Jews vs Aliens

by Naomi Alderman

  That same boy is here, asking her about Odessa.

  ‘We’ve heard about your bravery in the revolution and fighting the pogromists,’ says Yankel.

  She’s an Odessa mama again!

  Revolution? It had only gone halfway.

  Brave? Years ago, Raizl had been terrified just to knock on this young man’s door. And how brave had she been in Odessa?

  She remembers a Jewish woman with wild hair running up to their group, throwing a stone at their banner. At the time, they were marching in response to the Czar’s reform manifesto. This woman didn’t think they were brave.

  ‘You bastards! They are chopping people up over there and here you are taking a little stroll. Your banners mean less than bupkes.’

  So they rushed over to the woman’s neighbourhood and stopped the attacks. They did save lives on that street. But they were too late or too few to stop other crimes.

  A mother hung upside down by her legs, with the bodies of her six children arranged in a circle below.

  A baby thrown out of a window.

  It would’ve been much worse if we hadn’t acted, Raizl tells herself.

  Raizl tries to share what she knows, though it doesn’t seem to be enough. She tells them that non-Jewish workers helped by forming self-defence groups and supporting pogrom victims. Railway workers, metal workers, sailors… But others? Maybe it was a worker who had thrown that baby out of the window.

  Yankel says they have support from a socialist doctor called Oleg, plus other local activists. Some peasants are sympathetic, especially those who’ve been working or trading with Jewish families. But many others don’t have these ties.

  Then they get on to shooting practice. Only a few have guns. Some are very old: something a father kept from conscript days. A few have Bulldog guns like hers. No rifles or bayonets.

  ‘A comrade from Odessa will try to bring more arms. In the meantime, we can practise with what we have. And remember, we do a lot with an iron pole, especially if our blacksmith modified it with spikes,’ says Raizl.

  Those who know how to shoot show the newer recruits, aiming first for the lower branches in trees. Yankel suggests the best thing for target practice would be a portrait of the Czar, but who would have such a thing?

  Someone shoots a partridge. This is met with cheers. Then they begin shooting at other birds. There’ll be a good meal after the practice, even if it’s not kosher. matzo balls might not go well with partridge soup, but their catch should make a good stew.

  Raizl concentrates on instructing the girls. She takes Sheindl aside, holds her arm and warns her to prepare for the recoil.

  Then there’s a crashing in the undergrowth.

  Thank goodness no one has a jumpy trigger finger, because it’s only Samuel.

  ‘How did you know we were here?’ She’s pleased, thinking he wants to join them.

  ‘We heard you! We’re not deaf!’

  Raizl nods, and introduces Samuel to her comrades. ‘My brother.’

  ‘The tzaddik is dead,’ says Samuel. His eyes are red as if he’s been crying. ‘He’s been murdered. And the Hasids were asking for all of you to guard the funeral.’

  ‘Tzaddik Avrom only wanted to look at the stars. That’s what the rebbe said. He went out walking to look at the stars, and they killed him.’

  Raizl tries to console Samuel. She doesn’t think she has anything left for that while she mourns Leah. But she is surprised how grief lightens when it is shared.

  She is also surprised that the Hasidic community asked the Bund for help. Jewish elders usually petition the authorities for protection, but they must have seen indifference from the police when they reported the murder of an itinerant tzaddik.

  Their group will stand guard outside the synagogue, then flank the procession to the cemetery.

  The Bundists arrive well before the mourners with about forty in their group, including sympathisers from other parties. All have guns or poles, prepared for trouble.

  A clot of people are already standing near the Hasidic synagogue. Raizl recognises a few faces. A local landowner, a horse merchant, some young labourers. All these people glare and swear when their group arrives.

  But she catches nervous glances among the Jew-haters. Perhaps they don’t expect resistance from Hasidic funeral-goers.

  Could the murderer be among this crowd, or is he lurking further in the shadows?

  ‘Mamzers,’ mutters Sheindl. ‘Surprised to see us, are they? Think we’ll go like lambs to the slaughter…’

  ‘Mamzers they are, but you don’t shoot now,’ says Raizl. She can see that Sheindl’s on edge, her hand clutched around the gun in her pocket.

