A Savage Flower

by Judith Weinstock

  But all of the brilliance, the originality, the sharpness, the creativity, the innovation, which naturally sizzled within Dana, effortlessly, like a self-filling well, didn’t trickle, unfortunately, onto her younger sister.

  I’m a little ashamed to admit, even to myself, that I saw in Hila a kind of faded replica of Dana.

  And it’s not that I love her less. Of course I love her. Very much.

  Only, it was less thrilling to raise her.

  There, I said it.

  Now I really feel ashamed.

  She was a little bit, how can I put it, dull, against the sparkling Dana. Pale.

  The girl hidden from one’s eye.

  I can’t believe my own thoughts.

  But to be perfectly honest, it’s true that this, most likely, was another reason why I hadn’t at first noticed Hila transforming in front of our very eyes.

  And it didn’t happen all at once either. Just like that. No. It kind of crawled its way there.

  Phase by phase.

  One day I saw that she’d coloured her shiny chestnut hair to a matte raven-black.

  I thought it was awful, an unkempt mane, black, dull, reminiscent of movies portraying homeless people.

  I can’t recall whether or not I had asked her anything about it. I seem to think that she had given me a kind of provoking look, and I then suddenly noticed the matte-black outlines of hair with which she’d framed her face, expecting a reaction, with a defiance that was to turn into her habit in the days to come.

  And I just looked and remained silent.

  Later on she returned home with the entire length of her right ear bedecked with large and small silver earrings. After that the left ear joined in too, and she’d pace around the house, her two ears as pierced and embellished as a Maasai tribe member’s.

  Her toned nose then joined in the celebration, pierced and adorned with tiny Swarovski gems and thin silver hoops on both its sides.

  I remember Ilan and I sat with her for a talk back then, once we’d finally realized in terror that Hila was growingly desecrating the delicate, doll-like form she once had.

  She just sat in front of us with a slight smile, didn’t say a word, and when Ilan asked her what was going on with her, and that-she-could-tell-us-her-parents-everything, and we’d help, and if it had something to do with someone, from her class, say, the teachers, friends, what. Just say it.

  Just tell us. We’re here for you.

  She just rose up cheerily, and asked:

  “Is that it? Are we done?”

  And left the room with a light skip, her black mane shaking to the sides.

  The following day she walked into the house with her raven hair cut incredibly short, the right side of her skull entirely shaved.

  The beautiful clothes were exchanged for masculine sleeveless tops, sometimes Ilan’s, sometimes from unidentified sources, charting the nipple outlines of her firm young breasts, with or without a bra, accompanied by cut-up pants of varying lengths.

  She passed her finals with moderate success, and ordered us not to escort her to the recruiting base when she joined the army, the way we had escorted Dana back in her days, with all of the other parents and families. She did her army service, like her sister before her, at the Kirya headquarters, moved to central Tel Aviv with a friend, and commenced a career of debauchery that would put Paris Hilton to shame.

  I saw Ilan recoiling further and further.

  He simply didn’t understand it. Didn’t believe it.

  What happened to our sweet girl, the beautiful baby with the aura.

  He asked her to join him for work days on projects he had in northern Israel, and to a huge construction site at the edge of Rehovot, offered her a position in his company, and nothing.

  The old Hila had evaporated. A different Hila walked out of her and into the world, rose up and settled.

  She stayed in touch with me. Even at the height of her partying era, she’d come over to the house, in her tattered sleeveless tops exposing tanned shoulders, her full bosom erupting through them, take something out of the fridge, and sit down to eat in the kitchen.

  “So, what’s up, Mom?”

  In a smiley pleasantness. Distant.

  As though she were some sort of older sister, trying to speak to a child who has learning difficulties.

  “How’s it going?”

  What could I tell her. I was tired of the preaching attempts, the pleads, the unsuccessful efforts in trying to redirect her back to normal life.

  “Everything’s fine.”

  I’d answer her limply.

  We both knew.

  We couldn’t talk about the things we really wanted to. And whatever we could talk about, we didn’t want to.

  After a cup of coffee together, in silence, she’d stand up, give me a quick peck on the cheek, and leave.

  The kissing habit was something she brought home from the social circles where she was hanging out. It wasn’t a common occurrence in our home, that habit. We don’t kiss much. It wasn’t a daily occurrence at my parents’ home either. If some aunt, or a friend from far away, came for a visit, then my mother would kiss them. Sometimes.

  When I went off to work at my governmental office, I was pretty surprised at the kissing occurring regularly between the female staff members, every morning, as though they were meeting one another after a long separation, as though they hadn’t left each other only a day before, when they spread out, like a brood of clucking hens, each woman to her own home, at the late afternoon hours.

  But I quickly took on the place’s traditions, not missing a single cheek within the customary kissing dance.

  Now too, at Hila’s apartment, we kiss, double-cheeked, as an agreed and appropriate indicator of our meeting’s commencement.

  It’s pleasant at her apartment. Clean. Bright. White.

