The Emoticon Generation

by Guy Hasson

  “He had a family. A daughter who is now a grandmother. And a wife who remarried. He had a family. I destroyed his family... for my commander’s shag in a bed. That’s why his family was destroyed.”

  I nod. I didn’t know what was appropriate to say now.

  “Yeah,” he says. “For a shag in the bed.”

  ~

  “Decades I spent on this. Decades.”

  “These last three decades, this is practically the only thing I did. Meetings like this. Invited to lectures and seminars. Answering hecklers and ill-wishers. ... The documentary film they did on me... following me around for a year... needs to be revised. Nothing is true. No reason for it anymore.” He looks down, ashamed. “I was wrong... I was mistaken... My cause was unjust... No, my cause was just, my deeds were unjust...”

  “You didn’t know. As far as you were concerned, you had just cause to assassinate him and protect your people.”

  “A man is dead. A family is dead. Bystanders were hurt. What does that matter?”

  “The tide of war turned because of that incident. The British Mandate began to leave.”

  “Yeah... That’s good. It’s good that it happened.” He falls silent, no doubt thinking about that point. Then, after a while, he says, “The results were accidental, weren’t they? It wasn’t because...” He shrugs again and puts his fingers to his lips as if he is smoking. “Just a lucky accident.”

  ~

  His lips curl. “People think I’m brave.”

  I look up. He had been silent for something like twenty minutes.

  “You are brave.”

  “Pfah. I’m not brave. I just like to think I’m brave. No, no, I am brave.” He waves dismissively at his own thoughts. “I’m rambling.”

  ~

  After five minutes of silence, he starts again. “Other people think I’m brave.”

  I don’t respond this time. He already knows I’m one of those people.

  “Other people...” he holds his forefinger tight against the desk, and moves the rest of his hand this way and that way, like a seven year old. “Other people... they thought I was brave... I got a medal... Then another... Then another... Honored at this or that ceremony every year since... Ben Gurion made me a minister. Do you think he would have done that if not for the...?”

  He looks down, like a child under punishment. “I’m sorry.”

  ~

  When he doesn’t say anything for a few more minutes, I ask him, “What are you sorry for?”

  He looks at me with doe eyes. “I should call her.”

  “Dinah?”

  “His daughter. Tell her I’m sorry.”

  I think about that. “Maybe you shouldn’t do that. It’s bygones. It’s history. We’re just fixing history here, not people.”

  “I’m living it still, every day. She’s living it still, every day.”

  He purses his lips and tears begin to form in his eyes. “No, I’m not brave. I just like to think I am.”

  He sighs, and in front of me he seems to deflate.

  ~

  “I was a good minister, damn it!” He slams his fist on the table, suddenly enraged again. Slamming his fist on something is something he had been famous for doing during cabinet meetings. “I was a good minister!”

  “Yes, sir. I—”

  “I did good. I helped build the country! I fought for roads, hospitals, military acquisitions that saved us in wars...” He trails off, and more light seemed to leave his eyes. “What does it matter?”

  And in his chair, he seems to deflate even more.

  ~

  “No one will remember anything of me. They won’t remember the good I did. They won’t remember I was an accomplished member of the Knesset. They won’t remember I was a successful CEO of four companies.”

  “Five,” I correct him.

  He squints for a second, then nods. “Yes, five. I brought success to whatever I touched. Shmuelevitch took that away from me. At that moment in time, when I was twenty three, he handed me my future. But he also took away my future.” His eyes begin to look here and there, as if searching for something. “He took that away from me.”

  He shuts his eyes and puts five fingers on his forehead. “I would never have met Dinah without this.”

  He opens his eyes, and he seems like a shy sixteen year old, suddenly. “I wonder if she would have liked me without... She stood by me all this time... She believed in what I did... She believed in me... Our entire lives... Together... Together...”

  He wipes a tear from his left eye, then looks at me as if he had been caught stealing. I look away.

