by Zion's Fiction- A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature (retail) (epub)
Sheli and I have studied together since our first teaching day, when we were three. Most kids study on their own, facing the computer wall that connects them with their study groups, what used to be called in Grandpa’s old days a class, but Sheli and I persuaded our parents to allow us to be in the same room so we can talk face-to-face, not just through the computer. Every morning we take our hoverbikes and go either to her home or mine, and what I like most of all is to hear her whisper “Neri” in my ear when she asks for help in her homework.
On our common screensaver we are met every morning by Orion the Hunter in a picture taken from an ivory bas-relief created thirty-two centuries ago. At the back of this relief there are eighty-six slots, which is the number of the days of a woman’s pregnancy, and someday I’m going to count them one by one, when I’ll go to see this bas-relief at the Beijing Observatory.
Sheli is fond of the ancient legend about Artemis, the moon goddess of Greek mythology who’d fallen in love with the brave hunter, so much that she’d forgotten to light up the moon. Her brother Apollo, the sun god, got mad at her and decided to kill the hunter. He made her shoot an arrow at him by mistake, and Orion was killed. Poor Artemis placed her lover in heaven beside her, and this is how he lives forever, and since the days of Greek mythology, Orion’s light was the brightest in the sky. When Grandpa was a kid, it could be seen from everywhere on Earth. On my birthday cake Orion doesn’t look like the shiniest hunter in the world, but I forgive him, ’cause you can’t copy everything using candles.
We were waiting for our guests. Grandpa was napping in his special old folks’ armchair, and we promised to wake him up when the guests arrive for the party, but nobody came.
“Why are they so late?” I asked Sheli, hiding from her my fear that someday everyone I love will disappear suddenly, just like the starlight.
I put on the phosphorescent shoulder pads that always make us seen in the dark, and I put on the phosphorescent headband we also have to wear at night, and we went out to the balcony.
Sheli tried to encourage me: “Perhaps this will be the night when all the stars decide to light up again?”
From Tel Aviv’s artificial seaside came to us the noise of the crowds as they were stirring, and we could hear them praying all together: “… and bestow light for blessing on all the face of the earth.”
The sea looked like a blank tabletop made out of marble on which nothing was reflected, and from the balcony my birthday cake looked like a forgotten block of basalt. I was so disappointed. I thought that they forgot my birthday because of the annual rite.
We were leaning on the balustrade, watching the Heavenly Body Substitute Searchlight that lit up exactly at midnight to swing its mighty beam across the empty dome above us.
I asked, “Sheli, do you think that maybe on another planet there are two kids like us wondering where Earth has disappeared to?”
Sheli replied that she was sure that the universe was full of curious kids, even if they didn’t look like us. Alien children—that’s what she said—have hearts, and even if they cry without tears, they are just as sad as we are and just as happy, and they too discover ancient heroes up above and tell legends about them.
We almost fell asleep on the carpet when they finally arrived, Mom and Dad and my aunts, one of them with a new boyfriend, and some more friends from the Horsehead Nebula neighborhood where we live. Around Orion, on the cake, they stuck ten candles plus one, and I tried not to blow them out all at once so that some light could remain.
Then I opened my presents. Mom and Dad gave me TriDi spectacles that simulate the entire Milky Way galaxy, and one spinster aunt got me bedsheets with a Big Dipper pattern, and from Grandpa I got a phosphorescent soccer ball you can play with in the dark, and Grandpa promised me that we were going to score many goals with it. And from Sheli I got a computer game in which I’m an astronomer, discovering a lot of new stars and naming them. The first one we discovered she named after me, “Neri’s Star.”
Only my other spinster aunt gave me a massive book about extinct rhinos in Africa, saying shrewishly, “You’re a big boy now, Neri. It’s time to grow up. Enough already with your fascination with the stars. A whole lot of good they were, one should think. Just a decoration, that’s what they were.”
Auntie had met her new boyfriend at a demonstration of the Movement against Star Worship. Her headband bore a sticker with the inscription “Stars belong only in movies.”
Grandpa was a bit miffed with his wayward daughter and made a wish for me that on my next birthday all the stars will light up again, and he felt certain that I won’t miss that moment. He also wished that he, too, will still be with us then.
If it won’t happen on my next birthday, then maybe on the following one.
When all the birthday leftovers were cleared, Mom and Dad sat together with Grandpa, and my two spinster aunts with their new friend went to sleep. I went out to the balcony again, this time without my phosphorescent shoulder pads and headband. I was swallowed by darkness. Sheli came out after me, and we reached out and held hands.
I whispered into the black sky: “Orion, my shining friend, I will always follow you. Like you, I will be a hunter of stars.”
The Believers
Nir Yaniv
In God’s Name
The old woman in the grocery store stares at the floor and doesn’t look up. She examines the date printed on a chunk of cheese, and her hand shakes. She turns around, and the cheese drops from her hand into one of the two carts nearby.