  There’s nudging from the other side, and one of them shouts out as if on a dare: ‘What are you doing here? Not a beard among you. Are you Jews or just Jew lovers?’

  Sheindl has to shout back: ‘And what are you, if you have nothing better to do than hang around here?’

  ‘I used to have a job but a Jew took it away.’

  Now the mourners are arriving. They hesitate at the sight of the hostile bunch. A woman holds her hands up in supplication.

  ‘Bugger off to Japan or Palestine!’

  The Bundists surround the mourners, creating a protective corridor so they can file into the temple. Most of them weep. But Raizl is dry-eyed. She has no tears to spare for a man she’s never met, but she will defend those who mourn him.

  ‘One Jew down, too many to go.’

  The man who calls that out gets too close and receives a warning poke with a pole. ‘Think you’re tough with your little sticks,’ he sneers as he backs off. ‘You won’t do so well next time.’

  But with the mourners all in the synagogue, the Jew-haters start to get bored and drift away.

  The young Bundists grin at each other. By standing together, they’ve seen the trouble off. The funeral prayers wafting from the synagogue do little to dim their enthusiasm. Yisgadal, v’yisgadal… the mourners’ kaddish.

  Last time Raizl heard that was at her father’s funeral.

  Now the mourners file out of the temple with the coffin. Their Hasidic garments make a ribbon of black against the brown and grey fields, heading to the cemetery.

  As they march out with the mourners, Raizl sees dark figures at the top of the hill. These are not the departing louts, but gentlemen who sit like officers on their horses. Watching. And waiting, she fears.

  On her way home, Raizl watches Samuel and Lev disappear into the woods. The boys are up to something. She follows them.

  ‘Hello, little brother. What are you doing?’

  They react with shrugging and shuffling. Then Samuel replies, ‘We’re just talking. We know there’s going to be trouble. We have to do something.’

  ‘You should have joined our shooting practice.’

  ‘But will a few more shooters hold off the Black Hundreds and their friends in the army? You said that yourself the other day,’ argues Samuel.

  For a kid whose head is filled with mystical nonsense, sometimes Samuel asks the right questions. The sad ones.

  ‘So you are right. Like a broken clock. But what do you suggest?’

  The three look at each other. ‘We’ve only started to talk,’ says Samuel.

  ‘I know! We can raise a golem,’ says Lev.

  ‘A golem! Something out of fairy tales. Are you mad?’

  ‘I think I’ve worked out what went wrong with our formula last year,’ continues Lev.

  ‘Last year indeed!’ Samuel’s contempt for the idea matches Raizl’s. ‘Golems! You are lost in the sixteenth century! What good is a man of clay and stone when our enemies can blow it up. Boom! We need more than a golem. And the answer could be in here.’

  He pulls a book from out of the inner pocket of his coat. ‘The Book of Deborah. I… found it on the ground near the tzaddik, along with a telescope.’

  He looks around as if expecting condemnation. ‘It was meant to be,’ he adds.

  ‘I don’
t know about what was meant and what was not. This book might be a lot of dreck.’ says Raizl. ‘But you did the right thing. The village police could have stolen it. You know what that schmuck of a constable is like.’

  ‘This book is not dreck,’ Samuel shouts. ‘It contains the words of the prophetess Deborah, and her instructions on how to contact other worlds. These are worlds beyond Mars, beyond our own star. This is a world circling the star Meroz.’

  ‘A curse on Meroz and all its inhabitants,’ quotes Lev. ‘Deborah cursed these creatures. So who needs them now?’

  ‘And how will we bring them here?’ Raizl considers War of the Worlds. ‘And why? Maybe they won’t be our friends. They could be worse than the Cossacks. Did you think of that?’

  ‘No, no… Deborah cursed them for what they didn’t do. They wouldn’t help the Israelites, and she cursed them by closing the passage point. But in this book, she says she regretted this action. She believes there may be ways to stir them to action, and future generations might need to reopen the point of passage. She also believed it can be a source of knowledge.’

  ‘So what’s this “passage point”? Not an airship or flying machine?’

