“I’m writing,” Ilan mumbled. “Go on, don’t stop.”
“Maybe the governments will start drugging the citizens, in small doses, without their knowledge. Through the water supply? But why? What does that give me?
“To blur the fear?
“Have to think about that.”
Ilan remembered that Avram always joked that if he had a good idea, he was capable of working on it even inside a blender.
“He was right, that Chinese guy,” Avram said wondrously. “There’s nothing like the proximity of a flamethrower to sharpen your mind.
“And people will get rid of their cats and dogs.
“But why? Pets give comfort, don’t they?
“No, think about it. In their state, people can’t give love to anyone. They have no reserves.
“So it’s an age of total egoism?
“I don’t get it … You mean people become completely wild? Gangs on the streets? Absolute evil? Homo homini lupus est?
“No, that’s too easy. It’s trite. I want to maintain the frameworks. Especially toward the end. That’s the power of it. That will be the power of a story like this, that people still manage to somehow keep the—”
He muttered, intermittently excited and fading, and Ilan struggled to keep up, and knew that no one had ever opened up to him like this before, not even Ora, not even when he slept with her. As he scribbled, something was being written inside him: a new, cool, lucid knowledge that he himself was not a true artist. Not like Avram. Not like him.
“And I forgot to tell you that babies will be abandoned, too.
“Yeah, yeah, parents will abandon their babies.
“Why not — my dad did it when I was five.
“Holy shit, there are so many possibilities. One year, man, one whole year I was stuck with this. It kept not working, it just stuttered and seemed unrealistic and hackneyed, and now, all at once—”
Ilan wrote it all down. And he knew, with total acceptance, that if he got out of there alive he would have to look for a new path. What he had thought of becoming, he would never be. He would not make movies. He would not make music, either. He wasn’t an artist.
“So let’s say the women will give birth in secret, in all kinds of hiding places, right? Out in nature, or in garbage dumps, parking lots, and they’ll just run away from the newborns? Yes, that’s it … Parents simply cannot tolerate the sorrow.
“This whole part is still a little weak.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like, parents. Parents and children, I can’t figure out families.
“That’s the awful thing, that people will have time to understand the exact meaning of everything that’s about to happen to them.
“On the other hand, and the other, and the other”—he was awake again now, alive—“it’s a kind of condition where you can suddenly fulfill all your dreams, all your fantasies. There’s no shame, you see? And maybe there’s no guilt, either.” He gave a quiet but triumphant laugh, as though finally acknowledging some profound, private shame to himself.
Ilan leaned his head on his arm, pressed the headphone to his ear, and wrote quickly, every word.
“Why not? Why not?” Avram whispered, as though arguing with himself. “Did I get carried away? And what would Ilan say? That I’m full of hot air again?
“It’s a good thing I have enough balloons for all his pins.” He laughed.
Ilan laughed too, then grimaced.
“No one will feel guilty about what they are. And there will be a time, not for long, a month is enough, or a week, when every single person will be able to completely fulfill what they were meant to be — everything their bodies and souls have offered them, not what other people have dumped on them. God damn this all!” he roared. “I wish I could sit down and write it all now. Such light, such massive light, God.”
He sighed, after a brief pause. “And every sight, every landscape or face, or just a man sitting in his room in the evening, or a woman alone in a café. Or two people walking through a field, talking, or a boy blowing bubble gum. There will be such splendor in the smallest thing, Ora’leh, and you’ll always see it, promise me that.
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” Avram whispered, “I will fear no evil, for my story is with me.
“And I have to decide if they’ll even use money—
“Well, we can leave that for later—
“There is no later, you idiot.
“Hello, Israel, homeland? Do you even exist anymore?”
The transmission was getting weaker. Perhaps the battery was dying. Ilan’s foot tapped incessantly.
“I wish they’d come already,” Avram moaned. “I wish they’d shout out their Itbach al Yahud and burn it all.”
He breathed heavily. Ilan could no longer tell when Avram comprehended his situation and when he was disoriented.
Avram was sobbing uncontrollably now. “Everything’s going to die. All the thoughts and the ideas I won’t be able to write now, and my eyes will be burned, and my toes also.
“Ilan, you asshole,” he whispered through his sobs, “this idea is yours now. If I don’t come back, or if I come back in a decorative urn, do whatever you want with it. Make a movie out of it. I know your mind.”
Some disturbances came over the radio, as though someone were rocking heavy objects in the background, behind Avram.
“But listen, it has to start like this, this is my one condition: A street, daytime, people walking quietly. Silence. No noise at all, not yelling, not whispering. No soundtrack. Among the walking people, a few stand on crates here and there. And then the camera narrows in on a young woman standing, let’s say, on a laundry tub. That’s what she brought with her from home. A red laundry tub. She stands there hugging herself. She has a sad smile, she smiles into herself—”
Ilan clutched the headphones. He thought he could hear human sounds in the background.
“And she doesn’t even look at the people standing around her. She just talks to herself. And she’ll be beautiful, Ilan, I’m warning you, eh? With a pure forehead and perfect eyebrows, the way I like, and a big, sexy mouth, don’t forget. Anyway, you know who she should look like. Maybe you can use her?”
There was no doubt now: the Egyptians were inside the stronghold. The transmitter’s microphone had picked them up, but Avram still hadn’t noticed.
Avram laughed. “She can’t act to save her life, but she’ll just need to be herself, and she knows how to do that better than either one of us, right? And you’ll shoot her face, we don’t need anything more, you know? Just her face, and that happy, naïve smile—”
The sounds grew louder. Ilan stood up. His left foot was stomping madly, and his hands crushed the headphones against his temples.
“Wait a minute,” Avram murmured, confused, “I think there’s someone—
“Don’t shoot!” he shouted in English. Then he tried Arabic: “Ana bila silakh! I’m unarmed!”
Ilan’s ears filled at once with shouts in throaty Arabic. An Egyptian soldier, who sounded no less startled than Avram, was screaming. Avram pleaded for his life. One shot was fired. It may have hit Avram. He screamed. His voice was no longer human. Another soldier arrived and called out to his friends that there was a Jewish soldier there. The frequency bubbled with a medley of shouts and commotions and blows. Ilan rocked back and forth and murmured, “Avram, Avram.” People walking by looked away. Then came a very close burst of fire, one dry sequence, and then silence. The sound of a body being dragged, and again curses in Arabic, and loud laughter, and one more single shot. Then Avram’s transmitter went silent.