Zion's Fiction

by Zion's Fiction- A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature (retail) (epub)

  Gila also began to prepare the Pole with hints, with movements he was quick to grasp, with a quick, conspiratorial smile he understood well, and inflamed by the fire burning in her, the passion that had already begun to wane in him ignited into a surprising blaze. One night, as if by chance, after she had quieted the child and the sick man with a fruit extract that would keep them asleep for half a day, she and the man went out to the wrought iron bench at the far end of the garden.

  The distant slam of a door came first, and they fell silent, stunned, the way it sometimes happens when events are expected. The man withdrew into himself and dropped his chin down to his chest, a sign that she was familiar with. Then they both tried unsuccessfully to shut out the sounds that assailed their ears, sounds that seemed to be shattering bone and penetrating veins and poisoning the body from within; spreading over house, the back garden, the garden of monsters, and the pestilent area to beyond the row of trees in the east and beyond the low mountain ridges in the west; echoing to the edges of the horizon: first the shrill, surprised cries of fear, and then the determined attempts to regain composure, the wild, courageous but futile rebellion; then the horrifying, despairing comprehension and the beginning of the body’s surrender, the shift to a stream of explaining, scolding, pleading words; and suddenly the sobbing, the screaming that shook the blood vessels, the persistent pounding that sought to break through the imprisoning wall, the continual weeping like a siren, the harsh sounds of scraping like iron combs plowing the walls, the animal groans coming not from her throat but from the depths of her loins, the desperate sobs and then the wailing, slashing shrieks, the choking roars that make the throat swell; then the sudden silence of choked breathing and the submissive, sinking whimpering, feeble grunting, the squeaking of the door to the Pole’s room as it opened and closed when he went to his bed.

  And then silence prevailed: deep, dark, full of fear and guilt. They did not go up to their room that night. From the moment they heard the sounds blaring from the house and restrained themselves for the sake of the future, they sat in silence, cut off from one another, looking inward, trying to formulate for themselves their individual stories about what had taken place. Even after the long, mournful sobbing subsided, they did not go to their bed but continued to sit silently until the sun, surprising in its splendor, rose over the heavy treetops and so generously illuminated the wide sky and the fields—made them gleam in the first light—and she suddenly remembered a school trip and the breathtaking sunrise that had turned the Judean Hills pink.

  In the morning, wrapped in the sweetness of slumber, silent and sleepy, the child slipped between them, and they made room for him. “I dreamed that the nun was screaming,” the child said.

  “In dreams, everyone is always screaming,” the man said and wrapped the child’s small, bare feet in the edge of his shirt.

  Gila stroked his disheveled hair and said, “Look, sweetie. Look at what a beautiful sunrise we have today.”

  Death in Jerusalem

  Elana Gomel

  The crowd is sprinkled with Arabs in galabieh, Orthodox Jews in dusty black coats, and young girls with navel rings. People jostle and push against each other. But Mor walks freely through the crush of bodies, buoyed by the roundness of her stomach, her gaily colored maternity dress glued to it by perspiration. People respect fertility in Jerusalem.

  She is relieved when she reaches the old residential area of Rehavia. The ghostly echo of prewar Europe lingers in the narrow alleyways lined with unkempt gardens. She opens the gate into the small courtyard where a rusted bicycle rests in the meager shadow of an ancient wisteria. The heat is killing her. Leaning against the wall to catch her breath, she closes her eyes and tries to cool off with a memory of blue steel and frozen candlelight.

  The evening is almost bearable. This is the blessing of hilly Jerusalem as opposed to humid Tel Aviv, where summer heat lies on the land like a rotting corpse. As the sunset fades to lilac, Mor takes a shower and gingerly lowers herself into the beanbag in front of the TV. Channels flicker in a litany of war, famine, and disease.

  She goes to bed early. Stretching on her back, she holds her breath, waiting for the baby’s kick, and falls asleep, still waiting.

  The scrape of a chair and a man’s voice saying: “May I?”

