After reading as much of the libelous literature as I could without opening the pamphlets, weak angel that I was, I became bored. Determined to find new stimulation in this panorama of ugliness, I decided to take a risk and reenter the secret room that plummeted, see where it burped me up this time. I retraced my flight path out of the shop, diagonally across the room of abominably dressed humans talking into their magic shining voice boxes, and waited in front of the metal doors of the plummeting room. Eventually they opened, and I flew in, joining a young woman pushing a small, half-naked child in a low, open buggy. The young woman was chewing the inside of her lip, one bare leg flung away, the opposite hip jutting out. With that posture, I assumed she was a prostitute. But why the child? The metal doors shut, sealing us in. With a terrible feeling of being buried alive, I felt the box ascend. When the doors opened again, a warm stream of air reached through the open doors and caressed my face. Tantalized, I followed the heat, out the secret room and down the hallway. Whenever I veered away from its path, the air went frigid. Careful to avoid parting with the delicious warmth, I swam it midstream, veering sharply as it led me through an open door.
I flew high, skimming the rough panels in the ceiling, and looked down at two narrow beds separated by a cloth curtain. The shades were drawn; the room was fairly dark. Two young women were lying on the two beds. One was asleep. Her body lay jagged, as if broken, under the thin blanket. Her hand swiped her face as she slept. I floated down and had a look at her, hovering so close that I could see her eyeballs scanning beneath the lids as she dreamed. Her skin was slick. Her hair, unwashed, clung to her forehead. I was reminded of prison; the women had been so shockingly unkempt there. Hair frayed and dull, skin sallow, lips cracked. It made me realize how important a woman’s toilette was to her appearance. In a state of nature, most women are hideous—even the beauties. I was so close to this one I could smell her metallic breath. Still giddy with my ability to fly, I sucked up my abdomen, pumped my wings a couple of times, and banked to the right, over the top of the curtain, toward the other girl’s bed. This one was awake, looking up at a luminous box clamped to the ceiling with a metal device. I flew up to the box and looked inside it. Within, tiny figures moved around in a most lifelike way. One of them was a fair-haired woman. She removed a red wrap to reveal a slender torso barely covered in a chemise. I tried to fly into that luminous world, but was repelled by a wall of warm glass. Slightly stunned by the collision, I looped up to the top of the box and perched at the edge, feeling its heat and vibrations as I gazed down at the girl in the bed. She was propped up on several pillows, staring upward with an expression of amazed fascination. Her intent face, bathed in the cerulean glow of the box, was captivating: very large onyx eyes, padded lips drifting open to reveal an insolent gap between strong front teeth. Her long, thick hair was dark, almost navy in the half-light. Her flimsy green gown hung open, and I glimpsed a patch of naked skin. Habitually curious about all breasts, I dove down to get a better look and hung in the air, wings beating, peering into the folds of the gown. I was just able to make out the curve of a plump, high tit. As with Leslie, the air near this girl felt as hot as dipping into a bath. I wondered if she was the warm tide’s source. Boldly, I landed on the nipple. Tiny as I was, I seemed to be crawling up the face of a cratered red mountain. Strange, I thought, that I was unable to stand upright. I strained my mind for examples in painting or sculpture of crawling angels, and could only think of the thick-limbed cherubim gamboling through frozen cascades of wax on the candelabrum I was staring at as I died. Was I a cherub? An invisible, fat toddler with wings? I remembered myself alive: clear blue-green eyes, a somewhat lupine yet delicate nose, a chiseled mouth. My hair was jet-black and fell in shining ringlets to my shoulders. I looked quite angelic, though somewhat too shrewd, intense.
