Authors: A.B. Yehoshua
The Lover (44 page)
And now I was surrounded by young, boyish faces, a
close-knit
band of regular soldiers. They looked excited, eager to go into battle. Laughing at their private jokes, talking about people that I didn’t know. The young commander called me over to his jeep, he asked me to explain quietly who I was and how I’d come to be in the hands of the major. So in the middle of the desert, amid the crackling of radio sets and the roar of engines, once again I told the whole story, adding some superfluous details, getting entangled in a strange confession, about my grandmother, about the legacy. A man standing before a silent youth, telling the story of his life. I thought perhaps he’d want to get rid of me, send me away. I even told him that I had no idea how to use a bazooka and that war in general wasn’t exactly for me. But I could see he had no intention of getting rid of me. They’d foisted me on him, so he’d find a use for me. He heard me out, not saying a word, just smiling faintly from time to time. Then he called to one of the men from the platoon, a soldier with glasses who looked like an intellectual, and told him to give me a quick lesson on the use of the bazooka.
The soldier made me lie on the ground, put the bazooka in my hands and started lecturing me on sights, trajectories, varieties of
bombs, closed electrical circuits. And I was nodding my head but only half listening. Only one thing stuck in my head, the backlash that recoils on the gunner. The bespectacled soldier warned me repeatedly about the dangers of the backlash, apparently he himself had once been burned by it. And in the middle of this strange private lesson they called us to eat. They brought out a stack of tinned foods. I was the only one with an appetite. They were a bit astonished at my ravenous hunger. They opened tin after tin, tasting it and passing it over to me, watching in amusement as, spoon in hand, I polished off one after another, in any order, tins of beans, grapefruit salad, meat, halva, sardines, and pickled cucumber for dessert. I gobbled up everything. And among the empty tin cans the radio crackled constantly, and at last I heard the news that had been kept from me the previous day. Hard news, dark news, dressed up in new words – defensive strategy, battle of attrition, holding operation, regrouping of forces. Jargon designed to soften the truth, the burning reality into which I was now so deeply sunk.
And suddenly alone, very much alone. An empty space in my heart. Imagine me in the middle of all this confusion. Sitting among the soldiers, beside the chain of the half-track, hiding in a scrap of sweltering shade, in the sickening stench of burnt gasoline. My clothes so filthy you’d think I’d gone through two wars already, seeing all the preparations being made for my death. Troops milling around us endlessly, encircling us. Tanks, half-tracks, jeeps and artillery, the crackle of radio sets, the shouts of soldiers hailing their friends. I begin to understand, I won’t leave this place alive. Shut in from every side. A nation ensnaring itself. Suddenly I wanted to write you a postcard, but already urgent orders were arriving, we must prepare to move
immediately
.
We moved on a kilometre or two, advancing in a broad formation, then they halted us. We waited there, trussed in our belts, helmets on our heads, drivers at the wheel, for four long hours, watching the dim, threatening horizon where the battle was noiselessly in progress. Watching the plumes of dust rising in the distance, the smoke of distant fires, signs that my companions interpreted eagerly. Slowly the desert turned red about us and suddenly, on the dusty skyline, the ball of the sun caught fire,
like a flare thrown up from the burning canal, a weapon of war, a part of the battle. And as evening came the sun began to disintegrate, as if it too had been caught in the cross fire, and our faces, our vehicles, the weapons in our hands were painted purple.
And in that same place, still deployed in advance formation, we waited two days, as if frozen where we stood. And personal, linear time, the time that we knew, was blown to bits. And a different, collective time was smeared over us like sticky dough. Eating and sleeping, listening to the radio and pissing, cleaning our weapons and hearing a lecture from an eccentric instructor who came to us with a little tape recorder and played us rock music. Playing backgammon, huddling together in tight circles, leaping onto the half-track at false alarms, watching the aircraft going out and returning. And somewhere else, beyond us, there were sunrises and sunsets, twilight and darkness, burning noons and cool mornings. They cut us off from the world so they could kill us more easily, and I, a stranger twice over, or, as they called me, the runaway who returned, I wandered about among the young men, hearing their foolish jokes, their childish, adolescent fantasies. And they, not knowing how to deal with me, still impressed by my ravenous hunger of the first day, would offer me slices of cake, biscuits and chocolate, which I took absent-mindedly, munching moodily among the armoured half-tracks. Once, in the middle of the night, I thought of trying to escape. I took some toilet paper and started walking towards a distant hill that I thought was deserted. To my surprise I found troops dug in there as well. The whole desert was alive with men.
