A Savage Flower

by Judith Weinstock

  Hila hands me a cup of coffee, pulls up another chair, and I join the table, a silent listener to their serious conversation.

  It turns out that the remote Jacob has suddenly gone quiet over there in the village.

  Doesn’t pass along any findings. Ever since he’d placed the little bottles and sent a short message about their whereabouts, ever since that day, he’s gone mute.

  Doesn’t send, as he usually does, a brief about the content of the Gathering that had taken place, if it took place, or any other sign of life. His satellite phone isn’t on. Nor is his cell phone.

  That’s a sign.

  Before he left, they had agreed that a sudden radio silence on his part would be a sign. Something’s gone wrong at Cayrona Beach.

  And the three are to immediately travel there. Ilan, Avri and Eric.

  There’s a flight to Bogota via Madrid. Tonight. From there they’ll continue to Cayrona using off-road vehicles.

  My breath stops.

  Tonight. Bogota. Cayrona Beach.

  It can’t be that these distant places, where Dana roams around secluded shores in a white robe, the mere sound of their names sounding like it’s peering at me from my childhood books about pirate ships, are actually real places, to which people buy normal flight tickets, get on a plane at Ben Gurion Airport, and the next day they’re already treading them as though they were just a place, like anywhere else.

  I can’t believe it.

  I’ve only just realized that they’re completely set for this trip, and not just since today.

  Ilan had pre-organized everything.

  Immediately after sending Jacob to del Ruiz, and then Ra’anan to Cayrona-Puerto Viejo, Ilan contacted Avri, his high school friend, whom everyone knows from his police work, in all sorts of roles. He occasionally appears in the headlines, having solved this crime, that case. That sort of thing.

  Ilan’s also asked Eric to join. Because he trusts the two of them.

  It also turns out that Avri has ties with the chief of police at the capital.

  It’s a complicated country, he illustrates to us over a foreign map rolled out on the table. It’s divided into districts that have limited access routes, and teetering communications between them. Each district to itself.

  Cayrona District is ruled by a tight group of brothers in arms, many of them actual biological siblings. Families split up into law enforcers, and law breakers. There are no good guys and bad guys there. There’s our people, and not our people, Avri explains.

  The police in the capital are actually trying to establish order.

  Alright, no need to exaggerate. They try as much as possible.

  They do try. Absolutely.

  Avri had even seen it all from up close, during police exchange delegations, when he was the personal guest of the state police chief, General Alfonso Arlano, who took him for a few days of touring around the area, and for a few meals which, despite being very fancy and filled with various exotic dishes, Avri had trouble fully remembering due to the thick alcohol fumes accompanying them.

  But they’ve definitely remained amigos ever since, Avri says with certainty, and even though Alfonso has unfortunately already retired, he still has contacts there.

  Yes. He’s checked. Called him up yesterday. Alfonso’s sending a driver who will take them to Cayrona, Avri reports.

  “And we won’t be alone. Guess what.”

  Avri’s eyes sparkle.

  “Alfonso Arlano’s name is still worth something in that country! I told him the general gist of things, and he‘s totally on board. He isn’t only sending us some of his ex-police officers, real top guys, he’s also promised me that he’ll be joining us himself!”

  Avri can’t help but suppress a victorious tone.

  “I think that he misses the action a little bit, my amigo, Alfonso…”

  “And you do too. Right?” Eric says.

  Avri chuckles.

  “Yeah, a bit.”

  I’m somehow relieved a little by this. Police. Officer. Backup.

  Hila and I look at each other.

  Ilan is deeply concentrated on planning things that I don’t entirely understand.

  Unfamiliar names are called out.

  Mosquera. Tojamaco. Playa. I hear them, and imagine a white shore with tropical trees bearing colorful fruit.

  But I know that the fruit are extremely poisonous.

  That which looks like paradise, smells like paradise, as colorful as paradise, isn’t paradise.

  Not in this story.

  Of Dana, of Orr, and of the regal King David.

  And of the group.

  Come on. Say it already, admit it, I force myself, what group. What group. Say it: Cult! Cult! Dana’s in a cult! Orr’s in a cult! A dangerous cult!

  A d a n g e r o u s c u l t.

  Just like Jonestown. Just like Jim Jones. The Peoples Temple cult.

  Nine hundred and nine dead.

  I never forget the nine.

  Cayrona Beach 2017

  32

  Dana senses that she’s being followed.

  She’s walking along the paths of the village, from the main kitchen back to her hut, and hears light footsteps behind her. Turns to look back, sees the leaves of the thick bushes shifting as though from a light breeze, doesn’t notice anyone there, but she’s troubled.

  She works in the kitchen every morning. Peels dozens of carrots. Pumpkins. Yams. Onions. They’re cooking orange soup ahead of the important Gathering. The Caesar is partial to their soup.

  Everyone is vegan there in their group of chosen ones. David has guided them to a vegan lifestyle from the offset. Purer. Cleaner. Ethical.

  They know that His Majesty doesn’t entirely abstain from meat. He doesn’t eat it covertly either.

