Refiner's Fire (52 page)

Marshall and Lydia walked toward the ring of towers which marked the kibbutz—a grove of tall trees among which some red roofs glowed in the setting sun. As it darkened, crows lifted above the date palms; a cold wind pressed down the sine of the mountains; and the perimeter lights of Kfar Yona came on like a string of shining porcelains.

“It's beautiful,” said Lydia.

“It
is
beautiful,” answered Marshall, “especially in light of the fact that it's an armed settlement.”

Lydia looked puzzled. “Who said it was an armed settlement? It doesn't look armed to me.”

It IS.

“Oh it is not. Ever since you found out that you're due for the Army, you've become a general. But you're only going to be in for one year; you'll be a private; you'll be home for five days a month; and there's not likely to be a big war.”

“What does that have to do with Kfar Yona?”

“A lot.”

“What?”

“Just don't take any chances, if you don't have to. You're not going to find your father by being in the Army, but by looking after you get out, and to get out, you have to stay alive.”

“Do you know what logic is, Lydia?”

“Certainly.”

“Then why don't you ever resort to it?”

“I do.”

“Stop.” He walked behind her, put his hands up against the sides of her head, and directed her sight like a mounted searchlight. “Look,” he said, pointing toward the settlement, “guard towers...”

“Oh, is that what those are?”

“...deep perimeter fencing, fire fields, arc lights.” The lights had just begun to sweep over the crops, like dancing stilts. “Look.” He turned her head, touching her gently, so that she could feel his compensatory surrender for each point that he won—their custom in disputes.

“A halftrack, see? I count five soldiers inside.”

“Oh! I thought it was a storage tank.”

He wheeled her around until she stared into the darkness between the date palms. “There.”

“What?”

“Look hard.” Then she saw three soldiers standing in the trees. They were armed to the teeth, and, perhaps appropriately, they were smiling. They were the archetypal soldiers who need almost not be described, except that they were very dark of skin, and they had vacuum bottles slung over their shoulders for the night of patrol among the trees.

A corporal approached without a sound, for despite his rank he was practiced at being bodiless in the silent groves. “Good night, friends,” he said in English. “Where you going?”

“Kfar Yona.”

“Kfar Yona is there.” He pointed. “Just a kilometer. On the right. On the left is other kibbutz. He is Kfar Tsofar. Kfar Yona is better, better food, very pretty, more peoples. There are in the Army, many peoples from there. His name is like ... a dove.”

T
HE COURTYARD
of the Lishcat HaGiyoos was filled with several hundred new recruits, who stood in groups according to the unit for which they were destined. Each group was addressed by officers from its future command, and then ushered out to waiting trucks. Finally, only those hundred and fifty or two hundred attached to the First, Second, and Third Mountain Brigades were left. Marshall had found two other Americans, with whom he sat on hard benches freed by the departure of an elite armor unit's new men.

One of the Americans was named Robert. He was a physical education instructor from Brooklyn, six feet seven inches tall, perhaps the strongest man in the world. The other was named Lenny; he had been a washing machine repairman in Los Angeles; he was very handsome, and he had a trim beard. They consulted, quickly discovering that they had a limited command of Hebrew and that Robert and Lenny were veterans of the American Army—where Robert had been an instructor in hand-to-hand combat, and Lenny had been a weapons specialist and sharpshooter. Robert was married. He often looked in his wallet at a picture of his wife. Lenny had never had a wife.

They immediately sensed a strong affinity, communicated in a certain nervous irony common to those with similar backgrounds together in a strange place. Though in America they would have been strikingly diverse, in Israel, by virtue of being Americans, they were practically clones.

