by Yoram Kaniuk
The Kastel, said the Captain. From there Jerusalem was seen in ruins by Gottfried of Bouillon. There the poor Crusaders ripped their clothes in ten ninety-nine before they went up to conquer Jerusalem. From the Kastel, the city is seen in its wretchedness by pilgrims in all generations. From there Dante could have seen it if he had gone up to it. Do you know the mountain? he asked.
Once, said Boaz, I conquered it for you inadvertently.
There we'll erect the memorial, said the Captain, whose faith in it was only strengthened by the authority of the words.
Noga refused to come along. She told Hasha Masha: Henkin wants to go with Boaz and the Captain, they're going to find a place for the memorial to Dante. Hasha Masha said: They'll put that Italian on their committee, what do you have to do with Boaz Schneerson! But Henkin put on his hat and kissed Noga on the cheek, hugged Hasha and left the house. Boaz and Noga's roof was new to him. Walls enclosed the little grove Noga planted. A plane circled in the sky on its way to Lod Airport. Henkin stood in the center of the roof, looked at the rusting houses of old Tel Aviv, and said: I'm torturing myself, what do I have to do with this mountain? And Boaz looked at Henkin with the same ancient and piercing affection he saw in the eyes of Ebenezer when he thought he was Samuel, and said: That mountain was the most important place in Menahem's life, but I confused everything and you won't believe anymore, so what's the point of talking-
Boaz drove the car and Henkin and the Captain in his uniform observed the very familiar landscape. Not far from the place where Menahem is buried, Boaz turned right and climbed up the mountain. The air was fragrant and pure. A wind whistled in the treetops, the mountains at that hour were clear and free of mist and came close together.
On top of the mountain stood a ruined structure. Below new structures were seen and Jews from Iran, Bukhara, and Afghanistan dressed in colorful clothing were walking around among the structures. A woman in a purple yashmak called out: The mother of the sons calls the Lord! A gray-haired mustached man appeared, and said: The wicked of the wicked is before you my lady, and she said strangers came up above and he turned his eyes aside and saw a car and three people, one of them a general, he picked up the old rifle and the cartridge of bullets, shot one bullet into the air, and the colorful people stopped what they were doing and looked up, and the woman yelled: Kill, kill, but the man approached Boaz, Henkin, and the Captain aiming the rifle at them, and Boaz said: We're from the Prime Minister's office, searching for a suitable place for a tombstone for an outstanding Jewish commander named Dante Alighieri who overcame the wicked Romans. The man, whose rifle slipped down, recalled his distant youth in misty mountains in a distant land, and the other people approached and stood around him. One man said: Commander? We had a dervish who was the son of Queen Esther, and lived in the mountains. He was a great Jewish hero and the king of all the Persians. Did you hear of Ahasuerus? Esther was his wife. Then we came to the river. Remember what river would come to the Land of Israel? It was forty days across, forty days we rode in a truck just to get across to the other side. And then, the little girl born after the big rain died, and from there in airplanes, and you're a commander, you want a tombstone? Why not? Jews or non-Jews? And everybody laughed and startled the pure air with mouths full of white, crooked, and black teeth. As a sign of friendship, the man put the rifle down on the ground and started singing, and everybody hummed along with him. The singer reminded the Captain of the ancient melodies they'd sing in the Temple, which was taken to Babylon and from there came to Spain and was preserved in monasteries by conversos, who were then exiled to the east and came to Persia and India and Kurdistan and Afghanistan, and from those chants Dante Alighieri wove the Divine Comedy, whose melody was heard by Emanuel the Roman who knew the melodies he took in with his mother's milk and the hidden and mysterious notes were latent in him ...
Then they stood above, and the people, except for that silver-haired mustached man, went to their houses and Boaz told about the decisive battle on the Kastel. Henkin stopped his ears. He didn't want to hear. And so Teacher Henkin, stubbornly but courageously, missed the only chance he was given in his life to hear about one battle in which his son fought wisely and heroically.
