Jews vs Zombies (2 page)

Yossele danced with Chana, and she told him in her droning voice about her seven sons. As she sang she imparted of their wisdom that she had heard and gathered as she cared for them and heard them pray and learn. His caramel locks twirled in the breeze around her rotting scarf, forming a halo, and if you looked you might have thought that she wore a living crown.

The straw-haired Moishe paired with Raichele, the dreamer, who sang to him of the mountain of straw within her, always burning, but never consumed. They slow-danced as her skeleton crackled, indeed like straw, and moved in tandem above her tombstone that praised her as a modest lady. She told him all the secrets she had heard from Rav Vital, as she eavesdropped at the door to the attic of her home, and of his visions, and of hers, and of her courtyard where all the Kabbalists would gather, and she would serve them tea and read their fortunes in the leaves.

Donniel was whisked into a tango by Donia Reyna, who grew up alongside the great Vital. His twin, she wrote her own grand Book of Visions and she serenaded the russet-haired boy with its words. He was entranced, not just by words, but by her still-red ruby lips, which looked as though they’d been stained with blood.

And so they were all paired, Yerachmiel with Mazal Tov, righteous woman, daughter of the perfect sage, and blessed, blessed, blessed, she hissed through her missing teeth and gums. Asher paired with Mira and she told him all her vivid dreams, and gave him a long list of holy missions, escapades she never got to go on. Bentzion twirled with Frances Sarah, a maggid dervish dressed in furs, and Efraim learned the zohar’s secrets to the fox-trot of Fioretta, the wisest woman of her time.

Though Dona Gracia was under the shade of the Nassi in her lifetime, in her death she danced with Leibel and spoke only queenly prose, all about the flowers in her garden, and how each bush grew a thirteen-petalled rose. Kalonymous took the hand of the eldest lady, Safta Yocheved, whose bones knocked with every step, but tap-dancing into the night they went, as she pointed out the path of the Messiah she was certain would still come home to her that day. Zevulun snaked around the cemetery with Sonadora wrapped in his arms, and he could feel the oil of sorcery still on her fingers, as she stroked his face and told him all her divination secrets and her holy lore.

Samuel took the arm of Hannah Rachel, much to his surprise, for he would have sworn he’d heard that she was buried in Jerusalem, yet here she was, the Maiden of Ludmir, in zombie form. Still dressed in tallit and tefillin, the two locked eyes and hearts and sang in tune. And then Gedaliah, youngest of them all, took the hand of young Anav. Dressed in wedding finery and almost whole, she who’d mastered spirits and possessions, told Gedaliah all the mysteries of souls, how to call them – from dybbuk to ibbur, and how to send them back to their abodes. With her he danced the longest, a form of wedding tantz, until the sun began to rise, and then with all the words she’d taught him, Gedaliah opened up the earth and one by one he and his bride sent them all home.

He was the last one back through the dormitory window, the last to pack the earth of his beloved’s tomb, as all the boys fell into bed an hour before sunrise. They shed their shoes, bereft of soles and fell asleep, covered in earth and flesh and shards of bone. And when the rebbes came to wake them from their slumber, they were like the dead under their blankets, comatose and spent. They stumbled out of bed and zombie-like they filed into synagogue, eyes glazed and mouths contorted into constant yawns.

The rabbis knew something had happened. They feared the worst: sexual dreams, they thought, and checked each bed for nocturnal emissions. Yet they found no such evidence, only traces of blood and bone amid the sheets and 12 pairs of shoes, destroyed and caked in muddy soil.

When the boys all took a break for lunch and went to town and all came back with matching shoes, the rabbis only shrugged because their students glowed all morning with new levels of insight, drash and sod. Let the boys have their eccentricities, the bearded men thought as they took notes. These illuim are priceless, minds like these come once a lifetime, what’s a pair of shoes destroyed.

And as the day passed the boys grew anxious; they checked their shirts for stains and twirled their curls. Like young girls getting ready for a date they fretted, cleaning under fingernails and checking for blocked pores. They rushed to brush their teeth after the evening meal, and grinned at one another thinking only of what secrets would await them, yet again, in the cemetery down below.

