Journal of a UFO Investigator

by David Halperin

  I was four when he died. He taught me to read the year before, from the comic pages of the newspaper, me sitting on his lap, on the porch of the big old house that was his and my grandmother’s, where on Sabbath afternoons he sat and read from his old Hebrew books. The Bible; other books too. But the Bible was the one I always remembered.

  “I’m not Asher,” I said.

  Who are you then?

  I would have told him my name, but I didn’t remember it. In the place I’d been, names are forgotten; that must be true here also. “You’re my grandfather,” I said.

  He heaved himself up from the water and sat on a stool-shaped rock beside it. The stream had carved that shape, hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. He was pale and naked, a huge plump baby, his skin shiny as a soap bubble.

  I wanted to sit in his lap this once more, but I was afraid if I did, he would burst. He motioned me toward a rock beside his. I sat down; with my body I shielded The Case for the UFO from the water that splashed up from the pool. I glanced toward my legs, stained an unnatural brown. They contrasted oddly with my grandfather’s paleness. The bright water would probably wash away the tint if I bathed in it. But I wouldn’t try that. I wasn’t ready to become a soul quite yet.

  He said: Why are you alone?

  What else would I be? I wanted to say. I’ve always been alone. Before my mother got sick, I might have had friends. But I didn’t, and then she did.

  “You need to be proud of me,” I said. “I won a contest. It was on the Bible, and I read the Bible until I learned it better than anybody. I wrote an essay on it, about how time can seem fast and slow at once. Then I went to New York and answered questions better than anyone else could. That’s how I won.”

  I didn’t tell him about the UFOs. I didn’t think he’d understand.

  “I read it in English,” I said. “I don’t know Hebrew, the way you did. But I’ll learn this summer. I’ll be in Israel until the end of August. That was the first prize.”

  I’d always wanted him to teach me Hebrew. I wanted to know those strange-sounding words, that blocky script he pored over with such love. But we never got beyond the newspaper comics and sometimes a few lines from the Bible in English. Then he died.

  Why isn’t your mother with you?

  “Beg pardon?”

  I felt the rebuke in his words. I went on talking, a little bit desperately. I’d loved him more than I ever loved my father. There were times I wished my father had died and not him. He would never have tormented me over my pimples; he would have taken me out driving and taught me, patiently, just as he taught me to read.

  “Don’t you remember?” I said. “You always wanted to go to Israel. The night the UN voted there should be an Israel, you were so happy you cried. I wasn’t born yet, but Grandma told me about it. And every year you saved money, and you would have gone, but that heart attack—”

  Why isn’t your mother with you?

  “I’m only going for the summer, for God’s sake! She’ll be all right. She promised me—”

  Yet what does it mean, an invalid’s promise? “Don’t you worry about me; I’ll be fine!” Tears trickled from her eyes as she spoke, as though we were saying good-bye forever and not for eight weeks.

  WHY ISN’T YOUR MOTHER WITH YOU?

  Louder now, in my mind and possibly also my ears. I knew exactly what I was expected to do. Break down weeping, beg forgiveness, promise I’d leave at once and go home to sit beside her. Rage swelled my throat, strong as when I sat atop the lake creature, smashing its face into the floor.

  “Why isn’t she with you?” I screamed.

  My body twitched at each thud of my heart, as my voice echoed off the walls of the hollow and I realized what I’d just said. I wondered if the souls would turn in unison to condemn me as the most evil of sons. Wishing his mother dead.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that.”

  Death comes in all seasons.

  “It’s only one summer,” I said. “I’ve never been away before.”

  Silence. Then he sighed. He bent to the water and drank. At that moment he looked like one of the bubbles in the water. I knew he’d begun to forget me, and I became afraid. I’d waited twelve years to talk with him, and we would never speak again.

  “I have a book,” I said.

  He looked up, with what I imagined to be a trace of interest.

  A book?

  “Like the old Hebrew books you used to read. There’s text here, and there’s commentary, and the commentary is more important than the text. There’s a lot I don’t understand.”

