“Everything.”
Ra’anan replies quietly, but decisively.
“Everything. He wants everything from them. He sucks up all of their insides. Their entire content. Drinks them. Like a vampire. I don’t know, it’s as if they become erased there. Become similar to one another. As though they’re all the same. Same face. Sort of hollow.”
“But how? How does he drink them?”
“First of all, money. He sucks out all of their money. Because it’s needed. For the village. To add homes. Build. Take in more members with more money. Construct landing sites for spaceships that will soon arrive to save them and take them somewhere far away in space. Can you believe that? Spaceships! And he wants everything. Inheritance, assets. Leftover jewelry. Unsold real-estate.”
Ra’anan goes quiet again. Then pulls himself together. Looks her straight in the eyes.
“And he demands sex. A lot of sex.”
Hila’s eyes gape open. In disbelief.
“Yes. Sex. Everybody in the village knows. Every day he goes to a different beautiful woman. Even the older women. And he actually hates women.”
Ra’anan releases a strange chuckle.
“It’s actually a vital part of his doctrine. The physical and the spiritual love. The physical love, for the women. He doesn’t give that up. Beautiful ones. Sort of feminine. Rounded, kind of like fertility Goddesses, only without the fertility.
But spiritual love, that’s only for the men. Yes. The men too! It’s no surprise. His Majesty is special. Tells them that he’s not the same as everyone else. He came from a faraway universe, a different one. He has his own rules.”
Ra’anan goes quiet for a moment. Contemplates.
“It’s as though he’s swallowing up everyone there in the village, this King David. And that’s not all. There’s crazy sex there with everyone. Yes. Everyone with everyone. He really enjoys that. Operates them like marionettes. Pairs them up, separates them. Sets all sorts of strange pairings. And the more bizarre it is, the more he relishes in it. A kind of king that leads them to all sorts of mad places, I’m telling you. And I haven’t even told you about all of the Gatherings.”
Hila recalls that Dana once spoke, years ago, her eyes glimmering, about some Gatherings.
“What goes on there?”
“A circus. A gladiator battle. The King sits on a stage, his subjects looking at him in admiration from below. From the floor. Waiting for him to speak. Caligula, I’m telling you. He shifts his gaze from one person to the next, leaches onto someone, and executes them, just like Caligula. No blood, but drains them dry, so to speak. To be honest, I saw him doing it to Dana too. ‘And what is the opinion of my educated colleague, Doctor Neveh-Levi, on the matter?’ he asked her. And Dana lowered her head and didn’t answer, and everyone laughed. And laughed. And he laughed with them, and continued in that same manner. And that’s how he sucks out everyone’s insides. Leaving them empty. Zombies. Following him like a herd. Wanting to be part of it. But they’re empty.”
“And Gilli?”
“Who?”
“Gilli, you know, your friend from the army, what about her?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I arrived at the village, and Gilli was no longer there. At first they said that they didn’t know her. Then they told me something. Dana said it too. She had just disappeared. I don’t know any more than that.”
Ra’anan looks down at the floor. Hila looks at him, sensing horror crawling towards her, seeping into her insides.
“Then why didn’t you write anything about that in your article?”
Hila almost shouts.
“Stop. The truth is, I’m ashamed. That’s why I’d agreed to meet with you. David made me sign something. Perhaps if you see the agreement you’d understand. I don’t have the money that I’d have to pay him if he were to sue me for breach of contract. And I was naïve. I thought that I was just getting Gilli out of there and leaving. And I also really wanted this article.”
He admits again.
“I ended up having to show him the article before publishing it. He deleted everything that seemed suspicious to him. You know that with some of that money that he collects, he pays off the district police officer and his people, and now he’s over there laughing at everyone, that Caligula.
Casually breaking each and every law legislated in their country, from cutting down trees to unconscious rape. Can you believe that he even supplies women from his village to those guys at the district police? I had actually placed a few little landmines in that article, planted some clues. Maybe people would get it. And he figured out every single one of them. Forget it. I’m ashamed. It didn’t come out the way I had wanted it to. Totally not.”
And then Hila tells him about Dana. And how she seemed to her in his photographs. And about her emaciated appearance, and her frightened doe eyes. And about Mom and Dad breaking at the seams before her very eyes.
Bereaved parents with a living daughter.
Ra’anan listens to her in complete silence, his eyes seem kind. And when she finishes, she says in a despaired voice, what do we do, Ra’anan. What do we do.
Ra’anan gets up, standing in full stature. And Hila suddenly notices that he’s a pretty decent guy.
“Jacob.”
He says.
“What?”
“I think I know who we should turn to.”
We. He said. Plural. So both she and he are in on it.
“We’ll contact Jacob. If there’s anyone who can help here, it’s Jacob.”
And then Ra’anan tells her about Jacob.
22
Jacob is a friend of his.
Not the kind of friend that you see every day, meet up, go out together, and talk, and drink.
