The Drive

by Yair Assulin

  “Why are you looking so sloppy?” he asked, glaring at my worn red boots. “When was the last time you polished those?”

  After a pause, I told him I would polish them as soon as I got home. Then I said my father was waiting outside in the car, and I asked if I could have the form.

  “Your dad is waiting outside?” I remember his voice stretching out into a thin drawl. “Who said you were going home now?”

  “I’m planning to see the MHO tomorrow morning,” I replied, and I felt the enervation taking over again. I didn’t have any strength left for this performance, for this show of power, for this need to keep insisting that I had to get authorization for every single thing, even for this thing that was so obvious, because even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t have gone back to the home base that day, and I certainly couldn’t have stayed on the base near Nablus, because I had to get to the mental health services at Tel Hashomer by eight a.m., and if I’d slept on the base there was no chance I’d make it. I didn’t have the strength for the stern expression, the furrowed brow, the authoritative voice, as if the two of us were standing on a stage.

  “What if I was going to give you a job before you go home?” he said impatiently, and I had the feeling that he couldn’t be bothered with the act either, but he was unable to break the habit, the pattern he’d learned over all his military years.

  “It’s after twelve and if I left now, then . . . ”

  “To tell you the truth,” he cut me off in a cold, pained voice, “you’re playing dumb, and it’s really getting on my nerves.”

  Then he said that fortunately for me I was out of the platoon anyway, because otherwise he’d show me “what military discipline is.” What is military discipline? I asked myself as I walked to Dad’s car, parked in a dusty lot outside the base. I concluded that military discipline was first of all being an idiot, erasing yourself, your name, your moods, your emotions, your ability to feel things, your capacity to choose between love and hate, between faith and heresy, between truth and lies.

  There are no truth and lies in the army. Truth is what the commander tells you, even though a moment before he said the exact opposite, and love is only what you feel for someone who is useful to you and only as long as he’s useful to you. After that you can, and perhaps should, shit all over him. There’s no right or wrong either. There’s only military discipline—that clean, sterile, “logical” title that projects such calm, such truth. So stuck in our bloodstream, in our modes of thinking.

  Then I thought that if that was the meaning of the term, if “military discipline” meant that I had to erase myself, my thoughts, my emotions—then I’d rather be a traitor than obey it. I stood looking at the giant cement walls I would never see again, and I realized that my miserable military service attested to the fact that, if truth be told, I’d never been willing to make that sacrifice.

  X.

  We were near the entrance to Tel Hashomer when we asked a soldier walking on the sidewalk where exactly the mental health services were. He told us to take the second entrance, then drive a few minutes farther through a manicured neighborhood of private residences.

  Mom had called just before. She said she was leaving for work soon, and she just wanted to make sure everything was okay. She asked Dad how he’d managed with the drive and if we’d had something to eat, then she asked me if everything was all right, and told me that with God’s help things would work out and that I had to believe that, I had to know there was no shame in going to the MHO, that everyone did it these days, certainly people who’d been through a lot less than I had, and that she knew I’d done everything I could and if I’d decided to go, if we’d decided to go, then we had to do it wholeheartedly.

  Dad, who was still apprehensive about the MHO business, became impatient with Mom and finished the call. He wished her a good day and said they’d talk later. I knew he didn’t want to turn this MHO thing into an ideal, into something one should do.

  I remembered my parent-teacher conferences in high school. I remembered how Dad’s face used to radiate disappointment when he heard something bad. He would always sit there quietly and listen to the teachers, and when we left he would walk beside me silently. I also remembered how on the way home, after I gave him my excuses, he would always end up saying: “The most important thing is your health.”

  Then I remembered that once I asked him why he didn’t get angry with me. I said that the father of a good friend of mine told my friend that if he didn’t take his studies seriously he could forget about any money, that if he had to retake his matriculation exams after the army he could forget about getting any money for that, and that he’d better start saving now because it cost a lot of money. “Why don’t you say something like that to me?” I asked, wanting him, for once, to be angry instead of disappointed. I had the feeling that if he shouted at me for a change, I’d have a much easier time dealing with the anger than with the disappointment.

  “I don’t say things like that to you because it’s a stupid thing to say,” he replied. “I could easily tell you that, but then what? What’s going to happen when you really do want to improve your grades? Am I not going to help you? Will you go out and get a job? Miss a year of college? Where’s the sense in that? Besides, you know that with me there’s no such thing as my money or your money. My money belongs to all of you kids. I mean, what am I working for? So that we’ll be comfortable. Me and all of you.”

  I didn’t say anything. What could I say to such a reasonable answer, an answer full of honesty and genuine love from a father to his son? Then he said he hoped I would realize on my own that school was important, and that he didn’t believe in teaching through threats.

  I looked at him in the car. We’d already driven through the entrance, and he was looking for parking. He looked tired. The bags under his eyes were puffy and little wrinkles were visible on his face. I remembered the night before, with his sobs and his broken voice. “What do you want me to do?” he’d asked me, his body tilting forward. “Tell me what you want.”

