Kingdom of Twilight

by Steven Uhly

Lydia let go of Shimon, she stood up, Come in, she told them, motioning with her hand, she was still smiling the good start, and Anna followed her mother-in-law into the house, taking Shimon and Sarah by the hand.

  103

  Lisa traveled through this foreign country, she saw the barren landscape, the small train stations, the villages. The harsh light of the Mediterranean fell on everything, casting sharp contrasts. Lisa felt lost, she was homesick, she thought of her grandmother, Tobias Weiss, David, who she might be in love with. She hoped the Israeli national archive would be of help. After Ramla, the train turned to the east, the countryside became mountainous, the train followed the winding course of a river, open woodland looking like thinning hair grew on the mountainsides, the air changed, it became fresher, the train slowly began its ascent.

  Lisa knew she was heading toward the narrow end of a corridor, that the train was traveling to Jerusalem between two dotted lines which a war had drawn through Judea, the lines meeting at almost exactly the point where Lisa was going to get off, at the old Ottoman station. Lisa knew that this line made Jerusalem a divided city. And now it came into view, a sand-colored collection of houses and hills, from a distance it was almost impossible to see where underground Jerusalem finished and the houses began. Lisa did not understand the city when she looked at it for the first time, but Oz Almog was already waiting in the small Ottoman station. He had driven to Khan from the south in his saffron-yellow humpback Saab. Oz Almog was a handsome man with bushy eyebrows, beneath which alert eyes peered out at the world. He would explain to Lisa why Jerusalem and not Berlin was the fiercely contested navel of the world, forget the superpowers. He would drive her to the top of a hill in the south and show her Jordanian-occupied East Jerusalem, he would stretch out his arm, point here and there, name the four great districts of the old town, he would recount anecdotes such as the one about the German Kaiser Wilhelm, who came to Jerusalem in 1898 to consecrate a church, he would say, The Kaiser wanted to drive into the old town and so the Ottoman authorities blasted a hole in the ancient city walls, and Oz Almog would smile as if he knew that All things must pass apart from human stupidity. This hole still exists, he would say, and talk of the British General Allenby, When he captured Jerusalem from the Ottomans in the First World War he arrived at the same part of the wall through which the Kaiser had driven in his car. But Allenby got out and entered Jerusalem on foot. And then he would smile at Lisa and say, That’s Jerusalem: a stage for things that play a role in a totally different part of the world. He would talk about the many Christian churches battling for a place on Calvary, often by highly dubious means, he would talk about the valley between East and West Jerusalem, which once was considered to be the gateway to the underworld, and about the city’s name, whose pagan origins he would relish revealing, and he would repeatedly give a mischievous smile, voicing his opinion noisily like someone who knows that nobody shares it, Because, he would tell Lisa more than once, the people here don’t want to hear that Jerusalem is just a city and that you can give up a city. Instead they prefer to wage war for a heap of stones. And then he would pause and look at Lisa as if wondering, Can I share these thoughts with her? He would apologize and say, Let me tell you something: Jerusalem is the Golden Calf. Lisa would soak up his words, his gestures, his movements and his many faces, all connected by the same friendliness, and wish she could have had a father like that.

  Now the train pulled into the station. The journey to Jerusalem was at an end, Lisa stood up, took her luggage, alighted and met Oz Almog’s sharp eye on the platform.

