Art by Ramon Sierra (Cocor)
1. A Brief Case of Theft
Amitai loved the countryside. Even when the sky was chalk, as it was then, the lad was tremendously overjoyed. A temporary escape from the city was always just what he needed in order to clear his aching head of demons. The purity of the air was palpable. He brushed past tall, tall blades of browning grass growing beyond the dirt road, rustling temporal dances upon his elfin touch. Branches of scattered trees swayed soothingly in the early spring breeze as stray sounds of insects and birds filled the air with music. Ah, the demons were already dying. But the pain in his head remained: His head was a throbbing mess of ruptured bass, a fiery battlefield for the demons dancing in his skull. Where did all of the hurt come from? He had suffered for years.
He had been dropped off some ways away on the side of a dirt road by the most slickly black car, tinted windows, tinted world. The car ride over had felt like a passage between two different universes, united by a vessel of fate; including Amitai, there had been three men contained in that vessel, all of them wearing similar black business suits. Amitai wore his suit with the same unquestioning innocence with which he had worn his school uniforms back when he was still a child and teenager, always part of some private institution thanks to his father – his father’s friends, his father’s money.
Amitai looked up – the sun above was a fragment of lingering memory hidden amongst the clouds, its sunflower circle of yellow light just visible enough to be noticed. From behind he heard the black car’s motor quietly hum as the vehicle drove away for security precautions; typical for the family business, they were to meet at an entirely different spot than originally planned.
Amitai continued: The stone path he followed was lined with lengthy brown grass acting as pliable twin fences; an azure butterfly fluttered nimbly between the stalks in a splendid display of natural narcissism. ‘Butterfly,’ Amitai would cry, ‘how do? Do you? Do?’ But the butterfly would simply fly along in a nonchalant way, ignoring him completely. Everyone has the gift of talking to insects, and all insects have the gift of not responding. So this is Christmas, and these are our gifts; Amitai wanted to frolic or hop or skip. He was suffering from an acute case of jubilation – suffering since, at twenty-one years of age, he was far too self-conscious to frolic, hop or skip. The scent of damp leaves wafted towards him, entered his nostrils without knocking and squatted in his brain. He thought about the car ride again.
Jack had been sitting beside him with one leg crossed confidently over the other. Amitai did not know Jack, and in fact had never even seen him before entering into the black box of cold acknowledgment and cushioned seats. In his fingers (Jack’s, not Amitai’s) he had held a long, unlit cigarette, although Jack had never smoked a stick in the entirety of his life. They (always they, forever they) said that Jack always carried a cigarette with him in case he needed to put an eye out. Not worse than cancer, but close – at that moment when the flaming comet crashed down from the heavens to collide with your previously picturesque view of the Earth, left or right, it was worse than hell itself. But at least you could say that you did not have cancer.
‘Your dad must have some pretty big ideas for you,’ Jack said cryptically to Amitai. ‘One job after the other lately. Small jobs, yes, but you must notice how you’ve been working with different people each time. Eh? Getting to know the faces. Small jobs, big ideas. You must be excited. But you gotta have the stuff. I, for one, welcome you fully into the business. I know how it is – young kid, just starting out. I welcome you. You’ll always be protected with us. You’ll always do right by us.’
That was Jack’s strange way of speaking. Amitai honestly could not tell whether or not the man had been harbouring any jealousy, though of course enough hints had been detected in order for him to wonder about it at all. Altogether Jack had been like many of the other older men in the care of his father’s business.
The third person in the car had been the driver, Zeeman, a friendly face to Amitai through previous operations. Zeeman was fairly quiet behind the wheel, atypical for a driver, but outside the cars he was an anecdote enthusiast – especially when it came to sour deals. It was largely because of this that Jack had done most of the talking during the ride over. Zeeman and Amitai mostly just nodded on cue, only offering the most generic possible responses where required (‘So, are you lads with us for the long haul?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Make sure you look out for one another. Our fronts may be different, but we all share the same back, so watch out for it. You hear?’ ‘You’re absolutely right, sir.’). Seniority was highly respected in the business and with good reason. You walked the streets like a king if you lasted longer than three months.
And that had been the car ride. Amitai always got headaches in cars, even when he was not reading. The stuffy air, the manufactured smells, the unlit cigarette – all of these contributed to the pain, fashioning diminutive weapons for the demons to prod him with.
