Khirbet Khizeh (3 page)

We finished one belt and started another. No one responded. Our sprays of fire cut the air, which poured aside, parting in their wake with a sharp rustling sound, then dulled and returned to its silence; there was no way of telling if the fire had hit home. Our man Moishe picked up his binoculars to check what had happened.

“That's good,” said Moishe. “We really startled them. Push it a bit to the right. At those houses. Good morning
ya jama'a
.
Yahud
have come for a visit in the village!” said Moishe with relish. “The Jews are here.”

We were lying on our stomachs watching the scene with enjoyment, and getting more and more excited both by Gaby's hits and by Moishe's wisecracks, looking around to see if we couldn't find some gainful employment for ourselves as well.

Now we could also hear the shots of the covering company beyond. And then, there was fabulous “cross fire” as it's called. “That'll tickle their tummies, ha,” someone said. All unawares I had a fleeting recollection of how it had been for us, at home, only a short time ago, and a long time, and a very long time, and even beyond the threshold of the distant twilight of youth, when there were sudden shots, shots from the border, shots from beyond the citrus groves, shots from the distant hills, shots in the night, or shots at dawn, and rumors, and the blackout, and something huge, serious, threatening, and worrisome, and running, and whispering, and strained listening, and shadowy figures setting out with rifles, figures at once strange and solemn, running down the road, excited voices and somebody insisting on silence, and at once, in the same association apparently, came a precise and certain image, how in that same white-and-blue plastered house with the green shutter somebody had stood up from what he was doing in sudden terror, how in the mud-brick house somebody had stopped eating, how somebody in the cluster of houses to the right had silenced whoever was speaking at the moment—shots!—feverish shivering, guts clenched, a mother frightened to death coming out to gather her children in almost-heart-stopping panic. The sudden hushed silence, the well-known “pray-God-it-isn't-us, dear God,” how for an instant the prayer hung in space, a long drawn out, ancient, mysterious instant, peering out here and there before it was determined. Inside every single heart and inside the heart of all as one the pounding of a primeval drumbeat that cried out: danger, danger, danger! And they wanted not to know, were forced to reconsider and quickly make a frantic decision, while the whistling of bullets decisively declared: it's started!

“It'd be a good idea now to lob over a few mortar shells,” said Shmulik, in whom the spark of battle had been kindled and who was ready to set it on fire; you could see in his face that he could already hear the howl of the shell as it flew through the air and the dusty thunder of its explosion. Without wasting a word Moishe quelled this bellicose suggestion with a slight shake of the head and a raised eyebrow. But Shmulik wouldn't back down. He asked for the binoculars and took a look around, turning the focus screws this way and that.

“Can't see a thing there,” he said. “It'll turn out in the end we're attacking an empty village.”

“Gimme the binoculars,” Moishe replied without a further word. And Shmulik folded his hands around his knees and looked among his friends to find someone more affable.

“Hey Gaby,” Shmulik suddenly said leaning toward the operator who was bending over his equipment.

“Whadaya got?” Gaby said.

“Nothing. It's a pity Rivkele's not here.”

“You miss her?”

“You bet.”

And he stroked the air with his hand as though hastily caressing a pretty neck, over which a cascade of sweet-smelling hair tumbled, tickling and radiating warmth, and, picking up the packet with his filthy fingers, he shook it to extract a single cigarette through the little hole that had been torn at the top, and lit it pensively in a cloud of smoke.

“
Ahlan
,” Shmulik suddenly called, as the cloud of smoke dissolved, “look over there, they're running away!” gesturing toward the cultivated plots near the hills, whose lower fringes were hemmed with orchards. With difficulty, because of the rugged terrain and the striated background of the hills, we made out, continuing the line of his outstretched finger, a few frantic figures disappearing into the bushes.

“They're running away already? So soon? Without a single shot?”

“You can be sure that the first ones to run away are the biggest bastards.”

“I'll blast 'em,” said Gaby. Even though the plan was actually to let them go, because the more they left of their own accord, the less trouble we would have when we went into the village, and it would reduce the dirty work of getting them out.

