Journal of a UFO Investigator

by David Halperin

  “We’re not sure. She’s got a chance, Dr. Talibi says. But not a very good one. He says she’s hanging by a thread.”

  A thread. Spun only just now. Now about to be broken.

  “Dr. Talibi?” I said.

  “That’s right, I’d forgotten. You don’t know Dr. Talibi. He was our family doctor here, from back in the old days. He’s got an office on Salah ed-Din Street. We’ll go see him tomorrow, you and I.”

  She switched off the flashlight as she spoke. We stood in darkness. I gazed into the shadow amid shadows where my child lay and listened to her tiny lungs struggle for air.

  “Her breathing,” I said. “Why is it so hard for her? This Dr. Talibi—does he have any idea?”

  “No, he doesn’t. But I think I do. I think it’s . . . the atmosphere. Theirs must be richer than ours. In oxygen. Not by much maybe. But enough to make a difference. I think their lungs aren’t built to function in air like ours. And she’s got lungs like her mommy’s, poor little thing.”

  Another possibility occurred to me. Born of seed yielded in pain and fear, drained through a needle into a flask—how could she be anything but warped, sickly, distorted? But then it would all be my fault, and I didn’t want to believe that.

  “And hasn’t this Talibi noticed? That—that—”

  “That she’s strange? Not entirely human? Yes, of course he’s noticed. He’s not stupid.”

  She went on, more softly: “But I don’t think he’ll tell anyone. He’ll keep our secret. For Daddy’s sake, if nothing else. He remembers Daddy. They were good friends.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure why she spoke in the past tense. From the sadness in her voice, I thought I could guess.

  “They came in the middle of the night,” she said. “When they brought her to me. Just like you tonight. They didn’t have much choice, really. They were wearing those long raincoats of theirs and those huge dark glasses that hide everything. But still there was no way they’d pass if anyone had seen them in the daylight.”

  “Three of them?” I said.

  “Uh-huh. You know them by now; I can see that. There were three of them, and she was the fourth, all wrapped up in her blanket. I said, ‘Why did you bring her to me?’ I didn’t understand; I honestly didn’t. I hadn’t had anything to do with UFOs, ever since—well, you’ll hear all about that soon enough.

  “They didn’t answer. I don’t know if they even understood me. I might have been speaking English or maybe Arabic; I don’t remember. They must not have understood. They didn’t say anything.”

  “They never say anything,” I said.

  After a moment, I said: “What about her eyes?”

  “Her eyes? You mean, are they like ours? Or . . . theirs?”

  “Yes. That’s what I mean.”

  “Well,” she said. “They do have an iris and a pupil. Just like ours. Only the pupil is a lot bigger than ours. It’s like your eyes, you know, when you’ve just come out from the darkness. Hers are like that all the time. And the light doesn’t seem to bother her. At first I thought it would. But it doesn’t.”

  She spoke slowly, as if she needed to choose her words very carefully.

  “You could see how big her eyes are. Even with them closed. And it’s a funny thing, they’re not just on the front of her face. The ends curve around to the sides, just a little bit. They’re slanted too. You can’t see that so well when she’s got them closed.”

  “And her hands?”

  She looked puzzled. “What about them? They’re just ... hands. Five fingers. Four and a thumb.”

  “Not six?”

  Rochelle shook her head. Relief flowed into me, like water down a thirsting throat. Now perhaps I could begin to love this child.

  “Danny,” Rochelle said suddenly. “Take off your glasses.”

  She turned on the flashlight and pressed its lighted end against my chest, muffling its light in my blanket. “Never mind,” she said. “You don’t have a free hand. I’ll do it.”

  She reached up and took off my glasses. She raised the flashlight’s beam until it was nearly in my eyes. I tried to see her face. But it was hidden behind the blinding eye of the flashlight.

  “You’re there!” she cried softly. “In her eyes!”

  “I’m there?”

  “The color. That beautiful brown, the little bits of green in it. I knew I remembered that color, the first time I saw her. The night they brought her here. You’ve got beautiful eyes,” she said. “You know that?”

