by Nir Yaniv
She opens her eyes.
She sees nothing, and then something, and then someone. And the colors are inverted, and all lights are distorted, and the world is twisted, and that’s not why she screams.
~
Her eyes are closed. She smells a weak flowery odor, and there’s a slight hum from above, maybe of an air conditioner. Everyone who knows her knows that whenever she’s around, the air conditioning must be turned off. Everyone, except for David. King David, they used to call him, affectionately and jealously. Her David. One of her last memories, she and David in bed. Where is she now? Who is she, exactly? The answer may be at the tip of her tongue. She and David, together, for half a year; and there’s something else, something in the back of her mind; stuck like a sting; she searches inside, but can’t find a thing; David, my King; horrible rhymes, bad poetry, fling, fling, fling.
She opens her eyes.
She sees nothing, and then something, and then someone. Someone, an old and horrible strange man, his hand stretched menacingly towards her.
And that’s not why she screams.
~
Her eyes are closed, a weak odor, a slight hum. Everyone knew, except for David. David, her lover, her love, who wrote better poems than hers. Everybody knew, but no one dared say a word. David, who reached for her and grabbed her and overreached her like a comet, and everybody knew, they knew that he was the real thing, not her. And she didn’t mind. She could have lived like that forever, or until she was old. Not that she has any idea of how it feels to be old.
She opens her eyes.
She sees nothing, and then something, and then some old and horrible strange man, and the colors are inverted and the lights are distorted, and suddenly she remembers, or maybe understands, that David left her. Threw her away. Left her like a useless piece of trash on the side of the road. Found himself someone else. The memory is fresh. She opens her eyes wide, wider and wider, shocked at the memories, the fragmented scenes playing again in her mind’s eye, David’s smile, the cuts on her hands, the blood stains on the broken mirror, getting sick on the ambulance’s floor, the world going crazy, not steady anymore, and all this, she remembers, happened just the day before...
And that’s not why she screams.
~
She opens her eyes.
The colors are inverted, the lights are distorted. An old horrible strange man, but not as horrible as David, not as horrible as what David did. To her. Her eyes focus without at particular intention, meeting the eyes of the old stranger bending over her. She doesn’t spare him any thought. He’s just another blurred shape among other blurred shapes in her field of vision. Blurred, unlike the memories invading her mind, the last memories before she woke up and found herself here. David leaving, without saying goodbye, without apologizing. One day he was there, the next he was gone. He didn’t even leave a note, not to mention a poem. Being a poet herself, she never considered the idea of asking him to write about her, despite toying secretly with doing the opposite. That’s the power of love. That’s the power of leaving. And that’s not why she...
She remembers the pain of the cuts on her hands, the ambulance, the hospital, the nurses and doctors, her parents, whom she hasn’t bothered visiting in years, two worried faces, almost strangers, surrounded by the faded gray of the stretches and beds and uniform. And that’s not why she...
And there’s a flash of rushing memory, or rushing knowledge, or maybe she remembers the moment that she first realized this, or maybe it’s that very moment itself, which strikes her, hits her tortured mind. That moment which—she’ll never know that—she has already been through thirty years earlier. That moment in which she realized that she was alone. That the poetry was gone. Muse, imagery, metaphor, imagination, idea, craziness—all gone, swept away, and nothing was left in their place. And now, with a real reason for a change, the colors are inverted and the lights are distorted and the world is twisted and shrunken and forced and shattered and broken, and that’s why she screams.
~
Gideon had been through combat—battles, ambushes, border skirmishes, injuries, accidents. He had never heard anything like this scream. He stood and stared down at the bed, at the beautiful stranger who was and was not his wife. He had no idea what to do.
She grabbed his hand desperately, stronger than he thought was possible. Her nails drew blood from his arm. She inhaled for a moment, then resumed the terrifying shriek.
“Leah,” he said. “Leah, relax! It’s me, Gideon! Everything’s going to be fine!”
She drew him to her, grabbed him in both hands, hugged him.
“Leah...”
Hugged him with a terrible, terrible force.
“Leah!”
Reached for his neck. Pressed it. Strangled.
Gideon tried to remove her hands from his neck, but she wouldn’t let go. It had been more than thirty years since he had to apply any kind of physical force, and more since he participated in a fight. Still, he was amazed to find how weak he had become. A twenty-year-old woman, almost a teenager, strangling him like that. He almost laughed, but no sound came out of his mouth. He couldn’t remove her hands, not the slightest bit.
~
His vision blurs. He blurs. He has no name, no wife, no country. Red, empty red, red filling the eyes, clogging the ears, without odor, without taste, without feeling. His eyes are rolling in their sockets, red, hot red in his retinas. Last moment, never absolute, always relative. Red on his tongue, in his nose and throat and stomach, a red cloud of uncertainty, in-identity.
In-identity. Who is the one thinking here, red of nothingness, of unawareness, of waning, and uncertainty becomes knowing and irresolution becomes identity, and he’s Gideon again.