“They're running … not even a single shot, bastards! Get 'em!” said Shmulik, growing more and more excited.

So Gaby swiveled the machine gun and fired several rounds. Moishe looked through the binoculars and gave him the range. We were all focused on that empty plot of land beyond which on one side were the hills and on the other clumps of bushes that grew thicker the farther away they were. Another group of figures appeared. Shadowy figures that moved in the open, and seemed to be in a hurry, but their haste was negated by the scale of the terrain; it was like the meaningless writhing of a worm.

“Get 'em,” said Shmulik. “A little to the right.”

“You missed,” said Moishe from inside the binoculars. “Farther to the right and up a bit. Now! Fire!”

We were getting excited. The thrill of the hunt that lurks inside every man had taken firm hold of us.

“Over there, too,” roared somebody, pointing to another field where, like ants, many figures were running, their jerky haste swallowed up by the larger field. I asked for the binoculars and saw them, group after group, or maybe family after family, or maybe bands of equivalent strength as they fled, four or five or six, or single individuals—women, too—easily recognizable by their white kerchiefs over their black robes, and their running, because they were exhausted and short of breath, apparently, slowed for a moment to a walking pace, and then growing faster and faster until it settled back into a heavy run, which contained not so much speed as a concentration of all strength and breath to prove that everything was being done so that there should be running, so that they might be saved from their fate. That instant a group of three was clearly seen racing up a hill.

“Right there,” I roared pointing them out to Gaby. “Range twelve hundred, to the right of that solitary tree. You've got a good shot at them!” And at that instant I shuddered for some reason, and with my hands still pointing with drunken excitement toward the runaways I'd spotted I felt somebody was shouting something else inside me, like a wounded bird, and while I was still feeling startled by these two voices, Gaby emptied several rounds there, and Moishe said, “To hell with you! You don't know how to shoot at all!” Surprised, I felt some kind of relief, maybe like this: “Let him miss, oh, let him miss them!” I quickly looked around to make sure that no one had seen me in what felt like my moment of shame. Immediately and uncomfortably, I went back to scanning that ditch in the field and tracking the panic-stricken figures that were floundering and trying to get out of it, but the earth could not contain them, unless they managed to get beyond those hills, beyond the horizon.

“I got 'em,” shouted Gaby.

“Like hell you did,” sharp-eyed Shmulik con-tradicted him, “gimme the gun a sec. Moishe—tell him to gimme the gun!”

“Those ones over there I can hit with a rifle!” said someone, Aryeh, who dropped to his knees, carefully aimed his rifle, and deafened us with an unexpected bolt of thunder. Meanwhile he jumped up and fired again. And the hunt was on, in full cry. Until Moishe stood up and said:

“Stop with that noise. You're such heroes, you. You shoot like my granny. Enough already.”

Then Aryeh said: “Sure, just give me the machine gun for a minute and you'll see!”

Shmulik said the same, and Gaby was furious. Shouting broke out and they called the whole world to witness. The angle of the sun in the sky, the zeroing of the equipment, the color of the hills, the vegetation of the fields, the fact that the target was moving, the estimate of the range, which was somewhere between twelve hundred and nine hundred, and they reminded each other, and jabbed fingers in the air, once upward and once straight ahead—mocking, denying, being professional, and with enthusiasm for the one great justice—as a result of which Aryeh knelt and lay down by the gun, and everyone got out of the way, grumbling and insisting on their opinions, and made room, and Moishe picked out with the binoculars a group of four men who had just at that moment reached the angle of the hills and stood out beautifully with their dark clothes.

“Come on, this is it,” said Moishe, “five rounds and you'll get at least one of them,” and put his binoculars to his eyes. And we too screwed up our eyes in anticipation of the first shot. And those four opposite, whose strength gave way at that very moment and who slowed their running into a heavy stooping walk, went down one after the other into the dip of a little wadi, and one by one they came out again, and when the last one emerged the first round rattled out and the four were seen falling. Then three of them stood up and started running and skittering toward the cover of the nearby bushes.

“One–nothing!” shouted Shmulik, bowing politely to Gaby.

