Authors: Naomi Ragen
She walked forward, pondering this, and almost without noticing it, her foot hit a tiny hole in the road, a small inconsistency in the texture of the ground. Her toes dug in idly as she looked down. There was a small scraping noise and then, without warning, the astonishing plunge downward as her body was swallowed
by the collapsing earth. In shock, she groped the dark earth that rose up all around her, her stunned mind unable to grasp what had happened. One second she had been on top, and the next she was on the bottom, the lower half of her body covered with debris.
It was so dark, with only a tiny pinpoint of light, like a forgotten star, above her. How far down had she fallen? Had she struck bottom, or would any sudden movement, any attempt to free herself, simply plunge her deeper into the abyss?
She thought about that. What a fitting metaphor for her life!
And then a sudden idea came to her: This is what it must have been like for them, those people in the pizza store in the center of Jerusalem: the solid familiar ground giving way with shocking suddenness, plunging them into darkness, pain, horror, and uncertainty.
She tried to dig out her legs, but a terrible stabbing pain in her wrist made her cry out in agony. Her head throbbed. She lay back, afraid to move, looking upward.
Am I going to die? she wondered, at first with clinical detachment and a touch of defiance, and then with horror and panic. She was buried alive in a place as silent and cold and dark as a grave.
Please, God, I don’t want to die. I don’t deserve to die!
She looked inside herself. Why do you want to live? Because I’m not finished. I’m not finished writing my song. I haven’t even started.
She closed her eyes, her life, all her struggles, suddenly too heavy for her to carry any further. She released them, falling to the bottom of her existence, as low as it was possible for a human being to fall. She felt something had ended. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. I am not in control of anything. She felt a sense of strange acceptance, of reconciliation. Without willing it, she slept.
When she awoke, she felt hungry and slightly wet. How much time had passed? Minutes, hours, days? Then suddenly, there was a faint noise. Human, animal, imagined?
“Kayla!”
A voice. A real voice, not a hallucination!
“I’m down here!” she screamed, looking upward. She saw the pinpoint of light suddenly widen.
“We’re throwing down a rope. Grab on to it, and we’ll pull you out!”
It was Michael and Judith!
She saw the rope dangling in front of her, but the pain in her wrist was too great for her to hold on. “I think my wrist is broken!” she shouted. Could they hear her?
And then suddenly the rope rose, disappearing.
She closed her eyes, afraid. What would happen now? She heard shouting, then the scrape of legs forging down the abyss toward her.
“Kayla.”
“Daniel!”
“Can you move your legs?” he asked.
She shifted her body and found to her astonishment and relief that the earth covering her gave way easily. She pushed her legs free of the debris, wiggling her toes and flexing her ankles and calves. She tried to stand.
“Don’t!” he shouted. “The earth might give way even more! Just gently, move closer to me.”
She inched her way toward him in the darkness. Suddenly, his strong arms were around her, pulling her up to him.
“Up!” he shouted, tugging on the rope.
They hung in space, his body encircling hers as if they were no longer two people, but only one, dangling in thin air, suspended and lost. She leaned against him, breathing in the sun-dried odor of his soft old T-shirt, feeling the strong, comforting bones of his shoulders and chest.
He said nothing, but she could hear the quickening intake of his breath as his unshaved cheek pressed into hers. She rested against him, exhausted, allowing herself to be rescued.
“Thank you!” she whispered.
His arms pulled her closer, his heart beating fast against hers.
Then it was bright day again as they suddenly reached the top. Many hands reached for them both, pulling them apart and into safety. Despite the sunlight, her body suddenly felt cold.
“Oh my God! Are you all right, Kayla?” Judith called.
“She’s all right,” Daniel answered, exhaling, his hands touching Kayla’s body professionally as he gently probed her wounds. “Her wrist isn’t broken, just sprained. But she needs to be examined and bandaged, and just to be sure, a head X-ray. Hey”—he smiled down at her—“you’re going to be fine, Miss America.” Gently, he brushed her hair out of her eyes.
She looked up into his face, so strange and so distant, yet so familiar. “Daniel, thank you…”
“You thanked me already on the way up, remember? You’re welcome. You see, I do have manners after all.” He grinned. “But don’t make a habit of falling into sinkholes, okay?” He brushed himself off and walked away.