  ‘No ships or machinery are involved, only the principles of ”kefitzat haderech”’, making the roads leap,’ says Samuel. ‘It creates the passageway that enables you to move from one place to another in an instant. Except it involves the sky, and bending the substance of space.’

  ‘Pah!’

  ‘It’s like this.’ Samuel takes off his tallis, spreads it on a rock and puts his fingers on it on either side of the rock. ‘Think of this tallis as space, as the distance you need to travel. So you close the space like this...’ He draws his fingers together, folding the material, until his fingertips are touching. ‘The crumpling of the sky!’

  ‘Very clever. So this book tells you how to do that? Can I see it?’

  Samuel places the book in her hands.

  It isn’t very big. If it contained such extensive secrets, Deborah must have made her points quickly. Now, if only Marx had done the same.

  Raizl opens it to pages of Hebrew. She knows a smattering of Hebrew from synagogue, but it’s a ‘sacred’ language not meant for women. Hebrew was never a language of food, love, work and life for her. Yiddish is her mother tongue, her mame loshen.

  But the Hebrew in this book would have been Deborah’s mame loshen.

  The illustrations in the book are simple line drawings, but they are striking. They compel her eyes to see something more than what’s there. This book must have historical value, even if it’s only a made-up story like War of the Worlds.

  Raizl tries to keep an open mind as they prepare. Ritual has its place for unbelievers as well as the devout. After Bund meetings, they link arms and sing ‘In Struggle’, ‘The Oath’ and the ‘Internationale’.

  And of course, they have a meal.

  The boys take turns reading from Deborah’s book.

  There are other worlds around other stars, but this is the only path I was able to open. It may be due to the celestial creatures’ nature, and ours. Perhaps the other worlds cannot be reached for good reasons.

  I say ‘celestial’ and not ‘divine’. Celestial pertains to the stars and the sky. They are part of the natural order made by our creator; they do not stand above it.

  ‘Creator?’ Raizl interrupts. ‘There is no creator.’

  ‘Shut up,’ says Samuel. ‘Do you want to hear this or not?’

  ‘This is why we don’t allow women to take part in rituals,’ says Lev, stroking his barely sprouted beard.

  ‘Deborah was a woman,’ Raizl points out.

  ‘Raizl has a point, Lev. Deborah was a woman. She communicated with celestial beings and had the power to open and close the gate to them.’

  ‘Your sister is no prophetess,’ argues Lev.

  ‘You bet your tuches I’m not. And what’s with ‘prophecy’ when we have ‘free will’? How free can we be with some big zayde in the sky?’

  Lev is about to retort when Samuel holds his hand up. ‘Stop! We can discuss this later. This isn’t a Talmudic talking shop, we need to plan something.’

  A few lines in the Talmud, a secret book from a dead tzaddik. Yet scientists and socialists like Mr Wells have also speculated about life beyond the earth.

  So how do these other-worlders live? In these worlds, do some prosper while others grow poor? Do they have social and economic classes?

  Now that makes sense, Raizl thinks. We will ask the workers from another planet to join in solidarity in our fight against the police, the Czar and pogromists.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ says Raizl. ‘But we do it along with other self-defence efforts.’

  ‘Whatever you want, sister’ says Samuel, as he opens the book to another section. ‘This part is called “Preparing the Table”. Now, Deborah says there are variations. There’s a sequence that worked for her, but many things can affect the contact. She says these beings are volatile.’

  ‘Volatile! Sounds like what we need,’ says Raizl. ‘So let’s be clear: there’s no fasting or mortifying our flesh? I won’t be having that.’

  ‘No fasting. No mortifying – only fortifying. But it’s more than that. Deborah says “celestial sustenance” can connect the worlds.’

  ‘Well, well, a universal nosh! But how do you know what these beings like? Deborah’s people ate differently from us, I’m sure.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. It’s most important that the banquet is enjoyed by those who prepare it.’

  ‘You mean it’s me doing the preparing.’

  The two boys look at each other and shuffle about in that abashed-boy way.

  ‘But that’s not how it will be,’ Raizl insists. ‘You’ll have to make yourself useful in the kitchen. Both of you.’

