The Death of Baseball

by Orlando Ortega-Medina

  Raphael stands and shakes his head.

  “Life is short, smart boy. I know it doesn’t feel that way now when you’re still young. But it speeds by, and we have no control over what happens. Some of us have no control even over what we feel. And feelings can be all-powerful and overwhelming.”

  Aunt Penina stares at Raphael, who has lowered his gaze to the floor. He looks up at the sound of the front door slamming. His eyes meet Aunt Penina’s.

  “That will be Assaf,” Aunt Penina says softly, “back from the doctor’s with Tomer.”

  “I hope it gets better for you, Aunt Penina.”

  She lifts her shoulder in a little shrug and shakes her head.

  “Maybe we can talk again sometime,” he says.

  Aunt Penina’s head snaps up. “Listen to me, you little pipsqueak,” she hisses. “Don’t think you can waltz in here and sweet talk me like you do everyone else. I know who you are and what you are.”

  “All I want is a truce, Aunt Penina. May we please have that, for everyone’s sake? In exchange, I promise to keep out of your way. Please.”

  Aunt Penina stares hard at Raphael for a moment, then rolls her eyes and quickly nods her head.

  Raphael steps forward and kisses his aunt on the forehead. She stiffens on the first contact of his lips, then relaxes and accepts the gesture. Their eyes meet again briefly, and each assesses the other, expert chess players staring at each other across the board, contemplating the end game. Then Raphael squeezes her hand and steps out of the room.

  Chapter 13

  The day before Rosh Hashanah, Yossi and Raphael pile into the back of a large transport truck, together with eight other members of Yossi’s tank unit. All of them are dressed in their off-duty uniforms, except for Raphael, who wears a pair of army trousers and some old combat boots Yossi lent him, with a black lace-up shirt, a bone necklace, and a red bandana tied around his head. They drive caravan-style, with another two trucks behind them carrying twenty troops and a military tour guide. Yossi and his mates sing pop songs, smoke cigarettes, and tell off-colour jokes as the convoy makes its way up the Arabah Valley bordering Israel and Jordan toward the Dead Sea. Raphael sketches in his pad, occasionally glancing up to watch the group in mild amusement.

  When they arrive at Masada at around four in the afternoon, they snack on almonds, dates, and energy bars, waiting for the sun to dip toward the horizon before attacking the hill on foot, making their way up the snake path to the summit. Yossi helps Raphael up the cliffside, walking behind him and steadying him as he catches his breath. The others hurl good-natured taunts at them down the side of the hill. But Yossi laughs it off, and he and Raphael eventually pull themselves onto the summit and admire the tortured majesty of the desert, the Dead Sea, and Jordan in the distance, the distant red glow of Wadi Rum softly pulsating at the edge of the darkening eastern sky.

  The tour guide leads them around the rubble of the ancient ruins, barely recognisable for the fortress palace it was two thousand years before. She explains how the compound came to be built, how Judean freedom fighters taking refuge in the abandoned fortress chose to commit suicide rather than submit to capture by the Romans. And she concludes the tour by reiterating to the soldiers the importance of Masada as a symbol of the modern state of Israel. “We will never surrender to our enemies.”

  Scores of hippie backpackers pour over the lip of the hill. Raphael leans against one of the crumbling walls to light a Marlboro and watches as the backpackers set up their collection of tents on various parts of the hilltop. As the sun dips below the horizon, they light fires in the middle of rings they build with stones with kindling they brought with them in their backpacks. Raphael turns away from them, stamps out his cigarette, and recites his evening prayers. Then he wanders back to look for Yossi and the other soldiers.

  “Hey, handsome,” a small-breasted woman in a granny dress with daisies braided into her long, blonde hair calls out in English from one of the groups. She stands and beckons Raphael over with a wave of her hand. The others giggle as Raphael strolls over and sits on the ground next to the woman, who introduces herself as Bright Moon. She grabs hold of Raphael’s arm and snuggles up to him.

  “Comfy, aren’t we?” he says, sniffing at her hair, which smells a bit like freshly mown grass mixed with a hint of perspiration.