  104

  Her eyes could see the road beyond the window, one story lower people going about their business, all concealed in similar bodies with similar movements, similar faces with similar expressions, similar clothing. Her ears could hear the sounds of everyday life. Her lungs breathed in and out, in and out. Her heart ached in a similar way to all hearts, she knew this, she had discovered it in her numerous sessions with those who were cast out, those who loitered, those waiting in vain for any opportunity, always meeting them in the same places, always engaging in conversations that took a similar course, clichés of everyday life, intolerably conventional, as if they were old Frau Huber outside her optician’s and old Herr Sedlmaier from the greengrocer’s next door, as if they had failed to pull out all the stops to do something radically different. They had failed, and when Gudrun, in the middle of a deep chasm between a couple of sober hours, was assailed by this realization like a downpour of excrement and she felt putridly normal, putridly and nauseatingly conventional in her self-destruction, it dawned on her, That’s what all of us do. That and nothing else! This self-delusion, this padding of thought processes with nothing but soft feelings, soft convictions, soft certainties, soft habits, everything soft. And yet they had believed themselves to be much tougher than anyone else, had slapped their chests proudly when the intoxication of sheer madness flaunted itself as in a peep show, a controlled loss of control! Letting the world go off the rails under laboratory conditions! Gaining power over impotence! We’ll drive out the bad with something worse! No! With that something worse we’ll find out what the bad really consists of and by that alone is it exorcised! We’ll destroy it and find a true feeling within! Intoxication as a medicine for the soul!

  Everything was fake.

  Even her most deadly convictions, her coldest shoulders, her greatest sorrow, her extreme anger were nothing but padding for her head. It had been her belief that if you destroyed, if you tipped poison into the water, drank it and watched the body perish, then something unknown would happen, something surprising. How naïve! How absurd! How all too human! How understandable! How desperate! How watchfully blind! Gudrun had lain in the sitting room of her dealer, Bernd, unable to move, incessantly thinking, Thanks! How terrible, but thanks! She did not know who she was thanking, she was just very happy finally to have found out that this path was a hoax she had played on herself.

  But this did not stop the path from moving beneath her feet. She had waited too long, the realization had come too late, her head was already stuffed with soft things, there was barely space for the truth to slip in, she remained stuck in the middle of pleasantly lethal rituals, the Huber routines and certainties, and fell asleep, still unable to get a foothold, so it was little short a miracle that her brother turned up out of the blue and took her away.

  In the end he was good for something, Gudrun thought as her eyes continued to follow the activity in the street. She breathed in and out. In and out.

  In

  and

  out.

  She focused on the pause, the moment of tranquility that existed when the air had been expelled from her body and before it was inhaled again. She found it difficult to stay there, her body wanted air, her soul took flight, What is there? she wondered.

  Suddenly she knew and at that instant Heinrich entered the room. She peered at him. He looked as if he had been turned inside out. How fruitlessly he tried stretching himself away from the dead center instead of realizing that this is where he needed to return! How neatly he folded his worries between his eyebrows! She could practically see the headache that must have afflicted him from the back of the neck upward ever since he had taken on the burden of his sister. Gudrun interrupted every attempt Heinrich made to begin the conversation.

  “I won’t stay long,” she said. “I just need to make a few phone calls, then you’ll be rid of me.” Heinrich stared at his sister, he knew her manner of presenting faits accomplis and she caught him on the wrong foot each time.

  Gudrun interpreted his silence as an inability to say, That’s exactly what I was going to talk to you about, she wanted to get away fast, pack her things and clear off, she thought, There’s still that woman, she thought, I’m not going back to my folk, he can forget that, she thought, Why did he bother bringing me here if I’m such a nuisance?

  “Please stay,” Heinrich said.

  “Please stay?”

  “Yes.”
>
  “What about your girlfriend?”

  “Don’t worry about her.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “O.K. She said it’s O.K.”

  “Why should I stay, are you going to look after me?”

  “No, I’m just giving you the option.”

  “What would I do here? I’d just get in the way.” She pointed at the mattress.

  “That’s no bother.”

  They fell silent, Gudrun breathed in and out, she felt her own lack of self, she could think of no other way to describe it, selflessness would have sounded too positive, she would have loved to talk to him differently, but their conversation ran through the room as if on Huber rails, she was laced in a corset of fear, Heinrich wore something similar, she thought, The little brother and sister, both magicked into animals, you into a deer, me into a cow, she thought, We’ve nothing to say to each other, we never did have.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” Heinrich said. Here it comes, she thought, here comes the next platitude. Almost uncertainly, almost timidly, Heinrich said, “I found out that Father’s a Nazi. He did terrible things in the war. His real name is Josef Ranzner.” He did not say, I’ve been reading his secret diary for years, I’ve always kept my eye on Dad because I never knew how I could make sure that he really looked at me. He would have loved to say this, but he tried to keep it brief to prevent Gudrun from losing patience and stopping listening or interrupting him, he dreaded those moments.

