by Lavie Tidhar
“If you don’t know that, you’re really new around here.”
“I’ve been out of touch for a long time,” I said. “I was busy. I’m a researcher.”
“Oh,” she said, and her eyes lit up. “Are you from the university, then? A professor?”
“Well, not exactly, no.” No faculty in the Tel Aviv University agreed to accept me, despite all my credentials and documentation. However, in my field I’m the equivalent — at least! — of any professor that you’d care to name, of any faculty whatsoever. “I don’t have the official degree, but I’m something very similar.”
This, I could see, impressed the woman to no end. “Professor!” she shouted. “A professor!”
“No need to get excited,” I said, backing away.
“A professor’s attacking me! Help! Help! Save me from the Faculty!”
There was a second in which nothing happened. It was a very long second. I stood there, not understanding what had just happened. The woman looked as if she was going to have a heart attack. Then she opened her mouth to shout again, but just as she was doing so two guys appeared on the porch. They took one look at me and jumped down to the ground. This jolted me out of my frozen stance, and got me running and puffing until Remez Street became Bloch Street, which, mid-way through, became too steep for me to climb.
*
Firemen and Professors. None of it made any sense. Well, actually, I could understand why people wouldn’t like the professors. That wasn’t anything new. The so-called intellectuals with their degrees and their ivory towers, snubbing the unwashed masses, snubbing, more importantly, those of us who had eyes to see what the establishment refused to acknowledge. People like myself, who deserved respect, deserved to be acknowledged. But no. No wonder the professors were hated. I didn’t like them much myself.
But why Firemen?
Was it some sort of gang? Did it have anything to do with the actual fire department? Or with whatever police force was left in Tel Aviv, if any? It didn’t seem very likely.
I was walking, thinking of all this, when it occurred to me to look again at the sketch of the tattoo I found on the man at mother’s apartment. The symbol underneath the flames — it was neither a horseshoe, nor a magnet. It was the Hebrew letter Kaf. I had a pretty strong hunch now that it was meant to be the first letter of the word kaba’im: that is to say, Firemen.
I wished for their sake they hadn’t upset my mother.
*
By noon I was exhausted. I was hungry and thirsty and awfully tired. The new Central Station was less than three kilometres away, but those were full of ruins and obstacles and people who seemed too aggressive for my taste. I kept myself hidden as much as possible, which slowed me even more. Then I saw the donkey.
It looked perfectly in place, as it came around a corner, walking without hurry right towards me. It was grey and small, and, as far as I could see, utterly at peace with itself and the world. It was also leading a cart. A child was driving it. I watched in silence as it came towards me. Children. There, at least, there was no danger.
The boy shouted, “ Hoisa!” The cart stopped. It seemed to be filled with old blankets.
The child and I looked at each other. I was thinking of something nice to say, without any mention of Firemen or Professors, and was failing miserably.
“You want something to eat, sir?” said the child.
“Yes,” I said.
He turned to the back of the cart, rummaged under the blankets and came back with an orange. He threw it to me. I stuck both my thumbs into the flesh, tore the orange open, and ate it off the peel. I’ve eaten good food in my life, including an original sample of the manna the Israelites received from God in the desert — which had, I have to admit, tasted a little old. This orange was better. It was better than manna. It made me wonder where it came from. Were people growing oranges in Tel Aviv again?
Or maybe I was just hungry.
“Thanks!” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”
The boy shook his head. “That would be two lira, sir.”
“Yes,” I said. “In a moment. But first — can you tell me anything about people who call themselves the Firemen?”
The boy shook his head empathically. “Two lira, sir.”
“Just answer me first, who are . . .”
“Two lira. Sir!”
Lira? That was the currency before the shekel, during and after the British Mandate, a long time before this kid was even born. Was that a joke?
“Here,” I said, “take this — ” and I pulled out a twenty shekel note from my pocket and gave it to him.
“What the hell’s that?” he said.
