Now. Run away now. They’re not watching. There’s a back door, you know that. You know it. Get up and get out of here. They won’t notice. They’re all under the hazy spell. Can’t you see.
And then His Majesty gestures over to Dori, and the cart is wheeled over to him.
David reaches his hand out, picks up a gray box, opens it and pulls out a little bottle. Sealed shut.
Dana concentrates, gathers up and focuses all of her senses, aims everything at that little bottle.
Size, color, quantity, texture. What is it? She doesn’t know. Doesn’t recognize it.
She looks at it again and again, effort in her eyes. Trying to decipher that which seems completely foreign to her.
The bottle is made of clear glass. It’s sealed by a cork stopper. Like the ones that seal the spice bottles they buy from the rural natives at Puerto Viejo, for the Existential College’s kitchen.
The kind of cork stoppers that they make out of dense, especially-thick tree barks, from the rainforest.
She once saw the entire process, ages ago, when she had just arrived, and joined Eyal on one of his trips, during the few good months they’d had here.
They travelled to the natives’ village, and Eyal showed her, and explained enthusiastically, about the lives of the villagers, who have changed nothing of their parents and ancestors’ customs. A thousand years of rainforest behind them. And they’re still connected to nature.
Never to be tempted by urban indulgence. Living precisely as their forefathers did (though Dana somewhat doubted that their forefathers too used to proudly wear blue and white striped T-shirts, the colors signifying the local soccer team).
And within David’s bottle is an orange liquid, translucent, but with a rusty hue. Like henna-colored hair.
Orange hair colored by henna.
Orange.
And Dana is suddenly stricken by another memory.
She sees him right in front of her. The guide, Roajo. From Puerto Viejo. The village native who’d accompanied her and Eyal during that trip.
He doesn’t wear a T-shirt like the other villagers. Because he has an important role in hosting them.
He’s their guide through the virgin forest.
His torso is anointed by an orange, henna-like paste. His lower half is covered by a work of art, with leaves, feathers, chains, beads and ropes joined together into a masterpiece of a skirt, reminding Dana a little bit of masquerades back in Tel Aviv. It all looks like a festive theatrical production, made solely for them.
His hair is curly, dense.
And totally orange.
Roajo demonstrates, just for them, how the natives hunt for animals there, in the village. Here’s the arrow. Here’s the poison. The arrow is anointed with a special poison. Orange. As soon as it hits the hunted animal, it dies on the spot. Monkeys. Birds. Lizards. Everything.
One moment it’s alive, he waves his hands to illustrate wings, and then it dies straight away. Completely. He shakes his head to the sides, his eyes close, his entire body convulsing uncontrollably, portraying carcass poses.
“De vida o muerte,” he laughs. Life or death.
In orange.
That orange liquid?
Death.
And David now turns on his seductive voice. The wise, the authoritative, the pleasant, the supportive. The honey voice, tried and tested, which enables him to effortlessly turn any group of mature thinkers into a unified plasticine body, soft and elastic, from which one can create anything one desires.
“Yes, friends, the moment has arrived! The inter-universal vessel, which you here call a spaceship, has landed on our strip not long ago.
We will all board it and take off. Myself and all of you. You will be picked up by those who have arrived from far away especially for this important mission. I will direct them accurately. Do not fret. You will all board the vessel. No one shall be left behind.
This has been my mission here. To save you. To bring us all back there.
We shall now fortify your weak bodies, which suit this land, but not the great voyage.
The transition between worlds. We will strengthen this body with which you have all been equipped for wandering your own planet, and prepare it for its journey. You will feel your body fossilizing. Shifting into a state of recoiling. This isn’t an uncomfortable process. It’s a bit similar to a good high.
Your internal systems, however, will not become paralyzed. They are susceptible to the substance’s influence, and they will undergo a vast positive change, growing stronger. And at the end of the voyage, you shall awaken within an entirely different body. Powerful. Protected from any and all illnesses. Endlessly young.
You shall live within a new and clean body!
You do not yet know how that feels. Once you awaken - you shall know. You shall feel release. Carefreeness. Joy.
Within a renewed and fortified body. Come. We shall now commence our voyage. I love you all. Each and every one of you. I am so happy with you all. Delighted that we have been awarded this moment.
Myself and all of you.
When we meet again, you shall be like me. Superior. All of you. And together we shall live a life of pure experience.
We shall now drink to our new existence, to us!
And David instructs Dori to begin handing out the bottles. Dori opens the gray boxes, pulls out the bottled orange liquid and begins the distribution. Four guards assist him. They divide the hall into distribution sections. Some at the back rows. Some at the middle ones.
“Do not open them yet. Remain in your seats. We shall all raise our glasses together!”
Dana looks around frantically.
She feels dizzy, blurred. The overpowering odour of incense, the blazing candles all along the walls. Her eyes are fixed on the bottles slowly nearing them.
