Khirbet Khizeh (5 page)

One or two of us leapt toward them and immediately recoiled at the sight that struck our eyes: two very old women in blue dresses and black scarves were sprawled shapelessly, horribly withered monsters that emitted the stench of newly dug graves, something inhuman, sickeningly foul, their nacreous blue eyes in their blighted dried-out faces stared straight ahead, either silenced by fear or in a senseless stupor. They had, apperently, been dragged here by their families together with cushions, baskets, and household objects; and here, in sudden panic or alarm, they had fallen, or been abandoned, and here they remained, exposed to the sun like moles in the midday, like a terrible deformity that had always been hidden indoors and had suddenly been exposed in all its horror, and here it was before us. What could you do with them but spit in disgust, and gag, and not look, and run from here—the horror! The horror!

“Yeah, yeah, I'm telling you!” said Shmulik with a grimace of revulsion.

“They're gonna die,” said some guy named Shlomo.

“The devil take them!” said Aryeh.

“Scary!” said Shlomo.

“‘I would do them a favor and finish them off with a bullet to the head,” said Aryeh.

“They're gonna die, look, they can't live,” repeated Shlomo.

And without looking back we went on our way up the track to the left.

 

5

N
OW THAT WE WERE GOING DOWN
the slope again into the body of the village along one of the lanes, wondering if it were wide enough for the jeep to pass through, and prepared for any kind of surprise that might come our way, as the stillness of the village closed in around the last house in the row, and the houses, still pent up within the walls of their courtyards, apparently breathed as they always had, only with a new astonishment, with the same woven tapestry of generations line by line and thread by thread, with an abundance of fine detail, the reason for each one of which may have been forgotten long ago and dissolved into the general appearance of a structure fixed in its form, like the bustle of ants to raise up something, grain upon grain, which, the larger and more complete it grew, the more shamefully its lack of purpose was laid bare, gradually exposed, and the disgrace of its end, weeping for oblivion because of what had happened to it: instantly its condemnation was decreed, and very soon, here and there, the first curls of smoke would hesitantly rise, accompanied by curses because everything here was so wet and nothing would catch fire.

Afterward another mighty shell resounded, and immediately the howling began. At first it seemed as though the cries were quickly stifled and placated as soon as they saw that no one was being killed; but the howling, a shrill, high-pitched, rebellious, spine-chilling scream of refusal, went on still, and there was no escape from the sound of it, you couldn't free yourself for anything else, impatiently you shrugged your shoulders and looked at your comrades and wanted to go farther, but it was no longer like the shriek of a frightened caught chicken, but like the roar of a tigress whose pain only enrages her, increasing her malicious power, like the roar of a convicted criminal being led out to execution, who hates and resists his executioners, a roar that is a defensive weapon, a roar whose meaning is I-will-not-move, I-will-not-give, I'd-rather-die-than-let-you-touch, until even the stones began to roar, a terrible roaring that gathered force with short breaks of snatched breath, and then it was even possible to distinguish words, but they were incomprehensible.

“What are they screaming about over there like that, what is it?” Our wireless operator couldn't contain himself.

“It's as if the devil has gotten into her,” Shlomo said sourly, screwing up his eyes as though someone were scraping metal near his ear. Something grim passed through the village. A cow began to bellow desperately, confusedly, in waves of stupor, as though only by bellowing forth could she find a grip in a world that had been shaken out of orbit.

We had a sudden sense of foreboding as though we were about to be attacked, the alien walls were closing in on us, encompassing us with solemn malicious whispering, suddenly we seemed cut off, devoid of hope, no one knew whence the blow might suddenly fall—unless there were no other—and we ourselves here were it, in our image and likeness. We reached a crossing of alleyways. We got out to search the nearby houses. Everything was empty. The emptiness of sudden catastrophe. Uneasy boredom began to gnaw at us. The terrible screaming did not stop but turned into a wail of complaint rising fitfully, a hoarse wailing that had already become enfeebled, that was no longer a sharp scream, now that it had become clear that everything was finished, lost, nothing would help, nothing would be changed.

