Magnapoets Short Stories

Oneg Shabat (Elisha Porat)

translated from Hebrew by Suzan Rosenfeld

Yair is my name; my family name is not to be mentioned  here - because it is a well known name in the Yeshuv, a respected one. For  the sake of your boundless curiosity I will add only this: I am a violinist  and kibbutz member.

An odd combination. A strange combination. Two things that  don't go together. Don't pay any mind to what you've read in the old  newspapers. That is to say, a talented violinist with a brilliant career ahead of  him. And suddenly, while still young and with life's pull still vigorous and  strong, he gets up and leaves it all and settles down in the deep loess sands  around Beersheva.

Nonsense - note that down so you'll remember. Utter  nonsense. Untruth, or worse, if there's anything worse than untruth. For what  was it that aroused that venomous journalistic wrath? The career broken off  malevolently. The musical genius who quit. Or that he threw away his  potential on what was mediocre in him, and withdrew to the kibbutz. You, who  are familiar with this life, would you believe it? Kibbutz - what withdrawal  is there in it? From what did he withdraw and to what?

You see, everything is open to interpretation. An entire  life is before you to interpret. A unique life story, repeating itself  perhaps in double motifs. And so forth, ad infinitum. And its up to you to  decide: perhaps as a journalist - that is to say, a great musician who  became a small kibbutznik.

Or like my colleagues who stayed in the city and describe  it as a unforgivable act of folly. An act meriting ostracism and disgrace. Or  like my friends the metal worker and the welder - true friends - who discern  that once this fellow had a different life, different breath, was enveloped  in different air.

And its true: Once I was a well-known violinist for whom  great things were presaged. The giants from Europe and from Russia spoke  words of praise about me. That is, the gentle treatment of the sapling that  is expected one day to be plentifully endowed with fruit - that true  endowment, not counterfeit, for which everyone so yearns. For the record, I  am even prepared to add that I haven't deserted music for a single moment,  but have transferred it to a different production line, as people  say colloquially these days. I have measured it out in different portions. I have adapted it to the realistic existence which I have taken upon myself. To  the existence derived from that reality which I, as an omnipotent creator,  quite to the contrary, took upon myself as a privilege and a duty, an effort  and a pleasure, to celebrate as the reality of my life. Donut be hasty and go  making generalization right away. I did nothing earth-shaking. I didn't  debase what was lofty. I didn't raise up the lowly.

That is to say, basically, that I took upon myself the laws and customs prevalent in our bestial earthly kingdom. But I wanted to admit to it a little candle-light. To illuminate its darkness a bit. No,  donut aggravate me with your impatience; not with the help of my music. My  music is not lamp oil. I mean the light of a candle in a more spiritual,  higher, purer sense. Or, to be more precise, a more purifying sense.

Now, when you pick up a record you look to see: Where is Yair's playing as opposed to that of the orchestra? Where are his brilliant  performances? Where are his wonderful recitals which the journalists trampled so gleefully? Where are those echoing recitatives which he would squeeze out  of the violin pressed to his brave chin? Where are they all? Into what  ephemerality have they gone astray and disappeared?

The hand which pulled the bow has been exchanged for that which splits clods; the extraordinary fingers have been subjected to the  suffering and blisters of a worker on the night shift in the plastic factory;  the heart which thumped out tempos and melted time into them has been tuned  to the depressing noises of machinery, and his soul  he pioneering".

And you can add to your notebook, right away, without hesitation: prolonged, hard years of drought. The burning desert of  Beersheva, the hazy loess wilderness along highways shimmering in the heat. Years set ablaze in the great bellows of the desert. Yes, that's good. It  explains the background.

It prepares the listener for the period of metamorphosis  which comes next. Here you sow the seeds of surprise. When it comes to the  details of that evening after the concert, struggling with one another within  a forced succession whose outcome, apparently, is already known to you from  your previous conversation. From will call your former  meetings with the other heroes of the affair. First of all, perhaps you  ought to be more precise and say, the other heroines of the story. You persist? Very well: There was one man. Who? Correct, the ever-worried culture coordinator. Yes, I had almost forgotten about him. And really,  between us, what importance do you attach to him? What you say about his  being important as an accelerator can be considered laughable. The nuclear  accelerator of this farce, of this drama of degradation.

Take note that I am evading nothing; nor am I denying  anything. You expected a firm denial.

Your disappointment is reflected in your eyes and in your fingers scribbling energetically through the pages of your notebook. I won't  deny it, because I donut feel myself accused. You want to hear my story too,  - all right. You can add it to the accused". Here in this whole rotten story  there are no distinct positions of innocence and culpability; there are no  varying distances from the illuminating, nuclear center of some specific  justice. We are all stationed in positions of equal punishability. No one among  us is more worthy than the others.

Donut forget that in your hurried scribbling in your  notebook. I quote: Equal reward for different work. That's the nucleus of the  collective idea, isn't it? So allow me to ask, does this mean material reward  or a reward which is not material? Televisions or a reward from above? Lets  see if your as smart as you make yourself out to be. Go ahead, try to give  me an answer: What reward is meant here? And donut make it easy on yourself,  please. When we say work, what work do we mean? Serving this great Golem, the  kibbutz? Or the service of the individual within the community? Or  serving idols?

