by Amos Oz
The squadron commanders stood at the doors of the planes and checked each belt and harness. The CO himself circulated among the men, patting a shoulder, joking, predicting, enthusing, for all the world as though they were going into battle and facing real danger. Gideon responded to the pat on his shoulder with a hasty smile. He was lean, almost ascetic-looking, but very suntanned. A sharp eye, that of the legendary blond commander, could spot the blue vein throbbing in his neck.
Then the heat broke into the shady storage sheds, mercilessly flushing out the last strongholds of coolness, roasting everything with a gray glow. The sign was given. The engines gave a throaty roar. Birds fled from the runway. The planes shuddered, moved forward heavily, and began to gather the momentum without which takeoff cannot be achieved.
5
I MUST get out and be there to shake his hand.
Having made up his mind, Sheinbaum closed his notebook. The months of military training have certainly toughened the boy. It is hard to believe, but it certainly looks as though he is beginning to mature at last. He still has to learn how to handle women. He has to free himself once and for all from his shyness and his sentimentality: he should leave such traits to women and cultivate toughness in himself. And how he has improved at chess. Soon he’ll be a serious challenge to his old father. May even beat me one of these days. Not just yet, though. As long as he doesn’t up and marry the first girl who gives herself to him. He ought to break one or two of them in before he gets spliced. In a few years he’ll have to give me some grandchildren. Lots of them. Gideon’s children will have two fathers: my son can take care of them, and I’ll take care of their ideas. The second generation grew up in the shadow of our achievements; that’s why they’re so confused. It’s a matter of dialectics. But the third generation will be a wonderful synthesis, a successful outcome: they will inherit the spontaneity of their parents and the spirit of their grandparents. It will be a glorious heritage distilled from a twisted pedigree. I’d better jot that phrase down, it will come in handy one of these days. I feel so sad when I think of Gideon and his friends: they exude such an air of shallow despair, of nihilism, of cynical mockery. They can’t love wholeheartedly, and they can’t hate wholeheartedly, either. No enthusiasm, and no loathing. I’m not one to deprecate despair per se. Despair is the eternal twin of faith, but that’s real despair, virile and passionate, not this sentimental, poetic melancholy. Sit still, Gideon, stop scratching yourself, stop biting your nails. I want to read you a marvelous passage from Brenner. All right, make a face. So I won’t read. Go outside and grow up to be a Bedouin, if that’s what you want. But if you don’t get to know Brenner, you’ll never understand the first thing about despair or about faith. You won’t find any soppy poems here about jackals caught in traps or flowers in the autumn. In Brenner, everything is on fire. Love, and hatred as well. Maybe you yourselves won’t see light and darkness face to face, but your children will. A glorious heritage will be distilled from a twisted pedigree. And we won’t let the third generation be pampered and corrupted by sentimental verses by decadent poetesses. Here come the planes now. We’ll put Brenner back on the shelf and get ready to be proud of you for a change, Gideon Sheinbaum.
6
SHEINBAUM STRODE purposefully across the lawn, stepped up onto the concrete path, and turned toward the plowed field in the southwest corner of the kibbutz, which had been selected for the landing. On his way he paused now and again at a flower bed to pull up a stray weed skulking furtively beneath a flowering shrub. His small blue eyes had always been amazingly skillful at detecting weeds. Admittedly, because of his age he had retired a few years previously from his work in the gardens, but until his dying day he would not cease to scan the flower beds mercilessly in search of undesirable intruders. At such moments he thought of the boy, forty years his junior, who had succeeded him as gardener and who fancied himself as the local water-colorist. He had inherited beautifully tended gardens, and now they were all going to seed before our very eyes.
A gang of excited children ran across his path. They were fiercely absorbed in a detailed argument about the types of aircraft that were circling above the valley. Because they were running, the argument was being carried out in loud shouts and gasps. Shimshon seized one of them by the shirttail, forcibly brought him to a halt, put his face close to the child’s, and said:
“You are Zaki.”
