Hold on to the Sun

by Michal Govrin

  Gupetti stops at the side of the road. There are only a few minutes left. You try to catch up with him through the smoke and the flames as he climbs the crowded stone steps of the outdoor shrine. Both of you sink in the wax dripping from the candles. Your steps almost touch the dark bodies of the trembling singers close together on the stone. Their heavy sweat glistens. Next to you Gupetti falls to his knees. His cropped hair is on fire.You stand alone in the streaming flames and the deep, spreading song. At your feet her oval face clings to the stone.You bend down into the heat. Her parted lips move in soft, bright dampness. You wipe away the sweat wetting your eyelids.

  You realize that you’ve made a mistake in calculating the time difference in your telegram. It is already tomorrow morning there. Your face is still turned backward as your body trails behind Gupetti down the giant steps. In one swing the night sucks the car into darkness. The dawn light streaming over the mountains there snatches her dark face away from you.

  Gupetti gives you one last friendly wave. He places the handle of the suitcase in your hand. His thin mustache gestures at you and disappears at the entrance to the gates.You dip your hand into your jacket pocket. Pull out the folder of documents.The border policeman stamps the exit visa next to your passport photo.

  At eight thirty I strap myself into the safety belt and sink wearily back into the soft seat.

  I wake for the first time when the plane turns sharply to the north, somewhere in the darkness over the ocean. The stewardesses have not yet finished packing up the serving trolleys. The lights have already been dimmed, and the few passengers are wrapping their bodies in the purple woolen blankets. They force themselves to fall into an irritable sleep, which will do nothing to refresh them in any case. Next to me the untouched meal turns cold. I stretch out my legs on the seats beside me. The iron capsule rocks us silently. A loud, monotonous roar pierces the night. Down below the zones of darkness change, and the sphere of night from which we’ve been detached goes on turning steadily.

  When I wake up again a ruddy light breaks through the windows. I throw the blanket off my legs and press my face against the clear glass. Above the downy clouds the sun lags behind, gently bounding. Her oval face recedes with the last of the darkness.

  Above the seats the red light goes on for the last time. The rest of the passengers sit straight up in their places.The stewardesses hurry past in their purple aprons. I silently grind my food. An unknown morning whitens and recoils from the windows.

  When we land I move the hands of my watch eight hours forward. There is no one to meet me at the airport. Probably because of the mistake in the telegram. An official of the border police stamps the entrance visa in my passport.

  At twenty past two Yehiel Nammi emerged with his light suitcase and walked over to the bus stop on the main road. Heavy clouds were hanging over the fields, and the traces of recent rain were still evident on the road. He put the suitcase down on the edge of the asphalt. Small bushes of ragwort were growing in the clods of earth between leftover lumps of cement. Their little leaves swayed.

  At three fifty he walked into his house. In a few words he told her about finalizing the contract. About the rest he said nothing. He apologized and explained that he had to make up for the night’s sleep he’d lost because of jet lag, and without even washing, sank into the big bed at four o’clock in the afternoon.

  She closed the door behind him. The suitcase was sitting on the table in the living room. She opened the two locks, trying not to make a noise. Holding the sheaf of printed papers in her hand she opened the study door. The room, which had been shut up since his departure, had a heavy, bitter smell. She put the sheaf of papers down in the narrow circle of light on the desk. When she bent down she noticed a small colored picture printed on top of the sheets of paper, the picture of a tower and an avenue of palms on the shores of a bay.

  Zipporah Nammi took the dirty underwear out of the bag, and buried her fingers between the folded shirts. The bag was empty. Still, she ran her hand through its long pocket, in case there was anything left.The waiting of these past days and nights had increased her wakefulness. In the next room he was rocked on their bed toward a distant night, and even later, in the evening, when she would finally collapse beneath the weight of her expectations, he would slip away from her sleep to a day in whose hours she had no place. She abandoned hope of catching up with the retreating darkness. Her wakefulness sharpened in a dense buzz.