Suddenly a man emerged from the entrance of one of the sinister mud walls in the silence behind us. He seemed to have imagined that we had already moved on some way, and, startled to see us, he began to run up the road.

“Stand still, dog,” screeched Gaby and fired off a round above his head.

The man leapt behind a stone that was standing next to the wall and lay flat behind it, retracting his head as far as the narrow space permitted.

“Stand up!” Gaby said. “Stand up I said.”

He did not resist but stood up at once. He was in a terrible panic. Gaby carefully pointed the gun at him and said to us, “Looks like filth!” And immediately he pressed the trigger and let loose a “singleton” that passed within a hair's breadth of his head. The man spun round, spread out his hands and froze like that with his neck tucked into his shoulders.

“
Ta'al, jaiy
,”
Gaby said to him, “come here.”

The man tried to move, and discovered that there was no connection between his legs and his body. Finally his legs uprooted of their own accord, while his body was still. His face was drained of blood, not to pallor, but to a revolting greenish yellow. Finally he somehow swallowed his saliva and spreading his hands out again he tried to smile submissively, the smile of a woeful mask, or to say something, but couldn't manage to utter a sound or even the semblance of a sound.

“What are you doing here?” Gaby interrogated him.

The man tried to smile again with no greater success than before.

“Looks like filth,” Gaby repeated, pointing to him with his thumb. The man had a gray toothbrush mustache, and he repeatedly licked his lips. As though all his existence was concentrated in that licking. He placed his hands in front of his chest and described little circles of perplexity and explanation, without finding any firm ground for his soul between what there was before-this-very-moment and what was happening at-this-very-moment, and so he stood before us with the ground slipping away from beneath him, as the earth revolved.

“What's he wandering around here for? People wandering around under your feet always means trouble.”

“He just didn't manage to get away in time,” said Shlomo, uneasily looking around and searching for something.

“Why didn't he run away? No, no. There's something else here. I know his type. All this stuff he's doing to you, he's just hamming it up, playacting!”

“They've told him all sorts of stories about us, apparently, he's dying of fear! Ask him, Gaby, ask him what's up.”

At this, Moishe intervened to point out that there was someone else who would ask the questions and that we should leave him alone, and move on if we ever wanted to finish, then, turning to the Arab, he pointed to the jeep, and to remove any possibility of doubt from his mind he pushed him into it with a wave of his hand so that the man was forced against the side and held on to it and folded the upper half of his body on board, while his knees on the hem of his caftan and his sandals remained dangling outside, and struggled in contortions that were ridiculous yet sad. They grabbed hold of him and rolled him on board like a sack, and when the man stood up it turned out that these violent movements had woken him from his stupor and he had finally found his tongue. Turning toward Gaby, whom he saw as our leader, he said with a despairing smile:

“I'll tell you everything,
ya sidi
. I'll tell you everything.” But then he was seized with a spasm of nausea and began vomiting all around, as we leapt sideways in disgust.

“Scum!” Gaby shouted. “There's something wrong with this guy!”

“It's fear,” Shmulik explained. “He's mucking everything up.”

The Arab on the jeep was crouched over, still trying to cover the torment of his guts with a blank, meaningless smile of apology, as he wiped himself with the corner of his robe, groaning, smiling, and stifling hiccups, rumblings, and throbbings, and he was untouchable on account of his filth, an abomination with his vomit, fear, and smile, with some wrong that might have been done to him with his look of a respectable citizen who'd ended up in the gutter—we threw him some sack that came to hand and with exaggerated attention he set to work, using it for every purpose: to dry, to clean, and to wipe, trying all the while to calm down, to think clearly, to take control, to recover his composure, except that his trembling hands let him down. Finally he thought that he had finished and he turned toward us apparently with a word of commendation, except that a sudden shell jolted him, and his face changed for a moment, but at once he smiled sevenfold, a clasping, intertwining smile, the smile of an idiot.