“It’s money, you little — ”
He stared at the note critically, making no move to take it from my hand. “Not worth anything,” he said.
“Worth a lot more than one orange!” I said.
“You don’t have lira? What about a grush?”
“Those coins with a hole in them?” I said, taken aback. Those went out of circulation back in the . . . back a long time ago.
“Yes!” he said. “You have?”
“No.”
“What about a quarter-gallon of petrol?”
“What about it?” The kid was starting to seriously annoy me. And I mean — why the lira? Or the grush? Though when I thought about it, it made a kind of sense. There must have been an enormous amount of bank-issued money — of shekels — in Tel Aviv after the event. People must want something rare enough to be valuable. But where would you even get old notes and coins? And then I thought of all the antique shops, and the Tel Aviv Museum, and it didn’t seem so far-fetched any more. . .
I wasn’t paying much attention to the kid, and I should have been. I should have particularly paid attention to the empty cart, which wasn’t empty anymore. The pile of dirty blankets rose and became four men.
They rushed me.
They were big guys, bare-footed, wearing tie-dyed sharwal pants and colourful Hawaiian shirts, paint- or dirt-splattered khafiyas which covered not only the tops of their heads but also their faces. Only their eyes were visible. I didn’t like the look in those eyes at all. They looked like murderous hippies who had run out of magic mushrooms.
“Look, I’m sure there’s some misunderstanding here,” I said, backing away, and then one of them came at me from behind and pain bloomed in the back of my head, and I blacked out.
*
When I woke up I was lying face-down in the cart. It stank of rotten fruit and unwashed bodies. I heard the people talking quietly, above me, but couldn’t understand what they were saying.
I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself for the moment, so I stayed as I was and considered my situation. It had obviously been a trap, and I went straight into it. Fine. But what did they want me for?
Suddenly I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
Try to think of something else. Who were they? I didn’t think they were Firemen — no visible insignia, and the man at mother’s apartment wasn’t dressed like a stoned Bedouin — could they be Professors? Not entirely impossible, but hard to believe nonetheless. So they had to be some other group.
How many gangs were there in this broken city?
A bare foot landed near my face. Big hands reached for me, turned me roughly around. I blinked in the sunlight.
A face above me said, “Don’t worry,” which didn’t make me feel any better.
“We are,” the man said — he had a warm, hearty voice — “the pilgrims, the seekers after divine truth, followers of they who are whole, the holy grail, the multiple manifestations of God, the devouring storm-beings of Altneuland . . .”
For a moment I forgot to be afraid. This was entering into my specialized field. Altneuland. That was the name of Theodor Herzl’s prophetic novel. The Old New Land. I suppressed a shudder. When the book was translated into Hebrew it was titled differently. It was called Tel Aviv.
“. . . the grail which was sent to teach us of the
knightly virtues, and the deadly storm that was sent to teach us humility in the face of God . . .”
Oh God, I thought. This can’t be good.
“Welcome,” finished the voice, “to the Holy Brotherhood of the New Knights Templar.” He sighed. “At least until we auction you off.”
One year in isolation and Tel Aviv was back to slavery? I decided he must be joking. Ha ha. Almost got me.
Don’t think about that. Think about something else.
Templars. I knew all there was to know about the Templars, including some facts that were never published concerning the truth behind their “dissolution” and seeming disappearance in the fourteenth century, which, I knew for a fact, had a great deal to do with a certain extraterrestrial artefact. I even know where said artefact was located today, guarded in the Templar’s secret headquarters at floor minus-five of the Louvre in Paris. These guys weren’t Templars. Not as I knew the term. Which was good, I thought. No worries about being trapped by a world-dominating secret organization then.
No worries at all.
But . . .
Slavery?
Ha ha.
You almost got me.
