Hold on to the Sun (15 page)

The padded dining room door was still shut. He turned toward the exit. The morning hours were at his disposal. The closing session of the business meeting would only begin at three o’clock.

 

The beach was white and empty. The sun glared. He sat down in the shade of one of the palm trees on the bay. A few shells were stuck together in a glittering lump. The light invaded the beach in splashing foam and poured out of it in streams of white bubbles.The little lump of crystals of light appeared between the currents and disappeared. Appeared and disappeared.

 

It was only eight thirty. More than anything else, he was thirsty.

He was swallowed up in the stream of people, in the shade of crowded stalls. At one of them he drank bitter fruit juice, and with the other people crowding the marketplace watched an old crone dancing, tracing convoluted circles on the ground. The shaking heads of the spectators magnified the movements, and their shrill cries pierced the rhythmic beat. Suddenly the dark face of a woman bent down close to him. Her face was oval, her features carved. Her full lips split in a thin gash, and in her eyes the irises arched as if in soft, white lakes. Between the stalls a smell of black-pipped bursting fruit rose into the air. He pushed away the hair which had fallen into his eyes.

 

At one fifty he returned to the hotel. On the way he stopped twice in the shady streets retreating from the sea in order to drink. He hadn’t eaten since the morning. When he raised his hand to push open the hotel door, its shadow was dragged southward, toward the darkness in the direction of the Pole.

In his room the sheets were smooth, and there was a sweetish, foreign smell left behind by the chambermaid. He emptied the contents of his jacket pockets onto the little dressing table, under the mirror. He straightened out the crumpled airline ticket. He spread out the local banknotes, with the picture of a tower and avenues of palms against the background of the sea. He tucked the ticket into his passport, next to the exit visa in the name of Yehiel Nammi.
And only then he raised his eyes to the oval face bending forward in the mirror.

 

Later you quickly take the suitcase out of the cupboard and put shirts and used underpants in it. You pull the pajamas out from under the pillow. Without undoing the laces, you take off your shoes, and go into the bathroom. At eighteen minutes past two you descend the stairs to the gloom of the lobby. Above the counter the head of the reception clerk floats in a narrow circle of light.You wait restlessly. At two twenty, as agreed, Gupetti enters in the wake of a swift shaft of glaring light. He relieves you of the suitcase and is swallowed up in the circle of light next to the receptionist. Head to head, they settle the account with a clear ring of coins. At two thirty you leave behind him.

On the way you seek her through the car window among the women, leaving soft shadows in the afternoon glow. Not far from the beach Gupetti parks the car, and the two of you hurry through the swarming queues of the central post office to the telegram counter. You make a quick calculation, and write with the pen attached to the marble shelf: To Zipporah Nammi, returning tomorrow at six a.m. Yours,Yehiel.You wonder for a moment if the message will manage to get there in time, and hurry out of the crowd behind Gupetti.

On the twenty-fifth floor the president of the corporation meets you outside the elevator and greets you in his soft accent, full of whispers. He cups your hands in his broad palms. Gupetti follows you to the conference room, carrying your bag. In the smoked glass windows the town and bay revolve as if in a furnace. The secretary reads the contract out ceremoniously. You all sign. The doors are opened by waitresses whose muscular bodies exude the scent of herbs. You bite into colorful pieces of fruits. The juice bursting from the skins floods your tongue.

There are ninety minutes to go before you have to report to the airport. They don’t want to deprive you of the time left.The director of the corporation gives you a friendly pat on the shoulder and leaves you in Gupetti’s hands, as if he knows how eager you are to press your face once more to the window of his old car. You glide silently through glass stories of the building and land at the entrance.You hasten after Gupetti in the red light dripping with salty warmth, and cross to the opposite pavement as if it were the illuminated bank of a dark, yellowish river.