You see, you can immediately discern the weakness of  formulas. Music in exchange for kibbutz. Neglect of the individual  personality in order to blend into kibbutz existence. Conquering the  wilderness of the Negev around Beersheva. With the strength of hands running  back and forth along a conveyor belt of melted plastic, and not with the  volunterable strength of musicians hands. Understood? I wont mention my  last name, and I will not allow you to mention so much as a hint of it. I have the feeling that everything will be revealed if I should say it in public. That is to say, as long as those who know the family is a distinguished one,  purebred, real, among the foundation stones of the Yeshuv, as long as that is all they're talking about - its not so bad. But the moment they start making  ignoble connections and pointing out questionable blood relationships and  known madmen in the family who must have passed on the iron-clad rules of  their madness to someone, to some distant offspring - no, I refuse to put up  with that. Not even at the price of the story. You wont find any of that on  the dust jackets of records. Neither beneath my picture nor above it.

By the way, I have also renounced making records. You  didn't know that either? What's with you, man? Why didn't you prepare  properly for this meeting? All these things lose their importance if I'm  having a dialogue with an ignoramus. You mumble and lead me to think that  maybe you really know something, and that you curiosity is based on something  deeper. And in the end, only shameful shallowness. You simply neutralize all  the enjoyment I might have gotten out of the story. Sluggard - go learn something about the history of the Yeshuv, the history of great people, the history of the kibbutz. Have you ever heard of A.D. Gordon? Have you read  Brenner? And, damn it, what do you even know about music? There's more to life than gossip. True, its sometimes hard to find in it more than snatches  of gossip made by mere shadows of human beings within some lump of time  collecting dust on its way through the present. Right before our wondering  eyes. But this way you are liable to lose interest in what's going on around  you. All at once I shiver as I feel a sudden draft blowing from within that  zero, moving quickly toward me, making me dizzy for a few moments and then,  fortunately - my good fortune - leaving me alone. Such polar frigidity, if  it lays hold of you, can empty you of everything that was in you and leave you an empty and puzzled child, as if you had never traveled and  experienced all those years, as if during their passage you had never been  charged with an electrifying load which keeps you alive, as you are, longing  for the music which you will never be able to play, and secretly taking  pride, a miserable foolish pride, that after all, if art has eluded you and  will not return, there still remains in your closed fist the train of the  raiment of another existence which will not fly off and vanish so quickly. A settled, comfortable existence that you donut have to run after. On the contrary, it chases you. Sometimes kibbutz "pioneering". Sometimes it can be termed sacrifice. And sometimes it can be said that you have sold you soul to the Satan of  Justice. Do you know what it means for your hand to cry at night from longing for a touch of the bow, for the vibration of the strings, the smell  of lacquer, the curvature of the wood.

"Damned eroticism", as you inquired. Snare or pit? Facing  you open notebook and your young hand running through it, I find it very difficult to phrase my words. I could simply throw the raw materials, main  points, hints, and principles at you, and leave the job of formulating it to  you. But I donut trust you. I'm afraid you're liable to disappoint me. Its not just a matter of formulating things. Its a much more inclusive organization. You have to decide which portion of the tremendous flow you're  going to freeze. Then you have to decide how many times to magnify it, which  details you wish to conceal, and which, out of strange gleeful vengeance,  you wish to highlight. That is to say, who within you to leave exposed - which may prove dangerous although that's something you cant know beforehand. There may be danger inherent in it, and also pleasure. When you are alone with the violin you are doing the same thing: freezing a bit of time. And afterwards, when it begins to rise and float on the face of the  formlessness, you choose yourself a focal length and a wave and frequencies  and modulations and magnify and clarify. But not the whole segment. Only portions of it. The ones that seem relevant to the matter at hand. And here  you are lost if the ear of your audience interferes. No deals under the table.

Any compromise is rotten. Only what your inner ear  whispers to you. Donut take the audience of you listeners into consideration. They're charmed. It is you who are leading them. They have only two external  ears, connected to their heads. But you have more. You have an inner ear  joined to other systems as well as to the systems of your body. A sensitive  ear which absorbs sounds from other worlds. They sit spellbound. You are bound to the source which pours into you. They stretch out to you, to the  motions of your hands, to the pressure of your fingers, to the sound  waves which you create from within your body, from within your body warmth,  your sweat, your metabolism, your horrible smells.

You stretch in a different direction. You have someone else calling to you through openings torn in the acoustic lining of the ceiling. You are different. They are blind. Donut see the light penetrating  through those openings. They are unseeing. They think that there is no rent in  the ceiling.

That only fluorescent lamps are shedding light upon them. You have more. More light gets through to you, flows to you, standing on the little stage, the vase of lilies for concert nights shaking on its stand from  the impact of the notes. You are alone with the sources that have opened up  to you tonight. Here they are. Their hearts open up to you. It is you who  bring forth and present to them. Donut collapse under the weight of this responsibility. Ignore them.

Woe to you if you stop to ask: What do you think? Do you  like it? Run ahead. Donut stop. Store away the profusion now so that you'll be able to scatter it to them, crumb by crumb, on the day the heavens close themselves to you and you can receive no more of their light.

