B002FB6BZK EBOK (61 page)

After Abdul Khadr el-Husseini was killed by mistake, said Boaz, and any
one of us could have shot him, including Menahem, he said and looked at
Henkin, all the Arabs fled and then came a reinforcement of commanders
and we saw them enter the path, yelling, but they didn't hear and then it
was too late and Simon Alfasi shouted: "Privates retreat, the commanders
will cover the retreat," and thirty-three commanders were killed to defend
Boaz and Menahem and Joseph. Afterward, the Arabs discovered the body
of their leader and they fled ... And that started the decisive turning point
in the War of Independence ... Menahem's one shot!

Or yours, shouted Henkin who heard the last words.

Or mine, said Boaz sadly.

Henkin started thinking about the next Independence Day: Nineteen
years have passed and what am I doing? I'm helping erect a tombstone for
Dante that will look toward Menahem's Jerusalem, while for my poets I
left abandoned graves in the old cemetery of Tel Aviv. And out of pondering and an ancient sense of treachery, Henkin said: I see shadows on the
horizon, Boaz, and Boaz said: What shadows, and the Captain looked and said: There will be a war, and Boaz thought: They're making fun, those old
men, what war can you see, but he didn't say a thing and looked at the old
Bukharan who started singing again.

In the evening, the Captain sat with Rebecca. Rebecca said: He's probably fed up with memory books and he wants to be a memorial to himself,
but without my Psalms, he won't succeed. And the Captain said: But what
will become of us, Rebecca? He thought about Ebenezer who had recently
come back and painted his house, and Rebecca said: What will be? All my
enemies are dead, all I've got left is you, Captain, Roots is waiting for me,
you're suffering from eight diseases and you won't recover from any of
them, what do you want from an old woman like me?

Tape / -

Boaz was one of the first to go. Then Noga was mobilized too. Hasha
Masha asked, Why you all of a sudden? And Noga, who came to visit her,
said: They'll find something for me, I'm not considered married and the lists
got mixed up. People stuck pieces of tape on windowpanes, Rebecca sat in
her armchair and contemplated her life and didn't find anything in it that
wasn't compelled in advance. Planes flew low and shook the house. The
great-grandson of Ahbed disappeared, but came back. At the airport, foreign
residents were evacuated. The Captain said: They built an Auschwitz here
with a philharmonic orchestra and now they sit and wait. Why don't they
strike? He wore his uniform and asked to be mobilized, but nobody even
paid attention to his lunacy. Dayan was appointed Minister of Defense.
Eskhol delivered a speech. On television, hordes of Egyptian recruits were
seen marching to throw the Jews into the sea. The nation of Israel, said the
Captain, sees Chmielnitski and Hitler assaulting it, and I pity Nasser. He
was the only one who pitied him at that time. Early in the morning, the red
sheet was hoisted and without music, and in a thin still voice, the nation of
Israel went to the great war against fat Frieda who lay under the dog, thought
Ebenezer, the fist clenched for three weeks gaped open.

And five days later everything was almost calm.

Tape / -

She took off her clothes and put them on the cot. Outside reigned the
impermeable desert dark. In the next bed he lay, she couldn't imagine how he looked. She played a game of imagining him from his breathing, from
the smell of shoes and socks. She strained her eyes and saw shadows.
Outside voices sawed. Her skin shuddered and she rolled herself up in
damp army blankets smelling faintly of Lysol. She lay down, her eyes gazing at the ceiling of the tent. He said: Wonder what you look like in the
light. She said: I also want to know what you look like. Every night you're
here and not seen. In the morning you disappear before I open my eyes. By
the time I come back at night, you're in bed.

My name's Boaz, he told her. I'm a grown-up child who survived the
wars. Killing and not killed. On the Richter scale of my metaphysical biology, I'm a nine. Your wonderful youth can be smelled. All I know about you
is that you've got a lover, that you have difficult dreams I can hear, you're
somebody one can definitely fall in love with, if one forgets the inconceivable and unbearable problems of love. For years now I haven't managed to
die in just wars, and in unjust wars I don't die either. Maybe justice has
nothing to do with death in war? Now that the war is ending soon, I'm still
here. During the day I shoot the routed enemy. You've got a female rustle
among your clothes. When you undress in the dark, there are tears in my
eyes.

