“Special education. In a home for juvenile delinquents.”
“Really? An interesting profession.”
But he showed no inclination to prolong the conversation. And standing there beside me, as I was still fumbling for words, with one hand he unfastened his trouser buttons, took out his big erect dick and pissed straight ahead of him on the dry ground, standing there stiffly, legs wide apart. Drops fell on my boots.
On the truck in front of us, the soldiers were watching him. He’d attracted their attention too. They laughed and shouted jokes. He, quite unabashed, his dick still hanging out, rose to the challenge, and raised his hand like a priest blessing the congregation.
In the big canteen at Rafah I fainted, quite unexpectedly, without warning. It just happened, as I stood there in the line of soldiers by the counter, waiting my turn to get at the trays of sandwiches and the little containers of chocolate milk, surrounded by the smell of food and the racket of transistors. First I dropped the bazooka, then myself. It seems he was afraid they’d take me from him, he slipped away from the group of officers that he’d been talking to, dragged me outside to a water tap, laid my head in a pool of mud and poured a stream of water over my face. I heard him talking to the soldiers gathered around us. “It’s fear,” he said, and tried to move them aside.
But it was hunger. “I’m so hungry,” I croaked as I woke up, sitting on the ground, pale, with mud in my hair. “Since last night I’ve been trying to tell you.”
Again he took two hard-boiled eggs out of his map case and gave them to me.
And so at midday he brought me to the heart of the Sinai. I didn’t believe we’d make it. The little Morris ran beautifully. You did a fine job, Adam, she was starting up at the first touch. The battered old lady obeyed him, he hypnotized her too, and she made a hundred kilometres per hour.
There were military police roadblocks on the way, trying to stop all kinds of adventurers from entering the war zone. But he outwitted them all, pretending to ignore them, pressing on and passing them by. He wasn’t stopped once. And if they came after us, he’d stop the car some distance farther on, leap out of the little Morris like a long thin flame and stand waiting, wearing his red paratrooper’s beret, on his chest medals of previous wars. When the military police caught up with us, panting and cursing, he’d say calmly:
“Yes? What’s your problem?”
And they’d retreat.
But at Refidim we had to stop. Nobody was allowed to pass beyond that point. From far away came the echoes of explosions. The sounds were muffled as if they came from deep down inside the earth. Shrieking aircraft wheeled in the sky. We were directed to a wide-open space full of civilian cars, like the parking lot of a concert hall or a football stadium. Men were flocking to the war as if to some great spectacle. He told me to unload the equipment and I put on my harness, donned my helmet, picked up the bazooka and started to follow him, searching for a unit that would accept me.
We marched through a cloud of dust, all around us half-tracks and lumbering tanks. And the people in the sand, a nation sinking in the desert. Here it was born, here it shall perish.
And yet in spite of all the noise and confusion we were attracting attention. The one-handed major, tanned crimson by the sun, sweat gleaming on his bald scalp, leading me, his own personal soldier, as if I were a whole squad, marching behind laden with equipment, bound to him with an invisible rope. Men would pause for a moment to look at us.
Eventually he stopped beside a column of half-tracks parked at the roadside, stretching away to the horizon. He asked for the commander and they pointed to a short, lean youth making coffee on a camp stove.
“When are you moving?”
“Soon.”
“Are you short of a bazooka gunner?”
He was astonished. “A bazooka gunner? I don’t think so.”
But the officer was insistent.
“You mean your outfit is complete?”
“What do you mean?” The youth was utterly confused.
“Well then, take him into your unit.” He pointed at me.
“But … who is he?”
“No buts. This is an order,” he snapped, and signalled to me to climb aboard the nearest half-track.
And I began to strip off my equipment and pass it to the young soldiers, who tossed it up inside the vehicle, they were amused by the vast load that I’d dragged along with me. Then they held out their hands and pulled me up onto the steel car, which was all blistering hot from standing in the sun. Meanwhile the major was making a note of the unit commander’s name and the number of the unit. He even took the number of the half-track, making sure that I’d be taken into battle, that all avenues of escape had been blocked. Finally he made the commander sign for me as if he was taking delivery of a load of supplies.
“Make sure he fights properly,” he shouted. “He’s been out of the country ten years … he tried to run away.”
They looked at me.
“You must be crazy,” somebody whispered. “What a time to come back!”
But I didn’t answer, just whispered, “Have you got a piece of bread or something like that?” and somebody passed me a big slice of yeast cake, it was sweet and delicious and I bit into it at once, gobbling it up with great relish. Tears rose to my eyes. Suddenly I felt at ease. Perhaps it was because of that sweet home-baked cake. Perhaps it was because at last I’d got away from him. And so, perched on the half-track, surrounded by soldiers, leaning against the hot fuselage and swallowing cake, I looked down at the bald officer, who was still, standing there cockily, grilling the young commander about the plans for the offensive. The latter was quite baffled, didn’t know how to answer. In the end the major sent him off, disappointed. For a while he hesitated, as if he found it hard to be parted from me, he stood there alone, looking about him with his empty, arrogant glance. Suddenly I was struck by the pathetic nature of his madness and I smiled down at him from my perch on the high vehicle, out of his clutches now.
Suddenly, decisively, he turned to go. I called out, “Hey, Shahar, goodbye.” He turned around. Even as he looked at me for the last time, there was hatred in his eyes, he raised his hand with a weary gesture, a sort of half salute, murmuring, “Yes, goodbye … goodbye …” and he set off towards the headquarters along the crumbling path, the path ground to dust by the endless stream of tanks. For a while I watched him, striding along with slow, measured, provocative gait, the tanks avoiding him carefully, right and left.
And now I was surrounded by young, boyish faces, a close-knit band of regular soldiers. They looked excited, eager to go into battle. Laughing at their private jokes, talking about people that I didn’t know. The young commander called me over to his jeep, he asked me to explain quietly who I was and how I’d come to be in the hands of the major. So in the middle of the desert, amid the crackling of radio sets and the roar of engines, once again I told the whole story, adding some superfluous details, getting entangled in a strange confession, about my grandmother, about the legacy. A man standing before a silent youth, telling the story of his life. I thought perhaps he’d want to get rid of me, send me away. I even told him that I had no idea how to use a bazooka and that war in general wasn’t exactly for me. But I could see he had no intention of getting rid of me. They’d foisted me on him, so he’d find a use for me. He heard me out, not saying a word, just smiling faintly from time to time. Then he called to one of the men from the platoon, a soldier with glasses who looked like an intellectual, and told him to give me a quick lesson on the use of the bazooka.
The soldier made me lie on the ground, put the bazooka in my hands and started lecturing me on sights, trajectories, varieties of bombs, closed electrical circuits. And I was nodding my head but only half listening. Only one thing stuck in my head, the backlash that recoils on the gunner. The bespectacled soldier warned me repeatedly about the dangers of the backlash, apparently he himself had once been burned by it. And in the middle of this strange private lesson they called us to eat. They brought out a stack of tinned foods. I was the only one with an appetite. They were a bit astonished at my ravenous hunger. They opened tin after tin, tasting it and passing it over to me, watching in amusement as, spoon in hand, I polished off one after another, in any order, tins of beans, grapefruit salad, meat, halva, sardines, and pickled cucumber for dessert. I gobbled up everything. And among the empty tin cans the radio crackled constantly, and at last I heard the news that had been kept from me the previous day. Hard news, dark news, dressed up in new words — defensive strategy, battle of attrition, holding operation, regrouping of forces. Jargon designed to soften the truth, the burning reality into which I was now so deeply sunk.