The Orchard

by David Hopen

  Noah craned his neck for a glimpse inside. “We can’t go in there. There’s no light.”

  “Where we’re going,” Evan said, “we don’t need light.”

  “And where’s that?” Amir asked. “What’s in there?”

  No answer. Instead, Evan forged straight into the dark.

  For a moment we hesitated, lingering in the storm. We had little choice. We nodded to each other and followed.

  We’d entered into an orchard. Trees were lined in careful rows. Luscious fields, everything radiant and green, stretched as far as my eyes could see. Large fruits hung from branches, white flower bulbs bloomed before our eyes. Off to the side was a pond, an enormous boulder at its edge; the boulder had a clean hole at its center through which water dropped from a small spring. In the middle of the grove was a slightly withered tree, before which Evan stood. Noah wandered slowly through flowers, admiring the streak of colors. Amir, off by the brook, was on his knees, gazing into the water, a thin mist in the distance. I realized that the rain was gone, that I was dry again, that a thick layer of warmth flooded my senses and relieved my thirst. Old memories ran through me: learning to ride a bike, wrapping tefillin for the first time, my fifth birthday party, my father inscribing my first Gemara, reading my Princeton acceptance letter, sounding out Corduroy’s Busy Street with my mother, kissing Sophia that night at the beach. I staggered about, as if tipsy, as if arriving home from a long, cruel voyage.

  “Amir has the right idea.” Evan broke away from the center tree, over whose bark he’d been tracing his fingers. “We’ll need to get in the water.”

  “Evan,” I said, “Oliver’s gone.”

  Evan didn’t move from the tree.

  Noah hurried back through the flowers. “Oliver didn’t come in here, did he?”

  “We need to find him,” I said. “We can’t leave him out—there.”

  Noah frowned, examining his purple robes. “Out where?”

  “I don’t know.” I paused to think. “Near the mirror? In the storm?”

  “The storm’s gone,” Amir chimed in, unflustered, still glued to his reflection, his nose hovering over the surface of the water.

  “In here it’s gone,” I said desperately, pivoting in place. “Not out there.”

  “You see this, then?” Evan asked, walking up to us. “All of you can?”

  “I’ll look for him,” Noah said. He spoke weakly, as if struggling to wake from a trance. “I’m going back out.”

  “No,” Evan said, “he’s perfectly fine. But he needs to be alone.”

  “What’re you talking about?” I said. “He could be—”

  Evan shook his head. “It affects us all differently. Leave him. It’s important we four remain together. Really, you have to trust me.”

  Laughter erupted from my lips, laughter I’ve never heard before. “Trust you?”

  “He’s fine, I promise,” Evan said. “But swear you won’t leave the orchard. It’s dangerous.”

  Noah squinted. “How’s it dangerous?”

  “Leaving now means never coming back.”

  “Okay, then,” Noah said, “fine, I swear.”

  I walked up to the foot of the water. I could see my reflection. I thought I looked handsome, but also as if I’d aged several years. My complexion was rough with stubble, my eyes dark, tired. I had short, neat hair, a gaunt face. The longer I looked, the more I resembled an only slightly younger version of my father. “Amir, you all right?”

  “Yeah,” Amir said, tearing his eyes from the water. He gave me his hand. I helped him to his feet.

  “Amir. Eden,” Evan said. “You need to swear you won’t go back out there.”

  “Enough already,” Amir said. “I swear it.”

  “Eden?”

  Looking at Evan, studying his scar, I knew whatever connection I still held to my old life was ending. The mostly silent boy, perched in the back row of Rav Glick’s shuir in Brooklyn, New York, the one busy contemplating how best to escape beautiful things he didn’t yet understand, was now gone. “I swear,” I said.

  “Good,” Evan said. “Now we need to bathe.” Carefully, he peeled off his clothing and, strolling past us, submerged himself. Behold Nachson, I thought. First into the Red Sea. We did the same, wading naked into the water.

  Amir, nude, startled-eyed, stood at the edge. “I’m not going in. It’s—I can’t.”

