“The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent
upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea;
and the way of a man with a young woman.”
Book of Proverbs, 30:19
Shortly before the court session began, Yiftach asked Weismann, “Would you like to glance over my summaries?”
“No, I hate them,” he gave an odd reply.
Yiftach and Melody seemed surprised. “But you haven’t read them yet…” Yiftach pointed out.
“No need for that. If they are bad, I’ll be disappointed and angry and I will hate them. If they are good, I will be jealous and angry and I will hate them.”
Sabat, Kedem and Golan entered the courtroom, bearing themselves proudly. Sabat coughed into his fist, cluing the audience to be silent. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said ceremoniously, clearly enjoying the moment, “we can see the end of the road. We are approaching the conclusion of this challenging yet grand journey. We are at the home stretch—the penultimate stage of the closing arguments. We shall listen to both sides with genuine interest and careful attention. The closing arguments of the prosecution please,” he ordered, and Yiftach stood up, ready to begin. Tension and pressure spread through his chest. He stepped up to the judges and, with every step he took, he felt he was moving farther way from the bad things that had occurred in his life. In just a few more minutes, he thought, he would reach the edge of the forest. A forest teeming with wolves and other wild animals, and he was nowalone in the forest, without his father’s hand to guide him and show him the way.
“There is nothing special about me. Of that I am certain,” he began, “I am an ordinary person with ordinary thoughts that lives an ordinary life. Like any ordinary person, I too once loved someone with all my heart and, like every ordinary person, my heart was also shattered. I am tired and I’m simply fed up. I have distanced myself from the things I had dreamt of doing, and I am very far from the man that I wanted to be and that I could have been. And, truly, who is this Love that broke my heart and denied me my dreams? Ladies and gentlemen, we have undertaken a fascinating journey together. We have dived into the depths of Love’s world in order to acquaint ourselves better from the inside. And what did we discover about Love? When the foggy curtain was lifted, what was revealed to us? Together we learned that the defendant in this trial seeks control, just as each and every one of us wishes it to some degree. However, the defendant in our trial seeks control not for the benefit of the people, as is expected of leaders and sovereigns, but for her own selfish needs. She is fully familiar with a sad and simple truth—human beings are weak and fearful, and they are incapable of bearing the weight of absolute freedom. They require an external source of power that will rule over them, even if this power leads them astray. Simply put—Love is the guardian of helpless human beings.”
Yiftach looked at Love, but she remained silent. She thought to herself, could it possibly be that in his great wisdom he has unlocked my secret? “But, ladies and gentlemen, how does she do that? How does she manage to control us humans? Here too the answer is simple—she ascertains that we constantly remain in a state of distress, and thus she gains control over anyone who cannot rule himself.” A wave of pain shot through Sabat’s body when Yiftach continued his speech. “That being the case, Loveis not hypocritical nor cowardly, as opposed to other rulers. She openly proves her desire for absolute and eternal control over humans for her own benefit, and she definitely does not hold the reins of power in order to relinquish them. She holds sway over human beings not as a means to an end, but as the end itself.” Yiftach continued looking at her and, for a moment, Love suspected that he was stronger and crueler than she. He paced the courtroom with self-assurance, his gait was light but firm, he held one hand in his pocket and, with the other hand, he gestured, illustrating his words.
“The defendant in our trial knows that to rule over human beings demands control, and absolute control means controlling people’s minds and their thoughts, controlling people’s hearts and their emotions. Whoever gains control of these two facets—gains absolute control over human beings, and all the rest is insignificant. Have you ever considered how Love succeeds in dominating humans so absolutely?” There was dead silence in the courtroom. “She does it by causing us a lot of pain and suffering. One who suffers and is in pain will always obey the ruler’s wishes, hoping that one day the ruler will remove his suffering and prevent his pain. That is how Love deceives us.
“Today, however, we, the human race, have gathered here to declare bravely and indignantly: ‘No more.’ Love, you saw yourself as being superior to us, controlling our minds and our hearts. But your end will be like that of every cruel oppressor. You will finally fail. Until now you believed that you are the creator of human nature, that human beings are like putty in your hands. But we have now understood your true character and, in a short while, you will realize that the spirit of man is stronger than you. We are now strong enough to bring an end to your evil tyranny which has controlled us since the beginning of time, and to declare loud and clear that we have the power torule ourselves and to punish whoever has caused so much pain and suffering throughout the history of mankind.”
