Terrified.
Only the thoughts rush within my mind, sweeping me up and carrying me away to Jonestown. The village which Jim Jones had created for his parish, within the forests of distant Guyana.
Because I can now tell, even with my eyes shut, in the middle of the night, in great detail, precisely how the story had unravelled over there.
I remember that they’d actually started out so beautifully, his group members. In the California sun, in San Francisco. In the years of flowers and love. The early seventies.
Jim Jones was their Royal Highness.
He was soft, supportive, kind, generous. Preached for a life of sharing, love, friendship, a just division of resources, out of comradery and beauty.
They dealt in agriculture, sang songs in the corn fields, and in the summer days they’d travel all over the United States, offering aid to impoverished families, inviting them to join the group, build a better world for them all together.
Thus their little group grew into thousands of members living in comradeship and humility, joyfully self-sufficient. Rice, oil, vegetables. Convening for nights of music and singing.
Feeling true spiritual elation. And who needs more than that.
Jim Jones, as it turned out.
Because to himself, he actually did allow meat, candy and wine.
He notified the community that from here on in, they were to give up all private possessions. He alone was to run their economy, wisely and generously.
He enveloped them with compassionate wings, knew each one by their names, dripped caressing words onto their ears. When he spoke, they’d stare at him in admiration, understanding that this was the right way to live. That he was leading them after him to the realms of beauty and justice, that he was trustworthy.
He named them the Peoples Temple, and they adored him. Felt that they couldn’t exist without him.
It sometimes happens that I tread a path of good intentions, and sense how it suddenly deviates and leads me straight to hell, and I wonder to myself, where exactly was the turning point? At what point exactly did the deviation from the path start, and hell began appearing on the horizon.
A mistake in the choice of path? Of crossroads? Right instead of left? Ignoring a warning sign?
I don’t know. I only know that it happens on so many paths which have started out with pure intentions.
The deeper in I dug, I still didn’t discover why, and at what stage, the road had turned so horribly wrong for them, the beautiful and innocent congregation of the Peoples Temple.
But the details keep resurfacing within me, during dreadful sleepless nights, floating up and quickly stabilizing, out of those old newspapers from the library.
One day it turned out that Jim Jones was regularly consuming drugs.
That he was in trouble with the tax authorities.
That he was slowly losing his mind.
When the troubling little details began accumulating and fluttering outside of the enclosed community, like a cluster of tiny prickly pear thorns flying in the wind and piercing into the flesh, irritating and refusing to be pulled out, a trail of growing whispers began to follow the Peoples Temple parish.
This vague and nameless sensation solidified into a lump of doubts, which then rolled up and found its way to the newspaper headlines.
The Son of God, their Jim Jones, identified a threat and acted swiftly. He gathered about a thousand of his devout believers, crowded them into a large cargo plane, and brought them all to the promised paradise.
In a remote corner of the world, which can only be reached by a special flight. In Guyana.
There, in a deforested plot of land, in which all of the parish members worked day and night, they gradually faded at the feet of the supreme Son of Gods, who slowly shrunk in front of their very eyes, who consumed sedatives, who brainwashed them with ceaseless sermons, who penalized them with strange punishments over imagined sins, who tied members to shame-polls, to be reprimanded there in front of the entire community.
The air grew charged. Something had to explode there.
Now Hila asks that I come to her apartment. Things are happening. I can feel it.
Jacob has sent findings. Ra’anan has transferred them to Tel Aviv. And they’re discovering more details. And those little bottles. What is the secret here.
Because I’m already certain. His Royal Highness, King David, is planning a grand finale.
He’s finished sucking up his subjects’ innermost parts at Cayrona Beach. They have nothing more to give him.
Except for their wills.
And he’ll probably end things there in a spectacular royal splendor.
Just like Jim Jones’ impressive finale at Jonestown. With all of his believers, when he decided to exit this world in a great storm.
In late seventies’ California, when the troubling headlines about the Peoples Temple rushed a very diligent American congressman over to Jonestown, Guyana, he landed there in a special plane, accompanied by a delegation of reporters, to personally investigate what was truly happening in that community, and met a few worshippers who were very pleased with their beautiful lives in the village.
But at night, in the dark, he also met others.
“Nightmare.”
They whispered to him, and to the reporters around him. And begged to be taken back home. Jones heard that and felt betrayed. “How could you?” He tried to stop them with his body, but they ran with all of their might, desperate, towards the plane, its engines already roaring.
The barrage of bullets shot at them brought with it the end of any chance of freedom, as well as ending the lives of that congressman and his fellow delegation members.
Jim Jones then convened all of his remaining believers in the village, and gave his great and final sermon.
He encased them in the warm words of a devoted father, convincing them that they’d have no life without him, and offered them a death filled with beauty. A respectful end. They rejoiced at the opportunity to leave this world with their father. They’re not alone. They’ll be with the entire community up until the final moment, within their father’s immense embrace.