  How, yet again, did I not notice Hila’s newly-paved way, towards the completion of the required 360 degrees, back to her starting point.

  Could it be? I’m scared. I have no energy left for any further disappointment.

  “Do you want to drink something? Coffee? Something cold?”

  “Water’s fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  How polite we are. It’s better that way, I decide.

  She makes herself a Turkish coffee, pours water into a blue glass for me, invites me to sit on the mustard-colored Ikea armchair, and sits down on an orange couch. Another Ikea, I recognize it.

  “Have you heard anything new from Dana?”

  She asks.

  “Nothing.”

  She remains silent for a moment, looking like she has something to add, but unsure as to where she should begin.

  And then she suddenly regains her composure.

  “Alright, well I hope that we’ll soon hear something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She goes quiet again. Embarrassed. She has something to tell me, I’m suddenly frightened. What now. For months I’ve heard nothing about Dana, about Orr.

  Something’s happened.

  I’m terrified. Now I’m completely sure of it. Something horrible has happened. This is how people give you bad news. Hesitant. Squirming. Unsure of how to go about it.

  “Hila, if you have something to tell me about Dana, tell me now. I want to know!”

  I almost shout.

  And Hila tells me.

  I sip the water, the glass empties, and Hila talks and talks.

  Throughout all of those days I had spent imagining, dreaming, writing desperate letters that delved into some unanswered void, attempting to see the Dana of those other people, her group in the forest, just like I had read in some newspaper article, I still didn’t manage to put all of the pieces together. Those slivers of information about a shared life of learning a
nd love, and wooden huts between a forest and a beach, didn’t pool together into my deciphering of a complete picture.

  Dana, who is no longer what she used to be, who’d been uprooted from me, and re-planted into another earth. What is she there? What does she think about? Does she remember us? Me? Home? Does she feel a sense of longing sometimes? What kind of mother is she to little Orr? Hugging? Patient? Strict? How is Orr getting along with living in nature? I imagine her like some tiny Native American child, seated inside a colorful embroidered carrier around Dana’s back, like in the movies I once watched.

  And my longing shatters me.

  Now I’m listening to Hila, and gradually realizing that she’s telling me something which has never been included within my visions. Never been dreamed of within my nights.

  Never.

  Dana isn’t living in some tropical scenic postcard with palm trees and turquoise waters, in which she dips herself and her colorful bikini, Orr in her arms, laughing and embraced with Eyal, looking out to a bold azure.

  And it’s not that this scenery is absent from her village. It really does exist.

  But Dana is incredibly absent from the wondrous mountaintops of existential joy promised to all of those forest inhabitants, the chosen, the worthy, the special, who had climbed up to reach them.

  Even if swells of joy really do flood upon the chosen group members, and a cloud of eternal bliss really is hovering above the village, enveloping the entire group, Dana has not been awarded them.

  She has been outcast.

  26

  What Hila tells me wounds me.

  One time, Ilan told me that they’d never use asbestos for construction, because it’s been proven to be cancerous.

  “How?” I enquired.

  “Under certain heat conditions, or when it gets cut and broken, it dissembles and spreads out follicles all around it, little arrows, sharp and slim, transparent, invisible, which hit anything living and breathing in their vicinity. Once they’re inhaled, they imbed onto the lungs’ inner lining, other internal organs too, and wreak havoc within them.”

  Hila’s words are now the sharpened follicles of my asbestos. I can feel them imbedding onto all of my insides.

  Strange. After all, I’d actually been waiting for this day to come this whole time.

  How I awaited the bearer of news to arrive and announce, that’s it. The day has finally arrived. Dana understands that she was wrong.

  She’d just been caught up in futile fantasies. Such a waste of time. Shame about the days, the months, the years that she had splurged over this nonsense.

  And here, Mom, Dad, I’m back!

  She’d come to us and say.

  Look how Orr’s grown. How smart she is. You won’t believe it.

  Yes, and I left Eyal at the village, she’ll say. If he wants to babble with that David about aliens and universes and spaceships, he can go right ahead. We’re here. And I’m starting a normal job again, of course. Yes, perhaps at the university. But we’ll live around here, Orr and I. Maybe for the meantime, until we find an apartment, we’ll stay with you guys for a bit, what do you say, Mom?”

  For days and nights I fantasized about that dream. Anticipating. And now it’s here.

  But not like this. My tall, proud, educated girl, crushed.

  They stomped all over her there, squashed all of the traits which had made her into who she was. The bright charm, the wisdom, the uniquely original thinking.

  She’s skinny, emaciated, as though all of her vitality had been sucked out of her.

  Hila shows me a photograph. And I cry in front of her for the first time. And she embraces, consoles me.

  “It’ll work out.”

  She says.

  “It’ll work out.”

  And I just cry. Everything gushes out of me all at once. How has this even happened. How does an intelligent and educated girl just leave everything, finding shelter under such an umbrella of foolishness.

  An alien king sent to our planet from another universe. A special landing site. A rushed evacuation to a distant protected planet. How.