  I remembered my silence. My fear of deciding to go to the MHO. My fear of disappointing him, seeing his eyes extinguished. His lips trembling. Just the way they did later, at five a.m., after I’d lain awake in bed staring at the wall and humming songs to myself, unable to sleep. “Do you want to go?” he’d asked, and I knew this time he meant it.

  “I don’t think we have a choice,” I replied. “We’ve tried everything, haven’t we?”

  “I don’t know if we’ve tried everything,” he said, perhaps still trying to salvage something after all. “But if you think it’s what you need, then get up and put your clothes on. We have to get there before eight, don’t we?”

  And we left.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I.

  At the entrance to the chief medical officer’s headquarters, all the emotions of the preceding period mingled inside me. I felt my heart pounding and my stomach churning. I thought about Ayala. I remembered again that she’d called me the night before and I hadn’t answered. I remembered how I lay in bed while the phone rang and tried to keep thinking, robotically, about how I could get out of going back to the base the next morning even though I had no more sick leave. I remembered that I saw her name flashing on the screen and was overcome by a strong feeling of disgust.

  Then I remembered that a few days before, she’d wanted to meet. I avoided her and said I couldn’t, but she called after midnight and asked me to come outside, and when I did I saw her sitting with her back against the wall along the path to my house, crying. I wanted to throw up. I suddenly realized how that whole period of heartache and constant sorrow had turned me into a walking corpse, so much so that I couldn’t contain anything except my own dying soul. Not even Ayala.

  Then I remembered that a little over a week ago, Dad took me to a play so I could calm down a little. I sat in the theater, and even though I could see the actors moving and talking, and even though I understood what they were saying, n
one of it managed to break through to me, to that death sitting inside me like a stinking lump of shit, reeking like a rotting carcass—the death that must have positioned itself in me when I stood on the side of the road night after night, waiting for headlights to appear in the distance so I could jump, or when I looked at Dror wide-eyed and shouted at him to stop being self-righteous and cowardly and break my hand already. “Shut that lousy door on my hand already!”

  I heard someone’s cell phone ring, and the sound threw me out of my thoughts and back to the gate, which was painted brown, and to the thick trees planted around it. I remember the sign that said “Mental Health.” I remember the large letters and the arrow pointing right. I remember Dad standing there, his body limp with exhaustion, mental or physical, also staring at the sign. His eyes were glazed, as if he couldn’t understand what he was reading. Or perhaps he couldn’t believe those words that looked so estranged, so unsympathetic to my plight—or to his.

  Then I remember standing with my head bowed, looking at the sidewalk. “Why aren’t you going in?” Dad asked. With my stomach still churning, I said I didn’t know. I remember that he took a little step toward me and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “There’s no point debating it now,” he said, “you wanted to come. You said you thought this was the only place they could help you. Go in, tell them what you’re feeling, what you’re struggling with, and I hope they really do understand and can help you.”

  “I didn’t say they could definitely help me,” I answered quietly and looked up. “What I said was that if there’s a single place in the army that can help me, it’s here.”

  Dad took his hand off my shoulder and ran it over my face. He said he would wait for me in the car, and that if he went anywhere he’d call me. He said I had nothing to worry about because he and Mom were behind me, and that whatever happened—and this was something I should know in general for the rest of my life—they would always be with me and would help me in whatever way they could.

  II.

  The guard at the gate asked me what I was there for. I told him I was going to see the MHO, and he asked if I had a referral. I took out the piece of paper folded in four from my pocket, and he smiled and said he was just a soldier and I didn’t have to show him the referral because he believed me. I remember his face, his ball-shaped nose, nasal voice, big black eyes, beard.

  It was a short walk to the mental health center, and when I got there I found a gray building with a large glass door. Next to the door stood a few soldiers, and when I asked why they were waiting and if we could go in yet, they said soon, and that I should sit down because it would probably take a few minutes.

  I sat down on a metal bench near the door. There was quiet music playing in my earphones, and I could hear the other soldiers planning how to get what they wanted out of the MHO. One soldier said he was planning to drool so the MHO would let him go home every afternoon at one. Another waved his hand dismissively and said he’d already tried that and it didn’t work.

  “No, no, no, bro,” the first one said, “I know someone who did it and he got whatever he wanted.”

  “What do you mean, whatever he wanted?”

  “What do I mean whatever he wanted?” the first one repeated, “I mean the MHO saw him drooling and crying and said: ‘Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.’ Just like that, I’m not shitting you. ‘Whatever you want!’”

  “Bunch of stories,” said the skeptical soldier, “everyone’s got stories. I know all that. It’s all bull, it doesn’t work.”

  “Bro, this is someone reliable,” the first one said, but it was clear he was just trying to convince himself at this point.

  “Forget it,” the skeptic replied with a pitiful look, “forget it.”

  Then they talked about sports for a while, and about how yesterday one of them was at a party and a girl hit on him but he wasn’t interested.

  “Why not?” asked the skeptic, and there was something in his tone that sounded as though no woman had ever hit on him, and so he couldn’t understand how the other guy could have passed on the opportunity.