She said: That's nice of you. My stupid officer pushes me around all day.
He's got clean fingernails, smells like perfume. You sound like a person
who flourishes in wars.

I make no demands on you. It's true, I love another man. But you come
back with a smell of death and dark. Last night I smelled blood. You sound
like a professional soldier. You bring weapons in your hands, you kill and
sleep, sleep and kill. In that shelling you slept like a baby. I don't know
why they put us in the same tent. My officer tried to start with me again
today. I erupted. He has soft, warm hands. He talked to me about twilight
in a distant city, said I remind him of that. It was cold and the sergeant on
duty yelled: I'll put all of them under arrest, and all of them cleaned the
mud and the mud kept coming in. As far as I'm concerned, you should go
to jail for mud. I'll smoke a cigarette now. And you?

I'm trying to think if you're pretty. That drives me nuts. Do you have
breasts? Big ones? Small ones? And your face, terrific, I'm not terrific either, few people like me. I don't believe in marriage. And I don't believe
in love, either, but I'm starting to doubt my ability not to love. Why do people want so much to be loved? All the fools and dummies ultimately
find somebody who loves them. And the worst bastards also have friends
and women. You can see that from the funerals. The dumber the man the
bigger his funeral.

Today I got out of the half-track. I went to search for a land mine. In the
distance I saw people in the desert. Men in coats and suits and tunics and
women in pants and head kerchiefs. They were straying, aimlessly, their
eyes burning from the desert wind. Hundreds of men and women. One of
them had a red scarf. I yelled at them to watch out. There are land mines,
I said, and they didn't hear and weren't scared. They showed me pictures
of their sons. Every one had a picture of his son, you know the high school
graduation pictures they make with the faces of stranglers of old women?
Those are their sweeties, and they were searching for their sweeties in the
desert. Everybody asks if I know his son. Missing, they say. One woman
told me: You surely know him. Surely, why should I know him, but I said:
Maybe, maybe I knew him. She said, search for him for me. I've got to
find him. "Surely," that's the compelling word, don't you think? You with
your small or big breasts. After the woman with the red scarf disappeared
I smoked a cigarette. Some of the sons in the pictures had scared faces.
Do you think those with scared faces die more than those whose faces
aren't scared? I'd like you to have my picture ... with an erect cock. Like
now. You'll take the picture with the erect cock, walk in the sands and
ask if somebody knows me. Maybe some poor girl I once inserted a souvenir into. She'll say: The shmuck's buried not far from here. And you,
will you weep?

And what do you do in civilian life?

Grave digger, prepare my financial future.

You're trying to be cynical.

Trying, that's right. Not living in the right man. A girl came to me, she's
got long chestnut-colored hair and bright eyes. Not especially pretty, but
belonging to somebody so temptingly. She said to me: I'm searching for a
man. I asked if I could be the man. She looked at me contemptuously and
I saw how she belonged to her somebody and I was jealous. And then she
repeated: I'm searching for a man. I told her: What about his picture? She
didn't have one. And she blushed because she didn't have a picture. She said:
Listen, I'm searching for a man I love, and she didn't add anything more. Will you also ask somebody about my cock, will you say then: I'm searching for a man I love?

Yes, she said, and she smoked a cigarette silently and her breath was
fast, almost loud. You understand, he said, the girl put a semicolon after
the man, because maybe he's dead. She didn't know his last name. She
met him in a tent like this in Bir-Gafgafa in the dark. When there were still
a lot more planes ripping the sky. She didn't know the declension: "I
loved," everything was fresh and still in the present tense. Like the grammatical judgment of a language teacher. I turn over for a moment, the blanket stabs what's-his-name. Like this. She can't draw me the face of the
lover. He had no geographical bearings or characteristics, normal or otherwise. No special signs. Only certain things, she said, swallowed those
words. And then she said again with surprising speed: Things that can't be
defined, she meant what happened to them together in the tent. Maybe
she loved him because he died? How do I know? And if he died, maybe
she'd love him forever. Isn't that safer?

