Песах Амнуэль - Zion's Fiction - A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature

Not even looking at Professor Parks, I run out of her office and into the hall. I run through the corridor as I take out my cell phone and dial his number.

I press “Send” only once I’m out of the hall, on the grounds, alone.

It’s ringing.

“Yeah,” he answers, always sounding the same, always sounding cheerful and carefree.

“Michael,” my voice breaks. I’m not sure he heard me. “Michael. It’s me.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize the voice.”

“I, uh, I’m sorry. It’s me, uh, uh, uh, Alexandra. I’m… Stephanie’s friend.”

And the temperature drops on the other end of the phone.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice different.

“I need to meet you. I need to talk with you about something. Now.” He hesitates for a split-second, so I push on. “John’s Café?” Five minutes from the university, where he teaches.

“I’m giving a lecture in an hour.”

I can’t tell anything from his voice. Which probably means that he really doesn’t want to do this. I have to see you! “Thirty minutes, then?”

Slight hesitation. “All right.”

“Good. Thank you.” And I hang up immediately.

I am not nothing!

I see him coming into the café.

He looks around. I’ve seen you naked, guy. I could pick your body from a police line-up.

Now he looks for women sitting alone. There’s only me. He’s coming over.

Suddenly I realize I have nothing to say to him. There is nothing I could say.

He stops beside me. “Alexandra?”

Quickly, I remove my gloves underneath the table. I stand up and offer my hand. He takes it.

And I am inside him. I don’t care what he feels or what he thinks right now. All I care about is finding an image of Stephanie—There!—and replacing me with her image .

For a second, he’s stunned at seeing Stephanie in front of him. But he doesn’t let go of my hand .

And I use that to see …

Stephanie —

Stephanie! —

Naked —

And I see him watch Stephanie take off her clothes for the first time. The way her legs go all the way up, the way there’s a little fat, just as you reach the crotch. He loves that small ring of fat so much, finds the space between that and her panties, that space through which light gets through from behind, so appealing .

And I feel how badly he was attracted to her then. And I make him feel it again, now, for me, standing in front of him .

“Hug me, Michael.” I cling to him. “Hug me. Hug me.” And he does. Tightly, so tightly.

And his cheek touches my forehead.

I surf to the moment he first saw her, sitting among five other women he didn’t know. And her image practically leapt at him, touched him, showing something in her even from afar that he liked. At first sight .

I am not as beautiful as she was.

“Stay,” she says. They’re at his apartment. It’s the middle of the day. He has to go teach .

“I have to go.” He puts on his pants .

“Stay,” she purrs, and curls on his bed like a cat. He can see, underneath her playfulness, how desperate she is .

He puts on his shirt .

She grabs it, her mood changed, and looks at him. The desperation in her eyes grows. She’s afraid that if he leaves the apartment she’ll never see him again .

Oh, my god. I remember this moment. I’ve seen it in her head. But I don’t… feel it anymore. I was never as desperate as this.

I make Michael hug me tighter, and I search for a memory of her later in their relationship, his strongest memory.

“Yes,” Michael says. They’re in the corridor where she cornered him, outside his apartment .

Stephanie stands in front of him, and it’s as if everything inside her changes. Something in her eyes changes, something in her cheeks falls, her face freezes, and she collapses into a ball on the floor .

It’s as if she is dying in front of him .

She did die that instant. But something in me doesn’t feel for her as much as I used to. I am not as depressed as she was. I am not in the same pain as she was.

I look up at Michael. I am not in love with him. I am not attracted to him.

I step back, and it feels like pieces of who I am fall to the floor.

I am not as beautiful as she was. I am not as desperate as she was. I am not as depressed as she was. I am not in the same pain as she was. I am not in love as she was. I am not attracted to Michael as she was. I am not as crazy as she was.

I am not Stephanie. And I am not Parks. And I am not Bendis. And I am not my parents.

I am not dust. I am not nothing.

And it dawns on me that I am… something.

I am me, for once. I am different now. I am strong. I am as strong as Parks. I am stronger than Parks, and she knows it. I am aware of my thoughts. I am free. I am without fear. I am ecstatic. I am in love… with no one. I am in need… of no one.

And I am through with this.

I let Michael sit, and I walk off. He’ll be confused for a couple of minutes, but he’ll be all right.

I call a cab.

When we get there, I see a sign above the gate I failed to see before: “WELCOME TO THE INDIANAPOLIS ACADEMY!”

That’s right. Because we deal with truth.

The night all the stars winked out, I was born. This is why nobody in our family paid any attention to what was going on outside, why none of them witnessed this world-changing event. They were all busy waiting outside the delivery room for my first scream, and Mom claimed I wouldn’t stop screaming, as if I’d already known that the world I was coming into had become completely dark.

Mom and Dad, and Grandpa, and my two spinster aunts, none of them rushed, crazed, into the streets or fields, like all the other people in the world, to see a sky that went completely black all at once; none of them cried out for the stars to come back.

Except for them, there’s not a single person in the world who can’t remember what they were doing at that terrible moment, which is called in history books the Obscuration of the Minor Lights. Until this very day—ten years have passed since—people are holding massive rites; even a special prayer was devised for the return of the lost lights. I remember nothing of that night, of course, ’cause a tiny little baby can’t tell day from night and knows nothing about stars or heaven. All this I was told by Grandpa, who also found out only the next morning that the world had turned upside down just as they were naming me.

Neri, that’s what they named me.

Mom, who breast-fed me with inoculation-enriched milk, said that I wouldn’t stop screaming for days on end.

The world got used to it. At first people cried, then they didn’t cry so much, and Grandpa says that people get used to bad things just as they get used to good things. In school we were taught that this was an ecological disaster no scientist had anticipated, and unlike those who claim that this was God’s curse, Grandpa says that this was people’s curse. All those toxic gases they were releasing into the atmosphere for centuries had made the air lose its clarity, and now no starlight can penetrate the black tire that surrounds us. And even though all means of transportation are driven by solar energy nowadays, the air is still sick, and the scientists have found no way to repair this heavenly short-circuit.

My science teacher claims that what happened to our planet was in fact a blessing, because now it is clad with a defensive shield preventing evil aliens from discovering and hurting us. But if earthlight can no longer spread out into the distance, I’m afraid that if God should happen to look for us from high above, He won’t know we exist.