On the way back from the hospital, where they confirmed Daniel’s diagnosis and bandaged her wrist, she finally got an explanation of what had happened.
“The drought has shrunk the Dead Sea. The retreating waters have left behind a high level of salt. When freshwater comes along and dissolves the salt, these underground cavities are formed, called sinkholes. They are all over the place. Didn’t you see the sign?” Judith told her.
“It said danger, but nothing about sinkholes,” she protested, feeling like an idiot. “I’m sorry for causing such trouble.”
“I should have warned you…” Judith bit her lip. “If anything had happened to you…” She shook her head, horrified.
“It didn’t. You heard the doctors.”
“But it could have. Thank God for Daniel.”
“He didn’t seem to think it was such a big deal.”
Judith looked at her, astonished. “Kayla, he risked his life for you! All we had was a simple rope. None of us really knew how much weight it could hold. At any moment, it might have given way, dropping you both. And then who knows how far down the two of you would have plunged!”
“Then why didn’t you just wait until you had better equipment?” Kayla complained, feeling enraged that he had put himself in such danger.
“Daniel wouldn’t let us. He said that every moment you were down there, your life was at risk.”
“He’s hardly said ten words to me! He thinks I’m some spoiled American princess. Why would he do that for me, risk his life?”
Judith shook her head patiently, patting Kayla’s hand with an innocent smile. “Such a mystery!”
15
She spent the next few days in bed, feeling both embarrassed and grateful. Everyone came to visit her, except Daniel. Even Rav Natan stopped by to bring her some fresh fruits.
She felt embarrassed, overwhelmed by the Rav’s presence. But when she looked at him, she realized he was just a young man, not a prophet. And his eyes were kind.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I feel sore, but most of all, stupid. I don’t even know what I was doing there.” She took a deep breath. “In fact, I don’t even know what I’m doing here at all, Rav. I’m so confused. I want so much to change, to be a better person.”
“Our lives are sometimes hard, difficult to change. So change the easy things first. Fix one little thing you don’t like about your life.”
“I don’t know where to start!”
“The starting point doesn’t matter! Find a teeny-tiny spot you’d like to change for the better. Maybe it’s the way you answer the phone, or how you greet people on the street. Be consistent. Follow that one little spot, until you’ve transformed your whole life. Because you can’t change just one thing without it changing everything.” He got up to go. “Well, I have a tentful of people waiting for me! May God bless you and heal you.”
“Thank you so much,” she murmured, sitting up, feeling as if she had swallowed some medicine that was already giving her new energy.
She got dressed and went outside. The air had turned bitterly cold. Her breath made white smoke as she breathed, reminding her of Boston. A feeling of homesickness swept through her. She walked down a dimly lit path, her mind meditative, still full of the Rav’s stirring words.
“Kayla.”
She turned. It was Daniel. Her heart thumped, her palms suddenly warm and moist.
“Are you in a hurry?”
She hesitated.
“Another time then? I don’t want to bother you.” He turned around abruptly, walking quickly away.
She caught up with him, taking his hand. “Don’t.”
They walked side by side through the starlight, breathing in the sharp scent of the cold desert air mingled with the intoxicating perfume of honeysuckle and jasmine. She felt light-headed.
“Look how tall the trees and bushes are, how lush! No one would believe that we are in the middle of the desert!”
“The wind carries the rich nutrients from the Dead Sea and deposits them on the soil. All it took was for someone to realize that and to plant something and add a little water.”
“It’s like magic,” she murmured, looking at him, wondering at the hidden richness in the most unprepossessing of places and human beings.
“This is where I live, Kayla.” He gestured toward rough-hewn wooden chairs on a little porch in front of a tiny white house. “Will you come in and sit for a moment?”
He sat on the bare floor, his back to the wall, his sandals and the hems of his dark trousers covered in dust. His hair too was dusty, she thought, sitting on his one chair, unable to stop herself from wondering how it would feel to run her fingers through the wild dark curls. But something about the cautious way he held his body—in stiff, almost brutal, control—made her put her hand in her pocket.
