The director was throwing small rocks at the tire of the van when the little circle broke. Epstein, sipping his tea, watched Yael approach him. She really was something beautiful to see. She didn’t lay her hand on his shoulder, didn’t baby him or tiptoe around him like the others. She just stood serenely, like a queen, waiting for the director to come back to himself. Only then did she begin to talk. After a while, they both turned and looked in Epstein’s direction. He tilted his head to look up at the sky, and took another swallow of tea.
They had begun at the end, and two weeks ago had shot the scene in which Solomon leans over David to hear the dying king’s final words. There were no lines left for the old David: only a long shot in which he walks into the desert. As such, the loss of the actor Zamir need not have been a total disaster. The final shot was meant to be at twilight, lit by torches, everything cast in shadows. Epstein was nearly the same size and build as Zamir. They only needed to shorten the hem of the cloak a centimeter, two at most. The wardrobe person kneeled at his feet, needle between her pursed lips as she knotted the thread. But when everyone stepped back to admire her handiwork, they concluded that something wasn’t right. Epstein straightened the heavy belt buckle while Yael bent her head toward Dan. He looked neither regal enough, nor fallen enough, the seamstress whispered to him, making a quick, irrelevant adjustment to his sleeve. A crown was found by the prop master. But the gold was deemed too bright, and black shoe polish was used to tarnish it.
The torches were lit. All he needed do was walk between their two rows in the opposite direction of the camera, then continue walking until the director yelled for the cut. But just as they began to roll, a wind came up and blew half of the torches out. They were relit, but a moment later went out again. There would be a storm that night, someone said. The rain, when it finally came to the desert, was always violent: the production manager checked his Android phone, and announced a flash-flood warning in the area. Bullshit, Dan said, checking his iPhone, there was nothing about flash floods. Epstein looked up at the sky again, but saw no clouds. The first star was already out. The wind was strong, and nothing the lighting technician did would keep the torches lit. The air became heavy with the smell of kerosene. They would have to do without them, the production manager argued. But Dan refused to budge. Without torchlight, the scene was useless.
The director and the production manager went on loudly arguing. Soon the producer joined in, and even the DP, whose light was quickly vanishing. The wind blew. Epstein heard the Vivaldi in his head. He thought of his trees, growing even now. The mountainside couldn’t have been very far from here. Was it possible they had already begun to transport the saplings? He’d lost track of the date. Surely someone would have told him? He thought of calling Galit, but his phone was in the pocket of his jacket, which someone from Costumes had taken from him, along with his pants.
The wool cloak had begun to itch. Deep in argument, no one noticed when he wandered away from the double row of torches and found his briefcase under a chair. He took off the cloak, left it draped over the back, and began to walk up the slope toward the ridge above. From there, he would be able to see. For a while he could still hear them arguing. The wind blew his hair, and reaching up to brush it back, he realized he was still wearing the tarnished crown. He took it off and lay it down on a boulder, then turned and slipped into a wadi carved by thousands of years of water, thousands of years of wind. If the rain came, in the absence of forests, the water would cascade down the slopes and flood its ancient path, carrying everything away toward the sea. The temperature was dropping. He would have liked to have his coat now. Better the boy should have it. He was breathing heavily by the time he reached the ridge. Down below, he heard them calling his name. Jules! But their voices, echoing off the ancient rock, rolled back without him: Jews! Jews! Jews! He could see very far now, all the way to Jordan. When he looked up, the star was gone, and clouds had wiped out the moon. He could smell the storm coming from Jerusalem.
And now the Philistines appeared, cresting the hilltop, a trembling mass disturbing the light and the air. Some of them knew they were Philistines, and others knew only that they were part of something enormous, gathering itself for elemental reasons, the way the ocean gathers itself to break on the shore.
The Philistines stood waiting. Holding their breath. A helmet clanged to the ground. A red flag rippled in the wind, silk torn. A great silence sounded across the valley. But there was no sign of David.
And now a Philistine held his arm up high, and snapped a picture with his iPhone. Where are you? he typed, and, straightening his battle gear, the Philistine pressed SEND, releasing his message into the cloud.
Already There
The night I spent in the emergency room felt like three. The shot of hydromorphone the nurse finally gave me quieted the pain and made me woozy. For the hours before that, I’d harnessed myself to the broad and beautiful face of an Ethiopian woman who sat with quiet patience on the other side of the open curtain, cradling her pregnant belly. But after the needle went in and the tingling spread up my spine and later down to my toes, I needed her less, and she, too, must have lost her need for me, for whatever my face did for her pain, because after a while she got up and walked away and that was the last I saw of her. By now she must have a child, and the child a name, whereas I no longer have my virus whose name they never discovered, and have given up searching for.