The Floater
The white sunlight filtered through the awning of the outdoor café, and reached Simeon’s lightly colored table in spots; they lay gently atop his glass of coffee, ashtray, and packets of sugar like thick, acrylic brushstrokes dabbed onto his field of view in the impressionist impasto style. The occasional gust of wind rippled the awning, sending these bright spots crawling up his face and arms momentarily; their brief presence on his skin warmed him in small, tickling doses. But mostly, the café was shaded from the sun on both sides, sneaked away in the back of an alleyway between two large hotels. He had arrived not a day earlier from Tel Aviv, where he had gotten notice of a summer job from a friend—‘Dead Sea lifeguard needed in Ein Bokek. The Leonardo Club, four shekel an hour, rooming provided’—it was less than minimum wage, but he didn’t mind much; Ein Bokek was a quiet resort city he had been once or twice as a child, and it was somewhere to live for the summer aside from his childhood room, still embarrassingly coated in school awards and crayoned drawings, which haunted him at night from all sides.
He sat with his eyes relaxed but wide open at the Dead Sea down below. From the entrance of the café, which was built into the side of a large, clay hill—as the sea was surrounded on all sides by large mountains—a dirt road winded all the way down to the base of the tiny sea. Simeon hadn’t seen the sea in ages; he forgot how light it was, especially during the day when it reflected the white, cloudless rays of the sun. It was only tangentially blue, and had one not know what color large bodies of water were supposed to be, one may not have even noticed its slight, dusty blue tinge, and thought the whole thing white. There were hardly any beachgoers, too, it seemed.
He then took a large breath of the moist, salty air—palpably saltier than the Mediterranean—and let the taste linger on his tongue and in his nostrils. It was oddly bitter, and reminded him of something clinical and antiseptic. The salts in the Dead Sea were mostly magnesium and were supposed to have unique, healing properties, at least according to the advertisements pasted all over Tel Aviv, but the thought of rubbing the bitter-scented mud all over his skin made him nauseas. His skin already felt slimy with the moisture.
Instead he rubbed his face with the tips of his fingers, making sure to press hard into his closed eyelids until he saw ringed clouds of flashing color. He released the pressure and looked with renewed sight back over his table, which still flickered with bright snowflakes. The man behind the counter—a stocky Arab with wrinkled skin and fair eyes—was occupied with a newspaper, and Simeon watched him finish the last of his cigarette with a deep, long inhale. He waited for him to exhale before asking him of him directions and the check, but after waiting an unnaturally long time, he had to assume the man swallowed the smoke, else it had all passed directly and completely into his lungs. He seemed now to be breathing normally.
“How do I get to The Leonardo Club from here?” Simeon pulled at the collar of his shirt, a white button down patched with sweat. “And how much for the coffee?”
“Straight down the hill there straight to the shore—” the man waved his arm up from behind his newspaper without looking up, “when you get there, turn right and I think it’s the third or fourth place down the line. But they’re all the same, really. I wouldn’t be too picky if I were you,” he looked up briefly at Simeon and his empty espresso glass, “and it’s seventy-five agorot.”
Simeon fished three copper coins out of his purse and stood up from his table. He brought his emptied glass back to the bar and set the coins down with it.
“They really are all the same, you know,” the man repeated himself, now with his newspaper folded on his lap and his eyes crawling up and down Simeon’s body. “If you’re going to stay down there for a good while, then you’re better off staying at The Oasis or The Dead Sea Motel. They’re almost half the price and will get you the same thing. I mean it’s all the same beach, after all.” There was a brief pause as the man punched his fingers into the cash register. “Are you even hearing what I’m saying?”
Simeon, leaning on the bar, had his head turned towards the shimmering sea down below. “Yeah, yeah—no I’m listening. I’m not staying as a tourist.” There wasn’t a single wave to make out on its whitish surface, “The Leonardo Club needs a lifeguard for their beach this summer; I’m applying for the job.”
“Lifeguard, huh…” he chuckled and pocketed Simeon’s change off the bar, “I forgot they had those here. Don’t work yourself too hard.”