Damned eroticism." I have already told you, and I repeat. You donut know whether you are bringing down or being brought down. Whether  you are conquering or are vanquished. It is a wretched crawling from the  snare into the pit. And again, back and fourth, over and over. There are always charming young women standing there, the smell of their youth  astonishing - hanging their legs over the concrete stairs and turning their  heads back at the sound of the screen door... The slight, faint breeze ruffles their soft hair, and your heart bursts within you foe what is unobtainable. Here, if you ask me, I am prepared to make a declaration: The most beautiful thing in the entire world is the soft hair of a young girl  blowing in a gentle breeze. Donut misjudge me for being so  frank.

Everything else, I tell you, everything else is just stories. A cabin whose foundations are rotting. A neglected garden. Bats devouring all the juicy fruit of the mimosa tree. Just a young girls hair blowing in a gentle breeze and my heart slows to a standstill. The spring  returning the screen door with a forceful slam. A car disappearing in  the darkness between the trunks of the Indian birches with their notched bark. That is only the background, I tell you. Donut aggravate me. Write it down exactly like that: background. I take the cabin and turn it upside down,  pull it up with its foundations. Until the fifty-year-old iron rods are  suddenly exposed and I throw it far away, and in its place bring a lawn on  Shabbat or a lounge deserted after a celebration or a drinking party. Do you  get the idea? You move your bow, and from the belly of the violin produce the  necessary note, which vanishes among the accessories. It can make its way in  any direction. Because, for it, any direction is true. Trees, roads, houses -  all can pass away. Because they are not true. They are here only by accident. A sort of wrapping which may or may not be removed. But the true note is not interchangeable. It is one of a kind.

Follow it and see how it escapes from the lounge in the  direction of the cabin. As if of its own accord, by the force of  gravity.

Damned eroticism". From the snare of the concert stage  into the pit of the wide bed in the guest room which the violinist is given  for the night. And the long road from the sandstorms around Beersheva to  this humid and burdensome coastal plain which now threatens to settle on his  tired heart and burst it by force of these things which only he realizes will  never return. And follow him further, as he escapes, like a youth after his first act of love, through the window with its shattered hinges; as he makes a soft landing on the earth of the neglected garden; as he hurries  instinctively in the direction of his car parked in the unfamiliar lot, turns on its lights, slices the foliage-encased darkness with  the surprise of spotlights; turns in place and without even checking to see if he has thrown  all his things into the trunk, he lurches ahead, wildly, until the degrading  encounter with the gatekeepers on the way out of the kibbutz. Its obvious  that your heroines have filled your granaries with useful information. You're in a bad way. Your filled notebooks wont save you. You'll have to  decide: Do you favor them or me? The marks you put down on the paper with  such amazing speed will not let you avoid a slow moment of thought. Where to  now? With Yair to the pits yawning at his feet at each concert? With Zipporka and with all the complainers in the world, who are always betrayed by people  more important and more noble than they - taken advantage of, led by the nose  until finally a cruel justice is done to the swindlers? Or perhaps with  pretty Naomi, with her lilies, her soft hair waving in the afternoon breeze?  The sheet music which her pretty hand turns fore. Her body, her bed, her  searing warmth. Or with the culture coordinator, who wasn't involved in  the affair at all but just floated in it at his leisure, from a safe  distance, step after step, until its strange denouement?

Take your time to make up your mind. I wont press you. I  have plenty of time and I'm prepared to wait. Ill gladly postpone our next  meeting. For a week? Two weeks? As long as you like. But you must remember  one thing: Donut put my family name into your papers where it doesn't belong.  Donut touch that name!

Zelda | Walter RUHLMANN

At first, it’s always the same. You know where you are going. You know things are going to happen the way you expect them to. Then, after a while, it slips. You can’t control anything. Things go wrong.

We are in the attic.
The room is rather neat. Zelda cleans it every evening. Quietly. Very calmly. She’s used not to making a sound. Not to making herself noticed. You can’t make yourself noticed.
It’s very dangerous. It’s so hazardous. It could be fatal.
Since they have taken the neighbors away, since her own parents have disappeared, she is quiet.
For her they had disappeared a longer time ago, but she can’t accustom herself to their real abduction.
So Zelda hides herself behind a servant’s apron. She does the housework, she washes the dishes, the linens, she serves at the table, she dresses up Madam, she plays with Pauline, the daughter, less with Julien, the son, older, less inclined to games, more sullen, less cheerful...
Madam. This woman fascinates her, she’d like to look like her, but how could that be possible.
The large flat is bright and situated in the heart of the city.
The city, the Nazis have settled in for two years now. Life is hard. The goods are scarce. Yet, Sir, Madam and the children always have meat for dinner.
She’d like to eat meat once in a while.

I imagine her in the evening, in her bed. She tries to remember the taste of meat. She must have eaten any for three or four years. Since she left home, since her father, the old fur trader Rissenstein sent her packing.
She had become too free and too libertine.

She knows Madam watches her undress sometimes.
Madam is a Russian. She is from the aristocracy. The White Russia. That which fled from the Reds. That of the tsars and criminal princes.
Madam’s name’s Cassandre. Sir’s Arthur.
Zelda Rissenstein works for the Fauberts. In Paris. In 1942.

