Refiner's Fire

by Mark Helprin

  “You see,” he screamed, ripping down the signal flag. “The best army in the world.” He couldn’t stay still, and had the knife in one hand, and the flag in the other. “You treat us like criminals. You treat us like idiots. But we’re not the idiots. You are. And we just proved it, because we killed you in your own game.”

  8

  A CERTAIN equanimity prevailed during a two-day storm when sheets of rain were thrown on the hillsides in sporadic bursts and clouds brushed against the raiding windows. Marshall, Lenny, Robert, Baruch, and the three Bengalis (Wilson, Prithvi, and Chobandresh) sat on upturned wooden crates arranged in a circle around an enormous cauldron in one of the enlisted mens kitchens. The floor was red terra-cotta tile. Several poorly joined windows gave out on wet rock ledges and water-battered bushes. Steel shelves covered the walls and were piled high with canned goods and sacks of flour. It was the afternoon of the fifth eighteen-hour kitchen day since the Americans had been released from the stockade.

  The officers on the mountaintop had understood English perfectly, and had not taken kindly to Marshall’s remarks. Therefore, instead of being rewarded for their spectacular victory they were charged with absence from a training area; abandoning equipment; being out of uniform; abuse of officers; and getting from point A to point B faster than is humanly possible without giving explanation. Of all the accusations, this was the gravest. At the trial, the Major presided in splendor, directing a frightening ritual of salutes, attentions, and formulaic greetings.

  Baruch had volunteered to be counsel for the defense, and Marshall discovered to his dismay that Baruch not only lisped and whistled, but stuttered painfully when speaking in public. The Major had no patience with this, and kept interrupting him, saying, “State your case or shut up.” Heavily laced with constructive selfinterest, Baruch’s case was that neither the accused nor their attorney should have been in the punishment company in the first place.

  “That is completely irrelevant,” the Major responded. “At issue here is a set of specific charges, to which you will confine your discussion. Is that clear, you fat little Turkish bastard?” The Major’s troop of pompous lieutenants thought that this was very funny.

  When it came time for sentencing, Lenny was first up. “State your full name for the record.”

  “Leonard Schnaiper. They also call me the Delaware Funny Boy.” Laughter came this time from the accused.

  “Trainee Schnaiper, you will forfeit a month’s pay and spend two days in the stockade. Next, state your full name for the record.”

  “Robert Stein. They also call me Mr. Jive,” he said in appropriate dialect. He received a duplicate of Lenny’s sentence.

  The Major tensed when Marshall stepped before him and saluted. Marshall comforted himself by thinking that the more punishment he got, the better.

  “State your full name for the record.”

  “Marshall Pearl,” said Marshall.

  “What kind of name is that?”

  “Half Anglo-Saxon, and half Pearl, Major.”

  “Is Pearl a name for Jews?”

  “Yes, Major.”

  “Is it your father’s name?”

  “No, Major.”

  “Do you know who your father is?” asked the Major, delighted to have found so quickly what seemed to be a very weak spot.

  “Yes, Major. I do.”

  “He is not named Pearl?”

  “No, Major.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He is Anwar Sadat, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Major.”

  “Trainee Pearl, you will forfeit two months’ pay and stay three days in the stockade.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “That’s what?”

  “Not enough, not enough. How about three months’ pay and four days in the stockade?”

  “Very well. You have it.”

  “Major.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll take five and five.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “No, Major, but you can’t do anything to me that I don’t want you to do. Do you understand, Major?”

  “Would you like thirty days in the stockade?”

  “I would be truly grateful, Major.” They could see in his face that he would have been truly pleased to spend thirty days in the stockade.

  “You will serve the same sentence as the others.”

  “Thank you, Major. It is just what I want, Major.”

  “Get him out of here,” said the Major. “Just get him out!”