  Evan drifted back toward the edge. “You’ll have to, if you want to see it.”

  It was the first time I’d witnessed Amir regard Evan not with defiance, not with impatience, not with contempt, but with fear. “See what?”

  Evan pushed off from the edge. “You know the answer.” Amir, in turn, walked straight into the water.

  “Hold your breath half a minute,” Evan said. “Then meet at the tree.”

  The water was frigid, immediately sapping all feeling from my extremities. Underwater, I opened my eyes. Evan was staring directly at me.

  When we emerged we were dry again, even before we had our clothing back on. Blood returned to my face. Feeling returned to my fingertips.

  “I don’t suppose anyone is hungry.” Evan plucked a pomegranate from the tree—small, slightly crowned, a deep, rich crimson—and handed it to me. “One bite,” he said. “Just one.”

  I took a mouthful, passed it to Noah. Sharp, sour, an explosion of juice. I spat the seeds, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. The fruit made its way from Noah to Amir and back to Evan, who took the final bite, a stream of red bleeding down his chin.

  Then: a stirring around us. Overhead, a whisper. The flowers swayed; the twigs beneath my feet snapped in unison. Over the water hovered a dark shape.

  Amir retreated several feet. “What the hell is that?”

  The dark shape fluttered gently. I had the distinct impression that the darkness was breathing, that it had been all along, waiting patiently while shards splintered and grass withered and flowers faded, while lifetimes expired and empires ended and families imploded, while man-made dreams dissolved. If Isaiah were right, I thought, if God created not a wasteland but a habitation, then how to sanctify the sorrow of human life? The darkness began moving, steadily, in our direction. I felt a hand on my shoulder. Evan, pushing me aside, stepped forward, presenting himself to the void without form.

  “Evan,” Noah said urgently, somewhere behind me, “get away from that thing.”

  I heard the sound of roaring waters, death laced with life. The darkness continued to approach, gaining speed.

  “Evan!”

  In the final moment before the darkness reached him, Evan snapped, turning back toward us, trying to run. Noah, Amir and I broke into a full sprint. We were only several yards ahead of Evan—Noah leading, Amir and I trailing—but Evan, with his shattered leg, was hopeless. I heard his scream; I craned my neck to watch the darkness overtake him, lost my footing, face-planted. I tried getting to my knees, the darkness approaching, nearly over me, only to discover the flare gun, which had rolled some yards ahead from where Evan’s backpack landed. I grabbed the flare and, as darkness descended, launched it above my head.

  The shot sailed upward for some time, a bright-orange comet impaling infinite space, a lesson in broken relativity, before losing steam and arcing downward. It fell from dewy morn to spectral eve, crumpling in an explosion of color, raining electric-neon yellows and reds.

  Amir was running toward me. “What happened?” Noah raced ahead to grab Evan, who was crawling on all fours, gasping for air. “What—”

  From the heavens approached a cloud of fire, within which stood a figure I couldn’t make out. It looked, at first, like the Vitruvian Man given wings, until I realized it had four faces: a human face at the front, the face of a lion on the right, the face of an ox on the left, the face of an eagle on the back. The figure expanded, growing larger, larger, filling our atmosphere, spinning in circles. My heart stopped; its faces were now completely human: one was mine, one was Evan’s, one was Noah’s, one
was Amir’s. These faces blinked, wept, in unison. From the center of the cloud came forth lightning, and then a whirlwind.

  “Blow!” Evan was on his knees now, his scar glowing. “Rage, you fucking cataracts and hurricanes . . .”

  Heaps of broken images. A corpse, a lion, a donkey. Dogs eating dogs. Holding my mother’s hands, walking through the ruins of Jerusalem. Sunsets, groves, oceans, summer solstices, olive trees. Bulls slaughtered on altars. Foxes running, tails aflame. Fire encircling our town, every tree, every house, every hill. Water to blood, hail to fire. Red doorposts, the great transgressor, the cries of mothers. A mountain above us: we will do, we will do. Many ladders. Going up, going down. A land of draught. Death’s beautiful shadow. Cain killing Abel; Joseph pleading from the pit. Years melting: my parents buried their parents, I buried my parents, strangers buried me. Seasons, decades, centuries, eons. We four clasped hands, blurred into one, the knowledge of everything coming together, the loft of vision, the divine image.

