So, I wondered, who was Yak?
THERE WAS SOMETHING ODD about Zvi Umshweiff, some internal conflict that endowed him with an enigmatic, mysterious aura.
His strange family name—Umshweiff—reeked of terrible and evil places. But in spite of this, there was no trace of the Diaspora in him. On the contrary, Umsh was the perfect Sabra, a kibbutz product, full of smiles, a good dancer, and a superb athlete. There was no hint of a Polish accent in his speech, but we all could sense ghosts shadowing him. Slowly and gradually we learned some details. He had come from Umshweiff—a village near Auschwitz—and he had spent two years in the extermination camp as a child, lost both parents, and somehow, by a miracle, made it out alive. When World War II ended, the nine-year-old boy wandered the roads of Europe and eventually arrived in Palestine and Kibbutz Ein-Hamifratz near Haifa. There he grew up an orphan.
In those years, the 1950s, such a story was not very unusual. The classrooms were filled with children who came from God knows where, speaking foreign languages. Gradually a perfect, throaty Hebrew replaced Zvi’s native Polish. The Holocaust seedling grew, acquired a tan, and became a superb sportsman and an excellent student. That is what Zvi Umshweiff let us know about him, that and nothing more. But when they ordered us to change our family names to Hebrew ones, Zvi stubbornly refused to part with his strange name.
In our cadet barracks and on some hard marches he proved a good friend. One evening on the “hunger hike,” when the night had enveloped our small group on top of a hill in the Negev desert, and we lay on the ground shivering, weak from three days of marching with no food, suddenly Umsh spoke up.
He proposed a prize of ten pounds from his own pocket to whoever could fart the smell of fried chicken. The contest aroused new spirit and got a good laugh from all of us. Zvi was a good sport, but he still jealously guarded his privacy. He always played his cards close to the chest. He was not unsocial, but kept to himself, meticulously squared away, ironed and shined. He lived the moment, every moment, as if it were his last. When we started flying he was immediately successful, but was satisfied with whatever he did and didn’t strive to do better. He studiously avoided any extra effort.
On one occasion when he did go out of his way, he took me with him.
We were learning the basics flying Harvard trainers. Suddenly Zvi took me aside and challenged me to a one-on-one aerial combat—a dogfight. We stood away from the others, whispering together worriedly, because this idea was mad and criminal. At that time we were just at the initial stage of our solo flights, and were only beginning to get a preliminary understanding of how to manipulate the controls of our chubby propeller trainer. Naturally, none of us had any clue whatsoever as to the real meaning of those two words “aerial combat” and what happens in one. And above all, it was clear to us that what was cooking between us was a very serious offense against army regulations. We knew that if anybody even heard us talking we would instantly be washed out of the course, and the school’s commander would definitely lock us both up.
We were just looking for big trouble.
THE NEXT MORNING we met over the eastern edge of the deserted British runway at Faluja, where nowadays stands the town of Kiryat Gat. At that time there was only the open expanse of the northern Negev Desert. I held a left-turn holding pattern and waited for Zvi’s arrival.
The Harvard trainer that came toward me rocked his wings and blinked twice with his landing lights. I extended my landing gear and then retracted them, as a signal. The area around us was clear and no other plane was in sight, so I went to full throttle and flew right at him, not knowing what exactly to do next. His barrel-round nose turned toward me, and within a minute we found ourselves chasing each other with roaring propellers. The more I tightened my turn, the more he tightened his, and the circle shrank and shrank. I could see his face as a white mark in the frame of his glass canopy.
We continued this way until I lost my temper and pulled back hard on the stick. My airplane began to stall, shuddering and skittering from side to side, like a car on a wet road. For some reason, Umsh’s plane had stopped turning and was flying straight ahead. Had he given up? Had I won? With pounding heart I hurried to complete the rest of the turn and came in on his tail, disregarding the shuddering of my Harvard, which was threatening to stall again under the pressure of the pulled-back stick, chattering victoriously “Rat-tat! Rat-tat!” And then I sensed something else, big and gray, moving ominously at the fringe of my vision. A second later I passed a rocky hillside within a whisker of my right wing.