After Abdul Khadr el-Husseini was killed by mistake, said Boaz, and any one of us could have shot him, including Menahem, he said and looked at Henkin, all the Arabs fled and then came a reinforcement of commanders and we saw them enter the path, yelling, but they didn't hear and then it was too late and Simon Alfasi shouted: "Privates retreat, the commanders will cover the retreat," and thirty-three commanders were killed to defend Boaz and Menahem and Joseph. Afterward, the Arabs discovered the body of their leader and they fled ... And that started the decisive turning point in the War of Independence ... Menahem's one shot!
Or yours, shouted Henkin who heard the last words.
Or mine, said Boaz sadly.
Henkin started thinking about the next Independence Day: Nineteen years have passed and what am I doing? I'm helping erect a tombstone for Dante that will look toward Menahem's Jerusalem, while for my poets I left abandoned graves in the old cemetery of Tel Aviv. And out of pondering and an ancient sense of treachery, Henkin said: I see shadows on the horizon, Boaz, and Boaz said: What shadows, and the Captain looked and said: There will be a war, and Boaz thought: They're making fun, those old men, what war can you see, but he didn't say a thing and looked at the old Bukharan who started singing again.
In the evening, the Captain sat with Rebecca. Rebecca said: He's probably fed up with memory books and he wants to be a memorial to himself, but without my Psalms, he won't succeed. And the Captain said: But what will become of us, Rebecca? He thought about Ebenezer who had recently come back and painted his house, and Rebecca said: What will be? All my enemies are dead, all I've got left is you, Captain, Roots is waiting for me, you're suffering from eight diseases and you won't recover from any of them, what do you want from an old woman like me?
Tape / -
Boaz was one of the first to go. Then Noga was mobilized too. Hasha Masha asked, Why you all of a sudden? And Noga, who came to visit her, said: They'll find something for me, I'm not considered married and the lists got mixed up. People stuck pieces of tape on windowpanes, Rebecca sat in her armchair and contemplated her life and didn't find anything in it that wasn't compelled in advance. Planes flew low and shook the house. The great-grandson of Ahbed disappeared, but came back. At the airport, foreign residents were evacuated. The Captain said: They built an Auschwitz here with a philharmonic orchestra and now they sit and wait. Why don't they strike? He wore his uniform and asked to be mobilized, but nobody even paid attention to his lunacy. Dayan was appointed Minister of Defense. Eskhol delivered a speech. On television, hordes of Egyptian recruits were seen marching to throw the Jews into the sea. The nation of Israel, said the Captain, sees Chmielnitski and Hitler assaulting it, and I pity Nasser. He was the only one who pitied him at that time. Early in the morning, the red sheet was hoisted and without music, and in a thin still voice, the nation of Israel went to the great war against fat Frieda who lay under the dog, thought Ebenezer, the fist clenched for three weeks gaped open.
And five days later everything was almost calm.
Tape / -
She took off her clothes and put them on the cot. Outside reigned the impermeable desert dark. In the next bed he lay, she couldn't imagine how he looked. She played a game of imagining him from his breathing, from the smell of shoes and socks. She strained her eyes and saw shadows. Outside voices sawed. Her skin shuddered and she rolled herself up in damp army blankets smelling faintly of Lysol. She lay down, her eyes gazing at the ceiling of the tent. He said: Wonder what you look like in the light. She said: I also want to know what you look like. Every night you're here and not seen. In the morning you disappear before I open my eyes. By the time I come back at night, you're in bed.
My name's Boaz, he told her. I'm a grown-up child who survived the wars. Killing and not killed. On the Richter scale of my me
taphysical biology, I'm a nine. Your wonderful youth can be smelled. All I know about you is that you've got a lover, that you have difficult dreams I can hear, you're somebody one can definitely fall in love with, if one forgets the inconceivable and unbearable problems of love. For years now I haven't managed to die in just wars, and in unjust wars I don't die either. Maybe justice has nothing to do with death in war? Now that the war is ending soon, I'm still here. During the day I shoot the routed enemy. You've got a female rustle among your clothes. When you undress in the dark, there are tears in my eyes.
She said: That's nice of you. My stupid officer pushes me around all day. He's got clean fingernails, smells like perfume. You sound like a person who flourishes in wars.
