MiSSiLE BASE 612
Yehoshua, A. B.
MISSILE BASE 612 a story by a. d. Yehoshuo And in the night he knows a brief spell of pre-dawn wakefulness, as though someone had pushed him off the mattress to the rug, seized him by the collar...
...Nothing . . . just wanted to see what they look like from nearby...
...He looks up at her, and she, casually: "That used to be the lecturer on Zionism . . . didn't hit it off with the men . . . annoyed them . . ." Vainly he scans her face for a smile...
...Yeah...
...But I wouldn't mind staying once I've come that far...
...And the girl maneuvers along twisting roads, always aiming upwards...
...No...
...In the end she leans over him and wrenches the suitcase from his tight grip, takes it away...
...She throws a swift glance at the aimless, amorphous mass of desert: "We're there already . . ." It's true...
...6_ And the truck rolls on, reaches a small service base, turns around a square and pulls up beside a piece of sculpture hatched by an unequivocal military mind...
...You tell them...
...What were you looking for down there...
...Ginger...
...Yes...
...Still grave, she points at the tumble of canvas and smashed crates: "And that's the lecturer on Israeli society...
...Yes...
...No . . . something . . . it's just...
...What're you going to lecture about...
...What it is you want to hit...
...What's happened...
...The chess players watch him briefly, quizzically, then start moving the few pieces still left on the board...
...No, I'm flying to Sinai this afternoon to lecture at a missile base," he informs her casually, with a smile, hoping to rise in her esteem...
...And down below lights spring up from the emptiness, more and more lights...
...Real missiles...
...And the soldiers' faces before him a many-colored multitude...
...Now it's all sea as far as the skyline...
...But a few hours ago he was still sitting in the university reading room, a feeble, woolgathering intellectual...
...It's me," he tells his wife who picks up the receiver, "You hear me...
...To envelop them, penetrate the veil of lethargy and seep through their attention, drive in the words at an ever-quickening rhythm, and see them surrender, eyes shining, mouth opening in surprise, in resistance, then in a smile of pleasure...
...Now the two men are watching him...
...You'll miss your plane . . ." M_ The steps are all but dropped away under his feet, and he has no sooner got on the plane than it starts to roll as if his boarding had set it in motion...
...He looks out for the redhead, his lost pillar of fire, stops now and then at the sound of laughter...
...He closes his eyes...
...You find the landscape depressing...
...No . . ." she smiles, and soon to his surprise the jeep leaves the road once more, and with the familiar sweep, without slowing down, starts the ascent...
...If anyone phones tell them Daddy's out, Mummy's asleep...
...All high school graduates...
...He stands there puffing at his pipe and presently there is a faint stirring on the barren ground between his feet, a thin flurry of sand starts up as though a storm were about to arise from the earth...
...These past weeks," he tells the lecturer as if in apology, "we're simply being bombarded with lecturers, and they don't even bother to warn us ahead . . ." "We can drop it...
...She'll have to see that he gets there, this redhead...
...Even though I could have . . ." And suddenly he slumps on a rock at her feet, knocks his pipe out on a stone, sick at heart, stubborn...
...gray-haired, wrinkled, they fill in some form with stubborn zeal, gape at the redheaded girl behind the wheel, wink at him, and at last, reluctantly, raise the barrier...
...But then it turns out to be nothing but a military office after all, or maybe Operations itself, for the walls are covered with maps and charts...
...They bar his way, suddenly assuming authority, very serious...
...No . . . I've got to go . . ." "And that girl...
...He tries to sleep a little himself but is still too eager, his eyes searching the slow-moving desert landscape below him for novelties...
...Maybe it's here they dropped you...
...He crosses the university campus slowly, deliberately, looking for someone to accost...
...This landscape...
...the lecturer asks with a little laugh, he has never had such a small audience before...
...Skull...
...Her freckled face smiles at him again...
...inspects his wife's letters and returns them to the box, runs quickly over his own unimportant stuff and tears it up as he climbs the stairs...
...And promptly he is gripped by excitement, stoops over the bush again to break off a sprig, to smell, to chew something, rouse himself, and then he notices that the bush at his feet isn't a bush at all but a heap of half-buried old clothes growing out of the earth...
...A brief, alarming glitter of blue...
...Someone is operating the missiles from afar, pointing them straight at the sky as if he meant to fire at the stars...
...He follows her over the rocky hillside polished by the winds to a pale sickly pink...
...Here's your lecturer...
...A mixture of war apparatus and feminine paraphernalia...
...He takes the chair and places it in front of him, removes his watch, unbuttons his jacket, drops into the inevitable lecturer's mannerisms...
...How long have they to serve still...
...A dubious spring...
...Come here . . ." Calls him like a dog...
...Well, yes, in '56 . . . just for a few hours . . . somewhere around here . . ." "In '56...
...Or maybe, for instance, Zionism in confrontation with other ideologies, with the New Left for example...
...This lecturer ought to be buried . . . mustn't leave him lying like that...
...I had a hard time getting them to let me go...
...Then go and grab something...
...Not with you, though...
...A dull ache throbs in his head...
...And they wait, they still haven't grasped that he does not intend to answer them, but he is on his way already, up the slope between radar station and missile base, eating his wafers one by one, leaving a trail of tinfoil wrappings behind him in the dark, licking his chocolate-smeared fingers...
...Yorami, this is Daddy____" And now the child does hear him...
...But drives slowly, as though sleepy still, circles the sculpture twice as though lost in thought, then turns onto a pot-holed road that lies straight as an arrow in front of them...
...He kicks at them lightly and starts, flinches, looks again, appalled...
...comes in and finds a dark, silent, square-set civilian puffing a pipe before the telltale charts, his fingers roving about Sudan...
...undresses, moves around a little in his underwear, makes some noise, but she doesn't move, her uncovered feet pale marble...
...He has waited for this moment all day, has been brought from afar for its sake...
...He shivers, his eyes on her strong feet, sapphire flashing white over rock...
...And they drive on in silence at the same slow nerve-racking pace, approach the crimson hills, and he's afraid to say a word or she'll stop again and this journey will never end, while by now he is bent on giving this lecture, passionately, an ache in his chest...
...He lifts a hand to the slender cone, takes hold of the fins...
...And sleep-worn but wide awake, he sticks a bitter pipe between his teeth, wants to say something, would even hold a little lecture...
...I've just been hanging around here, and I've got to get back tonight...
...It's been three years since he published anything...
...What you got there...
...Even if he had the time she'd be impossible for him...
...Perhaps the face of Israeli society in drawn-out struggle a harsh political analysis which suddenly, towards the end, for no good reason, takes an optimistic turn...
...Now...
...Lemme through . . ." "Where you going...
...And at home the child picks up the receiver, and is joined by all the roar of the desert...
...as if there were any particular significance to what he says...
...He is best known for his short stories, and is also a columnist, playwright, and essayist...
...Shall I keep it for this afternoon...
...Breathlessly he catches up with her, and she points out the Canal to him, far away to the west...
...She climbs up on a rock, looks down kindly at him, acts as though she still had all the time she might want, and all of a sudden he feels as though an eternity had passed since he came here, and he looks at the horizon and a sense of peace comes over him as well...
...They promised I would . . ." He is seized by a sudden fear they mean to detain him...
...To hold her, suppress the slight nausea and seek the smooth tender place in her flesh, draw her mouth to him for a first kiss...
...Oh, never mind, thanks, it's getting late," and he turns back to the jeep...
...Is the Canal visible from here...
...And nowadays, missiles as well...
...Not a word will he utter...
...The plane comes to a stop and there is a general bustle of rising, donning caps, slinging up guns, crowding to the exit...
...Gently he catches the evening paper slipping at him from the other seat, then the feather-light body of the girl-soldier who seems to have relaxed her guard, leaning against him drowsily as the plane dips...
...A graying, tired- faced cook serves him a meal of infantine food a soft-boiled egg, cocoa, and porridge...
...And now metal screens flow on both sides of them as the jeep gathers momentum, and metal-roofed communication trenches, metal steps dropping down into the earth, and gradually the ground itself becomes plated in iron...
...rain slanting in at him...
...in return for which he is exempt from guard duty...
...He remembers it perfectly now...
...The lecturer bows his head...