  Gudrun stared at her brother in astonishment, his words stood in the room like surreal sculptures, completely logical, completely out of place, completely as if in the middle of a conversation somebody had said, And now the weather.

  All of a sudden she burst out laughing without knowing why, she could not make head or tail of it, the whole situation, this room, she and Heinrich, and now the old man, her laughter grew louder, she noticed the dumbfounded expression on Heinrich’s face, which looked so similar to Heinrich’s dumbfounded expressions from before, and laughed and kept laughing until her belly ached.

  A door opened behind Heinrich, the woman driving the car appeared in the crack, Gudrun’s eyes took this in, but she could not concentrate on it, she was busy with the joylessness of her laughter, she heard her laughter turn into a strange barking, into a coughing, it became voiceless, just a hyperventilation, a muscular reflex which refused to stop, like hiccoughs. Her face was wet from all the laughter, she shed tears without joy and without sorrow, peculiar tears as if there were a third sort of crying.

  105

  Lydia Sarfati sat in the kitchen, missing her two domestics. Outside the sun was shining, it was late morning, she was alone.

  Lydia realized that they could not have stayed, We’re at war now, Latifa, the younger one, had said, Nobody would understand if we kept on working for you. Lydia had given her and her cousin, Sana, money to leave the country and still she felt guilty. She hoped that they would make it to Transjordan. There to give birth to sons who will fight against us. Those were Gershom’s words when she asked him for money for the cousins, when he gave her the money nonetheless, as if he were conscious of the guilt too, ugly words she had tried hard not to hear, but not hard enough.

  She missed her men, I might not be coming back, Gershom had said to her softly before he left. Avner had already arrived at the Syrian border. And Peretz, where was Peretz? She had no idea.

  Five days of war. I ought to listen to the radio. But she did not want to know anything, she desired her peace, she already had her hands full with the new Sarfatis now laying siege to her house.

  There was a knock at the door. Lydia got to her feet, I must have the key copied, she thought as she went to the front door. Outside were Anna, Sarah and Shimon, looking at her. For a moment Lydia had the impression that these people before her were strangers, even the boy seemed unfamiliar. She dismissed this vision and smiled. She would have loved to say, Come in, we’ve a huge amount of work to do, but all she could do was motion them in with her hand, We don’t even speak the same language. She sighed. Beginnings are always hard.

  106

  Peretz lay on his back, staring up at the night sky. He had never seen so many stars. Maybe I’m just imagining it, he thought. He felt the uneven, rocky ground, jabbing into him uncomfortably in several places. The Czech rifle across his chest. He could sense the breathing of the other men lying beside him and at his feet. The night was virtually silent, how could this be possible with so many people lying together in such a small space? here the soldiers of the Israeli army, down there, barely fifty meters away, the Egyptians, north of them, to the left, the inhabitants of Yad Mordechai in their houses, behind their barricades and defensive walls. So many people, none of them asleep, surely their breathing must create a wind that would rustle the leaves of the olive trees on the plain, their countless thoughts, Hebrew, Arabic, their feelings, surely the sky must light up in iridescent colors. So many hearts, all beating faster than normal, surely they must be audible.

  A slim, waxing moon rose in the east, climbing slowly higher, the air turned a little cooler, a gentle breeze wafted in from the coast, brushing Peretz’s face on its way to the Dead Sea. Crickets chirruped as if not a soul were there. Some flower gave off its tangy scent to attract nighttime insects. Shooting stars drew their short trails of light in the darkness before dying out. Peretz had never seen so many before, he was certain of this, for he had never lain out on the earth for a whole night waiting for an order.

