The Marsh Angel

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by Hagai Dagan


  Not in Lebanon and not in Iran?

  That’s right.

  Syria?

  Uh… no.

  Then where?

  Somewhere else.

  Is it that sensitive?

  It’s a matter of source confidentiality.

  Can I bribe you?

  No, Shaul replied seriously, without so much as cracking a smile.

  Okay. What about a source named Raspberry? Does that ring a bell?

  No.

  So you’ve never come across it?

  No. What is it?

  Never mind. Is there anything else you want to tell me about Amir Rajai, or any other matter?

  No.

  c. Strive for Clarity

  Reserve duty dissipated like an unpleasant fog, and Tamir was back to his university life. He sat in his apartment to write and in the library and read; he sat alone in the Barometer to have a beer, alone in Cinema Paris, alone in Hummus Akshara on Jeremiah Street. He felt he was spending most of his time in a state of suspension, just staring— staring out of his balcony in Simon Thassi Street, staring from the corner table at the Gilman cafeteria, staring at female students, staring at the Tel-Aviv landscape which never inspired him, writing only when he could no longer stare, only when he ran out of ideas how to waste his time, when the pale light in the window finally faded, when all other options expended themselves besides sliding in an Einstein floppy disk into his computer drive.

  Still, he must have written a substantial amount, because within a few short years, he had obtained a doctorate in philosophy. After binding all two hundred and eighty-seven pages— printed in font Merriam type size 12— between two sheets of bluish Bristol paper, he placed his dissertation on the department secretary’s desk, who spouted a terse congratulatory wish at him and returned to what she was doing. Tamir, in turn, returned to his apartment. Perhaps this is a time to celebrate, he thought to himself. He wasn’t the celebrating type, and in fact wasn’t even sure if he remembered how to do so.

  He stared at the walls of his apartment, which he had grown sick of. The light on his answering-machine flashed. He pressed it. A familiar voice from the past sounded— Neta was back in the country for a visit. She’s in Tel-Aviv, visiting friends. Perhaps he’d like to have a coffee and reminisce about the good ol’ days. He called her back, they scheduled to meet at the Siegel pub.

  When he saw her, Neta looked older to him— her face had become fuller and her curls seemed flatter, no longer bouncing vivaciously. She sipped her Kir Royale and told him she had just graduated from law school at Columbia University, and was now working as an attorney in Boston. She said that she was married, living a comfortable, bourgeois life.

  How have the mighty fallen… he mumbled into his beer.

  Would you believe it?

  I’m still waiting for the plot twist, he replied. Your husband doesn’t happen to be a sleeper KGB agent, does he?

  Could be, I should ask him.

  Tamir wanted to ask if she was having autonomous sex with him as well, but refrained.

  And you?

  Me…? He cautiously told her that he had just finished his PhD.

  Wow, so you’re going to be an actual doctor?

  Yeah, I guess, eventually…

  Awesome! She sat up and asked the bartender for two ice-cold shots of Stolichnaya vodka.

  Tamir asked if she really thought it was awesome.

  What, you’re not happy?

  Not really… I guess I’m… I dunno, I feel mostly numb.

  But isn’t this something you’ve always wanted? You once told me you liked the academic atmosphere in the department.

  Before I discharged, I told the department head who replaced Moti that I was planning to study the humanities, and he asked me if I wanted to be poor.

  Okay, so maybe you won’t strike oil, but a university job is a decent gig— good salary, not too many hours, longs vacations. The only catch is having to teach… My last boyfriend before I met my husband was a lecturer in History. He complained about it all the time. You have to keep the students interested, to be an entertainer; he said it was exhausting. He also hated the fact that in order to get promoted you had to constantly ask for recommendations, kiss up to people, be nice… Are you cut out for that?

  Tamir looked at her incredulously. He hadn’t considered any of that until that moment.

