by Amos Talshir
“No.”
“Because those cats get into garbage cans. Did you ever think of that?”
“No.”
“I wrote a poem about that, and also about fish, whose pain doesn’t concern us. Do you know why we don’t care when fish are in pain?”
“No.”
“Because they don’t have a voice that expresses pain.”
“I don’t know much about poems,” Charlie said.
“This isn’t about poems. I write about life. You’re just innocent, so you don’t get it. Maybe I’ll actually dedicate both poems I’ve already written to Clebber, since I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to write more poems.”
“You’ll write more poems. Don’t worry. We have to get back to our seats.”
“You’re so sweet, kind of soothing.” She hugged Charlie and they lay in the dark, enveloped in Veronica’s warm whispers. Her thin exercise outfits did not separate his bony body from her own. He succumbed to the touch of her hair on his face and to her special scent. The scent of running water, he managed to define it for himself now that both her arms were encircling his head.
“We have to get back to our seats,” he said, releasing himself from the delight of her grasp. Veronica purred self-indulgently and joined him, her hand in his. They left their hiding spot. The scent of her body, clinging to him, blurred the soundness of order.
25.
The sudden barrage of shots came from different directions. The sharpshooters lying at the edge of the roofs were shooting out single bullets simultaneously. Charlie was certain he had not been hit. As they ran, crouching beneath the first rows in the stand, he asked Veronica whether she was hurt. She was totally dumb with shock. Which was a good thing, he thought. Otherwise, she might have started screaming. Her hand clasped his tightly while her other hand sought out the impact of bullets on her body. They continued to run in a squat between the rows until Charlie realized the shots were not aimed at them. He tried to convince Veronica that they were not being hunted down, as the fact was, up till today, the snipers had known how to pierce the foreheads of those who were disrupting the peace. Veronica calmed down somewhat when they found shelter behind a post, and managed to whisper to Charlie that she was glad he had saved her. Charlie didn’t even try to tell her that he hadn’t actually saved her, because they were not being shot at. He felt how happy she was saying you saved me. In her voice he heard the familiar note he had missed so much. As if she had said I love you. He needed it. He noticed clouds of dust descending under the edges of the roofs and surmised the snipers’ shots were aimed at a different target. In the meantime, they managed to reach their seats, where Simon was waiting for them, taut in his chair. His backpack lay on his knees, and he was greatly excited.
“You know exactly what happened, right?” Charlie asked his son. “You saw that we didn’t make it back right after lights-out?”
“I saw that you laid out Clebber’s body and I knew they would turn out the lights in order to haul it away. I hoped you’d come back quickly, but that didn’t happen. I saw exactly what corridor you went down under the stand. I knew I had to create a diversion. I tried to attract the snipers’ attention to a different location just when you appeared in the aisle again.”
“How did you do that?”
“My whistle, Dad, the one that’s inaudible when I inhale. I directed the bats in the opposite direction of your location and sent out a very strong soundwave. The bats picked up on the warning and all flew off together at once. The sharpshooters panicked and all shot in the same direction and didn’t notice you leaving the corridor after lights-out.”
“You saved us, Simon.” Veronica was moved. “It’s so nice of you to save me. I like being saved.”
“We have to get out of here, to save Emily and Mom,” Simon said. “Dad, do you think we’ll make it out of here?”
Charlie did not reply. Veronica, tired out from the difficult day she had experienced, rested her head on his shoulder and fell asleep. Clebber’s chair remained empty that night. Charlie felt that time was not on their side. He had developed his timing instinct as part of his intimate relationship with the sea. Swimming long distances at night and returning to the beach before the storm, developing the ability to breathe during long deep-sea dives, had sharpened his senses in regard to exact timing. Here, in the stadium, time was creating a commitment toward Veronica and Rose. With every passing day, more people got to know them and wanted to be near them. Simon was attracting too much attention with his survival skills. People were coming to ask his opinion on a variety of subjects he could research on the internet. Many of them had dead batteries in their cell phones, and they came to Simon so he would charge them, or try to connect them to loved ones through internet phone calls. Simon and Charlie had managed to cut their hair as well as trim Charlie’s beard. People noticed their enhanced appearance. Charlie often noticed people eager to hear Simon’s opinion on what they should do. At first, they had wanted mainly to understand the situation, to know who was controlling the lockdown. Gradually, their questions focused on the future and on ongoing life in the stadium.
Charlie felt that there was also a measure of danger in the way people treated Simon. He welcomed them with love and also felt a commitment to them, as if he was supposed to tie their fates to his own. Charlie had already heard people asking him for advice on how he thought they could get out of the stadium, with some of them even offering their help if he had an escape plan. It had been a while since they’d seen him courageously help the naked girl, and there were already whispers about Simon’s connection with the deposed president. Charlie was convinced they must expedite their escape.