She crushes the cigarette. Rustling is heard outside. Three half-tracks
rumble up and brake. Music from the radio mixed with a roaring motor.
The flash of pale blue light in the tent flap. A wind strikes the tarp. She
sinks her head deep into the small hard pillow. I recall going out with my
lover, she said.

He laughed.

And he's alive, she said.

Ah, but for how long?

A long time. Once he took me to the movies. That was soon after we
met. He'd sit in cafes, go to matinees, waste time, sit next to me in the
movies and even though he looked like a letch, he was afraid to stroke my
back. I thought: Why doesn't he understand I've got breasts? Why doesn't
he put a hand on my breasts, he thought I was a dangerous girl.

In the morning she sits at the teleprinter. Third shift. All the time she
receives messages. Words appear-missing, missing, fell, fell, wounded.
Names, numbers, identity tags. She drinks hot coffee from a cardboard cup
and writes the dead. Suddenly she shrieks: Joseph Gimmeleon. Just yesterday he came into the teleprinter room and saw three girls and didn't
know which one of us to desire more. So perplexed and lost he stood there.
And I was the oldest. The officer with the soft sweaty hands didn't let him take us to the movies. He said: I'm from Haifa, and Talya made him a red
paper flower. He stuck it in his shirt lapel and disappeared with Zelda. She
phones the battalion. A field phone hums. A commander yells at Talya,
come down from the line, she comes to a third in command who sleeps
with her every third night. From the distance, from the war, a voice rising
and falling like a roar answers her: What, what, Joseph, Joseph Gimmeleon,
the body wasn't intact, they found a red paper flower. I'm coming tomorrow, and he hung up.

Bring you coffee, he asked.

Bring yourself, fool, she said.

I'm wiped out from the teleprinter, she said, but without naming names,
and clean up your smell, don't want to smell death.

He stood in the tent flap. Took off his clothes. She strained her eyes but
didn't see a thing. He said: Wait a minute. And then a car passed by in the
distance and sprayed a little light. He stood there shaking and naked and
she laughed.

He went to her and she said: You look like a skeleton. Want to touch
you. Then if you want, you can. On a night like this I'm easily raped.
Mainly by a living person, without a red paper flower, but don't try to be
close or understanding, you'll just touch me and I you. In bed he hugged
her and the shaking passed. Try to be romantic, she said, but without love.
He said to her: I'll put a paper flower in you. She said: You're faking, you
behave as if you know this body, think it's an instrument, be more careful,
more calculating, you're sweet. And he said: No compliments, listen to the
distant cannons, killing.

Then she stands up and he hugs her. Don't be a dead picture for me,
she says. We fit in terms of height. Maybe we'll love each other again, she
says, and they sway in an uncompromising prayer and things are forgotten.
He steps on chewing gum and is disgusted. He also tosses her onto the
bed, clings to her, that need to be loved by a real enemy who is you, and
she puts her life on his erection and lies there, waiting, sweat pouring, that
beauty of a mad lusty movement in a tent, you and I, two strangers. Listen,
you can do with me what you want, but only in the dark and as an undesirable woman, as I am, don't relent, here I'm touching, touching with my
feet the ceiling of the tent. Lick like that toward Mecca, yes press like
that. Press ... You think there's a God? I don't care. There are officers outside with national erections. You think there really are national goals.
Here we can beget a Hebrew soldier for the ninth war, in this state a national mutation will take place and they'll beget children with rifles attached. You exaggerate, she said unemotionally. Everybody has a different
name for what's happening here. Tomorrow you take the picture of that
cock and walk in the sands and search for me. Ask horny soldiers if they
knew me. Tell them you didn't know my first name or my last name. In
that silence to penetrate to the throat and cut it. Generally, she says, I love
first and only then do they come into me. Now it's vice versa. Who needs
victory? Don't stop. I'm unable to love, he says, and she says: From death
you came and to death you'll go, I'm lost between here and there.

And beyond them, far from there, people are killed. Bullets go astray at
night. Airplanes go on final sallies. The teleprinter doesn't speak his name.

Then she smokes a cigarette. Silence. Pleasant odor of burned red war
kerosene. If that smell is pleasant, it means I'm alive and well. The wind
isn't blowing anymore, eh?