  “She likes you,” calls out a shirtless young man in cut-off jeans with a scruffy blonde beard. He is slightly older than Raphael, maybe eighteen, with bright blue eyes that sparkle in the firelight. He holds out a joint to Raphael, who puts up his hand and shakes his head.

  Bright Moon kisses Raphael on the cheek, then buries her face in his lap and nibbles at his thighs. He pushes away from her, and she falls into the dirt and remains there giggling. Raphael jumps up and stares down at her.

  “Don’t worry about her,” the young man says. “She’s just tripping.” He holds out an empty palm. “Want a hit? It’s windowpane.”

  “What’s going on here?” a voice comes from behind Raphael. He turns and finds Yossi standing there; his machine gun slung over his shoulder.

  “Shit,” the young man says to the others in the group, who scramble to their feet and size up Yossi across the campfire.

  “Nothing’s going on,” Raphael says. “I was hanging out with these guys for a bit.”

  “You know him?” says the young man with the beard.

  “Yes, I know him.” He looks down at Bright Moon, who is now rolling from side to side in the dirt babbling what sounds like a nursery rhyme. “You sure she’s OK?”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Yossi asks Raphael in Hebrew.

  “LSD, I think,” Raphael whispers.

  “She’ll be fine,” the young man says in broken Hebrew with a nervous giggle. “I won’t let her launch herself off the hill or anything like that.” He and the others drop back onto the dirt and resume passing around a joint.

  Yossi shakes his head and walks away, and Raphael catches up with him. They hike across the top of the hill, now illuminated only by intense starlight, to join Yossi’s troop, which has set up camp on the east side so as to have the best view of the sunrise. The group has already started preparing dinner over an open fire pit.

  After a full meal of roasted chicken, vegetables, and hummus, they spend the next hour singing and trading stories about the war games they’ve been conducting in the Sinai. Raphael tunes them out and stares into the distance, contemplating with growing melancholy the sudden turn his life has taken in a matter of a few days, with Aunt Penina’s words still echoing in his head.

  Yossi sidles up next to him. “Are you all right?”

  Raphael looks at him out of the corner of his eye. His dark thoughts lift at the sight of his cousin sitting so close. He rests his head against Yossi’s shoulder. “I was feeling a bit lost. But, I’m better now.”

  Yossi rubs Raphael’s head and smiles. “We all have our moments, achi.”

  The tour guide announces an end to the evening activities, and the group breaks up to unroll their sleeping bags, arranging them in a semi-circle around the campfire. Some of them wander to the edge of the hill to smoke a last cigarette before turning in for the night. Yossi hands Raphael a spare sleeping bag, and they set up next to each other a little distance from the others.

  Raphael strips to his underpants and wriggles into his bag. “You’re not sleeping nude tonight, are you?” he asks.

  “Always,” Yossi says with a smirk. Setting aside his machine gun, he unlaces his boots and strips off his uniform, rolling it into a makeshift pillow. Raphael watches him disappear into his sleeping bag. A moment later he emerges with his bikini underpants hanging from his fingertips. Raphael snatches at them, and Yossi holds them just out of his reach.

  “What were you doing back there with those people, the hippies?”

  “I wasn’t doing anything.”

  Yossi moves his hand closer. Raphael takes a swipe at the underpants, and Yossi pulls back his hand again.


  “You’re not doing drugs, are you?”

  “Hell no.” Raphael lunges out, snatches Yossi’s underpants out of his hand, and pulls them into his sleeping bag. “Yes!” he says and lets out a short laugh.

  “Quiet, you two,” a member of Yossi’s troop hisses.

  “What are you planning on doing with those?” Yossi whispers, pointing at the underpants.

  Raphael brings them to his nose and sniffs. Then he winks at Yossi and flings them back at him. “Smells like sweaty balls.”

  “But you don’t mind that, do you?”

  Raphael scoots closer to Yossi until their sleeping bags are touching and he can just make out the scent of his cousin’s body.

  “I’m not interested in drugs, cousin,” he whispers.

  “I’m relieved to know that.”

  Raphael glances at the others for a moment and looks back at Yossi. “I’m interested in sex.”