  “No. I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, you do. And so does she. She’s got a little bit of you there in her eyes.”

  “Come on, Danny,” said Rochelle. “We’d better see about getting you to bed.”

  We were back in the hallway now. The door to the baby’s room was closed behind us. We didn’t need to whisper.

  “If we stay up much longer,” she said cheerfully, “we’ll hear the call to dawn prayers from the mosques. You’ve never heard that before, have you?”

  She turned to me, smiling. At once her smile vanished.

  “Danny! What’s wrong?”

  I couldn’t answer. I hadn’t known anything was wrong until I saw the fear in her face. All I knew was that I could hear the clock ticking, louder than before, as though echoing through a vast empty house.

  That’s what happens, Danny. It’s the black widow spider. First she fucks. Then she kills ... and I saw in my mind the face of her murdered lover. Suffocated, fighting for breath; knowing he was about to die. And I would be next.

  She reached for my hand. I pulled it away.

  “What’s the matter? What are you so scared of?”

  Her voice seemed to come from very far away. I felt myself pulled backward, away, down the tunnel, toward the place where the shining, bubbling dead had gathered to drink. I imagined myself tumbling into that hollow, falling as my book had into the waters. And then, when I no longer existed, when I’d burst like one more bubble, everything would go on exactly as before.

  “Rochelle!”

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  “Rochelle!”

  “Yes, Danny? What is it?”

  I could speak. Or I could let myself be carried off, back to the dead. I chose to speak.

  “Did you kill Tom Dimitrios?”

  She shook her head no. She turned painfully from side to side as she kept on shaking her head no, without ceasing; and all the while she mouthed silently, over and over, “No, no, no, no, no” as the tears streamed from behind her thick glasses and down her lovely face.

  PART SIX

  ROCHELLE’S STORY

  (JULY-AUGUST 1966)

  CHAPTER 27

  THE JERUSALEM SUN WOKE ME WITH ITS RISING. IT POURED through the open window with the morning breeze and bathed the wall opposite in golden light.

  It didn’t awaken Rochelle, at least not all the way. She stirred and murmured something in her sleep. Then she turned over, heavily, so that her back was to the window and her face rested on the edge of my pillow, close to my shoulder. I sat up in bed and reached over her to the night table, where our eyeglasses lay together, their lenses sparkling in the sunshine. I extricated my glasses from hers and put them on. The crack in my right lens scattered colors wherever I looked.

  Her flannel nightgown, hanging on the wall, glowed softly in the new light. She’d apparently gotten up sometime during the night, retrieved it from the floor where she’d tossed it, and hung it up. As I watched, a tiny lizard emerged into the sunlight. In a series of jerky, hesitant movements it crossed the wall, leaped upon her nightgown, and hung there. Its body was dark against the bright cloth.

  “Rochelle,” I said.

  “Unnhhh.” She opened her large, myopic eyes and looked at me without quite focusing. “What is it?”

  “There’s a lizard on your nightgown,” I said.

  “A lizard?” she said groggily. Then she said: “Oh, Danny. For heaven’s sake. They’re all over the place here. The
re’re more lizards in Jerusalem than there are people. They don’t hurt anything. Can we go back to sleep?”

  I didn’t answer. All I wanted was that she not close her eyes. They were very close to my own eyes, golden brown in the morning light. I’d never seen anything more beautiful.

  “Those glasses have seen better days, haven’t they?” she said.

  “They knocked them onto the floor,” I said. “While they were slapping me around. I suppose I’m lucky they didn’t stomp on them.”

  “I suppose you are.” She took my glasses off, delicately, as she’d done twice the night before, the second time in her bedroom. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We’ll get you new ones.”

  She cupped her hand behind my head and kissed both my eyes. I kissed her mouth. For a few moments our tongues caressed. Then she pulled her face away. “Oh, Danny,” she said, “you are marvelous. But I think—I am so very sleepy.”

