Painting

The plane was flying over the ocean, and I was flying in it, clinging to the armrests. I was not a bird in a previous life. Or maybe it was, and something terrible interrupted the flight. And from that moment on, the soul kept the feeling. The terrible inevitability of the rapidly approaching earth, unbearable nausea that stopped breathing, and fear that stopped the heart. The fear of heights is innate in me.

I don’t like elevators and I always prefer flights of stairs, because the stairs are stable, although tedious, and the elevator is a slide and hover in the air, in a plane that can’t be touched, which means you can’t trust. I don't find anything attractive in the mountains. That is, I do not deny their extraordinary snow-sun beauty and romance, but this beauty is too cold, uncomfortable and requires too much effort to enjoy it. Is it the sea? However, in the state where I live, it is better to keep such thoughts to yourself. The Rocky Mountains are sacred to the people of Colorado.

While on the plane, I kind of become a part of it, sensitively reacting to the slightest changes in the noise of the engines, the twitching of the wings and sudden exhausting turbulent shudders and hurls. I treat him as a living being, despicable for flattery, and therefore mentally ingratiate myself, begging not to break. And then there is He, with whom I have found a special way to communicate. As I take off and land, I try to close my eyes so that I can see a bright spot in the dark. And if you can do that, then temporary contact is established and He can be asked for mercy.

That flight to Israel was my second transatlantic flight in my life. The first, Moscow-New York, left the most unpleasant memories for many reasons. After that, I didn't fly for four years, and it was only our move to Denver that forced me to get on a plane to get off the ground and experience the vile feeling of helplessness and fear again.

The decision to go to Israel is mature, but the real opportunity appeared only in the 99th year. The tickets were bought three months before the trip, and all the while I was literally waiting for her, anticipating the long-awaited encounter with friends, the Mediterranean Sea and a land I had never seen but always considered mine. However, in proportion to the approach of the day of the trip, my pre-plane fears grew. So for the last couple of weeks, I've barely slept, and I've been in this agitated, depressed state of being on a plane. “My vacation starts the minute I get on the plane,” says a childhood friend. The work, though temporary, remained down there, under the clouds, with the boss and his pranks, along with all the other problems. Now it’s time for me to rest and the plane is a great place to start relaxing and feeling human.

I decided to relax and took sleeping pills. Everyone was sleeping: my husband, my daughter and son, numerous Arab children with their mothers wrapped in black crows, and no less numerous Jewish children who had dressed their slightly more colorful mothers. Convulsively squeezed into the chair, I sat in a semi-dark plane, illuminated only by the scant light of the duty light, waited for the action of the pill, taken three hours ago, and felt like a watchdog angel, carrying a forced service to protect the aircraft and its passengers.

There are happy people who can sleep at any time and under any circumstances. For example, many years ago in Chisinau, we had a friend who managed to sleep through a strong, seven-point earthquake. It was a late summer evening. I must say that Sasha spent this whole Sunday afternoon helping his mother-in-law to make twists for the winter. Well, as it should be, givech, blue and, of course, pickles. By night, fleeing from the stuffiness and kitchen steam, he lay down to rest on the loggia, having previously closed tightly from the inside. (And they lived on the first floor.) At about 11, there was a first shock, and within ten minutes the whole city, at least the whole walking part of the population, was on the street. But Sasha was asleep. For a time, Sasha's wife and her parents overlooked his absence as they were busy with five-year-old Evelina. When, having safely escaped from the undulating house, they ran away to a safe distance and took a breath, the neighbor sympathetically asked Milka: “Does your husband not sleep at home today?” She gasped and rushed to the house, but then again shook, and in front of the numb tenants, the loggia with Sasha sleeping on it slightly separated from the wall and slowly slid onto the lawn.

- Sasha! - Mother-in-law voiced. - Get out now!

- He would have gone out if he could, his father-in-law remarked grimly.

