Refiner's Fire

by Mark Helprin

  “When it was over and the dust had cleared, and we started up again even though there were many new graves, I hardly knew what was going on. The day that I got back, I looked around at this simple farm, I looked up at those mountains, and I cried.

  “We were still alive. That was something. I’m not saying, you understand, that I worship survival. Despite the fact that it has been made the primary duty of every Jew, it in itself is not so special. The special thing was that life came back. Each war is the same, like holding your breath for as long as you can and then realizing how wonderful it is just to breathe; like a dry field suddenly feeling the flood.

  “You tended the graves, a gentle thing to do. However, did you know that for everyone who dies in war, there are others who are born, and reborn? That is why veterans will never make the peace, and why, in denying the nobility of battle, pacifists cultivate war. To stop something so powerful you must at least tell the truth about it, and they don’t. What I’m trying to say is, don’t feel bad about us. There is a balance to everything—symmetry, compensations. A soul buried in the ground rises in the air. When you go to America and have your wheat farm, thrive in peace, but don’t pity those in war.”

  He returned to the tractor and drove off to the hay fields. For Lydia, even in the space of minutes, a gate had closed, and a gate had opened.

  23

  WHEN MARSHALL arrived at Fortress Six in the beginning of September there were actually fewer Syrian tanks than when he had left. But their positions had changed, and they were concentrated in such a way as to appear far more numerous, at least in those sections easily observed. During September itself the armor on the plain multiplied steadily until at month’s end 900 tanks were in position. On the thirteenth, the Syrians pressed home an air battle over the sea, into which they flung and lost thirteen planes. Arieh Ben Barak decided then that war was imminent. The planes were sacrificed to lull the Israelis further into a stupefying sense of security, to probe their readiness, to test the wind. In the way that a farmer can sense a storm from the speed of clouds, the random electrification of the air, and the light in its gray and purple variations, Arieh Ben Barak smelled the full scent of war.

  Not only did he go to the Chief of Staff and the Defense Minister (who sent only one extra armored brigade and put the Air Force on a high state of alert), but he began to take action independently. He canceled all leave, stockpiled ammunition and anti-tank weapons, summoned as many spare units as he could to the fortresses, impressed upon his subordinates the need for vigilance, and intensified efforts at gathering intelligence. There were 177 tanks on the Golan, and the Syrians were a few miles away with 900.

  Marshall didn’t go home. A strange collection of stray units streamed into Six, filling up all available space with tents and equipment. The ramparts were crowded and active. It was like a walled Arab town in the Middle Ages. Among those gathered in haste from other branches and divisions were Baruch and the three Bengalis, who had laid hold of an armored halftrack. Baruch drove and commanded (an unusual combination, to be sure); Wilson was the machine gunner; Chobandresh and Prithvi were mortarmen. Baruch wore sergeant’s stripes, and the Bengalis had become corporals. Because they had been together for a year, they were well co-ordinated, and they lived with their machine day and night, maintaining it as if it were a new Rolls-Royce.

  “A sergeant was mustering out,” Wilson told Marshall, “and Baruch was senior in service. They gave us this halftrack. Then that unit (a reserve group where we had been sent to wash dishes) was deactivated. But we are conscripts, so Baruch asked what to do and where to go. The Commander said to take the halftrack and patrol the beach between Rosh HaNikra and Nahariya! That was in April. No one has bothered us except the tourists, who always take our pictures. We were very astute in our duties. In case you are wondering, the Commander was a Kurd—the uncle of Baruchs sister’s husband. At the petrol dump someone told us that all miscellaneous forces were being sent to the Golan.”

  The new Captain of Commandos arrived, an Englishman who was so calm that he seemed to enjoy the heat of the moment as an Eskimo might enjoy a blazing fire. His name was Palmer. No one knew if in fact he were a Jew, or how he had gotten there. His Hebrew, though classical, was excellent and precise. He took half the force and assigned the other half to Marshall. They were busy that September, and they crossed the enemy line twice.