They speculated on the character of the training, but their primary concern was where they would be stationed. All three were from kibbutzim, and dreamed of being sent to a base near home. This often happened, and it was said that the assignment officers did what they could for older and married men. They discovered that they were only-sons, which meant that, excepting all-out war, they would be held back from combat zones as much as possible. There was fighting on the Golan and on the Lebanese border, and they surmised that the only-sons of Northern Command would fall to the bottom, on a line running roughly from Haifa to Bet Shan—a line near which they lived. They would have speculated themselves into generalships and Mercedes limousines driven by buxom girl privates, had not an officious captain screamed,
“Le kol ahshev
!”which means, roughly, “Attention!”

They did not know how to come to attention properly. Instead, they stiffened and blinked, and their hearts beat faster. Most of the recruits were young and very frightened. Some were peasant farmboys; a few were Druse Arabs; many wore gaudy flared clothing—tight pants, jewelry, pimps' shirts with pictures of pineapples and fish. But they all became completely silent when a general walked in and stood on a raised platform before them. He spoke as if he were subjecting his words to a critique at the very moment they sounded, trying not to say the unnecessary, to compress his message, to be uninfluenced by the great gap of power and experience which lay between him and the new soldiers. He knew well that a few of them might eventually rise far above him, and that more than a few were already happy and had loving families—something which had eluded him. Though he spoke with great dignity and authority, he spoke with respect for those he addressed.

“Good morning,” he said. “I am Arieh Ben Barak, Commander of the Second Mountain Brigade. Today, you enter the Army of Israel. I cannot remember the day I did so myself. It is surrounded in confusion, for in those times everyone was in the Army and no one was in the Army. But anyway, you will soon be joining me in my command, or in the neighboring commands of the First and Third.

“Our job is to protect the northern approaches to the heart of Israel. There are far too many Syrian soldiers, and they are well armed. But, as you will see, the terrain is on our side, and the Air Force helps us immeasurably. You may ask: ‘Which Air Force?' I can tell you: our Air Force, because it is so good; and their Air Force, because it is so bad. Though many of you will be with us for only a year, you will always return to the Mountain Brigades for your reserve duty. Now you are to be given infantry training. Pay close attention. We run tight brigades, and you must know what you are doing at every moment. Though it is difficult to live in this way—you will see what I mean—it is not unpleasant; especially in that time goes very fast for a man who does his job well. I guarantee you this. I know, because I have become an immodest old man in the snap” (he snapped his fingers) “of my fingers.”

They laughed.

“Now go and learn, and when you come back, you will learn more.
Shalom.”
He walked off the platform and vanished into the corridors of the fortress.

The General had a quick sensitive face; they had been impressed by the way in which he carried himself, and by the intelligence of his voice. Already, he had begun to build their morale—because they sensed that he would guide them properly and well.

They raced in an Army truck down the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway, often sighting the sea, rolling past a thick green belt of canefields and groves, heading for the induction center at Tel HaShomer—a place called Bakum. Whenever Marshall had passed beautiful landscape, or ridden fast in a half-open truck, or seen the sea vanish and appear from behind dunes and hills, his soul had arisen. But despite the scent of new-fallen cane, of oranges, despite the excitement of the moment and the passage of October sun across the beginning of his first day in a crack army besieged on all sides, in a small country in Asia, despite his natural fear, he was quiet and calm, and unafraid, and happy. He felt like a man-angel, as if nothing in the world could upset him, as if his heart—usually exposed and alert—were safe within a fortress. He was surprised to feel for the first time in his life just like everyone else.

When the Commander of the Second Mountain Brigade had walked into the courtyard of waiting recruits, the forces driving Marshall were temporarily stilled and quieted. It was as if he had always been in pain, and then the pain had stopped. He was puzzled and did not understand. He did not realize that the Commander of the Second Mountain Brigade was his father.

T
EL
H
A
S
HOMER
, or Bakum, had about it the air of a navel, being the center of gravity for military affairs, in almost the exact middle of the country, and where regular soldiers like Marshall, Robert, and Lenny were inducted and released. It was the busiest place Marshall had ever seen, a hive of soldiers and equipment. It looked like a staging area for an invasion, an Italian opera during a martial finale, or a Roman farce, and Marshall and his friends could hardly move a step without being cut off by a tight column of armed troops, hurrying down one road or another.