  But if you really care about it, it’s worth it, I think…

  Tamir tossed back his shot, and suddenly recalled his father, who had to cut his studies short when he was thirteen years old. The Germans had entered Kaunas, and the world turned upside down. Once, during one of their regular Saturday afternoon vodka-drinking sessions, his father told him that he should go to university, study, become educated. He uttered the word educated slowly, as if trying to suspend it on his tongue for as long as he could.

  What did you even write about?

  Karl Jaspers. A German philosopher.

  Oh. Why him?

  Something there… appealed to me.

  What was it?

  The fall.

  What does that mean.

  He spoke about life as a series of falls, falls into a void, and the significance of these falls.

  Sounds depressing as hell.

  Yes… Well, yes and no, because he also spoke about how we are shaped by these states of crisis.

  And what, you just described his philosophy?

  No, the point is to say something about it.

  She smiled. So, what did you say?

  The noise inside the Siegel increased. The music became clouded and dense. Tamir sipped his beer and looked at the bartender’s tattoo. He saw a bird. For some reason, it seemed to him like one of its wings was broken, but he assumed that was just the dim light of the pub refracting over the bartender’s body.

  I said that the thing with him was his strive for clarity. That one can strive for clarity— aspire to it.

  That’s it? Neta wondered.

  Yeah.

  How many pages did you write?

  Almost three hundred.

  Almost three hundred pages about how it’s possible to strive for clarity?

  Yeah.

  And they’re going to award you a doctorate for that?

  So it seems.

  Academia is strange, isn’t it?

  Yeah.

  Okay, well, here’s to your budding academic career. Are you sure you want to do it in Israel?

  No, but…

  What’s keeping you here, anyway?

  She had a point— what was keeping him there? He sat in silence.

  She cast a prolonged gaze at him. Eventually, she glanced at her watch and said it was getting late. They looked into each other’s eyes. Everything was clear, there was no need for interpretation. That vitality, that joyful connection which vibrated between then, vibrated no more. It had been a singular moment, existing in the space between the reception room and the intelligence analysis office in Efroni; between the mountains of the Western Galilee and the mountains of Lebanon; between the upbeat chirpiness of Neta the intelligence analyst in her parka and slippers, and the desperate longings of that Tamir, who now seemed immeasurably far, lost in the annals of time. None of that fire had rekindled.

  * * *

  20. The Purple Line— The internationally-recognized border separating Israel and Lebanon. At that time, South Lebanon was under partial Israeli control and was referred to as the ‘security strip’. Subsequently, a distinction was made between the security strip, which acted as de facto border between Israel and Lebanon, and the purple line, which separated Israel and the security strip.

  6. SHIKMA STREAM

  a. Carpenter’s Glue

  Shikma Stream is called Wadi al-Hasi in Arabic. The stream originates in
South Mount Hebron, flowing from east to west through the northern Negev Desert, before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea, south of Ashkelon. The stream is seasonal, but even on the occasions when water does run through it, it gets sucked up by Mekorot water company near the mouth of the river. The eponymous Shikma Stream College was established near the stream’s arid channel. Tamir Binder felt that was cruel irony.

  He arrived at the college in the early 2000s as an adjunct professor in philosophy. The students he met knew too little about everything, their inclination to learn was scant, and their interest in the material meager. From the off, he found himself struggling to retain whatever semblance of attention they were able to muster. He exuded philosophical authority, sagacity, and flare, but at the same time, he knew that it was easy to shine against a dull backdrop. His students were not trained in analytic reasoning, nor in systematic thinking; they were obtuse and awkward. Any articulate utterance sufficed to impress them, or, alternatively, to threaten and confuse them. He could tell them anything. They lacked any tools to challenge him or criticize the premises of his arguments. When he was a student, students would regularly challenge their professors, raising counter arguments, bringing up other schools of thought. That age had passed. Students now were mesmerized by any cheap trick or intellectual sleight of hand. He found the whole thing exasperating.