  The morning was hot, cloudless and blue, as all mornings would be for the next three months. But the man who sat by her in the campus cafeteria smelled of rain and fog. He smiled: his teeth were white and impossibly even.

  They talked until she was close to being late for her class. The language of their conversation was English, as it immediately transpired that “May I?” was the full extent of David’s knowledge of Hebrew. He was from Toledo.

  “I’ve been to Toledo,” she said. “They make wonderful swords.”

  “Toledo, Ohio,” he corrected. “I don’t like cutting weapons.”

  Was he some sort of pacifist? A pilgrim? Just a tourist? Mor did not care. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Just a millisecond before she absolutely had to rush to the classroom, he asked her whether she was free in the evening.

  They met at Dizengoff Square, which is not actually a square but the wide pedestrian overpass above a perpetual traffic jam. Its revolving fountain wobbled in the grayish twilight, occasionally coughing up a thin jet of water. Pigeons and pedestrians thronged the overpass, but there seemed to be a magic circle of quietude around David.

  After a couple of drinks in a bar, they walked along the beach promenade, the black, oily sea heaving beyond the fluorescent strip of sand. Moonlight dribbled from the tarry sky.

  “I like your name,” he said. “Mor. Does it mean something?”

  “It’s a kind of spice or incense mentioned in the Bible,” she said, searching for the English word. “Oh, yeah. Myrrh.”

  “Really?” he sounded interested. “I thought it had something to do with death. You know, like mortality.”

  “Mortality, morbid, moribund.” She shook her head. “You are right; it does sound like it belongs with these. Funny. I never thought about this. But it’s a different word. Mort, death in French. Just a coincidence.”

  Her mother wanted to name her Hanna, but Daddy objected. She insisted, and so there were two names listed on Mor’s birth certificate, even though she never used the other one. Another item to add to the list of grudges against her mother; another drop of sweetness to flavor her hazy recollections of the big, burly man who had brought her to the kindergarten one fine morning and was dead of a heart attack in the afternoon.

  The silence between them seemed filled with unspoken promises. Mor tried to think what to ask him next and could not. Job, family, politics? What difference did it make? She would be happy to walk with him in this velvety dark for an eternity, just listening to the roll of waves on the bone-white beach. But did he feel the same? He asked for her phone number but made no definite promise to call. When she drove him back to his hotel (which turned out to be the expensive Sea Crest), he politely thanked her for the perfect evening and left without as much as a peck on the cheek. She fought tears on the way back home and counted the crow’s-feet around her eyes as she brushed her teeth. Next day, just as she resigned herself to another dating failure, he called.

  When the phone vibrates on the kitchen counter, Mor stares at the flashing display and tries to remember who the caller is. Her memory is holed like cheese, some memories willfully expunged, some unaccountably gone. A school friend? A former colleague? Not a relative, certainly. She has none. An only daughter of an only daughter; and her mother’s entire family buried in unmarked graves.

  It does not matter. She needs nobody. She has her son.

  Stroking her belly, she watches the phone quiver and jump like a living thing. When it finally calms down, she tosses it into the garbage bin.

  They met every day for a week. Mor learned a little more about David—enough for her to decide he was the One. He was so reassuringly normal, untainted by the fe
verish madness of the Middle East. He was an accountant, he said, and indeed, he was very good with numbers. His parents were dead, his numerous siblings scattered over an amazing geographical range, and there was no mention of an ex-wife or significant other. He read all the right books and had all the right opinions. He liked gadgets. Mor, being an adjunct professor in the Department of Life Sciences, listened to his technobabble with an indulgent smile. The only negative she could find was that he was surprisingly indifferent to good food, despite the plethora of culinary temptations on every street corner. Rice-stuffed vine leaves, couscous, creamy hummus, freshly baked pitas, honey-almond cake—he consumed them as dutifully and apathetically as if they were medicine. Mor told herself that was a necessary counterpoint to her own indulgences that were beginning to show in her curves.