  Being in the stockade was not so terrible. They ate the same food, didn’t have to work, and only one other prisoner shared the little stucco building. He was a rotund Egyptian with two front teeth absent, and he had the rather distressing habit of ripping up his clothes, banging his head against the wall, and saying, “Ani meshugah, Ani meshugah” (I am crazy, I am crazy), over and over again. At first they were frightened by this fat fellow Safran, but when the guards went to dinner he stopped and turned to them with a sigh. “I’m not crazy,” he said. “I’m just trying to get out of the Army. ”

  Marshall recalled the Majors summation before sentencing: “If, as you allege, you should not have been assigned to Company T, it does not make the slightest bit of difference. You have found the right place, as your actions show. It may have been out of order to begin with, but it has proved correct. As I have always said, a great army makes great mistakes.”

  It rained all the time. The big cauldron was filled with an infinite number of hardboiled eggs to shell (there were so many that once in a while they came upon a chick). To heat the room, they had six burners on an open-frame gas range burning green and blue in double rows. By their fourth day they were allowed to stay together in their anteroom as long as they were continually engaged at various tasks. Lenny sang, or the Bengalis hummed and drummed exquisite ragas which blended resolutely with the rain and green fire and drafts of wet mountain wind. They were even allowed to make a kettle of tea, and they would have been happy, were it not for each man’s freshly kindled passion for home. And they were always tired—so tired that their eyes sagged like horse collars.

  As they shelled the eggs they spoke about their condition. They were disgusted by the uncivil behavior of the criminals, especially since Ashkenazi had organized a ring to extort money and unmentionable services. Were it not for the three Americans, the Bengalis would have been done for, and had it not been for a magnificent and heroic Rumanian boxer named Mush, a few unfortunate Russians and Czechs would also have been done for. As it was, the entente of three Americans, three Bengalis, Baruch, four Russians, four Israelis, and the boxer—sixteen in all—was more than enough to protect against Ashkenazi and his subalterns. Quickly coalescing into an alliance, the sixteen wielded immense power and rose above extortion and attack. The rest were suicidal or evil—except for little Yakov, who was good, and had fallen irreparably into the hands of Ashkenazi. But even Yakov survived continued indignities. The protected ones saw him tossed about in the storm, and loved him not only for his suffering, but because he seemed to be a just man caught in the body of a broken toy.

  “What would you do then?” asked Baruch. “How can you control thuch awful criminalths?”

  “Beats me,” said Lenny.

  “Oh oh oh. Nothing can be done. Nothing can be done,” chirruped Chobandresh.

  “Now that I’ve lived a few weeks with these maniacs,” said Marshall, “I know exactly what to do.”

  “What?” said Wilson.

  “The Code of Hammurabi.”

  “You must be kidding,” said Robert.

  “Must I? Apart from minor imperfections, it was a good code. It said an eye for an eye, no more, no less. If a man kills, I believe that he should be killed. Is he not a man? Is he not responsible for what he does? And if he is not, who is? And if we are prideful enough to attempt forgiveness for one who has taken a human life, are we not stepping beyond our competence? Let me tell you, if someone killed Lydia, he wouldn
’t live long.”

  “What about rape? Should the rapist be castrated?”

  “No. If you castrate him, you deprive him of his sex for life, whereas he has probably not done that to his victim. He should instead be raped by a sex-crazed hog—twice. That would be just punishment, and would rehabilitate, in that it would educate. I would save castration for those who molest children, for the terror and permanence of effect call for similar terror and permanence.”

  “What is a hog?” asked Chobandresh. “Is it like a dog? It sounds like a dog.” Marshall explained.

  “What about the menu of criminals on a lower scale; the burglars, the pimps, and all the rest that we have to live with here?”

  “Again, an eye for an eye. A burglar would do hard labor to pay back what he has stolen. One who robbed and beat his victim would be beaten and committed to hard labor.”

  “That’s barbaric.”

  “It isn’t barbaric. It’s ultimately civilized; just. Those who attempted crimes would know that they themselves would suffer exactly what they imposed, no more, and no less. If this were not a deterrent, it might at least serve as moderation. Killers would be killed. Rapists would be raped. I say that its barbaric not to impose upon these murderous beasts what they impose upon others. Nothing else will stop them save a perfect world. I have compassion for the victims. My civilized mind carries the image and feeling of their pain long enough to insist upon retribution. Those who have compassion only for criminals are compassionless, and themselves criminal.