  The first time, Palmer had taken two men out in early morning and returned several hours later, puffing up the road, a stick under his arm. He was noncommittal and emotionless, preferring not to describe the foray in detail except to give Marshall a few pointers on procedure, and to render his report—which attributed to the deployment of surface-to-air missiles a frightening density. “Looks like some real stuff,” Palmer had said, “like a big holy war.”

  Marshall was impressed by Palmer's nonchalance about crossing the Green Line. “It’s the Purple Line,” said Palmer. “Are you afraid of those silly incontinent bastards, those ... those crotchless half-wits?”

  “Yes,” answered Marshall. “And I don’t have contempt for them.”

  Palmer gripped Marshall urgently by his lapels. “Neither did I, until the day before yesterday. But how do you think I got stiff enough to run around in their encampment?”

  Marshall went out alone one day late in September, just before dusk. In addition to insulting the Syrians continuously and with verve, he had studied a route through the tels, consulted mine maps, and eaten carrots. On Palmers advice, he took several belts of whisky before setting off, and tried to think of the whole thing as a lark. “If you’re going to be a Russian, you should be a little drunk,” Palmer had said. “In fact, you should be more than a little drunk. And scowl at them when you see them.”

  “You see them?”

  “Of course you see them! You get close enough to kiss the fairies. And you’d better get that close. If you don’t, you’ll look out of place. Walk loose. Remember, there are a hundred thousand of them down there in vast confusion.”

  With the onset of darkness he made his way across the free zone, and approached Syrian lines just as the troops began to congregate about blazing gas fires and cookpots for their dinners. Marshall had carried with him all the way from Fortress Six a plate of stew and a bottle of lemonade. He went overland and then got onto a road. It was dark. He passed many troops. They too were eating, but their mess kits were shaped differently. It didn’t matter, as it would not have mattered in Israeli lines. At choke points he passed right through, eating from his plate as he walked. He looked worried and preoccupied. He took many swigs from the lemonade bottle only to spit them back, and his bites were suitable for a tiny mouse.

  The morale of the Syrians was not heightened and infused with vigor and destiny as before an assault. This perplexed him because he didn’t know that even the Syrian commanders were ignorant of the plans for war until just hours before it was to begin. The soldiers behaved like soldiers on maneuver. There was a lot of laughing and joking—as in all armies at dinnertime unless it is raining.

  Occasionally Marshall would remember where he was and what he was doing, and his eyes would cloud in absolute panic. In these moments his heart beat fast and then he would cool in his own sweat. His job was to get as close to as many tanks as he could, and check for night-vision equipment.

  Knowing that the main counter to a mass wave of Syrian armor was the Air Force, Arieh Ben Barak guessed that the Syrians (aware themselves that Israeli planes were crippled at night) would break precedent and tradition to start their jihad in darkness. He wanted intelligence on the percentage of their tanks with infrared and starlight scopes. Men were sent out at various places along the line.

  Marshall passed quite a few tank parks, keeping a running tally as best he could. “Two out of six, three out of seven ... twenty out of thirty-one...” All the T-62S were fitted with scopes. Many of the T-54S had them as well. Within half an hour he started to make his way back along a different route, which led
to a steep defile down which he wanted to escape.

  A few hundred yards from the point where he planned to vanish down the precipice he passed a campfire around which a platoon sat picking its teeth. They had run out of conversation and were staring awkwardly into the fire, dealing with their decayed mouths. As Marshall passed, every tortured and suspicious eye was upon him. He heard a voice call out in Arabic, asking him where he was going. He responded in Arabic with a heavy Russian accent. (He and Lydia both had a knack for speaking other languages in various foreign dialects.) He said that he was Russian and spoke little Arabic, and that they should mind their own business.

  To his disgust, a man jumped up and ran toward him yelling something in Russian, of which Marshall understood not a single word. He continued, but the man reached him just as the two of them passed completely beyond sight of those at the campfire. He ran up to Marshall chattering away happily, glad to have found a companion. Marshall smiled at him and tossed his plate of stew onto the road, revealing in the low moonlight his Webly and Scott pistol, angular and nasty, pointing at the Russian’s heart.