  Yossi smirks. “Yes, I gathered that. Welcome to the club.”

  “No, what I mean is I can’t get enough. Sometimes it scares me.”

  Yossi’s face becomes serious, and he looks directly into Raphael’s eye. “You’re sixteen years old.”

  “Seventeen next week.”

  “OK, seventeen. The point is you’re in your sexual prime. It’s completely natural. There’s no reason to be scared.”

  “You don’t understand,” Raphael whispers, moving even closer to his cousin. “I jerk off, like, five times a day. And, if I get the chance, I’ll do it with just about anyone. Girls, guys. That can’t be normal.”

  Yossi shrugs. “Some people are hornier than others, that’s all.” He reaches out and gently rubs Raphael’s head. “Honestly, don’t worry about it. It’ll pass eventually. Try not to torture yourself over it.”

  Raphael blinks at Yossi, suddenly realising the accumulated tension in his neck and shoulders has subsided. “Thanks, achi. I’ve never told anybody that before.”

  “No worries. Anytime you feel like talking.”

  “What about you?”

  Raphael’s question hangs unanswered for a few seconds. After a moment, Yossi smiles and shakes his head. “That’s for another time. Let’s get some sleep.”

  * * *

  The screech of a whistle jolts Raphael awake as the tour guide rouses the group at five in the morning. Raphael and Yossi groggily creep out of their sleeping bags and gather with the others at the eastern retaining wall, where they wait as the black sky grows progressively lighter, glowing with the colours of the dawn.

  Just before five-thirty, the sun explodes over the horizon, setting afire the Jordanian hills towering above the slick multihewed surface of the Dead Sea. As they stand at the cliff’s edge snapping pictures and admiring the sight, they hear screaming from behind them. The young bearded man from the hippie camp comes running up, his face ashen and wracked by anxiety. He begs for their help to find Bright Moon.

  The soldiers follow him back and fan out from the hippie camp over the top of the hill, searching among the ruins. Raphael tags along with Yossi, who clambers down into a dry cistern. As they search around the fallen boulders inside, they hear the sound of screaming echoing down into the chamber from outside. They climb back out of the cistern and see the entire contingent of soldiers and hippie campers gazing over the edge of the western cliff. They run to join the group and see two of the soldiers climbing down the shadowed side of the mountain toward a woman’s body far below, twisted by the force of her fall onto the jagged rocks into what looks like a human pretzel, more a broken toy than a person.

  The young bearded man, who turns out to be Bright Moon’s stepbrother, is inconsolable and requires the strength of four soldiers to keep him from throwing himself off the cliff. They hold him down while Yossi runs back to the camp and returns with a syringe, which he plunges into the young man’s arm. Within moments, his body goes limp.

  It takes the balance of the morning to recover Bright Moon’s body from the cliffside and for the air ambulance to arrive from Jerusalem. As it lands on the top of Masada, blowing sand and rocks everywhere, the soldiers rush toward it and load the sedated young man and his stepsister’s body into it. A moment later it lifts off the mountain and heads toward the medical facility on Mount Scopus.

  The experience leaves everyone in shock for several minutes, almost in a state of paralysis. Then, as the reality of her death sinks in, Bright Moon’s companions stumble back to their camp to pick up their things, stopping occasionally to hug each other, and to sob over their lost comrade.

  The soldiers wordlessly pack their gear. Once they’ve finished, Raphael and a couple of the religious soldiers step to one side and struggle through their delayed morning prayers before rejoining the rest for a quick lunch, none of them particularly hungry despite the twelve hours that have passed since their last meal. They hike back down the hill and pile into their respective transport trucks to make their way to their next stop, Jerusalem’s Old City.

  The rest of the day’s activities are conducted half-heartedly, in mournful silence, save for a few basics recited by their guide. After the tour, which includes, to Raphael’s surprise, a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and a couple of other Christian sights, the group enters a recently excavated tunnel complex reserved for the military, which lies beneath the Old City, to have a snack and discuss their itinerary following Rosh Hashanah.