But luckily the country air was a salve; he breathed it in deeply. A bright plastic children’s toy was set conspicuously in the middle of the path, Christmas-coloured with opalescent green and red; upon closer inspection the toy became a hideously bloated caterpillar, struggling to drag its bulk. Amitai could hardly believe it: The caterpillar seemed to him a dream thing, something that should not exist in this world. Yet somehow the caterpillar was strangely familiar – he tried to place it and came up with a distant memory of walking home one childhood day from the flea market.
Just like this most recent encounter, he had thought that he had seen a children’s toy – a harmless item for toddlers to suck on and wave mindlessly at the world – resting on the sidewalk home. An old man was hunched over it, his back a strikingly perfect arch as though his spine had a hinge; only when young Amitai was a few steps away from it did he notice how the toy bulged and glistened in the thick summer heat. ‘I thought it was a toy!’ young Amitai had gasped. ‘It doesn’t look real at all! Not at all!’ The old man had not responded, however, not even with a nod. A full twenty seconds passed by before the old man finally did speak: ‘I guess they get that big,’ he had said, and that was it. Amitai could only stare with an open mouth before nodding, and then left. And just like a dream, the caterpillar had dissipated from his thoughts almost as soon as he had passed it. The wonders of nature to a city boy were as insubstantial as the floating white souls of dandelions; thus the memory drifted away.
Several satisfying breaths later, his headache was nigh on dissipating as well. However, random murmurs were stalking his thoughts: He thought he could hear the faintest whisperings of a demon.
‘A is for Amitai,’ said a voice like whistling steam. ‘B is for Butterfly. C is for Caterpillar. D is for Doorknob.’
And Amitai realised that he had come upon a modestly-sized house, held together with stone walls and a wooden roof. The stones making up its mass were subtly shaded with the palest blues, oranges and greens. Tall leafy sentries stood guard on either side of the door: they were uncultivated cedar hedges tied with bright red ribbons, their masses of branches and leaves so thick that they formed vast networks as complex as those found in the human body; from within the bushes came the twittering talk of tiny birds and the minute fluttering of fairies. Amitai looked up at the wooden roof, its slightly grey colour creating the impression that it had been painted into the sky.
‘This is the Sky House,’ he thought in appreciation of its ethereal image. ‘This is a beautiful place. If only I could live here.’
He made use of the door’s silvered doorknocker and then stood stalk still in the house’s front garden as he awaited a response, his hands planted loosely in his pockets. A sudden breeze ran silken fingers across the nape of his neck, pleasantly speeding his convalescence. The scent of flowers kissed him gently.
‘Who . . . who is it?’ came a low nervous voice from beyond the door. But without waiting for a reply: ‘I – I’ll be there in a second, just one second. Don’t go away.’
Hurried footsteps shuffled about within the house, followed by the satisfying sound of metal sliding across metal. The door opened to reveal a worried middle-aged man wearing a smoking jacket that did not match his jeans in the least. His watery grey eyes streamed along the surroundings before focusing entirely on Amitai, at which point the man smiled.
‘Oh! You – you look so much like your father when he was younger, its uncanny. Re . . . remarkable. I can hardly believe it. Please come in young lad, I think it might rain soon; you don’t want to, you don’t want to ruin your suit. You don’t want to ruin your suit, it looks good on you. A fine gentleman like your father, I know it! Here, sir, let’s shake hands. There’s a fine lad. Ha!’
The man’s grip was relaxed but meaningful; Amitai could tell right away that the eccentricity of his mannerisms stemmed from a rare sincerity battered by a hard luck world. Despite this, however, Amitai was reluctant to enter the Sky House as he could see that it was completely black within. As a spare time poet, he knew that black meant nothingness and that nothingness meant death. No one would question him if he questioned the situation.
‘Is it all right if you uncover the windows, sir?’ Amitai asked politely. ‘My eyes have some trouble adjusting to the dark.’
‘Oh, certainly, most certainly!’ cried the man, and he quickly set about pulling the drapes from each window. Natural light seeped brilliantly into the room.
‘There, Amitai. Is that better? I’m Marcello, Amitai – I’m Marcello.’
‘You know my name,’ Amitai said in surprise, blushing lightly.
‘Yes, yes, I know your name and you know mine. I’m an old friend of your father’s, sir. Now – now please come in, make yourself at home.’