  “Think. If Ashkenazi had been hanged, there would be an equality of souls in the world of the dead, and Yakov would not now be suffering. Justice should be a blind weighmaster, mechanical, as in the statues. Criminals should be stopped in their tracks, one way or another.”

  “In my country,” said Wilson, “many, many good people die. Oh, they die in floods; they die by the horrible sicknesses; they die when there is no food. I have often seen a mother and child lying by the side of the road, soon to be corpses, the flies on them already, the crows walking to and fro nearby. It seems to me that you in the West do not realize that to live is a great privilege. Mercy should not be wasted on the likes of Ashkenazi, Lord God no. Oh no by great God. Why, if a sweet child must die for lack of food ... why should a man who takes a life be allowed to live? You say that we do not hold life dear. Quite to the contrary. You do not hold life dear. If you Westerners loved, if you knew how to love, you would not let killers go free.” Wilson had never understood why in Israel there was no death penalty. Even terrorists who came from abroad and massacred the children in schools were allowed to live. “That is wrong,” said Wilson. “So help me, that is most wrong.”

  A lieutenant burst into the room. He surveyed the comfortable salamandrine flames, the cauldron of a thousand eggs, the dancing shadows, the unfamiliar foreign faces. Then he spoke. “Abandon this work, return to barracks, don your battle gear, and assemble in threes for night drill.”

  “Jesus!” said Lenny. “It’s raining a flood. Look at all the lightning. We’ve been working a thousand goddamned hours. We can hardly stand or see, and now we have to go on night drill.”

  “Too many lieutenants,” answered Marshall. “Too many officers, too many criminals, too many pogrebins, too many eggs.” Then he popped an egg into his mouth, swallowed it whole, and smiled.

  In the hypnopiasis of fatigue, they marched to the drill field in the pouring rain. It was as if stagehands on scaffolds were throwing buckets of water at them. A thousand men assembled on the concrete square to be tested in disassembly and assembly of their Uzi submachine guns, in total darkness. The Uzi is a simple weapon. Marshall could take it apart and put it back together again in a flash—with one hand. The Major sat on a shielded platform. His contribution to the exercise was to declare that they would wait until the lightning stopped, for its illumination gave unfair advantage. They waited in the rain for two hours. Marshall saw endless rows of soaked men—grave-looking, snarling soldiers who appeared suddenly in a stroke of daylight, and then vanished into complete darkness. Minutes later they would appear again in unchanged, unflinching ranks, all thousand souls standing still. It was revealing and somehow touching to see the rain pouring off those stubby upright forms, and to see how patient they were—even the criminals.

  When the lightning stopped, they were tested group by group. As the gun parts spilled onto the pavement they chimed like the bells of a Vermont town. Marshall, Robert, and Lenny passed splendidly and worried for the sake of the amechanical Bengalis. But the Bengalis did beautifully. They put the guns together perfectly and rapidly—because they could see in the dark. “Of course we can see in the dark,” said Wilson, his eyes flashing white. Lenny nearly collapsed.

  “I knew that,” said Robert, lying through his teeth. “It’s common knowledge that, under stress, Bengalis can see in the dark.”

  Then one of those high-spirited old Iraqi sergeants danced out into the middle of the battalions and began to tremolo. “Line up! One two, one two! Line up! In threes! One two, one two! Sing out! Sing out! Mornings come! Sing out! Sing out!”

  The thousand soldiers and several hundred criminals, who had been standing in the rain until three o’clock in the morning, buried him in a flood of curses which resounded off the drenched hillsides. He did not understand their lack of enthusiasm. After all, he was marching them to a great hall, where, in the middle of the night, in their wet clothing, weighed down by submachine guns, helmets, and shovels, they were to enjoy a talent show.

  As they filed into the hall, Marshall wondered quite wearily what kind of talent would be abroad in an army prison camp at three in the morning in a lightning storm on the West Bank of the Jordan. Would they be professionals? If so, they probably would not be very well known.

