Addicted to the Light

by S. E. Amadis

  She chucked little Rivkah on the chin indulgently as the girl ran past towards the kitchen.

  “Here we tailor our studies to what each child needs, reinforcing them in the areas where they’re weak while encouraging them to carry out more detailed projects in areas of interest.”

  She sounded as if she were reciting from some textbook she’d memorized.

  “This same room we’re in right now serves as the schoolroom on weekdays. Like children in the outside world, community kids study five mornings a week and get to rest on weekends. And it’s great, because the kids don’t suffer from homesickness either.”

  Chaya glanced over at us with interest. Her gaze darted for a minute towards Romeo, who was munching on corn chips with glee.

  “Yes, that’s right,” she joined in. “Here we emphasize the values of tolerance and respect. Bullying is a plague which we won’t tolerate. We teach all our children to see the good in all the other members of the community in spite of their differences. Here you won’t see kids get beaten up, or unjustly punished by hard, self-serving masters.”

  A group of tall individuals dressed in black with the air of pilgrims, their heads neatly covered by wide-brimmed hats, filed in at the moment. They surveyed the scene before them solemnly, then took a seat near the front of the room. One of them stood and marched over to Romeo and me with his hand held out.

  “Welcome, Annasuya and Romeo,” he declaimed in a monotone. “I was told of your long-awaited arrival. I’m Elder Brooks and as head of the Council of Elders, I wished to give you my greetings in person. I hope you are finding everything to your satisfaction.”

  I nodded and stared at my feet, unsure.

  “Y-yes. Everything’s great. Your people are... very hospitable.”

  The words seemed to please Elder Brooks. I found it curious that he continued to use a name from the “outside world” while everyone else seemed to have invented their own biblical name.

  Elder Brooks turned and faced the room, clapping authoritatively.

  “It’s Friday night. Let the festivities begin,” he proclaimed mirthlessly in a deep, bass voice totally devoid of inflections.

  All the women whipped out scarves and covered their heads like Bedouins. Even the young Rivkah was smothered in a cheerfully painted length of silk.

  After that, everyone perched on wooden chairs around the room and stared at everyone else. At last, a young man picked up a banjo and began strumming a half-hearted tune. I had never heard the song he was singing before.

  Lindsay leaned over and whispered to me: “All the songs that we sing here were composed by community members. Bringing in songs from the outside world is forbidden. That’s Raphael. He wrote the song he’s singing right now.”

  “Oh the Lord Jesus Christ he has saved my soul

  Yes the Lord is my saviour I look only unto him

  The Lord is my shepherd, I will want for nothing more

  Oh yes the Lord he has saved my soul,”

  Raphael intoned glumly.

  I imagined he must have sung it about a million times already, hence his total lack of enthusiasm.

  On the second round, the whole group joined in, singing with more or less zest depending on each person’s mood and character. Chaya leapt to her feet resolutely, motioning to other members, and began dancing in a circle around the room. She was joined by her two daughters. Soon almost everyone was dancing.

  Lindsay jumped up with delight and pulled Romeo and me into the circle. I felt a bit ridiculous, cavorting about to this childish tune, but no one seemed to mind and I noticed several faces smiling at me in encouragement.

  After a few songs, all equally foreign to me, everyone collapsed into chairs, panting and breathless. One of the elders, a corpulent man with broad shoulders and a countenance smothered by a dark beard, stood and gestured for silence.

  “Now I’d like the young people to tell us what lessons they have learnt this week,” he announced, then pointed to a young boy of about sixteen.

  The boy got to his feet awkwardly.

  “Weeell,” he began, unsure. Then glanced around, seemingly at a loss, searching for ideas.

  “Did anything happen to you this week, Eliya, that maybe made you ponder the wonders of the Lord?” the elder prompted him.

  Eliya’s face brightened all of a sudden.

