Then something happened. Something took the reins and decided for her, without her permission, to continue a trial she had already completed. She was thrown here, into this perfect white, with no instructions coming from anywhere. In one fell swoop, everything had been different. Even the hunger had disappeared without a trace, disappearing so completely that she didn’t even think to miss it.
If in her initial shock she had thought to analyze her situation, perhaps she would have landed on the idea that she knew later, in hindsight, to tell Polina when she appeared, bewildered and sobbing. What she said to Polina went something like this: “At first it felt like I had just had the best sleep of my life. A deep, dreamless sleep.” And then: “Gradually I felt lighter and lighter, and the pain that had been in my stomach for so long disappeared, and all my aches were gone; I felt like I was in seventh heaven.” But alone in a place like this without another living soul—no one thinks that way then. She only noticed the pain and nausea were gone once her panicked mind had explored every other alternative and dead end.
Theory number one: Was she blind? This first thought upon opening her eyes is understandable. The whiteness all around is like a sickness, is like blindness, is like the conclusion: “So this is how I’ll be punished.” And this isn’t a terrible theory since there are sicknesses in which the first, dramatic symptom can be a sudden loss of vision (for example, Horton’s disease, also known as temporal arthritis, which generally strikes aging women).
However, the blindness theory fell apart quite quickly because she thought to look at herself, first at her hands, and there they were. A thin wrist peeked from the sleeve of her black caftan with the veins in the back of her hand shining bluer than ever. Long, slender fingers, long, red nails, joints like jewels, knuckles like the brass variety. She struggled up onto her stick-thin, bowed legs. Just a heave, a movement without air resistance, and suddenly she was up.
Theory number two: She was in some sort of building. Somewhere there had to be a surface that would expose the structure as a dome, a cube, or a sphere. At this point she began to feel a rage. They had really done this to her! It wasn’t enough for them that she had her own things in order, that she had calculated everything going in and exiting her body down to the last calorie. That she had arranged—of course she had arranged—follow-up care for herself and made numerous backup plans. Nothing had been left to chance. She wasn’t fooling around. But they had still just snapped her up and locked her up in . . . where?
She tried to walk but didn’t get anywhere. Her legs moved, but whether she was making progress was impossible to say. She threw herself on her stomach and felt a light rocking in the pit of her stomach. She did not feel an impact or any pain, and she still couldn’t see anything anywhere. There was no reference point. She squinted, looking for hidden cameras, motion detectors, something dark that might take shape against the background. Someone had to be watching her on a monitor. Things like this could happen—it was almost to be expected. She had heard the rumors about them: science abductions.
There it was, theory number three, the natural, logical jump from theory two. Nowadays information about human behavior was needed more urgently than ever. Real, brutal information, the kind that might not be available for collection following accepted ethical norms. And she had been the subject of enormous, undisguised interest. They simply wanted to know more. Would she survive? How had she survived up until now? And above all: how would she do now, in a controlled environment? What was her secret?
Triumphantly she stuck her finger into her shock of hair. She was convinced of the find she was about to make. The antennas. She dug deeper, tugging at the roots of her curls, nails scratching her scalp. Antennas, antennas. Even just one. However small. Is this? A scab. A microchip. Implanted deep. A mole? A small wound. Psoriasis. No! A device. Definitely something technological. The latest, nearly invisible technology that they were testing for the very first time.
She pulled at her hair. She removed her clothes, turning them inside out and inspecting them carefully, then turning them back and checking them again. She did things that would have looked strange and perhaps indecent if anyone had been looking; the analogy of a snake eating its own tail would not have been far off as she finally bent double to search for foreign devices inside herself.
Shlomith.
The thin woman extends her hand to Ulrike and introduces herself, adding a most important detail, a fact apparently meant to explain everything: I was the first one here. The other five women have come to sit next to her. They seem in reverent fear of Shlomith’s austere statement, and of Shlomith herself, this offensively thin, ancient-looking woman. Now that her hair is not in the way any more, her face is visible in all its horror. Her skin is wrinkled and fragile, altogether paper-like, as if blowing on it would dislodge it. Her cheekbones are high and would cast enormous shadows below if the light were not so uniform. If she wished, Ulrike might describe her thus: old witch, chestnut hair, corkscrew curls,