“Leave me alone,” the child replied.
Sheinbaum said: “What’s all this shouting? Airplanes, is that all you’ve got in your heads? And running across the flower beds like that where it says Keep Off, is that right? Do you think you can do whatever you like? Are there no rules any more? Look at me when I’m speaking to you. And give me a proper answer, or . . .”
But Zaki had taken advantage of the flood of words to wriggle out of the man’s grasp and tear himself free. He slipped in among the bushes, made a monkey face, and stuck out his tongue.
Sheinbaum pursed his lips. He thought for an instant about old age, but instantly thrust it out of his mind and said to himself: All right. We’ll see about that later. Zaki, otherwise Azariah. Rapid calculation showed that he must be at least eleven, perhaps twelve already. A hooligan. A wild beast.
Meanwhile the young trainees had occupied a vantage point high up on top of the water tower, from which they could survey the length and breadth of the valley. The whole scene reminded Sheinbaum of a Russian painting. For a moment he was tempted to climb up and join the youngsters on top of the tower, to watch the display comfortably from a distance. But the thought of the manly handshake to come kept him striding steadily on, till he reached the edge of the field. Here he stood, his legs planted well apart, his arms folded on his chest, his thick white hair falling impressively over his forehead. He craned his neck and followed the two transport planes with steady gray eyes. The mosaic of wrinkles on his face enriched his expression with a rare blend of pride, thoughtfulness, and a trace of well-controlled irony. And his bushy white eyebrows suggested a saint in a Russian icon. Meanwhile the planes had completed their first circuit, and the leading one was approaching the field again.
Shimshon Sheinbaum’s lips parted and made way for a low hum. An old Russian tune was throbbing in his chest. The first batch of men emerged from the opening in the plane’s side. Small dark shapes were dotted in space, like seeds scattered by a farmer in an old pioneering print.
Then Raya Greenspan stuck her head out of the window of the kitchen and gesticulated with the ladle she was holding as though admonishing the treetops. Her face was hot and flushed. Perspiration stuck her plain dress to her strong, hairy legs. She panted, scratched at her disheveled hair with the fingernails of her free hand, and suddenly turned and shouted to the other women working in the kitchens:
“Quick! Come to the window! It’s Gidi up there! Gidi in the sky!”
And just as suddenly she was struck dumb.
While the first soldiers were still floating gently, like a handful of feathers, between heaven and earth, the second plane came in and dropped Gideon Shenhav’s group. The men stood pressed close together inside the hatch, chest against back, their bodies fused into a single tense, sweating mass. When Gideon’s turn came he gritted his teeth, braced his knees, and leapt out as though from the womb into the bright hot air. A long wild scream of joy burst from his throat as he fell. He could see his childhood haunts rushing up toward him as he fell he could see the roofs and treetops and he smiled a frantic smile of greeting as he fell toward the vineyards and concrete paths and sheds and gleaming pipes with joy in his heart as he fell. Never in his whole life had he known such overwhelming, spine-tingling love. All his muscles were tensed, and gushing thrills burst in his stomach and up his spine to the roots of his hair. He screamed for love like a madman, his fingernails almost drawing blood from his clenched palms. Then the straps drew taut and caught him under the armpits. His waist was clasped in a tight embrace. For a moment he felt as though an invisible hand were pulling
him back up toward the plane into the heart of the sky. The delicious falling sensation was replaced by a slow, gentle swaying, like rocking in a cradle or floating in warm water. Suddenly a wild panic hit him. How will they recognize me down there. How will they manage to identify their only son in this forest of white parachutes. How will they be able to fix me and me alone with their anxious, loving gaze. Mother and Dad and the pretty girls and the little kids and everyone. I mustn’t just get lost in the crowd. After all, this is me, and I’m the one they love.
