Now there’s a lot to be seen, but the sound is muffled, filtered, on the verge of the unreal. This, on the very top floor of the station, is the bay from which people used to start their journeys across Israel — to Haifa and Naharia in the north, to Eilat and Be’er Sheva in the south, to Jerusalem and the Dead Sea in the east. Now no one is going anywhere, and the only vehicles to be seen are the cannibalized remains of intercity buses. The bus-bridge going down from the bay to the ground was blown up earlier, though in the confusion no one can tell who was responsible. The bay looks like a giant wrecked porch, with a nice panoramic view to the south where a wall of dirty, blood-coloured clouds separates Tel Aviv from the rest of the world. Right on the edge, from which one could freely fall the height of four or five floors to the ground, someone positioned weird contraptions made of red leather and cardboard and metal and plastic junk. They look like dust motes the size of small cars. Whatever those things are, they seem to be on the verge of falling apart.
The wall separating the bay from the rest of the station is relatively intact. Only one hole has been blown in it, quite some time ago. From this hole now emerges a column of people — five, ten, thirty. They all wear red. Bright red T-shirts, shiny red nylon raincoats, red pants, red dresses, and even, in one case, a red bikini. Between them they carry seven big bamboo cages. Inside the cages are seven men, all in various states of unconsciousness, none of whom is wearing any colour worth mentioning.
The leader of the group, a small figure covered, despite the heat and terrible humidity, in a thick dark red robe, hood included, raises a red-gloved hand. The procession stops, and the cages are lowered down to rest on the floor. By what is, perhaps, a strange coincidence, each cage is located right beside one of the weird leathery contraptions lying on the edge of the bay. The carriers straighten up, salute, then stamp their legs together on the floor.
This noise, finally, reaches into one of the cages and wakes up Mordechai Abir.
“In the beginning was the fire,” says a voice. “And when the fire raged upon the deeps He came. The first Fireman.”
Sam too has awoken. His first emotion is anger. First, his hand. Then his captor, a moving mountain shaped like a woman, carrying him like a baby, paying no attention to his protestations or his cries of pain. Then, when he tried to fight his way free — a slap from her hand, just that and nothing else, but so hard that he flew against the wall, banged his head against it and lost consciousness.
Now he has regained consciousness. His second emotion is fear.
He is trapped inside a bamboo cage. Somewhere nearby, someone is making a speech.
The voice is sharp and precisely articulated. Every syllable is in place, every consonant loud and clear, every comma an absence, every period a void. It is an old voice, but he can’t tell the speaker’s gender.
His third emotion runs close to despair.
“And He battled the emissaries of God, Creatures of Wind, and bested them,” says the leader. “But the world lay in ruins, a desert, and he traversed it to the Mount.”
The red-gloved hand points upwards. This, Mordechai Abir thinks inside his bamboo cage, is really quite fascinating!
It’s as if he’s found a lost tribe, previously unknown to modern man. This is exactly what he was looking for when he came to Tel Aviv! This, as opposed to all those documents he’s been chasing all these years, this is the real, authentic thing. Fascinating!
And yet . . . as he huddles inside his cage, he can’t but wonder where it would lead. The anthropology of cannibals is a lot less . . . fascinating . . . when it is you yourself who is inside the pot.
“And seeing that all was as it should be, He rose to the heavens in a Chariot of Flame!” intones the leader’s voice. “And as He rose, so shall we rise, so shall we rise so that He may return!”
To which the whole congregation answers, “So shall we rise!”
“Firemen — to your positions!” shouts the leader.
Strong hands grab the cages, open them, drag the prisoners out.
The agent tries to fight, but his whole body is cramped. He can’t even stand, and thus has to be held. He catches the mocking glance of the woman who caught him, towering over the leader like a storm front. Then his hands are shackled and he is dragged and tied to something, some contraption that smells like rotten leather and paint. He knows then that he was right. It’s going to be bad. He just doesn’t know how bad.
Seven men are tied to seven contraptions. All around them, redclad people operate, fixing, staging, pulling and tying things. Each assembly of leather and plastic and junk slowly gains a more defined shape. The operators scurry around, tightening ropes, setting levers. Then it is all done and the operators return to a safer distance from the bay’s end, on which are now positioned seven red, part-leather, part-human bats.
“To the fire ye shall soar,” says the leader, “and in your trail the Fireman shall come!”
A prisoner shouts, and immediately receives a wooden club to the head. The rest of the prisoners, learning fast, settle for quiet moans.
The leader raises both hands towards the congregation. “Bring — the Lover! Bring the bearer of the prophecy! Bring the receiver of fate, the recorder of the miracle, the speaker of the truth!”
A small procession now comes out of the station, seven women wearing black robes. The last of them carries a big silvery box in both hands. She stops in front of the leader, gently puts the box on the ground, and opens the cover.
No-one is talking. Even the prisoners understand, however dimly, that something of importance is happening. Now there’s a sound, the sound of wind, the sound of a storm. The air is charged.
There’s movement inside the box. Something rises. Something round and brown. It’s furry. No, it’s hairy. It keeps rising. It’s a ball covered with hair. No.
Rising, higher and higher, like an awful jack-in-the-box, is a severed human head.