  “I hope you understand English,” said Marshall. The Russian looked at him in panic. “Move!” He understood no English and balked at descending the cliffs, explaining in his own language that he could not do it. He was little and stocky and had two chisel-like buck teeth and reddish hair of which not too much was left on his shiny head. He seemed so human. He was so human. His knees were knocking. Marshall motioned for him to turn around.

  He was a captain, and he began to cry. Marshall looked at the precipice. A Syrian patrol car was slowly winding its way along the road, playing an arc light in a side-to-side sweep. The captain started to lose control, and so did Marshall. He was tight inside. His eyes had never been opened so wide. He didn’t want to kill the man who stood crying in front of him. The armored car got closer. Marshall was about to burst, when he took the pistol and hit the captain on the back of his neck, collapsing him onto the stones.

  Marshall went down the cliff as if he were skiing—creating rock slides, falling terrified in darkness only to be arrested suddenly on a slim ledge over a sheer drop, speaking to himself in a slow encouraging voice. He reached the base of the cliff, and heard the Russian screaming and rocks falling into the wadi near him. “The little son of a bitch,” said Marshall. “He’s throwing rocks at me, the creep.” As he ran he saw the lights of the armored car sweeping the tels. They would never see him. A volley of heavy machine gun fire signaled the end of their effort, and their light went off. Just after he raced across a flat half-mile in the U.N. Zone, a Syrian flare burst as white as phosphorus, casting stronger than moonlike shadows, like fireworks over a lake in a summer resort.

  He screamed his coming to the Israeli lines, but no one was there. He ran along the fence until he reached a mine gap, climbed the wire, and threw himself down on the Army road—where he sat soaking wet, his heart pounding, his face flushed with heat.

  The information he reported was received with close attention and he was commended. He got to bed by ten o’clock, and his sleep would have been peaceful had he not had one dream after another in which he was running a foot race. He was proud that he could run swiftly even in darkness. Before morning broke, the last chamber of the dream had him in China resting on a grassy river bank, while, on the water, junks and sampans moved quietly and in mystery, and above, a thousand star-shells burst over the night, flickering, falling, and darkening finally in the velvet stream.

  24

  ON THE sixth of October, Marshall was awakened just before dawn. Fully alert, they had prepared everything and were waiting for the onslaught, even though Jerusalem thought differently and the world knew nothing of it at all. When the light snapped on above his head he shielded his eyes and felt for his boots, assuming that the Syrians had begun to move. An agitated sergeant leaned over him, shaking as he spoke. “Definitive information,” he said, “the attack will occur tomorrow, this afternoon that is, at four.”

  “Bar-Shalom.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you have to wake me up to tell me that. Now I’ll never get to sleep and I’ll be too tired to fight.”

  “I was told to tell everyone,” said Bar-Shalom, in exit.

  Marshall did not even try to sleep. Instead, he took a long shower, put on a clean uniform, and shaved close. Because it was Yom Kippur, no one was supposed to eat, but everyone did. A lot of meat was served up, and even the orthodox were coaxed to partake of lunch. “God has sent the Syrian Army so that you can eat today,” they were told. They ate nervously.

  Enough ammunition had been stockpiled to last for days. The vehicles were tanked up, turned over, and assembled by order of sortie, with the Centurions first and the APC’s following. There was nothing more to do, so the soldiers played basketball. At first, they tried to keep score, but they were too agitated to remember the numbers. Right after lunch a lookout screamed from the tower. “They come! They come! They come now!”

  All the men rushed in a massed wave to the ramparts. They stood with weapons in hand and mouths open. Some whimpered and were told to shut up. A wind from the plain upwelled against the palisades, bringing with it the low unearthly sound of thousands of moving tanks and armored vehicles. It was a moment in which all time could anchor. The Syrian Army covered the world; the plains had arisen; dust filled the air; a deluge of columns approached.