...The officer seems flustered, picks up a short stick and begins to play with it...
...Only the dull roar of the generator outside...
...The colonel looks up, removes his glasses, reaches for the order with smooth, almost effeminate hands, barely glances at it...
...Lemme through...
...The signaler rises, removes his headset, puts it over the lecturer's head, and instants later the phone is ringing at home, and the child picks it up again and his voice is clear and warm and close as if he were within arm's reach...
...She laughs, appears relieved...
...has gone off somewhere and she's going to look for him...
...She does not even look up...
...And towards the front he discovers the gray head of the battery commander he talked to a few hours ago at the service base...
...Question them a bit about themselves...
...Here, in a bunker deep underground, in the middle of the desert, he stands opposite four soldiers and is supposed to speak to them, enliven the boredom of their long days, offer some information, possibly some ideology, best of all some faith...
...Why d'you want to know...
...Then wake her up...
...I found him asleep in front of the television set...
...How come he hadn't recognized this rocky hill at once...
...What's it to you...
...And he sends the lecturer back into the night, and himself returns to chase the two chess players off his bed...
...teasingly...
...Arriving, he delves into the mailbox downstairs as if in breathless expectation of long-awaited, unknown tidings...
...If it's not to hit you don't fire...
...Can one get Tel Aviv on this too...
...The man removes his glasses, stares at him as if he were seeing a ghost...
...Tired, needled by a thin headache, his dead pipe bitter in his mouth, he wanders about the emptying field, the old briefcase in one hand and in the other the reels of motion picture he's been given at the airport to pass on to the local education officer...
...And now the sky clouds over again too, and a few drops fall and cease at once, as if by way of experiment, and he hurries to his car, on his way to the airport...
...The long nights of guard duty had been a growing ordeal, the hours dragging out endlessly till at last, around midnight, time would stop completely...
...He is never going to give that lecture...
...Instead of which he climbs into the battered, dirty jeep driven up by the girl, its floor strewn with yet more sunflower shells, mingling with machine gun bullets, food tins whose wrapping has come off, gummy sweets sticking to military documents, a huge white brassiere between cans of lubricant...
...There's just one thing I didn't quite get" still clinging to the elderly officer "What depth do these missiles reach...
...It had been on the fourth day of the Sinai Campaign, at night...
...And everybodys strains to listen, while the signaler takes it all down in writing...
...And now the lecturer takes him in his arms, kisses him, and the boy stands still, lowers his head, odd how he freezes these days, blushes even when kissed by his father...
...He sways a little under the leaking roof...
...Drugs...
...The O.C...
...No chance they'll ever understand him...
...A glass of water stands at the bedside and sleeping pills show up white in the darkness...
...If I may, just for a moment...
...What do you mean...
...He'd shown them samples of drugs, had burnt a bit of hash here, on this table, given them a sniff too...
...gray-green, turbulent sea, nipped by winds, whipped to feathery crests...
...He picks up the fallen briefcase, climbs out pale and shaken, meets two soldiers coming down the road who look startled at the sight of a briefcase-carrying civilian emerging from a missile pit...
...And meanwhile the plane keeps steadily on its western course, the engines at full power, the coastline long vanished, as though they were heading for Europe, not for the desert...
...They might have sent you sky-hieh, you know . . ." But that is just what I wish, he wants to tell them...
...That's all...
...The color of these windows . . ." he says, "So strange . . ." But the officer sees nothing strange about it...
...And then the O.C...
...Regulars...
...Maybe...
...This sudden braking, the direct question, as if it were a personal matter his, or hers...
...The redhead stands in the doorway, has approached without making a sound and stands there tranquilly, a submachine gun over her shoulder, gazes at him seated there in the middle of the bunker, head bowed, the poetry volume on the floor at his feet...
...In short inspire them...
...His gaze fixes itself on some grains of sand beating against the window...
...Aren't you here on reserves...
...And still the dumb soldier's eyes haven't left his face...
...This is it...
...None of your business...
...he asks with a surge of unreasonable despair...
...To break the silence at long last, to start speaking...
...He shivers a little...
...The education officer . . . Lecturers are her domain . . ." And he points at the barracks across the road, hands back the order...
...13_ And again he trails behind her, climbing rocks, wandering through small crevices, stumbling over rusty containers, tangles of canvas...
...And the sense of freedom gripping him suddenly 8_ An unexpectedly strong wind is blowing here...
...What do you talk about...
...The girl's muddleheaded...
...You got back from there...
...Daddy...
...An ideology of missiles...
...But as soon as they halt at the gate in the gray dust he hears the rumble as if the entire anthill were throbbing...
...He looks at the silent girl by his side who strains over the wheel, intent on her driving, the submachine gun in her lap, her face illuminated by the glow of the headlights cast back from the road...
...But he does not answer, studies the three crumpled, agitated figures in silence, does not answer...
...I'll be home soon...
...Wearily he climbs out of the jeep, looks for the missiles, but he's already used to finding his listeners hidden behind ridges and down dry riverbeds...
...Drugs, for instance . . . We had a lecturer here not long ago who did...
...He meets the child downstairs, flushed, worn out by his school day, bruised here and there with the fights he's been getting into lately...
...He reads quickly, once, then again...
...Whereas he would suddenly be willing to yield, to forgive...
...Depends what exactly you're aiming at...
...He reaches out and lightly touches her thigh...
...What's your subject...
...We will...
...Aren't you staying...
...Forget about the lecture and touch her, just touch her and the words will come later...
...I nearly fired a missile myself . . ." The colonel seems bothered, frowns...
...he asks unthinkingly, half to himself, and at once regrets the question...
...The blood rushes to his face as he turns to leave the dim room, the carpet of shells whispering underfoot...
...He hugs his briefcase closer to him, already grown restless, shivery...
...He has flown to Sinai to lecture at a missile base and he'll be back tonight...
...repeats the same two or three lectures over and over again, jokes and all...
...Filthy coffee cups, an empty wine bottle, a carpet of sunflower seed shells on the floor...
...They have forgotten him...
...So lemme through, dammit...
...And he is treated with respect, is offered coffee or soft drinks, invited to meals, and when he displays an interest they show him their new weapons too a bridge-laying tank or a bent-barrel gun...
...And all at once a low buzz sounds and the entire platform with all of its five missiles stirs suddenly, veers left towards him as if to strike him...
...He is drawn to her, points to a large smudge in the dark wadi...
...And the guard has changed at the gate too, and it is by elderly soldiers that they are stopped this time...
...Startled, he looks at her sitting beside him, hands loose in her lap, smiling sweetly at him...
...As always, he devours his food rapidly, hungrily, the used dishes being cleared away as he eats, crumbs swept up around him...
...He looks at the approaching hills, first clouds looming in the distance...
...9_ And the missile base turns out to have been only a short distance away all along, on a hill dug up as an anthill, well camouflaged, none of it visible except a pinpoint of light floating high on top of a tall aerial...
...Are you sure...
...Failed to convince them...
...4_ He watches Tel Aviv tilt slowly sideways, seesawing, as though straining to turn over, then clouds dropping swiftly on top of it, and then it starts to sink, is covered by the sea...
...And now he decides to begin...
...You . . ." they demand, "When's your watch...
...12__ And at eight a shadow falls across him...
...he cries desperately...
...he flares up, rain lashing at him, a headache starting...
...A low buzzing sounds from one corner...
...The soldiers' faces are lifted up at him, following the conversation...
...The sky is clear, and the sun^which had been hidden all morning is there, sailing ahead of them in its full glory...
...But the boy fails to recognize the distorted voice...
...He is familiar enough with this clever-clever romanticism sentimental stuff notwithstanding the ragged lines...
...Tomorrow morning, as usual...
...The signaler picks up a screwdriver and starts taking the mouthpiece apart...
...At other times he stirs up a discussion, trumps up imaginary problems, and starts arguing with stubborn composure...
...And from time to time they are made to stop at a rope barrier, one end held by a dark-skinned fellow, the driver's counterpart, lolling in a frayed wicker chair, a soldier twisted and paralyzed with idleness...
...A long silence...
...Hands thrown wide he touches a bush, bits of fabric, metal scraps...
...They were wonderful...
...No...
