Flashback

“I was writing a series of poems about time overlapping, the past and present coexisting, and the power of certain places which allow us to see that conjunction.”

“Sounds like sci-fi.”

Danny Oz nodded, squinted through the smoke, and flicked ashes. “Yes, it does. At any rate, I was at Tel Be’er Sheva for a few days with Toby Herzog, grandson of the Tel Aviv University archaeologist who first excavated the site, and his team. They’d found a new system of cisterns, deeper and more extensive even than the huge cisterns discovered decades ago. The site was famous for its water—deep wells and ancient cisterns riddled the deep rock—and the area had been inhabited since the Chalcolithic period, around 4000 BCE. ‘Be’er’ means ‘well.’ The town is mentioned many times in the Tanakh, often as a sort of ritual way of describing the extent of Israel in those days, such as being from ‘Be’er Sheva to Dan.’ ”

“So being underground at the dig saved your life,” Nick said impatiently.

Oz smiled and lit a new cigarette. “Precisely, Mr. Bottom. Have you ever wondered how ancient builders got light into their caves and deep diggings? Say at Ellora or Ajanta temple-caves in India?”

No, thought Nick. He said, “Torches?”

“Often, yes. But sometimes they did as we did at Tel Be’er Sheva—the generator Toby Herzog had brought was on the fritz—so his grad students aligned a series of large mirrors to reflect the sunlight down into the recesses of the cave, a new mirror at every twisting or turning. That’s how I saw the end of the world, Mr. Bottom. Nine times reflected on a four-by-six-foot mirror.”

Nick said nothing. Somewhere in a tent or hovel nearby an old man was either chanting or crying out in pain.

Oz smiled. “Speaking of mirrors, many are covered here today. My more Orthodox cousins are sitting shiva for their just-deceased rabbi—colon cancer—and I believe it’s time for seudat havra’ah, the meal of consolation. Would you like a hard-boiled egg, Nick Bottom?”

Nick shook his head. “So you told Keigo in the interview that you flashed only on your memories of looking at explosions in a mirror?”

“Nuclear explosions,” corrected Oz. “Eleven of them—they were all visible from Tel Be’er Sheva. And, no, I didn’t tell young Mr. Nakamura this because, as I said earlier, he never asked. He was more interested in asking about how extensive flashback usage was in the camp, how we purchased it, why the authorities allowed it, and so forth.”

Nick thought it was probably time to leave. This crazy old poet had nothing of interest to tell him.

“Have you ever seen nuclear explosions, Mr. Bottom?”

“Only on TV, Mr. Oz.”

The poet exhaled more smoke, as if it could hide him. “We knew Iran and Syria had nukes, of course, but I’m certain that Mossad and Israeli leadership didn’t know that the embryonic Caliphate had moved on to crude Teller- Ulum thermonuclear warheads. Too heavy to put on a missile or plane, but—as we all know now—they didn’t require missiles or planes to deliver what they’d brought us.” Perhaps sensing Nick’s impatience, Oz hurried on. “But the actual explosions are incredibly beautiful. Flame, of course, and the iconic mushroom cloud, but also an incredible spectrum of colors and hues and layers: blue, gold, violet, a dozen shades of green, and white—those multiple expanding rings of white. There was no doubt that day that we were witnessing the power of Creation itself.”

“I’m surprised it didn’t create an earthquake and bury all of you,” said Nick.

Oz smiled and inhaled smoke. “Oh, it did. It did. It took us nine days to dig our way out of the collapsed Tel Be’er Sheva cisterns and that premature entombment saved our lives. We were only a few hours on the surface when a U.S. military helicopter found us and flew us out to an aircraft carrier—those of us who’d survived the cave-in. I spend all of my waking, non-flashback time trying to capture the beauty of those explosions, Mr. Bottom.”

Stone crazy, thought Nick. Well, why shouldn’t he be? He said, “Through your poetry.” It was not a question.

“No, Mr. Bottom. I haven’t written a real poem since the day of the attack. I taught myself to paint and my cubie here is filled with canvases showing the light of the pleroma unleashed by the archons and their Demiurge that day. Would you like to see the paintings?”

Nick glanced at his watch. “Sorry, Mr. Oz. I don’t have the time. Just one or two more questions and I’ll be going. You were at Keigo Nakamura’s party on the night he was killed.”

“Is that the question, Mr. Bottom?”

“Yes.”

“You asked me that six years ago and I’m sure you know the answer. Yes, I was there.”

“Did you talk to Keigo Nakamura that evening?”

“You asked me that as well. No, I never saw the filmmaker during the party. He was upstairs—where he was murdered—and I was on the first floor all evening.”

“You didn’t have any… ah… trouble getting to the party?”

Oz lit a new cigarette. “No. It was a short walk. But that’s not what you mean, is it?”

“No,” said Nick. “I mean, you’re a resident of the refugee camp here. You’re not allowed to travel. How’d you just happen to walk over to Keigo Nakamura’s party?”

“I was invited,” said Oz, inhaling deeply on the new cigarette. “We’re allowed to wander a little bit, Mr. Bottom. No one’s worried. All of us refugee Jews have implants. Not the juvenile-offender kind, but the deep-bone variety.”

“Oh,” said Nick.

Oz shook his head. “The poison it releases wouldn’t kill us, Mr. Bottom. Just make us increasingly more ill until we return to the camp for the antidote.”

“Oh,” Nick said again. Then he asked, “The night of the murder, you left the party with Delroy Nigger Brown. Why?”

Oz exhaled smoke in a cough that might have been meant as a laugh. “Delroy supplied me with my flashback, Dete… Mr. Bottom. The guards here sell it to us, but they add fifty percent to the price. When I could, I bought it from Delroy Brown. He lives in an old Victorian house on the hill just west of the Interstate.”

Nick rubbed his cheek and realized that he’d forgotten to shave that morning. Oz’s reason made sense but it was still odd that Keigo Nakamura would have interviewed both Brown and Oz during the same last days of his life. Unless Brown had led Keigo to Oz. It probably didn’t really matter.

“I never understood why the U.S. government didn’t just let you Jewish refugees integrate into society here,” Nick said. “I mean, there are twenty-five million or so Mexicans here now and that group sure as hell doesn’t reflect the education and training of you ex-Israelis.”

“Ah,” said Danny Oz. “You are too kind, Mr. Bottom. But the U.S. government couldn’t just turn us loose and let us live with family members here in America. There were more than three hundred thousand Israeli survivors that came here, you remember. And with your economy and the Jobless Recovery now in its twenty-third year…”

“Still…,” began Nick.

Oz’s voice was suddenly sharp. Angry. “The U.S. government was and is terrified of angering the Global Caliphate, Mr. Bottom. The Caliphate is waiting to exterminate us, and what’s laughingly called the U.S. government is terrified of angering them. Grow up.”

Nick blinked as if slapped.

“You’re one of those who pretend as if the Caliphate and partitioned Europe don’t exist, aren’t you?” demanded Danny Oz. “One of those who ignore the fact that Islam is the fastest-growing religion in what’s left of your United States.”

“I don’t ignore anything,” Nick said stiffly. In truth, he did ignore the Caliphate and all foreign problems. What the hell did it matter to him? Dara had had some half sister disappeared into dhimmitude in France or Belgium or one of the other partitioned countries where sharia law predominated, but what the hell was that to him? Dara had never met the woman.

Oz smiled again. “Isn’t it interesting that they killed six million of us again, Mr. Bottom?”

Nick stared at the poet.