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By Root 1114 0

Every universe is a stone, and every stone is a universe. Until it begins to make your head spin, and meanwhile your tongue explores the stone as though it were a sweet, and now your tongue itself has a chalky taste. Danush, Alik, Uri, Lulik, Eitan, and Ammi and the rest of the Black Hand, in another sixty years they'll be dead and then everyone who remembers them will die and then everyone who remembers everyone who remembers everyone who remembers them. Their bones will turn to stone like this stone that's in my mouth. Maybe the stone in my mouth was children who died trillions of years ago? Maybe they went to look for those things in the woods too and there was someone they made fun of because he didn't have the guts to blow it up and put it on? And they left him alone in his yard too, and he also lay on his back and put a stone in his mouth, and the stone was also a boy once and the boy was once a stone. Dizzy. And meanwhile this stone is getting a bit of life and it's not quite so cold and hard anymore, it's become wet and warm, it's even beginning to stir in your mouth and gently return the tickles it's getting from the tip of your tongue.

Behind the cypress trees behind the fence at the Lembergs' someone's put the electric light on, but lying here you can't see who's there, Mrs. Lemberg or Shula or Eva, who put the light on, but you can see the yellow electricity pouring out like glue that's so thick it's hard to spill, it can hardly move, it can barely make its heavy way, the way viscous liquids do; dull and yellow and slow, it advances like heavy motor oil across the evening, which is a little gray-blue now, and the breeze stirs and licks it for a moment. And fifty-five years later, as I sit and write that evening in an exercise book at the garden table in Arad, that very same evening breeze stirs and from the neighbors' window again this evening too there flows a thick, slow, yellow electric light like heavy motor oil—we know each other, we've known each other for a long time, it's as if there are no more surprises. But there are. That evening of the stone in the mouth in the yard in Jerusalem didn't come here to Arad to remind you of what you've forgotten or to revive old longings, but the opposite: it's come to assault this evening. It's like a woman you've known for a long time, you no longer find her attractive or unattractive, whenever you bump into each other, she always says more or less the same few worn-out words, always offers you a smile, always taps you on the chest in a familiar way, only now, only this time, she doesn't, she suddenly reaches out and grabs your shirt, not casually but with her all, her claws, lustfully, desperately, eyes tight shut, her face twisted as though in pain, determined to have her way, determined not to let go, she doesn't care anymore about you, about what you are feeling, whether or not you want to, what does she care, now she's got to, she can't help herself, she reaches out now and strikes you like a harpoon and starts pulling and tearing you, but actually she's not the one who's pulling, she just digs her claws in and you're the one who's pulling and writing, pulling and writing, like a dolphin with the barb of the harpoon caught in his flesh, and he pulls as hard as he can, pulls the harpoon and the line attached to it and the harpoon gun that's attached to the line and the hunters' boat that the harpoon gun is fixed to, he pulls and struggles, pulls to escape, pulls and turns over and over in the sea, pulls and dives down into the dark depths, pulls and writes and pulls more; if he pulls one more time with all his desperate strength, he may manage to free himself from the thing that is stuck in his flesh, the thing that is biting and digging into you and not letting go, you pull and you pull and it just bites into your flesh, the more you pull, the deeper it digs in, and you can never inflict a pain in return for this loss that is digging deeper and deeper, wounding you more and more because it is the catcher and you are the prey, it is the hunter and you are