  A faint light came in from the windows. It looked as if it were going to start raining again.

  THE END OF THE PYTHIA

  Many years ago, before the seething land came to rest, in a remote district between high mountains, in a broad valley surrounded by cliffs—full of milling crowds, noisy trams, and hooting trains—lay the greatest entertainment empire which ever existed. The City Fathers had covered the swampy soil of the valley with earth and planks, and in the course of time its bed was stamped down by the feet of revelers, who made their way there through the desolate roads of the wilderness in a constant stream of tens of thousands. With their arrival they added new streets and neighborhoods to the town, and packed the rooms of the tall buildings until there was no room left. As in all cities, so too in the City of Joy, people filled the squares and the stairwells, besieged the passageways, and were quickly swallowed up in the tunnels of the underground trains. All this feverish life, however, was only set in motion by the powerful pistons of the Fun Fair. Its effects were felt even in the hidden corners of remote courtyards, and even the scurrying of the rats among the garbage bins was controlled by its rhythm. The amusement park was located in the heart of the metropolis, on a field spreading from horizon to horizon between the tall buildings, and the sky above it was constantly covered with smoke and fog.

  There was nothing, it seemed, to upset the life of the City or cast a shadow over its revels, but for the ancient rule of the thousand-faced Pythia. In the midst of their pleasures, with the foam still spilling over their bellies and the bubbles of grease shining on their lips, those sentenced by the Pythia were executed and fell wallowing with half their lust assuaged. And the more halting and obscure her verdicts, the more swiftly the sentence was carried out. With one of her thousand faces the Pythia would visit the condemned man, and some said that with her hollow visage—the mirror-image of his dread—she would press her lips to his in a farewell kiss.

  In vain the City dwellers tried to track down she-of-the-thousand-faces. Hot in pursuit of the skirt slipping provocatively around the corner, none of them suspected the wrinkled crone knitting baby’s booties, in whose guise the Pythia had visited the reveler collapsing in the street. In the heart of the Fair, too, where the merry-making had just been cut short, it was unclear if the apparition rising above the column planted in the cracks of the steaming earth was a giant clay image of her figure, its head seething with pythons, or only a curious natural phenomenon, densely concentrating grains of sand and debris in the valley’s core. Her priests, too, were swallowed up without a trace in the fumes and vapors. And since they were known for their low tricks, they may even have donned the glittering uniforms of the Fun Fair ushers and taken up position at the gates to collect the poll tax paid by all who entered there.

  Even the Pleasure Tycoons, who exerted themselves tirelessly to improve the Fair—and pocketed most of its fabulous profits—didn’t dare to oppose openly the Pythia’s reign of terror. They clenched their teeth at the sight of every additional condemned man but held their tongues. And when the Elders spoke of the ancient Fair which had ruled the valley in bygone days, they bowed their heads submissively. At that time, too, a radiant light had blazed there, and drink and delight had flowed freely over the Fair’s counters by day and by night. Until one night, when the quota of joy had been met, the flames of the Pythia’s wrath descended upon the Fair, and burned it to a cinder. The valley had turned into a swamp, overgrown with weeds. Until the current City Fathers had come and covered the swampy ground with earth and planks.


  But for the moment, the inhabitants of the metropolis, limp with joy, drowned their cares in drink in the Fair’s pavilions, and availed themselves of the services of the Pythia’s apparently harmless substitutes. And thus, even in the outer streets leading to the heart of joy, the Pythia’s mechanical dolls stood and offered their favors to those who could no longer control their desire. As soon as a coin was inserted, the doll would roll her long-lashed china eyes, heave her mechanical breasts, and swinging an iron arm to the right and the left, emit a fortune.

