by Tamara Avner
“Hell is other people, isn’t it?” I tell her and that usually shuts her up. Truth has a paralyzing effect.
Sometimes the inmate count comes up short or with more inmates than there are supposed to be. In those cases, they ring the prison alarm and call everyone for a recount.
The jail siren goes on for an entire minute and if I’m feeling well enough I get off my bed, take off my shoes and do a headstand in the middle of my cell.
This new girl I met today on my way out to “the cage” says that she’s like a plane that’s taking off from Louisiana.
“I used to be a programmer for Rafael Defense Systems”, she tells me and before I can respond, she drones on with her monotonous voice: “I have to refuel in-flight so I can carry plenty munitions, so I can drop B-52 bombs on Afghanistan and Iraq, while avoiding detection by Russian, Chinese and Taiwanese satellites. Then I fly back to my home base in Louisiana and land for some R&R. I resupply all the necessary equipment, refuel and go off on the next mission”.
“Wow”, I am so impressed. I’m not being cynical, I really am. I’m literally astounded.
“This is just a pit stop”, she says, reassured by my reaction.
“I’ll be going out on another strike soon. I might crash. I might not get a chance to come home”.
“It’s not easy”, I tell her, “that’s a pretty harsh life”.
“It is what it is”, she says and we share an understanding silence.
Rakefet four-eyes comes knocking with Dr. Squeak’s report. Hold on to your seats – I am legally competent to stand trial. I can tell the difference between good and bad, a veritable Eve after eating the proverbial apple. She asks me if I want to read the report and I say no. She can’t help herself. With all her kindness, she still wants to add her two cents to the conversation. “He does say, though, that you’ve got a borderline personality disorder and you occasionally have difficulties distinguishing fantasy from reality”, she says, patting the sides of her thighs with her hands.
“So, and…?”
“So we might be able to use that later during sentencing, if we can’t…”
“When we get to the sentencing we can call in the whole top brass, if you still haven’t figured that out”.
Rakefet paces back and forth in the cell and stops right in front of me.
“Well? Out with it”, I blurt out.
“That’s the thing, I talked to this Minerva guy you told me to contact…”
“Yes, and…”
“So the thing is… He didn’t really remember you, Rakefet”. She looks at me through the lenses of her glasses. “I’m sorry”.
What’s nice is that she really is sorry, our kind-hearted little four-eyes, the innocent shepherd, galloping on her golden ponies.
“Well, what did you think he would say? That son of a bitch”. I can’t hold him responsible. Seriously, what did we expect?
Rakefet gathers her papers and turns to leave.
“Oh, yeah, I also talked to Adva”.
“What Adva?”
“Adva Jarby… The prison’s mental health officer…?”
“Oh, that Adva Jarby”.
“She wants to see you. I can try and arrange…”
“What for?”
“She can help us. She says there’s no way you could have been involved with Nicolai Gurvitz, she says you only worked at the office, taking care of the records, you didn’t even have access…”
I am frozen stiff. If I had the strength, if I was my old self again, I would be all over her, screaming: “That she-horse can say whatever she wants! I would like to remind you, Ms. Rakefet the spectacled cobra, that I was a major in that office of hers, that I spent six months practically by myself in that office!” and she would reply: “Yes, you did… When she was on maternity leave, Rakefet…” sliding her palms down her tailored black pants. The old me would have bothered to explain to her, as harshly as necessary, that that was how systems covered their own asses, that no one will ever admit to the amount of authority I wielded in practice, to all the dirty moves they were content to let me pull for them, that no one really knew about the double life I was leading, about me being a substitute player from the day I was born, through childhood, adolescence, army service, and that no one really cared, as long as they could use me and my skills for their own benefit.
I can feel all the air draining from my brain. If I was still the old Rakefet that I used to be just a few months ago, I would have gotten up and kicked that Rakefet right out of the room with all her paperwork, shouting at the guard to send her off to hell. Another sucker who reads psychiatric opinions and thinks whoever wrote them has the sun shining out of their ass.