So it’s the war everywhere in Europe. The concentration camps. The Resistants. The prisoners. The coupons. The children go bare foot down the streets. The grey colors of a city looking for itself. Everyone thinks you’re so happy here. Are they really?
The army of occupation is here, too often, too visible, it doesn’t seem it wants to let loose.
People disappear. People we don’t want on the French territory. People who the present régime wants to get rid of. The collaborationists give them to bring war prisoners back. We send the unwanted people away; we have the nation’s sons back. Families have a father, a brother, a son back home, it’s nice, and it’s comforting. The Caring Father* makes sure his citizens are well. That’s for the best. Indeed, those against whom we trade the prisoners, who gives a damn about them, they’re nothing, we don’t want them home, they’re scum, rubbish, robbers, liars, people we suspect.
Look at them, their nose, their eyes, their low forehead, their sharp chin, the black clothes they wear. How awful!

The state did well to neglect them, to suppress their jobs, to displace them, to forbid them being French.
Where are they sent by the way? Who cares? They disappear, that’s good enough. So we get our dear children back home.

Zelda hears all this when she goes to the market place, when she goes for a pack of cigarettes for Sir, when a letter needs sending.

Yet she knows she shouldn’t go out so often. She puts her life at risk any time she steps outside.
Where these people go, Zelda knows it well. Cassandre told her: “Zelda, my child, don’t try to go out, don’t rebel against us, you’re well off with us. Do you only know what they do to people like you? They make them work till exhaust. They practice experiment on them. The other ones they kill and burn them.”

How can Madam know all this? Cassandre. The Oracle. How can you believe such things?

Arthur came in Zelda’s attic last night. He only listened to her while she was sleeping. But while he was watching on her, he found a small bottle of perfume on the bed-side and remembered it was one of Cassandre’s.
He now knows what he had always suspected, this girl is a robber, her beauty stole his senses, and she didn’t just steal his heart and soul.
But he won’t say a word; Cassandre didn’t seem to complain from the disappearing of this small bottle of perfume.

On the following evening, Sir comes home late. Cassandre is alone in her bed. The children are asleep.
The bell rings in the attic and Zelda goes downstairs to show herself in front of Madam. Cassandre greets her dressed in a night gown. She is naked underneath this light piece of cloth.
Half-open, it lets Cassandre’s smooth and white legs show off.
- Go back upstairs my child, go back to your room.
Zelda walks up the tiny staircase. She goes back into her dark attic where only the fragile light of a candle helps her to see in the darkness.

Madam comes in the attic. She’s still wearing her satin night gown but it is wide-open now.
She slowly undresses her servant and drives her hand in the grey cotton panty.
Zelda recognizes there long gone sensations.
Cassandre’s hand join Zelda’s, spread on her breast and rubbing her nipples erected towards Paris grey sky, towards the yellowish ceiling of the dark attic.

Sir has come back home, but they haven’t heard him.
Sir had but one idea in mind. Get out of this freezing cold air, go up to see little Zelda and keep her company a bit of night, warm up against her, forget the horror.
Through the half-open door, he can see his wife, bare-naked, her head resting between Zelda’s thighs. He watches them, an unaware peeper. Zelda felt his presence. But she didn’t say anything; she lets the fire burn her.
What else is she thinking about? About her parents? About what happened to them? About the lost joy? About the joy she found again under Cassandre’s expert tongue.
She comes.

Arthur left them to their easy flow; he went back downstairs. He hanged off the phone. In a short time, life is going to collapse into horror.
He himself won’t be left unharmed.
An hour later, maybe it took them less time, the Gestapo is in the flat and two officers ran up the stairs driving them to the attic where Cassandre and Zelda have fallen asleep.
They are brutally woken up by iron wrought hands that cut their delicate bodies.

When the officers go out, taking both women with them, Arthur thinks about his brother, Armand. Armand is far away now. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
He doesn’t know yet that he will join the two ladies in the Gestapo office tomorrow.

The future will be coarse for them three.
The year 1942 will be soon closing but three long years will follow.
When the souvenir of Zelda is not so insistent in his memory, Arthur will be en route to join Armand and try to forget his past completely.
Cassandre will have gone to other banishment places in the Siberian inferno.
Zelda died a long time ago. I helped her give birth to the child she was unknowingly expecting.
Both died in my arms, blown away by tiredness, hunger and cold.

1st published in French at http://revue.hauteurs.free.fr/zelda.html
Translated into English by the author.

*Philippe Pétain, chief of the French collaborationist government (régime de Vichy) during WW2 - from 1940 to 1944.

Jewish Thought (Elisha Porat)

A.

I met Tzila Biran, a young woman from one a large northern kibbutz, at one of Professor Rosenfeld's lectures.  I was late because the lecture was not in its usual place.  Professor Rosenfeld drew such a large crowd of young people that the small classrooms in the liberal arts building could not hold them all, so the professor moved from one large, vacant hall to another. Though it was impossible to know where his talks would be given, his audience loyally followed. When I arrived, the students were pilfering chairs from the next rooms.  The audience overflowed out the door into the corridor.  I pulled up a chair and joined those at the front to catch a few of the professor's pearls of wisdom.  Tzila came in and sat beside me.  I saw at once that she was an attentive and very diligent student.