Amitai swallowed the saliva swimming beneath his tongue and nodded. He carefully brought one immaculate dress shoe through the doorway and then followed it with the other; with those two steps he was inside the Sky House. ‘Marcello,’ he thought. The name seemed familiar somehow, although he could not place the memory of it as easily as that of the toy caterpillar. He disregarded it in order to focus more on the matter at hand.
The main room of the Sky House was comfortably furnished; Amitai was asked to flop down in one of two large leather chairs while Marcello fetched his parcel for delivery. Amitai declined ‘flopping down’ but did sit studiously as he looked over the various items decorating the room: he particularly admired the sunset paintings depicting fishing boat silhouettes that adorned three of the walls; they made him nostalgic for his childhood, when his father took him on fishing trips during the hot summers. He had never actually caught anything back then.
The chair was so soft that Amitai felt like he was melting into it. He tried listening for the shuffling of Marcello but could only hear the sounds of the room and the earthy insect noises outside, the arrhythmic ticking of a grandfather clock sounding off as grasshoppers sang their creaky songs. While all of this music played, diaphanous sheets of white light cascaded through the windows and covered the room in a milky haze; altogether the Sky House held a tremendously sleepy atmosphere, and Amitai caught himself nodding off more than once as he waited for Marcello’s return.
A matte black briefcase was ushered in like a dear boy and set lovingly onto the coffee table in front of Amitai; a serious facial expression had apparently landed on Marcello’s nervous features while he was away and refused to take off. The man determinedly arranged the briefcase so that the locking mechanism faced the stunned lad.
Amitai was not expecting a briefcase – all of the preceding cases he had dealt with involved gift boxes tied with colourful ribbons. Briefcases were simply not how the business was done; they attracted too much attention.
‘I – I know I’m supposed to use a little cardboard, a little cardboard box,’ Marcello stuttered. ‘But every time I get the product back to me, the box is all dinged up. So I decided to spend the extra money on this: it’s a Samsonite briefcase, they make good briefcases. It cost me two hundred dollars but it’s worth it, since it’ll protect the product. Even if it got banged up, dinged up, battered around, it’d still be all right, the product would be fine. I got this Samsonite briefcase just for this.’
‘But, sir,’ Amitai started, wanting to explain to him how the procedure worked. They took the gift boxes back to their stations, tallied the contents, burned the boxes and then dispatched new gift boxes with the ordered products – this was the foolproof security measure that had been instituted for years. But Marcello either did not notice Amitai’s words or refused to listen.
‘I – I tried to tell you about the briefcase over the phone, but my wife was sleeping, I didn’t want to wake her,’ continued Marcello. ‘I had to talk very quietly and I, and I couldn’t talk for very long. But, see, it’s a Samsonite briefcase, it cost me two hundred dollars, just make sure you let them know to send it back with the product inside. No more little boxes.’
And then Marcello unexpectedly unlatched the locking mechanism and revealed the contents of the briefcase to Amitai – neat brown bundles of hundred dollar bills. ‘Look, ten thousand dollars,’ Marcello cried as though stunned by his own wealth. ‘And I will only trust you with it, Amitai, because you are a good son to a very great man.’
Amitai did not think his father was actually all that great, but then again he had rarely seen the man outside of the youngest years of his childhood. What kind of product was Marcello purchasing with this kind of money? He doubted drugs as the man did not seem at all the type to use or abuse them. But it was something that could fit inside a briefcase. Firearms? Bombs? Judging by Marcello’s nervous behaviour, Amitai assumed that it could be a weapon of some sort. Weapons made him sick. So did drugs, for that matter.
Sometimes, after thinking about it for too long, his father made him sick. But his father had created him, both as a human being and as a person, so Amitai could not help but feel an ingrained sense of love and respect for the man.
‘The gift boxes are –’ Amitai tried again. Marcello shook his head and lectured the lad about the quality of Samsonite briefcases.
Amitai gave up on trying to explain. He accepted the briefcase with grave concern, but managed to force a weak smile in a pathetic attempt to instill confidence. How could such a simpleminded man be associated with a crime syndicate? Amitai had not encountered such a beautiful soul in years; he found it painfully touching, as though the taut strings of his heart were being yanked loose by weathered fingers. The encounter made him long for another, one sleeping angelically in his past; an encounter buried by the furiously digging hands of a thousand furious demons.
Ten thousand dollars.
‘I’ll take good care of it, sir,’ Amitai promised, and he truly meant what he said.
