Refiner's Fire (51 page)

“I know,” said Marshall. “The bakers wife told me never to speak to you because you are possessed.”

“Ah, those horrible peasants! They are superstitious and they know nothing. I cannot even buy stamps or a newspaper in Bat Gallim, for they fear to look me in the eye. All because of the flies in my room. And who do you think sent me those flies?”

“Flies?”

“Yes. One night about ten years ago there were hundreds of flies in my room. I had no screens, and there were so many that I breathed them. I had nothing—no newspaper, stick, or broom—with which to drive them away. So I picked up my chair and used it. The chair was heavy, and not very accurate. I broke most of the things in my room. I smashed pictures, plates, light bulbs, every thing, and only managed to kill one or two flies. It was so frustrating that I began to scream. When I stopped, covered with sweat, I looked up, and saw two hundred people watching me from the street. Boys had climbed trees for a better view. Just then the fire brigade arrived and, as is the custom with lunatics, sprayed me with cold water. I was so humiliated that I did not leave my house for two years. During that time, there was no reason to shave. When I came out on the street for the air raid sirens in the June War, my beard was five feet long and my hair came down to my waist. The people of Bat Gallim will not forget that. They have their own reputation and need someone to whom they can feel superior.

“You see, in 1957, a certain butcher named Shlomo had calendars printed and distributed throughout the quarter to every household. They had a beautiful color photograph of the Bat Gallim Casino, and everyone was so proud that they hung these calendars and used them to determine the dates of festivals and holidays.

“Everything was fine except for two mistakes. The printer had put that Carnival and Purim came together on the same day, and not only was there that mistake but that day was also listed as Fool's Day. Joke and costume shops in Haifa had to stay open at night for weeks as everyone in Bat Gallim decided to burn both candles in this triple holiday of madness, which, of course, did not really exist. In addition, the Moroccan and Bulgarian immigrants (who did not know of such things) wanted desperately to excel in the ways of their new homeland, and competed ferociously in devising practical jokes and nonsensical schemes. Even I, with no taste at all for buffoonery, bought plastic fangs and goggle eyes—they were popular at the time.

“Then a report appeared in the paper that a government delegation was coming on the day of madness. It was to consist of the Minister of Immigrant Absorption, the head of the Jewish Agency, the Prime Minister, the two Chief Rabbis, the President, and, for good measure, the Chief Rabbi of Brazil. The purpose of the visit was for them to be shown how well the new immigrants had adapted to national customs. ‘They can't fool us,' said the people of Bat Gallim. We know what to do.'

“On the appointed evening, a long official motorcade crossed the tracks and entered Bat Gallim. To their surprise, not a soul was to be seen on Rehov HaAliyah. But when they turned down Bat Gallim Avenue and made for the sea, they saw the entire population assembled on the sidewalks. Every man, woman, and child wore a disguise—fake beards, buck teeth, crossed eyes, wigs, and costumes made of skins, aluminum, paper, whatever. Women dusted the palm trees, and the children had been instructed to bend down and break wind at the visitors—a mission which they carried out with great gusto.

“The high officials and their staffs were stunned. They got out of their cars and looked around them in astonishment. The people of Bat Gallim are not stupid, and immediately recognized that something was wrong. Not daring to reverse themselves, they became very serious and embarrassed, and, with their costumes on, they proceeded to carry out their plans.

“A wretched Bulgarian woman with goggle eyes, a fish tied on her head, and frogman's flippers, approached the dignitaries, gave them bunches of weed, and recited Slavic palindromes. In tears, the mayor rode up to the motorcade, facing backward on a jackass. He was supposed to have given a welcoming speech, but all he could do was weep. And this fellow had had his eye on a seat in the Knesset. Politics are fickle.

“The officials jumped in the cars and fled. Of course, Israel is a small country—beautiful, but small. Everyone knew within an hour.

“But it is past noon and I must soon see my mistress. I asked you here for one reason. You must not go into the Army. This I know. You will be killed.”

“How do you know?”

“I know,” Lamarel screamed, “because I have ridden with the god of war.”

“Was it a nice ride?” asked Marshall. “I may be drunk, you may be drunk...”

“And you may not realize it,” said Lamarel as he began to slip into the past, “but I am the same fool as you, or at least I was, until I learned.