“How are you?” he asked her.
“Fine. Thanks to you. But tell me, Daniel, are you just one of those hero types, the kind that jumps into swollen raging rivers to rescue cats and little old ladies, or are you simply suicidal?”
He grinned. “Both.” His face became serious. “I couldn’t let anything happen to you. You must know that, Kayla. You are the first person… the first woman… I have allowed myself to feel anything for since… I couldn’t lose you, too.”
She was absolutely stunned. “What? But all those things you said… I thought you had only contempt for me, for Americans.”
“You misunderstood me completely! When I first saw you with your clean, fine, healthy body, that curly hair and pretty, freckled face, I thought of all those American college students so carefree and sheltered in their peaceful, ivy-covered dorms. Beer parties and spring breaks to Mexico…”
“Oh, please!” She shook her head wearily.
“No, no. You don’t get it! It isn’t contempt. It’s envy, Kayla. Don’t you see? How could I taint your easy, innocent world with my mourning and pain and tragedy? I wanted you to stay just the way you were, to protect you. But it wasn’t easy. I was telling you the truth when I said your presence here was painful. It’s torture.”
“So your goal was to protect my innocent freckled happiness from the sordidness of life, the scourge of terrorism?” She shook her head slowly. “You have no idea how funny that is.”
“Funny?” he asked, stunned and confused by her reaction.
“Tell me this: Is it
my
presence that’s painful, or any woman you’d be attracted to?”
“There hasn’t been any other woman in my life… until you.”
“Am I in your life?” she asked, bewildered.
“More than you can ever know.”
“Then why push me away like that?”
“Because it can never, ever be allowed to happen again! If it hadn’t been for that sinkhole, I would never have allowed myself to touch you. Don’t you see, I simply can’t risk it.”
“Risk what?”
“Loving someone again that much.”
Her heart somersaulted. They sat together in silence, the sound of the fierce, wild desert wind rattling the flimsy windows, demanding to be let in.
“Tell me about her.”
He stared at the floor. “Don’t ask me to talk about that.”
“I have to! I want to understand you. And she is part of you. Even if the past is just this fading watercolor portrait, I need to see the shape, the outline of the two of you together. I need to know how it was.”
“Oh…” he said in anguish, holding his head in his hands.
She felt a stab of guilt. “I’m sorry… I have no right.”
He looked up at her, shaking his head.
“Is it so hard to let yourself remember?”
“It’s not that. I think about it all the time. And it gives me pleasure to remember. It’s just that… I don’t know if I can explain it to anyone else. It was… just so… ordinary.” He took a deep breath. “I was standing on a bus stop on Strauss Street, just outside Bikur Cholim Hospital in the center of downtown Jerusalem. There was a patient I went to see. All of a sudden, it started raining. It was late September, when it hardly ever rains. No one, except one very old lady, had come prepared with an umbrella, so everyone was crowded inside the bus shelter. There was not an inch of room left. Esther”—he swallowed hard—“was standing out there in the middle of the rain. Her dark hair was heavy with water. Her lashes looked like she’d been crying.”
He stopped, his chest rising and falling with deep breaths. She wanted to reach out, to hold him, but stopped herself.
“I asked her if she was all right, offering her my spot in the bus shelter. She looked up at me, her face shining and warm and soaking wet. She laughed. She said: ‘From the end of April until the end of October, there are only blue skies. Every single day. Even the wind hardly blows, except if it’s a
hamsin
. . . To tourists, Americans, that sounds wonderful. But the thing is,’ she said, ‘it isn’t. It’s relentless, that blue sky and that hot, beating sun and the summer wind. Like a movie you are forced to watch again and again until you know every line by heart. And something inside you longs for rain—for grey clouds and thunder and flashes of lightning. It’s thrilling—those first few drops of rain. And when you watch it, you just want to laugh and dance and hug somebody you love, and crawl under warm covers because you are just so happy the movie is over
and the reruns are gone. It’s new, amazing, full of possibilities—even bad possibilities. Still, it promises a new year, all the old hurts washed away…’ Then she laughed and looked up, opening her mouth and drinking it in. I’ve never seen anything so… so beautiful.”