RAIN DANCE

CONTINUED from Zamfir.

Download this soundtrack . It has nothing to do with the text, just to prove that Rotem still has no taste.

'Get in!' she yells. The rain is wilder and the water looks dirty and rough.
'I'd rather keep my health intact,' I call back, realizing an instant later what a faux pas this was.
'Bitch!' she laughs, spraying my feet. She flaps about in the cold, in the waters that once carried her vomit and blood. But you never step into the same river twice.

A million of buzzing questions, and instead, I sit on a mossy slab of rock under an enormous willow umbrella. She climbs out, shaking her head like a dog, peeling off her shirt and wringing it in the rain.
She pulls on her boxers and pants, and stretches down beside me on the flat rock, dripping like an animal and as happy as a cub.

'I don't see the point of exposing different portions of yourself to the rain.'
She chuckles. 'You sound like Sara.'
'Shut up.'
She watches me. 'You've grown.'
'So have you,' I say, but when she cocks her head I decide she hasn't, and tell her so. 'You still have to up-to-no-good smirk.'
'I'm nearly 20,' she says proudly. 'I've spent so much energy reaching these digits, I forgot to grow up.' I giggle even though it's mighty dispiriting.

I watch her profile as she bends over to tie her laces, face submerged in shadows. I can stare comfortably, as she is lost in thought. Her expression seems sad; I know her body but now it shows unfamiliar scars.
There is one right where the bra strap goes, a cleft of dark skin - that's new. And one beneath her shoulder, rather twisted. I noticed the old ones when she leaped into the water: the slash at the buttock, the jagged cut down her back ribs, where the weapon must've bounced off as it cracked each bone, and the straight line down her thigh. This is what I want Vidoo to witness: an unwilling cutter. No, cuttee. Acts of external violence, violation of a perfect soft curve and a child's bone. Rotem would never damage herself.

When I think of child abuse I think of brittle bone crushed by a massive hand. Tiny skeleton, like a chick's or a rodent's, crumbling. I think of Rotem as a small child, the one I saw in the photos: tiny hands and feet, big bald head with huge hazel eyes, black Bermudas and a Bart Simpson tee. Striking forehead, a pout, a silence, an anger, add a slingshot if you will. I think of her pulverized under the violence of another colossus and my mind hurts. She does emit some enfant terrible airs, but maybe the bad-tomboy-on-the-block look is a cover-up façade of a more terrifying act.

The rain ceases as we begin our ascent uphill.
'You never told me why you came to Norham.'
Striding by, she plucks a tall weed. 'So I could meet you and the gang.'
'No, not the effects, the cause.'
'Cosmic predestination. An urge to celebrate Guy Fawkes' Day. I have no reason.'
'You suck as a bullshit artist.'
She turns around in her tracks to face me, spraying dew. 'Fine. I came to quit drugs. On my own. Among other things.'
I smile. 'Figured as much. What other things?'
'Alcohol. I needed to rehab myself undisturbed by authority.'
'What other things?' I repeat.
She doesn't reply. The grass is beaded with droplets which turn into mist as we pass.

In the car, she switches on the engine, and fixes a shot to a permanently-plastered contraption on her right arm. Then she rummages behind our seats, fishes a bag of blood, hangs it from the rearview mirror, spins the clear cord and mainlines it into her left arm. It's so macabre I feel dizzy.
She leans her head back.
'Some shit happened the Spring before Norham. Somebody died. I almost got arrested for possession, and I had a huge bout of alcohol poisoning.'
'You were 14?' She nods. 'So you were also gang-raped.'
'Nah, that happened at the end of that Summer. So by Springtime, I thought I was a survivor. Then everything crashed again and I had legal trouble. I was disowned. I knew no one could blow my cover at some crumbling godforsaken theological convent.'

'But you were carrying a few good kilos of shit. Why did you do that?'
'It wasn't mine,' she replies simply.
I remember discovering the nature of the heroin sachets hidden at the bottom of 6 grand Cadbury's cocoa cans, Rotem crying furiously because the principal ordered her to return the tins to the kitchens.
'And you thought it was some cursed smack or something.'
She grins. 'I didn't. But I needed your help, good pagan.'
'It was cursed! It got us into deep trouble.'
'I should really apologize to you about that,' Rotem frowns.
'Never mind. Now it all seems very funny, looking back.'
'The only amusing piece was selling it to that Aberdeen freak.'
I laughed, because I can still tangibly recall the relief. She never thought she could get rid of that crap that easily. 'You hummed Chariots of Fire all the way back to Norham.'
'No I didn't! I hate that tune. It's King of Geeky Themes.'
'You did too. Bellowed, actually.' And I have a flashback of a girl flashing a huge smile, skipping down red-brick alleys, hollering Chariots of Fire and splashing through all the greasy-rainbow puddles.

'If you come with me after Passover, I will tell you what happened pre-Norham.'
'Where?'
'Come to Germany, for a week or two.'
I shake my head. 'You keep doing that. You keep driving me into spontaneous decisions which could –'
'What?' she interrupts. 'Paralyze your career? I got you the bloody job – not to boast or anything, however you could afford a vacation, lest you'll burn out. And hey, I promised Vidoo to show her around Amsterdam. She wanted to see where one may order it with eggs.'
'Wasted maggot. Ok, ok, then what?'
'We'll stay at my grandfather's house in Frankfurt until UNICEF dispatches me again.'
I grimace. I hate that house. But information requires a trade system, and I will do anything for a piece of Rotem history.