But I’m not that person anymore. Surrender has been taking hold of every decent piece inside me, taking possession of who I am.
Reject love
Reject dream
Reject pain
Be still.
I am notified that my mother has died.
A police vehicle takes me to the Kiryat Shaul cemetery in Tel Aviv. I’m in the back seat. Nicole and another guard from the women’s prison are watching my back.
They lead me through the cemetery gate and into the purification room, where a kind-eyed representative of the Chevra Kadisha meets me and asks me to identify the deceased, since “your father can no longer identify her, so that you are the only descendant, after Zvi-Israel Aurbach, who has already left us”, as he thoroughly explains.
To my surprise, the room is well lit. Much too well for death. A neon light is flickering over our heads while the deceased, my mother, is lying at the center of the room, covered with a black sheet.
Nicole and the other guard stay behind and I am expected to walk the walk of the living to the land of the dead all by myself.
The bearded Chevra Kadisha fellow slowly raises the black sheet, revealing my mother’s face.
I come closer, as close to her as I can, and look at her, at my mother lying there. I take a good long look, maybe for the first time, and I see her, maybe for the first time.
I scan every wrinkle, every crack around her closed eyes, every slit in her lips, no longer clenched so tight, resting now like loose hair bands for her short, un-gathered hair.
“I know, mom”, I finally say to her. “It’s okay, don’t worry”, gently running my palm on her cold hand.
Right before leaving her there, I smile at her, just to make sure.
My inner winds lie dormant for most of the day.
Sometimes I remember all sorts of things. Like the box I promised to open for you one day. Well, sometimes black boxes stay sealed forever, despite all our promises, despite the fact that they may have been opened, but not at all at the right time or the right way they were supposed to be.
You should keep that in mind.
And don’t believe everything you’re told. It’s not like there is just one truth, anyway.
The original black box ended up disappearing. I picture it rotting away in some dump, lying under putrid mounds of garbage and waste.
All this, of course, is a reference to Freud’s topographic model – the unconscious that lies buried deep within our psyche, forever unattainable. That’s where my box is, like a useless heirloom.
I don’t think about Oded Stenger anymore, or about all the other things that happened to me recently, since I found out about Zvika.
What did I ask for? I only wanted to get rid of some blackheads, to drain out the acne, and even though it’s so gross and even though it hurts so much, the desire to cleanse myself was too powerful.
When I can think clearly enough, I think about my brother Zvika. Zvika who died five different deaths and still hasn’t found his eternal rest. Zvika, who started out by dying in the war and then committed suicide and was then shot by friendly fire, by some gun that went off by accident (which is just a metaphor for how we kill each other in this country, Jews killing Jews at the altar of the Arab lamb, I explain to myself), and then killed
himself again under shameful circumstances and was finally killed one last time by his own friends, this time maliciously. Five different deaths.
With one result – one bereavement.
And then, when I can think a little too clearly, when the endless sky grows too yellow inside me, when everything turns raw and cuts down to the bone, I can hear that woman in the other room again, screaming that she wants to die so she could live.
“You are at your most human when you crash”, I can hear the Louisiana jet fighter solemnly say in ‘the cage’.
When my thoughts grow hazy again, I can see things much more clearly. It’s a kind of inner vision. I can clearly hear the birds chirping, the shots sounding in the canteen, the rabbits running. A kind of inner hearing. I am turning into this magical ruby for my own sake, I don’t need to be reflected in anyone’s eyes anymore. It’s a kind of place that I’ve reached recently, at the end of a long blind journey. A place of great submission.
I ask him:
What’s better Zvika? What’s better?
I ask him.
He gives me an ear to ear smiley-face smile and his fat face is all aglow.
I smile back at him. A real smile, no crazy stuff.
“Which do you prefer, Zviki. Whadda you say? At the end of the day, at the end of all days, which do you prefer? To live so you could die or to die so you could live?
I ask him.
And with his lisp and his lazy tongue, he gives me all his answers.