  ~

  “Don’t think that makes me a liberal,” he isn’t being aggressive now. It’s four thirty in the morning. Most of the strength has left him. He is now completely deflated, and his voice is raw. And yet he sits there, unable to leave, running through thoughts in his mind, thoughts and scenarios I couldn’t begin to guess.

  “Hey!” he says, snapping me out of my own thoughts.

  “Yeah?”

  “You didn’t make me a liberal, you know. Don’t think it takes any of the emotional, intellectual, spiritual, historical basis on which we built this country, on which I built myself.” I shake my head, about to tell him I didn’t think that, when he looks down, and in an even weaker voice says, “What does it matter? It doesn’t matter.”

  ~

  “I remember one of my first missions...”

  It’s been eight hours since he had learned the news. Neither of us has left the room. As he speaks, his eyes are floating, seeing a past that hasn’t been there for more than seventy years. “We were sitting behind one of the hills outside Jaffa’s market...” He speaks softly, dreamingly. “We thought we were snipers... Our mission was to shoot Arabs and cause as big a mess as possible... I was the lookout. I wanted to be the sniper so much. ... I wanted to kill Arabs. ... I remember thinking that: I wanted to kill Arabs. ... But no Arab adults came when we were there, only children. ... Then we got a radio call, and were told the mission was aborted, and that we had to leave ... I wanted to kill so badly... We were children, playing children’s games.”

  He looks at his right arm, deep in thought.

  I’m afraid to move my hands or to even shift weight in my chair. He seems so fragile to me, so broken. Any movement on my part might cause him to snap out of it and leave. And then he would go through the rest of it on his own, at home.

  I can’t stop looking at him.

  Suddenly, he mumbles, “Children’s games... Children’s games... I haven’t been a child in...” and his eyes are suddenly infinitely fatigued, “...in so long.”

  ~

  “My father always said... When you grow up... You have to work. Work is food. Work is respect. A man who does not work has no respect... I kept true to that all my life... The minute the war was over, I had a job... Even during the Mandate, I was working for the freedom of the country. ... The Knesset... Making a new country, a good country, as a minister...”

  Suddenly he squints. “Why did I think of that? Why this saying, of everything my father had told me? Why...” And then realization appears in his eyes. And with it, almost immediately, is light. A spark of light, for the first time in hours. “Ah! I was going to be a gardener! When I was just a kid, that’s what I wanted to do. Yes!” He smiles, sadly. “My mother learned about this, so she waited for my father to get home. She spoke to him, and then he came to speak to me. I needed a real job, he said. Being a gardener, that is not a real job.” And as he speaks, the spark in his eyes grows slightly brighter. “I’d forgotten about that.”

  ~

  “I always had a green thumb when I was a kid. I had a small garden behind my family’s apartment... I used to go in and look at it and take care of it every day. ... I figured out how much shade each flower needed... I figured out when to water the plants and when it was best to keep them thirsty a bit... I brought books upon books from the library, telling me about the different kinds of
plants. And when my Dad came to me and explained I needed to be serious... I dropped everything about gardening... I never drew another book from a library. Can you imagine that? Not one book.”

  He looks at me and there seems to be a gleam in his eye.

  For a second, I start to believe he was beginning to feel better. But it couldn’t be. His world had collapsed.

  ~

  He had been quiet for fifteen minutes, looking at his fingers, as they move on the table. It looks to me like he is playing a very slow piano or as if his fingers are playing some sort of game. His gaze follows his fingers with mild fascination, as if surprised by their actions.

  He breaks the silence, “I wanted a plant nursery... wall to wall with roses... daffodils... lilies...” his fingers are still playing on the table, and his mildly fascinated gaze follows them. “Persian alliums... the cyclamen, before they were protected, were fantastic... I love them to this day...”

  He leans back, and I could swear that for a minute he was resting.

  ~

  “I haven’t touched flowers in decades...” He hadn’t spoken about anything that had to do with the assassination in forty minutes. “I haven’t looked at them... No, that’s not true. I’ve looked. From afar, when I happened to come across... I never bothered thinking about it, but I remember my eyes getting stuck on the site of a beautiful garden, and every time that happened Dinah would ask me what’s wrong, why am I dreaming...”