...The lecturer, ill at ease, draws on his pipe...
...She smiles, takes the order, stuffs it under her pillow unread...
...Ginger did," says one of the men with a knowing little grin at his fellow, and the lecturer sees the mischievous twinkle in the officer's eye...
...she repeats, puzzled...
...The maximum . . ." says the lecturer with sudden heat...
...The lecture...
...What does she want of him...
...Where is she...
...She's taken a fancy to him, apparently...
...opens the bedroom door and stands in the doorway, casting a shadow over his wife's body which lies aslant the twin bed...
...Certainly...
...Solitary he has become a solitary of late, has fallen into the solitary's ways...
...He smiles, taken aback, the sun full in his face...
...No...
...All at once it strikes him again as something marvelous that he's going to be in Sinai this very day, and back tonight...
...His glance travels coolly over the large thighs, the pale flesh not taking a tan, yet affecting...
...And once again the lecturer, feeling a fool, starts carefully spreading his wares...
...And beyond the window, between sky and dark desert, he suddenly discovers himself, sailing serenely through space, his features heavy, weary, the day-old stubble like a grayish vapor on his cheeks, stars entwined in his hair...
...inspects his surroundings as one who doesn't belong to this desert, this dull expanse of low shapeless hills, the incoherent mixture of a great dead hush and camp-noises the roar of tanks, shouts, and windblown commands...
...But it's the spring vacation now and there are no students at this time of morning, and when he gets stuck in a line of cars at an intersection, two cleaning women from the university spot him, make a dash for the crawling car, and he stops, lets them in, not acknowledging their thanks, and fiercely, almost savagely, he gallops off with them through this freakish spring a drab spring blowing with dank breezes, hangover of a winter that hasn't been much of a winter either but cold clear skies and sickly buds shriveling on their branches...
...Hurriedly he flattens himself against the wall of the pit, ready to dig into it if needs be, but the platform lets go of him, swivels blindly to the right, then finally erects itself, aims upwards and stops...
...And the redhead in the doorway, a pillar of fire, stands calmly observing his struggles with the phone...
...He tears off the wrapper, glances at the inscription, turns a few pages and is filled with weariness...
...Too sanguine . . ." And now he laughs a brief, muffled snort...
...Great big strides she takes, bobbing up and down, hunched with long habit of minimizing her tall stature...
...You two there, break it up . . ." One of the players freezes in mid-move...
...He didn't seem that old . . ." He doesn't answer, looks away, beginning to lose his patience...
...And there they are, pointed at the light horizon, stolid, their color a rosy pink...
...He doesn't answer...
...But they refuse to let go...
...The officer listens, reveals some surprise, ponders...
...the lecturer sounds puzzled, unbelieving...
...I'm the lecturer...
...And he always still relishes the thought that presently he'll wind up his lecture, answer last questions and be free to leave them, and it's they who'll be left to the long night of guard duty...
...Not yet...
...Managed to wake you up finally, did he...
...You will...
...Do the men take drugs...
...He does still preserve a tiny quiver of anticipation, every time anew, but it ebbs swiftly after the first few words...
...And I thought you'd fallen asleep," she says...
...Which . . . which one fires the missiles...
...says the lecturer, faintly amused...
...Maybe she signed on as a regular imagining that here, in this reddish desert, she'd be less conspicuous...
...He alights from the truck, strolls about the grounds, still with briefcase in one hand and film in the other...
...Occasionally they just ask questions, anything that comes into their mind, and he answers...
...A spring rain is sweeping the town...
...Ah, well, he is used to being transferred like this, handed on from one person to the other, one car to the next, sometimes left in a dim barrack, a communication trench, a storeroom, to wait till his listeners are rounded up for him...
...He applies himself to the poems, skimming pages unhope-fully...
...What do you lecture about...
...Where you going...
...Silence...
...Softly he embarks on the opening words...
...To light this here up," the dumb one answers patiently, the only one of the four to respond...
...But then the lecturer catches sight of his own face on the radar screen, like a target in the grid of thin white numbered lines covering the area...
...She'll come and fetch you after...
...For a moment she appears not to have heard, but then the jeep comes to a stop, in the middle of the empty road...
...Perhaps she even attempted suicide...
...And beyond the barrier he sees the slowly rotating radar scanners, the huge camouflage nets, and blank, egg-shaped domes from within which one can eavesdrop on the depths of space...
...He returns to the truck, sounds a few brief blasts on the horn, walks over to one of the barracks, starts knocking at doors, one door, another, a third, and finds himself face to face with a gray elderly colonel who appears to have surrounded himself with missiles: models of missiles glowing in the afternoon light, diagrams of missiles on the wall, photographs of them in action...
...She bends down beside one of the wheels, picks something up...
...He inches forward behind the girl-soldier, his eyes on the nape of her neck, but once on the field he loses her, as usual, with not even a parting word...
...It took several minutes till contact was made and the shooting stopped...
...The Sinai Campaign...
...Why does it depress you...
...Personal questions: Who are they...
...Gasping, he doubles up on the stairs, head in hands, his eyes filling with tears...
...By now he can no longer even pick out his driver, who has doffed his shirt too and joined the game...
...She had refused to give in, though, as if in all that desert there really was no place for him...
...One more time he reads it, then looks up...
...A girl, a giant of a girl, a great redhead lying on her stomach under a blanket...
...Signs of habitation, villages, lamplit roads, intersections, light upon light...
...The ease with which the words spout from his mouth surprises even him...
...They took away the supplies and munitions, bundled him into a jeep with the dead body and sent him back to the rear...
...Not with me, though...
...Before that they used to call him up twice a year, summer and winter, for a fortnight of guarding two huge electrical transmission towers planted in the middle of some field...
...He approaches the instruments, smiling pleasantly...
...Do we have a lecture tonight...
...back to the reading room, to his book, listlessly, with growing reluctance, to discover after twenty pages that he hasn't taken in anything...
...He waits awhile and then his son appears round the corner too, alone, trudging uphill, weighed down by the heavy satchel...
...and after a few seconds she pops out again, comes and shouts something at him over the fearful racket, but he doesn't catch a word, smiles in utter confusion, draws nearer to her...
...Dozens of vehicles by the fence like a line of hackney coaches waiting for fare...
...Sometimes he comes, talks fluently for an hour without interruption, and departs as soon as he's finished...
...She opens the door again and ushers him into the brilliance now, and all at once the night seems dispelled and he finds himself in the middle of a bright noonday...
...I've been in Sinai, at a missile base...
...Daddy's away, Mummy's asleep," he hears the steady, disciplined voice through the turmoil...
...Such poised might...
...And he flounders on the doorstep, sticks his pipe in his mouth, chews the stem, removes it...
...What you got there...
...He bends but she forestalls him, picks it up, but instead of placing it in his outstretched hand she thrusts it between his lips in an intimate gesture, and he smells her, covertly, the smell of a big queer animal...
...How could he ever have forgotten this place...
...Still depressed by the landscape...
...I'm here to give a lecture...
...Funny sort of lecturers . . ." he says, trying to keep up the note of banter here on this barren hill exposed to the vast landscape, to the distant strip of water in the west still glowing with daylight "Dressed in those old ragged greatcoats . . ." At last she smiles...
...And the weapons too...
...The officer turns, comes back to him, amusement in his voice...
...Eventually he had gone there, introduced himself complete with academic degree and a tentative list of subjects, and had been accepted at once to his own surprise...
...Do you still want to get back tonight too...
...If we ever get there, you mean...
...And they, evidently familiar with the question "Depends on your target...
...The colonel watches him curiously...
...Is he still looking to him for a lecture, a revelation...
...I'm sure my predecessors said all there was to say...
...Yorami . . ." he whispers anxiously...
...The roar of the engines is falling off, the plane has begun to lose height, and as they hover above the runway he still sees nothing but wasteland, his eyes on the window drinking in every detail, thrilled to discover the row of bright hooknosed fighter-bombers...
...Presently the riflemen arrived in person, gay and noisy, drunk with their swift advance through the vanquished desert...
...The outline of the hills sharpens slightly...
...You bet...
...But he is incapable of replying, chokes on the words, continues the descent at a stoop and enters the bunker bowing...
...He feels a fleeting urge to wake her, to ask, but what's it to him, after all...