When I came to my senses again, I was skimming over a white dirt road, still in the air and trying to regain speed and escape from the low hills around me. Umsh had disappeared somewhere. I saw his plane again only later, when I got behind him in line for a landing at Tel Nof. When we shut our engines and dismounted our aircraft, we ignored each other.
In the evening, in our room, when the two of us were safe from any eavesdropping, Umsh shot me a mocking smile. Hurt, I said to him, “Come on, Umsh, what’s that smile on your face, huh? I beat you, didn’t I?”
He didn’t respond, so I continued, “So what if I didn’t see the fucking hill? I was concentrating, I was locked on you!” And when again he didn’t reply I said angrily, “Well, are we fighter pilots, or not?” I was insulted, because I felt I deserved praise. In this mock engagement I had succeeded, finally, in flying the way my instructor, Lieutenant Rosenberg, had tried to teach me. “You’re absent-minded, Spike!” he used to thunder at me during every flight, in a hoarse and thick voice that came from the rear cockpit as from a deep barrel. “Concentrate, ya-Allah! Focus! Fo-cooos!” stressing the last syllable to get to the Arabic word for “cunt.”
And here I did concentrate all right, didn’t I? And I sure got results—I shot down Umsh the Great!
Umsh shushed me. “Don’t shout. Somebody will hear us—”
I lowered my voice but didn’t calm down. After all, the teacher in the children’s house at the kibbutz used to call me “scatterbrain.” And our schoolteacher, Yos’l, used to ask, “Where was His Majesty hovering lately? Would His Highness be kind enough to descend?” So absent-mindedness had always been my curse, but not this time.
“So what if I took some risk, Umshweiff, eh?” I demanded. “So what the fuck?” I had adapted that from Harry Barak, our Australian commander with the long mustache.
Umsh just chuckled at me. He was two years older than I, going on a hundred, and felt no need to phrase survivability skill in words. So while I was fuming, I found myself alone. Zvi Umshweiff turned to the wall and covered his head with a blanket, retiring for his regular evening interview with Kim Novak.
AND NOW UMSH CONCLUDED, introducing himself to the squadron and sitting back in his chair. Zorik handed him a present, a cardboardbound file full of his study materials—Super Mystere manuals, flight rules, etc.—with his name on it. They shook hands, and the group applauded.
It was evident that a splendid pilot such as Zvi Umshweiff would be a very fine addition to the Scorpions, and most of all to Giora Furman, who needed a world-class striker on the squadron’s volleyball team. And Yozef Salant also vetted plots. He coached the basketball team.
URI SHEANI THEN PRESENTED himself in a few quiet sentences. Uri never liked to talk much. But it was obvious from the looks on the faces of the people present that the Scorpions had checked this shrimp out before. The best shooter received his file with a handshake from Zorik and sat down. Zorik, with his pointy nose, had already sensed with whom he was dealing, and within a couple of days Sheani would be selected leader of the “fast turnaround” team of pilots, who must put an end to the irritating ascendancy of the wild mechanics of Lt. Gad Sandek, the technical officer of the squadron.
Fast turnaround contests were common competitive events back then. The rival teams, ten players each, would careen crazily out of the ammunition dumps, dragging and pushing trolleys loaded with external fuel tanks, heavy bombs, fuses, and strips of cannon
rounds. The competitors then would jump and climb all over the aircraft, crawling under it, all at full speed—all you could hear was wham, bam. Arm it, fuel it, and prepare it to go out again. As in a festival, the whole squadron would be around cheering and shouting encouragement, smearing the name of the opposing team. When all was done—this would be in minutes and seconds—Sandek would arrive to check that all was done right. Then the winning team would collect its prize—an evening pass in town, or something like that.
Everybody in the air force was involved in the fast turnaround contests. We all knew that this was the “force multiplier” of the IAF, the trick that could produce the equivalent of two hundred aircraft from the mere hundred we actually had. These contests required intelligence, a lot of physical power, and strong leadership. Uri Sheani was definitely the right man.
