I didn’t know any of them.
But I saw it on TV.
Because Cayrona Beach became, of course, as everyone now knows, the most talked-about place in the world.
News channels from East and West urgently sent over delegations of cameramen, reporters, journalists and technical teams, right when the news broke about the strange cult on the secluded shores, at the edge of the rainforest, whose members chose mass-suicide, but most of whom were saved, thanks to the brave state police, who resourcefully prevented the disaster at the very last minute.
Alfonso Arlano, the retired state police chief, ceaselessly gave interviews on all of the channels, and became very famous, obviously.
The diligent news teams sent the news, photos and videos from one side of the world to the other.
In London, Moscow and Sydney, everyone is already familiar with the aerial photograph of the Existential College Village, with the semi-burned down management building, smoke still thinly rising from it, which has been repeatedly projected on a loop, and the faces of the nine dead group members, taken from up close, their eyes open wide in a look of surprise, perhaps in sudden shock, I haven’t yet deciphered.
The images of the group members wandering in the confusion and huddling up on the tiled area that had survived the fire.
A few were found lost in the forest.
Many of them weren’t able to give interviews. Their eyes shifting every which way. Searching. Not finding.
Some have been hospitalized in mental-health institutions, it’s been reported.
A few have given interviews.
Unclear. Jumbled heaps of strange sentences. Saying something about a spaceship, about some distant voyage, to another planet.
Asking till when the voyage has been postponed. Asking about King David. Where he is. And where they should go now.
They look lost. Grabbing onto one another. Looking at one another in a kind of comradery of those who’d survived a terrible dread, and have nothing but themselves left.
Not a single one of them mentions suicide.
And the interviewers ask them about it openly.
“Why did you all want to die?”
“Die?”
They repeat, confused.
They don’t want to die. They want to commence the great voyage.
In the spaceship.
The interviewers try again. And again.
“Suicide?”
“No. No.”
“Then what is this orange liquid, and the little bottles, and the escape, and the screams. And the dead?”
Nine dead. Five women. Four men.
“They drank the liquid, right?”
“They didn’t commit suicide.”
“Did someone force them to drink it?”
“No, they wanted to drink it.”
A conversation with crossed wires. The interviewers give up, and continue with the reports and the images.
The police are investigating. Making arrests. The reports from Cayrona Beach slowly fade away.
In the Middle East, someone throws chemical bombs over someone else, and close-ups of dead children preserve the demanded level of excitement.
Dana doesn’t watch TV.
She was hazy when they brought her and Orr to us.
The state police couldn’t manage to question her, she was examined at the capital city’s hospital, was found fit to board a direct flight to Israel, not without added bundles of money, a gift to the hospital chief and his staff, and a few more bundles with emotional thank-you letters to the state police team, and specifically to General Alfonso Arlano.
I’m horrified when I see Dana at Ichilov Hospital, where they bring her in for examinations. Incredibly skinny. Her eyes look huge over her thin, pale face.
She’s found to be healthy. A little underweight. Borderline anaemic. But healthy.
Physically.
During her orientation examinations, she actually gives practical answers. Knows where she is. And what. And who. Explains how she feels (a little bit weak), understands that her husband, Eyal, is gone. Is even able to say that he’s been poisoned.
“Who poisoned him?”
Silence.
I intervene and ask that she be left to rest for a bit.
Since then, she’s been with us.
With Orr. With Hila, who comes over every day after work.
They sit on the back porch, drink tea and talk. Orr chatters away, caresses Mommy, mentions Cayrona over and over again, Hila talks about herself too, about her job, about Ra’anan, the reporter who once published an article with photographs documenting the Existential College Village, after having fluttered inside it with distant butterfly wings, the words lightly floated across oceans and continents, printed for some Tel Aviv newspaper’s weekend edition, circled around the world, and finally brought down the village.
A perfect family picture. Hila, Dana and Orr. We’re just like a family.
Almost.
When Dana and I met there, at her bed at Ichilov Hospital, all of the determined bans I had commanded upon myself collapsed at once.
No scenes.
No crushing hugs.
No crying.
No tears.
Because I know Dana. She always carries her world within a restrained silence.
Head held high. Proud. Never outwardly portraying thoughts and emotions. They all rest within her, drawers upon drawers.
Here’s sorrow. Here’s rage. There’s insult.
All sealed shut within her.
The memory of the last time I’d sobbed in front of her, during our parting session by her front door, is still scorched within me, still reddens my cheeks with great shame.
But I couldn’t keep it in.
The dams I had laid out around myself all shattered at once the moment I saw her. Small and lost in her light-blue hospital pajamas.
And once again, the embarrassing sobs gushed out of me, refusing to remain trapped inside.
Dana gave me a look I didn’t recognize. If it weren’t for the years of experience I’d had with her, I’d even say it was, perhaps, compassion.
I saw something else there too. Evasiveness. A sort of fear of our eyes meeting.