At last we began to move, slowly, like struggling out of quicksand. Already exhausted, advancing a few hundred metres and stopping, stopping and advancing. Moving south, then north, then east, then turning back to the line of advance. As if some moon-struck general were controlling us from far away. Suddenly, without warning, the first shells fell among us and somebody was killed. And so the battle began for us. Lying flat on the ground, scratching trenches in the sand, then up again onto the transports and moving on. Sometimes opening fire with all weapons at sand-coloured targets. They too were wandering like sleepwalkers on the dusty horizon. I didn’t shoot. The
bazooka was slung over my shoulder all the time but the bombs were tucked away under one of the seats. I sat there huddled, the helmet over my face, turning myself into something inert, an object without will, a lifeless creature, only at intervals looking out at the nearby scene, the endless, never-changing desert. Our unit was changing all the time, disbanding and regrouping. The boy-commander had been killed, another, an older officer, had taken over. The half-track broke down, they put us aboard another. Changes all the time, handing us over to somebody new, taking us away from him. Sometimes under bombardment, short or prolonged, hiding our heads in the sand. But advancing, that much was clear. Men trying to whip up enthusiasm. Victory, the breakthrough, at last. But a hard, bitter victory. One evening we arrived at an important field headquarters. We were set to guard a staff officer who was sitting among a dozen radio sets, surrounded by wires and receivers. A tired man, his eyes narrowed by long days without sleep, sitting on the ground, taking up receiver after receiver with endless patience and fearful slowness, in a sleepy voice, sending out orders to faraway units. All night we sat around him. I tried to follow his conversations, to understand the course of the battle, but it seemed that matters were growing always more complicated. In the morning twilight, in a brief lull, I plucked up my courage and approached him, asking when he thought the war would be over. He looked at me with a fatherly smile and in that same sleepy voice, very slowly, he began to speak of a long war, a matter of months, perhaps even of years. Then he picked up a receiver and in a weary voice gave the order for an assault.
Now the young men around me were beginning to look like me. Ageing prematurely. Hair white with dust, beards unkempt, faces wrinkled, eyes sunken through lack of sleep. Here and there, bandages around filthy heads. Already we could see in the distance the sparkling waters of the canal. They ordered us down from the transports and set us digging deep into the ground, each man his own grave.
And then I heard the singing. Chanting, prayer, live voices, not from the transistor. It wasn’t yet light, just the first flutterings of dawn. Shivering with cold, wrapped in our blankets, wet with
dew, we woke up to find three men dressed in black with side curls and beards, leaping and dancing, singing and clapping hands, like some well-trained dance troupe. They came closer, touching us with warm, thin hands, rousing us from our sleep. They came to cheer us up, to restore our faith, sent by their yeshiva to circulate among the troops, to give out prayer books, to bind
tefillin
on the young men.
Already some of our men had joined them, drowsy,
bedraggled
soldiers, laughing nervously, rolling up their sleeves and repeating the words of the prayer. They were blessing us. “A great victory,” they said. “Another great miracle, by the grace of God.” But it seemed they weren’t sure, their voices lacked conviction. This time we’d disappointed them a little.
The morning came and quickly the air grew warm. Men started to prepare breakfast, smoke rose from campfires.
Transistors
broadcast the morning news. And they, having finished their mission of awakening, folded up their equipment, the
tefillin
and the rest, sat down on a hillock, took out little cardboard boxes from their jeep and laid out their morning snack. We invited them to take breakfast with us, but they refused politely, bowing their heads, smiling to themselves. They had their own food. They were even afraid of touching our water bottles for fear of contamination. I went closer to them. From among their sacred objects, among the prayer books and tassels, they took out bread, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes and giant cucumbers. Sprinkling them with salt and eating them complete with the shell. From a big red thermos they were drinking some yellowish liquid, apparently cold tea that they’d brought with them from Israel. I stood and watched them, more and more fascinated. I’d forgotten that Jews like this still existed. The black hats, the beards and the side curls. They took off their jackets and sat in their white shirts, patches of colour not of this world. Two were adults, about forty years old, and between them sat a pretty youth with a sparse beard and very long side curls. He seemed a little shy and ill at ease in the middle of all the bustle, picking with a pale hand at his breakfast, which was laid out on an old religious newspaper.