‘Ah, you – you’re so good! You have good blood in you.’
Marcello escorted Amitai to the door with a heavy arm wrapped sentimentally around his shoulder. ‘Do you smoke?’ he suddenly asked quite randomly. ‘Do – do you need a cigarette? Cigar?’
Amitai shook his head. ‘No, but thank you, sir.’ He did not smoke but he knew that his father was an addict, consuming copious amounts of sticks without any regard to his own personal health. Marcello might have been making some possible reference to this. ‘No, I’m not decadent like my father is, sir,’ he almost wanted to say. Decadent demon. Father. Father, I love you.
‘It was my pleasure meeting you, sir,’ said Amitai with a bow. ‘You have a wonderful house. Your wife is very lucky.’
Marcello gripped the lad’s wrist and shook it enthusiastically. ‘You – you’re the brightest star in the future sky!’ he exclaimed, and Amitai wondered if those nonsensical words had come across however the man intended them to. ‘Please say hello to your father for me. Please – give him a kiss for me!’
‘Yes, sir. I’ll definitely do what I can, sir.’
Marcello seemed to be almost out of breath. He looked around the lightly greying sky from his position in the doorway. ‘Is your car nearby?’ he asked with weighty concern. ‘I think it might rain, but you never know here; you never, you never know. You – you know? Please take care of the briefcase. Please, sir. I’ll wait patiently for it. Now – adieu!’ And he looked away as he closed the door, as though he could hide away from any awkwardness by disregarding it completely; stubbornly disregarding anything unwanted seemed to be consistent trait with him.
Some strange thoughts suddenly struck Amitai now that he was alone again. For some reason the entire meeting with Marcello – in fact, all of the car ride over, including Jack’s speeches – felt like it had not happened at all. They almost felt like implanted memories, or memories formed by himself in order to create a consistent continuity that explained his present. Like moments in a dream that may or may not have happened, but still reflected directly on the current scene.
This type of bizarre, unwelcome sensation had been occurring to him a lot lately. In the Sky House he had felt generally calm – on the verge of being blasé, to tell the truth – but now that he was outside the briefcase in his hands suddenly seemed so much more tangible to him, so much more real. He made to gulp and swallowed an ocean. What was he thinking? Was he really thinking that he could be a Raskolnikov, a Karamazov sans the murder? Would stealing the sincere Marcello’s money make him a great man like Bonaparte? Why steal the money at all – what did he even need it for? Because it was the only thing that seemed real to him then; because all of his memories had been formed in order to bring him to this one moment in time, this everlasting present that consumed all of eternity. At least that was what he thought, and was comforted by this.
Ten thousand dollars. Did the amount really matter? No, but it helped.
‘God, what am I doing?’ he asked himself under his breath. Something right for a change.
The remaining demons giggled. So: where was the meeting point, again? Apparently he forgot. Wink.
Amitai began heading back down the stone path, his heart beating savagely. Without warning he swiftly turned into one of the walls of tall browning grass and disappeared. And that was that, with no premeditation having been involved whatsoever. He simply stole ten thousand dollars from Marcello, from his father, from his friends and coworkers, in the blink of a young and reckless eye. With no immediately redemptive use for it.
A Raskolnikov, indeed. Amitai murdered the trust of everyone he knew, even if they did not know it yet. He continued to push past silken blades of the greenest grass as he headed in the direction of his future. His breathing became more and more laboured as he pressed on, slowing him down somewhat but not diminishing his perseverance in the slightest. The Sky House looked like nothing more than a hut from where he was then; he was covering greater ground than he thought, as though the grass beneath his feet was helping him move through the field. Eventually the Sky House became the size of a varicoloured butterfly, and then it was gone completely.
Even so, Amitai continued trudging through the field until he could not take a single step more. When that moment came, he fell backwards with his arms and legs outstretched, colliding with the cushioned earth below. He took quick, deep breaths until his heartbeat slowed to a more agreeable pace, all the while gazing up into the soothing silver sky.
After all of that unexpected exercise, Amitai could appreciate the calmness of the world around him twice over. A motherly breeze trailed the hem of its airy gown over the rustling grass and Amitai’s face, cooling the thin film of sweat that had formed there. Mother. Where are you, mother?
