Private Novelist by Nell Zink

psilocybin mushrooms, and he said, “The outside world is more beautiful than any art.” He ducked into the Justy (I had come outside to see him to the car) and arranged himself for a trip to the Helicon editorial board meeting. “But your art is very cute. You are cute!” He revved it to 4,500 rpm and sped away.
    In one sense I am delighted by Zohar’s transformation. For years he had seen me only as art’s detractor—the sourpuss sure to say, “Are you sure writing a poem requires staying drunk for a week with ninety-nine channels of cable?” Now I have taken the role of art’s disoriented, preoccupied hermit, and he—my gentle patron.
    Meanwhile, down in the Gulf of Aqaba, Nachum’s newglass-bottomed boat skimmed across the small, frothy waves, followed by Sissy and friends, out to approximately the point from which the Trident missile had emerged on its mission of dangerous vandalism. He was busy preparing a bucket of dead fish when he heard one of the tourists say, “Will you look at that!”
    Below them was only darkness. But it was a solid sort of darkness, punctuated with rivets, a huge hulk, immense and black—the submarine, still there. “I’ll be damned,” Nachum said.
    â€œGet the dolphins to go down and tell us what it is!” someone suggested. Everyone agreed that would be the best thing.
    â€œOh, I don’t think so,” Nachum said, turning toward Eilat. He called me twenty minutes later and made me promise to stay out of my apartment whenever I could.
    â€œJust let me know when it leaves, so I can relax,” I said. I told him to tie a float to it, one of those little fishing buoys with a flag. Nachum protested, but that’s what he did. The next day he called to say it had moved about a hundred yards closer to Eilat. The next day, it was gone.

CHAPTER 7
    IT WASN’T MARY WHO BROUGHT Yigal back to Tel Aviv—it was a syndicated newspaper story he found in a bus shelter in Konstanz.

    A SPECTER IS HAUNTING ISRAEL: THE SPECTER OF “MR. PICKWICK”

    Inhabitants of Tel Aviv are reporting sightings of a mysterious submarine—the first UFO (Unidentified Floating Object) of its kind. A British “house” DJ active in the port of Tel Aviv has dubbed the object “Mr. Pickwick,” calling it “rotund” and “jovial,” and the name seems to have found resonance in the popular mind.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  All official sources are denying reports of the vessel, which witnesses say is approximately 100 meters long and 20 meters in diameter. “A whale,” scoffs a bored clerk at the Ministry of the Interior. “Crude oil,” says an idle receptionist at a customs office. “A mass hallucination,” adds the press secretary to the minister of culture.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  Ordinary Israelis are not so sure. “A Trident missile submarine, without a doubt,” says Amit, 22, a lifeguard on Tel Aviv’s Hilton Beach, relatively near where most of the sightings have taken place at Tel Aviv’s defunct shipping port. “Definitely one of the black submarines,” agrees Maya, 24, barista at Sheinkin Street’s Café Kazeh, echoing the American penchant for sighting “black helicopters” connected with U.S. government covert operations.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  No one yet claims to have circled or touched the craft. Fishermen in the port of Jaffa say it is unobtrusive. None we spoke to had bothered going anywhere near it. A few mentioned a proposal to string an underwater cable across the Yarqon River, to keep the submarine from blocking boat access should it choose to enter the shallow estuary.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “From what I’ve heard, it wouldn’t even fit,” one fisherman said, shrugging. “So let them try it.”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  A widely held opinion holds the submarine to be somehow connected