...A welter of murky light...
...At last he retreats, comes over to them, looks down benignantly at their chessboard, stands there...
...He approaches her...
...A lecture...
...He invariably picks his subject at the last moment, going by his mood, by the noise around him, the quality of the light on the upturned faces before him, the distance home...
...Less so . . ." He laughs, knocks out his pipe hard against a stone...
...lies back among the shapeless debris around him, lowers his head carefully to the ground, looks at the rapid motion of the sky which is growing bleary behind a thin mist...
...No one is coming for him...
...and is gone...
...He pulls him close, smoothes his hair, adjusts disheveled clothing and showers instructions upon him...
...the stateness of it, the hollowness, the tedium, the imminent divorce, the lone onanistic nights, the child being ground down between them...
...And then they are driving uphill again furiously, raising a cloud of dust, and the throbbing around them increases, large dug-in generators producing a din and a great blast of air...
...What are they...
...What's the matter with you fellows...
...the slightly bowed shoulders, the resignation to her oversize self...
...Not muddle-headed after all then...
...The place is awash with a purplish light and there are instruments everywhere a radar screen, control panels, a small computer, sticks, levers, phones, wires, cables all of it painted a greenish khaki...
...His eyes on the ground, he starts listing the various possibilities in a low voice...
...I kept silent...
...All the lights are hidden and buried...
...Arrows point straight at the heart of Egypt, at the Nile meandering on its way into the depths of Sudan...
...his voice softening all at once...
...She eyes him quizzically...
...And once again he flounders through his catalogue of subjects...
...I was dropped here by parachute, on one of these hills...
...looking at the lecturer and talking to some distant person, who answers him now, who in a crisp voice reports the weather forecast, the wind force, visibility, his voice coming from a small loudspeaker fixed to the wall...
...under a blue sky, under a canvas roof, on the top of a hill or in a bunker underground...
...and till deep into the night, in hot fury, occasionally smashing a piece of crockery coming to hand...
...he points at it as if it were the only one whose function he didn't know...
...He squats and by the veiled starlight reads the numbers and letters inscribed on them, gently caresses the dark tangle of wires descending to the pad...
...Ah well, how could she have known that at home he sleeps on a mattress in the living room...
...He puts his briefcase on the floor among a litter of old magazines and tattered thrillers, and sinks into a plush Egyptian armchair, piece of loot from one war or another...
...The torn rust-eaten tail of an Egyptian aircraft whose dim, slightly furry cracks gape at the missile which smashed into it and which has been resurrected here now, painted gaily and inscribed with biblical verses torn out of context...
...Without a target...
...as to a small child she speaks to him...
...Not all . . . What you lecturing about...
...You...
...Just a little courage...
...The entire pointless, wasted day drops off him as an empty shell...
...it's interesting . . . like maybe about other kinds of drugs . . ." The lecturer smiles to himself, a trickle of sweet smoke escaping his lips...
...And in a trance of fatigue, his mind vacant, his rifle tossed into the corn, he would slip through the crisscross of iron bars, sit down inside the tower like a caged ape, listen to the monotonous hum of electric current overhead, and wait helplessly for the frozen sky to start moving again...
...Lecturer...
...asks the officer, but doesn't wait for a reply...
...And all of a sudden he feels relieved...
...He glances about him, leans towards her, searches her face for the smile, but she remains grave, only her eyes twinkle...
...Nothing . . . just to see which button's pushed . . ." "There's no such button . . . you don't exactly push anything either . . ." He looks straight into the soldier's blank eyes...
...Have they heard all that stuff before...
...Ought to get the divorce, start a new life...
...Know about drugs...
...That's why the pain persists...
...He turns them off...
...He won't mind just letting them ask him questions, anything that may occur to them, and he'll do his best to answer...
...And again he jumps up to look for someone, anyone, to flip newspaper pages in another room, wander through corridors, return to his desk, read another page or two before he is up and out again, walking in a cloud of tobacco smoke to the bursary to see if they've calculated his salary correctly, from there to his mailbox to find only a slender volume of poetry sent him by an old schoolmate who each year, come spring, publishes at his own expense a batch of wishy-washy love poems...
...Yes...
...And as always in moments of waiting he already bemoans the time lost, confident that if he were seated in the library now he would be able to concentrate...
...What do you lecture about...
...Tt is the picture in a thin black suitcase which attracts the attention of a dark skinny soldier to him...
...And again, the chill "What happened...
...Station wagons, jeeps, vans, lorries, halftracks, even an old tank sent especially to pick up two soldiers...
...Yes...
...What made you sleep like that...
...No...
...He hasn't exchanged a word with his wife for months...
...And in the morning he is alone, dressing his son, giving him breakfast, taking him to school, driving to the university, looking for hitchhikers to draw into conversation...
...The chief battles were virtually over, the war decided, and they had been spending all four days at a small airfield, sitting around beside an old World War II Dakota plane...
...Homesick already...
...Yes, that's me . . ." The soldier crumples the note and drops it as though relieved of a heavy burden, leads the way to a big empty truck, and with the transistor on the seat between them pouring out its tunes they drive slowly across a large bustling camp...
...Go wake her up right away, you hear me...
...The sky has darkened, the light grown murky...
...drops into an armchair and broods on the impending divorce and how he'll have to take the whole place apart, and presently his strength fails him, his breathing grows harsh, he kneels on the rug, tugs at the sheet, smells people's footmarks, and falls into a deep sleep again...
...Yes, why not...
...And beyond the dusty windscreen lies the dreary desert, low bleak hills, sand dunes...
...The dead pipe in his hand drips wetly...
...Nearly all day . . ." She remains silent...
...These are the remains of a human body, how come he didn't notice before...
...He raises the blinds partly to see the sky swept clear, glances at the quiet street, at the children returning from school...
...And then they are on the arrow-straight road aeain, and he looks back and the missile hill is gone, only a red pinpoint floats high on a vanished aerial...
...And then he gets up, puts the kettle on, washes, dresses, folds the mattress, sheets, blanket, removes the traces of the night and goes to wake the kid...
...Z._ Actually he ought to go home at once, to the child wandering about there by himself, ought to shake the sleeping woman who must be out of her mind...
...This is where they had dropped him...
...This endless privation, the unchanging hostility...
...He smiles: "I'm not one of you people...
...MISSILE BASE 612 a story by a. d. Yehoshuo And in the night he knows a brief spell of pre-dawn wakefulness, as though someone had pushed him off the mattress to the rug, seized him by the collar and plucked him off the floor, dumped him in a chair to face the gray TV screen gleaming in the dark, where now a vague reflection of his face begins to shimmer...
...I'm due at 612...
...they ask anxiously, as if that were what he'd come to Sinai for, "Come on then, they're waiting for you . . ." And the lecturer gives himself up to them, follows the officer down steep narrow steps underground, tiny star-like lamps brushing his hair...
...Eventually he retreats...
...And now she recoils, tries to shake him off, drags him along the ground a pace, pulls him up, and he feels the power in her, in her strong hands...
...And then they are rolling down the slope, and the metal hissing under their wheels becomes earth again, the missiles and radar scanners are wiped out by the darkness as if they had never been...
...What happened to you...
...They appear old-fogyish at first sight, heavy, off-putting . . . "Give 'em a talk on drugs," the driver suggests magnanimously...
...But the child doesn't go, doesn't want to relinquish the phone, his breaths verging on sobs...
...arrives at the nearly empty library, spreads his papers over a desk by the window, goes to take out Aristotle's Metaphysics from the reserved section, and in utter silence, with unutterable slowness, not concentrating, he starts to read the ancient, difficult A.B...
...Then back to the corridors to resume his aimless rambling, to follow a slight, delicate girl student, stop with her to study the notice board, holding his breath, watching her furtively, it's been a long time, he's ready to fall in love, desperately, at a hint...
...But neither of the two remembers his name, only that he'd really been great...
...He stops, looks at her...
...Asleep...
...Flintstones catapult from the plunging wheels...
...The sadness of it...
...S_A desert airfield, people milling about, a kind of Wild West...
...He steps up on a low rock to poise himself over her, suddenly thinks of his wife and son...
...Towards noon he returns the book to the reserved section...