And everyone there, families upon families, fathers, mothers and children, all purposefully and intentionally drank the poisoned juice offered to them.
The not-knowing is killing me. These bottles are foretelling something bad. I don’t know how he’ll convince them. What he’ll tell them there, that David. And the children. Will Dana really give Orr that little bottle? Will she make her drink it?
I sense that this journey is reaching its end at a dizzying speed. And there’s no spaceship. And no universes. And it’s beginning to be extremely dangerous there, in His Majesty’s paradise.
Cayrona Beach 2017
30
Jacob is now tied to a chair, in the locked basement of the management building, sifting back through his moves.
He’d made a mistake. A major one.
He’d concentrated on Dana, and hadn’t sufficiently appreciated the King’s greatness. Yes. It’s true. He gets it now.
His Royal Highness thinks big.
At the start of the Gathering, still fixed on David’s piercing stares towards Dana, Jacob thinks only of her. Of Dana.
He’s like a snake, this David, Jacob tells himself. Before the start of the Gathering.
When he was a child, he once read about snakes who hypnotize their prey before swallowing it. Crawling towards it with this hypnotizing stare, the prey is entranced, doesn’t escape. Nailed to its spot without the ability to move.
Dana doesn’t seem to be hypnotized. She sits at the Gathering, distant and shrunken, black fringes of hair shading her eyes as they fix on the rug.
And still, David’s piercing looks, before he begins his sermon, as well as all the looks sent to her immediately by his obed
ient flock, are seen by Jacob as silent gargantuan snakes, hypnotizing, slowly crawling towards her from all directions. Another moment, and they’ll swallow her whole.
She’ll be swallowed up and disappear.
Just like Gilli.
Dana is in danger. We have to speed up the plan. That’s what he thought. Yesterday. In the beginning.
And by that, he had ignored the real danger. The one crawling towards him.
He was so mistaken. And David overpowered him, of course, without too much effort, even.
Of course Dana is in danger.
But everyone, everyone is in danger. All of the village residents. How did he not realize that. A bottle per person.
And there’s enough for everyone. He knows that.
They’ll drink that poison to the last drop, and continue worshipping His Majesty even as they draw their last breaths.
I wonder if he’ll drink it himself, His Royal Highness. Now, when his vision is about to shatter into pieces.
Perhaps.
Jacob recalls how during the Gathering, David said, as though casually, that his body requires a different substance.
Different, of course. The kind that makes one grow wings to fly away and disappear.
Suited for aliens, Jacob smiles to himself bitterly.
I was such a fool. I knew and yet I didn’t know.
I didn’t see that the madness was already here. Within that regal body. Filling it up to the brim. Fizzing within all of its organs, a delusional fuel gushing and flooding his entire insides, flowing up to his head and sparking flames of deranged anger.
And I went along with his commandment.
After the Gathering he commanded me, and I, like some new recruit, went out to the hallway without asking any questions, walked along with that idiot, Professor Sadeh, like an innocent lamb.
I could have knocked him out with half a fist.
I’d contracted such stupidity.
Only when his two local thugs came out of the basement all of a sudden, in their ridiculous uniform, and grabbed me from behind, only then did I realize.
I was so dense. Idiot. And what now.
Jacob calculates ahead. David hasn’t yet wiped him out.
For now.
Obviously.
He works quietly, the King. Not at center stage.
Just like with the forgotten Gilli. Plop. A dull thud, a silent swoosh of delving into water. And there’s no Gilli. Was she ever even there? No more.
David isn’t one to make an unnecessary ruckus in front of the Gathering-goers’ intrigued eyes, on the night before the grand occasion. Not him.
But Jacob knows. They’re all in danger. Because David is methodical and well-planned. And he’ll find the right time to deal with him too. After he finishes up with all the rest.
Now he needs to think.
He knows that Ra’anan has received the bottles, because he’d managed to send Jacob an encoded thumbs-up on the satellite phone.
And he’s probably already transferred their content onwards, to be tested.
Since yesterday, after the Gathering, Jacob hasn’t, of course, sent any new material to Ra’anan.
He’s incapacitated.
Stuck here like a rookie, tied to a chair by an amateur’s knot.
But Ra’anan knows that there was a Gathering yesterday, and that there’s no way Jacob wouldn’t document it and send it to him immediately.
Ra’anan will quickly realize that his radio silence, and the lack of the recent Gathering’s documentation, point to something that went wrong. Especially when he finds out later on tonight that his hidden opening is empty.
How long until Ra’anan takes action? Operates others? Calls for help, like they’d planned?
Jacob recalls that back in the army, Ra’anan was an officer full of resourcefulness and brains.
That’ll help.
For now, he’s waiting.
And thinking.
Surely there’s some way of getting out of here. There must be. This isn’t a Turkish prison. Just a basement with doors and locks, simple ones at that. He hopes. But right now, his hands are tied by a strong knot to a metal chair welded into the floor.