It’s the wrong cart, and a small child sees the cheese fall, then hit a pack of frozen chicken legs. There’s a terrible tearing noise, and the old woman is split in two. Blood and stomach and intestines spray all over the place, and then there’s a gargling noise, and then silence.
Everyone ignores this, each keeping his or her head down. Except for the little boy, who’s waiting patiently with his mother in the line in front of the cash register.
He still doesn’t understand the need to lower one’s head. His mother covers his ears and eyes with her hands, but it’s too late. It’s oh so late. From somewhere in the air comes the sound of the beating of wings.
Next Tuesday I’m going to have a meeting with a machine that will change my life. My head will be put inside a big gray plastic egg, wires and tubes protruding out of its top. I’ll spend an hour like that. When I get out, I won’t be the same person that I am now.
I will not be the only person to be changed like that. There are many others. Or maybe just a few.
I don’t know, I’m not supposed to know, I don’t want to know. I know just this: maybe when we all are changed, we’ll be able, at last, to kill God.
Today, when I think of it, I understand that the incident at the grocery store was the first time that I saw the Hand of God. Until then my life seemed pretty safe, and I had no clue of what could happen to anyone who is careless about anything to do with the divine. Which is, after all, everything.
God took mercy on the children, of course He did. God never punishes the young ones—but only because He needs a steady supply of adults.
God examines kidneys and heart, but not those of everyone at the same time. Not because He can’t, but because He’s bored by it. Or maybe it’s just laziness. Some of us consider this good fortune, and the rest prefer to believe that He knows exactly what they think of Him and does whatever He feels like doing, just let them stop pretending and fulfilling the commandments.
Those people have a problem. All of us have a problem. Because God has a terrible personality.
If I think about this too much He’ll notice me. Let’s change the subject. Here’s a subject that is, paradoxically, rather safe: belief.
This reminds me of my first argument with Gabi, when he told me about his underground movement, the Atheists.
“I fail to understand how you can disbelieve something that exists,” I said. “Especially when it’s something as explicit as God.”
“And we fail to understand how you can believe something that doesn’t exist,” Gabi said. “Like the way God was until a few years ago.”
Several dozen years, but who’s counting.
“And also,” he added, “after we finish with Him, He won’t exist anymore.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by thinking about it. I think that I’m thinking too much about this right now.
Change of subject.
Here’s how we met: I sat on a stone bench in the public garden, by the fountain, too close to it. The spray hit me from time to time. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. On other benches, mothers sat with their children, a herd of coifs and hats and children’s toys. No one wanted to sit near me. No one but Gabi, who popped out of somewhere, sat by me, and said, “I know.”
“What?” I said.
“I know exactly how you’re feeling.”
He didn’t smile.
“You have no idea,” I said.
“Look at me,” he said. “Raise your head and look.”
I did that, and I saw. The absence. The emptiness, huge, engulfing, drowning, whining. The soul, perforated, defiled, that will never be the way it was. I saw the vast hole in it, gaping, and I knew that it was just like mine.
“Go away,” I said. I wanted to hold him, to hug him, to merge with him. I added, “Leave me alone.”
“Just like I told you,” he said. “I know how you feel. And I have a solution.”
“Please,” I said. “Please, go away.”
He did, but only in order to return.
The young boy and his mother stand by the table. Two candles for the Sabbath, fresh Sabbath bread, covered. The mother reaches out for the prayer book, the Siddur.
“Mother,” the boy says and points with his finger, “Mother, no, it’s not right, wait a moment,” but it’s too late.
It’s always too late. It has always been too late. And now, just a moment after the sound of sucking and pumping and pulling and absorbing, the dried body of the mother, sans blood and bones and flesh and tendons and cartilages and mucus, drops, very slowly, paper-thin, hovers down dreamily to the floor, then rests.
God’s first appearance occurred before I was born. I have heard old people tell tales of life before it, the way the world was set. Some of them—most of them—remember it fondly. Some say that it was horrible, everyone doing whatever they wanted to, Sodom and Gomorrah, impurity, abomination, sin, chaos. All of them, always, miss it. That was before I was born. I miss it too.
“You want me,” Gabi said.
“You know the punishment for male inter….”
“Don’t say it,” he said.
I didn’t understand what was going on inside me. Yes, I “wanted” him. To be with him. To touch him. The idea had never occurred to me before. On the contrary: the mere thought of … deviants—that’s the safe word at the moment, the word that won’t attract His attention—nauseated me. Undoubtedly God felt that way too. And then Gabi appeared, and….
“I don’t want to make it hard on you,” he said. It took some time for both of us to catch the double meaning. Yes, the punishment for the forbidden intercourse is death. As are most punishments, these days.
But when it comes to this particular sin, the reaction is particularly quick and harsh. And I thought to myself, maybe I’m not really interested in Gabi. Maybe I just want to die. Maybe I’m just aiming for the most horrible possible death. How far from the truth can you be?