  One day he told her his return ticket was for tomorrow. The despair she felt was strong enough to frighten her. Did she really need him so much? She had her life, her friends, her job. She might meet somebody local, get married, have a family.

  She was thirty-five. All of her school and army friends were married, most had children. The future stretched before her: blank, lifeless, childless.

  They ate at the most expensive restaurant in Tel Aviv. David had a lot of money and spent it freely, though never recklessly. He walked her to her apartment block and pecked her on the cheek as he did every evening. Dully, she waited for him to turn around and walk away as he did every evening.

  “Can I come up for coffee?” he asked.

  The darkened rooms were bathed in the inflamed glow of city lights. Her neighbor’s cat caterwauled in the yard and fell silent. She tangled with her clothes, but his undressing was quick and tidy. Running her hand over his delightfully smooth chest, she was, again, struck by how cool his flesh was: like a porcelain bowl with sherbet inside. Mor felt embarrassed by the drops of sweat gathering under her armpits and in the hollow of her neck. But David’s body remained immaculate. His kisses were sterile; his mouth tasted of nothing.

  His regular breathing did not speed up until it suddenly stopped. David’s perfectly groomed hair tickled her lips and pushed back her rising scream.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I cannot die. Not even a little death. So that’s all for me, but don’t worry, I’m satisfied.”

  She could see him clearly. His body was glowing in the dark, a bluish glow like candlelight seen through a thick slab of ice. The translucent flesh molded itself around the geometrical beauty of curving ribs and elegantly strung vertebrae, shining with hard, steely light.

  “Little death,” she repeated blankly.

  He sat up. Now on the left side of his chest, just above the nipple, she could see a neat hole surrounded by petals of flesh that stirred restlessly, opening and closing like a sea anemone. The wound bled more metallic light.

  “Orgasm,” he said. “The French call it la petite mort.”

  “And you …”

  “I am Death.”

  In fact, he was only a death, one of many. Over the next couple of days he explained it again and again: gently, patiently, and reassuringly.

  There were, he said, a number of deaths (he talked of them in family terms—brothers, sisters, cousins). New ones appeared from time to time and oldsters retired, though, of course, none died. Each death was responsible for a specific mode of mortality, though in emergencies (he was vague as to what those might be) they could take over each other’s domains. David’s own specialty was death by shooting.

  How old was he? He did not know; could not remember. Had he ever been human? He did not know that either. Was there a God? This received a blank stare.

  And in between these conversations they went for ice cream or swam in the sea or toured the labyrinthine alleys of Old Jaffa or made love. He brought her flowers every day. After a week he moved in, bringing his natty suitcase from the hotel. After two weeks he asked her to marry him.

  This precipitated a crisis. She threw him out, yelling at him to go to hell. She cried for hours afterwards, only stopping when she realized that he might have done just that. Next morning he was at her door with a fresh bunch of flowers.

  She could not say no. She was in love. And yet she could not say yes, either. She pleaded with him to give her more time.

  “Why can’t we just live together?” she cried.

  He explained that it would not be right. He wanted her to see how committed he was. And unless they were legally married, he could not give her his wedding gift. She tried to push the thought of the gift away from her deliberations—she was not to be bought, she told herself and believed it—but the magnitude of it was not so easily overlooked.

  One afternoon her cell phone rang. Her mother’s officious neighbor Dvora called to tell her she was worried about Mrs. Shalev’s state of mind. She managed to introduce a not-too-subtle remark about Mor’s dereliction of her filial duties, with the unspoken “and the only child, too!” accompanying every word.

  When her mother failed to pick up the phone, Mor drove up to Jerusalem. Just as she was rounding the last bend in the highway, the setting sun shone a peculiar golden-mauve light on the bare hills with their clusters of whitewashed dwellings. In such moments Jerusalem seemed not so much a city as a physical state: a lighting flicker of vertigo or a stab of pain.

