Zion's Fiction: A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature

They Had to Move ^{Shimon Adaf}

They had to move. There was no other choice. She did try to keep it together. With all the washing, all the food she had to prepare, all the cleaning up. And she had to learn how to do all these by herself. With no help. With her slowly decaying mother who was looking at them, her and No’am, but saw other persons, times past. No’am was sinking too. When not moping around, he was fighting with kids in the neighborhood, and she had to hide him away and apologize for him. For one month she was able to hold on. Lucky for her it was summer vacation at school, but neighbors would come around occasionally to check up on her, asking questions, and finally Aunt Tehila, whom neither she nor No’am had seen for quite a few years, showed up. Their mother didn’t recognize her at all. Just looked at her with those vacant eyes. No. They weren’t vacant. Transparent, for all those tears, and all the light hitting them, which should have painted reflections and images, was deflected back the way it came, as though they were two little mirrors. And she was examining Tehila, who said, “Aviva, you’ve really grown up,” and then offered her hand to No’am, who was staring at her too. And refused to approach her. “What a mess,” she said, observing their home. Then she went to her sister, who lay folded on the living room’s couch, and kissed her on both cheeks.

A strange one she was, Tehila. All dressed up, perfect makeup, looking ready to go to a party, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and her makeup—rouge and blue eyeliner. Also what she wore, a simple dress, but nearly an evening gown. Yet, and this was the funny bit, her shoes didn’t fit. That is, they were perfect colorwise, but they were old, cracked, blue lacquer shoes. What’s with all this blue? Aviva asked herself, her hand moving to grasp the locket she wore on a chain around her throat, becoming a fist over that oblate silver egg. She wasn’t quite sure what it was actually, except that her father had given it to her before he was gone.

She almost screamed, now it was just almost a scream. All through that month her pain folded in on itself, becoming a hard shell, so she didn’t cry now when she remembered; it was only the pain banging on the shell from the inside, and she felt the thuds of these bangs, and she almost screamed. There were no stabbing pangs now, like there were when she’d heard from the soldiers who came to speak with her mother, to say things that her mother had already guessed, in the middle of the night, and she woke up and got them out of bed, screaming horribly, and No’am clung to her not understanding anything; fear made him cry, but she’d already realized, though she wasn’t ready to admit it, until the soldiers came. And a couple of weeks later the war in Lebanon was over, but it made no difference to her; she felt the Katyushas that kept falling and the fire that kept burning, breaking pieces off her brain. Then she screamed too, because knives were cutting her inside, every one of her organs was being cut, and seeing her mother give up and start decaying, and No’am uncontrollable and full of rage and looking for pretexts to quarrel, she tried to choke down on her screaming, breathe it in, soften those knife thrusts, and she almost made it, she just almost screamed, and soon she’ll lose her pain completely and will remain empty of her father, his memory, all those moments when he was her father and she was somebody’s daughter, and she’ll get on with her life. She knows this, it wasn’t she who’d set the price, only her locket will remain, sort of an oblate sphere, and she couldn’t figure out why somebody should have made it in the first place, and her father’s words, “Aviva, so that you don’t forget.”

She started crying. Not really crying. She just allowed a few tears to get out. Tehila sensed, how fast she sensed those tears, and came beside her and held her tight. “Well,” she said, “no way you’re staying here. You’re coming to live with me.”

Live with her? In another city? Their mother hardly complained. She said, “The one I lived here for is gone,” and Tehila just took her by the hand after Aviva had packed up for the three of them, but No’am ran out and kept running and running until he got to the royal poinciana tree—she knew its name because her father made her memorize the names of trees and flowers and birds—and No’am started climbing, holding on to its branches. And Tehila went out there, her lacquered shoes going tak, tak, tak on the pavement stones, and Aviva, standing at the window and watching, could hear her shoes even at this distance, but what Tehila whispered to No’am, which made him climb down off the tree and come with her, she couldn’t hear. Even though she saw her lips move.

There was still a week left of the summer vacation, before they had to go to school. Both of them would go to the local high school, which included a junior high, since No’am was just going on to seventh grade and she to tenth, and No’am wasted no time getting on the wrong side of the neighborhood’s kids. Kids in Yehud were tougher, and Tehila’s home was at the end of town, in a neighborhood of old single-family houses, and it is well known that kids in single-family-house neighborhoods are the toughest. It’s been a few days already that No’am would come home bruised and bleeding. Always, their mother lets her glance linger on him, and Tehila looks bemused, with this frown that doesn’t fit in with her made-up face. And Aviva takes him by the hand and cleans his wounds with iodine or Polydine, or puts on a compress, and gives him a piece of her mind, but he doesn’t listen, he just tightens up his lips and growls behind them.