...A collection of his stories, THREE DAYS AND A CHILD, has been published in English by Doubleday...
...The throb of the engines and the dry summery heat are sleep-inducing, and all around him heads drop, eyes glaze over druggedly...
...A star lights up in the sky and all of a sudden he loses confidence...
...To provoke a discussion or something...
...Again she smiles at him, a wide provocative grin, still under her blanket, naked no doubt...
...She is standing very close to him, a full head taller, his hair grazing her captain's bars...
...I mean, what's the point...
...What to eat, what to do, what to tell his mother if she asks about him...
...You too...
...I was here in '56...
...They halt, wait for him to come up with them, grimy, his hands besmirched with missile oil...
...Have you never been here before...
...He is still unsure of his liberty...
...The kid listens, keeps nodding his head, saying yes, all right, all right, already looking forlorn...
...And then he is up the hill again, near the almost savage-sounding rumble of the generators, is signing a form which the skull-capped officer hands him, is looking stunned and bewildered, his clothes rumpled as though he had slept in them...
...Going straight to the battery...
...Three simple, lucid stanzas, each word in place, pearls on a dunghill...
...No, of course not...
...He grins the idea...
...No, I mean . . . just like that...
...One morning a young lecturer on reserve duty had given them a talk about official Israeli policy...
...This it...
...He slips in beside him with a nod and a smile, but the colonel fails to recognize him, reads on, in the same manual still, with the same absorption...
...so I've been told . . ." says the lecturer at last, in a cold fury, controlling it, "Sorry, but I'm no expert on drugs . . ." A silence follows, and for a split second it again seems to the lecturer that night hasn't come yet, that the sky is still blue outside, a sweet clear summer sky...
...Only the dumb soldier continues to stare at him, but the lecturer avoids his eyes, rummages through his briefcase, pulls out the volume of poetry received this morning, sits down, begins to read, barely taking in the shape of the letters, overcome by boredom...
...We ought to get moving . . ." he hears her say...
...And as he walks he meets a steady stream of soldiers coming towards him, and knows they will presently gather to hear him, and feels again the tiny thrill of anticipation...
...So the war's still on...
...I mean you're wrong...
...And where's the battery...
...Yes...
...Can I?" and he pulls the switch all the way, secretly expecting a distant explosion, but all that happens is a row of little bulbs lighting up on the instrument-panel...
...And distant objects rocks, hillocks, bushes seem to float in the air by a trick of the falling light...
...First he's had to wake her up and now she chooses to go gallivanting about the hills with him...
...Oh, I don't know . . . I'll make up my mind when I get there . . . maybe I'll let the men choose . . ." He always prefers not to reveal his subjects in advance...
...Their load grew bulkier and more cumbersome day by day till, towards dusk of the fourth evening, they were put on the plane which had suddenly come alive, and after a two-hour flight were dumped as a couple of live bundles of equipment in the no-man's-land between the two armies...
...Emboldened by this apparent liberty to touch the instruments, his hand roves on, questing...
...They're pretty tough with lecturers as a rule...
...Urgent messages are passed through the child, who has grown older lately, graver, whom the new silence in the house is grinding down...
...Still, he would like to deliver his lecture, feels a desire to speak, to speak without interruption, break a silence of several days...
...Yehoshua an Israeli writer, is spending this year at the Oxford Center for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies in England...
...He might get some argument going...
...This silence of theirs...
...Her clothes are all over the place, shirt and blue skirt, underwear in a heap beside a military phone...
...On the stairs, at chance encounters, they stiffen for a moment, bow their heads the gestures of stubborn knights...
...You did, did you...
...there aren't going to be any more wars here...
...And all at once a different audience...
...And once again he is the only civilian, and the soldiers, bareheaded and well-behaved, sit quietly rustling their papers, not even glancing at the latecomer...
...The twilight, the lengthening shadows, the emptiness around...
...she says apologetically, "I find it beautiful . . ." And then softly, with absurd politeness: "I'm sorry . . ." "It's not your fault...
...In the morning when the light floods through the large balcony-door, nothing is left of all his early awakening except a red bulb in the radio which has got stuck between two stations...
...That one preached Jewish ethics," she flashes back at once, "put everybody to sleep, including himself, and when he woke up . . ." She stops, falls silent...
...opens her eyes and blinks away a tear...
...In the end they'll kill him between them...
...His relations with women are clumsy...
...Who're you...
...You're lucky...
...Well, he hasn't quite made up his mind yet as though anyone cared, as though there were some intrinsic flaw about his subjects well, let's say, something about Jewish identity, or some brief outline of Israeli society under drawn-out struggle...
...What range, you mean...
...He abandons the idea of a lecture, collects his notes, replaces the watch on his wrist, makes to say something and changes his mind at once...
...then off again, back to the charts, tries estimating their scale himself...
...Is this all...
...The lecturer puffs at his pipe, and the smoke twirls blue in the light dying on their clothes...
...He reads on all the same, turns the pages over wearily, his eyes almost shut...
...Above him the ugly freckled face with the red crown of thorns...
...And already he is questioning the driver...
...But he remains silent...
...You hear me...
...But the colonel waxes impatient: "No...
...But he doesn't want to move, he digs in, clings to the last of his liberty, is ready to stay the night in the desert, perhaps even deliver the missed lecture...
...Fifteen minutes pass and he is still alone...
...The kid doesn't take in either the flight or Sinai, only the missiles...
...What do you want now . . ." Her remoteness, her loathing...
...Over her head he watches the slow return of the land avidly...
...Till he is quite becalmed, starts retreating, drawing himself out of them, lightly smoothes over final questions, dabs at the sweat, leaves a few question marks, a few vague promises for the future, smiles selfconsciously, gathers up the notes, the watch, pulls on the sweater and gets out...
...Yes, I'll be back tonight...
...he prods her gently...
...Stone...
...And all of it lightless, not a glimmer of light...
...Yes, this is Daddy here...
...Each of them cooks for himself, and they take turns to eat...
...The last plane back is at nine...
...They draw up just below the crest of the hill, next to an enormous thundering generator, and she leaps out nimbly, opens some door, is sucked in by a great spill of light, leaves him standing outside, briefcase in one hand, suitcase with film in other...
...Light it up...
...In field, outpost, mess hall...
...The girl sitting next to him, a small delicate girl-soldier, huddles against the window with her evening paper as if afraid he'll touch her, though he has not meant to touch her, just wants to talk a little, exchange a few words, without hope, without expectations...
...She continues dressing at her leisure while he is already on his way back to her, not taking his eyes off, boldly, openly...
...I suppose I've got used to it...
...These past weeks he has been lifting him out of bed as he is, carried him still half asleep into the kitchen, put him on a chair and talked at the drowsy child while he sips his coffee...
...And when she appears in the doorway, in a childish, much too short skirt, in sandals, zipping up a windbreaker with faded captain's insignia, he is already there beside her, eyes raised to her face: "Mind if I just make a phone call...
...Then he clears the table, washes up, enters the bedroom to collect his army gear and is startled to find her still asleep in the half-light, at the same nocturnal slant across the bed, her expression peaceful as though time had stood still...
...And he speaks...
...This sabbatical is also crumbling fast, a year without students, adrift in the library...
...The pipe is heavy in his hand...
...A pale relic from another existence...
...The headache mounts...
...wanders between two rows of reddish prefabs, in the glaring light, stark summer light from an azure sky...
...He isn't going to get to that missile base tonight anyway...
...There is no avoiding it any longer he'll have to give this lecture come what may...
...He collects his army clothes khaki pants, old leather jacket, gray shirt, high boots...
...2_ He had been transferred to this unit of itinerant lecturers early in the winter...
...Me too, I thought he must mean the Second World War...
...Daddy...
...Where you going...
...And who's that...
...What's growing here...
...She hears him out evenly, her eyes on the setting sun, as though his words didn't touch her, as though they swerved and fell on the rocks about her...
...This wearisome, war-worn desert, good for nothing except strategical vantage even the approaching twilight hour cannot soften it...
...And he wants to lash out at these two here, but under his eyes she approaches the officer, kisses him, and the officer recoils slightly...
...I didn't come with you...
...No one comes...
...Mercilessly he cuts through the small flock of girls waiting for a lift, races homeward...
