Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
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.
Who?
Talya.
Oh. Give me a drag. He drags on the cigarette and puts it back in her
lips. He looks at the dark, at the slit of pleasure of the juncture of her lips.
A junction of pleasure of strength and softness. And she goes on: After the
wars and the campaigns, Talya says, he goes back to America. He'd also
bring whiskey. And for that war he came late. They had a pool about when he'd come and if. He came on the third day. From the airport he came
straight here. His friends took blankets, a kitbag, and personal weapons for
him. Even a little book of Psalms and the prayer of the warrior. He came
straight to the desert with a James Bond case and a suit and tie, put on a
uniform, and in two hours he went out in their half-track. Then he came
back to Talya and she was in the clinic. They met by chance. They slept
together one night. She says it was great. He forgot his James Bond case at
her place and came back. The case was empty, she says. Why did he bring
an empty case? Two days later, she went to his parents in Jerusalem. The
father saw her and hugged her. The mother gave her a cup of tea. Talya sat
in her filthy uniform and drank. They hung pictures of him all over the
house. His father said: See how lucky we are, this time he didn't come.
And the mother was glad the son didn't come, this time she had fears and
dreams, but he didn't come so everything was fine. In America they're not
fighting in the Sinai now.
I saw a father walking alone, he said. With a creased picture. He asks
every soldier: Did you know him, did you know him? Me he didn't want to
approach. He sat in the middle of the desert and dug, he searched for his
son in a pit. Desperate. His son wasn't in the pit. All around were corpses
of Egyptians. The wounded were brought from the Canal. He searched for
his son in the pit, just because there was a pit there.
And there was one there who photographed a killed person, wore a
kippah, and took twenty-eight pictures of the killed man from every angle
until he ran out of film.
In the morning, the two of them came out of the tent. Not yet really
morning, but they saw one another in the light. A pale desert light. Clear
and pure. He started the jeep. She got in and sat next to him. Shadows of
night and dew still mixed with sunrise. A gigantic convoy passed by them
and they had to get off the road for a while and get out of the way. Sitting
and looking, trucks with prisoners, soldiers with drooping heads, sleeping
standing or sitting, two small buses full of singers, dancers, and mimes
returning from the front, more prisoners with dead smiles spread over their
faces, defective ammunition, spoils of crushed enemy tanks on carriages
and command cars filled with wounded. One of the singers in the bus sang
and the song was swallowed in the distant desert. The prisoners gazed
with empty eyes. She flicked a cigarette. In the distance, civilians were seen, women with kerchiefs against the wind. Dogs running aimlessly,
black and gray desert dogs, the light grows stronger, and a voice is heard:
He comes only for wars, doesn't stay to live here, and now who will bury
him? Then they drove on, a captured tank stood there, four foreign photographers wearing laced-up hats are posing the dead next to the tank. Moving the corpses and laying them in a nice position. While the photographers
quarrel about where to put the last corpse of the rout, he spits and starts
the motor. A soldier comes to them with a jerrican full of coffee. In the
distance shots are heard. Three horses whinny and gallop toward the jeep,
and she says: Like in the movies, while he takes out a transistor and puts
it to his ear. The horses gallop and the shots cease. And then the horses
disappear in the gigantic plain and shots echo once again.
People, old, young, women wrapped in kerchiefs, lie curled up in the
desert. In their hands they hold photos. On their faces is the terror of the
dream that may not be a dream anymore. He says to her: In an hour I'll take
you back to the teleprinter! He wants her in the wet sand of the morning
dew in the filtered and serene light, and when they stopped at a damaged
car they saw a soldier connecting an electric razor to the battery and shaving. He stood naked in the morning chill and trembled. The soldier asked:
Are you by any chance not dead people searching for their parents?
You're a son-of-a-bitch, he said to the soldier, we're going to make us our
sons right here.
So who's the son-of-a-bitch here, said the soldier and went on shaving.
