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

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 to believe that He knows exactly what they think of Him and does 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.