The professor spoke of the teachings of Rabbi Soleveitchik who, from his home across the sea in New York, was carrying on, in a manner of speaking, the tradition of his Lithuanian forefathers.  Even as he offered a nod of respect to the free thinkers, he intended his remarks as well for his followers living in Zion.  Her book open before her, Tzila closely followed his discourse.  Each time he quoted a passage from his own copy, she moved her lips in unison.  I noticed that she had a heavy, soiled cloth book-bag and wondered if she came to Jerusalem for a day or two as students from remote kibbutz settlements often did.  Her hands were those of a laboring woman, and I detected the hint of a fine, light mustache above her lip.  She was seated so near me that I heard her every movement and observed her every motion, however slight.  When I allowed myself this small liberty, I could also draw into my lungs the scents of her body and her clothes, and even of the bag set on the floor by her feet.

At the end of each lecture, I would meet some friends in the building's little cafeteria.  Over cups of coffee and dry crackers, we mercilessly dissected the presentation, Rabbi Soleveitchik and his students.  We held in high esteem only Professor Rosenfeld and the lovely, charming girls squeezing their bodies between the cafeteria's closely- spaced tables.  By the time I slipped my volume into my black book-bag and straightened up to see who and what was around me, Tzila was almost out the far exit.  Her movements were so quiet, and her gait so stealthy, that I never heard her gather up her papers, move her chair and sling the heavy cloth bag over her back.  From behind, her walk seemed somewhat clumsy and her blouse, which fell a bit short, flapped loose at her sides.  A sudden and inexplicable wave of affection for her swelled within me.  Long after she disappeared up the stairs, I saw her lips echoing the book open before her.

I learned my lesson and, the week after that, arrived early at the liberal arts building.  I then had plenty of time both to ascertain exactly where Professor Rosenfeld's lecture would be held and to plan how I would meet Tzila as she descended the maze of stairs.  I already knew her name, which was stitched in violet thread on her bag, and even the northern kibbutz where she lived, whose delivery stamp I had glimpsed when I peeked at her open book.  All that, however, merely whetted my curiosity.  I saw before me a young woman who had long since outgrown her youth.  She surely was a teacher of Jewish thought pursuing advanced studies on sabbatical, taking the trouble to recharge batteries drained by hostile, apathetic classes who shuddered at the very term "Jewish thought."

Again the hour grew late, but still Tzila had not arrived.  The professor began his lecture and the usual spectacle unfolded before us.  From rooms close by, some of his young, faithful students dragged chairs into the corridor so that, god forbid, torah-lovers coming from afar would not lack a seat.  I had already made a number of trips to the water cooler and poked my nose into the filthy men's room again and again, read with boredom each plate on the doors up and down the hall and even stood at the cluttered notice board to discover how nerve-racking and stressful life was for young students.  Every inch of the board was plastered with notes seeking or offering tiny rooms in old apartments, notices of mental health self-help courses and countless invitations to parties, tennis matches and special religious services.

She arrived at last.  From a distance, I recognized her awkward limp caused by the weight of her bag.  I tarried just long enough for her to grab a chair and join the river of students overflowing its banks.  Then I too went forward, took a chair and pressed behind her so close that I could stick out my tongue and lick the hair on the nape of her neck.  My eye lingered as she set out her books, drew forth the wide sheet of paper on which she liked to scribble and ran her tongue over the spot on her upper lip where the faint line of fuzz sprouted.  I saw next how she gave her undivided attention to the professor's remarks.  She bobbed her head in agreement at the proper times and silently mouthed every question he permitted.  When he asked for volunteers to read aloud selections from Rabbi Soleveitchik's works, I saw her legs tense to rise, but others in the hall were faster.  The professor could not see how ready she was, how responsive to his every whim.

At the end of the lecture, I was quick to follow her.  I carefully climbed the stairs after her and out of the liberal arts building into the darkness falling on the campus.  I trailed her slowly, matching my pace to hers, until she passed through the university's gate and walked up the busy street to the central bus station.  Unbelievable, I said to myself, she's not staying in the city.  I sensed in her a stubborn determination.  She went ahead resolutely and without stopping.  Someone is waiting for her on the kibbutz way up north.  Someone there needs her very much.  I stood by the ticket windows until I saw her pick up her bookbag and get on the last bus to Haifa.

B.

Tzila Biran spotted me another time as I walked arm in arm with a friend through the rented booths of the book fair.  "Your wife is a very beautiful woman," she said, lowering her voice, after one of the lectures.  I laughed so hard that she drew back her chair.

"That wasn't not my wife," I said.  "She's a friend who works as an editor at one of the publishing houses."

"It's not important," she replied.  "Please forgive my mistake."  From what she had said that, I gleaned that if I had any romantic intentions towards her, I had better keep them to myself.  I suddenly remembered seeing a young woman who resembled her at the book fair.  She had sat by one of the displays studying a catalogue and never looked up at the stream of passersby.  My friend had asked me about a book and I had been distracted from Tzila's stooping figure.

Only later did I recall the hair on her nape so familiar to me and the prim collar of her blouse.  I had come to know them very well from my observations during the weekly lectures.  Had my inattention offended her?

I invited her that night to relax with our little circle of barbed wits after the professor finished his lesson.  She shouldered her heavy cloth bag and, without saying either yes or no, started in her camel-like gait towards the stairs.  I did not allow her to escape.  I sprang forward, blocked her way on the stairs and said,

"Come on, Tzila, have coffee with us in the cafeteria.  You won't be sorry."  She shook her head no, but I had the feeling that she did not want me to let her go and dragged her down to the next floor, where the group had already taken seats at our little table.  They pulled up extra chairs when we arrived and made room for us.