  The moment they passed the gates of the Fair, those who entered were lured by the tent of the fattest woman in the world. Long signs proclaiming the precise sum of her weight, enlarged pictures of her limbs with pythons coiled around them and even her gigantic panties were displayed for all to see. The slick huckster enflamed the passions of the passersby with rapturous cries. And his two underlings, sniggering boys with sweaty palms, collected the entrance fee, and from time to time, with whoops of glee, threw wet and dirty cloths at the faces of the emerging customers. And at the edge of the fairgrounds stood a long green hut, its doorway covered by a heavy curtain and its painted walls sunk in tall weeds. None of those stooping to emerge from the folds of the curtain would say a word about what had happened inside, but their eyes burned as fiercely as the eyes of a man who has seen his own death. It was rumored that it was from the roof of this green hut that the great fire which had destroyed the ancient Fair had begun. But in spite of the suspicion, only packs of dogs would charge the green walls, scratch the planks, and retreat defeated, whining, with the hair bristling on their backs.

  Yes, only the dogs relentlessly pursued she-of-the-thousand-faces. They prowled the City in packs. Emaciated, sharp-clawed, growling. And some said that the souls of the Pythia’s victims had been reincarnated in their bodies, and it was they who were seeking their revenge. Meanwhile, however, she-of-the-thousand-faces succeeded in cunningly distracting the wrath of her pursuers: the inhabitants of the City, drunk with lust for flesh and blood, would throw the dogs the lavish leftovers of their feasts. And the more the packs of dogs quarreled, the more the stalls where roasting sucking pigs revolved on spits—as well as butchers, slaughterhouses, and battle arenas—multiplied. And the remains of blood and charred fat cut black furrows through the grounds of the Fair.

  The artisans of one of the City’s suburbs and the guard of the nearby graveyard (which was full, of course, of the condemned) never imagined that there, too, the Pythia had organized a daily meal for the dogs. From behind a rubbish dump, a skinny old man would appear with a cloth cap pulled over his head and a tin tray in his hands piled with the decapitated heads of chickens. An invisible hand had borne them there from the slaughterhouse under the noses of the butchers in their blood and feather spotted aprons. Meanwhile the butchers rhythmically dragged the birds from their cages, pushed their necks into wooden holes, and brought their heavy cleavers down on them like the fists of God on the books of pardons. The dogs, with bloodshot eyes, bounded after the old man to the farthest end of the rubbish dump, tearing his rags with their teeth. They pounced on the skull bones and bits of feathers, which slipped from the tray into their claws. And while the dogs devoured their rations and pulled their claws out of the blood-soaked earth, the harsh hand of the Pythia continued to reign undisturbed over the City of Joy.

  Thus the life of the metropolis continued for many years, and the hearts of its inhabitants grew hardened to the sight of the condemned and their corpses piled up in the streets. The whining of the dogs, too, would have turned into a monotonous and routine accompaniment to the revelry and celebration, if disaster hadn’t struck from an unexpected direction. For to tell the truth, the first cracks in the ancient power of she-of-the-thousand-faces appeared without a single battle being waged.

  It occurred rather recently. The traffic of revelers streaming to the city grew beyond measure. Multitudes filled the roads by day and by night besieging the city gates. Pleasure pavilions opened one after the other. They contained facilities nowhere equaled for sophistication and ingenuity.

  Among the pavilions that were opened, for example, was The Grand Gambling Pit. From the heights of its roof in all directions loudspeakers proclaimed it attractions, and on fight days and racing days tens of thousands of revelers streamed through its doors. Among its attractions was a cockpit for cock fights, and behind it the no less entertaining rat race, where the competitors scurried on skinny legs through courses fashioned like hills and castles, swam across miniature lakes, and jumped through fiery hoops—with the numbers of the betters burned into their backs. But the attraction to which the Pit owed most of its fame was the knife and blade course, where the customers could place their bets on one of thirty men positioned on the starting line dressed in nothing but a loin cloth. When the whistle blew, and goaded on by the prods of the wildly excited audience, the runners sprinted through a gauntlet of blades and iron rakes. They were refreshed with cold water by the attendants, and went on to the bayoneted tunnels at the end of which the head of the first runner disappeared, to the cheers of the onlookers, into the smoking cell at the end of the course. At the beginning, special zones were allotted in the Pit to games suitable for children and youths, but the youngsters quickly outdid the adults in their boldness. They filled all the pleasure courses with their irrepressible eagerness.