I N T E R L U D E
Slavery. There are mines in this new Tel Aviv: there is mining for copper wiring, mining for such things as were buried in the foundations, in the rubble, mining for tins of food in the ruined supermarkets and in the cold dark storage rooms hidden below. It is not a nice place, this new Tel Aviv. There is survival, whatever the cost. There are gangs who seek the weak, the fearful, the ones who are alone, and take them: men and women do this, the gatherers of human souls, and once a month in the old municipality building they come together and there bargain over their pitiful haul, over those few who were not taken by the cold winds of the mountain, and when they are done they set them to work. There are new jobs in this new Tel Aviv, this city of spring and of hope. There are the gatherers, the traders, but worse than them are the overseers who drive the slaves, for they had found freedom in the absence of law, and found power in the dominance of others. There are not many, no. And there are those who oppose them — the Arlozorov Posse, for instance, who fight the traders and kill them when they can, who liberate the unfortunate souls and try to care for them — but how many can you take care of, when you have no guarantee of your next meal yourself? Escaped slaves can sometimes find refuge in the many places of the city — some have become roof-dwellers, some have joined the many tiny kibbutzim that flourish in empty apartment blocks, but for many, capture is almost a respite, an end to running: a final destination from which can emerge only the final, endless peace which had passed them by that last year, yet took their loved ones with it.
SAM: FOUR
I left Kibbutz Galuyot behind me and turned right on Mount Zion avenue. I was watching out for wild animals — and feral children, for that matter, not to mention crazed pidgin-speaking delivery boys and, just possibly, the messiah, but all I saw was rubble and destruction, an urban wasteland spreading out and away from me in every direction. I didn’t know what Mount Zion Avenue had looked like before the event — as I passed through it all I saw were broken buildings, heaps of rubbish that had once been shops and homes and community centres. I was looking out for danger, but I was thinking wrong — I was looking for people.
*
“You are going,” the Chief Rabbi had said, “to Tel Aviv.” I nodded. There was no dissembling before the Chief Rabbi.
I assumed his own intelligence service was as good as the Prime Minister’s. I knew the powers that fought for the balance of Israel.
The secular authorities were still standing, but for how long? With the loss of Tel Aviv, Israel had lost the vast majority of its secular citizens. The battle ahead was a battle for dominance, Orthodox versus secular, God versus the godless, and the godless, it seemed, have mostly disappeared in what was clearly a miracle: that is, an act that could not be explained rationally and could not be repeated.
“Do you understand what is at stake?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I had the feeling he did not expect an answer. The Chief Rabbi brought out two sheets of paper.
Twin images to the ones I had just seen at the PM’s office. “What do you think it is?” he said, stabbing with his finger at the second picture. How very Rabbinic, I thought. Always ask the questions. It reminded me of the old joke — how many Germans does it take to change a light bulb?
Shut up! Vee are asking ze questions here!
I looked at the picture. Then I looked at the Chief Rabbi. I said, “I think it looks like a mountain.”
“It is a mountain,” the Chief Rabbi said.
“Do I get a cookie for guessing right?” I said. The rabbi let it pass.
“It is Mount Sinai,” he said.
Whoa. And backtrack a little. “I beg your pardon?” I said.
“I accept your apology,” he said, and smiled a small, sardonic smile. “Yes, it is Mount Sinai, where God materialized before Moses to give him the Ten Commandments, the basis of all law.”
“Mount Sinai,” I said carefully, “is, well, in the Sinai. That’s in Egypt,” I added, helpfully. The rabbi gave me a look that suggested I should keep my mouth shut. “God has reappeared to us,” the rabbi said. “The time of Moshiach is nigh. The end of days!”
“Wasn’t it supposed to happen in Jerusalem first?” I said.
“A technical point,” the rabbi said. “Clearly, God felt it was necessary to appear first to those of us who had forgotten the true path. One cannot be only half a Jew. A chance is being given.” His look said it was a chance I, personally, should consider taking. I shrugged. “Where is this messiah, then?” I said.