He breathes heavily, panting as he had never done before. He falls on his knees. His vision is still blurred. He can’t look at the bed. He needs time, he needs to wait, he needs to recuperate. He doesn’t remember anything from the moment he entered the room and saw Leah lying on the bed. How much time has passed like this? And how much time has passed for Leah? And in what direction?
He stands up.
He looks down, at the bed.
Contraption: Void Machine
It is not a machine, in the same way that a pumpkin is not a mode of transportation. It is locked forever in the vapors of deniability and doubt. It is null and void, not so different from the void around it, not always really separate from it. But it is still there. Or is it?
The Believers
In God’s Name
The old woman in the grocery store stares at the floor and doesn’t look up. She examines the date printed on a chunk of cheese, and her hand shakes. She turns around, and the cheese drops from her hand into one of the two carts nearby. It’s the wrong cart, and a small child sees the cheese fall, then hit a pack of frozen chicken legs. There’s a terrible tearing noise, and the old woman is split in two. Blood and stomach and intestines spray all over the place, and then there’s a gargling noise, and then silence.
Everyone ignores this, each keeping his or her head down.
Except for the little boy, who’s waiting patiently with his mother in the line in front of the cash register. He still doesn’t understand the need to lower one’s head. His mother covers his ears and eyes with her hands, but it’s too late. It’s oh so late.
From somewhere in the air comes the sound of the beating of wings.
~
Next Tuesday I’m going to have a meeting with a machine that will change my life. My head will be put inside a big gray plastic egg, wires and tubes protruding out of its top. I’ll spend an hour like that. When I get out, I won’t be the same person that I am now.
I will not be the only person to be changed like that. There are many others. Or maybe just a few. I don’t know, I’m not supposed to know, I don’t want to know. I know just this: maybe when we all are changed, we’ll be able, at last, to kill God.
~
Today, when I think of it, I
understand that the incident at the grocery store was the first time that I saw the Hand of God. Until then my life seemed pretty safe, and I had no clue of what could happen to anyone who is careless about anything to do with the divine. Which is, after all, everything. God took mercy on the children, of course He did, God never punishes the young ones—but only because He needs a steady supply of adults.
God examines kidneys and heart, but not those of everyone at the same time. Not because He can’t, but because he’s bored by it. Or maybe it’s just laziness. Some of us consider this good fortune, and the rest prefer that He knows exactly what they think of Him and do whatever He feels like doing, just let them stop pretending and fulfilling the commandments. Those people have a problem. All of us have a problem. Because God has a terrible personality.
If I think about this too much he’ll notice me. Let’s change the subject. Here’s a subject that is, paradoxically, rather safe: belief. This reminds me of my first argument with Gabi, when he told me about his underground movement, the Atheists.
“I fail to understand how you can disbelieve something that exists,” I said. “Especially when it’s something as explicit as God.”
“And we fail to understand how you can believe something that doesn’t exist,” Gabi said. “Like the way God was until a few years ago.”
Several dozen years, but who’s counting.
“And also,” he added, “after we finish with Him, He won’t exist anymore.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by thinking about it. I think that I’m thinking too much about this right now.
Change of subject.
~
Here’s how we met: I sat on a stone bench in the public garden, by the fountain, too close to it. The spray hit me from time to time. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. On other benches, mothers sat with their children, a herd of coifs and hats and children’s toys. No one wanted to sit near me. No one but Gabi, who popped out of somewhere, sat by me and said, “I know.”
“What?” I said.
“I know exactly how you’re feeling.” He didn’t smile.
“You have no idea,” I said.
“Look at me,” he said. “Raise your head and look.”
I did that, and I saw. The absence. The emptiness, huge, engulfing, drowning, whining. The soul, perforated, defiled, that will never be the way it was. I saw the vast hole in it, gaping, and I knew that it was just like mine.
“Go away,” I said.
I wanted to hold him, to hug him, to merge with him. I added, “Leave me alone.”
“Just like I told you,” he said. “I know how you feel. And I have a solution.”
“Please,” I said. “Please, go away.”
He did, but only in order to return.
~
The young boy and his mother stand by the table. Two candles for the Sabbath, fresh Sabbath bread, covered. The mother reaches out for the prayer book, the Siddur.
“Mother,” the boy says and points with his finger, “Mother, no, it’s not right, wait a moment,” but it’s too late. It’s always too late. It has always been too late. And now, just a moment after the sound of sucking and pumping and pulling and absorbing, the dried body of the mother, sans blood and bones and flesh and tendons and cartilages and mucus, drops, very slowly, paper-thin, hovers down dreamily to the floor, then rests.
~
God’s first appearance occurred before I was born. I have heard old people tell tales of life before it, the way the world was set. Some of them—most of them—remember it fondly. Some say that it was horrible, everyone doing whatever they wanted to, Sodom and Gomorrah, impurity, abomination, sin, chaos. All of them, always, miss it. That was before I was born. I miss it too.
~
“You want me,” Gabi said.
“You know the punishment for male inter—”
“Don’t say it,” he said.