I had a girlfriend once. A long time ago. We couldn’t hold ourselves back. We never thought of getting married, or even engaged. We knew, of course we knew, but the urge was too strong. We slept together. We took pleasure in each other. Exhausted, sweating, happy, we fell asleep.
A weird smell woke me up in the morning. Just beside me, in bed, a gray-red-purple sack, moist, dripping, wet. Still twitching. Fluttering about. My girlfriend, turned from the inside out.
A Jew who believes in God doesn’t believe that God exists. Existence is a matter for God’s creation, not for God himself. Attributing existence to God means lowering Him to our level, the level of the stone and the bush and the animal and the man and the rest. Unfortunately, God has never heard of that. And if He has, He has never shown any interest.
A young man bumps into a girl in the library. In his hands there are several forbidden books, which he found on one of the shelves in the back, a place forgotten by the censors. She clutches in her hands a thin booklet, “Dreams of Angels.”
Her face is small, delicate, drawn in thin, sharp lines. They both apologize, smiling shyly. The next day they have dinner together. The next evening they sit in his apartment. He fights the urge, and the guilt—he still remembers his previous girlfriend’s death.
She, without delay, gets out of her clothes. He says, “No!” She smiles, spreads two white wings. She, or he, no gender, no guilt. An angel.
The young man discovers a new form of attraction. He cannot stop looking. The angel is his whole world now, his whole life. Without the angel, his existence is meaningless. And the angel, without gender or guilt, and as the future will show, without any particular meaning, approaches, grows, touches. Penetrates.
It’s impossible to explain what happens to you when an angel penetrates you.
It’s not physical—you wish it was, for then at least you would be left with something of your own. No, your body remains untouched, unfelt, unnoticed, even pure, while the angel penetrates the only place that really matters. You feel it swelling and widening and expanding within you, and then you’re gone.
Superficially, you’re still there, imprisoned in your corporeal body, but it is your mind that has been defiled, and your self isn’t there anymore, and the person you were will never be anymore. And when the angel departs it leaves a hole in you, an empty space, a place that it occupied and that you can never, ever fill again. All of us, all of the people who will visit the machine next week, have such an empty space in the place where we used to have souls.
Know All Tuesday, twice blessed, I walk slowly on my quest, my mind deliberately at rest. Every step gets me closer to the address I was given, an abandoned warehouse in the old industrial zone. I wonder who, of all the people around me, I will meet there, if any, and then silence the thought. The sun shines, it’s a nice day, and those, if I manage it, are going to be my only thoughts till I arrive.
“What are you going to do?” I shouted. “How exactly are you going to fight … ?”
Gabi reached out and covered my mouth with his hand, then hugged me. “I fight no one,” he whispered, “but there are more people like us. And, you don’t understand this yet, but there’s something unique about us.”
I pushed him away. “I feel this uniqueness all the time,” I said. “I’m not impressed by it.”
“Oh, it’s not only what you feel. We have other qualities. I … I don’t fully understand it myself, but there’s someone who does. We call him the Know All.”
“And that person, did he explain to you everything about those ‘qualities’ of ours?”
“Not in any words that you or I can understand. But that doesn’t matter. He’s building a machine that will set us free. In several days there’ll be a meeting, and you’ll be able to listen to him for yourself.”
I didn’t answer. It sounded too ludicrous. Some mad scientist builds a silly contraption from springs and coils in his basement laboratory, and a bunch of retards dance around him, hoping for salvation. How pathetic.
I agreed to go anyway. Never underestimate the power of hope, ludicrous as it may be.
We saw from afar the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire. When we arrived at the street, it was already clean. Not much was left of the machine or the Know All, or of the building in which they had once resided. Gabi was desperate to get closer, to look for remains, but I held him back and forcibly dragged him away.
That night we almost committed the deadly sin. We felt suicidal. It was Gabi who sav
ed us, at the last moment.
“No,” he said. “This can’t be the end. The Know All was smart enough to know that this could happen to him.”
I wanted to say that it didn’t sound very smart, losing your life like that, but the sarcasm got stuck in my throat.
“Get up,” Gabi said. “Get dressed. We’re going out.”
We went to a place I didn’t know, a safe house in which, so Gabi said, some of the Atheists’ meetings and some of the Know All’s famous speeches had taken place. One small room, without a bed, without chairs, just one desk, and on it a stack of papers, and on the top one a title: “The Tower of Babylon.”
And under it—diagrams, drawings, descriptions.
“I knew it,” Gabi said. “I knew it.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” I asked. “What’s this about the Tower of Babylon?”
“I don’t know. Let’s take it home and figure it out there.”
And the whole Earth was of one language, and of one speech, in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.
And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. And the LORD said, Behold, the people are one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off building the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
“What does that mean?” I asked.