  His status obviously bears different rules. He isn’t like them. His body is different from theirs.

  Compiled of different substances.

  The friends from the district police sometimes get him large chunks of meat, fresh, bloody, red, hanging on hooks which are swiftly placed within a large refrigeration room, directly connected, like the rest of the management building, to a special generator.

  He also sins with candy, the Caesar. That he does do covertly. Perhaps a little ashamed of such an earthly weakness.

  They, the group, are not allowed. They’re the chosen ones.

  But Dana knows. She smells it on his breath with revolt when he comes to her. Chocolate, she discerns. And resists the impulse to vomit.

  He also has a small wine cellar. On special occasions he pours for them generously. A toast to the great day. Which will soon come.

  Very soon.

  Jacob sometimes brings, during their mornings, something tasty for her. Perhaps from the management building, where he’s occasionally invited. Cake. A white bun, soft. Eat a little bit, he encourages her to taste it, you’re so skinny.

  She refuses.

  She can’t. Ever since being separated from Orr, she feels that her throat is blocked to any food that isn’t the bare minimum.

  Dana thinks of it as punishment. She had tormented others. Now she herself is tormented. Punished.

  Orr being taken away is punishment.

  The Caesar in her bed, punishment.

  Eyal’s violence, punishment.

  Her downfall from the status of tribe princess to the very bottom of the rancid pit, punishment.

  Images scurry through her mind. Lots. Jerusalem. The professor. Dad. Mom.

  And one movie that doesn’t give in and keeps projecting over a private screen in her mind, repeatedly.

  She and Mom standing at the entrance to her and Eyal’s home, in front of the door that Eyal had just slammed shut, after casting her mom out.

  Mom’s crying: But why. You’re fine
here. You have a great job. A wonderful child. A good husband. Why leave?

  And Dana is utterly seething inside, radiating tranquil contempt outwards.

  How is this mother of hers not getting it. Any of it.

  Can’t she see that out of all those, she, Dana, is the one who has to escape? That she can’t remain trapped in the same depressing cage imprisoning her mother?

  Husband-work-children-career-home-and-leather-couches-and-armchair-and-stove-and-fridge-and-television?

  That she has to break through the wall encircling the inhabitants of this shallow swamp of theirs?

  The wall which enclosed her father, for example, a curious man, thirsty for knowledge, a novice lecturer at the Technion, researcher and scientist at heart, for the sake of a gray and conventional career in construction within an infinite race after money-money-money?

  The trap which had also lured her mother all through the years to continue running an exhausting and endless race, which she called a career?

  This mother of hers, a career woman, is now ceaselessly weeping at her, black makeup running from her red eyes, she’s tattered and dripping onto the tiles at the entrance to the house. She can’t utter anything, her meek sobs interrupted only by the name Orr, Orr.

  And she, Dana, conceited and cold, simply says: “I expect you and Dad to respect our wishes, and don’t try to contact us in any way.”

  For all of that, she is now being punished.

  While watching this movie, projected on her private screen within her mind, Dana doesn’t miss a single detail.

  That’s me. That’s me. She looks within herself, reciting the words over and over again, silently. In her mind.

  And recalls a Hindu word she’d once learned, back in Jerusalem, at a time before the Caesar, when she was still thinking about feeling her way towards Eastern wisdom, and studied a bit of Sanskrit.

  Karma.

  Mother-daughter-mother-daughter-mother.

  That’s what Karma looks like. The life cycle of cause and effect. Now it’s come back to her. The sin.

  Her karma roamed continents, distances, time zones, and has found her here. At Cayrona.

  Her, Dana, who is currently at the Existential College Village, wondering who she really is. Because she’s no longer sure of anything. Doesn’t know.

  Early in the morning, she still goes to Orr’s boarding home, to her and Jacob’s window.

  She guesses what’s really happening.

  Jacob isn’t showing up.

  After the last Gathering, she saw Jacob going out to the hallway with Doron Sadeh, and she shuddered. Something’s wrong. She realized that.

  This morning, while standing by the window to the children’s sleep hall, on her own, she recognizes Orr’s figure slowly crystallizing within the darkness, and trembles.

  What’s happening to Jacob.

  She returns to the hut and prepares for the day’s work in the kitchen, when she hears David’s voice on the PA system.

  Tonight we will have the grand Gathering!

  Tonight’s the night. He’s calling them to prepare.

  To pack a little handbag with few personal items. Wash their hair. Scrub themselves. Don a clean robe.

  Because tonight, it will happen. The preparation.

  And the big voyage.

  Dana immediately rushes, uninvited, to the management building. Two guards run over to stop her at the entrance. She shouts I’ll-scream-I’ll-scream-you-be-careful-I-want-David, and then David comes out, calmly waves to the guards to let her go, walks up to her, smiles and reaches out a large hand to stroke her hair.

  Dana sharply pulls her head away, and David remains standing for a moment, his hand hanging in mid-air.

  “I want Orr! Right here! Right now!”

  “You needn’t worry, Dana. Of course she will leave here with you. You are her mother.”

