“We don’t have insurance here,” I said, “so how will we pay?”
“I don’t know the exact details of that,” the doctor said, “but some of the nurses can help you when you come and visit her tomorrow and the administrators have had a chance to review her file.”
It all seemed very humane. In America, the first thing you did at an emergency room was figure out how you would pay or give them an insurance card. The idea that such matters could be left until tomorrow was an unexpected, almost lavish kindness.
“Visiting hours are ten to noon,” the doctor said. “You can wear your clothes in the ward, but if you want we have some pajamas you can wear for tonight. If you don’t wish to sleep in your clothes.”
Vera nodded. She was still wearing her nightgown over her jeans and under her sweatshirt, but it was thin and had lace in the front. I could understand why she wouldn’t want to wear it.
“I will have the nurse bring you some,” the doctor said.
“Can I go and see her room?” I asked. “Can I at least see where she’ll be?”
“I’m afraid no one is allowed in the ward except during visiting hours,” he said, and gave me a polite smile. He was tall and balding. “Because it is the junior ward, the adolescents — the rules are more strict. But a clean transition is better. We will take very good care of her.” He stood there, nodding and smiling.
“It’s fine,” Vera whispered.
But I didn’t feel like it was fine. I felt like I was abandoning her here.
“The nurse will be right in with some pajamas and can show Vera to her room, but I’ll give you two a chance to say goodbye.”
Once he was gone, I hugged Vera where she sat. She didn’t wrap her arms around me back, just let herself be hugged, her arms at her sides. They had given her a strong sedative and I could tell it was kicking in. Her face looked thick and frozen. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m pretending it isn’t happening.”
We swayed back and forth, me standing, her sitting on the creaking hospital bed, not talking.
“I love you,” I said. I had said that to her before. I had said it a million times. I said it as she was getting out of my car at her mother’s, as we said goodbye on the phone. I had said it a million times, but this time it seemed to be shredding my vocal cords.
She didn’t say anything back. When the nurse came, she was holding a pair of gray pajamas that had been washed so many times they were almost white. Vera climbed off the bed and accepted the small bundle, and together the three of us left the little curtained room. The nurse said something in Russian and gestured me back the way I had come, as she steered Vera down the hall in the opposite direction. I just stood there, watching as the woman guided Vera by the shoulder. Before they rounded the corner, Vera turned back to me and mouthed, “Dragon. Go find the dragon.”
Chapter 13
“Revelations” Word doc Created by User on 7/18
It is unclear to me yet whether Dragon is merely the name of the project, or if it is a metaphor (for that which is on fire, that which is molten and chaotic, yet housed within a scaly exterior, just as murder/genocide/etc. is, i.e., an irrational principle cloaked in the disguise of reasonable behavior), or if there is an actual literal dragon. Not sure about the line between literal and metaphorical in general. Could be a trick, way the government is duping us, possibly convincing all populace that reality has only one layer, whereas clearly it is multilayered as evidenced by metaphysical activities like falling in love, etc. And about dragons, I am unclear what kind of creature is indicated. The Hebrew word for dragon is tannin, which is also the word for serpent, but I need to look up which word is used in Genesis, because if Eve was tempted by the dragon, then that would be a very interesting thing to know.
Pits are another interesting feature. The huge, unfillable pit left by the Great Synagogue. The pit full of bodies in Ponary. If there is a hole, something will rush in to take its place. A vacuum. This is how Tesla comes into things, maybe. But curious as to the relationship between pit in the ground and pit in a fruit. Connection? Coincidence? Even if they are not etymologically related, aren’t they still phonically linked? Possibly there is no such thing as coincidence?
And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority. One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast. And they worshipped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast and who can fight against it?” And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months. — Revelation 18:1–18
Hitler ==> Modern Germany ==> European Union ==> Internet ==> Tesla ==> Daniel
“Ways to Keep Papa from Noticing” Word doc Created by User on 7/15
1. Remain calm and collected at all times
2. Do not let him notice the way strangers have begun to respond to you
3. Feed his ego by letting him feel close to you
4.
5.
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7.
~ ~ ~
I READ THROUGH these documents and more on Vera’s laptop as I sat on her bed, in her little slant-roofed room that was so similar to my own but which felt entirely different. It had taken me only three tries to guess the password to her computer log-in, and then her laptop was completely open to me. The password was “FangBoy76,” which was easy to guess because it was also her Pandora password that she had given me so she could play music on my stereo at home.
Her room had a little chair by the door and her dresser was wider and lower than mine was. These two tiny differences seemed enormous, maybe because I kept assuming I was in my own room as I read and then getting startled that I was not. I read her e-mail first, skipping around in time, then finally deciding to go all the way back to the beginning of our trip and read linearly forward. Then, once I had a better idea of the narrative, I started to go through her Word documents, of which there were literally hundreds. Some of them went on for pages, some were only a few lines. Lots were from before our trip, but a shocking number of them were from just the last few days. Yesterday she had created twenty-three new Word documents.
It was like watching an instant replay of a bad fall. There was an almost physical revulsion to reading bad logic, like looking at pictures of people badly wounded or deformed, and I realized, reading, that I had always been afraid my own thinking was like this. Writing anything was to stare this kind of madness in the face. All you could do was move through the links between one idea and the next, testing each one out, hoping they held. You were all alone with the words and the page, going further and further away from anything social, civil, conventional, or agreed-upon. At times, I came away from reading my thesis thinking it was like this. I would close the document, horrified, revolted. And that had been a well-formatted academic paper.
Her ideas were something like this:
The persecution of the Jews was not a historical accident. (How could it be? How weird was it to hate Jews? Why hate, they were like everyone else?) Instead, the Jews, in their worship of God, had created a positive polarity, which, by virtue of some physical law (enter Tesla), had engendered the dragon as a corresponding negative polarity. There were incomprehensible math equations trying to explain all this. Nazi Germany had harnessed the power of the dragon, but after Hitler’s fall, those dark powers had only been shattered, not slain. The ghosts of those slain in Ponary had tried to bind the dragon to their bodies and sink him in the pits, but had failed precisely because the Soviets had destroyed the Great Synagogue. Again there were references to Tesla, trying to argue that spiritual energy operated by similar principles to electric energy and that Tesla’s work had been repressed because it was too dangerous. She suggested that the Soviets had found a baby dragon somewhere in the region (there was some supposition in the text that the dragon had actually been Grandma Sylvia’s lost child, and that Agata was a fake planted later by the EU) and had built a secret laboratory in the ruins of the Great Synagogue where they could keep the dragon and study it. For some reason I could not understand, she had decided that in the global power vacuum created by the crumbling of the USSR, the EU had become a kind of dream team of power-hungry scientists and Freemasons, who were also secretly trying to suppress Tesla. They had taken over the care of the dragon, but eventually the dragon would grow too powerful for them to contain.