At that moment the fourth one stood up and ran after his friends.

“
Istanna ya qdish
,” said Gaby to Shmulik with a slight bow.

Then a second round rattled out, followed at once by the third. The four people in the distance all dropped. Someone inside me choked. Time stood still for a moment and everything was unimportant. We craned our necks to see better, to get a better view. Moishe said nothing. Suddenly two of them got up and ran, and before we knew what had happened they had leapt into the bushes and vanished. Then another one got up and ran. And when the fourth one got up, the fourth round poured out, the man bent over for a moment, waited, then rose—a fifth round. He didn't run but he walked. Then apparently he decided to crawl. Suddenly he began to roll along and was swallowed up in the grass. There was no point in shooting anymore. The contest had been indecisive. The whole thing had become tainted and there was no more will left to fight. I felt that it was impossible for me not to say something so I said:

“Let them be—you won't hit them anyway … It's pointless. Too bad…” And my words choked, but nobody cared.

“To hell with them,” said Aryeh laconically, standing up and shaking off the clods of earth and a few sticky crumbs.

We were rescued from our distress by the wireless operator, who said that they were sending a vehicle for us to go out and check the huts in the orange groves and the orchards, and then we'd enter the village.

 

4

W
E WALKED SLOWLY
in the muddy tracks of the jeep that revealed its acrobatic prowess by bouncing around on all fours in the ruts and mire, which after so many tranquil generations of bare feet and donkeys' hooves were compelled to bear silently two scars along their entire length, bleeding mud and silence. There were no more shots to be heard, apart from a stray volley here and there, like an afterthought. If you were here on your own, and stopped walking, and listened for a bit, you'd no doubt hear the earth quietly smacking its lips, drinking, sucking, and lapping up the water, and the remains of autumn melancholy, dry and fevered, warmed and spread soothingly like the soporific effect of suckling.

Finally, when the road straightened out and stopped winding and meandering, alternately exposed and sheltered by hedges of prickly pears and acacia, and twigs threaded through rusting barbed wire, and became simply a damp dirt path running down toward the valley, the jeep stopped, where the machine gun mounted on it could cover the whole road ahead while we got out and went into the huts and yards to check them. And even if there was, it seemed, nothing easier than to disregard it, simply to deny it, it mattered to me that it was beginning. I was impatient for the beginning of things that I imagined differently from everyone else. I was content with everything and hated starting to feel differently, and I didn't want to stand out from the others in any way. It always ended in disillusionment. The tiniest crack attracted attention, turned into a gaping hole and started to shout. I took hold of myself and forced myself to keep quiet.

The huts appeared to have been uninhabited for a very long time. A harvest of fear and a crop of evil rumors had reaped untimely haste and the writhing of a worm hurrying to meet its fate. We kicked in the wicket in the big wooden gate in the clay walls and entered a square courtyard with a hut on one flank and another hut on the other. Sometimes, when they had the means and the time was right, these people would erect a clay hut over the casing of the well house below, training a vine or two and making an arbor, and bringing some concrete blocks, which didn't need plastering, at least as long as their corners were so attractive; pepper bushes and autumn eggplants were rotting below in the grass and moldering near the water tap, and roses peeped out of the rampant weeds and climbed above them, and paths extended to some place inside the groves. Another kick and a casual glance into an abandoned home, and a storage room where the dust of crops coated cobwebs both tattered and greasy-looking. Walls that had been attentively decorated with whatever was at hand; a home lined with plaster and a molding painted blue and red; little ornaments that hung on the walls, testifying to a loving care whose foundations had now been eradicated; traces of female-wisdom-hath-builded-her-house, paying close attention to myriad details whose time now had passed; an order intelligible to someone and a disorder in which somebody at his convenience had found his way; remnants of pots and pans that had been collected in a haphazard fashion, as need arose, touched by very private joys and woes that a stranger could not understand; tatters that made sense to someone who was used to them—a way of life whose meaning was lost, diligence that had reached its negation, and a great, very deep muteness had settled upon the love, the bustle, the bother, the hopes, and the good and less-good times, so many unburied corpses.