 

Gupetti guides the car through the avenues lined with palm trees rising up opposite the bays. Beneath you, the sea retreats from dark blue into orange. The rhythmic hum already familiar to you shakes the old springs of the seat. With both hands you hang onto the window frame. The pavements recede from warm orange into the red of the
scattered peels. Women carry baskets of straw and fruit on their heads, gilding like tall torches.You examine their tender necks and their cheeks hollowed out like soft, carved wood, and for a moment or two it seems to you that you can decipher something in the way the palms of their hands are entwined in the straw.You sink back into the springs of your seat. Gupetti navigates from the old-fashioned dashboard without breaking the silence. At sunset he points to the glass of the corporate tower in the distance. At that moment a white light goes on in all its floors. He makes a u-turn. You’re still busy watching the shadows walking in the darkness. The evening warmth is sweet.Your breath comes in gasps.

 

Gupetti stops at the side of the road. There are only a few minutes left. You try to catch up with him through the smoke and the flames as he climbs the crowded stone steps of the outdoor shrine. Both of you sink in the wax dripping from the candles. Your steps almost touch the dark bodies of the trembling singers close together on the stone. Their heavy sweat glistens. Next to you Gupetti falls to his knees. His cropped hair is on fire.You stand alone in the streaming flames and the deep, spreading song. At your feet her oval face clings to the stone.You bend down into the heat. Her parted lips move in soft, bright dampness. You wipe away the sweat wetting your eyelids.

You realize that you’ve made a mistake in calculating
the time difference in your telegram. It is already tomorrow morning there. Your face is still turned backward as your body trails behind Gupetti down the giant steps. In one swing the night sucks the car into darkness. The dawn light streaming over the mountains there snatches her dark face away from you.

Gupetti gives you one last friendly wave. He places the handle of the suitcase in your hand. His thin mustache gestures at you and disappears at the entrance to the gates.You dip your hand into your jacket pocket. Pull out the folder of documents.The border policeman stamps the exit visa next to your passport photo.

 

At eight thirty I strap myself into the safety belt and sink wearily back into the soft seat.

I wake for the first time when the plane turns sharply to the north, somewhere in the darkness over the ocean. The stewardesses have not yet finished packing up the serving trolleys. The lights have already been dimmed, and the few passengers are wrapping their bodies in the purple woolen blankets. They force themselves to fall into an irritable sleep, which will do nothing to refresh them in any case. Next to me the untouched meal turns cold. I stretch out my legs on the seats beside me. The iron capsule rocks us silently. A loud, monotonous roar pierces the night. Down below the zones of darkness change, and the sphere of night from which we’ve been detached goes on turning steadily.

When I wake up again a ruddy light breaks through the windows. I throw the blanket off my legs and press my face against the clear glass. Above the downy clouds the sun lags behind, gently bounding. Her oval face recedes with the last of the darkness.

Above the seats the red light goes on for the last time. The rest of the passengers sit straight up in their places.The stewardesses hurry past in their purple aprons. I silently grind my food. An unknown morning whitens and recoils from the windows.

When we land I move the hands of my watch eight hours forward. There is no one to meet me at the airport. Probably because of the mistake in the telegram. An official of the border police stamps the entrance visa in my passport.

 

At twenty past two Yehiel Nammi emerged with his light suitcase and walked over to the bus stop on the main road. Heavy clouds were hanging over the fields, and the traces of recent rain were still evident on the road. He put the suitcase down on the edge of the asphalt. Small bushes of ragwort were growing in the clods of earth between leftover lumps of cement. Their little leaves swayed.

At three fifty he walked into his house. In a few words he told her about finalizing the contract. About the rest he said nothing. He apologized and explained that he had to make up for the night’s sleep he’d lost because of jet lag, and without even washing, sank into the big bed at four o’clock in the afternoon.

She closed the door behind him. The suitcase was sitting on the table in the living room. She opened the two locks, trying not to make a noise. Holding the sheaf of printed papers in her hand she opened the study door. The room, which had been shut up since his departure, had a heavy, bitter smell. She put the sheaf of papers down in the narrow circle of light on the desk. When she bent down she noticed a small colored picture printed on top of the sheets of paper, the picture of a tower and an avenue of palms on the shores of a bay.

