Sight is an assassin. The master of assassins. Sight seizes on a body like a marauder. Deprives it of all other senses. Of its dimensions. Makes of it nothing but paper. Makes the world flat. Makes it a map, to be folded and unfolded. Redrawn to please the eye. Spoils. A simple X marking the spot of the next conquest.
Arik keeps his eyes open, always has. The entire world is territory to be bulldozed. Houses nothing but facades. With no interiors, no inhabitants. Models to be destroyed. And why not? Raptors do not question their predatory nature. Aged fifteen, the day he joined the ranks of the Haganah militia, he made his decision: he would be the most accomplished bird of prey!
His eyes are always open, except —
Except when it comes to Lily. Lily and her hair. Lily and her laugh. Lily and her unequivocal gaze. Who would abandon him only once, on the day of her death. Lily who has come to his aid in his hour of need, when he’s perched on death’s doorstep, drowning, killed by his mother, and relentlessly hounded by the voice of the woman-sorceress. Only Lily knows how to calm the voracious monster in him. She consoles him after the loss of his loved ones, though she too is in mourning for her sister and nephew.
Lily. Sister-in-law. Aunt. Mother. Lover. Wife. Accomplice. Lioness among lions.
He’s obese. She loves him. He rages. She loves him. He’s an assassin. She loves him anyway. Only with Lily does he close his eyes. As he does now.
Something is tickling his cheek. No! Not just anything. The only thing possible: a strand of his wife’s black, lustrous mane burying her neck as she lies beside him. He who loves maps so, traces the country’s geography with Lily’s long tresses, black rivers on white sheets, planting kisses here and there to mark the cardinal points, cities, regions.
These unruly curls on her forehead: the Sea of Galilee.
The wavy strands on her right temple: the Dead Sea.
The tender teasing of her hair on his cheek … beckoning him to play.
Guess where I’m from, Arik. From the north? Where it rains on my roots, and shows how white they are? Where the colour fades until my next visit to the hairdresser? Am I from the temples? From the slopes of Mount Carmel facing the sea? There, where the land breaks up into stone terraces, one over another, like the pangs of love? Am I the Galilee of women? Their crown, their Nazareth, a citadel perched at the highest point of their most secret desires? There, where their furrowed brows shine under a sea of silky hair, washed, combed, tied up and gathered up into a small chignon, as if the rebellious hair of the world was striving to rekindle their shattered childhoods and return them to the cradle?
And if I came from the backcountry of women’s tresses? The place where, when they’re tired, they let their weary heads fall back on the worn headrest of their divan, or against the sticky tiles of the bathroom, or the wardrobe door, or the mirror they don’t dare look at anymore? That place where ringlets that used to fly in the morning breeze are crushed under the weight of their worries, their migraines, their heads bent over the sink or raised to the dirty ceiling to let the sweat run away from their eyes? Tell me, where do I come from?
From the south! Arik wants to answer. From the nape of my Lily’s neck. From the Negev of her hair, the anemones of Sycamore. From the farm.
The words don’t leave his lips. He can’t feel his tongue. His mouth won’t open. Powerless, he waits for her hair to answer. For its reassuring smile. For it to tell him: yes, I am from the south. We’ll find each other there soon. You’ll wake up and roll me between your fingers as you lie in bed with Lily.
Arik waits and waits.
From the south?
The words cut through the silence.
What south, Arik? What do you know about a woman’s shallows, her founts, her hollows? Yes, I come from the south. I tumbled down from the scorched locks of Beersheba, my ends so dry they ripped the teeth from the combs.
I am the surviving hair of the women and children of Qibya, crammed in the houses levelled with explosives under your command. Too afraid to move, or to say a word, they die huddled together as a single corpse while your soldiers watch the flames.