  “We could do it in our sleep.”

  “Yes, and what wonderful dreams we’d have!” she said, laughing. She added: “I’m a little bit sore down there too. It’d been ages since I’d done it, till last night.”

  “It’s been ages since I’ve done it too,” I said.

  “Mmmm-hmmmm.” She turned over and nestled her back against me. I put my arms around her. She moved her rear end, gently, back and forth against my waist.

  I awoke again, a little before she did. I lay on my back and tried to make out the blurred shapes on the walls. She laid her head on my chest and dozed there another minute. Then she began kissing my chest, while her fingers felt between my legs.

  “Oh, dear,” she said at last. “Where have all the flowers gone?” She sang: “ ‘Where have all the flowers gone, long time pa-assing ...’ ”

  “Isn’t there something we ought to be doing?” I said. “To take care of her?”

  “Her? Oh, you mean her. No, no. It’s all right, honey. Jameela’s with her now. She nurses her, sings songs to her. We’ll look in on her after we get up. There’s no hurry.”

  “Jameela.” I thought about this for a moment. “What does Jameela think of . . . our little girl? Has she said?”

  “Oh, yes. She loves her. She calls her ‘my little strange one.’ ‘My little jinniyya.’ That’s what she thinks she is, Danny. One of the jinn.”

  “The jinn?”

  “Oh, how to say? . . . The Other Ones. They’re not ghosts, and they’re not demons exactly, though some of them are. Demons, I mean. But there’re also good jinn, who believe in the Quran and try to do right. That’s what Jameela thinks the baby is. One of the believing jinn.”

  “Maybe she’s right,” I said. At the moment this seemed as good an explanation for the baby as anything I could think of. “She sings to her, you say?”

  “The most marvelous lullabies. In her Galilean dialect. Jameela’s from the Galilee, one of the refugees of 1948. It’s a different kind of Arabic they used to speak there, not like here in Jordan. I listen for hours while she’s singing, and I can’t understand half of it.”

  She yawned. She stretched. She propped herself up on one hand. Her large, pillowy breasts swayed above me. In the morning light her skin seemed almost translucent. A very faint red line ran around her neck and down onto her chest. I guessed she normally wore something on a chain, under her clothes, hanging between her breasts, and she was slightly allergic to it. Someday I’d ask her what it was—after I’d asked about the thousand and one other things I’d waited so long to hear.

  “It’s so lovely lying here with you like this,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve slept so deeply for years.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “But I think we’d better be getting ourselves up. We’ve got a big day ahead. I’ve got to get you some clothes and a shaving razor, first of all—”

  “That would help,” I said. “If I’m not still invisible to other people, that is.”

  “Then to the optometrist, for some new glasses. It won’t be much out of our way; he’s just a block down from Dr. Talibi. And we’ll see Dr. Talibi. To talk about her, of course. But also about you. You’re not in such wonderful shape yourself, are you?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “That foot of yours could do with some antibiotics. And—and—is there anything else a doctor might help with?”

  “The glass in my neck, maybe. They shot out the rear window of the car when they were chasing me,” I said when I saw she looked confused. “Some of it went into my neck.”

  “Poor Danny. You have had a hard time. Turn over, will you?”

  I lay on my stomach. I felt her touch, very tenderly, the back of my neck and winced in anticipation of the pain. But there was none.

  “Does this hurt?” she said.

  “Not at all. Feels good, actually.”

  “It’s just scar tissue now.” She kept on stroking, and the pleasant warmth spread from my neck through my body. “Three years have gone by, remember.”

  “I can’t remember. I’ve never known.”

  Could I explain to her what it meant to be in a place without time? Or did she already know? She leaned over me, caressing with her open palm from the back of my head down to the bottom of my spine.

  “It feels very good,” I said.

  I reached up, pressed my hand behind her neck. I raised myself from the pillow. Her mouth opened as I kissed her. She slid beside me, smiling. Her smile broadened as she lifted her thighs, took me in her hand, guided me in.