“Yeah, well… thanks for the concern.” Simeon stepped out from underneath the awning into the sunlight and felt the moist heat immediately; he started down the dirt path, and made it about halfway down before needing to undo his top two shirt buttons. Large, white buildings rose quietly like pillars of salt from the clay earth on either side of him, glowing with reflected light. Perhaps it was too early in the season, he thought, noting the vacantness of the streets and the emptiness of the beach down below. Pleasantly surprising to him however, were the handful of beachgoers that became increasingly visible upon his descent. The shoreline was also dotted with palm trees, though clearly they had all been transplanted; he doubted anything could grow in this acrid, salty earth other than the resorts and lampposts.
He reached The Leonardo Club after a short while, which was easy to spot on account of the resort’s size and sign, which in large, red letters read the name out heavenwards. The front desk attendant, a tall woman with crooked teeth and pockmarked cheeks, confirmed that they did, in fact, need a lifeguard, and almost to his surprise, hired him and handed him a ring of keys immediately.
“This one is for your room,” and singled out a small brass key. It wasn’t at The Leonardo Club, but instead a smaller, accessory building a minute or two away, “and this one is for the storage room—for the umbrellas and chairs. You’ll start at six to set them all up, and at five you’ll bring them all back.”
She pointed out the location of the two buildings—the storage house and his living quarters—on a small map under a pane of glass over the countertop.
“Don’t worry if you need to step off the post for a couple of minutes to use the bathroom or eat,” she added a thin smile atop this declaration without baring her teeth, “we haven’t ever really had an accident here, other than the occasional water in the eyes—which by the way is quite painful, I’ve been told—you’ll be just fine taking a little break here or there.” The pay was still four shekel an hour, and he was to start tomorrow morning. Until then, she concluded, he should settle in and explore a little, “you’ll need all the energy you can get!” She chuckled to herself, covering the lower half of her face with her hands clasped together.
He found his living situation quite understated, although truthfully, he conceded, the advertisement didn’t promise much. It consisted of a single room at the end of a long, dimly lit corridor. It barely fit a small kitchenette, and he shared a bathroom with the floor. His only window faced the highway, over which loomed the solemn mountainside. Over them the sun was setting, and the orange light poured over them like a small waterfall, partially illuminating first his floral wallpaper and then the twin-sized bed. He set down his bags and set out for a walk and dinner.
Outside too the streets were lit with this evening light, and the harsh whiteness of the buildings and sea softened up now—he could open his eyes fully without squinting. In it swam many more passersby, as if they had been waiting for the blazing sun to tire itself out and settle into bed. Simeon sought out a place to eat, but until then, enjoyed the presence of many in the street, into which he was able to lose himself. Storeowners were washing their porches off with large mops from the salted air of the day, and tall, attractive people lounged about inside and around lighted bars and restaurants, from which sounds of merriment hummed into the street; between each one, the Dead Sea made her face known in narrow strips, far-off and black.
Simeon stepped into an unnamed bar through a set of old, saloon doors, which rocked back and forth on their hinges for a while after he had pushed his way though. He sat down at a table tucked into a far corner of the room and ordered glass of beer to start. No use in wasting an empty stomach, he thought. A radio loudly sputtered a soccer game on a table near his, sandwiched by three men—who seemed to have had the same idea as Simeon, for their table was covered in empty glasses residued with thin white foam—each covered in dark, curly black hair. Two wore tight-fitting, white tank tops, and the other sported a jean jacket on top of a white T-shirt. All three shared the same enthusiasm for the game, however, and laughed in-between hearty mouthfuls of beer.
From behind the counter, the bartender-and-cook wiped down glasses and plates, and the men occasionally prompted him by name, “Yusef! Another round for the team, please!” At this point I must tread carefully, lest I over-characterize these men as hostile or belligerent, as Simeon had done (a first impression he had made on his way towards his table, and one that they were unlikely to change). Though in truth, despite their drunkenness, they were decisively well behaved, and while perhaps occasionally boorish, were not in the least aggressive.
Yusef poured four beers, and brought them to the table on a tray. He set them down to a round of cheers, and one of them patted him on the back, slipping a few coins into his free hand. Yusef made his way over to Simeon and handed him his own.