- Sasha! – already in two voices shouted Milochka and mother.

- Dad doesn’t like to be woken up, Evelina said. At this moment, the head of a sleepy, dissatisfied Sasha finally protruded from the balcony. On his head there is an impressive lump.

- Sasha, did you fall a brick on your head? - Inquired mother-in-law.

- No, Mom. It's your cucumber cans falling on my head. Honestly, it's impossible to rest. You've already gone to bed on the balcony.

- What do I have to do with it? – Mother-in-law weighed. - Earthquake! We almost died here. And he sleeps like an elephant!

- You still say that the war has begun! – barked Sasha and thundered the glass.

- I told you, Dad doesn’t like to be woken up, Evelina said.

I would like to have this ability to relax, but unfortunately I do not. On the contrary, I still manage to bring everyone around to a nervous state. One day we were returning from California, and flying over the Rocky Mountains, got into a thunderstorm. The plane was shaking, but the people did not react much and slept peacefully... until I noticed that the right wing, in my opinion, somehow unusually functioning. At first, I stared hard, trying to understand the sequence of these strange twitches and turns. But not finding an explanation for this, I began to look around energetically and say to myself: “Hmm, very strange. As long as I’ve been flying, I’ve never seen this.

Of course, noticing my fidgeting and whispering, a flight attendant went to me, with whom I immediately and already in full voice shared my fears. Here, passengers were not up to sleep: someone noticeably tense, someone urgently wanted to go to the toilet, some began to meticulously compare the synchronicity of the work of both wings, and especially impressionable even managed to discuss the statistics and causes of plane crashes in recent years. The flight attendant gave me an oblique smile and said, ‘That’s how wings should work. Don't create panic.

My husband looked at me reproachfully and shamed me: ‘Well, you don’t give yourself or people peace. "

And this time, I was silent. Besides, I didn't eat or drink. All the way. All fourteen hours.

But everything comes to an end, and when the chassis still touched the concrete strip, I immediately came to life and rushed to the wild - only now, on the other side of the plane, the countdown of the long-awaited journey began.

From the first minute I felt at home. Such a strange, ambivalent feeling: they speak an incomprehensible language around you, and for some reason you are sure that you just forgot this laryngeal language many generations ago, but here you will stay for a little more time - and you will certainly remember it, how people who emerged from amnesia suddenly remember their past.

Our hotel in Tel Aviv on the beach... A long time ago, in a package from the Joint, along with an artificial tan, we received a color photo album, Meet Israel. (I still keep it.) It was written under one of the pictures. Tel Aviv, the waterfront. On it, an unfinished semicircle stood white-stone hotels, and in front of them sand and a strip of sea, slightly blocked by freshly painted fungi. I went to the sun-drenched back porch of Marriott and gasped: here it is, this beach sandwiched between ribbed hotels and serene blue sea. Same trampled sand, same fungi, probably the same, but already grown children, and I appeared in this picture from another dimension. And when I went down three hot steps and came to the water, the photo became panoramic: the sea was everywhere, and behind the strip of skyscrapers there was a view of Jaffa - bizarre houses with flat roofs and boats moored under them. It was then that I had a distinct sense of displacement, of the uncertainty of space and time, which had not left me for the next ten days.

That night I hardly slept – I stood on the balcony until three o’clock and watched the crowds of people on the waterfront, in crowded restaurants under tents. Down there, life was boiling, from which I had become so weary in the silence after six o'clock in the evening Denver. Only in the morning the embankment gradually emptied, and I still could not fall asleep – from an oversaturated solution of impressions and the realization of boundless happiness. It remained with me in a short colored dream: lying on the sand facing the sea, I touched, rubbed between my fingers the white scallops of waves. And then a dark raindrop fell on my palm. There's another on her chest. As they crawled, they were heavy, causing pain, and when breathing became impossible, I woke up. My heart was beating somewhere outside my cramped body. Looking at my convulsed fingers, playing with the waves a few seconds ago, I realized that the line separating reality from the unnamed substance was very blurred, and that the shaky line could sometimes open to let the wandering soul in and then push it back in confusion and slurred anguish. Between spasms, I tried to figure out what was happening to me. And if the gaps between them were shorter, I might have guessed that the panic attack that took me by surprise was nothing more than the post-reaction of my body to a 14-hour flight and all the prior fears. But as you know, fear creates even more fear. Therefore, my mental activity at that time was limited to only one intrusive conclusion - that is, the Jewish happiness - to suffocate from this very happiness in the land of ancestors, in order to spoil everyone's rest.