  Her mother was in the living room, softly crying. The usual half hour of useless recriminations followed, with Mor getting so angry with her mother’s drab misery that she felt like slapping her lined cheek. But eventually Mrs. Shalev rallied sufficiently to make tea. Mother and daughter sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of homemade cookies pushed closer to Mor’s side.

  “Ima,” Mor asked. “Ima, did you ever see Death?”

  Mrs. Shalev, who was stirring her tea, froze and then glanced at Mor with a sly, conspiratorial smile as if they finally got to share a grown-up secret.

  “My mother did,” she said. “Your grandmother, God rest her soul! She told me about it. When they were bringing them in, in the cattle cars, she was just a child. They let her stand close to a window so she would not suffocate. There was snow outside. And there was a man standing on top of a snowdrift: an ordinary man wearing an office suit. In the depth of winter. The people pleaded and screamed, and he was writing something in his notebook. He never raised his eyes as the train passed by.”

  Mor reminded herself that David never wore office attire.

  “But Granny survived!” she remonstrated.

  “Yes,” her mother agreed. “For a while.”

  Two days later Dvora called again. When Mor came to Jerusalem, she found her mother dead in her bed. The family physician called it a heart failure but privately admitted that an overdose of tranquilizers might have played a part.

  They went to Cyprus to get married. Israel has no provisions for a civil ceremony. In her increasingly sleepless nights, Mor sometimes imagined a council of elderly rabbis solemnly deliberating whether a death may convert to Judaism.

  After a brief honeymoon they returned home as a married couple. Now, said David, they should have a reception for his family.

  “At home?” Mor asked faintly.

  “We will rent a banquet hall,” David reassured her.

  A catered dinner, of course, he said casually, say, a hundred and fifty people. No, not including your friends, we can have a separate reception for them; money’s not a problem. No, love, not in Jaffa, the seaside is very pretty, but it has to be in Jerusalem. They all dream of visiting the Holy City, you may count on it.

  Will they show up riding pale horses, she wanted to ask, or in clouds of lighting and thunder? But she knew she was being ridiculous. They would stand in line for passport control like everybody else.

  Candles burned on the tables. People with champagne flutes and plates of canapés laughed, chatted, embraced, and wandered out onto the jasmine-scented patio.

  “Wanda, Zoe, Jerome, Ervin,” David introduced them one by one even when they arrived as couples. “Mark,
Yolanda, Ahmed.”

  Only the first names. Did it mean that they all had the same family name?

  “Maggie, Ruth, Xiaowei.”

  How many? God, how many of them?

  “Guido, Carl, Donna.”

  Good-looking people, all of them: youngish, healthy, smiling, well dressed.

  “Liliana, Eric, George.”

  And properly diverse too: whites, Asians, blacks, and browns in roughly equal proportions. Mark was African American, and elegant Miranda looked like an Ethiopian model. Ahmed would blend into any Middle Eastern crowd. Susan, arriving on Roger’s arm, belied her nondescript name by sloe eyes and café-au-lait skin.

  “Kalia, Roman, Patricia.”

  “Nice to meet you!

  “Have a drink!”

  “What a lovely place!”

  They all spoke English, but some with exotic accents: silky French, heavy Eastern European, or guttural Middle Eastern.

  “Reginald, Oscar, Victoria.”

  Strangely old-fashioned names, but nothing old-fashioned about their bearers. Women in Fendi and Prada dresses, men in Armani suits. Glitter of jewelry and expensive dental work.

  “Mikhail, Gloria, Stefan.”

  Greeting them at the entrance, Mor tried to guess their identities but was defeated by their impersonal gloss. She found an answer when she started to mingle. One wall of the dining space was composed of mirrors. And in the mirror she could see her new family as they really were.

  Liliana was the Plague. Seen face-to-face, she was a slightly plump woman with crinkly brown hair and laughter lines. She was reflected in the mirror wearing a blood-red cloak that dragged on the floor, leaving a dark stain behind. Her pleasant features were disfigured by open sores, lips split and oozing pus. Holding a wineglass in a festering hand, her reflection smiled at Mor with missing teeth.