“Aha,” the rabbi said. “That is a good question.” And again I felt like asking for a cookie. He smiled at me. I did not like the smile. “That,” the rabbi said, “is what I want you to answer.”
The English have an expression. How the cookie crumbles . . . “You want me to go into Tel Aviv to find you a messiah?”
“Not a messiah. The messiah. He is there. He must be. If the calculations are correct” — here he tapped the desk, and a pile of computer printouts that lay on top of it — “according to our best kabbalists, diviners and students of the Torah, and using the latest gimatria software and bible code decryptors, the messiah would have emerged, unbeknownst, possibly, even to himself, in Tel Aviv, in the area of the event. He would have gone to the mountain, and there — ”
“Yes?”
“He would have spoken to God.”
“Of course,” I said. Of course. There is another old joke — the richest man in the world wants to speak to God, so he goes to the U.S. President. “Can I talk to God?” he says. “Sure,” the American President says. “Use that red phone over there. But it’s ten million dollars a minute.”
Next, the man goes to the Vatican. “Can I talk to God?” he asks the Pope. “Sure,” the Pope says. “Use that white phone over there. But it’s five million Euros a minute.”
Lastly, he goes to Jerusalem, and walks into the Chief Rabbi’s office. “Can I talk to God?” he says. The rabbi doesn’t look up. “Sure,” he says, waving his hand distractedly towards the window. There’s a call-box outside, and a queue of people waiting to use it. “It’s only a local call.”
“What if — ” I said, and the rabbi gave me the kind of look that suggested I was beginning to annoy him “ — the messiah turns out to be a woman?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Look,” the rabbi said, leaning across the desk. His eyes locked on mine. “All you have to do is go into Tel Aviv, and find the messiah. Do you understand me?”
“I get you,” I said. “I get you.”
“Good. Then get the hell out of my sight.”
I hadn’t noticed the door opening. When I turned around two of the yeshiva boys stood there. The last thing I saw was the fat one on the left smiling. I started to say, �
��Oh, come o — ” and then everything went dark.
*
I was still thinking wrong. I was still looking for people. What I got instead was a —
Something slammed against my back, hard, and I skittered across the road, my body shuddering from the impact with the ground, my palms grazing where I tried to stop the fall. I turned on my back, Uzi drawn —
A great column of air — no, not air — of nothingness — no, that’s not right either — a turbulence, is the best way I can put it. Not a turbulence in the air, though. A turbulence in reality. The thing was tall, as tall as a building, wider overhead, tapering to a cone where it touched the ground. Though it had no face, no expression, I could somehow tell it was watching me. I nearly pressed the trigger then, but something stopped me. Perhaps the realization that bullets were unlikely to do much to this thing. Make it angry, maybe. I stayed down, on my back, and stared up at the thing.
It was, a part of me had to admit, magnificent. It was like a localized storm, but an aware storm — at least, with a sort of awareness. Not human, not like anything I could comprehend, but when I looked up at it and wondered if it was going to kill me, I felt awe.
The thing moved. The maelstrom passed very close to me. I tried not to breathe. Then, as if dismissing me as irrelevant, the thing swooped majestically down the avenue.
Was this — and others like it — what had caused the devastation in the city?
Yet some people survived. I myself had been left unharmed. Why?
I stood up slowly, my hand holding tight to the Uzi. The thing was moving north along Mount Zion Avenue. I looked north, and up: the mountain rose high above, not Mount Zion, not Mount Sinai either, I didn’t think: something else. Something strange and alien and awful, which is to say, it inspired awe. I stared up at the peaks for a long moment. They looked impossibly high.
I decided to continue in the direction I had chosen. Which meant following the maelstrom.
At that moment there was a loud bang, and I dropped to the ground again, hitting my left elbow against the road. The pain flushed hot through me and I cursed. I rolled and brought the Uzi up and then I saw the thing coming towards me, a giant, hulking, snake-like shape, crawling along the road towards me, belching smoke.
