Khirbet Khizeh

by S. Yizhar

  “You’d better not touch him, or you’ll get a kick,” Gaby said, suiting action to words and withdrawing to a safe distance.

  “What wildness, what a rebel!” Shmulik marveled. “Let’s get his ropes off him.”

  “You’d better get back,” said Gaby.

  “That’s enough now, that’s enough,” Shmulik chanted to the colt. And he tried to pacify it from a distance with a handful of grass. This time the colt didn’t wait for the gift but danced a rebellious rope-dance with mounting anger, flailing ineffectively, its movements restrained by the hobble, all tangled up in itself, made frantic by the power of movements that had no range whatsoever.

  “He’ll break a leg!” shouted Gaby.

  “We’ve gotta untie it for him,” Shmulik answered. “It can’t go on like this.”

  “He’ll break a leg,” Gaby shouted again.

  Boldly Shmulik approached, one hand extending the peace offering of grass and the other reaching out with the intention of stroking and gradually calming the colt; he chirped pacifically but at the same time maintained a kind of half-turn in readiness to leap backward. The colt stood still. Its neck was stretched out, its head forced downward ready to butt, its back arched like a bow, its tail flicked up, tense, its four legs set at an angle so that its fetlocks were close together and almost in the same spot, like a grasshopper about to leap, or a drawn bow before the arrow is released. It paused in this pose for a short while, steely, lithe, seething with restrained power that might burst forth at any moment with uncontrolled desire, with liberating joy, and the breath of distant places and wide-open spaces. Then it straightened out all at once and raised its neck while its head, with tiny ears pricked up, tilted slightly to one side, as though sniffing at the wind, all attention. At once it relaxed its muscles. With a mischievous movement it turned gracefully to face Shmulik and extended its baby-like lips toward the grass.

  Triumphantly Shmulik approached the colt, patting its silky neck and quivering belly, its reddish gazelle-like hocks, and speaking soft, soothing words of affection.

  “Good boy, good boy. There, there. That’s good,” Shmulik said. And immediately he knelt down and drew his knife to cut through the hobble on the animal’s forelegs. He thrust his head and most of his body between the four legs of the attentive colt.

  “You’d better not stick your head down there,” said Gaby excitedly, and took one step forward. At that very moment the horse started and gave a great leap, spreading its tail like a peacock, its mane waving wildly. It gave another leap forward and with head extended broke into a mighty gallop, jumped the low hedge (with a bit of rope dangling from one of its forelegs), and appeared one last time at the end of the plowed field before vanishing from sight.

  With gaping mouth and dim eyes Shmulik got up and turned toward us, holding the knife, amazed and stunned, the words wrenched from his mouth: “Wow … did you see that!… I’m telling tell you!”

  Meanwhile Gaby opened his mouth wide and burst out laughing, laughing and coughing, laughing and slapping his knees, laughing and looking backward at us and forward toward Shmulik, as he tried to say something that was lost in the howls of his laughter, which infected us all, until there was a general uproar, screeching, mocking, that extracted all sorts of things that we hadn’t said all day and brought them out into the open, freely, publicly, all at once, and then Aryeh said, with a fleeting hint of a smile (because he had never done more than smile in his life) to the poor guy: “There goes your fifty pounds!”

  “Fuck your fifty pounds,” muttered Shmulik, reaching for his knife and returning it to its sheath, and turning away from us as he looked into the distance toward what had disappeared, while the field still throbbed with a wonderful echo of thundering hooves.

  However, it was now clear that we had wasted too much time here. We got up unwillingly and returned to the alleys of the village. We checked the houses casually. We peered dutifully here and there, interpreting the sense of gloom that had fallen upon us as though it were merely a sign that it was lunchtime. Shmulik dejectedly trudged along in the rear, and when we tried to hurry him along he responded evasively and said to us, “What do you know about it! You don’t see a horse like that every day!” and returned to his sad thoughts. In the meantime we also picked up a few Arabs, whom we gathered into a group and sent on ahead of us without paying any attention to how they looked or what they had to say or needed, nor to the occasional fit of weeping, and even the one who had for some reason prepared an impromptu white flag and approached us waving it and murmuring a formal address, as if he were the village headman and was holding the keys of surrender, even he aroused in us only feelings of boredom, inexplicable anger that gradually got the better of us and turned into an expression of resentment, meaning that they had defrauded us, they’d exploited us, but we were not about to give up, we would not hand anything over, though what it was we wouldn’t hand over was not known.

  Because who were we dealing with after all, apart from some women with babies in their arms (bleary-eyed driveling Arab babies wrapped in rags and good-luck charms) and a few other women clasping their hands and mumbling as they walked? There were also a few old men walking silently and solemnly as though toward Judgment Day. There were some middle-aged men there, too, who felt they weren’t old enough yet to be safe from the impending wrath, and who also felt a need to explain and a rebellious urge that manifested itself from time to time in a look or two. There was a blind man led by a child, perhaps his grandson, who walked along looking around him in bewilderment and curiosity, oblivious to the hand on his shoulder or the trouble hanging over their heads, so that even when he stumbled occasionally he hardly stopped staring at us. And with all these blind, lame, old, and stumbling people, and the women and children all together like some place in the Bible that describes something like this, I don’t remember where—in addition to this bit of the Bible, which was already weighing on our hearts, we now reached an open place in which there stood a wide-spreading sycamore tree under which we saw sitting in a huddle the entire population of the village, gathered in silence, a great dappled mass, all collected together, a single silent assembly following what was happening with their eyes, one of them occasionally sighing, “O dear God.”

