Dinner at the Center of the Earth

by Nathan Englander

“It’s Israel. We let the murderers come home on weekends. You could kill a dozen people and they’d let you out to dance at your kid’s wedding. No sale.”

She would recount the tale of King Saul’s visit to the Witch of Ein Dor, of Elijah appearing at the cave of Shimon bar Yochai. Her point was that spirits far more removed than his have long, in this land, returned to advise. That before Heaven and before Hell, before those newfangled Christian notions became all the rage, there was another place where souls rested after life was done. The good and bad penned up together without judgment, and always within reach for counsel.

With a practiced motion, as if he’s done it a million times before, his arm swings up, and the hand—the hand with which Z now covers his own mouth—slides up across his head, as if smoothing out his hair. In one perfect action, the yarmulke is gone, palmed, and slipped into the pocket, where it’s swapped out for the chocolate. Suddenly, like that, Z is as Gentile as them. He feels it, because he has become it.

It’s the phones, isn’t it! You show up with your business. You show up with free money, just when we need. Computers when we need. And I take them. I take your fucking refurbished phones. And I get them to my people in Gaza. And now my brother, and all those near him, are dead.”

The focus of the students—as with all universities the universe over—resting on the twin pillars of learning and getting laid.