  He smiles. And there is a longing in his smile. Is that longing not sadness about all that he had lost today? For a split second I think it might be. But, no. I’m wrong about that.

  ~

  He looks at me, and his eyes are as sharp as they had been when he had come in. But they are also different. They are sharp in thought, but not sharp in bite. “So what if gardening isn’t a vocation?” his eyes look at me, sharp but not cutting. “I mean, so what? Who cares?”

  I shake my head. I don’t know what we’re talking about anymore.

  ~

  He leans back, and he seems taller and not as sickly-thin as when he had come in. “I loved my childhood, Mr. Sanders. I loved my childhood.”

  I don’t understand what he’s trying to say, but I have to say something. So I smile back at him and answer his words, “Me, too.”

  “Did you?” he says, smiling. But my own smile cracks.

  ~

  He slams both hands on the table, not aggressively, but to help him get up. “Well,” he said. “Time to go home.”

  I stand when he stands. “Are you sure?” It’s six ten a.m.

  He turns to face me with the briskness of a young man. “I’m sure. Thank you for your work, Mr. Sanders. And your honesty. And your understanding during this night.”

  He offers his hand, for the first time. I shake it heartily. “It was a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  He shrugs it off. “If you say so.” He doesn’t care about that anymore.

  I look at him as he exits the room. If I didn’t know better, I would say by his walk, from behind, that the man was forty years old. He’s tall, his back is straight, and he is no longer dragging his feet. He walks with energy and lightness of foot.

  Right before he disappears, as he crosses the door, he looks back at me and nods. And I notice that all his wrinkles have disappeared.

  FREEDOM IS ONLY A STEP AWAY

  “They said it could never happen, but scientists have discovered the secrets of imagination! The full story after these messages.”

  Roger looked up from his newspaper and eyed the television screen suspiciously. Then he craned his neck and called, “Joan!”

  “What?” she yelled back from the kitchen.

  “Come here!”

  “What is it?”

  She was obviously planning to stay in the kitchen and finish washing the dishes.

  “Come here. Quickly! Before the news comes on again!”

  Roger heard the sound of dishes being put down, the faucet being turned off, and then some shuffling. But Joan didn’t appear in the corridor. The first commercial ended and the second one came on.

  “Quickly!”

  Joan emerged from the kitchen, walking slowly, her hands wet. 9-year-old Russell clung to her side, and behind him 5-year-old Rose peeked.

  “What? What’s the rush?” Joan said.

  “The guy on the news said scientists have discovered the secrets of imagination.”

  “What?” Russell said. It was too surprising and Dad said it too quickly, but it sounded interesting. Rose looked up at Russell. He held her hand.

  “What does that mean?” Joan said, still wiping her hands on the apron. “What did they do?”

  “I don’t know. The guy said scientists know the secrets behind imagination.”

  The second commercial ended and the third one began.

  “Come on! You can’t believe what they say on the news, Roger. They’re teasing you so you’d keep watching.”

  “They said ‘Scientists have discovered the secrets of imagination’,” he even lowered his voice, mimicking the anchor. “How can you walk that back? It must mean something.”

  Joan shook her head. “They’re fooling you. You can’t put imagination in a scientific formula. What are they going to do? Bottle it?”

  “Just wait ten seconds.”

  Joan made a face, but turned to look at the end of the commercial.

  Russell, also intrigued, looked at the TV while leaning on his mother’s leg. Rose, intrigued because Russell was intrigued, leaned on Russell and looked at the TV.

  The commercial finally ended and the news came back on. “And we’re back,” a blond TV anchor said. “Our bottom-of-the-hour item for the day is nothing less than a scientific breakthrough of historic proportions.”

  “Hmmm,” said Joan.

  “Scientists at the Roseman International Institute of Sciences have created a scientific process that captures man’s imagination on their screens. Jack Seuter has more.”

  The visual changed to another blond man holding a microphone outside a building with a sign ‘Roseman International Institute of Sciences’ on it.

