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

“Daddy always used to read to me when I asked him to,” said No’am.

I’m impervious. I’m as impervious as a wooden door , Aviva said to herself, moving her left hand to her locket. She squeezed, she could almost feel her hand bones cracking around the locket. I’m giving up crying, and pain, so that something will be left . “Get the pile,” she said, making every effort for her voice to come out steady. And clear.

No’am obeyed immediately. Again she picked one, almost at random. This time she chose the magazine she’d already seen, the one with the alien in a teacup. And opened it. The first story began with a couple of lines about a teacher and a school. Very good. She pointed at the title—“Ararat”—and said, “There, this one looks interesting.” No’am became absorbed almost at once, breathing quietly while she urged their mother to eat.

This time she saw No’am running. She felt uneasy, perhaps because of that business with the boy who’d complained about him and his strange behavior. She should keep her eyes open, she thought. And indeed, when she raised them from Sense and Sensibility , she realized he was making towards the woods, followed by a bunch of kids, with the tall boy leading. She leaped to her feet and ran there too.

First No’am disappeared into the woods, then the kids who were shouting bad names after him. Two boys who looked the same, pudgy and menacing, caught up with their tall leader, shouting, “We’ll get ’im.”

Three white egrets were sitting on the branches of the outlying trees like ornate hairpins. When she got into the woods she saw no one. The silence was deep. In this heat the eucalypts were standing tall, green and sweating, the bright light making their trunks shiny, their pungent smell stinging her nose. Then she caught sight of a swift movement and headed for it. Through the trees she saw the kids bunching up, and then, coming closer, there was No’am facing them, grinning, his arms crossed. What she saw then she couldn’t believe. Everything that happened next was blurry, as in a dream. The kids had sticks and stones in their hands. And No’am said, “Come out now.” And the eucalypts’ tops started moving, and out of them came more kids. They were flying. In the air. Flying kids , Aviva thought. And they had with them an older woman, but still young. Pretty. She looked American. And lonely. Aviva knew this expression. She could see it in the mirror every day. The flying kids were holding ropes as they came closer to the other ones, those from the neighborhood. One of the flying kids was waving his hands, and it looked like the neighborhood kids were unable to move—they were paralyzed. And the flying kids separated the neighborhood kids from each other and prodded them into the thicket and tied them up. Then they alighted. And the young woman raised her hands high in the air and started moving them like she was pulling strings, but they were invisible. And a small cloud appeared above the underwood where the neighborhood kids were tied up, screaming and trying to free themselves, and hail started falling on them. Heavy, pounding hail. And No’am was laughing. Aviva hasn’t heard him laugh since their father…. This is not possible , she told herself, I’m dreaming . She started to back away, then turned around and ran.

In the afternoon, when No’am returned from his wanderings to eat, she interrogated him. But he looked at her as if she had a few screws loose. Maybe he’s right , she thought. All the same, there is something weird about those woods. I must look into it . And in the evening, while she was insistently entreating their mother to eat, with Tehila looking at her in silence and No’am restlessly leafing through Fantasia 2000 , she asked No’am again if anything unusual had happened in the woods. And No’am said, “What’s all this about the woods? First that broomstick Aviel accusing me of roughing him up; now you too? I never go anywhere near those woods.”

Tehila asked, “Why are you asking about the woods?”

“No reason,” said Aviva.

“Okay, then help me pick a story,”

No’am said. “I can’t find any by myself.” “No’am,” she said, “you must learn to find stories you like on your own.”

“But you find them so easily. You’ve already picked two, and I couldn’t find any.”

She looked at Tehila, who seemed to be grinning to herself. Her cracked lacquer shoes were clicking on the floor. Their mother started coughing. “What’s the matter, Mommy?” Aviva asked. “Are you ill?” She laid a hand on her forehead. And their mother said, as if she was speaking with someone far away, “What could happen to me anyway? What could happen? The one who took care of me is gone. There’s no one to take care of me anymore.”

The locket was waiting for her hand. She grasped it. She mustn’t cry.

“Come on,” said No’am. He picked up one of the magazines and shoved it into her hands.

“Enough, No’am,” she said angrily. “I picked those stories without even thinking. It was sheer luck.” And to prove her point she opened the magazine and pointed at a page. “There, this one looks good to me.” Truth to tell, it didn’t look good at all. It had a surprising title, “5,271,009.”

No’am snatched the magazine away from her and started reading. And she turned her attention back to their mother.

Going to her room, exhausted after this evening, she thought she must do something about No’am. Early next week they’ll both have to go to school, and she’ll have to look after him. Something is happening to him , she thought. And it has to do with this Fantasia 2000 magazine and with Tehila. She’s involved, too, with those cracked-up shoes of hers. And who was this Shim’on who knew their father, anyway? She went into No’am’s room. He was lying in his bed. The light was on and his head was pushed into the pillow. He was snoring a little. The Fantasia 2000 —issue number 5, she saw now—fell onto the carpet. On his desk there was a sheet of paper. No’am had written one line on it: “Dear Mr. Solon Aquila.”

She picked up the magazine and went into her room.

The story, “5,271,009,” was fascinating. It was written by an author named Alfred Bester. She seemed to recall that her father had read one of his books, something about a man with a tiger’s face or suchlike, and her hand tightened around the locket. This one was a story about an artist gone mad and a character called Solon Aquila, who was some kind of witch doctor or angel or Satan and had a power to make people live their dreams, or their nightmares. Dear Mr. Solon Aquila , she thought. Her eyes were already heavy, but before shutting them she could hear Tehila’s footsteps coming closer to her room: tak, tak, tak .

When No’am left the house in the morning, she followed him. He seemed deep in thought, holding a letter in his hand, unaware that she was not far behind him. He made for the woods, and she followed. For a moment he disappeared among the trees, but then she saw his back on her right-hand side, beyond a trunk. Like he was giving a wide berth to the place where she dreamt of the flying kids. She hurried to close the gap and didn’t notice how near she was before she realized she could hear No’am murmuring to himself, “Now I’ll show ’em….”

She stopped for a moment, to let him get farther, then kept following him. No’am took a path that only he could see; otherwise she couldn’t explain how they went around in circles part of the time or went straight ahead into the woods at other times.

No’am stopped. He stopped beside a mailbox, bright red, shining as if it was just recently painted. He glanced down at the letter he was holding, then dropped it into the box.