I was born twice. First the womb, then the words, and sixteen years in between. I read his words to quench a thirst I was unaware was there. But it was, and so was I. It was an old Hebrew book that belonged to my dad, probably from when he was sixteen, and the title read something like “Masterpieces of World Literature.” It was an anthology of translated excerpts, and I recall none but one. I realize now that reading that particular excerpt must have been like looking into a broken piece of a mirror. I saw myself. But to better see, I first needed to fix the mirror. I searched for the entire original book from which this excerpt came. It was a couple of years after the internet was invented but decades before it invaded, so I went looking for it in the very analogic archives of Israel’s National Library in Jerusalem. To my mind, it became a holy grail, and having copied the pages, I descended onto the Library’s underworld to plead with the workers to bind them. I asked for a rugged black cover.
It was the first English book I read, and I struggled. Once I reached its end, the book’s last piece made my mirror complete. Later, when I finished high school, I translated the book into Hebrew, hoping it could help others. I still do.
Today, I cannot imagine myself without Mark Twain’s novella, The Mysterious Stranger. Take it away, and I could hardly recognize myself. And so it happened that soon after arriving in Ithaca, NY, some five years ago, I learned that it’s just an hour's drive away from Elmira’s Quarry Farm, where Twain (Samuel Clemens) and his family regularly summered for three decades, and where he wrote many of his works. It didn’t take long before I submitted my proposal for a fellowship. Give me a month, I promised the Center for Mark Twain Studies committee, and I’ll write a sequel to the novella!
I guess the committee saw through the cracks of my pledge, for I submitted it thrice and was rejected twice. For good reasons: I’m not a Twain scholar and never published fiction (though many peer reviewers of my academic writing may disagree). I do not know why I was finally granted. Perhaps my revisions did the trick, or, more likely, my obstinacy exhausted the committee. Either way, and ironically, I received my coveted acceptance and invitation after three years in Ithaca – when I was back in Jerusalem.
So after a most tumultuous year in Israel, facing the undoing of its democracy by our own government, on September 2023, I crossed the pond and headed toward the isolated Quarry Farm to realize my dream – both understanding it and making it real. And I was, for those twelve days, living the dream, and in it. I was walking, reading, writing, and imagining, mostly alone and sometimes with friends and family who made the dream even better. I completed about a third of my sequel novella and headed back, blissfully, to Jerusalem, thinking I’m sure to complete it soon.
Two days later, October 7.
I haven’t read my sequel since. It felt out of time and out of place, and I somewhat dreaded our reunion. Now, I want to read it to decide if I want to post it today of all days—for reasons you may understand if you read it through. If I do, I want it to be another promise to you but mainly to myself: to complete it.
Well then, I will. For now, here's the beginning...
I
The first time I let Satan in, I lost my voice and started to listen. It was in 1986 – winter. Jerusalem was centrally isolated, and asleep, and promised to remain so forever. Some said Jerusalem was stuck in the Age of Belief, and while they meant it as a slur, we took it as a compliment and were proud of it. Tel Aviv, the city of endless sins, was an hour, and a light year, away, and we wanted to keep it that way. I remember it well, although I was only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me.
Yes, Jerusalem was isolated and asleep, yet the center of it all, as everyone could see on our classroom’s rear wall. It was covered with a huge mural reproduction of a famous Renaissance map of the world with cloverleaf continents. I spent countless hours sailing across the green-blue oceanic waves where mermaids and sea monsters frolic. I tried to understand their language so I could ask them to join, but whenever I came close, they just dove back in and left me alone, seeking land, tracing with my fingers the three leaves of Europe, Asia, and Africa, spinning around Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was centrally isolated and asleep, but every couple of weeks it woke up, wiped eye junk off its weary face, gave its morning prayer, and stared at a newcomer with pride, rage, and boredom. Each visitor chewed their own slice of Jerusalem syndrome. An Argentinian soccer player sticking a crumpled note in the Wailing Wall, getting God’s left Hand to lift the World Cup. A Jewish siruvnik exchanging a Soviet prison with a city around a holy walled-off heart. A nuclear technician betraying a renowned secret, confessing – on the palm of his left hand against a cold police van’s window – that he too got betrayed by love. And throughout, a trail of lords and leaders, paraded from money to museums, bringing all the glories of their kingdoms along; and when they went, they left a resignation behind, which was like the defeatism that follows bad sex.