“Your message is understood, please reach your conclusion, Attorney Posner,” Sabat ordered him.
“With your permission, Your Honor, just a few last words,” Melody said as she rose from her seat. “From this place we are sending out a loud cry to mankind—do not fall in love! When a man and a woman are desperately in love, they become focused solely on their own individual pain. They are entirely preoccupied with yearning and longing for that lost paradise, which can only lead to one place—total destruction. Think about it, how love is like a toxin that controls your body, working havoc and causing the worst of disasters. Just as drugs are forbidden by law, so must love, for the very same reasons, be banned from this day on.”
Yiftach and Melody looked at each other, knowing that their closing speeches were indeed excellent. They felt elated and satisfied.
“Thank you, and now for the closing argument of the defense,” Sabat instructed with a stolid face.
Heart stood up and was about to speak, when Love stopped him. “It’s okay,” she said to him, “now is the time for me to manage on my own.” She took a deep breath and started to speak. “At the end of this legal process, I would like to present to you, human beings, my real role on planet Earth.” The audience was at once alert in tense anticipation. Everyone listened closely, hypnotized by her pleasant voice, as if they were the countless rats, and she—the Pied Piper of Hamelin. “The love that beats in the hearts of humans is not without purpose, ladies and gentlemen. If I were to sum up my job in one sentence, though it’s a bit simplistic, I would say that my job is to prevent you, the human race, from becoming extinct.”
“Haa… now really…” Yiftach yelled out dismissively, “a littlemodesty here wouldn’t hurt, not even for an arrogant and condescending creature like you. It is the sexual urge that guarantees the continuity of the human race, and the sexual urge that humans feel towards one another does not require you in order to exist. The sexual urge does not depend on love. And the proof lies in the fact that sexual relations are consummated countless times without love, that is, without you.” His eyes were aflame with anger.
The audience turned its attention again to Love and she continued to speak in a quiet voice. “What I meant to say is that your feelings as human beings play a role in your lives. For example, the role of fear is to warn you of dangers and to distance you from them. None of you ever considered to bring Fear to trial just because the feeling it generates is unpleasant. Yearning, on the other hand, plays a different role. Yearning is a mechanism that enables you humans to continue to live with someone who no longer exists physically in your lives. Has anyone ever considered bringing Yearning to trial just because, at times, it can become unbearable? Therefore, before you decide to eliminate me and create for yourselves a world void of love, I think you must understand, if only briefly, what my role is and why I have come here, to the world of humanity.
“Indeed, sexual desire—which is the fuel that ignites intimate relationships and leads to conception—will continue to exist without me. From that aspect, you will be able to continue, just like the most primitive life forms, to proliferate without love. However, my role is not to prevent humankind from physical extinction. I started to say, before I was interrupted by Attorney Posner, that the role of love is to prevent the moral and cultural extinction of the human race. Ladies and gentlemen, I am no more than the glue that links you to one another. I am no more than the mortar that unites all human beings into the same grand structure you are so proud of. Without love, and afterthe waning of the transient sexual urge, you would all leave one another. So who holds you together? It is I who holds you together, as couples, as families and as groups, and it is through me that you remain with each other for long periods of time. And, most of all, it is thanks to me that you provide a stable, warm and supportive framework for your offspring. Thus, you are able to attain those moral and cultural summits that you would otherwise never have achieved, and that no other living creature has ever achieved.
“I find it strange that you tried to create here a legal process that is supposedly a threat to me, in whatever way. I do not feel threatened. But if you wish to do so, then go ahead. Put me behind bars and create for yourselves a world devoid of love.”
“Thank you,” Sabat said when she stopped speaking. “The court hereby announces that the verdict will be pronounced on October 8th at precisely eight-thirty in the morning; you may mark that in your calendars. Please be on time!”
Melody looked with surprise at Yiftach. She never imagined three years ago that on the day she had set to meet Eitan again, under the third cypress tree at the entrance to the kibbutz, exactly three hours after their planned meeting, the Supreme Court in Jerusalem would be announcing Love’s fate, the love that beats in the heart of the human race.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Far be it from Thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked, that so the righteous should
be as the wicked; far be it from Thee; shall not the
Judge of all the earth do justly?”
Genesis, 18:25
It was eight-thirty in the morning.