But a good friend.
They first met in the army. Where else would someone from a kibbutz and someone from a city meet. They spent a lot of time together.
Ra’anan goes silent for a moment, and Hila feels that he’s pacing around other places right now.
After the army they went their separate ways. But kept in touch.
Jacob went to work at some top-secret job. Didn’t tell much, but there were talks. Ra’anan had heard a few stories, and Jacob was fine there, as he is anywhere that he finds himself. As he was in the army. He’s decent, they say. His heart’s in the right place. And a good mindset too. Always thinking one step ahead. Very quickly notices what others only realize long after.
Everything is calculated with him. Every detail is included within the plans. No negligence and no shortcuts, and no it’ll be fine.
Excellent performance levels.
They met up a week ago. Jacob said that he was leaving his job. Going to live out in the desert for a while. Clear his mind from all of the mess. He wants to check out other avenues.
That means that Jacob is free right now. And this is our chance (our! Hila sizzles inside).
If he’s still free. Let’s see.
“Will he be willing to travel there?”
Hila asks. And then her face lights up.
“And of course we’ll pay him for it. My father’s constantly talking about us having to investigate what it is that’s going on there. Check everything from up close. He feels that there’s a lot to be checked. Keeps interviewing candidates. Looks for friends that know the area. If your friend, this Jacob, really is that good, then my father will employ him, he’ll definitely employ him.”
Ra’anan, perhaps a little concerned by the premature burst of joy, tries to bring the conversation back to order.
“Let’s check first.”
He goes into his contacts list, types Jacob’s name and is almost immediately answered.
Hila watches the telephone-based brotherhood occurring in front of her th
rough a ping-pong of one or two-worded sentences.
Cool.
Sweet, Bro.
Sure.
Yeah, right.
Gladly.
Yeah. Was awesome.
Oh, yeah, that’s precisely what I wanna talk to you about.
Ra’anan delivers the longest sentence of that conversation, and Hila realizes that they’re finally getting to the matter at hand.
He asks for them to meet. Hila gathers that Jacob’s agreed. They make up for the evening, mentioning a name of a place unfamiliar to her, and her thoughts wander to her conversation with Dad. He wants a private investigator, and here’s one. Dad should meet him, and decide for himself as to yea or nay. Have Ra’anan tell him what he had told her. And maybe they’ll set up a trio date. As long as they do something. Fast.
Anything. They have to.
Because Dana.
She’d never thought that she possessed such flowing streams of compassion towards her sister.
For years they had brawled like two stray cats.
Then they shifted to years of silence, thunder and lightning caged within its depths.
Dana, Ice Queen, arrogant and patronizing, whom everyone worships, everywhere and all the time.
The perfect daughter, the older sister.
“Yes, she has a little sister. But they’re nothing alike,” well-mannered individuals would say, a merciful understatement.
Dana, whom Hila can’t bear to be around for more than five minutes without feeling herself about to explode, is now managing to stir through everything that’s circulating within Hila, like mixed clothes all rolling within a washing machine, feelings of compassion, and fear, and sorrow, and sympathy. With a pinch, just a hint of gloating, and a sense of a small victory. Everything circulating there together, within this revolving machine.
And a surge of great love for her sister now washes over her. Who would have believed it. She herself is having difficulty believing.
Ra’anan finishes his phone call with Jacob.
“We have work to do.”
He tells Hila.
We.
Again.
He gets up to leave.
“I’ll explain it all to Jacob. We’ll see what he’s willing to do and what can be done. You check and see if your father’s on board with us.”
“I’ll call him straight away.”
“We’ll be in touch.”
Ra’anan puts his arm around her in a casual manner, perhaps a hug, she isn’t certain. But certainly a friendship, Hila thinks to herself.
And though she hadn’t planned anything in advance, she feels a flutter of excitement deep down inside, because now Ra’anan reminds her a little bit of her father. Efficient. Practical. Clear of any unnecessary arrogance.
Provides a sense of security.
Hila hasn’t met a man like that in a long while. A guy like that.
And for the first time in weeks, something within her drops down a gear. A kind of all-clear sound.
Faint, but still there.
“We’ll make it happen. Things will work out for us, Hila.”
Ra’anan leaves.
She shuts the door behind him.
Cayrona Beach 2017
23
When Eyal had found the beautiful Jacob in del Ruiz, he took him for an Israeli backpacker. Just like the rest of them.
But with a lot of potential.
Observed him from a distance as he photographed the volcano spurting out flares of fire, the hot springs, the ponds, the gardens, the waterfalls, with the devotion of an enthused tourist.
Eyal was there for procurement errands, naturally.
He possesses, Eyal, a natural gift, it turns out, of recognizing the searchers, the unrooted, the lone path-wanderers, freed of companions, those loners in the corners of bustling rooms at remote hostels, entrenched within their own silence against the vocal congregations of other backpackers, but who turn on the lights of their eyes with a suddenness, a flicker of a warm smile at a simple sentence uttered by a total stranger.