I come from the Dead Sea of women-salt. Women-dust. I come from the earth sucked dry of water. Of its lifeblood. Of its sap. Sucked dry by invasive fruit trees. Industrial trees laden with chemicals. Trees that exhaust the underground aquifers, that inject themselves into the open veins of hills and rivers. That disperse their transgenic seed throughout the indigenous basin. That bear monstrous fruit to nourish monstrous men.
Tropical fruit in an arid climate, their thirst never quenched. The gluttonous harvest of visionary settlers. Who plant their settlements like they do avocados. Gluttonous fruit for gluttonous men.
Avocado-men. Belly-mouth-men. Gut-monsters. They suck the earth’s breasts until they are nothing but wrinkled skin. Putrified. Drained of their juice. Their milk. Their honey. They gobble up the land. Chew its ribs one by one. Slice. Grind. Crush the soil.
There, where the avocado trees carpet the valleys, fields of wheat and barley and sesame used to stretch as far as the eye could see. Their stems were golden hair against the blue sky. I come from these fields that once nourished whole villages. I am the daughter of the grain you trucked to market when you wanted tools and furniture. That women bartered for silk to embroider. For shawls. Woven baskets. Clay pots.
I am all that’s left of the clouds that shrouded the watermelons after a long summer’s day. My hair that once danced in the wind has been pulled out. The manes of my mares that used to knead the land with their hooves and spread the pollen of cypress trees with their tails have been cut off.
I am the one who ran during the time of white horses. I’m all that remains of the ravaged earth. Violated. Ancestral tenderness mowed down. Humiliation after humiliation.
I am not a lock of hair.
I’m the story no one tells.
The voice you have shut up inside yourself.
The woman-voice.
The river spat you out. The desert took you in. Time passes. Stops. The time of water. The time of rock. Here is your life. Your death. Your ailing body.
I tend to you. I plug the hole made by your mother’s bullet. I cover you with my hair. With all I have left of my dignity. If only I, too, could be a predator, Arik. Take pride in my vision. Devour you with a look. Sweep over every inch of your repugnant body. Sink my teeth into your mass of flaccid skin. Scrape you from this land!
Arik jolts up.
He opens his eyes. Everything is dark. He feels his face, his eyelids, touches the whites of his eyes. Yes, they’re open. He rubs them. Nothing works. He can’t speak! He can’t see! Where is he? Where’s Lily? Gilad? Uri? Is he in the hospital? In his bed? In hell? Is this a dream? A nightmare?
A current of air raises the hair on his neck, thighs, stomach, groin. His penis! His belly quivers in the wind. He’s naked. Naked! Oh, the thought of being seen like this — his drooping belly exposed to his enemies, his chin drooling down his neck, the false folds of flesh dangling down both sides of his body. Over the cheeks of his ass. Over his penis and scrotum. That someone might see him in this state. Defenceless. Without eyes. Without his weapon. His compass. The idea is insupportable.
He waves his arms, sweeps them wildly over his body. He’s too massive, can’t hide his nakedness. He’s alone. Alone. Alone in the dark.
— Arik …
That voice.
— Arik.
She’s everywhere. Here. Down there. Up there.
She rises up from the very ground. From the rock. From all sides.
The voice is coming from him. From deep inside him. Tormenting him. Like a dagger.
— Arik! Arik! Arik!
Every time he hears his name he wants to throw up. His body convulses. Nausea overwhelms him. Rises up in his throat. Fills his mouth. Swamps his parched lips. He clasps his hands over his mo
uth. The torrent is too strong. Vomit spurts through his nose, his ears, his eyes. Between the fingers he has clamped to his lips. Runs in thick gobbets down his chin, his neck, onto his chest, over his breasts.
— Leave yourself behind, Arik. Flush your cadavers out.
He wants to cry out: NO.
He’s pinned in place by a second surge of bile.
— Your body no longer belongs to you, Arik. It hasn’t for a long time. Leave it to its raging.
No. This body has protected him. Occupied all his space. Colonized the air around him. Forced open doors for him. This gargantuan body. Confident. Striving. Greedy for everything. Food. Life. Power. Land. Water. Trees. Sky. Wind. This body would not betray him.