But back then I had no sex, good or bad, not even with myself, nor hardly knew anything about it. What I did know, dreadfully, was that I had less than a year to my looming Bar Mitzva, with all its blessed gears, familial vows, and biblical vowels. My parents wanted me to learn the latter by heart, sending me to a beardless Rabbi who could teach me to cantillate my Parashah: how Joseph read Pharoh’s cows-ridden nightmares to save Egypt from famine; how he forgave and saved his brothers too, though they threw him, out of envy, into the darkest pit only his technicolor dreamcoat could save him from.
Rabbi Asher tried to get me excited about the whole shebang, telling me how gematria connects my Parashah to Hannukah, my birthday. He jerked his right palm in front of me as if begging for a conceding nod, “Don’t you realize how amazing it is, how Joseph loves his brothers despite everything, arranging them a feast?” he said it with such excitement that made me wonder if he identified more with Joseph, or with his brothers. “Now count and add the numerical value of the letters in that expression. What do you get? 44! And what’s forty-four? The number of candles we lit during Hanukkah! You see, everything is connected in God’s hands, He protects us all!” But since He didn’t protect me from Rabbi Asher’s spit, I moved my chair a bit.
I moved it too suddenly and nearly fell off that day in class when the wall looked back at me. I knew Jerusalem was the center of the world, but which neighborhood, and what house in it, and who inside that house? If one person is the center of the world, do they carry it with them? But then, what happens when they’re gone? I shivered with thrill and trepidation. Could I ever be The One? I must never! I knew nothing, but I felt enough. If Jerusalem was centrally isolated, I was certainly isolated, but hardly at the center of anything. The only thing that kept me grounded was looking beyond the cloverleaf at the bashful and banished fourth continent, the New World, peeking from the bottom left corner of the map, close to where Dana sat.
I had known Dana since kindergarten. I didn’t have my fear of heights back then, so I recklessly climbed up trees with other girls, but I was always transfixed by her. Dana was different, out of this place and time, and surely mine. I could imagine her in a boarding school for kids of some master artists at the dawn of the Enlightenment, not in a subpar school on the muddiest side of a torn-up and torn-down town, yet here she was, with her short black hair and her green-blue eyes, which blended so easily with the wild waves of the world wide wall behind her.
But on that Thursday, during our two-hour English class, which most of us, knowing only Hebrew, disliked, it wasn’t Dana’s hair or eyes I was looking at but her lips that moved without making a sound. I thought she must be praying and imagined what a prayer of such a beautiful girl might be like. It occurred to me that she didn’t want to be beautiful anymore. She didn’t want people to be dazzled by her looks, and asked God to please make her normal, and average, so that we could simply see her. I didn’t want God to answer her prayer. You don’t turn an ocean into a puddle. We have enough of those in any given Jerusalem winter. I tried to fight her prayer with my own but felt guilty for being so selfish.
“And he’s returning today?” It was Dana’s voice, but I realized I only heard her speaking long after she started, the way thunder chases its lightning, always in vain. I stepped out of my revere to see Lana, our English teacher, looking at her with delightful approval, “Yes, Dana, today! But you shouldn’t say He. Even though we name it after the astronomer Edmond Halley, a comet is just It, a big, lifeless mass.”
“Yuh, sure, like that lifeless mass that clogs our toilet!” David said in Hebrew from behind me, “And we’ll probably have to wait another 75 years until Halley returns for someone to fix it!” We giggled, but Lana, who made Aliyah, wandering to Israel from Cape Town just a couple of years ago and was new at the school and still struggling with Hebrew, lightly admonished, “English, David, in this class we speak only English.” She was right, and I’m still thankful to her. With all the hard time she gave us, Lana is the main reason I can try to recount these events in half-tolerable English.