  Carrot tzimmes with honey and raisins, potato kugel and sweet noodle kugel. Hunks of barley bread to mop up the juices. Soup from the remains of Friday’s chicken.

  ‘You better get grating and chopping. Down to the knuckle, boys.’

  ‘Ha, you’re as bad as Chaim the tailor.’

  ‘No, this is cooperative work. See, I get my hands dirty too, alongside you. And they’re your guests anyway.

  Raizl starts singing ‘In Struggle’, a favourite workers’ anthem, as she mashes fish and crumbs together. ‘We are the hated and driven, Tortured and persecuted, even to blood… ‘Tis because we love the poor, The masses of mankind, who starve for food.’

  Raizl chuckles to think she’s preparing food while singing a song about the starving masses. But she’s learned how to make a little go far: lots of matzo meal and seasoning. Short of revolution and expropriation, this helps fill the belly.

  ‘We are shot down, and on the gallows hanged, Robbed of our lives and freedom without ruth –’

  ‘Stop it!’ Samuel complains. ‘Yes, we all suffer. But do we have to suffer more? At least the Hasids play tunes that are good for dancing.’

  ‘I’ll think about changing the music after you do some work.’

  Samuel shrugs, then closes the shutters.

  ‘And what’s that for? How do we make the sky crumple when we can’t see it?’

  Samuel opens Deborah’s book and reads: ‘The sky is space, and space is everywhere even when it is enclosed.’

  ‘Space, schmace!’ Raizl carries on with the preparations. But in keeping with the theme, she shapes the rugelach like stars.

  When everything’s bubbling on the stove, the boys spread a bed sheet out on the floor and begin drawing diagrams with charcoal and pens.

  What are they doing to that sheet? These scholars will have to learn to do the washing too.

  Samuel labels eight places at the table, and several in the middle. He adds lines around it, a vortex of rings around the centre, plus other figures.

  ‘It’s the Tree of Life,’ says Samuel.

  ‘Whatever you say, little brother.’

  He draws lines linking the circles together,
creating pathways and a central vortex. ‘And the food goes here.’

  So the table is set, and they place the food on the sheet following the symbols and geometrical figures from the Book of Deborah.

  Finally, the rugelach is ready, warm and fragrant from the oven. Raizl hovers with the plate, then plonks it down on the trunk of the Tree of Life, in the centre.

  ‘Tiptheret!’ exclaims Lev. ‘It stands for beauty. And it’s where the synthesis of opposites meet.’

  ‘Well, it’s where we find a plate of rugelach, our mother’s best recipe. I put poppy seed in them and…’

  The boys begin davening and genuflecting towards the food.

  ‘Stop it. Eat!’ orders Raizl as she picks up her knife and fork.

  She is tasting every piece of gefilte fish she ever ate in this mouthful.

  Then the carrot tsimmes is sweet and savoury at once. With nourishment of the chicken soup flowing into her veins, the symbols on their improvised tablecloth begin to make sense. That one there, under the plate of rugelach, does indeed look like an opening, a tunnel.

  ‘Look, we’ve fortified ourselves. Now we carry on the ritual,’ says Lev.

  The boys start to chant what sounds like a series of numbers, pronounced in many languages as well as Hebrew. It puzzles Raizl. Singing the ‘Internationale’ might be a ritual too, but she knows what it means. It inspires her. But this?

  ‘Raizl, you look confused. The chanting frees our awareness to travel and open the path,’ says Samuel.

  ‘So tell me, how do we chant and eat at the same time?’

  ‘Stop with your squabbles,’ interrupts Lev. ‘We have a road to make rise, and a sky to crumple! Or have you two forgotten?’

  ‘But I’m asking a perfectly good question.’

  ‘So here’s a perfectly good answer. The chanting is a kind of verbal alchemy. By forming these words, then changing its letters, we can change the nature of reality – or in our case, the distance between two worlds.’

  ‘Alchemy, you say? So maybe food is an alchemy of the stomach. An alchemy of taste and scent as well as words and sound. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.’ How she hated that phrase when she was growing up. On the other hand, her home cooking did impress Arkady and all her comrades.