“Dad, the president will tell me what he knows and then we’ll escape. It doesn’t matter what’s left and what will happen out there; we have to get to Mom and Emily. You have to look like you’re getting used to living with Veronica, and people will believe we’ve resigned ourselves to this life. They won’t suspect us and they won’t spy on us. The more we look like we’ve gotten used to it, the better we can ensure our escape. I think the doctor will also do anything he can to help us get out. We might need him. I still want the president to teach me what he knows about the Others, and maybe about what’s going on outside. Don’t worry, Dad, we’ll get out of here.”
Charlie was touched that Simon was acknowledging his emerging relationship with Veronica. Once again, he felt that Simon had his own complex way of seeing things. Not only was he happy that his father was interested in a woman, but he also saw it as another phase in their survival plan.
Simon realized that their plan had to be carried out soon. He had to complete the two tasks: planning the diversionary tactic and collecting precise information about their escape route. It would be dangerous to live in the stadium for another month, or year, or longer, when the locals started to realize that the few visitors were taking up their space. Ninety thousand against ten thousand. It would happen suddenly one day, and they would start to harass the minority. When would it happen? When they got used to the fact that the rest of their lives would take place in the stadium. That would be the moment when the locals began to hurt the visitors. Charlie and Simon realized they had to escape before that happened.
26.
Simon liked the moments of awakening. Sleeping in a seated position was especially comfortable for him, and he was moved anew every morning by the vision revealed to him as he opened his eyes. Tens of thousands of people filled the seats in the stands, sleeping while sitting up. Hadn’t he once dreamed of living in a soccer stadium? In a different context, of course, but for many nights, before his planned trips to the games with Dad, he would dream of flying at night in his own body, without a plane, landing in the empty stadium before everyone else, and walking with Dad through the Soccer Club Museum, just the two of them, without the crowd and the noise and the urgency. He would then recognize the stars of the past and th
e championship cups of the best team in the world. He would ask and Dad would confirm and tell him about the amazing goals scored by that Spanish star that Dad was old enough to have seen during his childhood. Simon only knew that famous photo of his volley kick between the crossbar and the goalpost. That goal would not be forgotten by anyone who loved soccer. An image from the video of the soccer master’s kick was immortalized as an icon in the opening credits of the New World State Coalitions’ soccer championship.
Next in his dream, they walked hand in hand to the gift store and Dad bought him everything he wanted. Not what Simon wanted, but what Dad wanted and urged Simon to buy. And this was the thing to which Simon woke up in the morning: his father’s excitement, his desire to buy everything, to gulp down everything. Sometimes, Simon thought his father behaved like a little kid, and not just in the stadium gift store.
His gaze scanned the stadium. Here and there, the uniform scene was disrupted by seats that had emptied of their occupants, who had died during the last few months. Clebber’s seat, too, remained empty. No one dared take the place of those who had departed, and therefore, the condition of those whose neighbor had died or disappeared improved. Like on a plane, when the seat next to you was free and you had more room to sleep at night. This morning as well, Simon glanced at Rose’s empty seat in the stands opposite and prepared himself to meet her in the burrow. At night, he had downloaded the song he intended to play her this morning. He believed it would be the most appropriate song for the massive dance party on Independence Day. He would seek her opinion this morning.
Charlie woke up and saw Simon focused on his smartphone.
“Can you still connect to the internet?”
“It’s surprising, but I can,” Simon replied. “Dad, do you know the song ‘Que Será, Será’?”
“Of course. Everyone in the world knows that song, even boat engine mechanics.”
“That’s what I thought. Dad, will you know how to hook us up to the stadium’s PA system?”
“It depends what they’re using here.”
“Dad, yes or no?”
“Yes. I’ll have to work on it, to figure out where their access panels are and what’s going on here.”
“Please figure it out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Charlie’s eyes tracked Simon as he descended from the stand for his morning bathing routine. The audience no longer resembled the army of fans trapped in the stadium months ago. Rather, the crowd consisted of piles of slumping people dumped in their seats. In the first months, many of them would still descend to the pitch with the first light of day. The ones who did not immediately join the fun of an improvised soccer game would walk on the fresh turf, watered by the sprinklers after lights-out. As the long months went by and hope was lost, the ball games came to an end, replaced by the wandering of shabby people with overgrown hair.
The few women, standing out from the rest of the audience at the beginning of the lockdown, had long since blended in among the filthy clothes and the lengthening hair on the heads of the men. Both men and women had stopped walking around in the sunshine, preferring to sprawl out on the grass since they had a hard time sleeping in a seated position at night. There was not enough lying-down breadth on the turf for all the bodies seeking rest for their weary bones. Despite the intense desire to find a place to lie down on the grass, they did not dare squabble, or even taunt those who had come earlier and seized a place for themselves on the turf. All of them had already witnessed, more than once, the chilling spectacle of a bloody hole suddenly gaping in the head of someone who had not controlled his temper and dared attack his neighbor on the patch of lawn. Anyone who dared violate the unwritten rules preserving the peace suddenly collapsed where he stood, his head buffeted aside by the precise bullet of a sniper who had noticed him.