The woman who had given birth to Amitai had gone missing when he was five years old. That was the grand extent of what his father would tell him about her disappearance. He had tried to research the case himself but always ended up empty handed – no word on any abduction, drowning, raping or killing ever resulted in a clue that was even remotely related to his mother. All that he had of her were his memories, what his father told him and an old diary of hers that his father must have forgotten to destroy. The diary had been hidden beneath her night table in a secret shelf; Amitai had discovered it when it slipped out during a move. Of the few entries contained within, the ones of most note were: that his father had been a far more loving man before she married him; that she had been hoping for a daughter instead of a son when she was pregnant; and that she very much believed in angels. The diary was a minute document of one woman’s existence; for Amitai, the diary was, in a way, his mother.
Amitai realised that he had left his eyes closed. So he opened them to a fat bumblebee bumbling along an uncertain trajectory, dipping from time to time as though it had trouble carrying its own weight. This made him smile widely and quite childishly. Splayed out like a snow angel, with a briefcase containing ten thousand dollars in his hand, Amitai felt almost as though he was living through a dream of his own creation. He smiled more gently and closed his eyes again. The buzzing of the bumblebee tickled his ear, and his soul laughed.
Then something slender covered his mouth and nostrils, causing him to choke on his own life. Something similar covered his eyes as soon as he tried to open them. He quickly let go of the briefcase and made to pry himself free. So this was death? So this was punishment? He heard a faint giggling bubbling above him like a brook, the one that he was drowning in. Then the hands pulled away and he gasped for breath, wild-eyed like a startled dog. A scant shadow blanketed his chest; his eyes followed it to a kneeling figure. His heart pounded as his degrading sight gradually adjusted to the person in such close proximity. Who could it be? Death. Was it Marcello? Death. Jack? Death. Dad?
No. Kneeling beside him was a grinning girl. She was strikingly familiar; in fact, Amitai realised that he had actually known who she was as soon as he had tasted the salt of her skin on his mouth. Vera. God, Vera. What did you do to her, Amitai?
The literary itemisation of a girl: 1. Her watery blue eyes (so loving, like a puddle being passed by a family of yellow ducks). 2. Her short, fair black hair. 3. Her smiling, pale, peach-coloured lips (but did they taste as sweet? He had never actually kissed her.). 4. Her svelte teenage body, still wrapped in her high school uniform (we had loved each other, had we not?). But I still love you, Vera.
She looked exactly the same as the last time he had seen her – nearly five years ago. Why was she here? Did she show up because all of the demons had finally scurried out of his head as soon he flopped down onto the grass? Is that right – is that true? Help me, I’m scared, I don’t even know why she’s here. I missed her so exceedingly so.
I don’t even know why she’s here.
‘!’ She cried wordlessly, joyously, fumbling with a party popper; she tugged the ends until the popper popped excitedly, showering Amitai’s suit with pastel confetti. Amitai gazed up at her as he used the briefcase to deflect as much of the confetti as he could. Her lips curled at the sides in that curiously intelligent half-smile he remembered so well. ‘It’s been a while, hasn’t it? How have you been?’ Yes, that was the type of thing you say to someone you have not seen in a very long time; Vera was a mischievous pixie but she could also be exceptionally polite. All of her mannerisms came flooding back to mind.
This teenage thing could not be her, though. This teenage thing was a ghost. No one could be as perfectly preserved as she was. Vera.
‘I can’t complain,’ he said with a smirk, sharing her delight in the unexpected reunion.
‘“I can’t complain”,’ she mimicked, elbowing him a little. ‘Does that mean you’re not allowed to complain or does it mean you have nothing to complain about?’
‘Both.’
‘Yes, both. Your father never wanted you to complain and you don’t feel like complaining about it. But that kind of talk got us into trouble, didn’t it? What’s in the briefcase, Amitai?’
‘Ten thousand dollars.’
Vera’s jaw dropped in mock horror. ‘Ten thousand dollars! That’s ten thousand smackers! Amitai – you have ten thousand dollars! Wow.’
‘It’s not mine,’ he explained meekly. ‘I mean – I stole it, but that doesn’t mean its mine.’
‘So you stole it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it’s a brief case of theft.’ The way her lips quivered and her eyes shone made it incredibly obvious that she was suppressing laughter at her own joke. A small giggle broke through a ripple in her mouth and soon came an avalanche of belly laughs as she pounded the earth with her porcelain fist. She then held her sides and began rolling over the grass.
‘You’re a cartoon character,’ said Amitai, watching her closely. ‘You’re not real.’
