who have been welded together to become one flesh.

  Each one and their own story.

  When Dana had still been at the beginning of her journey into this group of chosen few, and listened to story fragments of their winding travels on their way to the group, she was amazed to hear that many of them had grown up without a mother, or a father, or both.

  Thus, naturally, once she had pieced together all of their separate life-chapters, it turned out that in fact these were many personal stories, all cast into one tale of abandonment in all matters relating to Mom-Dad.

  Absence. Lack. Missing. Non-existent.

  A kind of collective orphanhood.

  She’d even felt a bit of shame back then. There she was, the odd one out. Having a whole set of parents. As though the existence of her two parents was somehow a flaw.

  And not just that.

  They have, most of them at least, academic degrees. Work places. Talents. And still they pace timidly, wandering, holding hands, orphaned just like Hansel and Gretel in the woods, meandering in confusion through winding paths.

  As though they ask themselves each and every day of their lives, and that’s it? Are you sure that there’s nothing else here? And there never will be?

  Work-home-sleep-wake-up-work, and that’s it, and so on until the end? And that’s what all the trouble is for? They, all of them, Dana thinks, possess that pondering, embarrassed gaze, in their eyes.

  A kind of bewilderment of path-searchers.

  She too. Had it.

  Once. Back then.

  Not Jacob.

  Jacob possesses tranquil serenity. His eyes swallow up the sights. The people. Warmth permanently resides within them. Sympathy. Confidence.

/>   Dana wonders if he’s already realized that he’s in the wrong place.

  Because she knows for certain.

  Jacob doesn’t fit.

  And there’s also the matter of Eyal and Jacob. Dana sees how Eyal is attracted to Jacob like a moth to a flame.

  How his eyes wander, scanning over everyone, until they locate Jacob, fill with joy, fix on him and propel him straight in his direction, for a friendly pat on the back.

  Jacob too seems to be glad about Eyal.

  Dana doesn’t exactly know what it is that’s been developing between the two. She’s already learned to be doubtful of what her eyes see.

  She has long understood King David’s doctrine.

  Plato-and-homoeroticism, and the supreme beauty within the mutual love of men. Spiritual satisfaction, versus the inferior materialistic satisfaction within the love of women.

  After all, Dana had already internalized it a good long while ago. His Royal Highness hates women. Not their intimate areas. Not their skills at satiating his body with pleasure. Of that he approves.

  But he despises them. Uses up and tosses with candid abhorrence. Dismisses their thinking abilities. Their judgement calls. The nature of their decisions. Views them as a tainted sack of instinctive emotions of the inferior kind. Whiny, drenched in melting emotional batter that drowns all possibility of them ever being able to think rationally.

  When reality does occasionally work by its own rules, and the Caesar identifies the buds of independent, logical and clear wisdom within a woman, he immediately views her as an existential threat, marches into battle and risks his own life in defence against her, using his old proven weapon.

  He mocks her, humiliates her in front of the group, dismisses and ridicules her with belittling name-calling. The woman then gradually fades until becoming fully erased.

  The opinionated women in the group, Dana notices very well, have long become erased.

  Although to be honest, this also happens with a large part of the male members, a bit differently, perhaps, but they too become dimmed. We all do. She summarizes the subject to herself. We’re all gradually losing ourselves.

  Erased of faces.

  Blurred of identity.

  Becoming integrated into a kind of manufacturing line, at the end of which all shall be marked as one product, a mold of David’s creation.

  We will soon no longer be ourselves.

  Only thing is that she, Dana, must protect herself, and be herself. Her identity mustn’t become blurred.

  Erased.

  She simply must preserve herself. For Orr. Hold on tightly, preserve herself.

  So that she doesn’t lose her grip of her.

  Orr.

  And Dana is suspicious of the wonderful friendship cultivating before her very eyes between Eyal and the beautiful Jacob.

  She doubts and suspects.

  Eyal almost never visits their shared hut anymore.

  He’s concerned, Dana assumes, that his relationship with her is decreasing his rating score, sabotaging his effortful drive towards the top of the group. Because now it’s already become clear to everyone that she has fallen from grace in David’s eyes. Her status plummeting lower and lower at a dizzying speed. Even if she were to remain utterly silent from here on in, not letting a single word out during Gatherings, David will still find a way to point dismissive looks her way, fling a sudden arrow, a word causing bursts of laughter aimed at her.

  “Wait, let’s ask Dana.”

  Silence. She’ll shrink.

  “Yes, Doctor Neveh. I’m referring to you. Your opinion matters to us.”

  Silence. Giggle.

  “That’s fine. We’ll just wait for you, Doctor.”

  The giggles will grow louder.

  And she’ll just grit her teeth, and whisper within herself:

  I’ll-get-out-of-here-I’ll-get-out-of-here-with-Orr.

  But who does he sleep with actually, Eyal? With Jacob? With Vered? Dana doesn’t know.

  And now, a few feet behind her mound, at night, Jacob and Eyal.