I didn’t understand what was going on inside me. Yes, I “wanted” him. To be with him. To touch him. The idea had never occurred to me before. On the contrary: the mere thought of... deviants—that’s the safe word at the moment, the word that won’t attract his attention—nauseated me. Undoubtedly God felt that way too. And then Gabi appeared, and...
“I don’t want to make it hard on you,” he said. It took some time for both of us to catch the double meaning.
Yes, the punishment for the forbidden intercourse is death. As are most punishments, these days. But when it comes to this particular sin, the reaction is particularly quick and harsh. And I thought to myself, maybe I’m not really interested in Gabi. Maybe I just want to die. Maybe I’m just aiming for the most horrible possible death.
How far from the truth can you be?
~
I had a girlfriend once. A long time ago. We couldn’t hold ourselves back. We never thought of getting married, or even engaged. We knew, of course we knew, but the urge was too strong. We slept together. We took pleasure in each other. Exhausted, sweating, happy, we fell asleep.
A weird smell woke me up in the morning. Just beside me, in bed, a gray-red-purple sack, moist, dripping, wet. Still twitching. Fluttering about. My girlfriend, turned from the inside out.
~
A Jew who believes in God doesn’t believe that God exists. Existence is a matter for God’s creation, not for God himself. Attributing existence to God means lowering him to our level, the level of the stone and the bush and the animal and the man and the rest. Unfortunately, God has never heard of that. And if He has, He has never shown any interest.
~
A young man bumps into a girl in the library. In his hands there are several forbidden books which he found on one of the shelves in the back, a place forgotten by the censors. She clutches in her hands a thin booklet, “Dreams of Angels.” Her face is small, delicate, drawn in thin sharp lines. They both apologize, smiling shyly. The next day they have dinner together. The next evening they sit in his apartment. He fights the urge, and the guilt—he still remembers his previous girlfriend’s death. She, without delay, gets out of her clothes.
He says, “No!”
She smiles, spreads two white wings. She, or he, no gender, no guilt. An angel.
The young man discovers a new form of attraction. He cannot stop looking. The angel is his whole world now, his whole life. Without the angel, his existence is meaningless. And the angel, without gender or guilt, and as the future will show, without any particular meaning, approaches, grows, touches.
Penetrates.
~
It’s impossible to explain what happens to you when an angel penetrates you. It’s not physical—you wish it was, for then at least you would be left with something of your own. No, your body remains untouched, unfelt, unnoticed, even pure, while the angel penetrates the only place which really matters. You feel it swelling and widening and expanding within you, and then you’re gone. Superficially, you’re still there, imprisoned in your corporeal body, but it is your mind which has been defiled, and yourself isn’t there anymore, and the person you were will never be anymore. And when the angel departs it leaves a hole in you, an empty space, a place which it occupied and which you can never, ever fill again.
All of us, all of the people who will visit the machine next week, have such an empty space in the place where we used to have souls.
~
Know All
Tuesday, twice blessed, I walk slowly on my quest, my mind deliberately at rest. Every step gets me closer to the address I was given, an abandoned warehouse at the old industrial zone. I wonder who, of all the people around me, I will meet there, if any, and then silence the thought. The sun shines, it’s a nice day, and those, if I manage it, are going to be my only thoughts till I arrive.
~
“What are you going to do?” I shouted. “How exactly are you going to fight—”
Gabi reached out and covered my mouth with his hand, then hugged me. “I fight no one,” he whispered, �
��but there are more people like us. And, you don’t understand this yet, but there’s something unique about us.”
I pushed him away. “I feel this uniqueness all the time,” I said. “I’m not impressed by it.”
“Oh, it’s not only what you feel. We have other qualities. I... I don’t fully understand it myself, but there’s someone who does. We call him the Know All.”
“And that person, did he explain to you everything about those ‘qualities’ of ours?”
“Not in any words that you or I can understand. But that doesn’t matter. He’s building a machine that will set us free. In several days there’ll be a meeting, and you’ll be able to listen to him for yourself.”
I didn’t answer. It sounded too ludicrous. Some mad scientist builds a silly contraption from springs and coils in his basement laboratory, and a bunch of retards dance around him, hoping for salvation. How pathetic.
I agreed to go anyway. Never underestimate the power of hope, ludicrous as it may be.
~
We saw from afar the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire. When we arrived at the street, it was already clean. Not much was left of the machine or the Know All, or of the building in which they had once resided. Gabi was desperate to get closer, to look for remains, but I held him back and forcibly dragged him away.
That night we almost committed the deadly sin. We felt suicidal. It was Gabi who saved us, at the last moment. “No,” he said. “This can’t be the end. The Know All was smart enough to know that this could happen to him.”
I wanted to comment that it didn’t sound very smart, losing your life like that, but the sarcasm got stuck in my throat.
“Get up,” Gabi said. “Get dressed. We’re going out.”
We went to a place I didn’t know, a safe house in which, so Gabi said, some of the Atheists meetings and some of the Know All’s famous speeches had taken place. One small room, without a bed, without chairs, just one desk, and on it a stack of papers, and on the top one a title: “The Tower of Babylon.” And under it—diagrams, drawings, descriptions.