  During evenings, he would sit in his apartment and try to ignore the fact this was what his life had become. He eventually left his apartment in Simon Thassi Street, drifting through several other apartments in Tel-Aviv, living in Johanan HaSandlar Street, Sirkin Street, Alharizi Street. The apartments were very different from one another, and yet very similar. They all bore a mark of certain forlornness, transitoriness, a sense of anguish and instability. It’s as if this whole city is a mirage, he thought, some cheap conjuring trick, a ruse, plaster and carpenter’s glue. The whole thing is going to come crashing down someday, he thought, that much is certain; I’ll be sitting on my balcony in the evening, drinking my whiskey, and the whole thing will come crashing down.

  b. Skimmed Milk

  In those years, Tamir would go on dates through online dating sites. His social circle had always been small, not to say non-existent, and it could hardly be said to have expanded over the years. The few friendships he maintained since his kibbutz days quickly dissipated, the loose ties he kept from his army days evaporated almost as soon as he discharged, and the feeble relations he struck during his university days blew away like dandelion seeds in the wind. He wondered what it was about him that prevented any relationship from sticking. Amalia introduced him to someone; Neta sent an email inquiring if he’d be interested in meeting a friend of hers. But these attempts were few and far between, before ultimately stopping altogether. Eventually, he had no choice but to turn to the internet.

  Tamir would sit at night and scroll through profiles on websites like JDate and OkCupid. It was an amusing pastime— a little exciting at first, tedious and despairing later. Most profiles, despite being funneled through the websites’ rigorous vetting system, were insufferable. He was surprised to learn how hard it was to find someone original, interesting, or smart, and especially, how difficult it was to find someone reasonably articulate. He did not consider himself to be snobbish, but perusing these websites turned him into a snob. Countless women expressed themselves with abhorrent banality— loves the sea, the sun, movies, smiles, yoga, sunsets, nature walks, sing-alongs, plants, and cats. They listed their achievements like they were applying for a desk job at an insurance company. Many women wrote they were looking for someone with two feet on the ground. Tamir didn’t strike them as such a person. He asked himself whether he was in fact floating in the air. He certainly didn’t feel that way. Perhaps he did float once, on that one singular occasion when he took off from the bunker to the clouded night sky, answering a secret call, a radio check, hal tasma‘ni, Tamir, hal tasma‘ni, until he plunged, his wings scorched, and crashed, on that one cold morning by Hassan Bek Mosque.

  On the rare occasion he did contact someone whose profile appealed to him, the whole thing tended to come crashing down fast, usually as early as the preliminary correspondence or phone call. The women would pick up on his reserved, critical, cynical tone, and bolt as fast as they could. On the even rarer occasions when things progressed to the point of an actual date, more often than not, they ended in disaster. Tamir discovered that he could be bristly, edgy, cold as ice. He was polite, but exuded an air of aloof aversion. Again and again, he tried to force himself to be attracted to a mixture of beauty and dullness, beauty and stupidity, beauty and banality. One time after another, he failed. It was as if beauty had been eroded, collapsing into a cruel superficiality, like an attractive coat of paint revealing a dilapidated wall underneath it. He tried to focus on lips, breasts, hair, even the curvature of arms, but to no avail. He needed a gaze, a pair of incandescent eyes reflecting a flame from the depths of the dark abyss, the eternal flame ignited at the dawn of time, the desert nights, the goddesses of destruction forged from fire and darkness. He found none of it. Only glazed, hollow stares.

  Of course, there were others— witty, interesting, dark, educated, intelligent. Some of them were even good looking. But in these cases, an elusive and mysterious element factored in: compatibility. Something simply didn’t sit right, didn’t jell. Tamir had grown to believe that nothing would ever jell, as if something in the chemicals in charge of the cohesion process was inherently damaged. He found it hard to imagine himself ever sitting in front of someone and feeling that illusive sense of connection. He vaguely remembered feeling it in the past, but that memory had eroded over the years.