  The Israeli soldiers were frozen with wonder and fear. Frederick had come with his staff onto the rampart; he did not make an inspirational speech, though there were dozens within him. Few have ever seen such a sight. It was as if the ground were moving to swallow them up. The orthodox chanted in rapid discord, facing Jerusalem and running through the body of prayer. In the sound of their ancient words, the other soldiers despaired. They knew that only two armored brigades were in position, that full mobilization would take at least another day. They saw their own deaths.

  Captain Palmer came walking across the courtyard. He was the only one who had remained in the dining room to finish dessert. They turned from one of the greatest sights in history, the noise of which was like a thousand muted thunderstorms, and looked at Palmer as he proceeded across the equipment-packed courtyard—his measured pace echoing off the walls—as if he were expected to check the distance and verify what they saw or tell them that it was a dream.

  He climbed the long concrete stairs. His expression was a cross between a frown and a smile. Arriving even with the line of men, he squinted into the air and observed the unified mass of the entire Syrian Army. Then he turned to those who stood awaiting his verdict, and, speaking in English, he said, “Arabs?”

  “Yes, sir,” answered an Ethiopian tank driver.

  “I didn’t know there were so many.”

  “There are very many, sir, very many.”

  “Look, they’re all worked up. Now, I suppose, we shall have to kill them.”

  Only Marshall had understood all his words, but the others had fathomed his tone, and, with a great cheer, they turned from the walls and rushed for their vehicles. Knowing that force ratios were ten to one against them, they realized that targets would abound on the fixed pre-ranged killing grounds for which they headed.

  Three platoons of tanks and secondary armor rumbled through the iron doorway into the wide-open air. It had been practiced a hundred times. Marshall loaded Baruch’s halftrack with five infantry soldiers carrying anti-tank rockets. With this tank-hunting halftrack he planned to match up against T-54S and T-62S despite their rapid fire, heavy armor, and gyroscopic and laser sights. Many halftracks were fitted out more or less the same way to help offset the dearth of tanks. On the .50-caliber machine gun, Wilson would try to handle opposing infantry and keep the tank commanders inside, hatches down. Baruch was the driver. The five ATR’s would be used either in ambush outside the halftrack, or from inside, rocket tubes leveled over the armor plate to give a naval-style broadside. Prithvi and Chobandresh would use the mortar to li
mit the enemy’s area of action, to break up concentrations of vehicles, drive them into the open, and put them out of commission.

  Because Russian tank guns could not point very far downward, Marshall sought a depression in the road. If he could hold a ridge with his anti-tank rockets, the halftrack could sit in the hollow and supply a mortar barrage. A beautiful dip in the topography gave them just what they wanted, and needed—for several miles away a column of Syrian tanks moved toward them. Steeply banked, the road went downhill and was slightly curved. Thus the tanks could come at them only one or two at a time. They set up with supreme speed while the halftrack idled in the hollow. Baruch and Chobandresh manned the mortar, Chobandresh being gunner and Baruch shell-handier. Wilson stood at the machine gun, ready to cut down flanking infantry. Prithvi lay just atop the ridge, spotting for the mortar. The five rocket men were hidden—two, two, and one—in a position of enfilading crossfire. Marshall had a high point from which to command, and was ready with his submachine gun to fire at infantry. They waited until the Syrians came into sight, and the battle was enjoined.

  When he could see the tank commanders stiffly upright in their turrets, Marshall turned to Prithvi. Prithvi’s black hair was shining. He was small and intent. He said to Marshall, “I am not afraid.”

  “Very well,” Marshall answered. “Begin.” Prithvi signaled Chobandresh, and a mortar round soared over the ridge and landed fifty yards in front of the tanks. They stopped. The commanders went under. Prithvi turned to Chobandresh and said, “A minnows head.” Profoundly shocked, Marshall realized that because they did not know mathematics, they could not call out artillerymens degrees. “Plus a minnow’s eye,” said Prithvi. Chobandresh adjusted the mortar and fired off a shot. It struck the lead tank on a corner and blew apart the tread. By this time the tanks were firing at the ridge, but they had no targets. “Chobandresh, a thick hair to that way,” said Prithvi, pointing left. The tank blew up in flames.