"Sit down, sit down.  After the distilled wisdom of Professor Rosenfeld, everyone needs to unwind.  Don't be like all those kibbutzniks always hurrying for the last bus with a glance at their watches and apologizing that they haven't the time to stay."

Tongues wagged around the table about Rabbi Soleveitchik and his eclectic rabbinical language.  On the other hand, some commended him for distinguishing the essential from the trivial.  For some reason, the group believed that if he were in Jerusalem, he would lead the ultra-Orthodox camp against the hot-heads of "Gush Emunim."

Tzila suddenly spoke up.  Flushing all over, she gave us a disjointed account of the time she had seen sleeping bags rolled up at one a yeshiva she had visited.  In all innocence, she asked the rabbi's wife, "What are all the sleeping bags for?"

"What, don't you know?" the rebbetzin scolded her.  "We leave each Friday night to sleep at a new settlement."

My ever-rowdy companions remained silent and let her finish the story without interruption.  "This dark fanaticism," said someone in the stillness that prevailed around the table, "will someday lead us to tragedy and drown us in rivers and rivers of blood.  The sleeping bags are only new symbols for an old world of sanctified greed."

I fixed my gaze on her.  She suddenly appeared so warm that my hand, as if of its own, nearly reached out to cradle her neck.  Her eyes seemed out of focus and she did not know which way to turn her fevered face.  One could see that she had been careless in choosing her clothes, which were in disarray.   She bent to sip her coffee as though unaware of the others around her and the reviving noise. Our sharp tongues ranged over every subject within reach, lazy teachers and dull students and Professor Rosenfeld's blind admirers.  Some other day, I would gladly have made myself a part of the wicked festivity raging around the table, but Tzila Biran's mute threw a damper over me.  I could not forget that it was I who had persuaded her to break her settled routine, to deviate just once from her wild dash to the bus station.

When she stood up, so did I, and when she turned towards the broadstairs leading to the spacious grounds above, I turned after her.  Where was it she was in such a hurry to go after the lectures?  "Why haven't you taken a room in the dormitories or near the university?" I asked her, and added, "Perhaps I can help you in some way."

"No thank you," Tzila answered.  "I don't need any help.  And please don't go to any trouble. Anyway, I can't stay in the city."

"Are you going back to your kibbutz in the north?  What time do you get home?  And how do you travel at night?  Alone all the way every week?  Now that's really crazy."

"I haven't any choice," Tzila replied.  "I have a little girl who waits up for me at home every night."

"But you have a husband and parents and friends," I said.  "You can make arrangements.  I know kibbutz life."

She blushed in the dark, and I could feel the color jetting to the base of her neck.  After a brief silence, she said, "No, that is impossible.  I live alone with my child, and I have to get back."

I accompanied her, saying nothing, to the central station.  I began to suspect that she was concealing something in her life from me.  I suddenly felt sorry for the young woman beside me. I wanted to switch bookbags, so that I would carry her heavy bag while she took mine, but she refused.  If I could have thought of some idea that would relieve her depressing silence or ease her camel-like gait, I would generously have offered it, but nothing that would lift her spirits her came to mind.

The same old story, I thought to myself.  Callow youths rashly married, pregnant too soon, the baby practically a surprise and then the father ups and leaves.  That's not how he saw his life, perishing among heaps of notebooks and the gripes of a weary teacher.  And then again, maybe not.

Perhaps hers was one of the heart-wrenching legacies of the war.  A wonderful marriage, a brief, glorious summer full of promise and happiness, then her young man called down that autumn to the Suez Canal, never to return.  You could read sad stories like that ad nauseam in the pages of the weekly supplements.  But I did not permit myself to ask her any personal questions.

Before she boarded the bus, I did ask how she had liked our little coffee klatch in the cafeteria. She smiled at me and tucked in the wayward tails of her blouse.  "If you did, make it a habit with us.  It's a weekly meeting.  We'll start with coffee with the gang and see how it goes."  She smiled again and propped up her cloth bag so she could lean against it during the long ride.

I told her I had a small room among the dormitories in Jerusalem.  If she preferred that to the table in the cafeteria, we could drop by my lodgings.  "Just ring twice."  Beads of perspiration began to glisten through the fine, light strands of youthful peach fuzz on her upper lip.  As the bus pulled way, I slowly left the station, my heart heavy with the words I had failed to speak.

C.

One day, Professor Rosenfeld assembled the faithful after the completion of his lecture and invited them to his home.  I turned to Tzila and asked if she would go with me.

"What for?" she asked. "What's so special about his house?"

"It's some family celebration, I'm sure," I answered.  "But the highlight comes later when the professor offers personal comments, straight from the heart, to his favorite students.  Come on, we'll tag along with them one time.  You'll see, it'll be interesting."  She hemmed and hawed but I insisted.  "And if it gets late and you can't make it home tonight, I'll take care of you," I said.  "I'd be happy to share my room in the dormitories with you."   She still hesitated. Her hands fiddled with the notebooks and texts in the bag at her feet.  Finally, she looked at me and the lecture hall growing empty.

"Why don't we leave our bookbags at the coat racks," I suggested, "to take a load off our feet?" But Tzila would not part from her bag and slung it over her shoulder.  I had to clutch my black bookbag and hurry after her for fear that she would lose her nerve somewhere on the stairs and resume her usual route to the bus station.