...suddenly finds a wonderful poem, knows it to be so from the first line that is as a blow on the head...
...In perfect silence...
...bursts into the room: a tall young officer, skull-capped, good looking, one of those boy-soldiers, lords of the front line, who rush about the trenches always in a hurry, never sporting their rank...
...And once again the jeep stops, as if she couldn't talk while driving, as if his words called for careful study, at a standstill...
...He gets up still hungry, seeks to wash away the bitter taste in his mouth with something sweet, inquires after the canteen, goes and buys some chocolate wafers, a packet of razor blades which he puts in his pocket, starts peeling the first wafer out of its wrapper as he leaves, and drifts slowly back uphill munching...
...Have you eaten...
...And all at once the child breaks down, cries from the depths of his abandonment, unable to stop, dry harsh wails, rising and swelling without interruption...
...Finished...
...The Second . . ."he corrects her...
...Every lecturer who comes here goes on about some battle or other he took part in . . . Once we had one told stories, talked my head off, in the end it turned out he was talking about the First World War...
...You wanted to see the Canal...
...Such a giantess...
...Though why should he care, he is going back tonight whatever happens, they'll simply have to get him out of here...
...The lecturer's hands which are black with oil, the mud on his clothes, his flushed face and the blood on his forehead, and on top of that the shrill note that has crept into his voice "A wonderful experience to see that vast might . . . And the perfect camouflage . . . not a pinpoint of light...
...And with a surge of love for him he lowers the blind softly, puts on his clothes, sticks an old hat on his head, takes his army bag and rushes out...
...We'll never make it this way...
...The jeep escaping to freedom rouses their envy and they try to detain it, shine their flashlights into it, take down numbers, inspect papers...
...Won't you sit down . . ." "That's all right . . . thanks . . ." a little uneasy, as though caught red-handed, but continuing to look at the charts nevertheless, defiantly, as if to show he takes orders from no one, as if busy trying to make out some underlying principle there...
...He approaches at a slouch, carrying a bulky transistor radio held together by string, and intoning an Egyptian hit parade in a shaky whine...
...Yoram, it's Daddy," he shouts into the trembling, breathing line...
...No, that's not here . .. you want Ginger . . ." "Ginger...
...You don't remember me...
...no longer a dozen philosophy students with metaphysical texts in front of them, fencing with him, waging stiff battles over every word, but motley crowds, boys and men who assemble on command and are placed in front of him, his words wafting over them as a gentle breeze...
...the officer exclaims, turning to the two sergeants questioningly, then dropping into a chair by the table...
...What lecturer...
...We will, if you'll let me get dressed...
...A smile lights up in his eyes...
...so depressing . . . ," he says, to break the silence, to make contact...
...Stuck there in the silence he waits for her to emerge out of her blanket...
...and the men in the room with him smile a little, and only then he remembers they can hear it all over the loudspeaker, and he removes the weeping headset, casts about vainly, not knowing how to break the connection, till the signaler comes to his rescue and slowly the weeping recedes...
...He fondles the switches in front of him with both his free hands...
...rubs his hands, plans to open quietly, in a hush, now, the first phrases already welling up in him, not bearing on anything definite yet, only in due course edging towards one or another subject...
...And the mess is completely deserted, the tables bare, supper over...
...There's something here . . ." he wishes to say to them, but no one is looking at him, each is intent on his own...
...His friends say he's finished, dead...
...But the other makes no move, sprawls full length, a wicked little grin on his face...
...Can I have some water...
...The water soaks into the earth at his feet...
...Towards dawn they had come under heavy fire from the very unit they were expecting...
...She listens thoughtfully, her hands in her lap...
...And here finally are the missile pits, real missiles, not quite as big as he'd imagined...
...Yes...
...A brief silence...
...Her hair blazes in front of him...
...Yet before long it will veer, start the broad curve backwards, inland...
...Nothing...
...But the child is gone and the roaring desert is gone with him and the line goes dead, and someone in the middle of another conversation, very near apparently, lisps soft cajoling words of love at him...
...a hairpin drops into his lap, softly his lust awakens, and all of a sudden he conceives a provocative, subversive lecture at a missile base of all places, before the pick of the army...
...they press him, disappointed, cheated out of a guard...
...Every damn lecturer has got to bang his head here...
...But the pair of them just shrug their shoulders and animatedly swap knights...
...He ought to have tackled something long ago...
...And at the same moment the signaler, too, starts speaking quietly into the mouthpiece attached round his neck...
...Gradually he quickens his pace, falls straight into the hands of the officer and the girl who are waiting for him in the darkness...
...laying a hard hand on his shoulder...
...The jeep picks up speed with a humming of air through the wheels...
...hat is a bit funny . . ." Now he'll take her...
...he asks softly...
...But the sun piercing the clouds kindles cracks between the lowered blinds, casts arrows of light at him...
...What happened...
...And with a jolt the jeep starts again and the pipe slips from his hand, drops to the floor, rolls under the pedals...
...In this desert, this Sinai this is where he wants to speak...
...The four of them watch him calmly, wordlessly, no doubt used to have a lecturer dropped on them from time to time, here, between their beds, among the instruments...
...Yes, that's how they always come here, dressed in their oldest clothes...
...He gives up in advance...
...Crushed by the silence again he rises, starts fidgeting about the room, inspecting the roster, the missile setup, charts marked with black circles and computer codes for every hill and mountain...
...Yes...
...Invent fake problems...
...For a moment he imagines seeing her, a flash in the center of a merry crowd, but when he goes over to ask after the mess hall he discovers only a little ginger-headed soldier talking and gesturing, cracking jokes...
...Could he touch her...
...And the radar screen in front of him fills with white scurrying dots, like a rash, like an air attack...
...11_ And descending the hill, on the way to mess, alone again, he takes stock of his surroundings, gazes at the missile pits, the radar scanners, the bunker entrances, the huge generators...
...Once they could squabble a whole day long, not letting go of each other, even forgetting to go to work sometimes...
...Where are they...
...You Ginger...
...and now here he is far from human habitation, hundreds of miles to the south, on a hill of stone, clambering after this pillar of fire who does as she pleases...
...Dunes, houses, fields, last orchards strung out over sallow hills...
...A crumbling tunic, a riddled, rust-eaten water canteen attached to an outworn military belt, a pair of mildewed trousers...
...I've seen the vast power . . . touched the missiles . . . Who could ever break through...
...3_ He leaves the university at midday, and the sky is a gray whirlpool...
...If she would die, he sometimes thinks, late in the evening and she not home yet from one of her unaccountable night journeys, he laying out the mattress for another solitary night in the living room, waiting in vain for the sound of key in front door, falling asleep in a rage and waking before dawn to find her in her bed, sleeping peacefully, slantwise, unstirring...
...Two sergeants are playing chess, the board on a camp bed between them...
...Dozing, yawning, tense, laughing, irritated...
...He enters the silent flat, makes straight for the kitchen, warms up the food he's prepared for himself earlier in the week, its charred flavor getting nastier every day...
...He makes no reply but gets up at once, stuffs the book into the briefcase, and without a word to the men in the room follows her up the steps, feeling his way, bent over, careful, but even so fully expecting to bump his head again, except that this time she waits for him beside the obstacle, lays a warm hand on the top of his head, presses it down low...
...and then there is the sea, and the shore, and Tel Aviv coming up at them...
...None of your bloody business...
...How did the lecture go...
...Depends on the audience...
...They are alone in the sun, in space, all the army camps have long vanished behind them, and only the slow whirring of the engine accompanies the stuttered words he forces out in explanation...
...Is he being had...
...The soldiers have removed their caps, shoved their weapons under the upholstered seats, settled down to rustle newspapers, solve crossword puzzles, converse in low voices...
...early in the morning, at noon, and after supper...
...At the battery - 612...
...I'm here to give a lecture . . ." he answers, putting on a frank air, a smiling face, suppressing his agitation...
...He has started going to the cinema alone, has been caught talking to himself at traffic lights, to the amusement of people in nearby cars...
...Ah well, as long as he's been here...
...The lecturer waits awhile, then lays a tentative hand on the colonel's shoulder...
...Range...
...he grins a little as if in recollection...
...Or let the men choose, let them ask questions . . . anything . . . The two chess players bow their heads...
