Aaron returns to the apartment with the two joints Ya’akov rolled and packed for him before he left. He’s ready to spend a relaxing evening alone, smoking, maybe writing a draft of the conversation with Hillel and Leibniz, maybe working out. He changes into workout clothes and practices the karate moves he incorporated into his routine (God help me) more than two decades ago. He practices his kicks against a thick tree in the yard, striking at the exact spot he’s aiming for, then adding speed. Only after succeeding in striking both accurately and quickly does he add power, panting each time his foot hits the bark. 

When he was thirteen, another kid in his year, nicknamed “Tumor”¹, slapped him in the face during a spare hour in the computer room, after Aaron refused to give up his turn to play. It’s hard to imagine a more convenient victim for bullying than thirteen-year-old Aaron—a sensitive and somewhat slow kid, barely hiding the depression that started with the death of his older brother. But when he felt, for the first time in his life, that specific ache of a mild concussion, the loss of balance, he realized Tumor had crossed a line. That he couldn’t let it keep happening. Aaron, expressionless, placed his backpack on one shoulder and, with half of his face flaming, got up and walked home, in the middle of the school day. When his father returned home, Aaron asked him for a punching bag.

In the two years that followed, he trained with a diligence he hadn’t known was possible, with the goal (explicitly stated to himself and his two friends) of becoming good enough to kick Tumor in the throat. He spent five hours a week in karate class, begging older and stronger kids to get into the ring with him so he could learn from them. As stories like this tend to go, by the time Aaron was ready for the big fight, Tumor had dropped out and started working at a steel factory. But the memory, like in the Metallica song, remains. 

He hears a window opening and sees one of the neighbors, a couple of stories above him, peering at him through the bars, a lit cigarette in her hand. He takes his foot off the bark and raises his palm in the air, a very gentle gesture, almost Canadian. 

“How’s it going, sweety?” she greets, graceful and lively.

“I’m fine. You know,  all things considered. You?”

“Yeah, same. Well, I won’t interrupt your workout. Good health to you.” She puts out the cigarette and closes the window, and he finishes the workout and lights a smoke of his own. As only rarely happens, by the time he’s burnt through half the joint he reaches that sweet mental state of ego-coma—not a permanent ego-death but a cessation of self-reflection. Reality just exists, without interpretation. There is sight and sound, but no one seeing or listening.

In one of the apartments close enough to hear from the yard, a little girl yells at somebody who doesn’t answer, maybe a baby or a cat. “Why don’t you eat?” she screams. “Mom made this food for you, so eat already!” 

She keeps screaming for a moment more. A woman joins in, her yells sounding like an imitation of the little girl’s. “What are you doing to him? Have you lost your mind?” A short pause, and then a sound like a loud clap. The little girl starts crying. “I’m so sick of you abusing him,” the grown-up says. “Sick of it. Where did you learn to behave like this?”

So you see why I warned you about narrative reliability, back in the introduction? Not only does it feel made up; it also feels like mediocre writing. But that’s the way it is. 

Then a rocket alarm starts. It takes him a long moment to remember what the sound means. That this is the reality he’s living in. His imagination is too active, too dispersed. Instead of running immediately to the safe room, the one with the guitars, he stops for a moment and thinks about the person operating the rockets; the person who stuffed a three-meter-long pipe full of plastic explosive and aimed it at Aaron, lit the fuse with an excitement in his heart. Thinks about how that person closes his eyes and prays as hard as he can that it will kill Aaron. Someone like Aaron. How does he imagine Aaron, when he prays the rocket will hit him directly? Does he see him like a westerner with a drawing of Buddha on his t-shirt, or a religious dude in black with weird hair? Does he hope that Aaron will die instantly, or that the building will collapse on him, so he’ll understand what’s happening?

To even imagine this hatred is as painful and disorienting as looking at the sun. He gets up and goes to the shelter. 

The cat that was sleeping in the shelter before the alarm began is startled and, ironically, runs out. Aaron sits in the shelter alone, trying to envision how he would pass the time if the building collapsed. If the safe room holds, he’ll probably sit there for hours and play the piano. It’s common sense that you should make noise if you want to be rescued, and it’s easier to play than scream.

NEXT: Leaders

1. In Hebrew, from the same linguistic root as “growth”. The dude was huge. ↩︎