  “Oh, nice,” she said. Her voice quivered slightly. “Oh, baby.”

  CHAPTER 28

  THAT SAME AFTERNOON:

  We sat side by side on a thick limestone disk that might have been a small UFO, while the sun poured down on the stones and the weeds, and Rochelle and I sat in the shade of the sepulchres.

  And she told me her story.

  “The first time we saw them,” she said, “they were hitchhiking. By the side of the highway from Roswell to Corona—oh, maybe seven, eight miles out of town. I couldn’t begin to guess how they’d got out there or where they were trying to get to. Just the three of them, in the middle of all that desolation.

  “I said, ‘Tom, did you see those three Mexicans we just passed, standing by the road?’ Well, of course he’d seen them. Tom didn’t miss much, though I don’t imagine you knew him well enough to realize that. He said, ‘They weren’t Mexicans.’ I said, ‘Oh, no? What are they then?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, but they sure weren’t Mexicans. They don’t have the features. Maybe they’re Gypsies, like the ones your friend Jessup got so excited about.’ He said, ‘Gypsies have dark skins, don’t they?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I suppose they do,’ and he said, ‘Probably Gypsies then.’

  “Well, no sooner did he get this idea than he wanted to go back and pick the men up. He pulled the car over to the side of the road and started turning it around.

  “We’d gone quite a ways down the road by this time. Tom always drove twenty miles over the speed limit, wherever he thought he could get away with it. And out west they don’t have speed limits once you get outside the towns. By the time he stopped the car the three men were—you could hardly see them anymore. Just three black specks, way back on the horizon.

  “I said to him, ‘Tom, you’re insane! What do you want to do this for?’ He said—oh, I don’t remember everything he said, but it was all about how they might have interesting things to tell us. We might learn something from them if they were in the car with us, talking to us. Though just what he thought they could tell us, I don’t have any idea.

  “He said, ‘Your friend Jessup always wanted to talk with the Gypsies, didn’t he? Thought they had the secrets to the universe, didn’t he?’ And I said, ‘Yes, and look what happened to Morris Jessup.’ And he got real mad then and yelled, ‘Jessup committed suicide, dammit!’ And I said, ‘Yes, and that’ll be a good way for us to commit suicide too, letting those men into our car.’ ”

  I stroked my cheek, freshly shaved. “Tom
had courage,” I said.

  She looked at me thoughtfully.

  “Tom had no sense of danger,” she said. “That’s why he drove so fast. I’m not sure that’s the same as courage, exactly. He was never in a really dangerous situation, not up till the very end. I don’t think he had any feeling for what it might be like.

  “He kept saying, ‘You’ve still got your switchblade in your purse, haven’t you?’ And I said, ‘Well, yes, of course I do. But there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to get to it in time. And anyway, there’s three of them and only two of us.’ And of course I didn’t want to say this, Danny, but I’m sure you remember—Tom wasn’t all that terribly strong....”

  We were at the Tombs of the Kings, off Nablus Road. Rochelle had given the watchman a few coins, and he had nodded to us, and we’d gone down the crude limestone staircase among the cliffs where the ancient Jewish kings of Adiabene had carved out their burial chambers. I wore the new clothes Rochelle had bought me that morning. Shoes too, though these had been a problem. She’d gotten them several sizes too big, to accommodate my swollen foot. I had to wear extra socks on my left foot, while the right felt cramped and pinched, so I took the shoe off whenever I could.

  The great circular stone, the size and shape of a tractor wheel, had once sealed off one of the burial caves. But now it had been rolled away from the door of the sepulchre and tumbled onto its side. Rochelle and I sat on it together, while she talked and I listened, and every so often I stretched my bare foot out from the shade of the cliff into the sun’s healing light.

  “That was our first day in Roswell,” she said. “We’d just checked into the motel, and we were trying to get the feel of the place. It wasn’t till the end of the next week that we found anybody willing to admit the archive existed. It was another week before they let me see what they had. And sure enough, there was Morris’s book. All ripe for the taking.