“This can’t go on,” Aviva said to Tehila. Since their arrival they haven’t talked much. Tehila showed them their rooms. She had a big house, with a den—she called it her study—in which she enclosed herself all day, working on her sculptures. She was unmarried and had no children, and when Aviva asked, she just smiled and said nothing. But her old lacquered shoes she wore every day, even when working in her study. Aviva saw some of the sculptures. They repelled her, deformed human figures that they were, with too many hands or too few, with two heads and sometimes more than one mouth where mouths aren’t supposed to be, nor tongues, and still more parts sticking out or gaping, which Aviva recognized but was too embarrassed to tell herself what they were. And all of them, all these monsters, wore new shoes. Sometimes Nike or New Balance or Timberland, sometimes shiny with high heels, or square-toed leather shoes. Tehila also had a library. A huge one. In her living room. It had all of Jane Austen’s novels. And Aviva, who had read only Pride and Prejudice, felt hope biting at her chest.

“No,” said Tehila, “this can’t go on.”

“He needs something to keep him busy,” said Aviva.

“I wish he would read, like you.”

“But once, before, he used to read.”

“Like what?”

“Books you don’t have in your library. Adventures, and thrillers, and fantasy.”

“But I do have fantasy,” said Tehila, giving her a long stare. “And science fiction.”

“My daddy…”

“I know. You think it would help No’am?”

“I never saw any of it in your library.”

“It’s not in the library.” Tehila turned her back and made a few steps toward her den. “Come on,” she turned back to Aviva, “follow me.”

The far wall of her den had a small door Aviva hadn’t noticed before. A low one. Tehila walked in with a straight back. Aviva, taller than Tehila by a head, had to bend to pass through.

A strange room. Even stranger than the den. On tall stands and in glass cabinets of all sizes there were assorted disassociated objects, including a jug and a watch and a book and a razor blade and a wallet and a handheld computer and a pair of eyeglasses and more. Each display cabinet was labeled by name: Alon. Dan. Yogev. Levi. Yaron. Yekutiel. Zvulun. And more. Aviva thought, only guys’ names. And the room looked like a museum. Tehila went to a large glass cabinet holding a cardboard box. Aviva saw the label: Shim’on. Tehila lifted the box effortlessly, although Aviva suspected it must be quite heavy, and put it on a table in the middle of the room. “There you are,” she said. Aviva opened the box and looked inside. A pile of glossy magazines, brand new. On the top one she saw Fantasia 2000 printed in yellow letters, and the cover was purple and blue with an illustration of an alien traversing the sky in a teacup. Interesting, she thought, and started digging in. All those magazines inside had the same title, Fantasia 2000. Must be magazines from way back, she told herself. The year 2000 was a long time ago.

“There are stories here No’am will find interesting.” Tehila answered the question she meant to ask.

“They’re yours?”

“No,” said Tehila. “They’re Shim’on’s.”

“Who’s he?”

“One of my ex-lovers,” said Tehila, looking at her closely. Aviva turned pink. “He used to collect all these magazines. This one was important to him, helped him consolidate his identity as a reader. At least, that’s what he claimed.”

Aviva moved her eyes, looking around the room. All those guys’ names. “All this stuff….”

“Yes,” said Tehila. “Keepsakes.”

“There were many of them.”

“Sure. Usually, the story lasts for just a few months.”

“And then what? They leave?”

“No. I get tired.”

“And you tell them to go away?”

“No. I kill them and capture their essences inside some object that belonged to them.”

Alarmed, Aviva immediately turned her roving eyes to look at her. Tehila laughed. She went to a glass cabinet. Behind its doors there were small books bound in leather, neatly arranged. “Sometimes I need more than an object to remember them by.” She took one of them out. Now Aviva saw that each of those books bore one of the names attached to the objects. The one Tehila handed to her was marked “Shim’on.” Aviva opened it—a photo album, not a book. Shim’on and Tehila on the beach, Shim’on and Tehila with a tower in the background, Shim’on and Tehila somewhere at night. In all those photos Tehila looked just the same, the way she looked ever since Aviva had seen her first, in those bluish cracked lacquer shoes. But Shim’on was changing. Growing older. She followed the sequence of photos, and her heart stopped. Froze. In this photo, yes, in this photo, under the big tree—a walnut tree, she knew—Shim’on and Tehila, and behind them, on a bench in the corner, someone. Not someone. Her father. She said, “that’s Daddy,” in a broken voice, and raised her eyes to Tehila, and Tehila bent to see for herself, and said, “That’s right, I never realized Netan’el was here. How strange. He really was friends with Shim’on.”

