Yellow People
Published in Issue #30 Translated from Hebrew by Dalya Bilu(Excerpt from a Novel)
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How many stories begin with a lion? A real lion? One with a golden mane, a catlike gaze, a majesty reserved for kings? How many stories?
Very few. So it seems to Oscar. Maybe only one story. Maybe not even that. Most of the stories he knew began completely differently—with a description of one of the characters, for example, or with details of the weather conditions, or words shouted by one of the characters to another on the perilous deck of a ship, or by an impressive sentence such as “Once upon a time there was a tiger with three heads,” immediately followed by an explanation of how that exotic tiger, who was in fact an ensorcelled prince, was just about to cast off the spell and marry the beautiful flower princess. And his new story? The amazing, hair-raising adventure story he has wanted to tell ever since he could remember? For now, it doesn’t begin with a lion, and to tell the truth it doesn’t begin at all because Oscar, in spite of the electricity flowing into his left hand and making it tingle, and even though potential plot lines ran through his head all night, is unable to produce a single word.
For three hours now he has been in this state. Agitated. Tense. Blocked. All night long he lay awake and now too, sitting on the pavement, he can’t sleep. It doesn’t help to look at the clouds, as he sometimes does, searching for a hint, a clue....
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