Empty Maps

This is the story of Ilana Abrams who did the most work and had the least to show for it. It didn’t matter how deliberately she cut the construction paper or how carefully she glued printouts to her poster board, there just was not enough information to make the project look in any way finished.

Ilana raised her face to the overhead lights in the kitchen, which blinded her with new fluorescent bulbs, and in the flash of white across her vision she could clearly make out her great great grandfather, Ruben Abrams, who had been from a town that no longer existed on any map. He was big and boisterous, she imagined, perhaps seventy-five, with a smile that stretched across his heavily whiskered cheeks. He wore a cap, very much like the ones Ilana had seen in the movie “Fiddler on the Roof.” He worked every day as a shopkeeper. Always ready to pour out packets of dried goods, weigh slabs of soap, or send away for special orders that crashed down every Jewish New Year and again in the spring for Passover. He was well liked, had always been well liked, since he was a boy, barely able to see over the counter of the family store, as he stood at his father’s hip. He would always smell of salt and flour and knew how to spin a tale by the time he was old enough to talk.

Ilana sighed, recapped her glue stick, and went on organizing. It was, perhaps, for this reason, that he was so well liked, and happy, that there was no paper to find listing the name of Ruben Abrams, the Ruben Abrams that belonged to Ilana anyway. For, had he been poor, and loathed, and lacked any sense of good humor, he might have left the empty place on the map before it was erased altogether.

After a period of searching, Ilana realized that she had nothing more to find on her family tree. Thousands of years of persecution had taken away any possible naturalization papers or immigration records: from now on there were only three generations of Abrams’s that could be drawn in any detail. All that was left was a name, a profession, and four children. Her classmates didn’t know enough to pity her, for they only cared what they saw on her poster, bright and loud and present. No one asked: How did Ilana lose so many branches?

Ilana had several friends amongst the third-grade girls whom she had known since kindergarten. During class time students are busy with their pens and pencils, but after school hours it was not a surprise for these friends to drop by. On Fridays, they would sit around the kitchen table with Ilana’s parents and gulp down pots of spaghetti or roast chicken and talk about things they all understood and experienced together. This was all after Ilana’s mother lit the Shabbat candles, an exotic but finally a familiar ritual to the young visitors.

One moonless evening when the candles had burned low, Ilana sat with her friends on the sofa, telling them the tale that would go with her poster board. It was about her family, but also about the shtetl that had burned down at its back. Ilana recounted the story in the few details she had. Her friends huddled close together amongst the pillows, wrapped arms around their knees, and took their lips between their teeth in a manner that meant fear rather than seduction.

“Why didn’t your great great grandfather leave with the rest of the family for America?”

“Not every family had the money all at once,” Ilana answered.

“Why didn’t he leave for another nearby town before the attack?”

“Pogrom,” Ilana corrected. “And the attackers were coming *from* the nearby towns.”

“That’s a terrible story, Jesus. We shouldn’t have to talk about things like this,” said one.

“I’ll be afraid to sleep now,” said another.

“We can leave the TV on,” Ilana promised.

While they were talking the Shabbat candles sunk low and a demon appeared. His steps were silent because he didn’t need to touch the floor, and he halted to listen. He shook his head, though he could not be seen by the girls in their hunched group on the sofa. The story was a sad one, to be sure, but all Ilana said was that there had been fighting, people had been killed, and the town burned down as they fled. The demon was a troublesome fellow, full of tricks and mischief, especially with unanswered questions. In an instant, he formed a plan to educate the girls further, for the story still lacked the evil details of the real event.

After the girls had fallen asleep, the demon stole into the living room under the glow of the late-night television. When he identified Ilana amongst the lumpy sleeping bags, he slipped across the rug and knelt beside her. Reaching out a fur-covered hand and placed a single claw to Ilana’s temple.

The girl sat bolt upright. She was almost too terrified to utter a sound.

“Who is it?” she whispered, her voice trembling.

The demon replied in a voice like the clattering of stones. “Do not scream, Ilana. If you cry out, I will not be able to help you. I am the demon of unanswered questions, ruler over all that keeps you awake at night with agitation and crippling doubt. I heard your tale of Ruben Abrams if a tale is what it can be called. I am the evil spirit who can tell you the secrets and bring you to the details of what happened to your family. If that is something you truly wish to know.”

Hearing these words, Ilana sat motionless. Her heart felt as though it were beating from within her stomach. She was afraid. But she also desired to understand. After a moment, Ilana gathered her courage and asked, “What must I do?”

“All that is required is for you to willingly close your eyes and take my hand.”

Ilana shut her eyes and reached out in the darkness, curling her fist around the hairy fingers. In an instant a wind, as if reaching from the bowels of the earth, swept upward tangling Ilana’s hair in a torrent about her head and, while she could feel it lashing her nightshirt and sleeping bag, the ground itself remained still. As quickly as the gale arose it faded to the most astonishing stillness the girl had ever perceived.

“You may open your eyes,” the demon said.

Ilana Abrams, when she opened her eyes and saw the complete darkness that surrounded her, was badly frightened. Her face felt cold; there was a shiver tracing its way up her spine. All she could see was the outline of the demon at her side. As if he were dangerously ill, the creature could barely sit straight; it hunched and held what arms it had at strange and troubling angles. All her courage seemed to have deserted her in the new emptiness.