  “Why, yes, Elder Smith,” he exclaimed. “This week I found a lark with a broken wing. I took him in and Jeremiah and me, we patched him up, fed him bread and water and now, now he’s jumping, sir. He’s actually jumping. He got so excited I had to tie his wing to his side in a sling. It’s amazing how God takes care of all his creatures big and small.”

  Elder Smith nodded towards him, complacence evident across his face.

  “Anyone else?” he intoned.

  Devrah stood up hesitantly.

  “Well, um. I learnt this week that it’s very important to keep our dresses clean. Because wearing clean clothes is like representing the cleanliness and purity of God on the outside. Keeping ourselves clean on the outside helps us to maintain a pure and clean soul on the inside.”

  Elder Smith nodded in approval. He motioned towards one of the younger men, whom we could tell evidently wasn’t an elder from his modest dress and his fidgety demeanour.

  “Yosef, would you like to read from the Scriptures?” he requested.

  Yosef stood, reached for a book on a bookshelf at the side of the room and began to sermonize. He droned on and on for a while in a fire and brimstone voice.

  When he finished, all the women leapt up and dashed for the kitchen while the men began to drag a heavy table from one side of the parlour to the centre of the room. The rest of us helped to arrange wooden chairs around the table.

  Someone planted two silver candlesticks in the centre of the table and lit some candles before the meal was served. I was used to Shabat dinners with my parents, on the rare occasions they had felt like carrying out the ceremony — which, if truth be told, hadn’t been all that frequently, neither of my parents being particularly religious — but I’d never seen anything exactly the same as this.

  Here it was like an anodyne routine. An obligation. Something that they did just simply because they were supposed to do it. Unlike in a Jewish home, there was no joy in the routine. No celebration or ceremony. No songs, no Shalom Aleichem. No prayers of effervescent gratitude. They just lit the candles and that was it. Clip clap.

  The women passed loaves of bread to everyone and placed the food in platters about the table. There was something that resembled stew, a salad (“Made with all our very own, one hundred percent organically grown produce, of course,” Lindsay informed me with enthusiasm) and slices of meat.

  “You’re not vegetarian?” I whispered to Lindsay.

  Lindsay shook her head.

  “No. But all the fowl is wild and has been hunted by our own members who are well-versed in hunting. And yes, they do own hunting rifles. But not to worry, violence is forbidden in our community.”

  The group passed the platters around, and everyone spooned out servings into their bowls and plates. I glanced down for my cutlery, but found only a spoon and two long bamboo sticks.

  “Do we eat with our hands?” Romeo whispered to me.

  I glanced at Lindsay for the answer.

  “No. Those are chopsticks. Here we eat with chopsticks.”

  She didn’t accompany her treatise with any sort of explanation.

  “Can I have a fork?” Romeo exclaimed loudly.

  All faces turned to him in shock. At last, a solemn man in his forties dressed in a lumberjack jacket cleared his throat.

  “We don’t use forks here, young man,” he lectured, a bit self-righteously. “Forks belong to the evil ways of Western men. Here we honour the softer, more subtle palates of the Asians by using only chopsticks. Chopsticks allow you to savour your food more delectably and feel gratitude for what you are consuming. And it prevents people from devouring their food like pigs.
”

  Everyone studied our reaction, looking as if they were about to throw us out. I nudged at Romeo. He gulped and picked at his chopsticks. A man sitting by his side with the humbled air of a farmhand offered to teach him how to hold his chopsticks.

  For a while I pretended elegance and civility. But in the end hunger got the best of me, and I ended up stuffing lettuce, tomatoes and chicken fillets (or whatever they were) into my mouth with my fingers greedily.

  Well, whatever we could say, I decided I certainly couldn’t accuse these people of starving us to death.

  But then I remembered that initially, Bruno had also offered us water, before trying to make us die of thirst.

  Chapter 13

  After a delicious dessert of homemade yogurt with homegrown berries, Lindsay pointed out that she was going to take us to our lodgings for the night.

  She seized a torch and passed one each to Romeo and me.

