He went prattling on, pacing about the room, playful, making jokes, as if there were no war, no other reality. For some reason he was convinced that I too had come here to find a match and he tried to give me some cunning advice. As if through a mist I remember my conversation with him, sometimes I think perhaps he was just a part of my dream, because after he’d undressed, paced about the room in his shining white underwear, sprinkled some perfume on himself and put on a dark suit, he disappeared and I didn’t see him again.
Slowly I sank into a bitter, fitful sleep.
When I woke up there was darkness all around. It was nine o’clock in the evening. Through the magnificent curtain, stirring lightly in the evening breeze, the Old City was dark. Utter silence. I was still exhausted, shivering with cold, as if I hadn’t had a moment’s sleep. Suddenly I felt a strange longing for the desert, for the faces of the men of my platoon, now fighting on the other side of the canal. I opened the window. The air of Jerusalem, pure, intoxicating, unfamiliar. Now I know that I really was feverish, running a high temperature, falling sick. But at the time I thought the pain was the result of hunger, my excruciating, maddening hunger. I put on my shoes, too weak to lace them up, and went in search of food. The yeshiva was silent and in total darkness. I wandered from floor to floor, corridor to corridor. Finally I opened a door and found myself in a tiny room, full of cigarette smoke, the blinds closed. Two students in thin shirts, sleeves rolled up, were bent over enormous volumes of the Talmud, disputing in whispers.
They seemed annoyed at the interruption. They told me the way to the dining room and immediately returned to their studies. The dining hall was empty, the benches were stacked on the tables. A young woman in a grey dress, a kerchief around her head, was washing the floor.
She almost cried out when she saw me, as if she were seeing a ghost.
“I’m new here …” I mumbled. “Is there anything left to eat?”
Dishevelled from sleep, my army boots unlaced, clad in a mixture of secular and religious clothing, my head uncovered, I made a startling impression on her, but she recovered her composure and set a place for me at one of the tables. She brought a big spoon, a dish and slices of bread, discreetly and without a word laid a black skullcap beside them, and then she brought in a dish of thick, oily soup, full of vegetables, dumplings and pieces of meat, a hot, spicy mixture. My first proper meal for two whole weeks. The pungent spices brought tears to my eyes. The soup was delicious. At the other end of the room she carried on with her work, stealing furtive glances at me. She came and took the empty dish and refilled it, smiling pleasantly to herself at my effusive thanks. A good-looking woman, so far as it was possible to tell. Only her hands and face were uncovered.
At last I stood up unsteadily, left the table without saying grace and groped my way back to my bed. Entering the room I was surprised to find that the Old City, which had been in darkness when I went out, was now all lit up. And in the yeshiva as well, shutters were opening one after another and lights were appearing.
Excited voices talking about a cease-fire, students appearing from every side, shirts unbuttoned, milling about noisily in the courtyard, as if a battle has just ended. It seems I was hasty in my flight. The war is over.
A sort of inner peace descends on me. I take off my clothes, strip back the bed, gather together all the blankets from the other bed and wrap myself up tightly. I’m ill, a mighty pain hammering in my head.
For two weeks I lay in bed with a strange disease. High temperature, aching head and inflammation of the intestines. Cowpox was the diagnosis of the doctor who treated me. Apparently I’d caught it from some cow shit on the beach. They tended me with great devotion, even though I was a stranger and a puzzle to them. One day they were thinking of transferring me to a hospital, but I asked to be allowed to stay with them. They granted my request, even though I caused them a lot of trouble and considerable expenditure on medical fees. At night, youths studying Torah and reading the psalms kept watch at my bedside.
It was the illness that smoothed the transition from secular life to life with them, that took away the need for superfluous questions. Physical contact with the hands that fed me, that smoothed the bedclothes beneath me, made them all more human for me. And after two weeks, when I rose from my bed, weak but well, my beard thick and matted, I became one of them without too many formalities. They gave me another set of black clothes, old but in good condition, pyjamas and some underwear. They showed me how to use the prayer book, taught me two or three chapters of the Mishna. Meanwhile they had keys cut for the Morris. I observed how efficient they were, how well organized, how disciplined.
And so it was that I became the driver for the yeshiva, in particular the driver for the old rabbi who’d taken me in on the first day. I used to deliver oil for memorial lamps to synagogues, take little orphans with long side curls to pray at the Western Wall, drive a mohel to circumcise the son of a pious family in one of the new suburbs, or join the long, slow-moving funeral cortege of some eminent rabbi whose body had been brought from overseas. Occasionally I’d make the drive to the coast, to the airport, with an emissary going abroad to raise funds. Sometimes, late at night, driving quietly and with dimmed lights, I was chauffeur to zealots sticking up posters and daubing slogans against licentiousness and frivolity.
I got to know all their little ways. They lived a life apart in the land, in their closed order. Sometimes I wondered if they obtained even their electricity and water from private, kosher power stations, reserved for them exclusively.
I settled down well among them. They knew as well as I did that at any moment I might leave and disappear just as suddenly as I’d come. In spite of this they treated me with affection and didn’t question what they didn’t understand. They never gave me money, even petrol I used to buy with coupons that they provided. Otherwise they supplied all my needs. They washed and mended my clothes, they gave me more suitable shoes to replace my army boots. And above all I had plenty of food. The same oily soup that I’d enjoyed so much the first evening was served to me every night without exception, though not always by the same woman. The women took turns serving the yeshiva students.
And gradually my side curls grew. Not that I made any special effort, they just grew of their own accord. The barber who came every month to cut the students’ hair used to cut mine as well, but he didn’t dare touch the curls. At first I used to hide them behind my ears but eventually I abandoned this too. I used to look in the mirror and see to my surprise how much I was beginning to resemble them. They too were aware of this and it was pleasant to see that they were gratified.
But only so far. No farther. They had no success with me in deeper, spiritual matters. I didn’t believe in God, and all their observances seemed pointless to me. The amazing thing was that they were well aware of this, but they put no pressure on me and cherished no false hopes. In the early days I used to ask them questions that shocked them and turned their faces pale. But I didn’t want to upset them and I began keeping my thoughts to myself.