Aviva grasped her locket, closed her hand around it, squeezed. She felt the room closing in on her; she had to get out. She picked up one of the Fantasia 2000s and started for the door, actually ran, and her forehead hit the frame head, but she didn’t feel it. She went out of the house. Her mother was sitting on the couch staring at the TV set, which was turned off, and she ran out to the porch, and there she stopped. From a distance she saw No’am approaching. He was limping. He mustn’t see me cry. She tightened her lips. “Who did you fight with this time?” she asked, making every effort to smile.

“None of yer business.”

“Sit here a moment, I’ll get you something to drink.”

She went inside, came back with a glass of Coke and saw that No’am was sitting, bristling with anger, and that he was crying. He, too, was crying. “Look, No’am,” she said. “Look.” She pointed at the magazine. He wouldn’t comply. She felt his frustration radiating out of him, shining like a little sun. She extended her hand to caress his hair, which was exactly like their father’s, dark and smooth. He pushed her hand away, rudely, and she grasped her locket the way she always did when she didn’t know what to do with her hands. With her left hand. With her right hand she opened the magazine, issue number 41, she saw, and leafed through it fast. “Look, No’am, aliens and spaceships, like in the books Daddy used to like.” No’am looked at her. His eyes were bright, bright because of his tears. She cringed and squeezed her locket tighter. With her other hand she pointed at a random page. “Shadow, Shadow on the Wall,” it was titled. “An interesting one, seems to me,” she said desperately, looking closely at No’am, but his eyes were glued to the page. He was swallowing the words. “No’am,” said Aviva, but No’am didn’t reply. He picked up the magazine and, walking and reading, went into the house.

Aviva wasn’t quite sure what it was all about. She sat all morning in the backyard, in the shade of the trees, reading Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. About some stupid girl who begins to suspect that the mansion in which she’s a guest conceals dark secrets. Obviously, there aren’t any; she only fell in love with the son of the host family, and she’s making up all this just for kicks. Nevertheless, Aviva never noticed how fast time was passing. It was already noontime and hot, and sun rays were filtering through the treetops—sacred fig and Indian banyan and sycamore—in bright, shiny patches, but what brought her out of her book was the sound from the front of the house; there was a woman on the porch, and she was shouting. She bolted for the front of the house. Tehila, too, emerged from her den. But not her mother, who remained on the couch. On the porch stood a heavyset woman, her black hair splayed over her shoulders. She was holding a tall, skinny boy by the hand. Would have been handsome if he weren’t so full of sharp bones, she thought. Bigger than No’am, who was leaning against the wall by the door, on the other side of the table. No’am looked very calm. He even grinned. He crossed his arms and looked back at her.

“I’m gonna break both that boy’s legs,” said the woman. “You just let me lay me hands on ’im and you’ll see.”

“What happened?” Aviva asked. She was looking at Tehila, who didn’t answer her.

“Yer brother, that little bastard, see what he done to m’boy.”

Aviva saw. The boy’s arms, his throat, and every other bit of exposed skin were covered with blue bruises. She turned to look at No’am. “You did this?”

“Not just to ’im,” the woman added, “a couple more kids, m’boy’s friends. I’m gonna tear ’im to pieces. And you,” she said to Tehila, “you got nuttin’ to say? You got no control over the kids yuh brung into the neighbor’ood?”

Tehila said, “Take a good look at No’am, see how small he is. Half the size of your son. You really believe he can beat up your son and his friends?”

“You tell ’er,” said the woman to her son. “C’mon, ya little jerk, tell ’er.”

“He got help,” said the boy, sucking in the snot threatening to drip out of his nose. “He brung another kid to the woods.” He pointed in the general direction of the woods at the edge of the neighborhood, a place Aviva had passed once. “That’s where we was playin’.”

“Two boys?” said Aviva. “Against a hulk like yourself?”

“I wanna go,” said the boy, pulling at his mother’s hand. Tak, tak, tak, Tehila’s shoes sounded as she went down to the gate and opened it for them. The woman gave her an angry look but stepped down from the porch. Then she turned around and said to No’am, “I’m warnin’ you. You come near m’boy, it’s the end of you.”

The grin Aviva thought she had seen on No’am’s lips grew wider. He waved them both good-bye.

“What was that all about?” asked Aviva.

“No clue,” said No’am. And Tehila looked at him again, her frown returning to spoil her carefully painted face.

