When people stopped falling out of the sky, the day of Gehenna, I took an embassy car and drove out to the suburb past Neve Tsedek, where my parents lived. Driving was difficult downtown, streets clotted with cars that had gone out of control as their drivers died. Some automatic cars were stalled, pushing against piles of metal and flesh. I tried not to drive over bodies, but it was impossible. I saw perhaps fifty people walking or standing in all of downtown Tel Aviv, sharing with me the inexplicable gift of life.

On the thruway there were long stretches of uninterrupted pavement, and then immense pileups, surrounded by empty undamaged cars. Of course people would stop, then open their doors and take one breath of unfiltered air.

My mother’s neighborhood looked unaffected, except for a few cars oddly parked in yards or in the middle of the street. There were no people about, but that could have been normal.

The front door was unlocked. I called for her, and, of course, there was no answer.

I found her in the kitchen, lying on her back in a tidal pool of blood. The door to the garden had been kicked down from the outside.

A nurse by training, combat nurse by politics, she had rushed to the knife rack and snatched a razor-sharp Toledo steel paring knife, a souvenir from Spain that she used daily and kept keen. A straw in her left hand, she had tried to give herself an emergency tracheotomy. Then nicked an artery, a carotid artery. Of course the tracheotomy wouldn’t have helped.

She wrote in blood on a white plastic cutting board CAN’T EXHALE, with a drying fingerprint apostrophe. She had always been careful about grammar.

Too much blood in this life.

Chapter 15 - SEX AND VIOLENCE

15

SEX AND VIOLENCE

2 September 2088

This was a very interesting day for observing humans. I didn’t witness the precipitating incident last night but have reconstructed it from several accounts, including Snowbird’s interpretation. She is closer to Carmen than I am, and Carmen saw much of it.

Apparently Elza and Moonboy were mating (or “fucking,” to be more accurate), an intimacy outside their traditional pairing and tripling but not forbidden. Something went seriously wrong, and Moonboy struck Elza with such force that he caused a serious injury to her face. Then he went back to his own area, leaving Elza alone and bleeding.

Carmen saw that she was in trouble and came to her aid. Elza is a doctor, but perhaps with only two hands had trouble treating herself.

I heard the noise when other humans became involved and watched from a distance I hoped was polite. It was fascinating.