...I only . . ." She puts him on her still warm bed, gets him a line and goes out...
...10__ It is the blue camouflage paint on the windows and the yellow light of bare bulbs reflected in them that has created the momentary illusion of deep, spring-sky noon...
...And with the return of silence the lecturer moves hesitantly back to the instruments, his embittered smile on his face...
...He reads it once more, then a fourth time, and it's as if it was meant for him personally...
...Pity you can't talk on some other subject...
...No, I mean just at random .. . not to hit anything...
...he laughs, shrinks in his seat, graceless, knowing himself graceless...
...The face of society in drawn-out struggle, or The Israeli's Jewishness, or even Zionism in confrontation with other ideologies...
...He hasn't seen the missiles yet...
...Even the dumb soldier has despaired of him, has pulled a dime novel out of his pocket and sits reading it, his lips parted in excitement...
...So for when...
...He takes his hat off, throws it down, approaches her, but she slips away, starts downhill to the jeep, now a blurred mass in the fast-falling darkness...
...Duck...
...And the country spreads itself before him as he goes on his wanderings, skipping up hill and down dale and speaking, preaching to soldiers...
...And meanwhile the colonel is already engaged in getting rid of him, puts his glasses back on, returns to the manual and becomes engrossed in it again...
...The buzzing lasts another few seconds and ceases...
...And suddenly making up his mind, casting a swift glance to ensure he is unobserved, he slips down into one of the pits to feel the missiles with his own hands...
...To 612...
...Where to begin...
...Yes I have . . ." he replies quickly...
...It's as if a dam had burst in him...
...Start perhaps precisely with that dumb one, who has a touch of violence about him, who needs a little sympathy perhaps, a kind word...
...Sure...
...he hears the officer's voice from the depth below him, and he bends his head a little and hits it hard against the ceiling...
...She waits for his eyes to complete their inspection and then smiles at him, sadly, as if all too familiar with her self...
...An ancient Egyptian soldier hidden in the sand, a nastily buried corpse, pale gray bones marking out a vanished form...
...What are you doing now...
...Couple of weeks back I brought them a lecturer on drugs . . . Guys loved it . . ." "So what do you want another lecture for...
...The First" she insists...
...A bus is parked in front of the mess hall, and a newly-arrived batch of reserve soldiers wander about, in their sloppy fatigues, with their outdated rifles, gather to arrange the watch, are already plotting ways to wangle a pass...
...He could have lifted the blanket and lain down silently by her side till this evening would end and the hour of his departure came, but he only touches her, lightly, embittered...
...And the farther he goes the more people swarm about him walking, standing about in groups...
...Have you never been here before...
...Why shouldn't we...
...This young generation, he thinks, amazed and faintly repulsed, his eyes on her enormous feet against the pedals...
...I'm the lecturer . . ." says the lecturer, grabbing the officer's hand and shaking it...
...So there's blood...
...he asks, his own reflection looking at him out of two large blue eyes open on his face, and hands her the crumpled call-up order...
...The child wandering about by himself all afternoon...
...What will it be this time...
...I'm the lecturer...
...He moves back to his papers which have slipped to the floor...
...And the doors open, everyone getting up, and the colonel swiftly escaping from him...
...What more could I add...
...The tanks, the swivel-guns, the infra-red sights of machine guns...
...In his embarrassment he discovers a whole sunflower seed among the debris of shells, picks it up, cracks it, chews absently, waits to be in motion again, and slowly they drive on, still in second gear, crawling along the rough road as though they had all the time in the world, and it is nearly six, and he still has a lecture to give and get home again...
...What happened in '56...
...The man hasn't noticed his hesitant entry, sits bent over a manual, absorbed in his reading...
...He pours a little water over his head, then drinks some...
...He smiles back, embarrassed, unnerved by his own smile...
...Just talk for the sake of talking...
...And now he is faintly excited...
...Perhaps other lecturers before him had made love to her here...
...and sees the flash and dazzle of white springing up there in the darkness he has left behind...
...For a long time after he had still gone around feeling cheated...
...Briskly to pull the sweater over his head, fling it over a chair or on the ground, remove his wristwatch, place the notes in front of him, and start speaking as a first caress, in a sweet voice soon to harden...
...So you've arrived . . ." "I arrived half an hour ago...
...But she doesn't care about his undelivered lecture, she wants to get rid of him, approaches the prostrate lecturer, touches him, tries to raise him, and he, as in a dream, bends and kisses her large foot, white sapphire no longer immaculate to his lips but filthy, filling his mouth with sand...
...But she insisted: No, they'll fly you back...
...Look, is something the matter...
...Try something entirely new perhaps...
...he asks, handing back the hairpin as well...
...a few miraculously gain entrance, land by his plodding pen...
...Why not...
...A distant memory flickers through his mind...
...Could she want him to make love to her in the short time left to his lecture...
...But the woman just gives him an absent smile, hasn't listened very closely, or perhaps it doesn't strike her as anything particularly wonderful, these shortened distances...
...Maybe even that one there . . . ," pointing at a hill on the near skyline which is slowly turning crimson...
...He holds on to his hat, bows his head, but the wind tugs at him, winds come from every side and pounce on him as though they had lain in wait...
...He leaves the door open, goes to the square, paces up and down beside the sculpture, very excited...
...as far as I'm concerned . . ." "No, why...
...And he smiles to himself, gives it up, goes on watching the game...
...They reach the top in a few minutes...
...The dumb one holds out a canteen...
...Lecturing too...
...In the Sinai Campaign...
...Ah well, he is familiar with the slight numbness, the curious embarrassment that comes over soldiers when suddenly confronted with a lecturer...
...So that's her game, is it...
...and he is the last to step off the plane and finds it is raining outside...
...There wasn't any after all...
...She is standing a few paces away from him with her gun, watches his excited prowling among the rocks...
...And now they are deep into the desert, the soldiers are coming to life, the girl beside him pulls away too...
...When...
...Don't worry, Til see you get yourself an audience that'll listen to anything you may say...
...And only now, sitting close to her, bending to put the briefcase and film between his feet, does he notice that she isn't so young anymore...
...Slowly he climbs on under the clear star-freckled sky, stops from time to time to peer at the missile pits, inspect them...
...But she hasn't heard, or at any rate doesn't stop but drives on, only turns the wheel a bit, leaves the road, sweeps onto a dirt-track and without slowing down, without shifting gear, in one rush, starts climbing a hill, at an ever steeper angle, regardless of any track, straight up as if aiming for the sky...
...Three gray-haired reserve soldiers in cartridge belts and steel helmets stop him, wave check-lists in his face...
...She listens tensely, her glance shifting from him to the scenery and back, as if anything could be done about it, as if the scenery were open to change or amendment...
...Of course: range...
...Slowly he pulls the notes out of his briefcase, biding his time...
...Wearily he touches her...
...Maybe the fellow's pinched it from someone else...
...He holds out the paper and she smiles vacantly, touching her hair which has come loose...
...Went to see about the movie . . . Probably looking for you...
...Not far . . ." "Figure I'll make it back tonight...
...lifts a hand to smooth her hair, glowing crown of thorns, then starts the jeep savagely...
...And the rope drops before them...
...He opens his old student-case-turned-army-bag and inspects its contents...
...And he even his name she does not know...
...This is Daddy . . . Can't you hear me...
...On constant alert, cut off from events, disgusted at missing what seemed from afar like a grand adventure, they lounged on the asphalt at the edge of the landing strip, under the blades of the propeller, and once every few hours or so people would come and bring them yet one more machine gun, another munition crate, an intercom set, a stretcher...
...When are we going to get there...
...The people, the nation...
...It isn't a very high hill, there are higher ones around, but it looks out straight at a gap in the mountain ridge ahead and a wide horizon beyond...
...What are their plans after...
...A stewardess, who has kept herself well out of sight during the trip, stands by the door dressed in a colorful uniform, bestows a personal smile on each passenger, bids them goodby as though they were vacationers arrived at a holiday camp...
...Inspiration has come to him and he is taking charge: "Had supper...
...By the feeble starlight he discerns the smashed munition crates, breathes the cool desert air, sees the land opening out to the coasts of Egypt, the distant Canal which even now, in the darkness, still glows with a faint incandescence...