  I was seated in a grand, deserted hall. Everything white, clean, gleaming. The ceiling extended as far as I could see, like some futuristic amphitheater. I was alone, wearing a black tuxedo, in the middle of a row, thousands of unoccupied seats around me. At the front of the room was a stage with white curtains. On the right wall I noticed a framed painting: a castle, leaning drunkenly into the sea, engulfed by a storm. Dark colors, a swirl of lighting, clouds smudged with gray, ragged cliffs, a ship in the distance.

  “Ticket, please.” A small voice in my left ear. At my side a toddler stood impatiently, hand extended. He wore a conductor’s hat. His name tag read DANIEL.

  “What?”

  “Your ticket, if you would.” He took out a pocket watch, swore under his breath and then returned it to his coat. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

  I reached into my breast pocket to find a white ticket. ROW 7 SEAT 25. A sentence in Greek was engraved on the bottom. I handed him my ticket, which he punched and returned. “Keep this on you,” he advised. “You don’t want to lose it.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Pardon?”

  “The Greek,” I said. “I can’t read it.”

  “Most people don’t ask.”

  “You can’t tell me?”

  He hesitated. “A deep distress hath humanized my Soul.”

  A more familiar voice from behind us: “Thought I’d find you here.” The boy and I turned toward the entrance. Walking down the aisle was Evan, his wreath replaced with a white dinner jacket. His limp was gone, his scar was gone. I couldn’t tell whether he was addressing the boy or me.

  The boy looked to the ground. “You shouldn’t be here.” Still, Evan took the seat to my right. “You don’t have a ticket.”

  “Of course I do,” Evan said, taking one from his breast pocket. “Just not for here, it seems.”

  “You’re not staying, then?” I asked Evan.

  He shook his head. “No, sadly. I have another viewing to attend.”

  “Really,” the boy insisted, “you mustn’t linger. It’s imperative we begin promptly.”

  “I’ll be only a moment,” Evan said.

  “How do you know him?” I asked. “Daniel?”

  “I don’t. Not really.” The painting on the wall caught Evan’s eye. He pointed, chuckling softly. “You could’ve had anything and you chose that?”

  “I didn’t choose anything,” I said. “I don’t even know what it is.”

  “Peele Castle in a Storm,” the boy chimed in. “Beaumont.”

  “I suppose it suits you,” Evan said.

  The lights dimmed.

  “Think that’s my cue.” Evan stood again. “Best of luck, Eden.” He took the boy by the hand and led him toward the entrance. The curtains rose. A long, flimsy screen descended onstage.

  “Not what we did shall be the test when act and will are done,” boomed a voice from within the orchestra pit. The screen began to glow. A pale orb. Two eyes, blinking in unison. A nose. Lips. My face. “But what our Lord infers we would had we diviner been.” Darkness. My film began. Nothing but a thin, still sound.

  * * *

  I WAS FACE-FIRST IN THE GROUND. For some time I blinked at darkness. My lips were cracked; I crawled, I breathed dirt, my palms bled. Eventually, after what seemed like hours, I managed to stand. The storm had passed. I stumbled, dizzied, phantom pain pulsing in my right arm. I cringed in the too-bright sunlight, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I was in the fields near our tent, the ground uprooted. Large, splintered oak trees littered the floor, along with scattered debris: wood, garbage, a dead red fox. I tried screaming, nothing came out. I waited for the first wave of panic to subside, wondering how long I’d been out, whether the others had left without me. I sure should see / Other men here: but I am here alone.

  I began walking, searching for clues. “Noah!” I called madly. “Evan! Amir! Oliver!” Echoes.

  I walked for half an hour until I found Oliver. He was sitting on a boulder, head in hands. His glasses were beside him, snapped evenly in two. For the first time, I realized how rail-thin and diminutive he was. He looked, in this moment, nearly emaciated.

