“I wish you had told me you weren’t going.”
“I didn’t know I wasn’t going.”
“What made you decide?”
“This!”
“What?”
“This.”
“What?”
“The pimple! The pimple! The pimple!”
I sat down on the bed. She turned her face away.
“I don’t see a pimple, Joan. There’s no pimple.”
“Well then you’re blind. It’s as big as Mount Everest. It’s ugly. Everything is ugly.”
“Everything?”
“When you’re ugly, everything is ugly.”
“You’re not ugly, Joan.”
“You’re very kind. I’m never leaving this house.”
“Suppose there’s a fire?”
“I tried to cover it up,” she said, beginning to sob. “But it was no good. It’s no good, Josh.”
She ran to the bathroom. She was staying in there too long and I called out to her and she did not respond. I knocked on the door. Then I kicked it open. She was on the toilet seat cover, hunched over. In her hands were facial cream containers. Her face was smudged yellow and orange, especially that place near her nose.
I sat down across from her on the bathtub edge and took her hands and removed the bottles. Her hands were ice cold. I rubbed them and she sobbed in heavy spasms. She pulled me down so that I was on my knees and buried my head in her lap and now, frantically, she stroked my hair. “What happens to people?” she said. “What happens to people?” I tried to keep from sobbing and did not know whose tears these were running hot and fast down my cheeks.
Chapter 30
SO THEN in Haifa only now and then did I think of her, there in warships that went down to the sea to do business in great waters. I had joined the Israeli Navy as a volunteer, immediately after the separation papers made my split with Joan final, and it was not like joining the French Foreign Legion to forget. Or maybe it was.
I patrolled the Mediterranean on the Satile, warships America had used in Vietnam, and went into combat on the Zodiacs, inflatable rubber speedboats. In Hebrew there was no word for navy so they called it Army of the Sea, and I patrolled the Mediterranean with this army of eighteen-year-olds, not counting officers of all ages. Once again I was in the Zahal uniform saying to my father, “Look at me.”
Strange, though, because for the Israelis the army or navy was duty, no place to find oneself or lose oneself. Rather it was a chore, an unromantic task that robbed from the young the three best years of their lives. Glory--that was for the Americans.
But as for this American--I did not think about her anymore. It was finished. At the outset, yes, she had been on my mind. In bed in my bunk, so near the sea that I could hear the waves and through my windows see across to Acre and Lebanon, I wrote her imaginary letters. There was so much to tell. When mail came--though I had not told her where I was--I fantasized letters from her. But that was in the beginning. No more.
Anyway, it had been fifteen months since we decided it was finished. And no wonder. She had begun to waste away. Never mind love, the very spark of life had begun to leave her soul. She suffered terrible fits of depression, manifested by those migraines and sleeplessness by night, and by day she walked about hard and cold and she even jumped that time I tried to touch her. Words could not console her and she believed nothing she heard or read. She--Joan!--had turned cynical and even vindictive. The words, “I love you,” made her nauseous. Romantic couples--she scorned them. Most books and movies were about people in love, so she had nothing to read or see.
She still had the flair for the perfectly timed phrase--but now inverted. She said, “There will never be another you. Especially you.”
She became a contradiction of herself. She was in the Norwegian night. Music and television were out and she even covered the mirrors, and our house was a house of mourning. She spent all her days at home and hours in the bathroom, and there she tried to slit her wrists. Once. That was when we decided...
As for me, I had lost all affection for her. I had just been hanging in. Nothing of her was mine anymore. Even if she had been the same...but how could she have been the same?
No, it had been useless and terrible. Though I had tried, once even teasing and joking as in other days, just to reawaken even for an instant the old Joan--just for a glimpse. But there was nothing. Nothing left. Gone. All gone.
So here in northern Israel, in Haifa, beautiful and serene with a view of Mount Carmel from almost every point, the golden Bahai dome glistening against the sun, and even in view of Elijah’s cave where nearby he contested the 450 false prophets of Baal and the 400 false prophets of Asherah--here I lived on the military base.
This base was bounded by the Mediterranean on one side and Aliya Street on the other. My schedule was a rotation of a week on patrol and a week of liberty, and in my free time there was so much to see, so many old friends to visit, and I did none of that, just stood outside the base, across the street, and watched children play in the schoolyard.
This was Israel, this schoolyard. The old men and women, Israelis by way of Auschwitz, they also watched these children, so rambunctious and carefree, the trill of their voices a song to the martyrs even in their graves.
I wished she were here, too, to witness this, this incredible sight. First take her to Yad Vashem, there to see those pictures of those kids being shoveled from the ovens, and then bring her here to this schoolyard. Then she’d understand all the things I could never explain.
I remembered her saying that even if we had the most terrible fight and even if we split up, to always tell her where I was. She’d come find me. But who expected anything like this?