  Those whom we had brought along found themselves places of their own accord and gathered under the tree, men and women separately, and sat down heavily, so that at once you could no longer distinguish them from the others. There were many people gathered here, a larger catch than expected, with dark robes and white head-coverings (a scarf wound around a low tarbush for the men and a white embroidered kerchief for the women). Some of them sat swaying to and fro as if they were praying. Others ran their honey-colored amber or plain black worry-beads aimlessly through their fingers. Others folded their big wrinkled peasant arms across their chests, while still others crushed stalks of straw or blades of grass between their fingers just for something to do, and they were all watching us, clinging to our every movement, and not a word did they speak, apart from that occasional sigh, “O dear God.”

  Among the women, meanwhile, a monotonous, almost incidental weeping started up, which occasionally mounted to a loud sobbing and was choked back. Some women bared a breast to their babies, some covered their faces with a veil, leaving only frightened eyes, some addressed broken phrases and reprimands to their children, whose patience had given out, and who had begun to fidget, approaching us, resting one bare foot upon the opposite knee, and devouring us with their glances, staring wide-eyed at the sight of our every move, as if it were a performance. Only rarely did a single cry burst forth and open the pent-up hearts and tears, and then a general weeping broke from the women, until one of the old men raised his voice and rebuked them, and they gradually controlled themselves.

  However, when a stone house exploded with a deafening thunder and a tall column of dust—its roof, visible from where we were, floating peacefully, all spread out, intact, and suddenly splitting and break
ing up high in the air and falling in a mass of debris, dust, and a hail of stones—a woman, whose house it apparently was, leapt up, burst into wild howling and started to run in that direction, holding a baby in her arms, while another wretched child who could already stand clutched the hem of her dress, and she screamed, pointed, talked, and choked, and now her friend got up, and another, and an old man stood up too, and other people rose to their feet as she began to run, while the child attached to the hem of her dress was dragged for a moment and stumbled to the ground and bawled, revealing a brown buttock. One of our boys moved forward and shouted at her to stand still. She stifled her words with a desperate shriek, beating her chest with her free hand. She had suddenly understood, it seemed, that it wasn’t just about waiting under the sycamore tree to hear what the Jews wanted and then to go home, but that her home and her world had come to a full stop, and everything had turned dark and was collapsing; suddenly she had grasped something inconceivable, terrible, incredible, standing directly before her, real and cruel, body to body, and there was no going back. But the soldier grimaced as though he were tired of listening, and he shouted at her again to sit down with the others. However, the woman was already beyond warnings, she left him behind and started running heavily toward the site of the explosion. With a movement of his hand the boy grabbed her headscarf, and her hair was shamefully disheveled and exposed to view, something that startled everybody and enraged the woman herself. Snatching back her scarf with a wave of rebuke, in a single movement she covered her hair and wrapped up the child, who was bleating with all its tiny might, and hurriedly picked up the hem of her heavy dress and ran toward her ruined home.

  “Leave her alone,” said someone. “She’ll be back.”

  “Khawaja,” an old man stood up, apparently one of the most respected men of the village, and came forth from his people toward us, with one hand on his chest and the other extended in front of him in a gesture of courteous request, in a polite manner that both sides would surely recognize as the basis for dialogue, as appropriate to honored interlocutors, and advanced toward us looking among us for someone to open a discussion with. However the one he selected did not let him utter a single word but pointed to where he’d been sitting and said: “Stay in your place until you’re called.”

  The old man started to say something in response, or to rebuke him, thought better of it, shrugged his shoulders, and heavily returned to his place, aided by his cane and the several hands extended to him by those still seated. He sat down heavily and sighed: “La illah ila Allah, there is no god but God.” Something ancient and biblical once again flickered for a moment, until some other prophecy of doom took its place and hung in the air. Anyone who had forgotten how all this was bound to end knew again what was before him.

  “What’s this place called anyway?” said Shlomo.

  “Khirbet Khizeh,” someone answered.

  7

  IN THE MEANTIME WE WERE CALLED to lunch, and never had a midday break been more welcome. Not just to provide a respite from all that stuff down below, and to enjoy the little warm sunshine that remained of this day and think about other things (and we needed to!), but also, simply, because we were, as could be expected, hungry. Before we got there, Shlomo had already started:

  “Its not okay what’s going on down there. And there’s gonna be more trouble.”

  “E-nough!” Yehuda squawked like a chicken. “That trash is gonna make trouble for us? No way!”

  “I just don’t like all this,” Shlomo repeated.

  “Whatever,” said Yehuda. “It’s not the movies.”

  “I just can’t stop thinking about those old women sitting there, such fear!”