Instinctively, I flicked out my tongue to glance the ridged mound of rose-colored flesh beneath me. I tasted salt and smelled the aroma of young, unwashed flesh—a pleasant, milky bouquet—with a faint undertone of sweat. Without warning, I felt a solid wall sweeping my body over the fleshy hill. I rolled over several times and was propelled into the air, my wings beating frantically to keep me up. A hand rose up huge before me, still in the act of brushing me off. She had felt me. I had substance! That was good. Invisible, but extant. I floated in the air, enjoying the weightlessness, the giddy feeling of power that flight brought to me. I had always hated the heaviness of life. Senseless obligation, the strictures of time—I had made my life an affront to these killjoys. True, I had only had thirteen years of freedom, but better to die beautiful, with a bacchanal taking place downstairs where certain people are actually missing your presence, than in unlusted-after old age, your day a round of senseless tasks, no pleasure in sight. Pleasure, oh! To manifest myself!
Flying in neat circles in the light of the luminous box, I was enlivened by my memories. What a joyous time a handsome young angel could have with this lush girl, as that sickly rag doll snored behind the curtain. I felt my sex so keenly it was a torture not to be able to touch it, to reassure myself it was still there, but my withered angel arms were too short, I could only wave them miserably. What if, as an angel, I had no sex, only desire? That would be a tailored hell. I had to know what I was!
I landed on a smooth, cool vertical plane. I am so light, I thought, I can grasp a wall. I rested there for a moment, gathering my thoughts. Perhaps this was only a phase of being. Corporeal manifestation might come in time. I looked at the smooth, unrippled surface before me. Reflected in it was the luminous box with its tantalizing, unreachable images. I was standing on a mirror. I stared into it, yearning to see an image of myself, but, where my form should have been, all was dark. Was I casting a shadow? Filled with hope, I took off, my wings propelling me back slightly before I rose, circling the mirror and looking into it. All I could see was the luminous box, the girl’s profile, the ceiling with its gray square tiles, and a fly, zigzagging back and forth through the air. I was still invisible. I yearned to see myself. I looked into mirrors compulsively when I was alive—I never passed one without checking the state of my beauty, and I passed many lustful moments with others and alone staring at my own reflection in ornate mirrors belonging to aristocrats or the cracked, stippled rounds hanging in brothels. Now, with no reflection to confirm my existence, I felt claustrophobic, suffocated, erased. Desperate, I beat my wings and rose up; flight soothed me. The fly in the mirror rose. I let myself sink a bit; so did the fly. I landed on the mirror and watched the glass go dark, felt the cool of it on my feet. I was a fly! I wept with rage and helplessness.
8
Masha stared into the TV, her breathing shallow. The pillows had sunk beneath her back; without thinking, she turned to plump them. A pain, sharp, yet old, like a wound that had been poked at a thousand times, jabbed at her heart with each beat, echoing out through her chest, into her throat. She stopped as if caught red-handed, cursing herself for forgetting. Extremely slowly, like a sloth, she turned back to the TV and lay gingerly back on the pillow, waiting for her heart to slow down, the pain that bloomed inside her with each beat to subside. She took little sips of breath, her body rigid, and stared up at the screen. The only way to be free of the pain was to stay perfectly still. She couldn’t lean back, she couldn’t laugh, she couldn’t cough. She had a quarter of an inch to move and that was it.
