A Peaceful Way to Go

The dirt filled the gap between the tip of my bony finger and my sharp, long, and twisted fingernails. I’ve been running away for too long. I heard the sirens coming, but stayed in my place. Keep digging. As if I could hide myself in the dark hole. It was almost two meters deep now. I had always been methodical. The body would fit in well. Its stench awoke me from my musings. My last victim.

“Turn around,” the officers said. I could feel the metal barrels raised against my back. Yes, there were a few. The hardened barrel of the M-16 rifles pushed against my ribs. I could taste the metal in my mouth. As if I hadn’t tasted that before.

“It’s over,” I whispered. I kept my head down, looking at the hole. My reign of terror was over. I had planned it that way, of course. I did not fight against the smile that slowly took place across my face. The end of the Killer of Markov Street. I learned later about that name as I sat in my jail cell and truly tasted metal. Repentance will come. The voices said. At the end, it did.

My reign was strictly confined to Garisheva, the Pearl Village. It perched on a hill in the middle of the Jerusalem forest. I dismantled it with terror. The streets had been lush. Teeming with life and packs of children running one after the other in sporadic, uncalculated paths. I was not like that as a child, but my son was. He could have been friends with those boys.

My Yiftach. The name reverberates against a dark hollow surface inside me, where the echoes ring in emptiness. At least the bleak despair was soon to be over. I kept digging with my nails. They yelled some more and beat my back with heavy batons. I tasted blood from the inside of my mouth, then I saw it dripping - dark red from my long black hair. Soon enough, I was lying face up on the ground. I reached out my skeletal hand to scratch at the grave. Rain poured over my blood-soaked face, the late coming of Fall. October, my favorite month. Numbness took over and my vision was blotted with black shapes that gradually increased towards one another until they were one.

✷

At last, I was convicted. The killer of Markov…. Finally caught!…. The screams of victim’s families. Curses and heavenly wishes for my death, my head, my blood. Screams inches away from my face felt distant, as if there was a thin sheet blocking the air. Killed twenty-eight victims…

You did the right thing. The voices still whispered, but now they were softer than before. Then silence again. As if life itself kept away from my reach. Convicted to death… another rare smile upon my lips, the second one since… since my boy.

The oppressive weight of cowardice crushed me. Not the cheers and the rants of the courts. The plastic cups of beer and the trash thrown at me outside the courthouse. The guilt. _Remember? _ the voices again. Remember how you cowered?

Soon, the ghastly dream that did not fail to molest me for ten years, every night since Yackov’s death, slowly disintegrated as the days passed by. Sleep became more bearable. My other dreams faded as well, as if they had found their place in the dungeon underneath the Holy City or my Unholy heart. For a moment, I had doubts. Maybe I should go on living?

Though the ghastly dream was less vivid now, I could not forget those words that floated above me, or within me, over and over, in the dream. In Hell, you may reap and toil for your sins. Reap, toil, and suffer. I wanted badly to rectify before leaving this world.

✷

The day came. I was led out of my cell in the dungeon. How long had it been? I bent my head down and walked straight ahead. My clothes were soaked with water. There were holes in the ceiling in my cell and the winter rain dripped and wet every surface in the cell, so that I lay down on a wet bed and my clothes were scattered on the wet floor. I walked on the cold stones of the Jerusalem dungeon. Wet, they too were wet. A cold bucket of water hit my face. I kept my head down. My skin was cold.

Like the skin of my victims.

Above the stairs the ground was dry and warm, but it was the same stones under my feet, I felt the curvatures, the small holes, and the uneven surface. The warmth hugged my feet, it was a summer warmth in the midst of winter, probably the sunny day that usually follows a storm. It was a beautiful day.

I saw the crowd cheering, but all I felt was silence. At last, I raised my head as I heard the axe slice through the thin, dry air. I saw the face of my boy, Yiftach. His eyes were beautiful, like my own. The tear that longed for ten years to disperse from my face finally did, but it never left the round surface of my brown eye.