“Do you know who else waited seventy-five years to see the comet, and passed away just after his next coming?” Lana asked us, clearly enjoying the moment she’s been building up for, “his was the first book we read this year.” Our collective stupidity could have wrecked her moment, if it weren’t for Maya who quickly exclaimed, “Mark Twain!”
I didn’t like Maya, didn’t like her at all. Being the teacher’s pet was the least of her flaws.
She was spreading absurd accusations. When we had the school’s mini-marathon and Galit fell and broke her leg, Maya came to visit her, and told her that Rami deliberately elbowed her, and Rami was Galit’s boyfriend! And once, after they found a dead cat in the school’s backyard, Maya went to our homebase teacher, telling her that Eviatar was going up to the school’s rooftop to throw stones at nearby cats, which we all knew was a lie; he had two cats of his own and loved them.
And just two weeks before, we had a day trip to the Negev desert, visiting Masada, and while the driver was alone in the bus, it slid to the valley below and nearly exploded. And then Gil from our class overheard Maya telling the police officer that Efraim, our seventy-year-old Bible teacher, stayed on the bus until everyone left, released the breaks, then quickly jumped off. The last bit was so ludicrous that we all had a good laugh until we learned the police called him in for questioning – Efraim, who could barely carry his bag of books, and wouldn’t even hurt a mosquito that bit him thrice on the back of the ankle, where it’s most annoying. The police obviously concluded that it wasn’t him, but the damage was done. And it was all Maya’s doing.
I really didn’t like Maya, but I was intrigued. Why the hell would she do that? She was smart, she was pretty, and she had friends, who always protected her. I was looking for clues. Our school was on the bad side of town, and early that year entered a special program by the municipality, which allowed poor kids to enroll in an extracurricular course taught by a university professor. Against my parents’ pride, I qualified, and against their better judgment, chose psychology, fancying myself a detective of the soul.
What was in Maya’s soul I couldn’t tell, but why she picked on Efraim was clear. Many parents wanted to have him fired after they heard that during our classes on Genesis, he taught us about Milton’s Paradise Lost. We all felt it was strange, but only when our parents intervened, did we realize it was also blasphemous. So Maya knew he was an easy target. Still, why targeting anyone was beyond me. What wasn’t was why no one dared do anything about it. There was no mystery there. Maya wasn’t just the teacher’s pet; she was the principal’s daughter.
Our new English teacher knew that too. “Excellent, Maya, you’re right,” Lana said, “it’s Mark Twain, but that was his pen name. He was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens – in 1835, just after Halley came as close as possible to the sun,” then she paused, “fire kissing fire,” and we could all see she didn’t have Halley in mind. “Now, Uriel, please read to us what Twain told his friend in 1909.” She handed me a thick worn-out book, its dust jacket carrying, in bold letters, Mark Twain: A Biography atop a simple illustration of a steamboat that was about to jump off the jacket into the Mississippi. “Open page 1511 and look for the highlighted sentences.”
I did. Browsing quickly through the yellowish pages made a hissing sound that reminded me of a visit to a clinic some four years earlier when the nurse was holding a cold ultrasound device to my gel-rubbed chest. “What you hear is his heart murmur,” she told my mom, “but it’s an innocent murmur, that’s what we call a harmless one.” My mom was still appalled, but I rejoiced at the perfect excuse for avoiding PE.
Many pages in Lana’s book were marked, mostly with green highlights but some with penciled comments. I stopped at page 1515, which underscored “dream-existence,” “The Mysterious Stranger,” and “I found the notes for its conclusion.” But aware of Lana’s gaze, I quickly turned to 1511, and slowly read out loud the olive-greened words:
“I came in with Halley’s Comet. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.” I lifted my eyes slightly, pretending I wasn’t wondering if Dana was looking at me, and realizing she wasn’t, I returned disheartened to the text: “It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt, ‘Now there are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’ Oh! I’m looking forward to that.” My “Oh!” climaxed with an adolescent voice crack that sounded like those squeaky stops the cars of drunken Americans make in teen movies, now that they don’t ride steamboats. When I lifted my eyes again in Dana’s direction, I noticed her looking away, smiling, and feared the reason.