She did not change her mind.  We walked side by side down the steep short-cut to the eastern gate and sailed through a dense thicket fragrant with the fresh smell of pine needles.  The white rock came into view occasionally.  Tzila nearly tripped over it and when I caught her fall, she willingly held on.  We slowly descended to the exit in the wadi.   She suddenly was moved to tell me of a sweet gesture made by her students, who knew of the long hours she spent traveling south on the suffocating bus to Jerusalem and back.  Some days before, two girls had risen at the end of a routine lesson, stammered something about the need to renew one's zeal and drive, and presented her a huge thermos.  She had been touched.  It was a gift from the whole class, the girls said when she tried to thank them, even those students who could barely tolerate Jewish thought.

"It was as though they knew how every penny I save goes to building a basic library in Judaism, and how thirsty I get on these insane bus rides."

Many guests had already gathered at the professor's house.  The party was in full swing.  He had put on a wholly different face and appeared before his faithful as a genial family man, befriending strangers and introducing outsiders into the infectious good cheer of his home. After announcing the family celebration and raising his glass for a brief toast, he turned to the real business at hand.

"The time has come," the professor began, "for us to start sharing some of the riches we have stored up over the school year.  There are others less fortunate than we, even some who know none of the joy of Judaism and the crowning glories of Israel.  He who is wealthy," like the professor and his faithful students, "must know that the essence of all learning is simply this: give of yourself to others."

He had already consulted a select inner circle of confidants to whom he had presented a plan we would surely approve.  There was no better time to reveal its main points, that we might begin our sacred task at last.

Tzila and I sat by the door somewhat apart from the crowd at the professor's feet.  Most of them were excitable youths.  Though they crouched on the floor under his desk, not much was required to inflame their passion.  At once, they began drafting "working papers" and formulating proposals.  The professor turned the reigns of the meeting over to one of his students while he mingled with his darlings.  The enthusiastic young students talked about soldiers they had met stationed at outposts in the Jordan Valley, withered not by the heat of the sun but by a void in their hearts.  How those people yearned, openly or not, for a sweet drop of welcoming the Jewish Sabbath, for the warmth and beauty bestowed by the forgotten customs of our fathers.  It was not only soldiers who hungered for our message.  There were also youths in their thousands, in the towns springing up around Jerusalem, who were just waiting for the good tidings about to gush from this room.  We should all know that this nation had a great thirst for Judaism.  Here we were, shut up in lecture halls, wasting our nights on pointless paperwork in libraries, while outside real life hummed, fates were fixed and events decreed.  Where were we?  What was our contribution?  Would we squander this historic golden moment?

I saw where his remarks were leading and whispered to Tzila that we were no longer needed here.  We could not plunge into the valley to canvass the outposts or depart for the youth recreation centers in the villages nearby to prepare the boys for their bar mitzvah ceremonies. We two, who had come a long way to draw some warmth from Professor Rosenfeld's light, were exempt from the holy crusade on which his students were embarking.  We rose unobtrusively, slipped through the youths who packed the doorway and even sat on the stoop outside, and retreated to the peace of the street.  I invited Tzila to my room in the dormitories. So my offer would seem honorable and upright, I added that the dorm had a well-stocked library on the second floor, a small self-service snack bar and even a humble synagogue where the students themselves conducted services.

Tzila was quite hungry, so we took seats at the snack bar.  The time had long since come and gone for her usual trip home, but I did not dare to ask any questions.  I was afraid she would rise and leave, and this opportune moment, which had unexpectedly presented itself to me, would pass in vain . While I ordered whatever she wanted, I told her that she could ask me a little about myself.  I was trying to strike up a conversation, dispel some of our uneasiness.  She inquired about my family, my wife and children, and I noticed that she was listening intently to my perfunctory replies. Out of the blue, she asked where I had been during the last war.  I warned her that that was a dangerous question.  I had so much to say, my remarks would be more numerous than the sands of the sea and seven nights would not suffice to hear even a small portion of them.  Still, since she had asked, I told her something of the interminable months I had lived through and gave her the merest taste of my innermost thoughts about the war.

She listened, absorbed, to my account. Suddenly, she blushed from her throat to the V-neck of her blouse.  She turned red so quickly that I wanted to lay my open hand over the blotch, as if I had been exposed to the forbidden sight of her flesh stripped naked before me.  Averting her eyes, she asked if I had returned whole from the war, mentally sound, that is.  Had I not abhorred my wife when I came back?   Had I not detested my children? Had not our room on the kibbutz felt like a cage?  And the grounds of the commune, the soil and the lawns, had they not repulsed me each time I trod them?

D.

I hoisted her heavy bookbag for the ascent to my room on the second floor.  "Here's the public phone, do you see it?  And here to the right is the synagogue.  At the top of the stairs is the roof, a huge, cracked spread of tar and plaster and pigeon droppings.  Although the girls complain that it's unpleasant to sunbathe up there in the mess, it does afford a wonderful view of the mountains south of the city, Mt. Gila, the monastery below it and Bethlehem in the distance.  No, wait a minute," I told Tzila.  "Take a seat in this old armchair and I'll put some tea on to boil.  You see, the room may be small but it has everything, a sink, a toilet and an electric kettle.  I don't have to run for the bus at night like a madman.  Now sit down and tell me everything, how he went off to war and what happened to him before he came back.  I'm beginning to understand some things for myself, like your Jewish studies and why you have to travel while your daughter stays home alone."