In the last weeks Uri began dating Shula, a petite parachute-folder, who also brought a friend for me. Madlene was a very good-looking girl who sat with long legs crossed, holding her cigarette between slim fingers, but when they went out to the rustling eucalyptus leaves and the perfumed darkness, I didn’t go. I preferred to stay sitting on a stool in front of the bar in the officers’ mess. I was in love with a girl from the kibbutz—a supple, flat-chested primrose—and preferred to listen to “Tammy” and “For Alize,” sucking slowly the Coke bottle and dreaming of those virgin lips.
THE ROOM WARMED UP.
The flight jackets came off, and finally I was able to discern—thanks to the major’s insignia on one of them—which of the men was our commander, Yak. I stared at the slender, modest, pensive figure who sat in the corner, totally silent, as if he were only a guest, and let Zorik flood the room with his bubbling energy. Yak had a fine, delicate face with a straight nose and small brown eyes with long lashes. On his upper lip was a thin pencil mustache. He looked soft, almost feminine.
I nudged Umsh. What, is this Yak, the pride of the Israeli fighter pilots? I was expecting somebody very different—a bull of a guy like Aki or Daniel Vardon. At that time I didn’t perceive the intense intelligence radiating from this slender person. Neither I nor anybody else imagined how distant from the Scorpions Yak already was, cooking inside his brain the historic victory that was going to save the Jewish state within seven years. And no one at the time could interpret correctly the early signs of alienation and aloofness that were already showing in Yak’s behavior and that would eventually lead to his own destruction.
But now he searched in his pocket, produced a pipe, filled it slowly, and lit it. The sweet scent of tobacco filled the room. I was thrilled, for this finally was a real sign. Douglas Bader, an amputee hero of the Battle of Britain, used to smoke a pipe all the time, even in the cockpit of his Spitfire.
I vowed to get me a pipe as soon as I could.
IT WAS GOLDIE’S TURN. Immediately, the room was filled with smiles.
Ami Goldstein, Goldie, the most distinguished member of our class, was a small, fair man with blue eyes and a yellow mustache. His unflappable good humor and quick wit inspired everyone. When his fast thinking and meticulous implementation, and the way he cut directly to the heart of things became evident, we understood he was a serious guy. Goldie became the golden boy of our class.
He had a sense of humor and a skill with language that could define a person or an issue in a few words. He coined phrases with staying power. All the time he introduced or invented new, funny ideas. Soon we all were speaking his idiom, which became our secret language. I myself received from Goldie for free the nickname “Spike.” Having been raised on a kibbutz, I hadn’t been exposed to American films and didn’t know the cartoon dumb bulldog who always reacts too late and too much. The nickname Spike, since it came from Goldie, did not offend me. After a time I thought that maybe there was something to it.
Besides his humor, Goldie had clear goals in life.
“Life is divided into two stages,” he would say. In the beginning, according to his theory, you are in the stage of “BSA” (being shouted at), because everybody reprimands you. Later you develop and become an “SAEE” (shouts at everyone else). “I have no time or patience for the first stage,” he told me. “My aim in life is to shorten it, and get up to the level of the ‘shouters’ as soon as possible.”
Later, when we got to night flying, Goldie had a tough time. For some reason his Harvard went wild time and again in the darkness. Sometimes he would run out of runway while landing, go off into the fields, and flip over. By dumb luck, Ami was not injured on such occasions. In one of those accidents, when he crawled out from under the upended airplane among the smoking gooseneck kerosene lamps that served for runway lights, the boss was waiting for him with a long face.
“What was it this time, Goldstein?”
The small man, covered with mud, giggled. “Suddenly the Harvard growled at me, like a wolf.”
“So what did you do?” asked Maj. Harry Barak, our commander, in his heavy Australian accent. This was the moment of truth—Harry was going to determine Goldstein’s fate, whether he would continue with us or go back to the ground troops.
“I growled back at him, like a bigger wolf.”
The flight instructors around Harry howled with laughter, like wolves, and he was fascinated. He decided to give Goldie a few more lessons. Finally Goldie got night landings figured out, too.