  “I wasn’t into her,” the first one explained with self-importance, and judging by his face, which was ugly and dumb, I couldn’t believe him. Once I would have scorned him silently, maybe even let out a snort of contempt, but now, on the metal bench, with my stomach contracting and my toes sweating with anxiety and fear, I couldn’t be bothered with any of that. I felt no less pathetic than him.

  Some of the soldiers were laughing or talking on their phones. Other than me there was only one guy sitting alone quietly. I sank into the bench and looked around at the peeling walls adorned with ridiculous pictures. I felt bad. I felt that I didn’t belong to this group of soldiers who had come to get things out of the MHO. I really was miserable in the army, I thought to myself. I really did need the MHO to help me. I really couldn’t go back there. Then I thought maybe it would be better to get up and leave, or maybe it would be better to put a bullet through my head and be done with the whole thing, with all this lousy waiting around, and the fear I was doing everything to suppress—the fear that even the MHO wouldn’t believe me and I’d have to go back to the base as defeated as I’d arrived. But my body wouldn’t move. When Dad called to ask what was happening, I said I didn’t know and maybe I should come back to the car. “And what will happen tomorrow?” he asked, with that wonderful ability of his to see the whole picture and disconnect from his personal desires, because I knew that what he really wanted was for me not to go into the MHO and to go back home with him, to go back to the base tomorrow and forget about this whole crappy episode.

  “You’re right,” I said quietly, perhaps defeated, stripped bare of any shred of a possibility of choice. I wanted to cry, but I told myself that there was nothing to cry about now, and that this was the place where they were supposed to help me. I didn’t want to get out of the army, and to be honest, as I’d felt all throughout my service, I didn’t know what I wanted at all. I didn’t have the capacity to know what was good and what wasn’t good, or rather, what was bad and what was less bad, where I should go and where I shouldn’t. Almost every time someone told me about a particular place that was good, it turned out to be nonsense. And so I sat there on the bench, dazed by all the thoughts ground down into dust, until a female soldier with brown hair and a broken nose came out and said we could start going in.

  At the front desk they asked for the referral from my unit physician and the commander’s evaluation letter. They gave me a form to fill out. “Sit down, we’ll call you,” the brown-haired soldier said when I handed her back the form I’d filled in with red pen and asked, “What do I do now?”

  I sank back onto one of the metal benches and tapped the floor nervously with my feet.

  III.

  After a few minutes I heard my name. A tall man in a gray T-shirt and faded jeans smiled at me and motioned for me to follow him. He held a green cardboard file with my name written on it with a red marker. His gait was light and energetic, and when I walked behind him, heavy and tired, I looked at him, trying to extract any crumb of information about this man who was about to condemn my soul—meaning me—to life or death. It was no simple turn of phrase, “life or death,” but a cutting fact, dry like dead skin on the soles of your feet.

  I looked at his clothes. Young for his age, I thought. An appearance meant to project warmth, maybe to encourage openness or arouse pleasant feelings, unauthoritative, nonmilitary. Then I looked at his haircut, with a part in the middle that seemed to be there to hide his age, which was apparent in the puffiness under his very round eyes.

  “Wait outside for just a moment,” he said when we got to the office door, and he shut it in my face. I was tense. I thought this was the only place that could restore me to a state of sanity. I don’t know if sanity is the right word. Maybe to a state of humanness, of being a normal person, as I was before the horrible enlistment day at the bus station in Haifa, when we stoo
d there with the whole family, and Ayala and Dror and Michal and Michael, and they all hugged me, and Mom and Michal cried, and Ayala, who was wearing the cutoff shirt she wore on the day we met, hugged me tight, and Dad told me it wasn’t easy but I had to get through it and there was no choice.

  Then the thought jumped into my head again: What if he didn’t believe me? What if he thought I was just another guy who made up stories to get some kind of dispensation? What would happen if even this journey led to nothing, this mental health center, all the hopes I’d pinned on this old, gray clinic? The fear that flooded me made me repress those thoughts immediately and violently. I stood there for a few more minutes, looking at the wooden door with a plain plastic handle, until he suddenly opened it, tall, smiling, even cheerful. I didn’t understand what he had to be so cheerful about, and I certainly didn’t understand what on earth that celebratory mood was doing in such a place of sorrow and pain.

  “Come in,” he said, and gestured at a green chair on the near side of the desk. On the other side sat a woman: black hair, red lipstick, red sweater. “I’m David and this is Michal,” he chirped, “David and Michal. I keep dancing, and she makes fun of me.” He sat down on the chair next to hers and laughed to himself. “Biblical joke,” he said, “don’t you know that story?” I thought about how I hate those people who, the minute they see a man with a yarmulke, come out with something about the Bible or Judaism, just to show that they know.

  “I do,” I muttered, impatient with these stupid diversions while my soul was on trial.

  “Michal is your mental health officer,” he said after a pause. “If you need anything else after today, remember that you go directly to her.”

  “And you?” I asked.

  “Me?” he said, laughing for no reason I could discern, “I’m the clinic director.”

  Then they talked between themselves for a couple of minutes. It was apparent that she was new, and that he was teaching her the procedures, because he kept showing her what to fill in on the forms and how. The whole time I waited, my legs were shaking and I felt as if there were electrical currents going through my feet.