She’s overcome with fear. Paralyzed. Dori approaches them, pulls out three little bottles, hands over two to her and Orr, who is tightly held in her lap.
He hands one over to Eyal, who seems detached, as though he’s deep within a daydream.
The distribution is done. Dori and the guards return to the stage.
“We shall all rise.”
Dana notices that there’s a guard at the end of each row. Supervising.
David gestures for everyone to stand up. Dana falters a bit with Orr in her arms, and the nearest guard quickly helps her up, planting Orr next to her, standing. They hold hands. They hold the bottles in their other hands.
Dana now looks behind her, and sees the entire group is standing up. One of the Caesar’s guards takes a guitar out and plays.
Dana recognizes the melody. David had composed it. Years ago. When they were still in Jerusalem.
Strange sort of sounds. As though from another world. One moment they sound like weeping, and then like a heavenly glide among clouds. They pour into the vast hall, and Dana sees people swaying their heads to the sides, their eyes closed. They look to be drifting away with the music.
The sounds then slowly die out into the fog of incense and the dim lighting. And David almost whispers, “We will now carefully open the bottles.”
Now. Now. Run away.
But she’s nailed to the floor. Immobile. She hears screeches all around her, the circular sound of cork stoppers being twisted open, and the crowd looks to His Royal Highness, awaiting the command.
Dana doesn’t open her bottle. Orr lets go of her mother’s hand, and hold her own bottle with both hands, looks at Dana, and waits.
Eyal has already opened his bottle, and seems as though he were standing on a secluded private island, custom-made for him alone.
The guards at the row edges supervise the opening of the bottles, all looking rather pleased.
The entire crowd, as well as the row guards, are now holding the opened bottles, a faint sweet
scent mixing in with the incense, and Dana becomes even dizzier.
The guard nearest them rushes over to her.
“You haven’t opened your bottle.”
“Yes. I’m opening it.”
And all of a sudden.
“What are you doing? What are we all doing? Don’t drink it! Don’t do it! It’s poison! It’ll kill us all!”
Who’s doing all this screaming?
Dana discovers with alarm that this horrible scream is coming out of her, out of Dana herself.
But she keeps going, forcefully throwing the bottle, aiming for David’s head, and missing.
He looks stunned for a moment. And she continues screaming.
“How can you not see! He’s deceiving us. He’s already taken everything from us. We have nothing more to give him. Only the wills that we wrote out. He’s a fraud, our king. There’s no spaceship and no other universes to go to. None of that exists. And you won’t exist either, if you drink--”
Deafening music suddenly booms out of hidden speakers, Dana’s voice is swallowed within her, the nearest guard rushes over to her and Orr, her screams are interrupted. Orr bursts out crying and tosses her own bottle onto the mat, and the guard leads them both, hand in hand, towards the exit.
The music ceases at once.
David immediately takes advantage of the quiet moment, raising his hand.
“We shall now all drink, to us!”
Dana looks back, and sees Eyal gulping down the bottle to the last drop. Slightly sways, sits down on the pillow and falls backwards. She sees other members drinking. And collapsing.
But there are some still hesitating.
And there are some looking around, confused.
Others suddenly toss away their open bottles, the orange liquid staining the pillows, the mats.
Some also scatter around and walk between the rows, the open bottles in their hands, their eyes staring every which way, as though they’re searching for validation whether or not to go ahead with it.
The Caesar trembles with wrath.
“What have you all done? You’ve spoiled everything! You ungrateful fools! Now everything is ruined!”
And he takes a large yellow plastic container, which has been placed by his feet, removes its lid and tosses it, liquid inside it, onto a candle burning near the wall.
Dana smells gasoline mixing in with all the other smells, and a flame erupts from the candle, travelling up the straw-shading covering the window and sparking a fire in the corner of the hall.
She twists her body around, trying to release herself from the hands holding her.
The guard suddenly halts. Frozen in front of the burning straw.
Dana feels his grip slightly loosening, gathers up all of her remaining strength and squirms herself out of his arms. Grabs Orr’s hand tightly, and they both run as fast as they can towards the exit.
Escape this place.
She hears frantic screams all around her, people running. Yelling. Crying.
She no longer hears David.
As she clears a path towards the exit for her and Orr, she sees a group of men.
Uniformed officers, their weapons drawn, batons attached to their belts, are running swiftly into the room. One of them has a fire extinguisher and he runs over to put out the flames. More officers charge into the room and call out:
“No move! No move!”
These are not the district police officers, Dana realizes that immediately. They’re totally different.
And then she sees her father.
And her father’s friends, Avri and Eric. And that backpacker who’d once visited the village, took photos, asked to write about them all, and hardly spoke to her.
The panic, the haze and the heavy scents in the room finally overpower her cotton wool knees, she folds into two and crouches down.