  He nodded.

  “I want you to explain it to me. Like you did when I was little.”

  He rose from the waters and sat beside me. I wanted badly to touch him, but I was afraid. I opened the Gypsies’ Case for the UFO to the page I hadn’t needed to mark, I’d turned back to it so often I could find it in my sleep. I read aloud:

  Such fools the Gaiyars are! They call us Alien, when all the time we are within them, Bone of their Bone and Flesh of their Flesh ...

  —until I reached the words:

  True, we are part of them, embedded in them, Spirit and Flesh, from the Day Of Their Birth. AND YET—

  From one edge of the universe to the other, and upon all its infinite Planets and innumerable Moons—

  There is none more alien than We.

  Again he nodded.

  Death.

  “Death?” I said.

  Already I understood, just as he had. Death—the most essential and familiar part of us all. Born in us, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, the instant we’re born. Yet also death—alien! Beyond all alienness! Through it I’m not me anymore; I’m nothing at all. Those Gypsies were right. Easier to conceive of the most fantastic star at the edge of the farthest galaxy, the most inhuman, unrecognizable form of life and intelligence than to conceive of death.

  And who of all the people I know—Jeff, the kids at school, Rosa, wherever she is—can conceive of me?

  The rock hollow, the radiant water spurting into it, the naked, babylike human bubbles swirling in the water: all spun before my eyes, as the meaning of the Gypsies’ words sank in. I was sure I was going to faint. To steady myself, I reached for his hand.

  “It’s not true!” I cried.

  It was too late to explain. I tried anyway. “I mean,” I said, “you’re dead. They buried you in the ground. And yet you’re not alien. You’re still my grandpa. I recognized you the moment I saw you. Don’t you remember? You recognized me too.”

  Too late.

  He’d burst the instant I touched him, like the bubble he was. I watched in despair as he flowed beyond my grasp, down the endless stream.

  The rock wall was slippery with spray from below. Yet it was rough and tore my naked skin as I climbed. If I looked down, I’d get dizzy and fall, so I forced myself only to look up, toward the entrance to the tunnel. It must have been at least thirty feet up. I carried, as best I could, The Case for the UFO.

  The hollow arched inward. My right foot, the bad one, slipped.

  My body swung out from the rock like a door on its hinges. My foot kicked at emptiness; the book, in my useless right hand, waved in midair. Must not let it fall. The other foot pressed into its rock niche. With my left hand I strained to keep hold, pull the rest my body back against the wall. I looked down.

  Saw the rocks on which I would shatter. Saw the soul bubbles, intent on their own eternity, indifferent to this flesh-bound man who swung, howling, in terror of death, a few dozen feet above them. Fall—and I’d lie forever, broken, on those rocks. No one would help. No one would notice.

  With my throbbing foot I scrabbled at the wall, found a grip, lost it. My left fingers weakened. I felt them slip. I let go of the book.

  In the second and a half it took to fall—my empty hand grabbing at a rock projection, my life, however precariously, back in my control—I felt all that had tumbled away with it. The secrets, the wisdo
m, the power. What was worse, the pain and blood that had gone into recovering it. Morris Jessup’s, Tom Dimitrios’s, possibly Julian’s and Rochelle’s; now mine. All futile, wasted, permanently lost.

  I heard the splash. I knew what I’d see if I looked down: the souls scattering, the way water does when something heavy plops into it. Back a minute later, just like water, as if nothing had happened.

  I wouldn’t look. I closed my eyes, pressed my cheek against the wet rock. My dizziness passed. After a while I loosened my grip, started climbing again. I kept my eyes fixed on the tunnel entrance, now just a few feet away.

  To give myself courage, I recited the psalms:

  A song of ascents, of David.

  I rejoiced when they said to me, Let us go to the house of the Lord.

  Our feet are standing within thy gates, O Jerusalem . . .

  CHAPTER 25

  THE LIGHT FROM THE WELL OF SOULS DIMMED AND VANISHED. For hours I scrambled upward through the tunnel’s darkness. Then came a light from above, which grew brighter as I climbed.