  “Oliver.” I hobbled toward him. He didn’t look up. “Oliver,” I said, sitting beside him, “you all right?”

  He raised his head. “Ari.”

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t see.”

  “Figured,” I said, looking again at his glasses. “Your glasses are—”

  He shook his head. “My eyes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re not working.”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Ari, there’s no light, there’s, I . . . I’m blind!”

  “What?”

  “I’m fucking blind, I can’t see shit, I—”

  “No, okay, hold on a second,” I said, breathing strangely, leaning toward his eyes as if I knew to examine for something, “I can help. There’s got to be an explanation, right? Maybe you have dirt or, like, I don’t know, a splinter? Let me—”

  “A splinter? You think I have a fucking splinter? Eden, I’m telling you I literally cannot see anything.”

  Think rationally, I told myself. Ward off the onset of panic. Recognize that foreign chemicals still coursed violently through your bloodstream. Determine whether this was imaginary, still part of the hallucination. Pray this was part of the hallucination. “Oliver,” I said, despairing at the sound of my own choking voice, “where were you? Why didn’t you go in with us?”

  He faltered over a rock. I steadied him. “Go in where?”

  “The cave,” I said impatiently, “leading into the—”

  “All I remember is seeing bronze gates,” he said unhappily, “and then not being able to see anymore.” He put his hands to his knees. His face was streaked with earth. “Someone was there with me.”

  “Which one of us?”

  “A stranger. Wearing tefillin.”

  “Tefillin?” I paused. “Then of course it was one of us. Who the hell else would have tefillin out here?”

  “I didn’t bring. Neither did Noah or Evan or Amir.”

  “I did.”

  “Were you wearing them last night?”

  “No, but—”

  He tried walking again. I stopped him. “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I said. “How could—what do you even think any of this means?”

  “I don’t know what anything means. All I’m saying is what I saw.”

  “Okay,” I said frantically, allowing our limping to continue onward, “okay, so let’s just think for a second, let’s piece this together. We can fix this, right? We can—right, so you saw a guy wearing tefillin and then . . . so what happened then?”

  “I told you, the lights went out.”

  “You mean the acid kicked in.”

  “I’m hallucinating blindness right now, too, then?”

  I was silent.

  “It was real,” he said. “Something I wasn’t su
pposed to see.”

  * * *

  WE WANDERED. WE FOUND TREES snatched cleanly from the earth, roots intact, teeth marks in bark, carvings in the ground. We considered giving up on finding the others and devised an alternative plan: I’d leave Oliver somewhere relatively secure and go directly for help, making my way back to the entrance, a trek I knew would take most of the day. Then we heard wailing.

  Oliver, ears perched, desperate for direction, shot his arm northward. “Over there.”

  We climbed through a thicket into a field, expecting to find another goat. Instead we found Amir, hunched over, drenched in mud, inconsolable. Beside him sat Evan, chin at his knees, clothing torn, hair clotted with blood.

  “What in the—” I sat Oliver on a boulder. Amir and Evan weren’t speaking. I wasn’t certain they even realized I was there. “What . . . what happened?”

  Evan didn’t answer. Eyes unfocused, he gazed several yards past me, toward the lone tree in sight. Amir, still sobbing, attempted to speak, but managed only paroxysms of unintelligible half-words.

  “Amir,” I said. Vertigo deepened in my skull. I felt, all at once, unsteady on my feet, confused as to where the ground ended and mental phenomena began, the physical reality of my body glaringly incompatible with the physics of the world around me. “You have to talk to me.”

  Amir grabbed my collar, pulled my face toward his own. He was convulsing. Unformed grief took hold in his eyes. “We need help, Ari, I don’t think we can save him—”

  “What? Save who? I—” I tried shaking Amir off. “Amir, save who?”

  Without looking my way, Evan raised his arm and pointed toward the tree. “He’s there.”

  “What’s happening?” Oliver thrashed about, almost as if his body were seizing. “Ari, what the fuck’s happ—?”