The Love Machine & Other Contraptions (19 page)

The lady, silent, did not look at any of that. Her head was lowered, and she was staring at the ground.

“Look,” the peddler said, and immediately she raised her head. “Look at our fair city in the sunlight.”

She started noticing some details, stains of murky red upon the green, dry white in the middle of the yellow.

“Your own sun, the hard, the cruel one, the source of your life, the life of all your people. But not so for us.”

The lady did not reply. Her mouth was not blocked, and neither was her mind. When the peddler had silenced her, she had simply lost the will to speak.

“These are our last days,” the peddler said. “You were brought to share our sorrow, maybe to save us.”

This time he looked directly at her, expecting an answer. When he did not receive any he added, “You may speak.”

The lady opened her mouth to scream.

“Quietly,” he added.

“Please take me back there,” she whispered. “Please. I want to go back home.”

“That home is ours,” the peddler said. “And yours—here. Just a coincidence, bad luck, doing the deed too hastily, too eagerly...”

“Please!”

“You were given three warnings,” he said, “and of those three not one was received. To three children of your city we have revealed ourselves, and with those three we may turn the wheel, return the city, make it real.”

“What?”

“Everything will be as it was,” the peddler said, “as if nothing had happened. As if no time has passed since then, since
that
time and
this
time.”

“No!” the lady said, as loudly as she could through the peddler’s ban on her mouth.

“Please,” the peddler said. “I beg. We beg.” He kneeled before her, lowered his head, silent and sad in his poor clothes. And so they stayed, maybe for seconds, maybe for hours. The sun shone without mercy on him, on his hat, on the grass, on the towers.

~

“We’ve dreamed of the sun,” said the dream woman, “for ages and ages. And now she’s burning us, our city, and we’re helpless.”

Around them, the forest continued to rise while they sank deeper and deeper into it, and stains of rust appeared on the towers’ trunks, few at first, then more and more, and the tendrils were full of holes, and solid walls became perforated and airy and crisp, and broke.

“Is there a way to return it?” the writer asked. “That is, make Tel Aviv return to where it was before... that is, where it
once
was?”

“Some say,” she answered, “that if the three who were warned, the sons and daughters of the other city, the chosen ones, could be brought here, and convinced to... but that’s just a daydream, a false hope.”

“Convinced to do what?”

“To abandon their previous lives.”

“I thought that in your world we had no choice but to obey you.”

“
Convinced
,” she said, “without force, without coercion.”

“No problem,” the writer said. “I can do that.”

The woman of his dreams looked at him in a way that made him feel stupid, but not enough to make him regret his words. He added, “Really!”

He wanted to hold her hand, but something stopped him from doing so. Probably, he thought, there’s still a force applied on me, coercion.

~

The lady was crying quietly, almost pleasantly.

“I can’t make you do it,” the peddler said. “You can choose it only by your own free will. Without your will we’re lost.”

“I beg you!”

“I cannot. Already I do not have the power to return there, to the place where the under-city I loved used to be. And when I die, which will be soon, all the rest will die too, and only you and the two others will remain, and perhaps some hint of our city.”

Slowly, she stopped crying. She looked at the twisted buildings, plagued with decomposition and mold, at the yellowish haze seeping out of the ground. There was a long, long silence, with only the faintest whisper of sea-wind in the background.

Time passed. The sun passed the zenith, moving west in a fierce blue sky. The peddler remained on his knees.

“So my choices are, either I get stuck here without anything and spend my life alone, or I give up the life I’ve had since... since
once
.”

The peddler didn’t answer. The lady considered it. She thought of the baby. She thought of its father, the loved one, her beautiful one, the strange one. She told herself that even if the past non-year ceased to exist, she still knew exactly where he lived.

She lowered her gaze to the peddler. She said, “You made me do it. Now make me free.”

~

The peddler hesitated. Then he said, “You are a free woman.”

He had never told her what would happen once she became convinced, her mind set and sincere and steady.

She said, “I’m ready.”

~

On the sand, under the sun, in front of a wall of pearl upon which nasty green had spread in an evil whirl, an old man appeared, and then a teenage girl.

She looked around her and smiled. “We’ll save you all,” she said.

A silent city, without movement, people wearing hats in the windows of the shoelace-buildings, dream women in green bubbles, now white-speckled, cloudless skies, faceless children, and between them vast dark canyons. And in contrast—three of the opposite city, and three companions.

“Imagine that you are one of us,” the dream woman said, “and make it real.”

“Forget your husband and the baby,” said the peddler, “or we’ll all die. That’s the deal.”

“Dance for us,” said the old man, “in front of the sea, make it feel.”

~

A minute passed. Two. Then hours. The sun moved west, toward the water, above the towers. It shone on a girl and a lady and a writer. More hours passed, and it started to get darker. Sundown, orange and pink and deep blue, all reflected in the water as the darkness grew.

Fade out.

Black.

Not a hiss, not a sign, not a cry. Only very few stars in the sky.

~

And night.

And day.

On an empty seashore, only water and sand, with no building in sight, nor forest, sky bright; in that place where nothing remained to which one could cling, three people wake up, realizing – knowing - that they’ve lost everything.