“Have anything to eat?” His voice was surprisingly soft; Simeon ordered a plate of hummus and falafel, still eyeing the table of three suspiciously. As the night descended upon the room, the other tables filled up and the soccer game ended. Soon Simeon forgot about the three men, and over his meal and second, heavy glass of beer, his attention turned inwards. Wandering about in quiet reflections, Simeon sank deeper and deeper into his cane-bottom chair.
There were supposed to be periods of ones life built for ‘doing,’ and those much better suited for ‘reflection.’ Most of those his age, he imagined, had placed themselves squarely into this ‘doing’ category, and moved on without much more thought to the matter. Simeon, however, felt as if he had been born straight into this latter category, and therefore, condemned to a permanent state of reminiscing, had been cheated out of the supposed riches and pleasures of youth. Recently, for example, in the throes of his more vulnerable moments, Simeon had gained the habit of reviewing his whole life in a quick, business-like manner. Where he had picked up this practice, exactly, was a mystery. He had heard of the phenomenon before—one’s life ‘flashing before their eyes’—only it had never occurred to him that it could ever happen before the very moment of death, and he wondered why, in what was supposed to be the prime of his ‘doing’ years, had he already begun to compose the transcript of his own life, which often had a very eulogistic character. And so there, in the darkening, salty restaurant, Simeon was deciding that there were very few ‘important’ events that had taken place during the course of his life. The sum of these events, which represented the final tabulation at the end of a long list of accounting, he felt, was frighteningly small. Of course there were events with personal significance, this much at least he conceded to himself. Yes, a minor adventure here and there he acknowledged; his time in the army, for example, or his subsequent trip to Kasol, India—where so many Israeli’s travelled after their service that they called it ‘mini Israel’—indeed constituted experiences that some would call ‘out of the ordinary’, but these were all-in-all predictable, titratable parts of life that, in his back-of-the-envelope calculation, didn’t add up to anything particularly extra-ordinary.
The feeling had only been further confirmed by the events of the day; he suddenly felt greatly ashamed for accepting the position at The Leonardo Club, and wondered if this adventure too was going to appear to him in the future as nothing more than a vacuous waste of time.
Simeon scraped the last remainders of the hummus onto his fork, and with a crust of bread concluded his meal. Between tables collecting plates, he noticed upon looking up from his plate, was a new waitress he hadn’t seen earlier—her shift must’ve just started to help with the influx of patrons looking for refuge in the night. The thought was confirmed when Yusef yelled from behind the counter:
“Aliya! Are you just going to dance around the tables all night or are you going to help me back here?”
She had olive-colored skin and her hair was dark like Yusef’s, almost exactly the same shade—Simeon immediately guessed that she was his daughter—and she wore it up in a high ponytail. With her arms full of glasses and plates, she shuffled quickly back to the bar between tables without a word.
Yusef continued, apparently unimpressed with her alacrity, “or you can ignore me all night—that works too; you’re not very fit for waiting, you know. I wish you’d chosen to do something with your life, or at least gotten married! A husband would do you a lot of good you know!” She rolled her eyes. Clearly she had heard the same diatribe before. She began to wash the dishes, and a man at the bar felt the need to chime in. “When is Aliya going to get married? What is it, Yusef, you haven’t got much of a dowry?” The whole bar burst into laughter, and Yusef’s cheeks turned red.
“You shut up before I kick you out of here, Ron—what do you Jews know about women anyway?” He managed to protect himself for the time being, before turning his frustration back towards his daughter, “Aliya’s just lazy. She’s got nothing going on up there, is all—no ambition, no nothing!”
Simeon stayed in his seat and watched Aliya continue working about behind the bar. She wore a ragged apron over a gray tank top and a pair of blue jeans, and she had large bags under her eyes like she had just woken up from a deep sleep. She worked too, like she was in a kind of dream, slowly and aimlessly soaping up dishes before abandoning them and switching to another task entirely. Occasionally she would stop everything and look about the bar wistfully, like she was gazing upon it for the first and last time, and soaking in the commotion, would smile and exhale before returning to the task in front of her. He wondered if she ever felt how he did about life. There was something indifferent, or even slightly oblivious, about her whole demeanor, Simeon thought; but as unorganized as she appeared to be still, she moved about purposefully, and contentedly approached each task with the full of her attention.