I make no demands on you. It's true, I love another man. But you come back with a smell of death and dark. Last night I smelled blood. You sound like a professional soldier. You bring weapons in your hands, you kill and sleep, sleep and kill. In that shelling you slept like a baby. I don't know why they put us in the same tent. My officer tried to start with me again today. I erupted. He has soft, warm hands. He talked to me about twilight in a distant city, said I remind him of that. It was cold and the sergeant on duty yelled: I'll put all of them under arrest, and all of them cleaned the mud and the mud kept coming in. As far as I'm concerned, you should go to jail for mud. I'll smoke a cigarette now. And you?
I'm trying to think if you're pretty. That drives me nuts. Do you have breasts? Big ones? Small ones? And your face, terrific, I'm not terrific either, few people like me. I don't believe in marriage. And I don't believe in love, either, but I'm starting to doubt my ability not to love. Why do people want so much to be loved? All the fools and dummies ultimately find somebody who loves them. And the worst bastards also have friends and women. You can see that from the funerals. The dumber the man the bigger his funeral.
Today I got out of the half-track. I went to search for a land mine. In the distance I saw people in the desert. Men in coats and suits and tunics and women in pants and head kerchiefs. They were straying, aimlessly, their eyes burning from the desert wind. Hundreds of men and women. One of them had a red scarf. I yelled at them to watch out. There are land mines, I said, and they didn't hear and weren't scared. They showed me pictures of their sons. Every one had a picture of his son, you know the high school graduation pictures they make with the faces of stranglers of old women? Those are their sweeties, and they were searching for their sweeties in the desert. Everybody asks if I know his son. Missing, they say. One woman told me: You surely know him. Surely, why should I know him, but I said: Maybe, maybe I knew him. She said, search for him for me. I've got to find him. "Surely," that's the compelling word, don't you think? You with your small or big breasts. After the woman with the red scarf disappeared I smoked a cigarette. Some of the sons in the pictures had scared faces. Do you think those with scared faces die more than those whose faces aren't scared? I'd like you to have my picture ... with an erect cock. Like now. You'll take the picture with the erect cock, walk in the sands and ask if somebody knows me. Maybe some poor girl I once inserted a souvenir into. She'll say: The shmuck's buried not far from here. And you, will you weep?
And what do you do in civilian life?
Grave digger, prepare my financial future.
You're trying to be cynical.
Trying, that's right. Not living in the right man. A girl came to me, she's got long chestnut-colored hair and bright eyes. Not especially pretty, but belonging to somebody so temptingly. She said to me: I'm searching for a man. I asked if I could be the man. She looked at me contemptuously and I saw how she belonged to her somebody and I was jealous. And then she repeated: I'm searching for a man. I told her: What about his picture? She didn't have one. And she blushed because she didn't have a picture. She said: Listen, I'm searching for a man I love, and she didn't add anything more. Will you also ask somebody about my cock, will you say then: I'm searching for a man I love?
Yes, she said, and she smoked a cigarette silently and her breath was fast, almost loud. You understand, he said, the girl put a semicolon after the man, because maybe he's dead. She didn't know his last name. She met him in a tent like this in Bir-Gafgafa in the dark. When there were still a lot more planes ripping the sky. She didn't know the declension: "I loved," everything was fresh and still in the present tense. Like the grammatical judgment of a language teacher. I turn over for a moment, the blanket stabs what's-his-name. Like this. She can't draw me the face of the lover. He had no geographical bearings or characteristics, normal or otherwise. No special signs. Only certain things, she said, swallowed those words. And then she said again with surprising speed: Things that can't be defined, she meant what happened to them together in the tent. Maybe she loved him because he died? How do I know? And if he died, maybe she'd love him forever. Isn't that safer?
She crushes the cigarette. Rustling is heard outside. Three half-tracks rumble up and brake. Music from the radio mixed with a roaring motor. The flash of pale blue light in the tent flap. A wind strikes the tarp. She sinks her head deep into the small hard pillow. I recall going out with my lover, she said.
He laughed.
And he's alive, she said.
Ah, but for how long?
A long time. Once he took me to the movies. That was soon after we met. He'd sit in cafes, go to matinees, waste time, sit next to me in the movies and even though he looked like a letch, he was afraid to stroke my back. I thought: Why doesn't he understand I've got breasts? Why doesn't he put a hand on my breasts, he thought I was a dangerous girl.