Masha had never watched so much television before. Through windows she had glimpsed images here and there, bright colors, flashes of expression on the actors’ faces. Her mother had recently bought a portable DVD player for once-weekly use, but the only movie allowed on it so far was The Lion King. That was the one complete movie she had ever seen. But this night in the hospital Masha had gorged herself. She had watched Top Gun, Mystic Pizza, and several episodes of Sex and the City. Her eyes ached, yet she couldn’t bring herself to switch the thing off. She might never be able to watch this much again. Now, on the screen, an award ceremony: a girl Masha’s age was smiling. A y
oung man beside her was wearing a tuxedo. The girl had bare arms, loose red hair. Her skin seemed very smooth. A person off-screen put a microphone up to her face and asked her what designer she was wearing. She smiled and called out a name. She said she was proud to be there. She seemed so happy. Masha looked up at the girl. A longing was taking shape in her, a charged notion that had been gathering all night. Those girls, she thought. Those girls in the movies, in the shows. They were just people. They had all come from someplace. They hadn’t been born inside those stories. And the thought of getting there, the amazing getting there, to the point where you were allowed to live inside those multiple worlds, that kaleidoscopic, endless story machine, tugged at her, prying her away from all the certainty she’d had only the day before. Masha had appeared in many all-female shows in school, and for charity events, which were performed for an audience of women only. She had been, all the women said, astonishingly good. She always got the lead. But her fame was confined to the women in her community; women were not allowed to perform in front of men. Masha had always accepted this prohibition as simply as she accepted the weather. Hashem did not want her to act or sing in front of men, so she could not. Disobeying Him was out of the question. Yet today, for the first time, an alternate future glimmered in the corner of her eye. It was absurd to her, this thinking—as if she had suddenly denied the fact of gravity and insisted that one day she could float in the air like a speck of dust. She wondered if it was her yetzer hara talking—everyone had an evil inclination, the self-serving part of you that tempted you to disobey the commandments, or to talk gossip, or be bad in general. She tried to squelch the thought. I heard her innocent cravings in my head as if they were my own. They interrupted my despair. Masha shut her eyes. Her eyelids were pale and pure as a baby’s. For a moment she drifted into sleep. Then, woken by pain, she said her morning prayer of thanks at being returned to her body: Modah ani lifanecha, melech chai v’kayam sheh-hechezarta bi nishmati b’chemlah rabbah emunatecha.
For a long moment Masha and I stayed perfectly still, she in her pain and I in mine. I wished I could give her what she wanted.
A knock at the door interrupted our contemplation. Reflexively, Masha reached for the remote to turn off the TV, and her heart sped up. The pain radiated through her chest with each heartbeat, like ripples of water after a rock plunks in. She lay still, waiting for the ripples to subside.
“Hello, Masha,” the doctor said. Masha turned off the television.
“Hi,” said Masha, strangling the end of even that short word.
“I am Dr. Heptulla. How’s the chest?”
“Not so good,” she whispered. The doctor sat down. He had flawless dark terra-cotta skin, a thin nose with a little bulb at the end of it, and a smiling, generous mouth.
“We have the results of your EKG and X-ray now, Masha. I’ll have to go over them with your parents. Do you have any idea when they might be here?”
“Could take them a long time,” she whispered. “They’ll have to walk.” The doctor looked perplexed. “It’s Shabbos,” she explained. “We’re not allowed to take the train or drive or …” She shrugged, embarrassed.
“Where do you live?” asked the doctor.
“Far Rockaway,” she said huskily, closing up her hospital gown with a slow, old-lady motion.
“That’s a long walk.”
“So what do I have?” asked Masha.
“The chest pain is being caused by pericarditis, which is an inflammation around the heart. Did you have a cold, a virus, recently?”
“A sore throat,” Masha said.
“Do you still have that?”
“No.” He took out a tongue depressor and stood up, walking toward her. She shrank back.
“Open your mouth, say aahh.” Reluctantly, she did so. He peered down her gullet.
“And you are twenty?” he said.
“Twenty-one,” she whispered.
“All the same, I’m going to have the nurses page me when your parents get here. In the meantime you should sleep.”
He pushed the red paging button and a fresh-faced nurse appeared. “Can you set Masha up so she can sleep?” asked Dr. Heptulla. There was a hint of irritation in his voice. He knew, Masha thought, that she’d been watching TV all night.
“Please don’t tell my parents,” she murmured.
“What?” asked Dr. Heptulla.
“That I’ve been watching TV.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” he said, perplexed. “But now you really do need to sleep.” The young nurse had arranged the pillows high, and held Masha gently as she slowly rested her head on the cool pillowcase. She was so tired. Her pure eyelids closed. Within seconds, Masha was asleep.
I gaped at her sleeping there. I had run away from Jewish women for most of my adult life. Yet I couldn’t stop the emotion that was building up in me. The girl was so touching: in pain, very sick, it seemed—yet with that ambition, planted in her that night, and growing, ineluctable as a healthy fetus, in the womb of her spirit. My love for her hurt; I felt it as a catch in my chest, a lump of feeling.