By him. Eyal.
Because he knows how to. He knows them. From back when he had still been Leo Levi. In cold Antwerp.
When the layer of ice, refusing to thaw out, had still covered him.
He’d sit next to the lone travellers, distanced from the jolly groups, waiting for a little while. Each to themselves. Two strangers who will soon join together. Perhaps. If he succeeds. And he almost always succeeds.
A smile. Handing over a bottle of beer, sometimes. Sipping together. Silence, or a word, or a nod, or a gesture of the head. No rush. Everything is relaxed.
When the hesitant words begin rising out of them and into the slowly fading silence between them, Eyal asks seemingly casual questions, not giving away his concealed, yet vigorous and intentional subversion.
Where from. So where to now. How are you doing with your studies. Work. And when the ponderings change course, and the new prey begins to show a mutual interest in Eyal, he customizes his answers according to his assessment of the new procurement’s ability to absorb.
Yes.
A village.
An awesome group.
A rainforest.
An ocean shore.
Paradise.
Isolated from the world.
Ceaseless searching and learning. Answers to existential questions. Another level of spiritual teachers. Rare. Singing. Music. Love.
Eyal’s already learned to identify the moment when the spring locks. When the trap’s escape hatch shuts at once, and the prey doesn’t feel trapped.
Sometimes it can take hours upon hours, sometimes days, it occasionally happens that the process takes weeks. Sometimes it doesn’t succeed. When the promising procurement suddenly vanishes, never to be seen again. It happens.
But when he succeeds, he’s overjoyed.
And Eyal sat there, a big glass of beer in his hand, next to a round table for two, on the tiled ground facing the waterfall.
He saw Jacob approaching him, a camera hanging around his neck, and tensed up. He’d planned that precise moment for days. He can’t falter.
“Hello.”
Eyal smiled at him, and was happy to discover an immediate response. Jacob smiled back. A full smile, widening the eyes, deepening a dimple on one tanned cheek. Eyal knew that his name was Jacob, and silently, without any words, he was already calling him the beautiful Jacob. Because that’s what he is.
“Hi!”
Jacob stopped near the table, and Eyal gestured for him to join him. He accepted, and sat down on the free chair, placing his backpack near his feet, and smiling.
Nice.
Two Israelis just happen to meet far away from home. Hebrew merrily hums between them, within the sea of Spanish strumming around them.
Happens. All the time.
And they both internally, obviously, let out a cheer, though inaudible to the naked ear, of a hunter facing his caught prey.
But only one of them knows and can hear the other one’s cheer.
Because Jacob too had meticulously prepared for that meeting. Collected all of the information he’d managed to get his hands on.
Map drawings of the village’s layout. Marking the huts, the management structures, the kitchen, dining hall, the Gathering hall, agricultural fields, access roads, alternative paths, the beach, the forest.
Where David lives, and Professor Sadeh. How frequently they meet with the district police. Are there set times. Mapping out the group, as much as he can, who has a stable status in the village, who’s been lowered to the bottom of the social scale. Who is listened to, and who’s been shifted unwillingly to the role of the village jester.
Who was the woman on duty in David’s nights when Ra’anan had still persistently tailed hi
m (there were a few).
He gathered all of the group members’ activity schedules. Photos of Eyal, Dana, Dori, David, who works where. Who goes out for errands, for the picking of new members. And where.
Are some hunting grounds more regularly attended than others. Where precisely. When.
And he’s trying to capture Eyal just as much as Eyal’s trying to capture him, and those similar to him.
He has beginners’ luck, Jacob knows that.
After not having come across any of the village emissaries at Azufral Volcano (but having delighted in the sights, and taken photos), he continued to de Lodo Volcano, and from there to del Ruiz.
Among the dozens of travellers, he had almost immediately recognized Eyal’s scampering eyes, watched him from a safe distance. Saw him wandering around, swallowed within dense groups of tourists spouting various languages. Sitting at a table in a restaurant, a cafeteria. With constant searching eyes.
Jacob even smiled, highlighting an imaginary victory mark to himself, when he had noticed Eyal following him across the tourists’ path to the waterfalls.
He felt a sort of contact click, reminding him a little bit of his army days.
Bingo.
After that, everything between them flowed according to a pre-written script. Both of theirs.
They drank beer together, and talked. A lot. The beautiful Jacob listened to Eyal in deep concentration, and flooded him with questions, as is required.
About the village.
The group.
The concept.
The Gatherings.
David.
The wondrous quality of those deemed worthy of inclusion within the Existential College. The highest level of humans. All brilliant.
The music. The singing. The sea. The forest. The freedom. The isolation. The love.
He could barely keep from cutting the process short, rushing Eyal, pulling at his shoulder with a cry of come on, let’s make a move already.
A Savage Flower Page 11