“Thanks, Uriel. Twain wasn’t disappointed. He died a day after Halley greeted the sun.” Lana seemed at ease with her new metaphor, but I was lamenting, wishing I were dead instead, or leaving with Halley tonight, escaping the juvenile trap of my voice box. But before I could even envision how exactly I was going to hop on Halley’s burning tail, Lana dashed my spectacular departure, which would have surely attracted Dana’s blue gaze: “Unfortunately, unlike 1910, we won’t be able to see much of Halley with the naked eye, but…”
She looked to her right, where Gali and Or were chuckling – “No, ‘naked’ eye just means without artifacts. But luckily, we got Giotto! He was a Florentine painter from just before the Renaissance, but now we have a space probe named after him, which can deliver plenty of cool images of Halley. And speaking of cool images, I have a special treat for you. After the break, meet me at the video room, it’s going to be fun!”
The fifteen-minute break went fast. The pouring rain forced us to stay indoors, which gave Eyal a golden opportunity to take the centerstage and play out his favorite advice column from the only youth magazine we all knew. “I think my mom is having an affair with my teacher,” he pretended to cry, and I suddenly saw Maya paying attention.
“Should I tell my dad?” He solemnly asked, then joyfully faked an answer, “Yes, tell him he too should have an affair, so you can have two houses to choose from!” Eyal was the only kid I knew whose parents got divorced, and I was amazed at how lightly he took it. I was terrified my parents would split up, especially on Fridays.
But before I could fear tomorrow, the school bell rang – or rather sang, because the previous year, Esty, our music teacher, did her little coup and took over the school’s sound system, so she could announce the start and end of each class with a tune from her recent favorite album, which changed daily, and sometimes twice a day.
So once The Headmaster Ritual of The Smiths began to play, our horde rushed out and down the stairs to the video room, where Lana was implementing her long nails as spearheads against the school’s dying VCR. When she finally extracted the leftover cassette, whispering “Who’s the idiot making them watch A Clockwork Orange?” we were already strategizing our seats in front of the TV monitor whose depth far surpassed its width. First come first served, and most of the boys easily got to the front row. I didn’t mind my minority status, away from the TV. When there were still a couple of available seats, Dana came and sat next to me.
Lana placed the cassette and failing to fast forward the FBI’s pledge to imprison us all, settled for a voice-over: “It’s an hour and twenty minutes, but I asked Motti to start your math class a bit late, so you’re fine.” Yoni, who was always kind enough to let us copy his answers during big math exams, grudgingly shook his head, but the rest of us, I’m pretty sure, were smiling.
We continued to smile when The Adventures of Mark Twain started to play. It was a colorful plasticine animation flick. Twain, in an all-white suit, was on his airship trying to meet Halley's comet, and along came Huck, Becky Thatcher, and Tom Sawyer. I remembered it was Tom that we were supposed to read an abridged book about during the High Holidays. I didn’t, but it didn’t matter. I readily joined the gang as they hopped from one of Twain’s stories to the next, using his cool air elevator. It was fun.
The scene changed. A dispirited Twain appeared out of nowhere, wearing a black suit, and the elevator’s gate was opened to The Mysterious Stranger, who introduced himself as Satan, dressed in a colorful costume and a masquerade mask for a head. The kids’ hesitation quickly evaporated as they stepped onto his floating island, which he magically adorned with brilliant plants, and gave each kid their favorite fruits. They then happily joined Satan in building a little village out of clay, joyfully sculpting animals, and people – farmers, soldiers, a king and a queen.
“Now we’ll give them life,” Satan said and did. The clay creatures started merrily moving about, chatting, making rules, blowing the trumpets, and bowing before the royal couple. The scene fascinated me. I was drawn to politics, and spent hours reading the newspapers, especially on Saturday, when there was hardly anything else to do, except fight with my brother, not unlike the quarrel that was going on between two clay men, who just received an ox, and started arguing over it, each pulling its horns. Satan, annoyed by their noise, crushed them to the ground, like insects. Some mourners quickly arrived, and their wailing row further irritated Satan, who wreaked thunderstorms and an earthquake upon the villagers, who cried, prayed, and scurried, to no avail, they were all annihilated. Huck was shocked, “You murdered them!” But Satan calmly replied, “Never mind them, people are of no value, we could make more sometime… if we need them.” The kids ran away in terror, as the masked stranger slowly vanished, “Life itself is only a vision, a dream. Nothing exists save empty space and you. And you are but a thought.”