Arik searches the void, looking for Lily, for her face. He calls out. Is answered by a gurgling in his stomach. The sharp burn of acid reflux rising from his stomach to his throat.
His body shouts: free me, deliver me from this torture.
Suddenly a tepid flow of liquid mixed with some more sticky substance. The stench of urine and feces. His legs move slowly, then collapse under him. As if they no long remember how to walk. As though he’s lost his limbs and is nothing but a formless mass of flesh.
He crawls on all fours, fighting with all his strength the urge to throw up. One hand feeling the ground, the other held out ahead of him. An arm is placed gently but firmly under his armpit. He bites at it like a wild dog, and scampers away, scuttles towards a warmth, a distant glimmer of light at the end of the darkness. He flees, flees, leaving a trail of piss behind him. If he keeps going, will he tumble over a cliff? Will he get out of this hell?
Too late. The arm grabs him by the neck. He bats at it trying to save himself, struggles against the weight of his traitorous body. Lily! Where is Lily? Why has she left him?
— Get up, Arik. It’s Lily you want? I’m Lily.
Startled, he lowers his guard.
— Lean on my arm. I’m taking you to the source.
Step by step, the voice guides him towards the light, a thin arm supporting the wounded, declawed animal. A solid, stable arm. Was it Lily who tickled his cheek? Was hers the acid voice that demolished his citadel stone by stone? To the source, it said. Deep down, Arik knows it’s not Lily. Lily would never have let him suffer like this. And if it actually was her? What if, as he has always feared, every love in his life had been nothing but an illusion? An offering to the predator? What if here — at this moment, in this dark, discombobulating place, Lily was finally telling the truth? Does she love him? Hate him? Did she ever love him? What if she was this woman who is torturing him, this honey-voiced demon? Then why, suddenly, is she being so kind to him?
So many questions, he has. He who never attributed any value to questions, never knew doubt, or tolerated uncertainty, or had anything to do with dilemmas. Questions get in the way. Dilemmas are superfluous. Doubts? A waste of time and energy. He has only contempt for such pitiful souls, racked by uncertainty and hesitation. Wretched people who squander their lives in the contemplation of choices, carefully weighing the pros and cons of actions that have no repercussions except on their own miserable good consciences. Souls who approach life as philosophers do in their quest for eternal verities. Answers are comforting to them, especially answers that lead to more questions.
Well, this country was not founded on questions! It wouldn’t exist at all if the Zionists had anguished over the legitimacy of their cause, of their right to appropriate land; had they asked permission to settle on the hilltops and cover their flanks with exotic orchards. This country was founded on answers. Solutions. Audacious, egregious behaviour.
Seventy years of solutions.
Questions are dangerous. They introduce nuance. They cause consternation, fatal in wartime. And what is the world but a vast battlefield? Questions halt the march of history. Sirens, when they sing, distract troops, make them waver, drill holes of reticence in their clear tidy orders. Before his comrades can stop him, a sensitive soldier turns his back on the enemy, just for a second, just long enough for him to listen to his conscience, and POW! Another corpse on the ground. Even so, for the first time, Ariel Sharon is unsure. Slips and slides into this intolerable greyness.
Who is he? Who is she? Who’s speaking to him? What is this carnivorous body he’s been lugging around for decades, this rapacious body? What has he been gorging on and shitting all these years, if not answers and solutions? Efficacious answers. Workable ones. Thanks to force of arms. Answers and solutions that don’t anticipate or instigate questions. So busy taking pride in his conquests, he’s never asked himself if a solution just might be that, if an answer really answers anything.
How many victims for each victory? He has consumed so many, his body is regurgitating them, and here he is: emptied, his body used. Like a garbage bag.
— Look out for the rock, his companion whispers. Lift your leg, Arik.
He obeys, happy for once to obey a voice other than his own. What a strange feeling this docility is.
— A bit to the right.