Jacob starts forcefully and persistently rubbing the ropes around his hands against the metal chair’s armrests.
No one has been here since morning, when they’d brought him some water and a slice of bread, fed him and let him sip for a moment, and left without uttering a word.
Those thugs in their security rags.
He’s alone. The rope is slowly fraying. And Jacob’s filled by thoughts. Dana. What will happen to Dana. Have they also uncovered his meetings with her?
Jacob shudders for a moment.
He and Dana meet every morning by the window, at the back wall of the children’s boarding home, before dawn ascends over the village. He waits for her there, and she appears out of the darkness, reaches him, lays her black mane over his chest. He wraps his arms around her, inhaling the traces of sleep from her face. Then they detach and try to listen to the sounds arising from the children’s sleep hall.
There are five children there. He already knows that. Orr isn’t the youngest of them. There’s another boy, the son of a young woman from Argentina, Clara, he’s maybe three years old, and cries a lot at night.
Clara has already pleaded with David, asked for her son back, at least for the night-time, her Mikey, “Just until he gets used to it.” And David explained to her in great length and pleasantness how good it’ll be for the child to be educated by the most professional nannies, who will prepare him for life in the village, and for the grand bliss which will flood them over there, in the distant universe, very shortly. And Clara gave in.
Jacob and Dana hear Mikey crying again. Early in the morning. They already recognize that weeping.
Sometimes they hear Orr too. She has a soft voice, cuddled, and she speaks with an upward inflection. Sometimes utters, “Mommy?”
Sometimes calls the nanny, “Dina?”
But she’s mostly asleep. Dana and Jacob try to slice through the room’s darkness with their eyes, and it sometimes happens that shadows appear, and they can then see Orr tossing and turning in the bed across from them, near the wall. One time, they even see her sitting up, and they quickly run off. Not wanting her to notice them and call out to them.
They then swiftly turn, without uttering a word, to hide behind their tall mound, hidden in the bushes.
There, within the dent in the sand made by their bodies, they become swallowed within each other. His hands feel through her robe, discovering the naked, warm body between the fabric’s creases. Dana’s hands wrap around the smooth, sturdy back. Descend to his loins, caressing. Famished. Grabbing. Her lips blindly kiss him. Face, shoulders, arm, chest. Hair. They intertwine and pour onto one another, limb upon limb. He casts his body into her. And they’re swept away, and plummet and disconnect. And embrace. And grab on tightly. And disconnect again, silently, towards opposite directions.
Do they know about our meetings, the management?
Jacob wonders. Maybe. He accelerates the rubbing of the ropes against the metal chair’s armrests. He senses that they’re loosening up a little bit.
There must be a solution.
Ra’anan will come. He convinces himself. He’ll bring backup along with him. They’re totally prepared to hit the road, over there, in Tel Aviv. They’re just waiting for the green light. They’ll show up. And we’ll resolve this whole thing.
This isn’t some police-state. Iron Curtain. North Korea.
It’s just Cayrona Beach, a measly cluster of sheds. With a few illiterate village cops, and one giant madman with an even crazier group who have placed him high up above it, twirling around him in pagan dances, to the beat of native drumming.
It’s
all such nonsense.
There’s got to be a solution. He calms down a little bit, and his eyes close from exhaustion.
Tel Aviv 2017
31
When I enter Hila’s apartment, a group of men is already there, sitting around cups of Turkish coffee, and papers, photographs and maps.
They momentarily shift their eyes away from the maps, nod at me when Hila says, my-Mom-came-too, and I suddenly discover old acquaintances of Ilan’s. Eric from the army, and Avri from the police.
Avri is Ilan’s friend from back in high school, when they studied in the same class.
With Eric, their friendship intensified during the many years of army service, which then continued onto their civilian lives, where Eric runs a business for agricultural equipment.
And there’s Ilan, sitting with them, briefly waving his hand at me, not getting up, and resumes examining the papers with them.
I suddenly blush. Embarrassed. My hand quickly and casually glides over my hair, and I blush even more.
I hadn’t met Ilan in such a long time. It’s not that I’ve really had an awareness of our separation.
It’s more like I’ve been put on hold over the phone. Once we both free-up, we’ll meet again. Perhaps.
I don’t feel that he’s missing from my daily life. I get along just fine on my own. Coming and going.
Don’t flatter yourself too much, I mock myself from the side, you’re not some bold and brave single-mother feminist. Of course it’s easy when he constantly makes sure to refill your joint bank account.
I quickly glance at the mirror hanging on Hila’s dining area wall. An old automatic habit of mine. There’s room for improvement, I decide quietly, just like every time I bump into the Dita of the mirrors. The one whose aging I’ve not yet made peace with. And I’m immediately bewildered by my dealing with such nonsense right now, the battered and emaciated Dana suddenly resurfacing in front of me, her image pounding into me.
A Savage Flower Page 16