  “We are standing where scientific boundaries have been shattered. A group of scientists, led by Dr. M. Burrows have been able to capture Man’s imagination on their screens. To better explain it to you, I tried it,” he lowered the register of his voice, “on myself.”

  Joan shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Russell adjusted his posture, clinging to his mother’s leg. Rose held tighter to Russell’s side. The corner of Roger’s newspaper could no longer hang in the air on its own, bent backwards, and fell.

  On the screen, Jack Seuter was lying inside what looked like an ordinary MRI machine. In the background, Seuter’s voice continued speaking, “I was put inside this machine for thirty minutes. First, they asked me preliminary questions to create a baseline of my brain. And then they asked me to use my imagination and invent a news story so they could capture my imagination at work.”

  The image changed to scientists in lab coats looking at colored images on computer screens. “Two hours later,” Seuter’s voice continued. “Doctor Burrows’ team called me back to show their results.”

  Joan bit her lip. Roger sat up. Russell looked at his mother. Rose held tighter to Russell’s pants.

  Jack Seuter was now seated in an academic office. A 40-year old man, dressed in jeans and a suit with the nametag ‘Dr. M. Burrows’ pinned to his suit, was turning the computer screen so that Jack Seuter could see it. The images looked like regular MRI images.

  “I sat down with Dr. Burrows,” Jack Seuter’s voice spoke again.

  Jack Seuter, in Dr. Burrows’ office, pointed to the computer screen and said, “Now this is me normally?”

  “Yes. That is the baseline of you which we had established.” Doctor Burrows clicked on the mouse and the colors in the MRI picture changed. “The innovation we bring to the table is not in seeing something that couldn’t be seen before, but in r
ealizing that imagination is a process, and being able to narrow down that process to certain spots in the brain, thereby following the process from beginning to end. This next picture is when we asked you to make up a news story using your imagination. Observe the process. First, neuron activity is increased here.” He pointed to a red circle around a black spot in the back of the brain.

  “This is me imagining?”

  “No, not yet. Imagination is a process, and we are showing you the ‘before’ picture. The red circle is your brain creating shortcuts of what it already knows. It needs data to imagine, but it separates the data here, in this small circle, and will no longer require these parts of the brain that have gathered the data in the first place.”

  “Okay.”

  “Next,” Dr. Burrows clicked on the mouse again, and the picture changed. “As you can see, there is another activity here.” Blue spots were now clearly visible inside and outside the circle.

  “What is that?”

  “That is you trying to imagine. You clearly are not asked to imagine much, and you tried, stretching, so to speak, the wrong muscle. We then asked you questions,” as he spoke, he quickly clicked past five pictures that looked more or less the same, “taking you off your guard.” With the next three pictures, the blue slowly dissipated. “The ‘effort’ disappeared. Then right here,” he clicked again, and this time there seemed to be yellow bolts of lightning that connected between the black middle the red circle surrounding it. Dr. Burrows pointed with excitement to the yellow lines. “This line is the feat of imagination.”

  Seuter’s mouth half fell open, “Am I watching... imagination?”

  “Part of that process, yes. Watch.” He kept clicking, and the yellow lines consistently vanished and reappeared elsewhere in the red circle. “These yellow lines that look like lightning are the second stage of the imagination action. They emerge from what is known – in red – to what is imagined – the orange middle. Then, after the small flashes of yellow lightning,” he kept on clicking, “You suddenly had a big, meaty flash of yellow lightning. Immediately following this,” he clicked again, “the entire middle is now completely new and active.” The middle was full of orange colors. “This,” he pointed the orange circle, “is what you have imagined. By this point, you have imagined the story you will soon tells us. This is all done in less than a quarter of a second. Then, even as small yellow lines keep appearing, improving the story you have imagined, other lines of activity here bring the information from the newly orange part back into the red circle, ‘what is known’, and from that point seep back into the other parts of the brain. At this stage, the red circle area, now containing new information as well as old one, brings forth new flashes of yellow lightning to the center, improving on the story you were telling us, while you were telling it.”