“Maybe he's sick,” someone said.

“What do you mean sick?” said Gaby. “He's healthy as an ox, he's playacting that's all.”

“They don't even have blood in their veins, these Ayrabs,” said Aryeh pensively. “To abandon a village just like that! Man! If that was me instead of him, you'd find me here with a rifle in my hand. For God's sake! I swear!… A great big village like this, and not even three real men. They see Jews and wet their pants. One jeep—what are we here, just a jeep and a few men, and we take a whole village. Only the devil can understand them!” he said, speaking words to this effect and other such things.

In the meantime, while Aryeh was ruminating thus, we descended and moved farther on, peering into the abandoned courtyards, calling out and announcing anything that had the status of a “find,” chickens and runaway rabbits, pouring out some diesel oil that was on hand in a jerry can in the jeep, igniting a heap of straw or a wooden gate or a low thatched roof and waiting to see how it caught fire, and how its verve dimmed as the fuel ran out, kicking something here and there in case something more worthwhile was hidden underneath it, taking care and warning each other not to go inside for fear of fleas, brazenly slicing a cross-section through the life of houses, yards, and people, caught in mid-movement, leaving only a fossilized gesture that from now on would gradually wear down, silenced in the dust of time.

In a courtyard below we found two women who, as soon as they saw us, began to wail and cry, apparently trying to say something that couldn't be understood, both because one's complaint interrupted the other's and because the sight of their tears and awful grimaces, like a crying child's, elicited more ridicule than sympathy, and also because, despite everything, we were embarrassed at being in the presence of crying women, until finally Yehuda pointed to the doorway while his other hand gesticulated at them as if he were shooing away a flock of chickens, and he plied his tongue:
Yallah
,
yallah
—meaning: shut up and get on with it. And indeed the two immediately emerged wiping their eyes with a corner of their large white headscarves, sobbing in silent obedience.

Then in the next courtyard, on a stone beside a house, we found an old man who seemed to be waiting for our arrival and rose up to greet us, and began to pester us with the whole ceremony of greetings and blessings, and even tried to kiss the hand of our wireless operator (whose strange equipment lent him an air of importance), but he withdrew it angrily: get out of my way, you too! And immediately that white-turbaned yellow-sashed man began to lecture to us about how there weren't any young people left in the village, only old men, women, and children, and how he'd tried to persuade the ones who had fled that morning not to go, because the Jews didn't do bad things, because the Jews were not like the English, God curse their fathers, nor like those dogs, the Egyptians, etc., etc., clinging and speaking to anyone who seemed to be listening or who might listen, and finally someone pushed him in the middle of his torrent and said to him brusquely that he should go over there and shut up.

By the time we reached a little square down below, there were already seven or eight people from the village walking ahead of us, including a cripple who hobbled along on his crutch. They walked along without turning toward each other, they didn't say a word, they didn't look at one another. And so, without ever intending to be, we became a silent, sullen procession, a miniature demonstration in those desolate streets. All this began to weigh on us. And we needed to get rid of them, to stretch ourselves out somewhere and start thinking a bit about other things, and also to get some rest. The winding alley, the walls of the courtyards plastered with mud mixed with straw, topped with thistle stems laid across in a ragged pattern, wafting a last scent of summer (ah, that distant summer), the smell of the sodden village, the sound of silent desolation, seemed alien, oppressive, and superfluous. And our anger was still mounting when we reached that little square below, where two guys from another company were standing guard over their own little crowd that they had gathered in their own sweep.

“How many pieces do you have?” asked one of them, preening himself on the word
pieces
, and happy to appear like a big bad bandit.

“We have these,” Yehuda said without looking at them but with something of a nod of the head, gesturing with a box of matches in their direction as he lit a cigarette.

“Look how many of them there are!” said the young guy. “If they only wanted to, they could've finished us off just by spitting at us. And look at the way they're standing.”