In the morning she sits at the teleprinter. Third shift. All the time she receives messages. Words appear-missing, missing, fell, fell, wounded. Names, numbers, identity tags. She drinks hot coffee from a cardboard cup and writes the dead. Suddenly she shrieks: Joseph Gimmeleon. Just yesterday he came into the teleprinter room and saw three girls and didn't know which one of us to desire more. So perplexed and lost he stood there. And I was the oldest. The officer with the soft sweaty hands didn't let him take us to the movies. He said: I'm from Haifa, and Talya made him a red paper flower. He stuck it in his shirt lapel and disappeared with Zelda. She phones the battalion. A field phone hums. A commander yells at Talya, come down from the line, she comes to a third in command who sleeps with her every third night. From the distance, from the war, a voice rising and falling like a roar answers her: What, what, Joseph, Joseph Gimmeleon, the body wasn't intact, they found a red paper flower. I'm coming tomorrow, and he hung up.
Bring you coffee, he asked.
Bring yourself, fool, she said.
I'm wiped out from the teleprinter, she said, but without naming names, and clean up your smell, don't want to smell death.
He stood in the tent flap. Took off his clothes. She strained her eyes but didn't see a thing. He said: Wait a minute. And then a car passed by in the distance and sprayed a little light. He stood there shaking and naked and she laughed.
He went to her and she said: You look like a skeleton. Want to touch you. Then if you want, you can. On a night like this I'm easily raped. Mainly by a living person, without a red paper flower, but don't try to be close or understanding, you'll just touch me and I you. In bed he hugged her and the shaking passed. Try to be romantic, she said, but without love. He said to her: I'll put a paper flower in you. She said: You're faking, you behave as if you know this body, think it's an instrument, be more careful, more calculating, you're sweet. And he said: No compliments, listen to the distant cannons, killing.
Then she stands up and he hugs her. Don't be a dead picture for me, she says. We fit in terms of height. Maybe we'll love each other again, she says, and they sway in an uncompromising prayer and things are forgotten. He steps on chewing gum and is disgusted. He also tosses her onto the bed, clings to her, that need to be loved by a real enemy who is you, and she puts her life on his erection and lies there, waiting, sweat pouring, that beauty of a mad lusty movement in a tent, you and I, two strangers.
Listen, you can do with me what you want, but only in the dark and as an undesirable woman, as I am, don't relent, here I'm touching, touching with my feet the ceiling of the tent. Lick like that toward Mecca, yes press like that. Press ... You think there's a God? I don't care. There are officers outside with national erections. You think there really are national goals. Here we can beget a Hebrew soldier for the ninth war, in this state a national mutation will take place and they'll beget children with rifles attached. You exaggerate, she said unemotionally. Everybody has a different name for what's happening here. Tomorrow you take the picture of that cock and walk in the sands and search for me. Ask horny soldiers if they knew me. Tell them you didn't know my first name or my last name. In that silence to penetrate to the throat and cut it. Generally, she says, I love first and only then do they come into me. Now it's vice versa. Who needs victory? Don't stop. I'm unable to love, he says, and she says: From death you came and to death you'll go, I'm lost between here and there.
And beyond them, far from there, people are killed. Bullets go astray at night. Airplanes go on final sallies. The teleprinter doesn't speak his name.
Then she smokes a cigarette. Silence. Pleasant odor of burned red war kerosene. If that smell is pleasant, it means I'm alive and well. The wind isn't blowing anymore, eh?
The wind isn't blowing, he said.
Talya had a boyfriend, she said.
You make friends fast. I've been here three and a half weeks and I've got only you. You've already got girlfriends, officers with wet hands, memories.
You should know me in civilian life. I silence the radio. But that's not important. My friend, Talya, had a boyfriend. Before the adjutant who slept with her. And I've also got an affair with you, even though I love somebody else.
Talya's boyfriend lives in America and sends her letters. She says that's convenient for her. She wants to know if she really loves him or not and the distance is a test. He'd come for every war. On the first plane he'd come. His unit loved him because he'd bring them presents-real jeans, lighters, American cigarettes. He once brought a mixer for one of them, she says.