I left Kibbutz Galuyot behind me and turned right on Mount Zion avenue. I was watching out for wild animals — and feral children, for that matter, not to mention crazed pidgin-speaking delivery boys and, just possibly, the messiah, but all I saw was rubble and destruction, an urban wasteland spreading out and away from me in every direction. I didn’t know what Mount Zion Avenue had looked like before the event — as I passed through it all I saw were broken buildings, heaps of rubbish that had once been shops and homes and community centres. I was looking out for danger, but I was thinking wrong — I was looking for people.
“You are going,” the Chief Rabbi had said, “to Tel Aviv.” I nodded. There was no dissembling before the Chief Rabbi.
I assumed his own intelligence service was as good as the Prime Minister’s. I knew the powers that fought for the balance of Israel.
The secular authorities were still standing, but for how long? With the loss of Tel Aviv, Israel had lost the vast majority of its secular citizens. The battle ahead was a battle for dominance, Orthodox versus secular, God versus the godless, and the godless, it seemed, have mostly disappeared in what was clearly a miracle: that is, an act that could not be explained rationally and could not be repeated.
“Do you understand what is at stake?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I had the feeling he did not expect an answer. The Chief Rabbi brought out two sheets of paper.
Twin images to the ones I had just seen at the PM’s office. “What do you think it is?” he said, stabbing with his finger at the second picture. How very Rabbinic, I thought. Always ask the questions. It reminded me of the old joke — how many Germans does it take to change a light bulb?
Shut up! Vee are asking ze questions here!
I looked at the picture. Then I looked at the Chief Rabbi. I said, “I think it looks like a mountain.”
“It is a mountain,” the Chief Rabbi said.
“Do I get a cookie for guessing right?” I said. The rabbi let it pass.
“It is Mount Sinai,” he said.
Whoa. And backtrack a little. “I beg your pardon?” I said.
“I accept your apology,” he said, and smiled a small, sardonic smile. “Yes, it is Mount Sinai, where God materialized before Moses to give him the Ten Commandments, the basis of all law.”
“Mount Sinai,” I said carefully, “is, well, in the Sinai. That’s in Egypt,” I added, helpfully. The rabbi gave me a look that suggested I should keep my mouth shut. “God has reappeared to us,” the rabbi said. “The time of Moshiach is nigh. The end of days!”
“Wasn’t it supposed to happen in Jerusalem first?” I said.
“A technical point,” the rabbi said. “Clearly, God felt it was necessary to appear first to those of us who had forgotten the true path. One cannot be only half a Jew. A chance is being given.” His look said it was a chance I, personally, should consider taking. I shrugged. “Where is this messiah, then?” I said.
“Aha,” the rabbi said. “That is a good question.” And again I felt like asking for a cookie. He smiled at me. I did not like the smile. “That,” the rabbi said, “is what I want you to answer.”
The English have an expression. How the cookie crumbles . . . “You want me to go into Tel Aviv to find you a messiah?”
“Not a messiah. The messiah. He is there. He must be. If the calculations are correct” — here he tapped the desk, and a pile of computer printouts that lay on top of it — “according to our best kabbalists, diviners and students of the Torah, and using the latest gimatria software and bible code decryptors, the messiah would have emerged, unbeknownst, possibly, even to himself, in Tel Aviv, in the area of the event. He would have gone to the mountain, and there — ”
“Yes?”
“He would have spoken to God.”
“Of course,” I said. Of course. There is another old joke — the richest man in the world wants to speak to God, so he goes to the U.S. President. “Can I talk to God?” he says. “Sure,” the American President says. “Use that red phone over there. But it’s ten million dollars a minute.”
Next, the man goes to the Vatican. “Can I talk to God?” he asks the Pope. “Sure,” the Pope says. “Use that white phone over there. But it’s five million Euros a minute.”
Lastly, he goes to Jerusalem, and walks into the Chief Rabbi’s office. “Can I talk to God?” he says. The rabbi doesn’t look up. “Sure,” he says, waving his hand distractedly towards the window. There’s a call-box outside, and a queue of people waiting to use it. “It’s only a local call.”
“What if — ” I said, and the rabbi gave me the kind of look that suggested I was beginning to annoy him “ — the messiah turns out to be a woman?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Look,” the rabbi said, leaning across the desk. His eyes locked on mine. “All you have to do is go into Tel Aviv, and find the messiah. Do you understand me?”
