תרגום לסיפור שלי, "מלאו כיסי בקריפטונייט", ע"י כ. מגן .
מופיע כאן בהסכמתו.


Tired, I'm so very tired. But I can't sleep without the
bitter-sweet taste of Kryptonite Powder. The stinging
feeling at the tip of my tongue and the blurring of the
senses that follows. Yes, that's right, let darkness come
and gather me to its dreamless bosom.

Joyce used to tell the joke like this: "Superman is having a
beer in the pub at the top of the World Trade Center and
this man comes and sits by him. They start talking about
this and that and after a few minutes Superman says: "You
know? There's this extraordinary draft going up between the
two towers, you can actually stand in the air on top of it."
"I don't believe you" says the man. So Superman goes out the
window and stands in the air between the towers, oh, shit, I
shouldn't have said it was Superman, now the joke is
ruined..."
I actually always preferred Joyce's version of it.

It's strange that this - Joyce's joke - was the first thing
that went through my head when my beeper beeped the message
about a plane crashing into the towers. That evening, when
we sat in my safe apartment on 116th and Riverside, the
veteran correspondents of the New York Review of Books, and
watched the pictures again and again, my head was filling
with completely different thoughts - that I must do
something, that I'm pathetic, that I have to get cleaned
up.

Only a month passed between Lois' death and Lex's. They each
died the way they deserved, as if the payback waiting for
them in the next world seeped into this one.
Lois worked in her garden all day long. In the evening, her
old and gnarled hands caressing my always-young face, she
said: "I'm so tired, I think I'm done with it all". In the
morning she just didn't wake up.
Lex was already very ill when Lois died. Cancer's secondary
growth was spread all over his body. Like the mythological
hydra, every head that was cut by the innovative and
expensive treatments was replaced by two new ones.
But it would be haughty of me to imply I visited him only
out of compassion. I felt it - it was impossible not to feel
compassion for the man's suffering, despite all the evil he
has done in his life - but the real reason for my visits was
loneliness - with Lois gone, he was all I had left.

"Do not worry, do not fear" it said, in Latin, on the silver
box Lex left me in his last will and testament. As soon as I
opened it I became dizzy. I recognized the feeling.
Especially after all of Lex's attempts to get rid of me. For
a moment I thought that was his intention - to stretch his
hand from beyond the grave in a final attempt in my life.
But I soon understood that was unlikely. Lex, for all his
downsides, had been very cunning. Had it been his intention
for the powder in the box (which, as the dizzy spell
confirmed, contained Kryptonite) to harm me, he would have
made it much more difficult for me to avoid it.
I could just close the box.
I could just get up and walk away.



I can just stop.
The thought crossed my mind as I sat with my fellow writers,
furious and impotent.
I can just stop and go back to the man I used to be, to the
world I used to live in. Be Kal-El again.
Me, not a bird. Me, not a plane.
The Man of Steel.
Superman.

Instead of leaving the silver box alone and ignoring the
cardboard boxes that kept coming, every month, from "Luthor
Corp." to my doorstep, I did what the writing inside the box
suggested - I tasted the powder.
My vision became blurred. My muscles, which as a toddler
already allowed me to pick up cars, were so weak I could
barely stand up straight. I tasted some more.
I wanted that blurring. I wanted that weakness.
Since Lois died, actually, since I first realized that what
we always knew is about to happen - that she'll get older
and die while I'll stay young and lonely - I craved exactly
that - that numbing of the senses, that weakness.
How well did Lex learn to know me during all these years.
So sweet was his goodbye present.

Did I change? Did the powder change me?
I think it's something more.
I think the powder changed the very world around me. Or
maybe it moved me, inch by inch, from the polarized, black
and white world I knew, to a world of shades of gray, where,
one morning, with no reason, thousands of my townspeople
were murdered.