  She clearly heard their voices. And didn’t know what that meant.

  Inside the hut, on her grass mat, she lays in the darkness, her eyes closed.

  She’s thinking. Eyal-Jacob.

  Is that good or bad.

  19

  Quietly, with eyes wide open in the darkness, Dana walks towards the children’s boarding home. Just like at the end of each and every night, before dawn breaks.

  Presses against the window at the back wall, the outer wall of the brick structure, onto the grated and netted window.

  She’s listening. Nothing is visible. The darkness is thick and absolute.

  She hears mumbling. She thinks that someone’s blurted out “Mama” meekly. And again, clearer, “Mama.”

  Then tightly presses her face against the opening between the grates, feeling the cold iron slitting lines across her forehead, and concentrates.

  Orr? Could it be that it’s Orr?

  No. Orr has always called her Mommy. Not Mama. The voice also sounds much older.

  On second thought, what does she even know about Orr’s voice at this point? It’s been so long since she’s last heard her. She feels suffocated. Tries to slice through the room’s darkness with a focused stare. And she can now finally see silhouettes of beds, and movements, in the dwindling darkness.

  A hand is placed on her shoulder.

  Dana freezes. Even the tear that had somehow managed to wet the corner of her eye without her realizing it, freezes.

  “Don’t be scared. It’s me.”

  The hand remains on the shoulder.

  “Jacob?”

  “Yes. You have nothing to be afraid of.”

  “What… What are you doing here?”

  “Shhhhh.”

  He softly lays a hand over her mouth.

  “Everything’s alright. I saw you here, and I came.”

  He saw her here? When? How many times? Has he told Eyal? Did Eyal send him?

  Jacob guesses her thoughts.

  “You have nothing to worry about. I told you. Everything’s fine.”

  It’s strange that she believes him. Since she’s already learned to question everything. Everyone.

  Now the tear in the corner of her eye has thawed out, and like that sudden rain that bashes over the village out of nowhere, a heavy drop, and another one, and then a heavy gush of water showering the trees, and the sand, and the sea, and all of the wooden huts, Dana feels how the thawed-out tear summons another one and another one after that, and the chocked throat too thaws out into a stream. Erupting, spilling and flooding outwards, rolling and making strange wailing sounds, and how her wet face is now buried deep within an unfamiliar masculine chest, because she’s suddenly enveloped within Jacob’s embracing arms. And he’s stroking her back and telling her that it’ll be fine and you’ll see that everything will be fine.

  Then he gently wraps his arm around her, and walks with her, and Dana, being led through the dark, senses that Jacob knows where and why he’s going.

  The heavy darkness is already diluted by the morning’s transparency. Shadows of trees become apparent. In between them, the sea is becoming clearer. It seems peaceful, but white foam can be seen floating here and there.

  Jacob arrives at a mound. Not the familiar one, hers. A different one. Well-hidden. He helps her to the ground, then sits next to her.

  And still she cries.

  Jacob speaks.

  “I see you in the morning. Every morning.”

  “Yes.”

  She weeps quietly.

  “It’s not right. A child and her mother should be together.”

  “Yes…”

  “And we can’t go to the police.”

  He doesn’t ask. H
e knows. He sees. Their police. No police here.

  “And the child’s father wills it this way.”

  “Yes.”

  “I spoke with him. With Eyal. He’s pleased. Says that this is the best way. The child’s learning from the best teachers.”

  “Yes. No nonsense, he says.”

  Dana’s voice is trembling. The arguments, the pleading, her cries against the solid iron shield into which Eyal had been welded here in the village, float back up to the surface before her very eyes, and she feels another surge of tears threatening to flood her.

  Enough. She regains composure in order to reprimand herself.

  And she doesn’t manage it.

  And then Jacob tells her: “Dana, I don’t yet know precisely how. But I promise to bring you back the child. You’ll see.”

  He looks deep into her eyes, and repeats, you’ll see.

  And Dana believes him.

  She.

  Believes.

  Someone.

  From the group.

  Someone who lives in the village.

  For the first time.

  She looks at him with her swollen eyes. Not in order to check if it’s really so.

  With a great sense of relief. It’s not that a huge weight has suddenly been lifted from off her shoulders, and now she’s lightly skipping around. No.

  But she believes him. As of this morning, she has a friend. They’ll carry this burden together. And they’ll leave this place. With Orr.

  They both stand up together, and Jacob embraces her before they silently turn towards two different paths.

  Tel Aviv 2017

  20

  “This is so messed up,” Hila says, “I can’t believe it. This is unreal.”

  She’s making herself a coffee at her office’s kitchenette, moving aside allowing Dorit to approach the coffee machine.

  “You’re right. It’s surreal.”

  Dorit nods in agreement, and rushes towards the door back to her room.

  Because how much can you take.

  This Hila has been chewing the crazy story about her sister for weeks now. Weeks, more like months. She’s stuck with a sister who took off with a husband and child to some kooky cult in South America, or something like that. Go figure.