  Since nobody took up the conversation, he continued on his own:

  “It was just like the beginning, the first time I saw dead men, wounded men and blood. Do you remember? It was terrible. I thought then that it would haunt me forever. And now, corpses and blood and all that—it doesn’t affect me at all.”

  “You get used to it,” Yehuda replied laconically, nodding his head in mock sympathy.

  We reached a field off to the side of the houses, next to a wide dirt track that connected this village to the main road, far away. Suddenly, for some reason, a thought crept into my mind, that this track compacted by thousands of feet over the generations would now grow grass, break up, bear fruit with no one passing by. Immediately the chords that had been moaning within me separated themselves, and a wave of bitterness washed through me. And I could sense that troublesome somebody inside me, grinding his teeth and clenching his fists.

  We tried to maintain our indifference and shake off everything that had happened down there, like a goose coming out of the water. We distributed the ration tins and the biscuits noisily, with various juicy words, sprawling out on the rotting fallen leaves of a bare fig tree, trying to find something we could laugh about, but underneath it all there was something vague, accumulating in the air, which, despite its brightness, without any connection to what was going on here, had meanwhile become pale and vaguely murky, and white tatters of thickening mists or shimmering water vapor were gathering in the stainless azure, and it was clear that tomorrow or the day after the rain would return.

  Shmulik, who was still grieving for his runaway colt, sought to engage Gaby in a very private, very friendly conversation, and said to him, turning his back to us, so as to mark out a separate circle for himself and his friend Gaby, and biting off some of the meat from the tin:

  “You don’t fancy her?”

  “Who?” Gaby hissed dryly.

  “Rivkele, you don’t think that she’s, how should I say, you know, kinda, well, let’s just say she’s not-like-other-girls.”

  “She’s exactly like other girls,” said Gaby.

  “No, it’s not like that,” said Shmulik. “She’s kinda proud, don’t you think?”

  “Not at all,” said Gaby. “Or maybe she is, what do I care?”

  “You don’t care?” said Shmulik in amazement. “I sure would like to get to know her a bit better.”

  “Just watch out,” Aryeh interjected, “that you don’t end up the same way with her as you did with the horse.”

  So there we were all smiling, eating, filling our bellies and passing the time, and we started to relax. If my ears didn’t deceive me the word home was even mentioned here and there (and your heart within you leapt up then at such a wonderful possibility of a solution and a way out). And when we were peeling oranges and enjoying their flowing juice Gaby quizzed Moishe with his mouth full—what else do we have to do here, and he explained how much better it would be if we finished now and went back and left everything else for others to deal with, and so he added rolling his tongue and grinding his teeth—the gun also needs to be taken care of. But Moishe would have none of it. Moishe said to us as follows:

  “First of all, we still have to check all the Arabs assembled below and identify any suspect youths. Second, when the trucks come we’ll load them all on and leave the village empty. Third, we have to finish the burning and the demolition. After that we can go home.”

  My innards clenched for some reason and I was disgusted with the food. I could sense that I was feeling sorry for myself and what awaited me. I don’t know what others felt. Impatiently I waited for Gaby to go on grumbling and raisings objections as usual, so that I could get what I wanted as usual, and he didn’t waste any time. What, demanded Gaby straightaway, what have we done today and what have the others done today? How far have we walked and how far have they walked? How far have we dragged the machine gun and the ammunition chests and how much have they sat under the sycamore messing around? And he also said that it was about time that we got to go home first for once, people were always taking advantage of us, and so on and so forth—which expressed more and more my own hidden, bursting desire to get up and leave and get out of here quickly before it started to happen for real. Because if it had to be done let others do it. If someone had to get filthy,
let others soil their hands. I couldn’t. Absolutely not. But immediately another voice started up inside me singing this song: bleeding heart, bleeding heart, bleeding heart. With increasing petulance and a psalm to the beautiful soul that left the dirty work to others, sanctimoniously shutting its eyes, averting them so as to save itself from anything that might upset it, with eyes too pure to behold evil, who has looked upon unbearable iniquity. And I hated the entirety of my being.

  However, all Moishe saw fit to do in reply to Gaby’s entire discourse was to say with more than laconic brevity:

  “That’s it.”

  We gathered our equipment and went down to the makeshift prison by the sycamore tree. After debating with myself I gathered up the courage to say to Moishe:

  “Do we really have to expel them? What more can these people do? Who can they hurt? After the young ones have already … what’s the point…”

  “Well,” Moishe said to me affectionately, “that’s what it says in the operational orders.”

  “But it’s not right,” I protested, not knowing which of all the arguments and speeches that were fighting within me I should set before him as a decisive proof. And so I simply repeated: “It really isn’t right.”

  “So what do you want?” said Moishe, shrugging his shoulders. He left me. I would have chosen, for various reasons, not all due to moral strength, to remain silent myself, but since I’d started and since Yehuda was walking by my side, I turned to him and said:

  “Why do we need to expel them?”

  “For sure,” said Yehuda, “what are you gonna do with them? Would you assign a company to guard them?”

  “What harm could they possibly do?”

  “They can, and how. When they start laying mines on the roads, and stealing from the settlements, and spying everywhere—then you’ll notice them, and how.”

  “These people?”