  And on the paths of the fairground, under the chains of lanterns flickering in the gloom of the eternal fog, a band of dwarf musicians strolled. In their oversized jackets they looked like hangers which had escaped from a wardrobe. Their big heads hung over the necks of their violins, and they swayed between the legs of the people emerging from the stalls, leaving behind the piercing sweetness of old love songs.

  And so it was that in the face of the rising, seething tide of revelry, the Pythia’s chastisements made but a faint impression.

  One last deadly weapon remained to she-of-the-thousand-faces. But the recent prosperity and level of sophistication which the City of Joy had attained neutralized this ancient arm as well. For a long time, no sooner was one of the revelers attacked by feelings of regret for even an almost insignificant trifle—no matter how slight—than the pangs of conscience would dig their teeth into him and bite so deeply that they threatened to finish him off within the space of a few days. Many hopes had been pinned on the work of a team of scientists who had developed a strain of animals (so far, small animals) with sterilized souls. But in the meantime, in order to solve pressing problems, and on the recommendation of the Patrons of the City, the Breast-Beaters Street was created.Warning posted up on the walls of all the Fair booths instructed all those afflicted with the first symptons of distress to hurry to this place.

  The sound of weeping and the cries for mercy were audible in the surrounding streets. Green-capped attendants circulated among the waiting people, and, gripping him firmly under the armpits, conducted the next in line to the entrance of the street. In the street itself the doors and windows of the houses had been sealed shut, and all along its length, on a jutting stone ledge, sat the elected members of the Pardoning Board. They passed their time by rattling collecting tins for charity, gnawing crusts of bread, and shrieking with laughter. The next in line hesitantly approached the entrance to the street, casting stealthy looks right and left. The attendants removed the purse stuffed with payment for the treatment hanging ready around his neck, and with one last push sent him in. The members of the Board, without stopping their chattering, looked him over cursorily, and without undue effort diagnosed the cause of his guilty conscience. Immediately, and in accordance with his sin—slander, gluttony, murder—a long tongue would grow out of his mouth and slide rapidly to the floor, almost crushing the members of the Board (who made haste to get out of the way huddling together like a startled centipede). Or his intestines, squirting juices and acids, would coil themselves around his body. Or knives and rifle-barrels would shoot out of his nails. He was speedily removed, and the next in l
ine was thrust into the street by the attendants’ practiced hands. The affected member would usually remain in its enlarged state for a while before returning to normal. The sight of the pardoned sauntering through the streets with their swollen members became a source of pride to the people of the City, a living proof of the triumph of progress.

  So it was that in the face of such an unprecedented burst of revelry even the fabulous powers of the Pythia failed. The lists of the guilty grew longer and longer, but although she changed her face ceaselessly, the ancient form of her punishments could not keep up with the scope of the guilt. Sometimes she would pause exhausted to take a breath of air on one of the hills surrounding the City. She would pass a heavy hand over her brow and contemplate the valley obscured by fumes. But a moment later the dogs would encircle the old man crushing his hat between his hands, and she’d be obliged to change swiftly into another shape and escape at a run.

  The anxious queue outside the green hut, too, grew shorter and shorter. There, behind the curtain, the person entering would hold out a hand, which detached itself from his shoulder and floated for a moment in a small space full of arms. At last, the tongue opposite him, underneath a pair of dull eyes would click, “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.” But now the revelers preferred other pavilions, and the call of the last of the fortune-telling booths, too, was losing its fascination.