That moment an idea flashed through Gideon’s mind. He put his hand up to his shoulder and pulled the cord to release the spare chute, the one intended for emergencies. As the second canopy opened overhead he slowed down as though the force of gravity had lost its hold on him. He seemed to be floating alone in the void, like a gull or a lonely cloud. The last of his comrades had landed in the soft earth and were folding up their parachutes. Gideon Shenhav alone continued to hover as though under a spell with two large canopies spread out above him. Happy, intoxicated, he drank in the hundreds of eyes fixed on him. On him alone. In his glorious isolation.
As though to lend further splendor to the spectacle, a strong, almost cool breeze burst from the west, plowing through the hot air, playing with the spectators’ hair, and carrying slightly eastward the last of the parachutists.
7
FAR AWAY in the big city, the massed crowds waiting for the military parade greeted the sudden sea breeze with a sigh of relief. Perhaps it marked the end of the heat wave. A cool, salty smell caressed the baking streets. The breeze freshened. It whistled fiercely in the treetops, bent the stiff spines of the cypresses, ruffled the hair of the pines, raised eddies of dust, and blurred the scene for the spectators at the parachute display. Regally, like a huge solitary bird, Gideon Shenhav was carried eastward toward the main road.
The terrified shout that broke simultaneously from a hundred throats could not reach the boy. Singing aloud in an ecstatic trance, he continued to sway slowly toward the main electric cables, stretched between their enormous pylons. The watchers stared in horror at the suspended soldier and the powerlines that crossed the valley with unfaltering straightness from west to east. The five parallel cables, sagging with their own weight between the pylons, hummed softly in the gusty breeze.
Gideon’s two parachutes tangled in the upper cable. A moment later his feet landed on the lower one. His body hung backward in a slanting pose. The straps held his waist and shoulders fast, preventing him from falling into the soft plowland. Had he not been insulated by the thick soles of his boots, the boy would have been struck dead at the moment of impact. As it was, the cable was already protesting its unwonted burden by scorching his soles. Tiny sparks flashed and crackled under Gideon’s feet. He held tight with both hands to the buckles on the straps. His eyes were open wide and his mouth was agape.
Immediately a short officer, perspiring heavily, leapt out of the petrified crowd and shouted:
“Don’t touch the cables, Gidi. Stretch your body backward and keep as clear as you can!”
The whole tightly packed, panic-stricken crowd began to edge slowly in an easterly direction. There were shouts. There was a wail. Sheinbaum silenced them with his metallic voice and ordered everyone to keep calm. He broke into a fast run, his feet pounding on the soft earth, reached the spot, pushed aside the officers and curious bystanders, and instructed his son:
“Quickly, Gideon, release the straps and drop. The ground is soft here. It’s perfectly safe. Jump.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t argue. Do as I tell you. Jump.”
“I can’t, Dad, I can’t do it.”
“No such thing as can’t. Release the straps and jump before you electrocute yourself.”
“I can’t, the straps are tangled. Tell them to switch off the current quickly, Dad, my boots are burning.”
Some of the soldiers were trying to hold back the crowd, discourage well-meaning suggestions, and make more room under the powerlines. They kept repeating, as if it were an incantation, “Don’t panic please don’t panic.”
The youngsters of the kibbutz were rushing all around, adding to the confusion. Reprimands and warnings had no effect. Two angry paratroopers managed to catch Zaki, who was idiotically climbing the nearest pylon, snorting and whistling and making faces to attract the attention of the crowd.
The short officer suddenly shouted: “Your knife. You’ve got a knife in your belt. Get it out and cut the straps!”
But Gideon either could not or would not hear. He began to sob aloud.
“Get me down, Dad, I’ll be electrocuted, tell them to get me down from here, I can’t get down on my own.”
“Stop sniveling,” his father said curtly. “You’ve been told to use your knife to cut the straps. Now, do as you’ve been told. And stop sniveling.”
The boy obeyed. He was still sobbing audibly, but he groped for the knife, located it, and cut the straps one by one. The silence was total. Only Gideon’s sobbing, a strange, piercing sound, was to be heard intermittently. Finally one last strap was left holding him, which he did not dare to cut.
