Daniel dropped the head. He didn’t even notice. He was staring at the burning, rising truck. It hovered impossibly in the air before shooting upwards, up and up and up, becoming a speck of dust against the mountain.
“Do you mind?” a voice said. Daniel looked down. “Shit, I’m sorry — ” he said. Then he looked again.
The head hovered above the ground. “What — ?” Daniel said.
The head looked confused. Then it twirled around. “It’s him,” the head said.
“What?”
The head stopped and stared at Daniel. Brown eyes, podgy face. A spot under her chin. Quite unattractive. “I know,” the head said.
“You know what?” Daniel could no longer see the truck. He had a sense of acute wrongness. The mountain seemed to expand around them, to fill up the world.
“I know,” the head said. It sounded just a little bit smug. “I understand now.”
“What?” Daniel yelled.
“Everything,” the head said — quietly, with immense dignity. “I understand it all, now.”
“At least that makes one of us,” Daniel said.
The head turned 360 degrees and came back to look at him. “I pity you,” it said.
Daniel grabbed the head by the hair and spun around and around. The head yelled, “Hey, what the fuck do you think you’re doing!?” — and Daniel let go, releasing the head.
“Daniel, what the fuck are you doing?” Hagar shouted. He ignored her and watched the head arc through the air, a beautiful, entirely satisfying sight, tracing a curve over the steep slope of the mountain until it connected with the ground far below, bounced, sailed through the air again, bounced a second time, rolled, and finally disappeared from view. He still had the strange child’s clay-thing, he realized. And it resembled the head too closely for his liking. He let it go. It fell at his feet and rolled away. Somehow, it made him feel clean. Purified.
“Are you nuts?”
“Just cut it in editing,” he said, and he laughed. He felt like something was laughing through him.
“Daniel, please stop.”
But he couldn’t. The laughter wouldn’t go. It grew, it burst out of him, it shook his whole body, shook the ground he was standing on, shook the —
“Daniel, the ground!” She grabbed his hand. Her touch sobered him. The ground shook. Coming at them down the slope were the remnants of the Dizengoff Center. “We have to run.”
“Run where?” he shouted.
“We can’t go back,” Hagar said. Just then something came at them down the slope, crashed into Hagar, and took with it her camera. She screamed.
“Hagar, no!”
“I have to get it back!”
He grabbed her and pulled her after him. “We could die!” he shouted. Above their heads, thunder like distant explosions was coming near. Lightning flashed.
“Everyone else is already dead!” Hagar said, and stopped.
He pulled harder, ran up the slope, pulling her. “But we’re not! Come on!”
She followed him. Around them, the remnants of the city centre were falling down, crashing, rolling, as if the mountain was shaking the last foreign elements off its side. They ran through a storm of bricks and glass and people and a poster of Independence Day and two flying turtles from what must have been a pet store, past mobile phones and notebooks and oranges that came at them like grenades, past handbags and Italian shoes and combs and a set of false teeth and a McDonald’s sign that nearly took their heads off. Above them the sky darkened and lightning flashed and where it hit there was a burning smell, and the thunder echoed around them and the rain came, washing away the city, a downpour that silenced everything and they struggled uphill, running, crawling, falling in the mud, like two insects climbing an elephant’s back, and when they couldn’t go any longer they fell on the ground and lay there, holding each other, while the rain fell and fell and fell.
When Daniel awoke, the city was gone. They were on a high plateau, and above their heads a multitude of stars shone cold and bright and unknown. The peaks of other, distant mountains were just visible in the distance, dusted with snow. There was no city. There was no Tel Aviv, no seafront promenade, no yeshiva and no rabbis, no restaurants, kosher or otherwise, no orange-juice sellers, no girls in denim shorts, no cell phones ringing, no —
No sound, in fact. The world was silent. The world was laid out around Daniel like an unknown map. Somewhere there were seas and islands and volcanoes, waterfalls and valleys and chasms, deserts and jungles and living things . . . living things. He touched Hagar’s shoulder, gently, and she opened her eyes. She stared up at the sky for a long time.
When she rose it was with a new silence, and it was echoed in Daniel. It was a silence like an abyss, deep and profound, a silence belonging to this new world, not the old. They held each other’s hands. The map of the world stretched out before them, full of blank spaces. Unknown. They linked their fingers. They didn’t speak, but they knew each other’s mind. They took a step, and then another, and another. Above their heads the stars stared down, mute and strange and old.