At first it felt as if the powder was only making me weaker.
I lay for days in bed, savoring my new weakness, my
inability to leap out the window and save the world, my
inability to hear the world cries for its savior.
The first hint that not only I have changed came when my
cousin, Kara Zor-El, called to ask how I was. A light
hoarseness in her voice, a hint of a strange accent, roused
my suspicion. But much more than that - when she told me of
her doings in the last days - there were no daring
adventures, just small talk.
Kara complained of her kids, told me of a new restaurant
that had been opened in Greenwich, suggested we go to see
the new Gauguin exhibition in The Met.
Only after setting the handset down did I realize that
something very strange just happened - Kara didn't have any
kids, and Metropolis didn't have a neighborhood named
Greenwich or a museum called The Met.

Despite all the changes - Metropolis becoming New York, the
Daily Planet becoming the New York Review of Books, the
League of Justice becoming a community center - the boxes of
Kryptonite Powder kept arriving at my doorstep, courtesy of
Luthor Corp.
When I tried to trace the company I failed miserably.
When I tried to stop using the powder, shades of gray
polarized into black and white, my gray suits became
red-blue and grew a cape, but, together with my supernatural
powers, returned the memories and the voices, bright and
absolute.
I returned to the powder.

I can stop whenever I want.
I've got to get cleaned up.
After 9/11 I threw the box' contents down the toilet and
flushed.
It would be arrogant to say I did it out of responsibility,
out of commitment to using my powers for Good and Justice.
The real reason for the clean-up attempt was the
uncontrollable fury I felt at the sight of the falling
towers. And the pure and complete helplessness that
accompanied it.

Detoxification was extremely hard.
For years I've been using the powder daily, and the sudden,
complete stop affected me much like the first times I tried
it - days and nights I lay in bed, sweating, hallucinating
and feeling that something was growing inside me, too fast
for me to handle.
All the time the television in my room spewed newscasts that
became stranger and stranger.
Or maybe less and less strange.
It was discovered that Osama Bin Laden, the terrorist behind
the terrible attack, used the help of a demon, a genie from
a magic lantern. Gone were the earlier reports that he was
connected with the Taliban organization (that ironically was
once supported by the CIA).

One morning, when I finally managed to get out of bed and go
through my morning routine without passing out once, the
phone rang and it was the President. It was not President
Bush. The voice was younger, more sure and clean of
deceptiveness.
"We need you" said the young and vigorous President.
"We already sent Green Lantern and The Flash and neither
came back. We need you".

A monitor on the wall showed a picture of Asia. Colorful
dots blinked on it, some of them moving slowly from one
point to another.
"It's good you've come", said the President. "We need a
quick and decisive strike in Iraq. We have to fell the cruel
regime of Saddam Hussein. Only thus will we be able to
vanquish the Axis of Evil. If we delay, our end will be dire
and so will be the end of the entire Free World."
"Iraq?" I asked, surprised "But, Bin Laden..."
"This is the Axis of Evil" the President explained "Iraq has
Weapons of Mass Destruction; Nuclear Weapons, Chemical
Weapons, War heads. The whole Free World is looking up to
you Superman."
"Weapons of Mass Destruction?"
"Of course" said the President, "The cunning Iraqis move
them from place to place, hiding them from the gullible
inspectors. But every child knows that they have Weapons of
Mass Destruction".
"Indeed" repeated his Chief of Staff, "every child knows".
"But the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center..."
"That attack is only a part of a nefarious plot by the Axis
of Evil. To break the Axis we need to strike while the iron
is hot. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link."
I watched the young President's eyes. Was there a shadow? A
murkiness of deception? Of an ulterior motive? Of being
duped? Why couldn't I believe him? I was clean!
Rehabilitated!
"We call it Project Liberation. You must go at once. For
Green Lantern, for The Flash, for the victims and their
families, for the entire Free World!"
"I understand..." I mumbled "but... I need to go to the
toilets for a minute..."
The President looked at me incredulously, but I didn't care.
I ran to the toilets, locked the door and emptied my pockets
into my hand. Amongst all the sand and fluff that
accumulated there, there was enough of the powder for that
gray, bitter-sweet stinging and numbing of the senses.

I'm tired.
I'm so very tired.
I think I'm done with it all.

Sitting there, on the toilet bowl cover, waiting for the
darkness to take me, I remembered Joyce's joke that always
charmed me with its honesty.
I imagined Lex, in a barman's suit, leaning over the bar and
telling me with a secretive smile: "Superman, sometimes you
are such a son of a bitch...."