In the evening, after the teleprinter, he waited for her as if he hadn't
seen her in a year. They went to the culture center. A month ago, Nasser
said here that he'd throw the Jews into the sea. This doesn't look like a
sea, said some sergeant major. But he wasn't laughing now. Airplanes tore
the sky in sudden sallies. An arrogant atmosphere of numb tension prevailed. They sat facing a television set. They set up an antenna to receive
broadcasts from Jerusalem that were just starting. Through the former
Egyptian transmitter they can see the end of the war in the north. And
H. Herzog talking about our forces. I'm drinking the wine of Latrun brought
by the conquerors of Latrun, he thinks, and looks at H. Herzog talking about
our forces, how terrific is H. Herzog, he's a General (Res.) and can talk;
what and where to. He's also combed and talks with abysmal seriousness
about wars. Wars aren't such a serious matter, H. Herzog. Our forces are a youth with a paper flower who shaves naked at a destroyed car and then
dies. Or first dies and then shaves. Our forces is a man with a James Bond
case who comes to wars from America and they're still drinking his whiskey here. Our forces is also H. Herzog himself telling what our forces are,
what they do, did, will do.
When they went out they looked toward a dark point lighted for a moment by two spotlights. In the crisscross of the spotlights a half-track of the
Burial Society was seen. Instead of a cannon, a hut was set up there. In the
hut were our forces, their memory for a blessing. He said: See how they
pack the children whose parents are searching for them in the sands.
People dressed like crows with sidelocks and ritual fringes, and love thy
neighbor as thyself, they put the children in the hut on the half-track. In
their hands they hold prayer books they'd sometimes stick in their coat
pockets. Even the driver wears a kippah, but he doesn't wear a coat over the
prayer shawl. A young Hasid stood there, his face very pale, looked at the
crisscross of the lights and sang: This is what my heart desires, pity please
and do not overlook ... He's also our forces, H. Herzog, he said.
When Boaz came to Rebecca's house, the old woman said, The Captain
died. Boaz didn't respond but went into the bathroom, waited until the
great-grandson of Ahbed brought him new clothes, filled the bathtub with
hot water, and sat for a long time and rubbed his body. Noga phoned and
he told her the Captain died.
Tape / -
Captain (Colonel) Jose Menkin A. Goldenberg died three days after the
war began. That was one of the rare days when Rebecca allowed the Captain to come when it wasn't Wednesday night. When he drank the eternal
tea the great-grandson of Ahbed poured for him, he saw Rebecca's legs
under the table. He said: I see through the dress, as if your clothes were
transparent, I don't see anything but bones and spots, he added pensively.
Outside, supersonic booms were heard, and Rebecca said: Watch out, Captain, you look like you are covered with clouds. The Captain said: When we
stood on the Kastel and talked about the memorial to Dante, I knew there
would be a war, I saw an army ready, but it wasn't ready, I saw things that
were to happen and that means I'm one foot in the future and the future
of a person over eighty years old isn't an alternative to death anymore. And Rebecca said something and almost regretted the tone that didn't suit her,
she said almost pleading: Don't die yet, I think I need you. He said: Interesting how beautiful you look without the clothes that disappeared from
you, and she blushed and said: One by one they all go, don't let him take
you, Menkin ... not yet. Rebecca looked in his misty eyes and in her mind
a memory surfaced of the river that pierced her, a sourish taste of blood
rose from her insides to her lips and she said: When you see me naked after
fifty years, Menkin, and I recall how I became pregnant from the river and
begat Boaz, I start to be fond of you, Menkin ...
In his attempt to smile, the Captain felt his bones dissolving, he stood
up, kissed Rebecca's hand, and very slowly walked to his house. She
watched him, but because her vision was blurred, she could see only an
unclear mass walking on the path planted by Dana. The mass disappeared
into the house and suddenly her throat felt dry. The Captain came to his
room and felt the air running out of his lungs, his throat was choked, his
body heavy. He lay in his bed, very slowly stretched his legs, even though
it hurt, lit the table lamp, put his false teeth in a glass from which he
sipped a little water, then he shook the glass to drizzle a little water on his
hair, the glass was almost emptied, and he put his hat on his chest, his
sword across his body, didn't take off his boots, but polished the medals he
pinned on, and with his last strength, with a comb he held in a trembling
hand, he combed the wet hair, and unable to see himself in a mirror he
folded his hands, and when he saw the phosphorescent clock showing three
a.m., he managed to pound the clock, stop time, and die.