I did seek her among the watchers, making a quick scan of the people outside the schoolyard. And she’d be easy to spot since there were no blondes within the entire land of Israel. No blondes meant no Joan.
But that was in the beginning and I did not think about her anymore.
We went out to sea that night in eighteen Zodiacs and then, on the shores of Lebanon, we silently deflated them and buried them and went to avenge the slaughter of eight Jerusalem nursery students who had been taken to the bushes and slaughtered one by one by Arab “soldiers” and “fighters.”
In the exchange of machine-gun fire I got it again, same knee, but I held together until it was over and even helped dig up and inflate the boats and only later, deep in the Mediterranean, did I know pain.
They rushed me to Rambam Hospital and I was in there longer than I should have been, the doctor saying this knee, though it would heal, was telling me something. Longer than I should have been because, the doctor suspected, I had no will to live, which was not true. “You came here to die?” said Dr. Avri Ben Tov. “Come here to live!”
There was something strange about these Israelis. They resented heroes, even martyrs. They built monuments to them and sang songs about them and even wove legends around them but they resented them, maybe because their heritage and culture was dedicated to life, not death and maybe because they had enough heroes, enough martyrs, and it was time for something else.
On this very base men who singlehandedly defeated scores of Egyptians in Sinai and Syrians on Golan--they walked about unrecognized, meriting not even the basics, like a salute, though it was true that here nobody saluted and there was no clicking of heels.
In five weeks I was out of the hospital and back on the base, lame for the time being and out of commission, sinking deeper in my cot, and later sitting atop a rock, letting the sea flow beneath my feet, the sun gently warming my flesh.
In time, aided by a cane, I could walk for longer distances, even to the outskirts of the base, at last to Aliya Street, to stand outside the schoolyard and watch the children play.
The blonde lady...from behind she could pass for Joan. I had not thought about her at all. Not at all. But blondes--going back to the States--so many of them looked like Joan from behind and then they made the
mistake of turning around. Such disappointment.
For a time, after the separation, I had tried to reconstruct Joan, even create a Joan, my own Joan. Let us make Joan. Some of the blondes that evoked such fantasies were nearly Joan and I thought, this could be Joan...but needs work.
Now--now the percentages were remarkably good. Here in Israel. A blonde.
A gambling man would bet that this was Joan.
Such a rare thing, a blonde, here, that I had to move closer, but not too close. Not yet. Let it last, the possibility. As long as her back was to me I could hope. No need to rush in and shatter this. This was delicate. I imagined her turning around and finally...finally Joan. That smile.
How close, I thought, would this golden-haired lady be to Joan? How nearly Joan would she be? Straight flush? Royal flush? Jackpot! I remembered, now--of all the memories!--that time more than a year ago in Atlantic City at Showboat, her getting that royal flush and winning almost nothing because she had used only a quarter…and how delighted she was! Thrilled and ecstatic and nary a thought to the minus, only the plus. Before that, on the tram, waving to the people on the Boardwalk, turning your basic tram ride into a magical adventure.
In the cheder ha’ochel, the mess hall, there had been talk of a blonde one. Couple of cadets had spotted this phenomenon. Scouts had even been sent out to spy. I had failed to make the connection, or maybe just thought it too incredible.
It had been so final.
So she had been here for some days, this blonde lady standing outside the gates of the schoolyard, and now I watched her and everything about her was a perfect Joan--at least from behind. There remained only this: for her to turn around.
Just like her--if in fact this was Joan--to know this would be my pastime, watching these children. Of course she could have simply walked up to the sentry and asked for me, so maybe it wasn’t her.
Two boys in the schoolyard were now in a tumble. Light sparring had flared into a mean fight and it was obvious there was a long-standing grudge between these two.
The big one had the smaller one on the ground, had him smothered and pinned solid. Not a happy sight, observing the smaller kid raging and flailing helplessly.
Come on kid. Push your two thumbs together and press up against his nostrils.
This is Krav Maga country. You should know this!
The blonde lady, now she turned, faced me and said, “Do something.”
I rushed in and broke it up between these two. Then I walked out of the schoolyard and stepped up to the lady. She was smiling, but her lower lip was quivering. I was quivering all over.
Crazy, I thought. No fear for even the most vicious hand-to-hand combat. Up walks this blonde and you turn to jelly.
But then, she was incredibly beautiful. I had seen something like her only once.
She said, “Not bad for a guy with a cane.”
“Yeah, I had some trouble.”
“Out at sea?”
“Yes.”
“Still you on one side, the world on the other?” Her eyes turned red and began to swell. “Isn’t that right?”
I hated to tell her that so far it was no contest. The world was way ahead.
I said, “I hate to see the bad guys win.”
“I know just what your mean. So you have to keep fighting. Especially for something very rare and precious.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You have to keep fighting.”
“Yes we do,” she said. “I guess that’s why I’m here, Josh.”
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