Goldie was purposeful and charming. We all knew that before any of us would be toddling, Goldie would already be running. And as Goldie finished his presentation to the Scorpions and returned to his seat, one almost could hear the “click.” Goldie was already one of the gang.
ZBB, ZUR BEN-BARAK, was no doubt the smartest of us, and a heavyweight by any measure. In spite of his cumbersome body and his flat-footed goose gait, he was quick in biting. From the dark, wrinkled, almost old face shone amazing eyes, gray-green and alive, that saw everything. And there was a brain behind the bright eyes that recorded and cataloged to the minutest detail, and retrieved at the appropriate moment for use, though not without adding a little extra something wicked. Zur’s brain was a rare calculating tool, sharp and acute. It lost no item of information. He was in love with details, remembered them, knew how to caress them into a whole picture and to produce witty, surprising inferences. He had mastered numbers and was fond of demonstrating his exceptional ability. Even though he was the best pupil in the class—an able painter with notebooks full of elaborate drawings in dimensions and colors—he was slow to grasp the mechanics of flight. But he improved his performance daily, not repeating any mistake. The flight instructors appreciated this and were competing to teach him.
His body was another problem.
In the evenings he was torn by intense desires. Restless, he would drag me along to the soldiers’ mess to watch him undressing the girls with his eyes. He would weigh breasts, legs, and buttocks, evaluate and analyze them. He would approach the girls, court them and flatter them, distribute cigarettes and chocolate—a rare item that was given to us air cadets as a nutrition additive—then corner two or three girls with his body against a wall. I was an innocent; I hated this approach and was ashamed of such behavior. All I wanted was to go back to my room to study or sleep. But Zur needed a squire and was trying to teach me.
“Why did you volunteer for pilot training? Huh?”
I was both scared of and attracted to him.
There was something mysterious in ZBB, something similar to my mother, Shoshana. Like her, he had a frightening quality that enabled him to know things he had no way of knowing. Those bright eyes could, at times, be like an X-ray machine. This capability to assemble banal details and produce unexpected generalizations—to infer the missing piece of the puzzle—sometimes seemed magical. On occasions he caught a glimpse into the future.
Once I invited him to join me in an Independence Day event at my kibbutz, Givat-Brenner. We arrived a little late, and the festival had already begun. It was a golden spring afternoon in mid-May. The sun was a great orange ball lowering behind th
e Sereni building, the community hall of the kibbutz. Hundreds of the kibbutz members and their children, all in white shirts and blue trousers, were crowded on the vast lawn in the golden light. Above us fluttered our national white-and-azure flags together with the red flags of the workers’ movement.
A trumpet sounded and everyone became quiet. The kibbutz choir began singing, and many members joined in. Then, from the second-floor veranda, a boy and a girl recited “The Silver Tray,” a poem about the youth who were the tray upon which independence was given to the Jewish nation. The words poured from their lips like silver. The trumpet sounded again, and we all stood at attention. The kibbutz’s spokesman read aloud the name of each of the fallen in the struggle for statehood. He read the name of my father, Zvi, and at that moment I saw my mother sitting by herself, smoking a cigarette. The choir went on in four-part harmony, and we all followed and sang together, in one mighty voice, the anthems: “Hatikva” (The Hope), the anthem of the State of Israel, and then the “Internationale.” The air was full of positive energy.
When the event was over, families began gathering to continue the festivities. I was about to approach my mother, and suddenly ZBB elbowed me. I turned toward him. He indicated with his eyes, and when I followed his look, I saw the girl I was falling in love with. She stood apart from us, slender and slight, part of a covey of girls her own age. Zur grinned at me. I felt a heavy blush heat up my face. How in the world could ZBB have known that this was the one I wanted? There were a lot of girls around, some of them very good-looking. But Zur saw something, and somehow he knew.
After the grand feast with the entire kibbutz in the public dining room we had to leave and return to base. We parted from my mother and the lit, flower-filled hall and walked in the dark to our Willis. Zur drove the pickup; he never gave the wheel to anybody else. And I sat looking at him from the corner of my eye, confused, as if he had somehow found a way to control me.
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