  Rain came through two dozen places in the corrugated roof. They sat on hard benches. The thickness was intense, a sea of bodies and steel helmets—all olive, all drab, and all wet. The hall was lit by rows of smudge pots. Oily smoke banished their hunger and added to their fatigue. Then two soldiers lit candles and carefully placed them about the stage. The flickering light was as rich as alabaster or mother-of-pearl, and the rain beating on the roof—like a heartbeat—stilled even the criminals. A thousand men halfclosed their eyes and stared at the altarlike stage in shadows and smoke.

  As if from nowhere, a stupendously tall captain vaulted over the candles onto the stage. “Yossi! Yossi! Yossi!” screamed the several hundred soldiers of his company. He was much loved. Thin as a rail, with a sad pioneer-type mustache, he resembled the classic painting of “a soldier in war, speaking to troops by candle light in a dimly lighted barracks.”

  His elegant Hebrew was far beyond Marshall’s understanding, and he spoke for an hour. Few of the criminals understood what he said, but they remained silent because they were tired. At about four o’clock, when it started to rain so heavily that water rose in the lower part of the hall, he said, “Okay. Now for the talent show. Who has talent?” Utter silence. “There are a thousand men here. Someone must have a theatrical skill.” They were so tired that every once in a while a sharp thud signified that one had fallen asleep and toppled off his bench. “Come now. Statistically, there must be an acrobat here.” A hand went up. “You, are you an acrobat?”

  “I am not only an acrobat, I am an acrobats acrobat,” he said, and as he pushed his way to the stage the soldiers awoke into cheers and whistles. Yossi stepped back. The acrobat took off his weapons and equipment and faced the expectant audience. “I will stand on my hands,” he announced. They applauded. He bent down, put his hands against the floor, kicked up his legs, and collapsed onto the stage with a cry of pain. The audience tried to control its laughter, but was no more successful than the acrobat had been in carrying out his promise.

  He blushed. “I will stand on one hand,” he said breathlessly. They broke out into guffaws. He tried to stand on his hand, and immediately keeled over onto the boards, smashing his ankle. He hopped
about the stage, cursing. The audience could not control itself.

  “All right then. Wait a minute. I knew it would come to this,” he said. “What would you say if I told you that I would stand on one finger?”

  “Idiot! Beast! King of the chickens!” they yelled.

  He took his helmet and placed it at center stage. But instead of standing on his finger with the helmet as a base, he began to do a strange undulating dance, weaving his hands and rolling his eyes. “Snake dance! Snake dance! Snake dance!” they screamed. At the edge of the stage, Yossi wondered how this lunatic had emerged, and then he realized that he had come from the mad platoon.

  The acrobat twirled and gyrated, stuck out his tongue, crossed his eyes, and waved his arms. The audience loved him, because he was obviously completely out of his mind. They cheered and stamped their feet, screaming out, “Snake dance! Snake dance!” until, amidst thunderous applause, he snatched up his things and disappeared into the crowd.

  Ashkenazi stood up and looked about. At first everyone was scared. But when Ashkenazi, making his way through them like a man who is waist-deep in the surf, asked with hungry anticipation, “Where is Yakov?” they lost their fear and began to chant: “Yakov! Yakov! Yakov! Yakov!” Encouraged, Ashkenazi ran through the waves, scanning the soldiers. “Yakov! Yakov! Yakov!” they chanted, stamping their feet.

  Yakov had hidden in a fire sand box. After cruising the hall, Ashkenazi stopped and thought. He saw the sand box and pranced over to it. He laughed evilly and said, “Yakov ... oh Yakov.” Nothing happened. But then with extraordinary suddenness the lid of the box exploded open and Yakov jumped out. He ran down the aisle squealing shrill high-pitched whistles, and Ashkenazi pursued.

  After three circuits of the hall, Yakov was lifted into the air, his limbs flailing, a cry of despair coming from his lungs. The soldiers were giddy with laughter. They expected to laugh more, and looked eagerly as Ashkenazi dragged Yakov to the stage, took a chair, and put Yakov on his knee. Ashkenazi held Yakov’s head like a knuckleball. Yakov was powerless. Tears began to stream down his cheeks.