“Where have you taken me?” she asked, her voice soft as a whisper in the silence.

“This, child, is the Middle World, home of all demons.”

Ilana’s shiver had grown to a full tremble in every bone of her body but, slowly, more outlines began to take shape around her. It was as if she were in another house, not so different from her own, except where her home had walls this one had only open doorways. The land beyond seemed a shadowy version of her own.

“What am I to learn here?” Ilana asked, her voice far steadier than her bones.

“Everything,” the demon replied. “But I will not tell you the answer. Instead, I will bring the answer to you.”

Ilana followed the shaded outline of her escort’s hand as it raised a talon and pointed far into the distance where, what Ilana could only describe as a black flame, was moving closer across a vast and dark plain.

“A servant of our king, Asmodeus, come to tell you your history, as I promised.”

Ilana had never considered that her history could be something dangerous before it began its trek toward her across the black distance of the Middle World. But gloom and apprehension would not change her mind. She sat straight in the stillness and let the flame approach until the outline at its side too made itself clear in the dimness. If it was another demon, it was one that looked far more like a man than Ilana’s traveling companion. It had a full beard, not yet gray, beneath dark eyes. In a moment it was at Ilana’s side, and it was clear that this creature of no great height or girth or terror was, in fact, no demon, but a man. He wore a cloth cap on his head and a shirt, half torn from his body. He held the black flame at the end of a dark candle in his right hand.

“Ilana,” the man said.

And, despite his being too young and too small, and the fact that he was not smiling as Ilana had always imagined, Ilana knew that here stood her great great grandfather Ruben Abrams in the Middle World of the demons.

For a long time great great grandfather and granddaughter stood silently gazing at each other. Ilana felt so stunned that she could not speak. She began to tremble more and was glad she remained seated on the ground, or she would not have been able to keep her feet beneath her. What was the meaning of this meeting in a world never meant for humans?

The candle in Ruben’s hand flickered and he reached down to pull Ilana to her feet. “My child,” he said, “There is not much time for me to tell you what you wish to know.”

“But I have not asked anything,” Ilana said, her voice stronger but strangely reduced in the alien surroundings.

“I heard you,” Ruben replied. “Wondering why I did not flee during the destruction of my home.”

“Heard me?”

“The Middle World is closer to our own than any other, it is easier for cries to be heard here than in any other realm. And that, child, is a part of the story. When I was not yet an old man a pogrom came to our shtetl and, without a family to carry with me, I swiftly fled into the deep trees near to our home. But there were not many of us left then, and the men who had come to riot and kill, soon made their way into the trees atop horses. I could hear them, feel them, close on my heels with torches, and weapons, and hate in their hearts. I asked for escape, anything to evade those who wished all my people to perish from the earth. It was Asmodeus, king of these lands, who heard my plea and whisked me away from my forest to his own, here, in the Middle World. I was not killed, but neither was I able to return to the world of my birth. A price had to be paid to his majesty for the kindness he bestowed upon me.”

Ilana worried at her lower lip. Her eyes darted to the slouched and shaggy shadow on her right side. No price had been mentioned when she reached out and accepted his hand.

“And you must live here, forever?” she asked, wondering as much about her own future as she was about her relation’s past.

Ruben nodded, but he gave a small smile. “It is not so terrible. What I saw, what I fled, I know there are far worse things than demons in the world,” he told her.

“And now you are not alone,” Ilana said, trying to be as brave as the ancestors she knew of as well as the ancestor she had just met. They all had escaped to lands unknown. “I am here with you.”

But Ruben only shook his head and reached out to take one of her hands in each of his own, the candle held between their palms. “It is the Sabbath, is it not?” he asked her. “And,” he indicated the flame between them. “The Shabbat candles still burn. Unlike me, demons have rules they are always required to follow. You are free to return so long as the flame burns. But, as you see, time is short.”

Ruben pressed the stub of the black flamed candle into Ilana’s hands. “May God bless you and keep you,” he said, leaning forward and pressing his lips to his great great granddaughter’s forehead.

There was a shriek from behind Ilana’s right shoulder as if her demon escort had finally realized what was happening and that, despite his efforts, he was not going to be allowed to keep his prize.

“You said I was to take her,” the demon of unanswered questions shrieked.

“And take her you did,” Ruben said simply. “No promises were made of keeping.”

The demon’s shrieking swelled in the mirrored plain of the Middle World.

“Close your eyes,” Ruben whispered. Ilana did not struggle to hear him.

The wind rose with the demon’s howl and Ilana feared for the life of the flame in her hands but, just as before her hair spun about her head, and her nightshirt and sleeping bag lashed at her bare ankles where she stood. And, as quickly as the gale had begun it faded, but not to silence. Ilana could hear the breathing of her friends, and the crackle of fire against hot wax.

Ilana opened her eyes. Her hands were clasped together, but she found them empty. She could see the rise and fall of her friends’ shoulders around her and, turning to stare over her own shoulder, she caught sight of the final Shabbat candle sputtering out. “Thank you,” she whispered into the newly fallen darkness, certain that, in one world or another, someone would hear her.