  The last ten feet were nearly vertical. At the top: a thick metal grate, bolted over the opening.

  Useless, I thought. Hopeless. No way I was getting out of here.

  Sink down. Slide back to the well. Drink its waters for eternity.

  Who whispered those words?

  My final message from the moon woman?

  No matter; I knew better than to listen. I pulled myself up, braced my knees against one side of the shaft and my shoulders against the other. With both hands I struck at the underside of the grate. The screws, mostly rusted, pulled free on the third blow. I pushed away the grate. I dragged myself up into a small rock hollow, its floor paved with white marble. An electric light burned weakly over my head. A short flight of steps led up and out.

  Naked I came forth.

  Like a pilgrim, I circled the Rock from which I’d emerged. The golden dome arched over me; the carpet’s softness comforted my bare feet. Huge gold letters, in a script I recognized as Arabic, ran in a band around the dome’s base. This was the wrong city—Jerusalem, Jordan, not Jerusalem, Israel. The city and world of my enemies, where a person of my ancestry had no business being. Yet a human city at last, where there were languages and things had names.

  I thought of the winged horse and the night journey. I thought of the picture that hung in the Rare Book Room of the Philadelphia library, where my own night travels had begun. I marveled that I was really here, that like the prophet on the winged horse I had flown. I imagined myself leaping over the ornate wooden fence that surrounded the Rock, clambering over the rough surface in search of his footprint. When I found it, I’d jump up fifteen feet and grab the end of the golden chain hanging from the center of the dome. I’d swing on that chain until I propelled myself into the sky. I was free, reborn. Anything was possible now.

  It must have been late. The building was almost empty. A watchman, a huge man, dressed in a long gray caftan belted at the waist, sat on a folding chair by the entrance. His white kaffiyeh covered his head, flowed down over his shoulders. His fingers played with a string of beads in his lap. He looked straight at me.

  My hands shot down to cover my crotch, and I let out a cry. Luckily he didn’t hear. He yawned and shifted in his chair. He looked absently out the doorway, then back toward me. Then back to the beads.

  Of course. I was still invisible.

  Half a dozen men sat cross-legged in a small circle on the carpet, chanting something I supposed was a hymn. One man was older than the rest. He wore a small wine-colored fez, sparkling white linen coiled around it. His eyes were closed and hollow.

  Ya nabee, salaam alaika, marhaban;

  Ya rasool, salaam alaika, ma’a salaam.

  “O messenger, peace be upon you, welcome. . . .” Somehow, I don’t know how, I guessed at the words as they chanted them over and over. I must have drawn in my breath, softly but loud enough. The blind man, the leader, looked up. He called out to me in Arabic; he smiled in the most friendly way. He gestured to a spot beside him on the floor. I smiled back, though nobody could see me.

  I shook my head no. The others looked toward me. Then one of them to the man beside him. He tilted his head and tapped it with his finger: The old man’s crazy.

  The setting moon bulged as though a little bit pregnant. It lit the stone platform around the Dome of the Rock, where I stood alone. The gnarled, scattered trees bent under their foliage, rustling in the night breeze.

  Down a long, winding ramp I descended to the shuttered city. I moved through it like a ghost. I passed darkened shops, their fronts stone archways. Young men in slacks and open-collared shirts walked in groups, close together, laughing and talking. I pressed myself to the wall as they went by. I slid through a turreted gate with high flanking towers, past a tall white pillar as mute and solitary as myself.

  Did I walk or float? I can’t remember. Nor can I remember what was guiding me, how I knew exactly which street to turn into, which of the identical-looking buildings was hers. I went inside; I climbed two or maybe three flights of stairs. The button in the wall glowed like a dim orange moon. When I pressed it, I heard a distant buzz. I waited for her to come to the door.

  CHAPTER 26

  “DANNY.”

  She looked older than she had the night at the SSS house, when Julian introduced us. Her hair fell loose to her shoulders. Her breasts hung free and heavy beneath her flannel nightgown. Her brown eyes gazed at me, through the thickest glasses I’d seen on any human being.