  * * *

  As Raphael and Yossi arrive at Savta’s, they agree not to mention the incident on Masada so as not to disturb Savta’s peace of mind during the holiday. For the first time in over five years, Yossi joins in for both the evening and morning prayer services at the Ades, and both he and Savta proudly watch Raphael chant the Binding of Isaac from the Torah scroll at the special invitation of the rabbi. Afterwards, they celebrate the holiday over a festive meal at Saba’s bedside and spend the rest of the afternoon visiting with neighbours and friends. The following day, the boys bid farewell to their grandparents, promising to return the weekend after next for Yom Kippur and to celebrate Raphael’s seventeenth birthday, which falls on the same day.

  When they rejoin Yossi’s unit for the rest of the tour, nobody mentions Masada, as if the incident never happened, which disturbs Raphael. Yossi shrugs it off, commenting that the soldiers see death all the time, and that they’ve learned it’s best to get over such things quickly if only to retain their sanity. They spend the next few days touring the Carmel region, the Galilee, and the coast near the border with Lebanon.

  As they convoy back to Mitzpe Ramon, Raphael sits in a corner of the truck pressed up against Yossi. He watches as Yossi enthusiastically exchanges with his comrades their plans for how they will be spending the balance of their holiday. Yossi pulls Raphael close and announces to the others their camping trip in the makhtesh, which draws playful catcalls and scattered applause. Raphael smiles at them and reflects that, despite the Masada incident, these past few days spent in Yossi’s company have been the happiest of his entire life. His eyes well up and he turns to face the back of the truck. Fearful of what lies ahead, he utters a prayer, asking God for His mercy, promising to be a better person—and hoping that someone is listening on the other side.

  Chapter 14

  Yossi and Raphael stand at the edge of the yawning pit, its southern half caved in and eroded. It extends from side to side to the limits of their vision, and about three hundred metres across from where they stand baking in the afternoon sun, to the desert floor across from them. Yossi pulls a swig from his canteen and holds it out to Raphael, who stares into the pit, silent and unblinking. Yossi nudges him to get his attention and presses the canteen into his hand. Raphael takes a sip of the cool water and screws the cap back on.

  Yossi extracts a prayer book from his backpack and flips to the last few pages. Standing with his legs wide apart, he recites: “You sweep people away in the sleep of death.”

  Raphael closes his eyes and takes in the sultry air, which carries the scent of acacia a
nd wild herbs toasting in the heat. The words Yossi is reading provoke a surge of emotions he finds difficult to bear, and he battles to tune them out.

  “In the morning, we are like fresh grass,” Yossi continues, his voice level and calm, “but by evening we are dry and withered. We are consumed by your anger.”

  Raphael steps away from Yossi and kicks a baseball-size piece of sandstone, sending it tumbling into the very pit that crashed down on Uncle Shimshon five years ago, his remains forever encased in the clay before them.

  The two of them remain quiet for a while, Yossi with his eyes closed, Raphael staring into the middle distance. The buzz of the late-afternoon cicadas drifts over the twisted landscape of the makhtesh, which brings Yossi back to himself. He stores the prayer book in his backpack and walks over to Raphael. Together they recite the Kaddish in memory of Uncle Shimshon.

  “I still miss him,” Yossi says, as they walk back to the car.

  Raphael rubs Yossi’s arm, but the gesture feels awkward to him. Yossi glances at him for a moment, then rounds the car to the driver’s side and unlocks the door.

  “What does it all mean?” Raphael blurts out.

  Yossi looks blandly at him, standing at the open door.

  “Seriously,” Raphael says, “what the fuck does it all mean? Here today, gone tomorrow. Family, friends, love, hate, success, failure, money, poverty, war, peace. In the end, none of that matters, does it? We’re just, like, what you said over there, grass that fades and dies.”

  “You’re asking me?” Yossi says.

  “Yes, I’m asking you. Because I sure as hell don’t know.”

  Yossi shuts the car door and comes around to Raphael.

  “I already told you what I think.”

  “I’m not asking you about God,” Raphael says. “I’m asking you what all this means.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Raphael stares in the direction of the pit. “It should.”

  “But it doesn’t. Not in any universal sense. At least that’s what I think. That’s what you asked me, right? For my opinion?”