No’am came to her room at night, asking whether he could get more Fantasia 2000 magazines. He liked these stories, he said, and Aviva sent him to Tehila, and he returned with the whole bunch of them. “Help me pick a story,” he said. “The one you chose earlier was a good one.”

“I’m too tired,” Aviva said. “Choose for yourself.”

He went through the magazines and finally selected one by its cover illustration.

The next evening he came back. All roughed up and disheveled, like scuzzy hair in the morning, she thought; the neighborhood kids must have caught up with him. “What happened?” she asked. “You got beaten?”

“Help me pick a story,” he said. “I can’t find any I like.”

“Come on,” said Aviva. “Don’t be such a lazy dog. Next thing you’ll ask me to read to you.” They were sitting in the living room. Their mother was sitting there too, chewing on a piece of bread Aviva pushed into her hand. The food on her plate was getting cold. “Can’t you see I’m busy?” And to their mother, “Come on, Mommy, you’ve got to eat.” And their mother said, “I’ve already told you. Me, I have nothing to eat for.”

“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.

“No’am,” Aviva said, coming towards him among the trees. No’am stared at her. “A… Aviva,” he stammered, “What are you doing here?”

“What did you do with that letter?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s nothin’, just a game.”

“A game? What kind of game?”

“Nothin’.”

“No’am, you told me you never go anywhere near these woods. Aren’t you afraid they’ll ambush you here? Aviel and his pals?”

“No, not really.”

“I’m surprised. What are you hiding?”

“Nothin’, I told you. Don’t be such a bore.”

“So what’s the game?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Okay. Can I guess who you sent the letter to?”

His eyes narrowed. He looked at her suspiciously. “I have to go,” he said. He took a few steps, and suddenly disappeared.

“No’am,” she called.

He returned. “We have a problem,” he said. “If I leave you here you won’t find your way back.”

“What’s going on, No’am? Does it have anything to do with Tehila?”

“Tehila? Why should it? Tell you the truth, I don’t know.”

“You sent this letter to Solon Aquila, didn’t you?”

No’am started. “How did you guess?”

“Why would you send a letter to a character out of a story?”

“’Cause sometimes they come.”

“They?”

“Those I send letters to through this mailbox.”

“That boy that Aviel claimed you brought in for help?”

“His name’s Bobby. He can…. Well, in the story his stepmom is abusing him and he can make silhouettes with his hands, live ones, and then he calls a creature out of the shadows to come take her. I wrote to him to come out and help me. After I’d read the story I went for a walk in the woods, and suddenly I got here, to this mailbox, and I thought, why don’t I send this Bobby a letter to come help me. And that’s what I did, and he did come. But… but he was more wicked than in the story. He brought creatures out of the shadows, scary creatures, and they attacked Aviel and his pals.”

Aviva looked at him, shocked. He’s pulling a fast one on me, she thought. His inventions are getting more sophisticated. Like Father’s.

“Then I wrote to those kids from this story, ‘Ararat,’ the ones who came from another planet and were afraid to show their powers, and their teacher, too. They looked nice. Only they weren’t so nice. They made fun of me and spat at me.”

“The… flying kids? They were for real? And their teacher? The one who makes hail?”

No’am nodded. His face seemed sad. “They didn’t go away as fast as Bobby. They shouted that next time I call ’em, they’d have enough power to get me as well.”

“I knew it, I knew it all has to do with those magazines Tehila gave you. What is she up to, Tehila?” said Aviva.

“At least some of the magazines,” said No’am. “I don’t know why, but it doesn’t always work.”

“You tried some more?”

“Yeah. I sent a couple of letters to people from other stories, but nothing happened. And somehow I knew nothing would happen. Those stories, they weren’t….” he fell silent.

“They weren’t what, No’am?”

He looked at her in horror. He was terrified. “They weren’t alive, like the ones that you picked.”

“That I picked?”

Now Aviva felt as alarmed as he was. Her hand went to the locket. The woods started closing in on her. She tightened her fist around the silver egg. No’am kept looking at her, waiting for an explanation.

“Do you know what Solon Aquila does?” she asked.

“Yes,” said No’am. “I asked him to come over here and make Aviel’s worst nightmares come true.”

“You didn’t get the point, No’am,” she said. “Solon empties people of their childhood, after letting them live their fantasies. He takes away their inner world, all their dreams. He leaves them with nothing.”

“Here he comes,” said No’am. His voice was trembling.

In the air, beside a eucalypt standing not far from them, a block of air lit up like a flame. The woods shook. Aviva squeezed her left hand around the locket. She whispered, “The locket, Daddy’s locket….” With her right hand she held on to No’am.

She shuddered, thinking of flying kids.