  How.

  “How will it work out?”

  I manage to utter between my choked sobs, and ask.

  And Hila continues telling me.

  It seems to me that she’s skipping parts. Because she occasionally goes quiet all of a sudden. Seems to deliberate, thinks for a moment, and continues on from another point.

  “Hila, tell me everything. Please. You’re keeping things from me.”

  “No. I won’t keep anything from you. Let’s get everything out in the open. Clean everything up.”

  And I understand.

  She tells me parts of it, and even with what she still must be keeping from me, I finally manage to see more clearly.

  A black eye-cover, like the ones they hand out during flights, is now lifted from my face, and I can see absolutely clearly. Figures, people, scenery.

  And Dana.

  She has become prey over there. At first they had only pecked at her a little. Tried it out. Mocked a bit here. Laughed a bit there. Everything she’d say at their Gatherings was grinded into tiny crumbs of laughter.

  Then His Royal Highness gave the signal, and the pack of dogs charged ahead, lashed out at her.

  “Really? What was your PhD about, Dana-Dear? Just refresh our memory.”

  And permission was granted to ravage.

  She was a good few sizes greater than them, that’s what she was. The grand David really didn’t like that.

  And the acclaimed Professor Doron, after having ploughed and trampled her field, then having become utterly satiated, shifted her over to Eyal’s lot, and resumed his role as the obedient puppy of his master the King.

  They both viewed her as a threat. Eyal just sealed that triumvirate. And Dana’s fate was doomed.

  Humans can be crushed.

  Little nibbles at first. Like young foxes. Just trying. Waiting to see what’ll happen. Then come the deep bites. Bloody chunks of raw flesh. And then the grand feasting.

  Prey. Dana is being devoured there.

  She’s no longer the proud woman whose words are awaited by all.

  Dana works, silently, in the field, in the kitchen. Shrunken on the sides of the rows at their Gatherings.

  Prey.

  Because that’s not all. I already realize that.

  His Majesty the Caesar doesn’t just abuse her with words.

  He chooses any woman he wants for himself on his nights in the village. But Dana is his cherry. She’s regularly visited by him.

  I weep to myself again, quietly. How. How is she agreeing to this. That’s not her. Not Dana. What have they done to you, Dana.

  And Orr has been taken from her.

  Darkness. I’m encased in darkness.

  “Mom, we’ll beat them. You’ll see. They’ll get what they deserve. There’s karma in the world.”

  “We?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “You, me, Dad, and others.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, Dad. We’re all in it together.”

  How are we together, I think to myself.

  Ilan’s no longer with me. He transfers money to me, true. Calls up to check that I’m alright. I tell him that I am. I don’t ask if and when he’ll be back. I know that he’s at the Rehovot project apartment.

  I don’t know if he’s alone. And I don’t enquire. Trying not to think about it. So busy with this hive that’s constantly buzzing in my mind that there’s no more room left for any further questions. Almost all of his clothes are still at our house. Probably got himself some new ones. He doesn’t need much.

  I want him back. But I know that something has gone horribly wrong here.

  During all of my yea
rs with him at my side, I’d taken him for granted. We’re welded into each other, I thought.

  Ever since that distant day of our wedding, with my short dress, and his white open-collar shirt.

  Because the years had intertwined us together. Like when you assemble a branch onto a different tree trunk, and it weaves and presses into it to become one tree.

  I viewed him as another organ in my body. Hand. Foot. Ilan’s leg is hurting us, I once quoted a sentence from some book to our family doctor, when he had sprained his ankle. We’re a kind of IlanDita. One. Quietly, serenely, without any storms. That’s what I had thought.

  And then he uprooted himself from me, after the disaster, and I didn’t dry up, didn’t wilt, didn’t starve, I kept living. Maybe I did wilt a little bit actually, at the sides, shed off some of the dry leaves, naturally.

  But when facing his untouched sheets of our bed, I just stare with glazed eyes, and I don’t tell myself, Ilan’s gone.

  Because I’m like someone whose hand has been amputated, I have no space left to feel another amputation.

  It’ll come, but not now. Not now.

  And suddenly Hila’s telling me, “Dad.”

  Us and Dad, we’ll beat them, together. Hila and Dad and me.

  We’ll reconnect the fragments of this family, and we’ll bring Dana back.

  “How?”

  I ask.

  Dana tells me more.

  Ilan’s hired an investigator and has planted him in the village. He’s been there for a couple of weeks now, reporting back. We’ll construct a plan according to his reports. He can be trusted. He’s experienced. Well-known. He has operational experience.

  It isn’t simple. The village is organized and departmentalized through secrecy, involved in all sorts of dirty business with the local police, with local criminal organizations. Drugs, smuggling, women.

  That sort.

  It seems innocent, the Existential College. The illusion of a South American scenic postcard, a tourist advertisement for the authorities there. But it’s actually a fortified site. Sealed shut. Guarded with an iron fist. People arrive, and no one leaves.