‘Oh?’ questioned Vera as she wiped a jubilant tear from her eye. ‘Why can’t I be real? What’s “real”?’
‘This briefcase,’ Amitai said as he proudly tapped his proof. ‘Not you, that’s for sure.’
He should have expected the pout; he should have known it was coming – but he had allowed himself the luxury of forgetting that it existed. When it came, it was more adorable than ever.
‘You’re killing me, Vera. You know that when you pout like you kill me.’
Then she slid out her tongue. Amitai sat up with her so that their shoulders were nearly touching; he was afraid that if they did touch then he would pass right through her. He played with the grass between his legs while she hugged her knees. An oncoming breeze toyed with her hair, floating stray strands like seaweed swaying underwater. Amitai caught all of this in one loving glance.
‘So what are you going to do with that ten thousand dollars?’ she asked with a breath of maturity. Sometimes her mood changed with the wind, but that was one of the things that Amitai had always found fascinating about her.
‘It’s not the money that matters,’ explained Amitai out loud for the first time. As the words came out he discovered that they gave more weight to his idea rather than lightening it, which was completely new for one of his ideas. ‘I just sometimes feel like I have no proof that my memories are real, which in turn makes my life feel like it never actually happened, or at least not how I remember it happening. I don’t know – maybe I figure that if I keep something close to me, something that makes my heart race, then somehow that would be proof enough that my life was really real. I don’t care about the ten thousand dollars, but other people do, and that makes me afraid. I’m afraid because I remember how important it is to other people. I remember learning that it’s wrong to steal; so now that I’ve stolen it, actually run off with it, I have all of these memories rushing back to me. Everything leading up to this moment happened for a reason. They were substantial. Is that too bizarre? I think I must’ve changed a lot since the last time I saw you, Vera. But you haven’t changed a bit. No, I don’t know why that is – you’re exactly how I remember you. I’m scared, my heart is racing. Vera, I wish I could hold your hand.’
Vera stared straight ahead of her with intense, shaking eyes. Was she scared, too? For some reason Amitai was not expecting such realistic emotion; although he did not express his feelings, he was taken aback. But then she suddenly turned to Amitai with a gentle smile. ‘Then why don’t you?’ she asked.
He gazed silently at the grass between his legs as though he was a god gazing at a hidden valley surrounded by twin mountains. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Vera’s shoes, socks and legs; some of the most charming, innocent parts of her. The skin of her pale left hand gave off a phosphene glow in the white country light. Amitai wanted to know what it felt like, but he was still scared of her touch; or rather, he was scared of a lack of it. Would she feel the same as when he had held her hand so many faceless moons ago?
He sat helpless as his hand crept towards hers of its own free will. Blasted traitorous hand. But he could not help it; his curiosity was undeniably getting the better of him. Vera was the best of him. His index finger hesitated before landing on the landing strip of her wrist; no, yes no, it did not pass through her. Thank god. He traced unseen veins towards her hand, then clasped onto her. Vera’s eyes widened and her cheeks grew red roses.
The feel of Vera’s hand: delicate, soft and perfect. She squeezed his palm and he looked at her again, only this time he accepted her as being very real. Like the briefcase, she became for him a type of proof that his life had actually happened. This made her more special to him than the sun, the moon and the ground beneath his feet. She was Vera.
‘Your hands have always been so smooth,’ she jocundly observed. ‘You’ve never worked a day of real work in your life.’
‘And with ten thousand dollars, I won’t have to for a while yet.’
God, he was holding her hand. At that moment he could have died and would not have cared in the slightest; only with Vera back now, he had so much more to live for. His life felt almost as though it was restarting.
‘Human contact is so much more special when you limit it as much as possible, isn’t it?’ said Vera whimsically. ‘We place so much importance in the simple holding of hands. It’s touching – literally.’
She tended to attempt cleverness in order to diffuse any awkward or intense moment. Was she so afraid of welcoming sincerity into her world? Sincerity made life beautiful. Her life was beautiful. So why was she afraid? Why, Vera?
‘Touching you proves to me that you’re not a ghost,’ Amitai stated dryly. ‘But it doesn’t prove to me whether or not you’re an angel.’
‘Oh, you’re so sweet!’ Vera exclaimed, and she squeezed his palm again.
‘Why are you here, Vera?’