Over time, violations of the rules decreased, and public order and cleanliness became the one sanctified worldview ensuring continued existence in the stadium. The times for lights-out and activation of the sprinklers, as well as maintaining the restrooms and the entire stadium clean, became the ultimate open secret of survival. The running water in the faucets, the dry food left behind by the helicopter once a week and the lights coming on in the evening were all that they were guaranteed to receive. The most vivid indication of the progress of time was the sight of the masses walking around barefoot on days of fair weather, holding their shoes in their hands, so as to conserve them for tougher times; no one knew if and when such times might arrive.
27.
David and his group had lost hope of finding Rose, who had disappeared from their view. She had not returned to her seat, and David was sure she would not risk a public disturbance. He had no doubt that the Others had noticed her empty seat. He didn’t know if her body had been found and collected from some unseen corner of the stadium, but he tended, or wanted, to believe that Rose was hiding, with Simon’s help, somewhere within the stadium. He and his friends monitored Simon constantly from the moment he got up from his seat in the morning and went down to the restroom facilities. But he always managed to shake them off, knowing that the resistance members were always tracking him while also watching out for surveillance from the Others, who would exact a steep price for every public disturbance—and tailing someone else was also considered such a disturbance.
David was eaten up by jealousy. The frustration due to the failed attempts to follow Simon had warped his mind. He had been sucked into a nightmare in which he allowed the resistance members to continue believing that tailing Simon was intended to protect them, supposedly guarding the resistance’s secrets so that Rose would not reveal them to others. That was why they were putting themselves at risk through the exhausting tailing of Simon, in order to reach Rose and prevent her from informing on them. David refused to acknowledge the searing truth, which had turned him into a knot of possessiveness. The long months of shoddy life in the stadium did not diminish the intensity of the jealousy burning within him. On the contrary, every day ignited one more twisted justification for his desire for Rose within his imagination.
David convinced himself that he was looking after their beloved country, trying to protect it from Rose’s betrayal. Every day in which Simon managed to evade the monitoring they tried to effect became a day of unbearable pain for David. He would return to his seat, imagining Rose in Simon’s arms, trying to shake the images searing his thoughts out of his mind and to convince himself that Simon was just a baby who could not be a partner to Rose, simply a young, inexperienced kid. But the images of Simon and Rose coming together in secret continued to run through his delirious brain, and his body was covered with sweat that froze him in the intense, inescapable chill throughout the endless night. Jealousy ate at him with every day that went by without Rose being found. His anger became insufferable to his faithful followers within the resistance, who expected him to lead them and pave the way to some kind of understanding with the Others’ regime. As far as they were concerned, the president had been deposed, and the reign of terror controlling the country had come to an end. The new regime had caught them by surprise, and they needed to find new objectives for the resistance’s activity. They tried to divert David’s thoughts from chasing Rose and tracking Simon, directing him toward the Others, but gradually realized he was in the grips of a compulsive madness that was putting them all at risk.
“We’re bringing about our own end,” David said, assuming the messianic spirit he wore so well.
“The end has already happened. We need to think about our next move,” said Gabriel. “We have to let go of the past and join the Others. They’re the new world. They beat us there.”
“They’re worse than the previous regime, and we need to fight them as well,” David decreed. “We’ll stay faithful to our idea of freedom and won’t be a pendulum in the hands of anarchists who have seized control of the country.”
“I think you’re stuck in
the past and don’t understand the upheaval we’ve gone through.”
“Where exactly am I stuck?” David challenged.
“Up Rose’s ass,” Gabriel said. “The only thing you care about is getting Rose back. Our cause may have been your ideal, but that’s over. Right now, the only thing you’re interested in is that Rose is running around with that kid who helped her when you were too scared to run to her.”
“I suggest you watch what you’re saying,” David threatened.
“In case you haven’t noticed, there’s one thing that the Others have already made clear to all of us—anyone who threatens violence will be exterminated. I hope you’ve managed to internalize that new rule.”
“Gabriel, you sound like you’ve already joined the Others,” David mocked. “What did they offer you?”
“I actually am suggesting that we join them, while you’re pulling us into a war fueled by your jealousy over your departed lover and attempting to persuade us you’re doing all this for our ideals. Let me explain to you what you’re going through. You betrayed her. We all betrayed her. She was lying there, freezing to death, naked at night, and you, who sent her there on behalf of our cause of freeing the world, didn’t get up to free her from her misery. Out of all of us, out of the tens of thousands of people who enjoyed looking at her pretty ass, there was only one person who took the risk of helping her, and the new regime didn’t hurt him. Quite the opposite; they got their message across. They support helping others. But what’s more important to you is that she left you. You want us all to take revenge on her, to forget our principles and fight the new regime, just because Rose walked off with someone else. And she was justified in doing it.”
28.
Rose emerged from the burrow in which she spent her nights only when Simon came to fetch her, and would exit only when she heard people moving around in the restroom facility adjacent to her burrow. Once, she had made a mistake and gone out in response to the noise made by the night patrol. She had lost all sense of day and night due to the ongoing darkness in her burrow and realized she had to rely solely on Simon’s arrival to indicate that daylight had come. Then she could go out to the pitch. Her patience had been worn down into unbearable tension.
