“Hey, now I understand!” Ulrike suddenly exclaims. “We died long before we ever came here! We just thought we were still alive. We were wandering around the world like that guy Bruce Willis played, you know, in that horror movie . . .”
Polina’s mouth hangs open in surprise. She didn’t see this transition coming. Even Ulrike hasn’t pondered it; the realization just flares within her, and the words come instantly. Ulrike searches for the name of the film, and a brightness resembling remembrance is somewhere near, but not in her; something definitive and sure drips with surging power toward her from just a step away . . . from Nina. Yes. Something floods from Nina toward Ulrike, something which at first is difficult to grasp, something delicate and strange, but then, suddenly, snap, utterly personal and bright and sure: “It was The Sixth Sense. Now I remember, and Bruce Willis played a shrink who’s dead but doesn’t realize it! It’s the perfect Swedenborgian film! Or The Others, the one with Nicole Kidman . . . The mother, her light-sensitive children, and the whole horrible tragedy, and the viewer doesn’t realize they’re dead any more than they do!”
Ulrike goes silent, sinking into thought. So when did she start to be dead? Did she remember any situations where others couldn’t see her? Did people see through her on the street? Did she go home without trading news with anyone? Did she wander around the Eagle’s Nest in front of customers with blank expressions in a strange silence? Did dishes, coffee cups, and cakes rise into the air in her dead grasp . . . ?
“Well,” Polina says, waking Ulrike from her reverie, “what if we vote now? Can we explain our current state using Swedenborg’s celestial doctrine? Let me give a brief review: we died, we unknowingly passed through an intermediate stage, which was a place like the world of the living, and now we are in the ‘state of the inner self’, we have become our own thoughts and our own wills, and our bodies have ceased to hinder us. Shlomith suggested that we’re in hell. On the other hand, we’ve been very quick to learn and very industrious here. We built this house around us and started a fire in the fireplace. So why couldn’t we also be in heaven? Left hands up everyone who believes the hell hypothesis! Right, if you believe we’re in heaven. And if you think Emanuel’s visions are just the ravings of a deranged mind, don’t raise your hands at all.”
There it is. The straw. The magic has gone. She shouldn’t have said that. “Don’t raise your hands at all.” Of course Emanuel was a crazy head. Of course his visions were ravings. Of course they have wasted their time, whatever that might be here now. All the enthusiasm and attentiveness has gone to waste because of one poorly chosen phrase: “Don’t raise your hands at all.” Polina realized her error the instant she said that last word, but it was too late. Would the curse never end? Everything had been so beautiful, so like a dream. She had shone, and now she, she alone, had deflated the dream. A sullen, unwelcoming expression appears on the women’s faces, the resentful, wrinkled mug of a small child who’s been cheated in such a way to injure her down to her very heartstrings. In hell, in heaven: all a sham.
And not a single hand goes up.
SHLOMITH’S EXPERIMENTAL LIFE
“In hell.” That was how Shlomith answered Polina’s question before the spell faded, and it was her firm opinion, not a joke or a game: they were in hell and that was that. However, it is necessary to stop at this point, because, as is well known, there is no direct reference to heaven or hell in the Pentateuch, and it is not easy to find a Jewish scholar these days who believes in messianic redemption, resurrection, or any otherworldly inventions—no, not if you should search all the synagogues of the world. Although Shlomith had been a passionate atheist since the age of sixteen, she knew her background like her own pockets, and she never made accidental mistakes. She dug out the dogma and placed it on the table and made contact with it; she dug out the belief and mocked it as necessary, but she didn’t make mistakes. That was not her style. The older she became, the greater her longing for nuance grew. She loved contradictions, and she didn’t fear conflict. She stood before humanity and placed her art on display, her culture, the most important raw material for her art, from which she drew compulsively some said, shamelessly and blasphemously said the orthodox. They hated her and organized protests in front of the museums and galleries, the places where she performed. They infiltrated the art-hungry crowd and pelted her with rotten eggs, but the eggs weren’t enough. Those white, sulphuric bombs were only a prelude, because Shlomith also began to receive death threats. The first one came in 1979 and was a ludicrous pasting together of letters from newspaper headlines: BITCH YOU’RE AN INSTRUMENT OF SATAN YOU OUGHT TO DIE!!! Shlomith smirked at this, almost feeling pride. She had now reached this point and joined those privileged few who were doomed to die for their art. She used the folded sheet of paper, which was stiff with glue, as part of her next performance, in which she burned certain books in a kiln constructed in the gallery space from red bricks. The death threat went into the fire, along with everything else as soon as she had read it aloud. It was the last piece of paper