II
I woke up in bed. I remembered nothing and saw nothing. And if it weren’t for smelling the lavender laundry scent and touching the coarse Aleph, the first letter of my name, which I engraved during first grade on the wooden headboard rail of my bed, I wouldn’t have known I’m back home.
I tried to adapt my eyes to the dark but couldn’t. I did manage to hear my dad’s worn-out voice, “…they can just sleep on the couch tonight. But I think we should wake him up,” and my mom’s reply, “Or you can get them to my parents,” and after a pause, “I knew something like that would happen… Innocent! Agh… as if!” I didn’t need to see my dad’s exasperation to feel it, “What does it have to do with his murmur? It’s not like he fainted after a sprint or anything, and the doc said it’s probably just dehydration. I think he hardly drinks in school. I don’t understand why. And the teachers should pay more attention to them, not put them in front of stupid children’s films, and walk away. First music instead of a school bell, now movies instead of classes. I wonder what’s next.” He sounded mad, which wasn’t like him, and I felt guilty for causing this trouble, especially on Thursday.
I think they went to the kitchen because all I could hear were mumbles, but a moment later the door opened, and I could finally see. My dad stood there, not looking mad, just worn out and worried, and my mom approached with a fruit salad that smelled delicious and tasted like nectar. I gobbled it up with a warm homemade challah she baked for tomorrow.
I let my fingers follow the challah’s two braided strands, tailing each other, and recalled the entwining snakes of the magical Auryn that protects its wearer from all harm. I watched The NeverEnding Story a bit over a year before, and it never left me. I was wandering again with Bastian and Atreyu in the plains and swamps of Fantasia, fighting The Nothing, when I looked at my mother’s almond eyes, and returned to my bed. She realized I was already in a different world, and just kissed me on the forehead, tucked me in, turned off the light, and left.
I wanted to sleep, to leave this strange day behind, but the taste of challah in my mouth made my mind’s eye wander in our apartment. It wasn’t hard to cover it all in a couple of seconds, but I stopped at one spot in the living room. Cramping six people in two bedrooms was the lesser marvel of our apartment. The biggest was an ugly curtain separating the living room from the balcony, with a string on each side, allowing even a small boy to open and close the drape in one swift pull.
I was about three years old when I started my affair with the curtain. I hid behind that pale veil of innocence, peaking through its tiny holes, trying to imagine a different world, where my dad wouldn’t mind giving hugs and my mom wouldn’t need to shout out all her frustrations on Friday, for hours on end, as she was cleaning the house and preparing food for us all, just to be at peace, from exhaustion, when Shabbat begins.
When it did, everything changed. We ate, prayed, talked, laughed, and then finally featured the Family Show with improvised scripts and customs from behind the curtain. Midway I would usually follow with my solo act. I would hold on to the edge of the curtain’s string, which looked like a microphone hooked to a cord, and start my cover for Yigal Bashan’s hit from 1975, “I have a little bird in my heart, with two dimples and a melody,” I sang, emulating the moves of the hunky Bashan, “And the bird makes up in me stories,” I swung my mic, giving everything I got into that addictive refrain, “naaay, na nay naay nay.”
I had no idea what I was singing about, but lying in my bed a decade later, the words returned to me like the waves on my classroom’s wall, and I was thinking of that little bird who “remembers in me pain,” and “paints sweethearts,” and “collects years and hopes,” and “resolves almost all the dreams,” making me “feel free as she sits on a branch between the strings of my heart.” Drops of waves rolled down my cheeks and felt salty on my lips, as I fell asleep, wishing I’d stayed awake to look up at the night’s sky and search for Halley.