I marched back and forth along the metal window frame, feeling the morning sun on my wings, the steel gathering heat under my feet, a powdery smell of dust in my nostrils. Through the dirty glass I could see, far below, a man and a woman holding a small child by the hands. The living—how ignorant they were of the hoax that was being pulled on them! What indignities they had in store. I had never known such despair. Wrenched from a death that was after all not so bad, in that there was no consciousness involved, in order to become a lovesick fly, I felt hoodwinked and abused. After a lout’s career of joyous disconnection in affairs of the body, I had finally fallen in love, even if it was with a Jewess—and I was dead—worse than dead: I was an insect! I hated God, that prankster, and vowed to dedicate my fly’s life to his debasement. Oh, where are the dark angels? I thought loftily, that I might join ranks with them to overthrow the old despot!
I turned and looked over at Masha, who was sleeping now, having guzzled from the box of light and its world of temptations all night long. Her beauty was a torture. I noticed another fly, smaller than me, and, I intuited, a female, drinking from a droplet of orange juice on the rim of Masha’s glass, just at the place where my girl’s lips had left a perfect impression. I took off and alighted on the edge of the glass, just behind the female, a petite, glossy fly, recently hatched. Her smell was delicious—a cocktail of candy, orange juice, and excrement that filled me with straightforward lust. Never having done this before, I felt somewhat insecure, yet I needed above all to conquer something, someone, today of all days. Without thinking, I assertively leapt on the female. She took off. Terrified, I held on desperately, my forelegs clasping her face, as she looped through the air trying to shake me off. I was amazed to feel my penis emerge from within my body like a turtle’s head and craftily enter her as she bucked and twirled beneath me, my little legs clamped around her hairy trunk. The wind whipping at my eyes, I stared at Masha’s sleeping face. Masha woke now, as if stirred by my desire, and blinked slowly. She smiled, curious, mildly entertained at the sight of two copulating flies looping randomly through the air like a pricked balloon. The fact of my beloved girl watching me as I fucked was so erotic to me that pleasure infused me without warning and I ejaculated violently, my whole tiny body racked with what felt like a life-threatening explosion of sweetness inside me. The female, unlocked, buzzed off as I, barely able to beat my wings, landed heavily on the windowsill, dizzy and slightly nauseous. In all my years of sensual excess, I had never had an experience close to this. I felt a tightness in my abdomen and at the end of my back. For the first time since my arrival in the sublunar world, I relieved my bowels, dropping a string of feculae along the window ledge, infinitesimal dots aligned like the three periods used to open up a sentence to a chasm of uncertainty …
Some time later, I was spitting on a crumb of Masha’s toast, softening it for my long tongue to slurp up. My beloved was
breathing softly through her nostrils. I felt calmer. The door opened. In walked Mordecai Edelman. I froze in confused amazement. He was dressed almost exactly as I once had been, in the eighteenth century. For a moment I thought I had stumbled on a wrinkle in the fabric of time. Surely this man did not belong to the present. I wondered if this was part of the mystical hoax being played on me.
Mordecai Edelman was a big, shaggy man with a gleaming beard and small, smiling eyes. A large fur hat was set upon his head like a crown. I recognized this as the Shabbos hat of the most pious. He wore his sidelocks short, however, and tucked them behind his ears. His coat was long and black. Behind him, his wife, Pearl, walked in. Pearl was small, with a voluptuous physique and a pleasant, smiling face. She wore a glossy auburn wig that came down to her shoulders, and she was dressed in a bright blue coat that ended below the knee to reveal a pair of thick beige stockings. I watched the family reunion warily, reminding myself that I was a fly, and could not be found out or judged by these devout people. The parents hugged their daughter, and she, not wishing to disappoint them, made an enormous effort to circle her shapely arms around their necks, her heart searing the flesh in her chest with every beat. Having greeted them both, the sweet girl fell back on the pillow, her face very pale and pinched with pain. Her eyes glittered like black jewels in her ashen face.
Jacob's Folly Page 5