“In Egypt, we continued to regard ourselves as French. Though I was as Egyptian as I could have been, there was a touchstone in my heart for France, which I loved as a man loves a woman. I was loyal in absentia, and, in walking the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, I put my feet down on the plan of Paris. Little did I know that had I stayed in Cairo and continued to imagine Paris I could have lived richly in my imagination forever. It was only when I proudly decided to fuse my life with my dreams that I came in for trouble. Dreams are stronger. How could I not have known that, in Alexandria—lost in layered light.

“At the beginning of the First War, I went to Paris and volunteered for the Army. Can you understand how stupid that was? I crossed the Mediterranean from corner to corner and traveled hundreds of kilometers so that I could be put in a dead man's coat and be made to live in the mud like a cold damp pig—and what is worse about the Army, we were totally forgotten, as if we had fallen into hell.

“We went on a boat in a river, about a hundred of us, in the heavy coats from the dead, and we lay on the metal deck in a ring like a necklace of men and arms. Though it was raining, there was a slight overhang and only our legs and boots were wet. Dry from the knees up, we tried to sleep. It was daylight, and we were quite warm, even hot, in those heavy coats. I was leaning against a wall, my hand on my rifle (if it were stolen, a month in prison). We moved through a light mist; the steam pistons echoed off the banks; and then a German plane came from over the trees like a kite or a bird.

“Most of us had never seen a plane. It left and came back, shooting its machine guns. There was nothing to hide behind and we didn't want to go in the water, so we sat there and loaded our rifles, and when I say ‘we,' it is with a sense of remembered
fraternité
, although I hated them and they hated me.

“The plane would go away, and come back again shooting. But there were a hundred of us firing at it. I was terrified, but paralyzed with laughter; no sound, but my legs and lungs were numb. Weak with this silent laughter, I had great difficulty loading my rifle. But I was pleased by the copper cartridges and the sound they made as I put them in the magazine, when I snapped the bolt, and when they were ejected to the deck.

“I aimed at the plane and shot. We all did. Not one stood or changed position. There was no talk. This went on for at least an hour. We saw the paths of bullets in the water, which sometimes looked as if it were boiling. The bullets hit the plates of the ship, but they never hit us.

“The Captain sat in a glass wheelhouse, and was drinking from a mug. Every few minutes he turned and looked at us, smiling in slow motion, his face glowing from behind a blue jacket and cap. The sky cleared; cold winds arose; and the plane kept returning. It was freezing outside, but a current of heat came from the wheelhouse and we were warm and happy, conscious of the clicking of the brass, the closing of the barrels, the cavitousness of a cartridge once it has been fired, and the sound of it empty falling to the deck.

“The Captains wheelhouse continued to grow lighter and lighter until the glass was like a construction of clear rainbows. The plane had gone, never to return. Our rifles lay by our sides, and we were frozen into one position staring at the wheelhouse, from which a higher and higher heat was coming—rushing air warming just the tops of our bodies; our legs in our boots were frozen. It was painful and yet pleasant. Our eyes riveted upon the Captain, we saw that the blue wool of his suit and cap contained glowing waves which moved up and down as if in molten metal.

“When he turned and smiled, his teeth were so white that they stretched our necks even farther forward. We were paralyzed in pain and pleasure for hours. Darkness fell and beams of white came from the pilot house, as solid and massive as the blackest of any beams on a great iron bridge. We moved through the night, and the next thing we knew, we had arrived at our destination. We were cold and wet, surrounded by spent cartridges. The wheelhouse was dark, and as we marched off the boat, over rain-soaked boards which did not bend under our weight, we said nothing. It was never mentioned, not even once. There was nothing to say. We had been plumbed to our depths, and we went through the war like dead men ... like dead men. Do you understand?”

Marshall could hardly keep his wits about him. His hands were pale and bloodless, so hard did he grip the wooden table. Swaying to and fro, he looked around him. The sulfurous smoke from the charcoal cooking pits was thick and intolerable. Most of the Indians had taken off their shirts. Their eyes glowed, and their skin was leathern. Marshall surveyed them in many-tiered balconies above him, perched with their chins resting on their hands. They seemed to ascend into the blackness and smoke as far as the eye could see. “Lamarel Foa! Lamarel Foa!” Marshall said before he fainted. “This is only a one-story building! Who are you?”

Lamarel Foa laughed in a terrible, dreadful, hideous, frightening way, and Marshall dropped to the floor like a rock.