And I heard her too.
She mumbled a single word to herself repeatedly. Quietly. Could it be that she was whispering ‘karma’?
And when they released her from the hospital and she reached our home, and Ilan said, “I’ll sleep with her tonight. Just in case,” I didn’t say but-I’m-her-mother-and-I’m-the-one-who-should-be-with-her.
I immediately agreed.
Dana did too. Too quickly.
And I felt an aching pang of sorrow.
So now it’s Ilan who shares her nights. In the mornings we all sit in the kitchen together. Dana’s already started eating.
Soft-boiled egg. Bread roll. Yogurt.
Orr eats a lot. Salad. Cheeses. Omelets. Pancakes. And floods the kitchen with her gushing and rolling chatter.
Sometimes Hila joins in too.
Anyone looking at us from the side would witness a segment from a you-see-this-is-what-a-family-looks-like movie.
Perfect.
Dana is slowly filling up. Those angled shoulder bones are no longer sticking out as much. Her face is slightly rounding, her black hair is shiny, and her eyes are calming down from the first days’ restlessness.
Doctor Zehavi is pleased. She’s making progress.
Then how come I feel like it’s all just pretend. That there’s a vast sadness within her, laying heavily inside and slowing down her movements. Lifeless. That she’s thankful for Orr, for the rescue and escape, but she’s not really free. I try to ask Doctor Zehavi about it, and she listens to me with a face that says sorry-that’s-confidential-infor
mation.
“Yes. Yes. You need patience.”
I have patience. I’ll wait. I’ve accumulated a lot of experience in waiting during the last few years.
But what if this heavy burden settles down within her, what if it doesn’t leave. I wish that she’d confide in me more.
But we both remain silent.
I’m doomed to only love her from afar.
Like the biblical Miriam, I hide within the reeds that grow upon her banks, and guard her from a distance. Each smile of hers uplifts me. Staring eyes and a distant gaze immediately fill me with anxiety.
And I don’t really manage to help her. No.
And in the evening, Ilan comes home with a guest.
He’s overly handsome, the guest, I’d say. Tall, broad-shouldered, firm, tanned. When he smiles at me, a dimple gapes within his cheek.
Dana hears the voices and joins us from her room.
She looks at the people present, stops, freezes in her spot for a moment, and then I witness something I’d never before seen in her.
She just leaps.
Like the panther I once saw on National Geographic.
And she becomes swallowed within his two open arms, and he immediately encloses her within him.
And she cries.
Dana cries.
I too must look like something out of a movie right now. Standing and staring at them in shock, like the hyena cub when faced with that panther.
Because Dana is now crying uncontrollably.
For the first time since Cayrona. And in fact, as much as I can recall, for the first time ever. She cries without words.
Just one name that she repeats again and again. Jacob. Jacob. Jacob.
And he grabs her tightly and says, “Shhh… shhh… I’m here, Dana.”
And Orr walks into the room, looks at Mommy, and at the stranger, and at me, and at Ilan. And seems very embarrassed.
She’s as confused by the sight as I am, as Ilan is. And she must not know the beautiful stranger either.
“Mommy?”
She says, using that one word which conceals numerous questions within it. Who’s that? And why are you hugging like that? And why are you crying now, with him of all people? And how come you two seem so close?
All of the questions which I too am asking.
And maybe a few more.
Because Orr had only recently lost her father. She saw him drink the orange liquid, collapse and fall. She heard Mommy screaming, don’t drink, don’t drink, and Daddy didn’t hear, didn’t want to hear, and drank it to the last drop.
Since then, Orr’s with Mommy. Without Daddy.
She guards her, makes sure that she drinks, sleeps, rejoices. Chatters around her.
I don’t know what Orr thinks about her father. About Eyal. She must miss him. How could she not. A child needs her father. But she remains silent, and doesn’t mention him. As though there’s no Eyal, and there never was.
And I think to myself, it may be that at some point, in the future, the day will come when she releases all of those Daddy-silences in front of therapists, psychologists.
Who knows.
But right now, she sees how the beautiful stranger is hugging Dana and shielding her.
“Mommy?”
She asks again.
Dana moves away from the arms embracing her. She turns to Orr, hugs her tightly, and cries. And laughs.
“Jacob’s back, Orr! Jacob came back to us… I thought that he was gone. And he’s back!”
“They released me. Just like they did with you, Dana. Just as I managed to tear and release one of the ropes that were tying me to the chair, and almost got the other side too, I suddenly heard screams, and before I’d realized what was happening, four cops leaped over me, boom. That’s it. Over.”
And his dimple laughs with her.
Now Orr’s eyes are getting teary. She wraps her little arms around Dana, and remains silent.
Only her cheeks furrow, tear by tear.
36
We’re like a real family now, Hila thinks to herself on the back porch, when the four of them sit there, her with Mom and Dana and Orr.
Even when she sees Orr’s tears, she tells herself, yes. That’s alright. Real families have tears too. All families do.