Beneath his feet the mud turns to solid earth, the earth to sand, sand to dunes. The dunes dance, crumble in gusts, and the gusts shift, become entangled in the fronds of palm trees, the palm trees drop their dates, the dates fall noiselessly to the ground, their echoes stifled. The hard earth softens.
Arik, sightless, stretches out his hand, feels his surroundings. A carpet of flowers, petals outstretched, their sex open to the day and at the end of his fingertips. He recognizes the velvety texture of anemones, Lily’s favourite flower. Is he going to her tomb? He whom Death terrified, now welcomes it. Would willingly take shelter in its arms.
How many years has he been in a coma? How many years in this body? How many years has he endured this torture? Death. Yes, Death, take me. Save me from this nightmare. He quickens his step. His guide’s arm holds him back.
— No, Arik. You’re not going to die. Not yet. Here, time does not run out. It moves in circles, waves, spirals.
They move forward, the dense warmth dissipated from time to time by a fresh breeze that reminds him he’s naked, stirs up the reek of vomit and urine. If only he could find a hole and hide in it. He’s naked, he’s blind, at the mercy of this woman-voice, this hair-woman pretending to be Lily. He so wishes she were. That she would rescue him from his impotence. Impotence compounded by shame. By the salutary kindness of this voice. His legs quake. The arm holds him more tightly.
— A little farther, Arik. The source is very near.
He hears birds, running water, the steps of animals come to quench their thirst. He recognizes the sound of oryx rubbing their horns against the stiff water plants. Is she bringing him to an oasis?
— I’m bringing you back to life, Arik. To memory. To time. Here. We’ve arrived.
She leads him to a rock. The surface is smooth, soft under his flayed buttocks. A rock imbued with heat. She sits him down by the water.
— Go on. Soak your feet.
The water is hot. A velvety steam envelops him. The voice supports him as he gently lowers himself. His feet, then his knees. After his knees, his thighs. After his thighs, his penis, stomach, his torso, one arm, then the other. The underground stream breaks up against his dark mass, goes around it, reassembles. He is a tear in the fabric. An intrusion. A parasitical element disturbing the flow of … of what?
His story? Memory? Life? All his mistakes and the atrocities he has committed? And what about his loves? His passions? His successes? His victories? His glory? Is he not a hero?
Uri Dan told him he was. He’s the King of Israel.
Lily told him he was. He’s the best of them all.
Isn’t he the nation’s saviour? Where have all his certainties gone?
— Go ahead. Dive in.
After his arms, his shoulders. After his shoulders, his neck, his chin, his mouth, his nose. Bubbles of ai
r rise up around him. Burst against his closed eyelids. His hair rises and floats in the water. No more tentacles. No more maelstrom. No more monsters. He is light. So light! He wants to encrust himself with pebbles from the source’s hollow.
The woman-voice’s arm is back under his armpit, pulls him up.
He’s cold.
— Don’t worry, you’ll warm up.
Steered back to the rock, he shrinks, gathers his legs up to cover his nakedness.
A roguish laugh. So like Lily’s!
— Don’t bother, Arik. In my eyes, you’ll always be naked.
Lips on his lips. A silken bubble slides from the tongue of the stranger down his throat.
— I’ve had your voice in me for a long time. Now I’m giving it back to you. Tell me whatever you want. Ask me all the questions. Judge me, if you wish. Kill me if you must. I am yours. I’ve always been yours.
— You’re not Lily.
He’s surprised to hear his own voice. That he is articulating words after so many years of silence.
— I am Lily, just as I am Vera. And so many other women inside you. When I am no one, I am simply … Rita.
— I’ve known a lot of Ritas!
Within the hoarse grain of his voice are traces of the man he was.
— None like me.
— Tell me who you are. Deliver me!
— The beginning of my story is the end of yours. Are you ready to die, Arik?
— We all have to die.
— Then let us die. Here is my story.
RITA
I Am Ariel Sharon Page 9