  “There’s no electricity out on the grounds,” she explained. “And there’s no electricity in the trailers either. So you’ll need these.”

  We went to the van, where she extracted our bags. Romeo’s rucksack was easy to transport, but my own suitcase on wheels proved to be more cumbersome.

  “I should’ve warned you, the terrain is rugged here,” Lindsay told me, contrite.

  She offered to carry my suitcase for me, but I shook her off.

  “I’m strong,” I exclaimed.

  She had to nod in agreement.

  “Well, I imagine you must be. After all you went through with Bruno and Hugh, and still survived.”

  With our paltry hand-held lights, we picked a skimpy way between thorns and brambles until we reached a tiny, battery-operated lantern gracing the doorway of a quaint trailer.

  “This is one of the places where we regularly house guests,” Lindsay said.

  I marvelled at her easy “we”, after living here for only a few weeks.

  She pushed the door open to reveal a typical mobile home, with two bunks piled high with blankets, a minuscule receptacle that could be used as a night table and a few empty shelves.

  “There’s no washroom here,” she said a bit ruefully. “But there’s a water hose close by where you can wash your hands and faces, and the communal outhouse is just across the way. Everyone uses it, so don’t be put off. Someone cleans it every day,” she added. “We call it our compost cabby. You might have noticed by now that nothing ever goes to waste here.”

  She helped me spread some blankets and sheets over the bunks, then led us to the water hose so we could brush our teeth.

  “Don’t worry. All the water that you use goes to nourish our plants. That’s why we personally prefer all-natural, homeopathic toothpaste. But we’re not going to leap on you for using commercial ones.” She giggled.

  After brushing our teeth, she wandered back with us across the field to our trailer.

  “Good-night.”

  She paused outside our door, staring at me with longing eyes.

  “Tomorrow I’ll show you my trailer. You’ll see, you’re just going to love it.”

  Tears brimmed up in her eyes all of a sudden.

  “Oh, Annasuya. Please do think about staying on with us. I don’t want to lose you again.”

  She hugged me briefly.

  “I’ve missed you so much, bestie,” she whispered into my ear, then turned and stumbled away.

  I watched her pick her way across the field until her light disappeared. Then I returned into our trailer. Romeo was gawking at me with humungous puppy eyes.

  “We’re not going to stay here, are we, Mimi?” he cried. “I don’t want to stay here. I don’t like it here. There’s no kids to play with. There’s no parks and no playgrounds to play on. And everyone looks so mean and serious.”

  I laid my hand reassuringly across his knees.

  “No, we are not going to stay here, little guy. But do try and at least enjoy our visit. We won’t get to see Lindsay all that often anymore after this.”

  *

  I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of retching. I reached out automatically, fingering Romeo’s bunk across the cramped space that separated our sleeping mattresses. It was empty.

  I started up, grabbed the torch and jammed my feet in my shoes and hightailed it out of the trailer. There, close by, near the water hose, I saw a figure leaning over by the light of the moon. I ran over to him.

  “Romeo?”

  Romeo squatted and writhed on the ground.

  “My tummy hurts like two hells,” he groaned. “What did they put in that food? Did they mean to poison us or something?”

  I cuddled him until he finished heaving.

  “Of course they didn’t mean to poison us,” I whispered. “I’m just fine. You’re probably just a bit more delicate than me.”

  I waited until I was sure nothing else was coming up, then turned on the water hose and rinsed out his mouth.

  We tried to get back to sleep. But around 4 a.m. (according to my mobile), Romeo woke up again. This time he started grasping at his throat and making the weirdest croaking noises.

  “Mam... Mim... Mam... I can’t breathe,” he gasped out. “I... I...”

  I dragged at him, shaking him in alarm. Something gurgled in his throat and his breath was barely rasping out in a fine thread. I thumped him hard on the back. He seemed to choke even worse than before. Seizing him by the shoulders, I lugged him out the door, screaming as loud as I could.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Hey! Can anybody help us? Romeo’s sick.”