The ceiling spins above her, faces all twisted-up lean over her, she thinks that she sees Orr’s face too.
They tell her all sorts of things in strange voices, she doesn’t exactly understand them, tries to absorb the words, answer, get up, grab Orr, but she stumbles. And then everyone suddenly disappears.
The ceiling, the strange faces, Orr.
The chatter slowly growing distant, turning into inaudible whispers, until everything turns utterly silent.
Darkness now encases her. Thick and quiet.
And very welcome.
Tel Aviv 2017
35
The night has brought me back to the zombie farm.
The blossoming place, like a holiday resort on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. The gate welcoming in, then swallowed up behind us, vanishing into the marvellous bougainvillea thicket, impenetrable. The paths upon which walk heavy figures, without any visible purpose, their eyes hollow. The little homes with the red rooftops, the open doors, the windows with the orange curtains fluttering in the breeze, the neatly-made beds in the rooms, Ilan and I entering the room, and the awareness which swiftly crashes upon us.
No way out.
Only in.
When the front door slams behind us, we realize that it has no doorknob for us to get out of the room. The window too is sealed, nailed shut.
And one man, resembling a hollow robot, enters, muttering something rhythmic, unclear.
We know, he’s asking us to stay.
No. No. We want to get out. We have a life outside. And a home. And a family. And daughters. And a granddaughter. The man with the hollow eyes is disappointed. His lips curl down in a weeping quiver. Tears well up in his hollow eyes.
But we have to get away from here. From this horrible place. From the dream.
Because now I understand that this is the dream again.
And that I’ll soon wake up. To my home. To my bed. Where we can love.
If we want to.
And morning.
And sun through our bedroom window. And no zombies and no room locked from the inside. And I’m in our old double bed, but there’s no Ilan in it.
I’m alone.
Ilan is asleep downstairs. In the guest room. With Dana and Orr. Ever since they returned from Cayrona Beach.
Because Dana is not yet Dana.
She hardly sleeps. Wakes up in the night screaming, Orr, Orr! Spewing out words, some incoherent. Sometimes calls out names that I know. David. Dori. Eyal.
All are already gone.
She’s being treated. Here, at our home. There was no point in hospitalizing her.
Doctor Zehavi from the Shalvata mental-health institution comes to the house every day. Home treatment. Medication. Sedatives, anxiety pills, antidepressants, therapy sessions.
The doctor says that she’s in a post-traumatic state. And patience. Patience.
I’m patient.
The important thing is that she got out of there. Dana. She’s here. With us.
And Orr.
It’s a cliché to say that she’s our light.
But she is. Glowing and uplifting us all. As though she’s swapped roles. Now she’s the mommy, and Dana’s the child.
Without her saying a single word, she simply senses Dana. Hugs her. Laughs with her. Holds her hand. Even tells her stories. Reminisces.
“Do you remember how we played in the sea there, Mommy?”
“Mommy, do you remember one time, in Cayrona, I made you a bouquet with yellow flowers?”
And Dana smiles at her, embraces her. And looks happy.
When she first began mentioning Cayrona, I was scared. I wanted to mute that memory.
Erase it from her.
Doctor Zehavi stopped me. Indicated to me that it’s alright. This child is wise. By nature.
She guesses what’ll make Mommy happy, and Dana already starts smiling.
Here and there. Sometimes.
And at night, Dana screams all sorts of names.
From what I’ve heard, I know that they’ve buried Eyal in Antwerp.
After the state police had finished investigating, collecting findings, establishing evidence, arresting suspects, locating family members of the deceased, the request from Antwerp arrived. Relatives wanting to bury Leo Levi in the family plot. With his parents, who have waited patiently for him, it turned out, for almost three decades, ever since they died together in a car crash on the highway to Munich.
If Orr ever wants to visit her father’s grave, she’ll find a very respectable gravesite at the old Jewish cemetery in Antwerp.
They arrested Professor Doron Sadeh. His list of offences was impressive, and included, along with drug trafficking, an array of various counts, such as unlawful imprisonment of the group members, human trafficking, accountability for the unexplained disappearances of some of those women trafficked, and even counts of bribing the district’s law authorities, which made me chuckle a little bit as I thought about the sums that Ilan, Eric and Avri generously handed out over there to all sorts of top figures belonging to the state police.
And in any case, he won’t make it to trial, Dori. He was overcome by extreme stomach pain while in prison, and the doctor there could do nothing but sign the death certificate.
His body was cremated, and the ashes were scattered at sea, because no one came to claim him.
A little ironic, but it turns out that this is what happened:
Nine people in the village lifted the bottles up to make a toast, willingly drank the Caesar’s orange nectar and died almost instantly.
Eyal was among them.
Except for him, there were another three men and five women. Someone called Vered was among the women. A name I picked up during one of Dana’s nightmares.
A Savage Flower Page 19