To Polina’s surprise, the bright yellow begins to crumble after blazing momentarily. Like a smashed mirror in slow motion. Broken shards billow about as if they’ve been shaken hard in a closed box, zigzag, zigzag, and then they begin to settle, to settle like powder.
Suddenly Polina feels as if someone has pulled the rug from beneath her feet. As if something has turned upside down under her. Or is she herself hurtling toward something, toward . . . grains of sand? Is she lying on her face in sand?
Polina begins to make out bulges and hollows, wind-formed waves, dunes. She lifts her head a little more and sees a vast expanse of sand shimmering in the heat, which should burn her cheeks, her hands, her chest, her stomach, her thighs. Cautiously, as if testing whether her vertebrae work, she begins to turn her head to the left. She doesn’t feel her neck move but, led by some unknown force, she finds her gaze focusing to the side, up and back.
At that moment the whining of a motor begins to reach Polina’s ears, as though someone had pressed the volume button of a muted television set. She notices a beat-up jeep stuck in the sand behind her. The vehicle’s tires spin as the engine revs. It howls, then croaks, then gathering strength again it utters another tortured howl.
Polina gets up on her knees. Next to the jeep stand men with rifles, scarves covering their faces and shoulders tense with rage. Two men crouch on the ground, hands clasped behind their heads. Before them lies Maimuna, with her familiar yellow dress rolled up to her buttocks. Five buckskin belts are spread out on the sand. One of the men wearing a scarf has the barrel of his rifle buried in the curls of Maimuna’s hair.
It is like a pose. The press photo of the year.
And then. The women! Wlibgis, Shlomith, Nina, Ulrike, and—Rosa Imaculada! And Maimuna! Maimuna too, not just on the ground, her dress rolled up, but also in the air, once again in her underwear! All are in their panties except Rosa, lucky Rosa in her modest clothes, her magenta pique shirt and beige shorts. There they stand, next to the jeep, like any old guardian angels. They stand but don’t stand. They float a few dozen centimeters above the surface of the ground, a little crooked, swaying somewhere around the rear bumper at the level of the exhaust pipe. They are somehow disconnected from the image, as if under cellophane, flickering, without any depth.
Rosa Imaculada begins to gesture eagerly at Polina. Nina gives an embarrassed smile, Ulrike looks tense, and Shlomith seems to tap her foot impatiently. Wlibgis leans on the spare tire bolted to the back of the jeep, though without touching it. The Maimuna in the air is calm. The Maimuna in the air looks at the Maimuna on the ground.
Polina feels a desire to join the others. She stands up, already seeing herself as a continuation of the line, next to Rosa, who stands farthest from the jeep, perhaps even arm-in-arm with the Brazilian . . . And then, and then—what then? What will happen when she stands beside the other women?
DEATH REHEARSAL NUMBER 2 (ACCORDING TO SWEDENBORG)
Polina’s eyes snap open. The desert disappears. Once again everything is harsh, shadowless, painfully white. Maimuna still sprawls the way she did a moment ago, face under the sleeve of the sable fur. Wlibgis lies on her back with the wig’s bangs on her forehead. Ulrike, Nina, and Shlomith each sit in their own familiar style in front of her. The women’s eyes are still shut tight, but their mouths are all open a crack. Even Wlibgis has her lips parted.
Oooon . . .
Slowly, vibrating like a meditative om-syllable, that frightening word begins to form in the women’s mouths. Soon, it is clear, they will all disappear. They will move, in one way or another, perhaps in stages like Rosa, perhaps all at once, to the desert by the jeep to escort Maimuna over the frontier, to witness Maimuna’s death. All except her, Polina Yurievna Solovyeva. She isn’t going anywhere!
As the R is rolling on the women’s tongues, Polina opens her mouth and screams, screams as only a person can scream when the train hurtling at her has to be stopped, or an airplane rushing at the ground has to be lifted back into flight; like you have to scream to wake up from the nightmare, when bullets whistling through the air have to be forced to change direction. Polina screams the scream of a person falling, a wordless, rising cry. She wants to stop death. It can’t be Maimuna’s time yet!
Polina’s scream has an effect. The dormant women’s eyes