  “You’re up late,” I said.

  “I don’t sleep well these days.”

  Behind her, by the end of a wicker couch, a reading lamp was lit. In her hand she held a thick book, bound in a heavy paper cover. The collected stories of Guy de Maupassant, in French. She’d inserted her finger in the book to mark her place.

  “I have terrible dreams,” she said.

  She stepped backward into the room. I followed; she closed the door behind me. A coarsely woven rug of crimson and white and black covered part of the floor, but where I stood the stone was smooth and creamy. Somewhere in the apartment a clock ticked loudly.

  “You’re naked,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “And your skin—well, never mind. You’ll be in the sunlight now. The sunlight will heal you.”

  She extended her free hand, ran her palm down my cheek. Beneath her touch I felt on my face an odd softness, a springy furriness, as if she were caressing someone or something I’d never yet been. For the first time I grasped I wasn’t invisible anymore.

  “You’ve got a beard now.”

  “I’m older,” I said. “Just like you.”

  “Of course. It’s been three years.”

  Once thirteen. Now sixteen. Once 1963. Now 1966. And my face, once beardless, had sprouted, covered itself in hairs without my ever noticing. No wonder my grandfather had taken me for his own father, whiskered old Asher of Lithuania.

  “But aren’t you cold?” she said.

  Only then did I realize, yes, I was cold. Where I’d been there was neither heat nor cold. I began to shiver and couldn’t stop.

  “Wait here a minute,” she said. “I’ll get you a blanket.”

  Almost at once she was back with a bulky wool blanket. She draped it around me. “Why is it so cold?” I said as soon as my teeth stopped chattering. “Isn’t it summer now?”

  “It is. But Jerusalem can be cold at night even in summertime. We’re in the mountains, you know.”

  “ ‘As the mountains are round about Jerusalem,’ ”I said, “ ‘so the Lord is round about his people.’ ”

  “Danny!” She laughed. “So you’re reading the Bible now?”

  “For the past three years,” I said.

  She stood close to me.

  “That’s how I got here,” I said.

  I held the blanket tightly around myself with both hands. I hadn’t entirely stopped shaking.

  “Would you like to s
ee your daughter now?” she said.

  The baby lay in her cradle, breathing noisily in her sleep. A network of very fine mesh hung suspended over her, from a hook in the ceiling. Its edges flowed down to the floor, enclosing the cradle on all sides.

  Rochelle had taken a flashlight from a table in the hallway. “There’s an overhead light in the room,” she whispered to me. “But I don’t want to use it. We’ll wake her up, and then it’ll take her forever to get back to sleep. She doesn’t sleep, hardly at all.”

  “My God,” I said. I could not take my eyes from the infant. “It was real.”

  Rochelle nodded. I think she knew what I meant. There really had been a “seeding” in that death-land beneath the moon, which now that I was out of it had begun to feel like a distant nightmare. Yet here was this tiny creature. Child of that land: my daughter, my burden. Whether I loved her I couldn’t tell.

  “You must be up half the night with her,” I said.

  “No, no. It’s not her that keeps me up.” There was an immense weariness and sadness in Rochelle’s voice, and I remembered what she’d said about her dreams. “She doesn’t cry. She just lies there with her eyes wide open, and you see her staring up at the ceiling. Or maybe at something else, I don’t know what.”

  I took a bit of the mesh between my thumb and forefinger. “Mosquito netting?” I said.

  “Uh-huh. You need it here, for the babies. They couldn’t sleep in peace without it.”

  The silvery netting reflected the flashlight’s beam and made it difficult to see inside. I had the impression of a tiny, frail form with spindly arms and legs, a swollen belly. A vast cranium, covered sparsely with fine, silky hair. Her ears were minuscule. Her eyes, which I most wanted to see, were closed. Behind their lids they seemed enormous.

  We stood silently together for a few minutes, listening to the loud, labored breathing from the cradle. “Will she live?” I asked.