  He reconciles her warmly. With a generous smile.

  “When. When will she come, I want to know!”

  “We’ll only be working a half-day today. We must prepare for our grand night. Don’t worry, Dana. Go to the kitchen, come back at noon. We’ll bring Orr to you, bathed and prepared.”

  And Dana works silently the entire morning. Peeling carrots and yams and pumpkins, and chopping. Chopping and peeling. The knife handle chafing her skin, and she continues. Silent. Hears the other girls talking excitedly. None of them doubting His Royal Highness.

  How. What is this big voyage really. What kind of substance does he want us to consume? Orr too? Who will make her drink it? What. How much.

  When she leaves the kitchen, she feels that her legs can hardly hold her up. As though the bone mass has been replaced with cotton wool. She grabs the doorframe and steadies herself. Just a little bit more. Not yet. David promised to return Orr to her.

  When the child arrives, we’ll run away.

  Because Dana no longer believes David.

  She was once, long ago, captivated by his image.

  He really did seem to be from another universe back then. His strange figure, gigantic, unkempt, his scarily-wide open eyes behind those lenses, she had interpreted all those as proof to his being an alien.

  The things that he taught them with his hypnotizing voice were so very different. So very not from here. Not from this predictable and gray place, which imprisons the soul, the place from which she’d aspired to escape.

  To other universes.

  How gullible.

  Not anymore.

  She’ll try to find Jacob, and they’ll run away together. Because Dana no longer believes David.

  Not a single word of his. Not a word. He’s no alien. Doesn’t possess a smidgen of divinity. No superior spirituality either.

  He is so very much an earthly man of this land. A man of physical pleasures, enslaved within steel chains to any delight that his huge body can be provided. He’ll never be satiated. A man constantly reeking with sweat and foul breath.

  And she won’t make Orr drink a single drop of anything that David has planned for her.

  Orr. She has to get Orr out of there. But how.

  And again she thinks that she hears slight footsteps on the path, behind her. Turns her head, sees nothing.

  Dana halts. And there’s no sound. She impulsively changes direction.

  Jacob. He must be in the management building. She knows. There’s a lower level there, comprised of rows of rooms. He’s being kept there, she tells herself. They haven’t managed to get him out of here yet.

  And why is he kept there? What do they know about him? Did they spot the two of them pressed against the boarding home window in the mornings? Do they suspect them? Did someone see them embraced behind their mound?

  Dana knows that David wants her only to himself. He of course quenches himself in many young village bodies. Both men and women.

  Everyone at the Existential College understands that this is what it’s like with leaders who have the spiritual level of their king.

  He is permitted any and all possible bodily satisfactions. He must have them, actually. Because he requires the delights of the body, this rejoicing of the flesh. Like meat. Like wine. Like candy. Like living in a comfortable brick home. Like the internet.

  But David is very strict with her, with Dana. She must remain pure. And she’s absolutely unpermitted to anyone else.

  He cherishes her.

  Eyal has long distanced himself from contact with her. He doesn’t touch her. Doesn’t live with her anymore.

  She thinks that he has a male partner now. A young Israeli backpacker who had been picked and brought along to the village during one of Eyal’s procurement trips.

  And she knows that David was the one to get Eyal out of the hut.

  But she doesn’t really care anymore.

  33

 
Dana observes the brick management building from a safe distance.

  Jacob must be in there. The building now seems like an impenetrable fortress. Sealed windows. Guards at the entrances. In the yard. She can’t smuggle him out, and she feels choked from desperation. And gives up.

  But she has to take Orr with her. If Jacob’s gone, then she’ll take her without him.

  David said that they’d bring her. She won’t wait. She doesn’t trust him.

  She quickly changes course, and marches speedily towards the boarding home.

  She walks with quick, light steps. She senses slight footsteps behind her again.

  But turning her head back reveals nothing.

  There’s the boarding home. This time she turns towards the entrance gate, not the rear window. Dana repeats to herself what she’s planning to say. David promised. We’ll come to the Gathering together. I’m her mother. David said so. We’ll commence the voyage together.

  I’m her mother.

  She’s surprised to discover that the gate isn’t locked. Could it be that it hadn’t ever been locked? She cautiously walks along the wooden-decked path, reaches the entrance door, it too isn’t locked, and finds herself in a spacious lobby, doors within its walls.

  Stands hesitant for a moment, when she hears Moooooooooomy! Mommy! And a warm child’s body leaps onto her.

  And she embraces and embraces and cries and laughs and kisses and envelopes, and feels and inhales the scent deep into her lungs, and caresses the hair, the face, the cheeks, the hands, the little fingers intertwine with her own rough fingers, the youthful lips kiss her, wipe away tears. And Mommy-Mommy.

  She spots the serious, moist stare of Dina, the acclaimed professional nanny, who also sneaks a little smile at them.

  But Dana and Orr laugh-cry-laugh, continue hugging-caressing-kissing.

  Orr’s wearing a little white robe, looks to be brand new. Her hair is washed, wet and fragrant.