For many nights the yeshivah students woke at the stroke of midnight, then bedded down on their beloveds’ graves, and sweet Gedaliah with his newfound words would call them, his voice shrill and melodic, like a flute. And the zombie ladies of the night, the holy rebbetzin, would rise and take their places by the sides of boys. They turned them into men at night, and they would talk and waltz and sing and dance and speak of all the mysteries of the world.

Every night they tangoed, rhumbaed, and hip-hopped to beats and jazzy jingles. They danced Israeli folk and then fox-trots, flamenco and ballet, and even tap, and all along they sang and learned Zohar and kabbalah, visions, dreams and conjured souls. And the boys marveled at these women and their knowledge: everything their husbands knew they knew, and so much more, until the boys began to fear that they would never marry, for what earthly woman could ever possibly compare?

That was when the spirits realised their nightly jaunts were coming to an end. Nice as it was to be out dancing, as women priestesses and visionary greats, the place for these boys was with living women, partners who could give them more than ruined shoes. And so it was Anav who told Gedaliah that the night trysts had to end and how, and taught him how to curse them all back into an eternal slumber, and she sealed it with a kiss from her sweet and rotten lips.

And so it was on the last night, after all was said and danced and done, that the lovers laid their ladies down upon each tombstone, and caressed their dead and lovely ones. Tears fell from the eyes of all the holy boys, and wet the eyes of their beloved zombie brides, and while the others listened for the last whispered words of wisdom, the last holy song and fervent prayer, Gedaliah slipped a ring onto the bony finger of his bride and whispered all the words he knew to say. She shrieked out loud as he did so, for he knew not what he’d done, but it was over in an instant and the brides all sank into the earth and all was said and done.

Gone but not forgotten. Never did the boys regret, and sometimes, when they thought no one was looking, one by one they’d wander still. And they’d look and watch and sometimes still they’d see, the holy lions, mist-shaped, curling up onto the graves. And they knew it was the lions who had led them, clothed in mist, each to his beloved’s bed. You can still see them sometimes in the morning mist. They answer to the bellow of the largest one of all, The Ari, the great lion king of Safed, whose ghost still haunts the city’s cliffs and stones.

And so the boys grew up and nearly all got married, and they loved their wives well and even taught them dance in the privacy of their homes, and the wives all wondered how they learned it, but never questioned, for the fox-trot was a dance they loved to learn. All except Gedaliah, who still waited for his ghostly bride to someday rise again. Celibate, he waited, for he knew no human girl would ever compare. She’d mastered him forever, Anav, she held his soul, and with his gift to her that night he’d made her whole.

THE SCAPEGOAT FACTORY

OFIR TOUCHE GAFLA

After a decade of complete degeneration, even he realized there was no sense in living up to nothing. Solvi Lumsvenson, once a Danish cab driver, presently a member of the formerly dead, couldn’t go on doing more of the same, namely sex, drugs and metal-rock. ‘Pleasure’s a bitch’ was the first thought that accompanied his every waking morning during his tenth year of renewed existence. He was craving a change.

The first change took place 15 years ago when Solvi – 30 years old, living in Copenhagen, recently married, about to become a father, relishing the promise of life in all its splendor – came to blows with fate.

It was a sunny day. A group of friends were having a picnic in the woods when a huge oak tree landed on the flabbergasted picnickers like a divine slap in the face. ‘Someone forgot to shout “Timber!”,’ ran the joke among the survivors. ‘They died in one fell swoop,’ ran another. No one knew what exactly happened until two years later when a teetotal lumberjack came out with it.

On the eve of the tragedy he had been drunk and tired and once he realized he was cutting the wrong tree he stopped mid-cut and went home. ‘Couldn’t see the forest for the trees,’ he tried to excuse himself, but couldn’t keep it bottled up any more. He was single-handedly responsible for the deaths of three people and the grave injuries of four more.

Solvi was among the lucky survivors, if brain damage, a vegetative state and a lack of any basic form of communication with the outside world could be considered luck.