I was soaring far above Jerusalem, its lights slowly dimming beneath me, when I saw it. I extended my hand, imagining I could grab its tail when I lost my balance and nearly fell. It was, after all, a precarious sort of flight, which I had often experienced in my dreams. I needed no plane, nor turned into a bird, and certainly not Superman. I was up above swimming, freestyle, through the air, chasing Halley. Sometimes, in my flight dreams, I used to rest for a moment on a treetop, then hop back to business. This time was different. Tired, I felt drawn by strange gravity to the ground, and slowly dove down to a pitch-black plain.
“Uriel,” I heard a soft but stern voice from behind me and turned my head toward the void. “Yes,” I said with hesitation, and saw a shining speck midair, first still, then trembling, drawing, as if with the finest brush of light, a gate, sending a chill down my spine. When the gate to the air elevator was fully drawn, I saw Satan standing on the other side. “Won’t you come in,” he said, and I could see that his masquerade face was Twain’s. Whether it was the music of his voice or the smile I thought I saw, I took two small steps, and stood next to him, wondering if I should extend my hand. “By all means,” he laughed, and shook my hand, “and that’s certainly a useful means to pretend it’s just a friendly meeting.”
“It isn’t?” I couldn’t bridge the chasm between his warm voice and his ominous words. “No, I’m afraid not. Friendship is hard work, and we must focus on other, more important, tasks.” Oddly, I knew what he was talking about, yet asked, “What tasks?”
“I believe you know – to grow. And mind you, not growing up, that would be most dreadful, but to dig deep, and learn what you’ve done.”
“What have…” I started asking, but Satan cut me a mid-question and handed me, out of thin air, a peach. For a moment I was expecting, and certainly hoping, Huck, Becky and Tom would join me. But they didn’t, and staring defenseless at the peach in his hand, I recalled and recoiled, “it’s forbidden, I’m allergic to peaches.” Satan seemed amused, “not here, you’re not,” and nearly shoved it into my hand, “Try it, you’ll see.” I did, and dazzling light landed everywhere, illuminating a blushful garden, where they stood. Eve was petting what looked like a small zebra with zig-zag purple stripes, while Adam was picking his nose, and both seemed quite happy, and fully naked.
I felt naked myself and realized I was, and yet was completely confident, and at peace, like never before, as if I had just grown angel’s wings, touching God’s throne, and suddenly became aware of the golden crown on my head. The Garden, I knew, is the center of the world, indeed of the universe, and I was at the center of the Garden and its guardian. I feared nothing and no one. I was the sharpest-sighted spirit of all in Heaven, and could pierce with my eyes and ears all that is around me. I looked at each plant, animal, and the two feeble creatures, and at once saw them for what they are, inside out. I could read them like the palm of my right hand, which I looked at, but then immediately turned my gaze ahead toward a stranger approaching.
“My lord,” the childlike cherub said, “So glorious is the work of God and his Guardians. I could have never imagined.” He asked for my name, and my answer took his breath away, “Uriel… the archangel! Of course, how could it be otherwise, ‘the light of God’ and His eye. You must see it all, as I’m sure you see me, your humble servant. And this garden ahead, is it truly so full of all the creator’s delights and wonders, as our teachers teach us?” His childish curiosity touched me, and I saw that he was sincere and honest, and I told him of God’s creation – of earth, water, air, and fire – and of the making of day and night. The little cherub drank my words in gratitude, and asked his questions in earnest, and modestly admitted his unspeakable desire to see, and know all God’s wondrous works, but chiefly Man. I confirmed that indeed, God has made this most recent creation, and seeing his heartfelt elation, readily indulged his plea to be shown the best path to Man, so he too can behold this curious marvel.
“Forever I am in your debt,” the cherub thanked me in tears, and slowly went about to find Man. I too was now elated, for I quenched another’s thirst for knowledge. I proudly spread my wings wide, and soared above the Garden, with a song in my heart, beholding the immense beauty of it all, and, loyal to my divine duty, discerned once more all inanimate and animate beings, and among them God’s favorite tree, and next to it Eve, whom my little cherub just offered a fresh peach.
“What have I done?” I said silently, and in the distance, next to the enlightened and ashamed Eve, I saw my cherub-turn-Satan smiling at me.