...And this one imagined he could answer any question . . ." And laughing wildly she gets in, starts...
...That hill . . ." he waves a hand at the dark landscape, "Have we passed it yet...
...he asks, irony in his voice, and resignation...
...Finished...
...a stale, vapid landscape with its stubborn bushes growing under a layer of dust...
...The poetry volume he has received this morning and stuffed in here at the last moment, headache pills, sleeping pills, pep pills, tobacco pouch, a rotting apple from his previous lecture, razor blades, and finally the pages of his lecture in a crushed roll, notes written in outsize script...
...saunters off to inspect other missile pits, lingers here and there, and the two soldiers stay where they are, follow him with their eyes...
...We'll fix something...
...He approaches the playing soldiers, watches the brown bodies shiny with sweat pursue the ball in silence, in seeming fury...
...A bare waste all round, no sign of a house, a missile, a man...
...Some minutes pass and he starts prowling about the dark flat, wanders in and out of the kitchen, the lav, the child's room...
...he asks...
...But don't wake her up...
...Where's the kid...
...His lips only turn up in a wry smile, however, and he resumes his casual walk, not to excite suspicion...
...Men were fascinated...
...in despair...
...Cautiously he touches them, smoothes their flanks, is amazed to find them rather slippery, damp, as though covered in a fine film of oil or dew...
...Daddy's away, Mummy's asleep," he says mechanically even before being asked...
...They figure they're being sent to the back of beyond...
...But she lies there still, her eyes laughing...
...Bet they'd like to . . ." And all around a land of great drought, hills and copper mounds and army garbage, shacks, structures, and vehicles driving about, to the left and right of them, crossing in front, overtaking every which way...
...Dozens of soldiers crowded into a smoke-filled room, absorbed in the movie he has brought...
...she asks gently...
...The landscape, on the other hand, does stay with him the view of a distant hill, a dry river bed, a mud track hugging a security fence...
...What's the range of these missiles...
...Excuse me . . ." holding the call-up order...
...But he shall go home prepared to give battle...
...And what is left of the sky...
...Lemme through...
...Be at the airport at three, they'll fly you back after, she had told him...
...I rang up several times...
...The other starts...
...I didn't hurt your feelings, did I?" Her voice, very gentle...
...No, only as far as command...
...And he sinks at once on a vacant seat in the rear, fastens the seat-belt, watches the torches disappear on the runway one by one, and is already growing bored again, jumps up in his everlasting restlessness to find someone to sit by...
...This is where I'm to drop you . . ." The driver bangs the radio to silence it and flits away, drawn like a butterfly to a bunch of soldiers kicking at a ball in a far corner of the camp...
...Now he would be called on to give a lecture once every week or two, wandering between various outfits, training camps, strongholds, remote spots he never knew existed...
...He lingers, waiting to hear if she will mumble something in her sleep, moan perhaps, then retreats, turns back to the living room, goes to the radio and fumbles between low distant music, readings from the Koran, and faraway signals...
...Sometimes, when he happens to arrive at some front line position in the afternoon and his listeners must be routed out of bed first, he mounts the observation posts on his own initiative, to peer through giant binoculars at the other side, watch the tiny enemy popping up here and there in the dunes, filling sandbags at leisure...
...A soft eastern breeze had carried them gently to this hill...
...Phantoms . . ." he identifies them with that curious excitement that all weapons rouse in him these days...
...And all at once he is reluctant to go home, wanders a little about the wet deserted airfield, turns to the emptying terminal and finds a telephone under a leaking booth-top...
...He is the only civilian aboard...
...They glance up wordlessly as he enters, then look away again, exchange a brief smile but say nothing...
...Ten past six already...
...He touches his forehead lightly, smiles at the dumb soldier...
...One of them was killed...
...What's this for...
...Show up to lecture in high boots, old briefcases, funny hats . . ." He touches his own, reddens...
...A large switch protruding from the board attracts his attention...
...What about...
...What happened to you...
...text which he will have to explain to his students next year, his eyes continually straying from the lines to the gray world beyond the window...
...The lecturer retreats slowly, looking at the little missiles set out like toys on the shelves, longs to touch them, does touch them with his fingertips...
...now it's open war...
...So the moment has arrived...
...After the lecture which he had considered rather crude he had made inquiries about the lecturers' pool and the qualifications needed to join it...
...and he starts anew, forces himself to summarize each passage like a first-year student...
...And a flickering light in one of the barracks reveals the audience they have deprived him of...
...He holds out a scrap of paper with the lecturer's name slightly misspelled in a soft, feminine handwriting...
...The sun is going down over the coasts of Egypt...
...There are only four men in the room one at the wireless wearing a headphone, the same two chessplayers still at their game on a camp-bed against the wall, and one other soldier, a dull, dumb face...
...He grins, stoops to pluck a leaf from a scorched, dusty balsam bush at his feet, notices a scrap of torn fabric, and further down a couple of rusted windworn jerry-cans, the loose chain of a tank, a soot-blackened square of canvas, empty food tins, smashed munition crates the relics of a vanquished army camp coming to light on the stony soil as on a strip of exposed ocean floor...
...A sharp pain stabs him...
...He already says "612" as if it were a familiar place, as if he'd moved among the batteries here for years...
...Just painted dummies . . ." The delicate girl-soldier smiles, stares at him as though only now really noticing him...
...Even though it's ridiculous to stand here in this dim mud-hole with four soldiers for audience and hold notes in his hand, as if he even needed them, as if he couldn't talk fluently, almost unconsciously, abandoning himself to the sweetness of his own voice, swayed by his own surreptitious, inescapable rhetoric, its slant of distortion growing as he proceeds...
...Now it's each to himself...
...And he is well content to have things dissolve like that, fade swiftly behind him...
...And who're the men there...
...As far as I'm concerned, he had said, I don't mind staying the night...
...Yes . . ." "And they listened to you...
...Another silence, and she still smiling at him, as though she wanted something from him, this titanic redhead bent over the wheel, her hair brushing the canvas roof flapping in the wind, while he stares at the hills round him, avoiding her eyes...
...And now he's in a hurry, shuts the door behind him, crosses the grounds, stops at a door, knocks, pushes it open, enters a darkened, chaotic room, something between office and girl's sanctum, and discovers by the light from the door, in the faint musty smell, a bed and a tangle of fiery red hair...
...I was dropped somewhere around here, on one of these hills...
...If she were dead and done with, but her deep breaths ripple through the room...
...What was he called...
...asks the elderly woman librarian, already used to seeing him show up suddenly towards nightfall...
...He takes a turn round the sculpture, taps the missile lightly and hears the echoing hollowness, peels a strip of metal from the shattered tail and is amazed at the ease with which the aircraft crumbles up between his fingers...
...she says mockingly...
...Sunken eyes, a face drawn with fatigue, a mass of hair, and blood on his forehead...
...In vain he tries to keep a face or two of his ever-changing audience in mind...
...Isn't Mummy up yet...
...Who brought him...
...Zionism in Confrontation with Other Ideologies," "The Israeli as Jew," "The Face of Israeli Society under Drawn-Out Struggle...
...What time is it...
...And meanwhile the redhead is already scolding the guards for dawdling impatiently, loftily, as if they were to blame for her wasted time...
...Yet he himself has been amazed when a girl from the army's lecturers pool rang up a week ago to inform him of this lecture...
...The officer appears somewhat taken aback, as though these subjects of his were rather peculiar, as though there were something original or faintly shocking about them to give him some grounds for concern...
...Showed me the view, took me to the missile pits, spread out charts, showed me round the control rooms, the instruments, the radar, everything . . . explained how things worked...
...The last plane . . . Do you think I won't make it...
...To stand before them, hear the buzz, the murmuring, the creaking of chairs or stones...
...Briefly, absently, desire stirs...
...Something about the situation of our universities, or maybe the Israeli's self-image, or, say, Zionism versus the New Left...
...without any target...
...At first they had tried to dig themselves in, then had just sat and waited tensely, shivering with cold, for the advancing troops...
...The men in the bunker appear blurred, as if seen through a fog...
...The first shots were fired long ago, the cause obscured...
...Had supper...
Vol. 1 • December 1975 • No. 5