He listened to a while more of the useless banter between Yusef and his regular patrons, and then rose to the bar to pay, waiting for a moment when Aliya was manning the register.
Simeon spoke to her using the broken Arabic that they had tried to teach him in school. “I had two beers and a plate of hummus.” Much closer now, he realized that she hadn’t been silent this whole time. Although she spoke so quietly and opened her lips only so slightly, however, that from far away it was almost impossible to tell that she was speaking. “Great—that’ll be, let’s see, three shekel fifty agorot.” He handed her four and watched her for a moment open the register, but held his hand out to refuse the change. “Thanks,” Aliya nodded her head and pocketed the tip, “have a nice night!”
Outside, the bustle of the early evening had broken, and the main street was now fully taken by blackness; as he distanced himself further from Yusef and Aliya’s restaurant, its chatter and clangor of dishes faded, and soon the only sound he could make out was the lapping of the sea on its shore.
At about five in the morning, Simeon made his way to the beach. He took off his shoes, and for the first time since his arrival, felt the sand of the Dead Sea between his toes. From the storehouse he brought armfuls of umbrellas and chairs, and began to construct them as the sea—stretching out cool and placid in front of him—shook off the last of the nighttime from its surface. He dug the umbrellas one-by-one into the rocky sand at regular intervals down the private beach, as patches of blue-black faded from the water like bruises, making room for the peach-colored reflections of the Judean mountains underneath.
When he was finished with the work, he went and made himself a black coffee from The Leonardo Club lobby, which was just starting to see the earliest risers mull about for breakfast, and brought it back with him to sip atop his post. He climbed up the painted white lifeguard tower and looked out over his work. An older woman lowered herself into one of his chairs close to the water, and wiggling about for a moment like a cat settling into place, opened a newspaper. Still the sun hung low over the mountains, and the day was new. A while later, the first family appeared, parents with two small children—who, without clothes on, waddled about in the sand—and lowered a blanket underneath an umbrella, dragged some of his chairs around it, and set up for the day. Not one person approached the water, though; Simeon, having finished his coffee and no one to look after, grew drowsy as the heat dulled his senses. Around eleven he remembered the front desk attendant’s advice, and closed his eyes for a short nap, which he felt justified to take on account of his successful first morning. Just before he dozed off completely, however, he caught notice a woman off in the distance at the far end of the beach. She wore a large sombrero that obscured her face, and a white sundress down to her ankles; still she began to wade into the water seemingly without care for either.
Simeon squinted to see in the sunlight, which was now fully and perpendicularly falling onto the sea and the beach like fiery rain. She was up to her thighs now in the water, and made no sign of stopping, despite the fact that her clothes were turning near transparent and most likely getting ruined in the briny sea. When it became too cumbersome to walk, she lay down stomach-first and began to breaststroke further into the water. Her dress at certain points stuck to her body, like at her waist, demarcating her curved figure, but at others, at the tips of her arms and legs, for instance, floated and waved like the thin, translucent wings of a koi fish—Simeon watched intently, curious and watching for a point to intervene.
She turned on her back, and her hat floated off; Simeon recognized her now, it was Aliya floating supine in the scintillating water. Gently she lowered her head backwards into the water, slowly submerging her ears and hair as she relieved the effort in her neck. Her black locks spread out in all directions from her head, and levitating there perfectly on her back, she was more water lily than human. She put no effort into floating, like one would need to in any other sea—the water would cradle her indefinitely—and she simply lay out in this way for first what Simeon thought would be a few minutes, but soon neared into close to an hour. She kept her eyes closed and her lips formed neither frown nor smile.
All the while, her image became increasingly muddled; if it was the salty haze, which had come to settle over the surface of the water at noontime, the sun growing brighter, or that she was simply floating off into the distance, he couldn’t tell, but she seemed nonetheless to spread out into the water like dye, and diffuse away by the minute. Watching this all unfold, Simeon gathered that the two were in no way similar, and that he had many things mistaken about the ‘importance’ of his life. He also concluded that she needed no intervening, and would not for the time being; in the building afternoon heat, the only thing left to do was close his eyes, smile, and drift off to sleep.