‘At least he’s alive,’ some said. ‘Of course,’ grunted his wife, pulling back the toddler who was climbing all over his statuesque father and pinching his face in a fit of soon-to-be-orphaned laughter. ‘My poor alien,’ was how she referred to her husband, for she couldn’t conceive of a different word. ‘Alien, alien,’ the kid shouted. ‘My dad is an alien.’

A week after the child’s second birthday, an errant blood clot brought about the conclusion of the tragedy and Solvi passed away in his sleep. Incidentally, two days later the scrupulous lumberjack stepped into the nearest police station.

The second change was far more shocking. After five years of uneventful death, Solvi woke up one rainy afternoon at the cemetery and instantly began looking for shelter.

While hiding under a big oak tree, he looked up and felt a sudden twinge of regret, soon to be replaced by a terrible sense of panic. Moving away from the tree, he glanced around him and saw another man, and then another, until the whole place was swarming with humanity, cursing the rain. It was a diversion of sorts, for once one of them pointed at a tombstone bearing his name and exclaimed, ‘Damn! I think it’s happening all over again,’ it dawned on Solvi that he was back for more. Life, that is.

That day he spent an exceptionally wet hour in front of his grave, failing to come to terms with the stunning revelation. Then he left the place, took a peek at a newspaper and found out he had been ‘away’ for five years. He didn’t waste another minute and rushed home, only to confront a screaming widow and a belligerent-looking boy who told him to bugger off.

The formerly dead were the subjects of an incredibly expensive experiment whose results have surpassed the wildest expectations of its initiators, a group of neuro-physicists who fell in love with the theory of eternal temporariness, according to which everything under the sun would one day expire. Love, life, misery, sickness – all is temporary. And death. Nothing is permanent for the very nature of existence is steeped in mutability.

When those scientists declared that death is temporary, they were swept by a tsunami of derision. But, true to their beliefs, they knew that derision was not everlasting. They conducted endless experiments at a small cemetery in Copenhagen, away from the public eye, until they witnessed the first sign of life in the maggoty cadaver of a certain 45-year-old woman who had drowned in the bath two years earlier.

They had never revealed their methods and only conceded that since everything is temporary, nothing is irrevocable. Perhaps nothing was irrevocable, but much was certainly irretrievable, as hundreds of the formerly dead found out upon trying to regain their past lives. No one welcomed them with open arms, and petrified hostility was the common reaction of their dearest to that macabre re-emergence. Funnily enough, the only ones who extended a helping hand were members of certain religions and lovers of goth-metal. Solvi opted to take advantage of the latter.

In goth circles, Solvi became a household name. Everybody wanted a piece of him and metal groups dedicated entire albums to the man who was resurrected against all reason. Just like his counterparts, Solvi was invited on innumerable TV shows and interviewed about his posthumous experience. Unlike them, Solvi came up with silly anecdotes and fascinated the masses with his ridiculous fibs. (‘We actually keep on living in a world of complete darkness, and after a while we get used to our mole-like existence.’)

Soon afterwards, the book deal arrived. The money Solvi got for Second Notes from the Underground secured his next five years, although he was constantly sued by other formerly dead who claimed he was nothing but a liar. ‘Amnesiacs,’ he retorted and resumed whatever he was up to at that moment, which was either sex, drugs, metal rock, or preferably all three at once.

Eight years into his renewed life, Solvi became sick of it all. He wrote another autobiography called Core, about his life prior to his death, but no one was interested. The world only wanted the ‘husk’ version of his life. With the remainder of his money he left Copenhagen and sought retreat in a small village, frittering away his days in his cabin, awaiting death. Solvi was never suicidal; he’d just had enough of it all, but to his dismay he discovered that death was not an option. His attempts at self-annihilation came to nothing.

Still, he kept reminding himself that if everything was temporary, then this loutish resurrection wouldn’t last forever. Doing crossword puzzles and watching reality shows only brought about a stronger sense of despair. He was looking for something meaningful to do, some form of occupation that would serve as a blessed distraction. His financial resources were rapidly dwindling, but he just couldn’t come up with anything. He even started frequenting forests in the hope that history might repeat itself – alas, to no avail.

On one of his excursions to the woods, he came across a man hanging from a tree. He rushed to help him, but the man called, freeing his neck from the noose, ‘Don’t bother – it just won’t do.’