And what’s a real family, actually.
Hila feels the thoughts wandering inside her mind, like spinning schools of colorful fish, hundreds of them, large and small, swimming towards her in circular swinging motions, like the fish she once saw behind the large glass of a huge aquarium at the underwater observatory.
Countless thoughts jittering inside her.
And she’s sitting on the porch, with a glass of iced tea, between Dana and Mom, her eyes shifting between the three, and tells herself: You’re the one who made this happen.
You, Hila.
This family had already begun plummeting into the abyss, completely torn up and disintegrated.
Right at the very last minute.
Yes, she sees. Dana’s eyes haven’t yet regained their spark. Most of the time they’re sort of sealed. Hard to know what’s really behind them. With Mom, you can clearly see a huge relief, but if you look more closely, you can find the indents of fear there too.
And Orr’s eyes are moist. Not all the time. Her facial expression changes rapidly. From drenched sorrow to happiness gushing out through streams of chatter, then shifting again into great devotion, all-encompassing, whenever she shields Dana.
A little woman-child.
And Hila’s happy. Because this is what there is, and that’s a lot.
We’re all here together now. Under the bamboo cover of this porch. Even Dad appears from the kitchen with a cup of coffee and joins everyone outside.
This family is no longer scattered across distant oceans’ shores, apartments in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, New York, or wooden huts in cut-down rainforests.
Everyone is now huddled up together on our porch.
Hila tries to withdraw her thoughts backwards. To times long gone. What were they really like before. Back then. Before King David stepped in and crushed them with his abrasive foot.
When she didn’t yet know that there was such a thing as a cult, that could pick a sister, or a daughter, imprison them, and never give them back.
A cult that had a way in, but blocked the way out.
Because those picked were then imprisoned.
Hila’s almost certain that they used to be a real family once. If there’s even such a thing.
Mom and Dad and two daughters, and school, and teachers, and studies. And Mom’s job, and Dad’s, and school lunchboxes, well-packed. Quick dinners from which someone’s always missing, and Friday dinners with numerous participants, uncles, Mom and Dad’s friends. Theater shows. Movies. Trips. The Golan Heights, the Sea of Galilee. Hotels. Guesthouses. That’s what real families are like, right?
There were tears too. That’s right, so what. There’s no such thing as no tears.
Because it was never easy, with Dana. Hila suddenly feels a resurfacing of the ancient insult which has dragged behind her for years, like a thorny trail.
Dana had always sat on a high throne, transparent, but agreed upon by all, carved out of the fame-drenched path paved for her by her parents, teachers, tutors, grades and excelling report cards.
She treated Hila as she did the rest of her subjects, sucked out her necessary admiration, in a natural taken-for-granted manner, and seldom tossed a crumb back to them. Not that she was cruel to Hila. Sometimes she was even generous. But she was always very obviously higher up than her, a true princess, from whom Hila would rejoice at every crumb sent her way.
And the sourness in her throat.
Up until her declaration of independence. Up until the great rebellion. Who did she actually rebel ag
ainst back then? Everyone. Everyone.
Mom. Dad. Dana. School.
Stop it. Just notice her already.
She’ll no longer sit in submissive obedience, transparent and still at the foot of Dana’s throne.
If this home doesn’t save a worthy seat for her, then forget about it. There’s lots of light outside. Lots of space. And she can bask in the sun there, on the sand. In the mud, even.
And have fun.
Wander between jobs. Between beds. Change shape and color and style. Pierce her body bit by bit, seeding it with metals. Suddenly they saw her. Everyone. And they actually paid attention to her, Mom and Dad.
Asked what happened (nothing).
What they could do to help (nothing).
Asked to hear what she has to say (nothing).
And gave up on her.
That’s how she felt. And then she left home.
To live in the laundry rooms scattered across the city rooftops. On old mattresses. With friends that she hadn’t before met.
She didn’t really leave home. She’d occasionally come by, smile, say hello, snoop around, check, try to see. If the storm has subsided.
And actually, she told them a while later, she wants to study film in New York, and with this flicker of faint hope, they then quickly rushed to distance her from Tel Aviv.
The rebellion continued there too. But differently. She actually loved studying at the Film Academy. Worked hard, crammed, wrote essays.
But also stood from afar as Dana’s tales from Jerusalem reached her all the way there, in the Big Apple, crashing down onto her. Echoing.
How Dana’s expanding her relationship with Professor Doron Sadeh, and joining that lovely duo they have going on there, Professor Doron Sadeh and David, a king in the making.
A strange kingdom.
That’s how they talk in Jerusalem.
About a special and exclusive and strange sort of group, coming together with them at the helm, dealing with all kinds of unclear spiritual doctrines.
Yes, Dana’s there too.
And they also talk about Eyal, a handy little pawn on their chessboard, whose moves no one really understands, and about his upcoming wedding with Dana.
A Savage Flower Page 20