Within an hour, my friends and I were on our way to the hospital. To be honest, it wasn’t my plan to get to know the country and its customs from the inside out, and certainly not as an ambulance patient.

Tel Aviv hospital with its crowded and many hours of waiting strongly resembled the bus station. Except the people were clearly more sociable. Patients discussed their symptoms with each other, analyzed their development, and for those who were not able or in the mood to talk, this was done by relatives who came with them. There were many Russians around, and the whole atmosphere resembled gatherings, when complaining and at the same time encouraging each other, people are distracted from pain and anxiety.

Sitting next to us were two elderly women, beautiful “Russian Jews.” One is full-breasted, with a neat, large permanent, the other is smaller, with thinned reddish hair and a strange for her age bangs, in the probe of which a strong gray hair appeared. I did not know which of them was the patient and which was the accompanying one, as they both waited patiently, without the slightest sign of irritation, for their turn. They talked about life and death. And the one with the bangs, the voice was like a trumpet of Jericho. She argued that everyone should have the right to die when he decides to do so. For example, doctors should give everyone six pills (why six, not three, or even one for simplicity?), and if a person finds out that he is terminally ill and doomed to suffering, he will simply take these tablets issued beforehand – and that’s it. Do not suffer from unbearable pain and torment others. And literally, in the same breath, "Zina, do you like olives?" And olives and bread? Yeah? So I’ll buy you a sandwich, and she climbed vigorously into the bag. For the next ten minutes, Zina focused on chewing the sandwich along with the information she received, and then thoughtfully said, You are right, Paradise, only these pills should have a long shelf life. "

Whether the realization that the necessary help is here, at arm's length, or by itself this oversaturated human solution gave me confidence, but after three hours of waiting I felt much better, and then I was called to a room separated by a twitching screen. A doctor appeared, judging by his name, an Arab. Jewish happiness is not enough. And then it just stepped on its heels. That's the truth, successful - to come to Israel, to a country that is famous for its medicine all over the world and get to the Arab doctor! He spoke English with difficulty, painfully choosing words. Given this circumstance, I tried to explain to him as easily as possible what had happened. It took a long time to grind my stomach, for some reason in the area of the remote appendix fifteen years ago. Then he summoned the nurse and, with a gesture that left no doubt about his brutal intentions, pointed to an enema hanging from the wall. I said I categorically refuse to do an enema.

- Is he still there? the doctor asked anxiously, pointing his finger at my stomach.

- Who?

- He's an animal.

It occurred to me that the doctor had mistook the word enema (enema) for animal (animal) and had therefore decided that a certain animal had settled in my stomach, which was the reason for my visit to the hospital. It was at that moment that an incomprehensible disease let me go: I began to laugh, to colic, to tears. The nurse who delivered the gurney on which I was to be taken to the X-ray office to study the gastric monster, looked at my shaking body with bewilderment and some regret (as they look at the mentally ill). To top it all off, there was a creaking voice from the side of the screen: “Have respect, I’m about to start looking into the rectum, and because of you, I can’t concentrate.” I couldn’t laugh anymore, I just groaned, holding my stomach. In this state, I was seen by another doctor, this time a Russian. In Hebrew, he exchanged a few words with an Arab and looked at me sternly and said, ‘Tourists, eh? What, we have nothing else to see here besides the hospital? Find a place to make a circus! Involuntarily continuing to grunt, I brought him up to date, and when I got to the enema-animal part directly, his eyes suddenly stained with Jewish sadness and he said: You are lucky that he did not schedule an urgent operation to extract this very beast. He's a good doctor if he cured you so quickly. I don't know, really. Three hundred and fifty dollars, I cheerfully finished his thought, looking at the bill.