Rebecca went into her room, locked the door, and for two days she
didn't come out. When the great-grandson of Ahbed claimed that the
corpse was rotting, she yelled at him not to come near her. Two days
later, planes were heard passing over the house on their way north, and
Rebecca went out of the room wearing a black dress and asked Ahbed to
make her something to eat. She sat alone to eat and said: What great generals are starting to die now!
Nobody knew how to bury him. His splendid lying in bed evoked admiration and amazement mixed with an intoxicating atmosphere of victory. The rabbi waged a hard struggle not only with Rebecca but also
with Mr. Klomin and a few other old men who began to show a suspicious
fondness for the Captain. When Mr. Klomin went to the small church in Jaffa, there wasn't a single person alive who remembered the Captain. In
the beautiful house among swans and rare birds where the old man dressed
in white sank into the ground, lived three old Arabs. The rabbi who left
before in high dudgeon now returned from Roots in an almost philosophical mood, a sense of death stuck to him too, but he still firmly refused to
bury the Captain in Roots. Rebecca argued with an implacable vehemence
that her husband had founded Roots even though of course he wasn't to
blame for the stupid name they gave the cemetery, and she had, she
claimed, the right of veto. The phrase "right of veto" she had heard on the
radio in interpretations of H. Herzog about the war Boaz was fighting now
to make Nehemiah's desired and dubious future present, she said.
Nor in the Captain's papers did they find anything to indicate how to
bury him. The valises and crates said: "To Boaz Schneerson." Rebecca and
Mr. Klomin searched in those closets and cases with Boaz's name. Mr. Klomin,
who wore white in honor of the resurrected kingdom of Israel-but also his
joy for the kingdom and his worry about the disgrace that would be brought
down on it by the leaders of Israel who surely didn't understand the greatness of the hour-didn't cover his pain at the death of his one friend. Among
the objects they found a hundred and fifty poems, some written by the
Captain and some ancient poems, handwritten, love poems to the throat
and neck, the breasts and shoulders of a beautiful lady, addressed to
Rebecca, even though they were never sent to her. She wondered how
Joseph's poems had come into the Captain's hands, but then she said to
herself with a logic characteristic of the Captain: He was an editor of a
French newspaper in Cairo, so! In the suitcases were secret plans of various undergrounds, models of memorials to the poet Dante Alighieri, a plan,
called "secret," for irrigating the Negev, a booklet in the Captain's handwriting titled "Indications of the Burial Place of Moses, Hagar, Jacob, and
Alcibiades the Greek," and even Mr. Klomin didn't recognize the last name
on the list or what he had to do with Moses, Hagar, and Jacob. There were
descriptions of passes to the Land of Israel from the north, the east, and the
south, including the Mitla and Gidi passes in the Sinai desert. Precise and
old descriptions of the Santa Katerina rift in the Sinai which was now occupied, plans for war and crossing rivers, a war of armor against armor as a
revolutionary tactic, which apparently had not yet been tried or had been
tried before the invention of the tank. There were also books of the Jew ish religion and the Greek Orthodox religion, Midrashim Eyn-Ya akov with
a dedication in an old-fashioned, curled hand to Yossel Goldenberg,
Argentinean books of war, "Books of the True Faith to the Children of the
Religion of Moses Who Saw the Truth," dried flowers, maps of lands neither Mr. Klomin nor the geography teacher-who was summoned-could
identify, maps of military campaigns with notes in a secret writing, copies
of Mr. Klomin's letters from a state whose name was torn from the envelopes and its stamps destroyed. There were alphabetical lists of heads of
the underground and the Haganah in the thirties and forties, leaders of
Arab gangs, a list of the sexual perversions of high British officials, documentation of their acts, the copy of a secret correspondence between the
chief of the American air force and the British attache about bombing or
not bombing the railroad tracks to Auschwitz, various notes, including an
announcement of the mufti of Jerusalem that "it's better for the English
not to support the Jewish foul deed and not to believe their lies about what
is happening in Europe as it were."