  Then, on a somber spring evening, he came across Afik’s profile. The first thing to catch his attention was her name. At first, he thought he had accidentally stumbled upon a man’s profile. But no, it was a woman’s. As he always did, he first examined her profile picture. He saw an elegant face with an elliptical contour; soft, big eyes, faintly turned away from the camera; a reserved expression, a careful glance; a luscious pair of lips, the bottom lip lightly dragged under the bite of an ever so slightly protruding set of teeth. He thought about timid rabbits, about Watership Down, and felt he wanted to be a carrot. She wrote almost nothing about herself. She was doing a PhD in biochemistry at the Weizmann Institute and was interested in processes of cellular degradation. She was originally from a moshav,21 she wrote, and that she sometimes misses strolling through the apple orchard. That line struck a chord with Tamir.

  They met in Siach Café in Sheinkin Street. Outside, it was too hot, too dusty; scents indicative of the forthcoming summer were carried through the air, scents of a city beginning to buckle under the weight of overbearing heat. The sulkiness of the owner and the introverted gloom of the few other customers, each receded into his own corner, befitted the nature of their meeting. Tamir spoke quite a lot, mainly to fill in the gaps in their conversation, while she mainly sat in silence. Her sentences were short and stunted. Her gaze was mostly lowered. There was something reserved, reluctant about her. But on the few occasions when she did raise her eyes to meet his, Tamir felt he saw something stirring in them, a secret, like books by Nietzsche concealed in a secret depression behind the Torah ark in an ultra-Orthodox Lithuanian yeshiva.

  When they left the café, they looked helplessly at each other. Moonlight flowed from the evening skies like skimmed milk. He leaned in carefully and kissed her, just barely grazing her lips with his. They were somewhat clenched at first, but slowly relaxed. He suddenly felt a strong urge to hug her. When was the last time he had hugged someone? He surrounded her with his arms. She leaned in, her shoulders hunched. His head touched her shoulder, her hands coiled around his waist, as if performing an unfamiliar action. This won’t be easy, he thought, but an unexpected, subterranean shiver ran through his insides.

  c. At the Tail-End of All Things

  He figured her out piecemeal. Like glaciers in Green
land in the summertime, she thawed slowly, and only partially. Parts of her remained reclusive, recalcitrant, even after months. Her speech remained terse, colloquial, almost farmer-talk— the weather’ll be good tomorrow, we’ll be able to sow. Short sentences, long silences. But her body began to submit to his touch, and he was happy to see that his intuition was right: behind the high walls lay gardens, lush with vegetation and trickling streams, and at the heart of the garden, under a pavilion, was a sweets-stand vending all sorts of cakes and pastries, and even whipped hot chocolate.

  He studied her body with patience and care. He gazed at her extensively, when dressed or nude, standing in front of the mirror or lying pensively in bed. Her body was at once both firm and soft. Her posture was gathered, alert, regimented. Her waist was by no means narrow, but not cello or contrabass-shaped either. Her bottom was thick and soft, but not to the point of bursting out ostentatiously. He thought of a swimmer’s pelvis. Her shoulders, broad and firm yet somewhat hunched, also brought to mind something between a swimmer and an adolescent observant girl hunching her back and shoulders to try and stave off the inevitable blossoming of womanhood. But in her case, that attempt— to the extent it was entertained at all— had failed.

  He loved putting his head on her belly, her small, dialectic belly, that was acquiescent, serene, and receptive, and at the same time stern, almost Spartan. He would linger there for a long time, and then move southbound, down along the shadow, down to oblivion, to the warm springs known to none but a few. Sweet darkness, encrypted in the abyss, undeciphered, unannotated, for his eyes only, his shut eyes that can see in the dark, his resting head, cast in the tail-end of all things, beneath him darkness and darkness above him, floating between darkness and darkness. Beneath the darkness below, fountains of warm mead pulsed; over the darkness above, Polnochi fluttered like the silhouette of a distant memory, of a forgotten and illusive mirage, fluttered and dissipated, dissipated and fluttered.

 

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