With his foot, the guard flips the glowing switch to the power strip on the floor, and then, fiddling with the computer tower, he pinches the Ethernet cable from its port.
These actions, of course, do not serve to undo the moment itself. They stop time for the guard but do not, in the prisoner’s cell, slow anything down.
All the guard has done is shut his own eyes in three different ways. What he’s done is deny a record of a certain amount of time, though the cameras are still there looking, even if they can no longer share what it is they see.
It’s that notion the guard thinks about on his drive home for the holidays, racing to beat the traffic where it jams up by Motsa. He’s supposed to have dinner on the balcony with his mother, and, for that, he does not want to be late.
2014, Limbo
The General stands atop the Temple Mount, where the Holy of Holies once stood. He waits for a sign from God, a sign to make peace or make war, to make anything more than another tired political point.
He receives no signals, no auguries, no omens, no wonders. It was right here, in this place, that Abraham, lucky man, was sent a ram to offer in Isaac’s stead. The General himself was not, as a father, spared.
Listening, he suddenly hears it, the sound of that tune. That voice singing the song he so loves. He looks to the force that surrounds him, a thousand strong, to see if anyone else hears the same.
The men do not show it. And the General is confused, for each of those assembled now wears the face of his lost son.
The sons of Israel, they are all his.
Up here on this sacred, contested site, the General finally makes sense of it. He looks straight up to Heaven, and then out to the Valley of Hinnom, over the Old City walls, where the perverse kings of Judah sacrificed their own.
The General knows—warrior, peacemaker, murderer, saint—that his time on this earth must be up. He stands there listening to that voice, then to the sound of the needle as that silent record spins.
The General, who does not panic, who never hid from death, does not worry even now.
He looks one more time out over his mighty troops, out over his united Jerusalem, out to the Judean Hills that hold all of the history that to him ever mattered. The General stands on that high point, in God’s beloved city, the one He held above the waters when He flooded, in anger, the world.
2014, Down Under and In Between
Shells hit, and missiles strike, the walls around them shake. The tunnel, solid as it is, well built as it is, withstands. The part Shira can see, as if they’re in the belly of a serpent, ripples up ahead. She wonders if the whole thing might slither away with the two of them inside. The seams of the concrete sections rain down dust and then settle like old bones, when the moments of quiet come.
The lanterns stay lit. The candle he promised holds its place on the table and still burns.
The mapmaker, as if they don’t have a care in the world, pours her more wine, my love, my sweet.
“We have picked a bad night for our dinner,” he says.
“Unless, for us, it’s the best.”
Always positive, always seeing the bright side, this is why he has fallen for her. Though he can’t not ask, “How could that possibly be?”
“Maybe our horrible, self-destructive peoples, maybe our vacillating cowardly nations, maybe our brave soldiers always looking to die, maybe tonight they’ll finally all kill each other and see this conflict done. It is time, Old World style, to fly the bloodred flag of no quarter and fight until no one is left.”
“And how would that be to our advantage?” he asks, quite sweetly.
“We’ll just walk out one side of the tunnel and step into the future. We’ll live in whichever horrible world remains.”
“You do not mean that,” he says.
“I don’t mean that,” she says.
They eat their dinner as the supports around them groan and strain. They hear grim, ungodly noises reaching downward, as if the land itself aches.
And though they are made for each other, and ready to die for each other, and overjoyed to be in the same place, the war breaking out above becomes too much to pretend to ignore.
Shira says, “For the first time in my life, I am deeply afraid.”
“Come here, then,” he says. And he pats his lap.
She pats her lap right back. “Being comforted would be nice. But not at the price of power. Why don’t you come to me?”
The mapmaker stands, and, instead of moving toward her, he pulls the tablecloth from the table. He does this without skill, a very bad magician. Everything set on it goes flying.
Amid the clatter, he says, “Should we not, then, just meet in the middle?”
“Yes,” she says. “In the middle of our middle. In the center of our dinner at the center of the earth.”
They sit on the table and put their arms around each other in a deep, satisfying hug.
The candle has gone out in the mapmaker’s rough clearing, and the toppled electric lantern has turned itself off. There is a single lantern left, hung on a bit of steel rebar poking out from the wall. It puts them in the softest of lights, in this very harsh place.
In this way, the pair sit like lovers at the sea’s edge, curled together in the sand. They lean farther into each other, feeling the full weight of the war above, both unsure in the moment, from which direction victory comes.
Acknowledgments
A heartfelt and colossal thank-you to Jordan Pavlin, whose commitment to this novel has been without bounds. I cannot thank her enough for her brilliant contributions and editorial advice. Thanks to my agent Nicole Aragi (who read this book when it was still hidden inside another). A truly special thanks to Lauren Holmes for her inexhaustible support and endless good nature, all of it inseparable from these pages. Her help has been an act of true friendship.
My thanks to Joel Weiss, wise counsel and sounding board, now for more than half a life.
For his substantial assistance with research, thank you to Darragh McKeon, a Hunter College Hertog Fellow. To the sailors, Louis Silver and Ari Haberberg, for sharing their know-how with the terrestrially bound. To all the friends and fine folk who came to the rescue with key facts on a wide variety of subjects, especially Dr. Daniel, Wendy Sherman, Isabella Hammad, Kevin Slavin, Mieke Woelky, Silvia Pareschi (who is already busy translating the book into Italian), and Farmer Steve.
At Knopf, I want to thank the amazing Jordan Rodman—a force from first meeting, as well as Nicholas Thomson, Betty Lew, Claire Ong, Victoria Pearson, Sara Eagle, and the many wonderful people there who have had a hand in this book. And the same goes for Duvall Osteen and Grace Dietshe at Aragi, Inc.
My deepest gratitude to Chris Adrian and Merle Englander for always reading and believing. To John Wray for his generosity and ping pong. To Deborah Landau at NYU for all kinds of unhesitating support.
I’d like to acknowledge the city of Zomba, Malawi, where a critical draft of this novel was written.
And to Rachel and Olivia, who have all my love and give everything its meaning.