  After a long time, during which Peretz asked himself what he was fighting for, knowing the answer, then not knowing it, depending on whether he thought of Israel or Anna, Shimon and his mother, the darkness was first blunted, then became milky. The stars faded, the crickets fell silent, the breeze abated, Peretz froze in his thin uniform. The first light was yet to reveal any colors, only gray silhouettes, the houses of Yad Mordechai, the gentle plain before it, the olive trees beneath which the Egyptians were hiding. Peretz was no longer lying on his back but on his stomach, others lay beside him, together they peered down.

  The order was not a word. It was given when the inhabitants of Yad Mordechai suddenly appeared from behind their barricades and walls and started shooting. Peretz leaped to his feet and raced with the others down the hill, making a direct line for the olive trees, because of the munitions shortage the commandant had impressed on them that they should not shoot until they actually caught sight of the enemy, so they did not shoot, but ran as fast as they could, Don’t run too far, the commandant had said, Otherwise you’ll end up in the firing line of the kibbutzniks, but run far enough or you won’t be of any use. They ran until they could see beneath the tops of the olive trees and then they saw the khaki-colored backs of the Egyptians, and then they raised their rifles, cocked them and then they shot, and Peretz shot at an Egyptian back, but in the middle of his shot the Egyptian vanished, and Peretz saw the German fall, saw the German lose grip of his loudhailer, saw the loudhailer clatter on the rocks, and then the German was gone again and the Egyptian lay before him, no longer moving. Peretz ran on further and shot, now the Egyptians turned to them, tried to react, but it was too late, from the left the kibbutzniks stormed, the Egyptians did not know where to flee, they scampered wildly in all directions, Peretz watched one of them smash into an olive tree as if he had not seen it.

  The German did not appear again, but later Peretz would think, Wasn’t it just as rocky as that in Italy, wasn’t the air just as dry back then, wasn’t it May too, the 8th rather than the 22nd? but it’s not such a big difference.

  Then Peretz would put these thoughts to one side. The German was history, fallen in battle. Over and done with. Only his bloody loudhailer was still there, sometimes Peretz got the impression that it made sounds all by itself.

  107

  Another step. And another step. The pavement was slippery, it was raining. It was cold. The houses stood so close together, there was no gap between them into which she could have disappeared. Sh
e dragged herself on, bent over. Her belly burned with both fire and ice. The night was so dark, she could scarcely see a thing, only lights without any source, they were all around, blinding her, reflecting on the black pavement. Her legs could barely go any further, so violently did the pain rage in her belly. She slipped, knocking into a house, sliding to the ground. She lay totally crooked, leaning partially against the wall. The rain fell endlessly, without her being able to formulate a single thought, she just lay there, feeling the cold, the wet, the burning. Her final customer, she had always known that he would come one day. Now he had been, all her fears had been realized, now at last she had felt that one sensation that encompassed everything, sorrow, pain, fear, excitement, hope, love. She vomited on the pavement, she began to cry, she was astonished that love could be so dreadful, so impersonal, such a dark force. The burning became unbearable, she saw her mother, her father, her brother, from what time did these images come? She knew, now she could see when it was that the glass had shattered, when the fissure had torn through them all, through herself most deeply. She could no longer feel her legs. She realized that it had been just a misunderstanding, nothing more, she had misconstrued something, she had failed to understand that it was love that had unleashed her into the world, not scorn. She saw her mother. She toppled forward, the left side of her face lay on the pavement, she saw the luster of the wet close up, she felt the cold of the stone. Her legs were gone. Her belly was ablaze, she could hardly breathe, she was panting. Rather than appreciating that life was a gift, she had believed it to be a curse, rather than understanding that the body was a home, she had despised it in every conceivable way. She saw her mother at the door, the door was closing slowly, she was afraid it would shut tight, she stuck a foot in the way, the fire reached her chest, ice-cold, blazing, her breathing was intermittent, she put a foot in the door, she pushed her body against the door that was trying to close, she was shivering from head to toe, she could not breathe, she gasped for air, she pushed against the door.