That's why we left the hospital. Just in case, the following days I sat on a diet, eating mostly amazing Israeli brynza, olives, tomatoes and juicy long apples, reminiscent of a long forgotten antonovka. The whole story, which was not very important at the time, continued, and its second phase came the day after our return from Israel.

This time the journey from the Tel Aviv hotel to the door of our house took twenty-three hours. Sitting at the airport, I tried my best not to think about the upcoming flight, to block my imagination, stubbornly drawing the picture.

The night sky and our plane cutting through the muddy glass wool of thick clouds. I revisited everything I saw in Israel: our endless excursions, the sun-drenched beaches, the winding streets of Acre winding the way up to Jerusalem, and the city itself, suddenly opening up from the hill like a truth revealed after wandering. I thought these happy memories would be enough for me to go back. And then I heard the conversation. Actually, it was a monologue, because the elderly man, who was located opposite him, though he looked at his interlocutor, but rather turned to himself.

- No, just imagine, he was rummaging through closets. Looking for hidden money. I knew that old people have a habit of putting ten or two towels under a pile there, or in the pocket of an old showerer. Then they forget...

They find it, they rejoice. Well, he was happy. There's a couple shekels, there's a stash. And this is the day after the funeral, instead of sitting Shiva, when the soul has not yet severed ties with the body and, returning, mourns it. What did this soul see? A nephew digging in his underwear. So you tell me where he is, this peace?

- It is not for me to tell you, his interlocutor entered, when a person wants to fall into the mud, no one can restrain him.

- True," sighed the first, "but this nephew with all his sins flies with us in the same plane. Do you think his sins won't bring the plane to the ground ahead of time?

Landed. And it happened again: a sleepless flight, unsuccessful attempts to relax with pills and an ambulance, already in Denver. Local doctors carefully conducted all the tests, checked everything possible, but found nothing. In the winter, I will be diagnosed correctly. And then I was quietly under an IV, and strange things were happening to me. I saw, or in this case I should say, I was dreaming. Yes, I did, because it was an unusual dream, unfolding like a canvas of a picture.

I saw the road and a short caravan walking along it, chased by several women in long dark robes. They walked along a low hedge, past two-storey houses with balconies, along a narrow curved street paved with a cobblestone covered with a touch of sand. It darkened, and the blue of the southern sky was replaced by a deep blue. The caravan was moving in complete silence. I was flying over it and wondering how inaudible the animals were. The air was very warm and smelled of flowers.

For some reason, I was sure that I was in Israel, even though the place was unfamiliar to me. I was not a lost stranger, but on the contrary, I felt completely involved in what was happening. I was very comfortable and interesting in this state of soaring.

But then something got in the way of my flight. An unpleasant, repetitive sound burst into my dream, and the picture began to tear like an old film, until it disappeared altogether. Very dissatisfied, I opened my eyes and realized that the annoying sound was coming from a blood pressure monitor. The nurse was magic on the IV.

- “You had a very low blood pressure, below the acceptable level,” my husband said, “and they couldn’t bring you back to your senses.” There was almost no breathing. Besides, you obviously didn't want to wake up and the whole time they were slowing you down, you tried to tighten your eyes.

I looked at the pinch that was squeezing my finger, and it was a thin wire that connected hospital reality to the reality of the vision for a few minutes, and I said, "That's true." I looked It's a very unusual dream. I flew in it, and it was good and not at all scary. Why couldn't you just leave me there for a little while?