She opened her mouth as if making to speak but instead closed it again and furrowed her brow; then she relinquished his hand as though requiring isolation in order to answer the question. This did not help assuage Amitai’s worries concerning her presence.
‘I don’t know, why are you here?’
Amitai sighed theatrically but had to cover his face when he felt laughter coming on. ‘Oh, even if you were a ghost or an angel, you wouldn’t be an awfully good one. You don’t seem to be following any ghostly or angelic rules. You’re just being very Vera.’
‘So you’re saying ghosts and angels don’t have any free will?’
‘Oh, I don’t know! It was just an observation,’ he mumbled, suddenly flustered. He was not sure if his psyche was capable of handling any more of this encounter; the back of his brain felt almost as though it was melting. But still, how often does this type of situation occur? ‘Jeez, you never stop being clever. You’re kind of amazing. I can’t believe it.’
Vera reached out and touched his knee; the shock of the touch to his heart was almost as powerful as being struck by lightning. ‘Amitai, just be glad we’re together, okay?’
He would have cried if his father had not taught him to be a stronger man than that.
‘Are you happy, Amitai?’
Well, was he? Throughout his life, at least outside of his earliest childhood, he had wondered what real joy felt like. He had always been a somewhat lonely boy, though he was surrounded by admirers – after all, he had graduated with high honours in all of his schools, all of those elitist private schools that would break your legs if you walked instead of ran. All of the girls – and even all of the boys, whether they had admitted it or not – found him delicately beautiful, like a winter flower. But he had never actually had any true close friends, anyone who knew the seed inside the husk – a frightened, isolated child who worked hard to impress a father who had others raise his boy for him. That was what Amitai thought of his father and himself. He wondered if it was true.
Was he happy? He was a phantom king lost in a crowd of worshipers; his exterior lie existed only because everyone continued to believe in it, even after he had declined so many dates, so many parties, so many confessions. He refused to let anyone inside of his shoes because he thought that they were altogether too uncomfortable for anyone to want to suffer them, and he refused to get rid of his shoes because he felt that there was still a lot more use left in them. This was the stubbornness of a teenage boy trapped in a world of his father’s making.
So was he ever happy in those school days now long behind him? Yes, he was, when he met Vera. Veritable Vera. Vera with the pretty black hair. Vera the girl who stayed with him after class to rehearse the play and learned more about him than anyone else had before. Vera the first person to actually talk to him as though he was a human being and not some untouchable demigod. Vera, god Vera. Vera, you made me happy.
‘Yeah, I’m happy. Well, at least I think so; I don’t see why not.’
‘Okay. You just seemed a little sad for a second there. But I’m glad you’re okay – I’m glad that you’re happy. I don’t like seeing you down or worried or anything like that, mon Ami.’
Yes, of course not. You always saw what was deep down inside of me and it caused you pain; you felt it was your duty to cure me of the horrible blackness that was sticking to the bones of my rib cage, that was filling my head with smoke. You took it all away until the demons came. ‘I just like seeing you,’ he said, and meant it. At that moment she was the world created in seven days. She was purest life purifying him. She was –
She blushed beautifully. Amitai realised why he had never succeeded as a poet – the subject was always far more breathtaking than the words composed in their honour. Also he was fairly bad at it, as the seven days and purest life lines reveal.
‘Do you miss school?’ she asked, as if to change the subject.
‘I miss some things involving school,’ Amitai admitted. ‘But I don’t miss school itself.’
‘Yeah, that’s always the way, isn’t it?’ and she gave a weak kind of half smile.
Yes, that was right. He had to think: What was it like for her? Amitai thought about it meaningfully. He wondered how she felt to have never made it out of high school – to be here in the exact same uniform and generally looking exactly the same as the last time he had seen her. Did she still have all of her thoughts, memories and emotions contained within that perfectly preserved shell? How could he possibly know or find out? Did it even matter? Just be glad we are together.
Yes, he understood: Why question a good thing when you could embrace it instead like an innocent child still in awe of the mysteries of the world? If only he could embrace her now. He wanted her to know that she could always rely on him; that he would always be there for her in order to protect her, like her knight in sickly armour. Was it too late?
With the soothing sounds of waving grass as the only soundtrack, Vera leaned in close to Amitai and slowly made to wrap her arms around him. His heart was fit to burst at any second until the beating steadied with the advent of her trembling touch; he closed his eyes, let go of the briefcase and held her back, not thinking about anything other than her.