  A few torchlights went on in nearby trailers. Some sleepy heads peered out, but no one made much move to help us. At last, Lindsay roused and peered out of a distant trailer. She rushed over to us and laid Romeo down on the ground on his side, placing her knee under his neck.

  “That usually helps people to feel better,” she said. “Are you feeling better, Romeo?”

  Romeo shook his head, too breathless to speak. The muscles of his throat worked away and sweat poured down his forehead.

  “It looks like an asthma attack, far’s I can tell, from the little Grant’s taught me,” Lindsay mumbled in surprise. “Does Romeo have asthma?”

  I shook my head.

  “He’s never had it in his life.”

  Lindsay glanced about desperately.

  “We’re against the use of conventional medicine here. Otherwise, I’m sure someone would have had an inhaler.”

  She edged Romeo’s head back a little further. At least, with his chest working away, I noticed it seemed he breathed a little easier. He gasped like a fish on land, but I could hear more breath pouring down his airways. A short while later, he panted in relief.

  “I’m better, Linds,” he whispered in a thin voice, reaching out and grasping her hand weakly.

  Lindsay bit at her lip.

  “Maybe we should go into town tomorrow and buy an inhaler,” she said. “Normally we wouldn’t do this. Our people usually become detoxified, and then they don’t suffer from any more health problems. But of course, Romeo hasn’t been here long enough to throw out all the toxins in him.”

  She stood up and spun in a circle, waving her hands wide in the air.

  “Look at this! Feel this, Annasuya! This is pure air. Pure land. Pure freedom from toxins and pollutants. The air here is too pure, too fresh and intense, for people who come from the poisoned outside world to take in all at once. You really ought to be drained little by little of all these things that ail you. Most adults have no problems, but I guess kids are more delicate.”

  I nodded, aghast. I had no idea how to reply.

  Lindsay reached out and grabbed Romeo in a bear hug, then hugged me too.

  “Well, I hope you can get some sleep for the rest of the night,” she said. “Wake-up call’s at seven. Normally we get up at six, but on Saturdays they allow us one extra hour of sleep. Nightie-night.”

  She waved at me, grinning mischievously the way the old Lindsay used to, then idled back
to her trailer.

  *

  The sun had barely peeked out over the trees outside our window when I heard loud strumming and drumbeats just on the other side of the flimsy walls of our trailer.

  “Good morning good morning good morning, it’s time to rise and shine. Good morning good morning good morning, I hope you’re feeling fine!” someone hollered right next to my ear.

  I rolled up the slanted windowpane of our trailer the slightest bit and peered out.

  A bloke with a gigantic cowboy hat plonked low over his stringy hair stood so close to the side of the trailer he could have leaned against it, grinning up at me.

  “Time to gather!” he boomed out. “We’re waiting for you in the main lodge.”

  I glanced at Romeo. At last, after the hellish night he’d passed, he had finally managed to get in some shut-eye, and I was loath to wake him. In the end I didn’t.

  I dressed myself in a long gown, although with the sleek scarlet satin it looked more like something you would wear to a soirée in New York than to a rustic meeting in the middle of the countryside, but it wasn’t like I was loaded with long dresses. I hated dresses. I pulled a hefty sweater over it, to face the northern morning air that even in summer cut into me with a chill edge.

  Up at the lodge people passed out mugs of some sort of herbal infusion. I asked for a bit of sugar. Chaya frowned at me.

  “Here we don’t use sugar,” she told me primly. “Sugar is full of poison. It clogs your veins, eats away at your brain cells and weakens muscles. You may have a bit of raw honey after the gathering.”

  Women whipped out colourful babushkas and settled on their seats. Men donned hats out of respect. This custom, I realized, was the same as the Jewish tradition of wearing a kippa, or skullcap.

  The gathering was a repeat of the previous night’s spectacle, with more half-hearted singing and more mechanical dancing. Someone read more Scripture. Then the whole crowd got to their feet and began yelling community dogma in unison.