Years have passed since then, but unlike many other dreams, which usually faded and faded easily from memory, supplanted by the dawn and bustle of life, this one has survived in minute detail, perhaps because I have told it many times to friends and acquaintances. I’m not even sure if it was a dream at all, because I still have a sense of moving to another dimension and, most amazingly, a sense of the naturalness of that state.

And as confirmation, late last fall, this story suddenly got a sequel when in the strangest way a virtual bridge spread from Israel into my present life.

That day, as usual during my lunch break, I went online, checked my emails, and then went to Google and for some reason started wandering around Israeli art galleries. And all of a sudden, I saw that picture. It was so unexpected that for a few minutes I just sat staring at the monitor. The same narrow, winding street flowing from the past to the future, the same alert serenity spilled in the evening air. But there is no caravan: apparently, it has already passed, leaving no traces on the pavement erased for centuries.

Lanes of Safed is what Moshe Yair called his painting. In general, I had no doubt that the place I saw in a semi-conscious state did exist, or at least existed. I was pretty sure it was in Israel, but Safed? All my knowledge of this city was limited to the casual phrase of my friend from Beersheba that Safed is a city of artists and that she acquired several paintings there. Moreover, to my shame, I did not even know that Safed and Seyfed were the same thing. Now I had to learn as much as possible about this place hidden in the mountains of Galilee. I found that it was because of its location that Safed remained a well-hidden, secret place even for most Israelis. According to the great Jewish theologians of the past, on his way to Jerusalem, the Messiah will pass through Safed. And the great Kabbalist Ari HaKodesh said that until the third temple is finally built, it is above Safed that the presence of G-d will be most strongly felt. Safed, together with Hebron, Jerusalem and Tiberias, represents one of the four holy sites of Israel. It symbolizes the air and, as Zohar, one of the founders of Jewish mysticism, points out, the air of Safed is the cleanest in Israel. Rebbe Menachem Mendel, who founded a Hasidic community in Safed, was forced to leave, explaining that because of the extraordinary purity and sanctity of the air, he constantly heard heavenly voices that disturbed his sleep. I also learned that in the 16th century, numerous prominent religious scholars migrated to Safed from Spain, fleeing the Inquisition, and it was then that the city became the spiritual center of the Jewish world, where the Kabbalah flourished.

Moshe Yair is a descendant of seventh-generation Spanish refugees. His family was directly involved in the construction of Safed, and

His great-grandfather, Rabbi Moshe Rahamim, built a synagogue there 400 years ago, where Moshe Jr. still prays today. It is located in the old part of the city, which is a narrow, cobblestone streets along which are crowded numerous art galleries, medieval synagogues, living yards and private houses. In short, it was there that, in some inexplicable way, my sick imagination carried me.

Every day I opened the Internet, peered into the picture, and each time I was overcome by a strange feeling of belonging to this place. Moreover, the frame of the picture did not limit its range at all, because I perfectly remembered what was beyond the space outlined by it: I was looking at it from above.

Finally, I sent Moshe Yair an email. There was no answer for a long time – a few weeks. And then, suddenly, the answer came :

"Sorry, I was at camp." And I remembered, reading very scanty information about Moses, I came across a mention that he served six years as a navigator in the air force.

The Internet is incredibly time saving. No more mail messengers, shaky trains, planes stuck because of bad weather and clumsy ocean liners. Just a few clicks of a button is enough to negotiate everything.

One of the first days of spring, when I got back from work and walked into the living room, I felt a change. At first I could not understand what was going on, but when I saw the mysterious faces of my children and my husband, I looked around, raised my eyes and saw a picture on the wall. On the table is a receipt and a note in English: “Zoya, Shalom.” This is the painting you've asked for. This is the painting of the Holy City of Safed. Thank you for everything.

– Moshe Yair.”

* Hello. Here's the painting you asked for. I hope you like her. This is a view of the Holy City of Safed. Thanks for everything.

Zoe Master.