I didn’t move away from them. They could feel me watching them. They smiled at me kindly. I took the tassel they offered me and put it in my pocket, still standing close beside them. They
were eating, swaying backwards and forwards and chattering in Yiddish. I didn’t understand a single word but I could tell they were talking about politics. And I, a dirty, unkempt soldier, with a ten-day growth of beard, staring at them hard. I was beginning to make them uneasy.
Suddenly I said, “May I have a tomato?” They were
astonished
, they thought I’d gone mad. But the eldest recovered his composure and handed me a tomato. I sprinkled salt on it, sat down beside them and began asking questions. Where had they come from? What were they doing? How did they live? Where were they going from here? And they replied, the two older men, swaying all the while as if their answers too were a kind of prayer. Suddenly a thought struck me. These men are so free. They don’t really belong to us. They come and go at will. They have no obligations. Moving around like black beetles among the soldiers in the desert. Metaphysical creatures. I couldn’t leave them alone.
But the religious-affairs sergeant, who was acting as a sort of impresario for them, came to move them on. A bombardment was expected soon, they’d better leave. Immediately they stood up, buried the remains of their food, tied up their boxes with string and at fantastic speed mumbled the grace after meals, then they climbed into their jeep and disappeared from sight.
And on one of the rocks I found a black jacket that one of them, apparently the youngest, had left behind. I picked it up. It was made of good thick material. The label was of a tailor in Geulah Street, Jerusalem, guaranteed pure wool. It gave off a faint smell of sweat, but a sweat different from that of the men around me, a sweet smell of incense or tobacco, a smell of old books. For a moment I thought of throwing it back, then suddenly, without thinking, I put it on. It fit. “Does it suit me?” I asked a soldier who was passing. He stopped and stared, I could see he didn’t recognize me. Then he grinned and started to run.
And now there fell around us a bombardment unlike anything that we’d known before. We crouched on the ground, curled up like embryos, desperately scratching at the dry earth with our fingernails. The shells groped for us blindly, pounding angrily and accurately a crossroads only a hundred metres from us. Such a tiny miscalculation. For hours on end we lay in the sand, shells
exploding all around us, eyes closed, dust in our mouths, beside us a burning halftrack.
Towards evening, silence returned as if nothing had happened. Deep silence. They moved us forwards five kilometres, to the foot of a hill, and once again we spread out our blankets to sleep.
And at first light, as if time were repeating itself, again we woke up to the sound of chanting and prayer and rhythmic hand clapping. The three of them had returned, as if they’d sprung from the ground, and they were trying to rouse us.
“You were here before! You were already here! You gave us prayer books!” They were silenced by the hostile reception. The three of them were frightened, froze where they stood and then retreated in confusion, mumbling among themselves in Yiddish. But one soldier leaped from his blankets and ran towards them, rolling up the sleeve of his left arm with an expression of pain, as if expecting an injection. Encouraged, the three men began binding
tefillin
on his arm, opening the prayer book in front of him, showing him what to read, tending him as if he were sick. Leading him a few steps forwards, a few steps back, making him sway in unison with them, turning him towards the east, to the rising sun. We lay in our sleeping bags and watched them. From a distance it looked like they were praying to the sun.
They finished, and once again they sat down to eat, as on the previous day, groping in their cardboard boxes and again bringing out eggs, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes, as if they’d picked them in the desert. But this time they were no longer the centre of attention. The men had lost interest in them, still shaken by the bombardment of yesterday. Slowly I approached them, glanced in the open boxes. These no longer contained sacred objects, they’d given everything away yesterday. The boxes were full of booty they’d picked up, army belts, ammunition pouches, coloured pictures of Sadat, souvenirs for home.