Once, six infantry battalions intersected at a crossroads, where an MP in the center directed them like traffic, motioning through the shortest columns first. The last group was half a mile long. Soldiers not in formation were running heatedly from place to place, beads of sweat on their red faces, equipment jangling from them like the pots and pans of peddlers. And mechanized equipment—either singly, in platoons of half a dozen, or in armored columns of staggering size—was moving everywhere else. Marshall, Robert, and Lenny stood open-mouthed at a corner as two hundred tanks drove past them no more than ten feet apart. The motors of one tank are as concussive as all the drums in a symphony orchestra resounding in unison. The sound of two hundred tanks shakes the earth and vibrates buildings as if they were hollow reeds.

The recruits of the Mountain Brigades walked a few miles past unending supply dumps, vehicle parks, tank depots, arsenals, armories, hospitals, and fortifications. They were headed for the Identification Division, where they would be photographed and issued documents, and where a record would be made of their teeth. If a body were too mutilated or burnt to identify, someone would resort to reading its cavities and crowns. On the way, they saw a distant hill covered with dark green vegetation. “That's funny,” said Lenny. “Every inch of this place is taken up with military stuff. Why do you think they left that hill there?” As they closed on it they discovered that, though a hill, it was covered not with vegetation but rather with an infantry brigade of nearly 2,000 soldiers in drab green battle regalia, who were all looking intently into a small canvas booth. Marshall assumed that a general was addressing his command. What else could hold the attention of 2,000 armed men sitting under the hot sun? But as the recruits passed they were able to see inside the booth. There was no general lecturing on the fine points of war, and no tactician explaining the capabilities of a newly acquired weapon. It was a puppet show—little Hebrew-speaking puppets bouncing up and down on a stage surrounded by flowers.

After bored dentists had called out the peculiarities of their teeth, they were marched into a dining hall and given a class-2 Army meal. Marshall and his companions were used to this fare, the sustenance of every kibbutz. It can be described in three words—Polish Oasis Cuisine. However, they noticed that the boiled potatoes were covered with blue stains. Marshall summoned the dining hall officer on duty. By custom, he was armed.

“What's this?” asked Marshall, pointing at the blue potatoes.

“What's what?”

“This,” he said, indicating the potatoes more fervently by moving his hand back and forth in accusation. The officer looked.

“Potatoes,” he said.

“Oh yeah.”

“Don't you eat potatoes in America?”

“They're blue!”

“The potatoes in America are blue?”

“No! These potatoes are blue.”

“Oh yes. These potatoes are blue. So?”

“Why?”

“Why? I don't know why. Who am I, Sherlock Holmes?” The officer started to walk away, but pivoted around. “As it happens,” he said, “I do know. I just remembered. The soldiers who peeled the potatoes have just come back from testing fountain pens.”

Marshall was speechless. Then he said quietly, “Didn't they wash their hands?”

“Why?” asked the officer, departing. “Ink is clean. It comes from rocks.”

After the magical point at which the recruits were issued their equipment and uniforms, and suddenly became indistinguishable from battle-worn veterans, the dining hall officer approached, towing a higher-ranking, pashalike, Egyptian-looking fatso who carried a swagger stick. “This is the one,” said the officer. With fire in his eyes, the “Egyptian” approached Marshall. Marshall could hardly believe what followed, but it did.

“
You
say,” said the fat pasha, “that it isn't
cashér
for kitchen troops to test fountain pens.
You
say, that we don't know how to run a
cashér
kitchen.
You
say, that I don't know my job.
You
say, that I am guilty of violating the commandments.
You
say, that ink does not come from rocks.
You
say, that I should be reprimanded by the rabbis.
You
say, that I should be thrown from the Army like garbage and cast out on the street to beg and die.”