“I get you,” I said. “I get you.”
“Good. Then get the hell out of my sight.”
I hadn’t noticed the door opening. When I turned around two of the yeshiva boys stood there. The last thing I saw was the fat one on the left smiling. I started to say, “Oh, come o — ” and then everything went dark.
I was still thinking wrong. I was still looking for people. What I got instead was a —
Something slammed against my back, hard, and I skittered across the road, my body shuddering from the impact with the ground, my palms grazing where I tried to stop the fall. I turned on my back, Uzi drawn —
A great column of air — no, not air — of nothingness — no, that’s not right either — a turbulence, is the best way I can put it. Not a turbulence in the air, though. A turbulence in reality. The thing was tall, as tall as a building, wider overhead, tapering to a cone where it touched the ground. Though it had no face, no expression, I could somehow tell it was watching me. I nearly pressed the trigger then, but something stopped me. Perhaps the realization that bullets were unlikely to do much to this thing. Make it angry, maybe. I stayed down, on my back, and stared up at the thing.
It was, a part of me had to admit, magnificent. It was like a localized storm, but an aware storm — at least, with a sort of awareness. Not human, not like anything I could comprehend, but when I looked up at it and wondered if it was going to kill me, I felt awe.
The thing moved. The maelstrom passed very close to me. I tried not to breathe. Then, as if dismissing me as irrelevant, the thing swooped majestically down the avenue.
Was this — and others like it — what had caused the devastation in the city?
Yet some people survived. I myself had been left unharmed. Why?
I stood up slowly, my hand holding tight to the Uzi. The thing was moving north along Mount Zion Avenue. I looked north, and up: the mountain rose high above, not Mount Zion, not Mount Sinai either, I didn’t think: something else. Something strange and alien and awful, which is to say, it inspired awe. I stared up at the peaks for a long moment. They looked impossibly high.
I decided to continue in the direction I had chosen. Which meant following the maelstrom.
At that moment there was a loud bang, and I dropped to the ground again, hitting my left elbow against the road. The pain flushed hot through me and I cursed. I rolled and brought the Uzi up and then I saw the thing coming towards me, a giant, hulking, snake-like shape, crawling along the road towards me, belching smoke.
I blinked, and stared at it again. I saw multiple eyes on its sides, blinking in the sunlight, and terrible smoke rising from its rear. It swerved and veered haphazardly along the road. It came closer and closer to me, head first, and then it stopped, and I heard the whoosh of opening doors and a loud, ethereal screech that was a car-horn, and a woman’s voice said, “Get on! Hurry!”
It was a municipal, double-jointed bus.
There is an old man living in a public library, and he reads a book a day and when he is done he writes in the margins.
He writes: “Today I ate a frog.”
He writes: “Life is a meaningless joy-ride in a stolen car.”
He writes: “I am lonely. I want to die.”
So far he’s worked his way from Aleph to Lamed, and he is halfway through. He knows when he reaches the last book, he will die.
He writes: “The city is a furnace, it tempers people into steel.”
He writes: “I was once a man. Now I am dead, and do not know it yet.”
He writes: “We are all lost.”
It is comfortable in the library, and he is safe there. In the piles of books he has dug a hidden entrance, created a small dark space where he sleeps and where he hides when others come in. He always hides. They use the place for a lavatory. Sometimes . . .
He writes: “Were I a writer I would tell the story of this city, and I would tell the truth.”
He writes: “The truth tastes bitter and furry. The city lies.”
He writes: “Today I ate a rat.”
Sometimes he writes phone numbers that no longer work, for people no longer alive.
He writes: “I once had a daughter. I once had a boy. I was once a grandfather.”
He writes: “I once owned a car. I once owned a house. Once I was with a woman who was not my wife, in Amsterdam.”
He writes: “There are no more secrets. There is no one to keep them from.”
He writes: “Life is lonely. Death is shared by all.”
He writes letters to old friends. He writes letters to the government. He writes letters to the newspapers. He writes: “I ate the body of a badger today. I found it in the Arts Books section.” The book in whose margin this is written is covered in stains, like old dried sick. He writes: “I miss her.”
He writes: “It hurts to pee.”
He writes: “I want to die in Greek Philosophy.”
He writes: “Dying in History would be a lie.”
He writes: “I am very hungry. There are no more rats.”
He coughs a lot, and it splatters the paper. His fingers shake as they turn the pages. He had a name once but he can no longer remember what it was.