Zipporah Nammi took the dirty underwear out of the bag, and buried her fingers between the folded shirts. The bag was empty. Still, she ran her hand through its long pocket, in case there was anything left.The waiting of these past days and nights had increased her wakefulness. In the next room he was rocked on their bed toward a distant night, and even later, in the evening, when she would finally collapse beneath the weight of her expectations, he would slip away from her sleep to a day in whose hours she had no place. She abandoned hope of catching up with the retreating darkness. Her wakefulness sharpened in a dense buzz.

 

A faint light came in from the windows. It looked as if it were going to start raining again.

THE END OF THE PYTHIA

Many years ago, before the seething land came to rest, in a remote district between high mountains, in a broad valley surrounded by cliffs—full of milling crowds, noisy trams, and hooting trains—lay the greatest entertainment empire which ever existed. The City Fathers had covered the swampy soil of the valley with earth and planks, and in the course of time its bed was stamped down by the feet of revelers, who made their way there through the desolate roads of the wilderness in a constant stream of tens of thousands. With their arrival they added new streets and neighborhoods to the town, and packed the rooms of the tall buildings until there was no room left. As in all cities, so too in the City of Joy, people filled the squares and the stairwells, besieged the passageways, and were quickly swallowed up in the tunnels of the underground trains. All this feverish life, however, was only set in motion by the powerful pistons of the Fun Fair. Its effects were felt even in the hidden corners of remote courtyards, and even the scurrying of the rats
among the garbage bins was controlled by its rhythm. The amusement park was located in the heart of the metropolis, on a field spreading from horizon to horizon between the tall buildings, and the sky above it was constantly covered with smoke and fog.

There was nothing, it seemed, to upset the life of the City or cast a shadow over its revels, but for the ancient rule of the thousand-faced Pythia. In the midst of their pleasures, with the foam still spilling over their bellies and the bubbles of grease shining on their lips, those sentenced by the Pythia were executed and fell wallowing with half their lust assuaged. And the more halting and obscure her verdicts, the more swiftly the sentence was carried out. With one of her thousand faces the Pythia would visit the condemned man, and some said that with her hollow visage—the mirror-image of his dread—she would press her lips to his in a farewell kiss.

In vain the City dwellers tried to track down she-of-the-thousand-faces. Hot in pursuit of the skirt slipping provocatively around the corner, none of them suspected the wrinkled crone knitting baby’s booties, in whose guise the Pythia had visited the reveler collapsing in the street. In the heart of the Fair, too, where the merry-making had just been cut short, it was unclear if the apparition rising above the column planted in the cracks of the steaming earth was a giant clay image of her figure, its head seething with pythons, or only a curious natural phenomenon, densely
concentrating grains of sand and debris in the valley’s core. Her priests, too, were swallowed up without a trace in the fumes and vapors. And since they were known for their low tricks, they may even have donned the glittering uniforms of the Fun Fair ushers and taken up position at the gates to collect the poll tax paid by all who entered there.

Even the Pleasure Tycoons, who exerted themselves tirelessly to improve the Fair—and pocketed most of its fabulous profits—didn’t dare to oppose openly the Pythia’s reign of terror. They clenched their teeth at the sight of every additional condemned man but held their tongues. And when the Elders spoke of the ancient Fair which had ruled the valley in bygone days, they bowed their heads submissively. At that time, too, a radiant light had blazed there, and drink and delight had flowed freely over the Fair’s counters by day and by night. Until one night, when the quota of joy had been met, the flames of the Pythia’s wrath descended upon the Fair, and burned it to a cinder. The valley had turned into a swamp, overgrown with weeds. Until the current City Fathers had come and covered the swampy ground with earth and planks.

But for the moment, the inhabitants of the metropolis, limp with joy, drowned their cares in drink in the Fair’s pavilions, and availed themselves of the services of the Pythia’s apparently harmless substitutes. And thus, even in the outer streets leading to the heart of joy, the Pythia’s mechanical dolls stood and offered their favors to those who could no
longer control their desire. As soon as a coin was inserted, the doll would roll her long-lashed china eyes, heave her mechanical breasts, and swinging an iron arm to the right and the left, emit a fortune.