30

THAT NIGHT VALERIE LAY down beside Matthew, and just before she drifted off to sleep, her body touched a lost soul unmoored from time. She was neither asleep nor awake when the night grew dark and the dim stars made her afraid. She thought it was a dream, what happened next.

Or maybe not.

***

She drifts into the sound of the unfamiliar, a voice, an unknown name. Ora Himel-Lévis, says the voice. Spring break, and I am in Zurich, and her wordless thoughts float through Valerie’s sleep; she is off to see her mother who lives in Israel, in Yafo, an old Arab city, a part of Tel-Aviv; she has just come from visiting her father in Paris; she lives in Montreal. I miss Gerard — Valerie hears these words as they float above the surface of her dream.

But I have to speak to you, says Ora. Please listen. Then Valerie feels awake within the dream, Ora’s words as clear as if she herself had spoken them. I am studying anthropology and English. Someday, I would like to write about poetry and folksongs in the Hebrew language. I am carrying with me a book of Bialik’s poetry, very popular in Israel, some of it set to music, so that my mother can help me translate, for my final essay, and then Valerie, awake or asleep, understands that this is not the present, that a ghosted past has entered her body, a time that is not quite past at all.

Gerard is working, and could not come, says Ora.

I am staring out the window of the plane at the tarmac, she continues, looking at the mechanics, the gasoline truck, the control tower. Klöten Airport, that’s its name. I don’t like Zurich very much, but I was late booking, and I could not get a direct flight from Paris.

It is almost one-fifteen, so we are ready to take off. I look forward to seeing my mother. How sad that my family is scattered and not much of a family anymore. When I marry and have children, I am going to build us a new family. I plan to help my mother emigrate to Canada, so that she can be with my Aunt Rachel in Montreal. My mother loves her country, but she is sick of conflict. Already we have lost two men at war. My cousin Arieh died in ’67, and Aunt Rachel’s first husband, Uncle Avram, died in 1948. If I had stayed in Israel, I would be a soldier now.

The flight attendant has asked us to fasten our seat belts. I loosen the belt a little before I pull it around my waist and clasp the buckle. I pull it around a secret. I am three months’ pregnant. When I return, Gerard and I will get married. The wedding will be at City Hall because his parents’ church will not perform it. When his mother and father get to know me, they will feel better. They are good people. They do not know anyone Jewish, that is all.

The wheels roll, very fast. The sensation of speed is something I love, and under my seat, I feel the lift as the plane takes off. I think of the words to the beautiful song, “Shedemati,” “My Field,” which tells of a field that is sown with tears, but in the morning, the grain is ready for harvest, and the sickle moves, yunaf el al, all the way up to the sky.

Up over the city the plane banks, but the view is rather dull, so I will read — a book in English, for one of my courses. My place is marked with a photo of Gerard, his graduation picture. English is my third language, and it is tricky. My professor says that many English speakers do not know the difference between “lay” and “lie.”

There is a thunk, the wheels of the plane pulling up.

Also “like” and “as” are difficult. My teacher cannot stand the English idiom, “like, man” which she says has nothing to do with the word “like.”

A thunk and a bang, both of them shake the plane, and I put my hand on my tense stomach to comfort my child. There, there, your grandfather is an aircraft engineer. He says to me, don’t worry, Ora, they build these things to last, go back to your reading.

I begin to study the difference between “fewer” and “less,” but the book falls out of my hand. I cannot read, my eyes are watering, I am choking, there is smoke in the cabin. The pilot announces over the loudspeaker that he has asked permission to return to the airport. We are only a few minutes away, so we should stay calm.

I look out the window, I can see the control tower in the distance, but we are going the wrong way. The plane is listing, we are near the edge of Lake Lucerne, veering toward the woods, oh dear God, we are flying much too low….

***

After seeing Ora, Valerie woke Matthew up.

“She was here.”

“Who?”

“Ora. In this room.” She started to cry.

“Oh babe.” Matt took her in his arms and stroked her hair. “Lots of dreams loose in this world, babe. Don’t believe everything you see.”

***

Valerie felt a thrashing of anger in her stomach. Later she told Gerard what she’d realized.

How did you know that? His voice was a whisper of dread.

Ora wanted to let me know, is all.

***

The New York Times reported that the Swissair black box had been recovered. Good-bye, everyone, said the pilot. He explained that the cabin was full of smoke, that he couldn’t see the controls. His name was Armand Étienne.

A bomb had been placed in an airmail parcel. Triggered by a barometer, it was set to go off at forty-five hundred metres. It exploded in the luggage compartment. The investigators found wreckage strung across the trees in the forest near Würenlingen, in the northern Swiss canton of Aargau. Their findings included fragments of the shattered hold, a smashed propeller, hats and coats and gloves, a charred book of poetry, a torn snapshot of a young man.