“Cut it,” the children shrilled, “cut it and jump. Let’s see you do it.”
And Shimshon added in a level voice, “Now what are you waiting for?”
“I can’t do it,” Gideon pleaded.
“Of course you can,” said his father.
“The current,” the boy wept. “I can feel the current. Get me down quickly.”
His father’s eyes filled with blood as he roared:
“You coward! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
“But I can’t do it, I’ll break my neck, it’s too high.”
“You can do it and you must do it. You’re a fool, that’s what you are, a fool and a coward.”
A group of jet planes passed overhead on their way to the aerial display over the city. They were flying in precise formation, thundering westward like a pack of wild dogs. As the planes disappeared, the silence seemed twice as intense. Even the boy had stopped crying. He let the knife fall to the ground. The blade pierced the earth at Shimshon Sheinbaum’s feet.
“What did you do that for?” the short officer shouted.
“I didn’t mean it,” Gideon whined. “It just slipped out of my hand.”
Shimshon Sheinbaum bent down, picked up a small stone, straightened up, and threw it furiously at his son’s back.
“Pinocchio, you’re a wet rag, you’re a miserable coward!”
At this point the sea breeze also dropped.
The heat wave returned with renewed vigor to oppress both men and inanimate objects. A red-haired, freckled soldier muttered to himself, “He’s scared to jump, the idiot, he’ll kill himself if he stays up there.” And a skinny, plain-faced girl, hearing this, rushed into the middle of the circle and spread her arms wide:
“Jump into my arms, Gidi, you’ll be all right.”
“It would be interesting,” remarked a veteran pioneer in working clothes, “to know whether anyone has had the sense to phone the electric company to ask them to switch off the current.” He turned and started off toward the kibbutz buildings. He was striding quickly, angrily, up the slight slope when he was suddenly alarmed by a prolonged burst of firing close at hand. For a moment he imagined he was being shot at from behind. But at once he realized what was happening: the squadron commander, the good-looking blond hero, was trying to sever the electric cables with his machine gun.
Without success.
Meanwhile, a beaten-up truck arrived from the farmyard. Ladders were unloaded from it, followed by the elderly doctor, and finally a stretcher.
At that moment it was evident that Gideon had been struck by a sudden decision. Kicking out strongly, he pushed himself off the lower cable, which was emitting blue sparks, turned a somersault, and remained suspended by the single strap with his head pointing downward and his scorched boots beating the air a foot or so from the cable.
/> It was hard to be certain, but it looked as though so far he had not sustained any serious injury. He swung limply upside down in space, like a dead lamb suspended from a butcher’s hook.
This spectacle provoked hysterical glee in the watching children. They barked with laughter. Zaki slapped his knees, choking and heaving convulsively. He leapt up and down screeching like a mischievous monkey.
What had Gideon Shenhav seen that made him suddenly stretch his neck and join in the children’s laughter? Perhaps his peculiar posture had unbalanced his mind. His face was blood-red, his tongue protruded, his thick hair hung down, and only his feet kicked up at the sky.
8
A SECOND group of jets plowed through the sky overhead. A dozen metallic birds, sculpted with cruel beauty, flashing dazzlingly in the bright sunlight. They flew in a narrow spearhead formation. Their fury shook the earth. On they flew to the west, and a deep silence followed.
Meanwhile, the elderly doctor sat down on the stretcher, lit a cigarette, blinked vaguely at the people, the soldiers, the scampering children, and said to himself: We’ll see how things turn out. Whatever has to happen will happen. How hot it is today.
Every now and again Gideon let out another senseless laugh. His legs were flailing, describing clumsy circles in the dusty air. The blood had drained from his inverted limbs and was gathering in his head. His eyes were beginning to bulge. The world was turning dark. Instead of the crimson glow, purple spots were dancing before his eyes. He stuck his tongue out. The children interpreted this as a gesture of derision. “Upside-down Pinocchio,” Zaki shrilled, “why don’t you stop squinting at us, and try walking on your hands instead?”