O
NE
O
CTOBER
morning three days before the conclusion of the language program, a military messenger on a quicksand-colored motorcycle roared into the compound. There does not exist in the world of men a creature more alarming than the military messenger. The
ne plus ultra
of bad news and excitement, he carries in his locked leather pouch ordinations of life and death, sentences of power, the fate of armies, the future of civil populations. His arrival at camp is an electrification.

This one had rushed down from Northern Command at seventy miles an hour through choked streets, by jumping sidewalks and driving his old British military motorcycle down steps, through gardens, and along the track bed—in a race with the Tel Aviv train. He had sergeants stripes, a sidearm, dust goggles pushed onto his brow, and a military police armband. The license tag on the motorcycle was white with red numbers. He had a siren and a guidon flag, and the civilian police wouldn't touch him.

Upon arrival of this fire-hot moon calf, the language students exited their classes and pressed to the rails of promenades, galleries, and porches. The Russians in particular were concerned and alarmed: they were always overly impressed by anything to do with the state. The messenger checked out the girls as he unlocked his pouch and removed several envelopes, which he scanned and shuffled. In a practiced manner, he faced ahead and shouted above the sound of his idling motorcycle, “Pearl! Marshall! Forward!”

Marshall ran down the steps. The messenger collected his signature, gave him an envelope, put on the dust glasses, and mounted his motorcycle, driving it right through the shallow duck pond and scattering the ducks. His acceleration was heard until he hit the South Road and buzzed away at 120 mph.

Marshall went upstairs and handed the envelope to Leah, their teacher, the dark-eyed daughter of a Greek stevedore. The intermediate class of nurses, engineers, liberal arts graduates, girls who wanted husbands, and boys with serious character flaws which led them to gain weight and speculate in West Bank real estate, settled back to hear the communication. Leah read it in Hebrew, explaining in Hebrew the words that the students did not know.

“It says: ‘Northern Command, Second Mountain Brigade, Headquarters Detachment, Haifa.'” Like a stewardess demonstrating a lifejacket, she held the envelope before her. Then she opened it and read. “H.Q./Class four order/Direct/8 October, 1972/Z.H.L. 191—4372. Pearl, Marshall: HaAliyah 71, Haifa. Notice of conscription. Report to Lishcat HaGiyoos, 22 October, 1972, for assignment to training prior to service in Second Mountain Brigade active cadre. General Arieh Ben Barak, Commander, Second Mountain Brigade.”

Knowing that in two weeks Marshall would leave for the Army, they moved on, this time to the Emek Bet Shan, a valley of the Mountains of Gilboa—hills which flanked the midlands of the desert before the Jordan escarpment. During Marshall's year in the Army, Lydia would stay at Kfar Yona. With luck, he would come home to her at least five days a month, and she would farm, work in the kitchen, or teach in the school—there was no way to tell. The kibbutz was famous for the many officers it had sent to the Army, and for the dates, wheat, and olives it grew on the bone-white floor of the valley. Half of the time, this valley was so hot and dry that it seemed to be the intercross of hell and terrycloth. But sometimes, it was said, the humidity was very great and the farmers went fishing in the air through which swam lost and startled prawns and other smallish crustaceans. (In the very beginning, the pioneers had thought that these were flying scorpions.)

Marshall and Lydia arrived at sunset and walked east from Bet Shan through the groves of olives and dates, past abandoned fortresses, down a narrow road which led through fields carpeted with crops as white and smooth as linen. New stone walls had just been completed at the road's edge, and the master masons had carefully smeared the joints with potted gallium and limonite. A linesman with a rifle worked alone near the top of a pole. It was quiet enough for the crickets and frogs to sound like a human multitude, and the high royal palms were no less elegant than their counterparts on the Riviera. But here were vultures, and great distances, and hawks which crossed from the Jordanian mountains to prey on creatures of the field. Israel sent back its own hawks, made of metal. In their approaches to the Golan, flying low by the Jordan to evade enemy radar, the Phantoms, Skyhawks, and Mirages from Ramat David often passed over Kfar Yona and other settlements in the valley. They came within twenty feet of the lookout towers and they scared the animals. The secretaries of the kibbutzim complained to the Air Force, but not very vigorously. Though the fighters spooked the cattle and the chickens, the people of the kibbutzim felt their hearts shake with pride as the planes ripped about.