As I poured the tea, I had the urge to place my rough palm on her crimson throat and bosom, but she looked at me with those short-sighted eyes of hers and licked drops of sweat off her lip. She seemed so dependent on me that I knew I could not so much as lay a finger on her.   She choked on her words and it was unclear to me whether she really wanted to tell me of her life or the comforting conditions I had forced on her had put her in the mood. Professor Rosenfeld's name had come to her attention at just the right time, when the routine of her life was broken.  In the beginning, there were only the trips with her husband to the hospital in Haifa for extended treatment following his return from the war.  There had been consultations, discussions and sleepless nights, after which the kibbutz advised her to leave and go her own way so she might rebuild what the war had destroyed.  But life is not so simple.

I sat beside her, sipping tea and urging her to drink with me.  I sensed things that she had not spoken.  He had returned from the war crippled in spirit.  Long days and nights of semi-consciousness and then, when he came to, the refusal to recognize Tzila as his wife.  He fell on her and asked, what she was doing in his room, what had she to do with him and the little girl?  It was interesting that he had known the girl at once and embraced her without reservation.  He had even told Tzila that she was not needed, he could take care of the child by himself.  In the weeks after that, however, he went into decline, sinking into a deep sleep in which he forgot all his obligations and from which he did had no desire to wake.  Then came more trips and doctors' visits.  Finally, he abandoned their room hoping to settle himself into the home of his attending physician.  With difficulty, the doctor convinced him to leave her house, but he would not return home to his ruined family.

Sometimes, in a rare period of sanity, he suggested that they amicably separate and even encouraged her to make a new life for herself.

She wept as she spoke.  Her tears mingled with the tea in her cup.  There was nothing I could do to stem the flow but put some paper towelettes near her. Beyond the room's thin walls, young students working off excess energy raised a ruckus in the dorm.  Loud music blared through the cracks and the sound of cushions thrown at the furniture thudded from their rooms. Soon they would begin to jump around and race like the devil through the hall shrieking with abandon.  I was all too familiar with my neighbors' habits.  I had once made the naive mistake of going out to calm them down.  I had lost my breath instead as a captive impressed into their hallway sprints.

One incident more than anything else had cut her to the quick and inflicted an healable wound. Others had seen him wandering one night across the lawn, lugging bedding to the room of a good friend of hers.  That insult had finally made up her mind.  Never mind that he left for war hale and hearty and came home from the Suez Canal a broken shell of a man.  Never mind that a doctor had tended him day and night, and that he had made promises and swore to their daughter oaths he never kept.  But to pick himself up after all that and slink into that woman's room, on the other side of a patch every damn inch of which was observed by a thousand eyes, that was more than she could bear.  It was then, when she went to pieces and even was neglecting her beloved students, that she proposed continuing her education.  She would have been required to do so anyway and, if not for the war, which delayed her schedule, certainly would already have begun her leave.  Friends recommended the professor in Jerusalem who offered balm for afflicted souls and she resolved to go despite all the hardships, the rushing and the fatigue and the uncomprehending looks of her students.

So, I told myself, it is not Rabbi Soleveitchik's commentary in progress, or age-old Jewish values miraculously transplanted to modern society, or the light burning unseen within us, or the wisdom of our fathers slumbering deep in our souls, or even the tireless efforts of Professor Rosenfeld to kindle the sparks dormant in us all.

It was a only matter of a small, frail woman, a stricken daughter and a man who, though sound of body when he returned from the Suez Canal, brought tragedy down on the three of them.  I was no great sage.  What had I done for her?  Occasionally whispered jokes in her ear during the lectures?  Dragged her to my circle of friends in the basement cafeteria? mysteriously trailed her in the dark of the stairs to see what course she was taking and whether there was any chance I could deflect her to my room in the dorms?

And if I had done one thing or another for her, I also, most unfairly, had demanded much more from her in exchange.

It was purely by chance that matters had turned out one way and not another.  It was luck that she was a woman riven by doubts and I too hesitant to take risks.  Had we been different people, I would long since have insinuated myself into her mixed-up life, immediately after our encounter at the book fair or perhaps even earlier than that.

I looked at Tzila seated in my room and saw before my eyes another woman blooming through the image of neglect I knew.  Who cared about the flapping tails of her blouse and her pants unstitching at the seams, or the uncombed hair on her neck and her perpetually disheveled collar, or the soft, blond down above her lips?

How deceptive one's eyes are.  Nor can one rely too much on the murmurs of the heart.  I had pushed my chair against hers so I might lean close and sniff the scent of her body, I had blocked her path on the stairs and forced her to descend with me to the cafeteria, and yet I had failed to see from the start what I had to see.  If she had not blushed so startlingly that my hand of itself had sought to reach forward and clothe the flushing nakedness suddenly exposed, perhaps I would never have noticed her.  And she would have been invisible among the crowd of students devoted to the professor who taught Jewish thought in Jerusalem.

translated by Alan Sacks

© All rights reserved

The Door on the 9th Street (Danny C. Sillada)

“The thought of suicide is a great source of comfort: with it a calm passage is to be made across many a bad night…”

-         Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

      

Along the 9^th Street at door # 4 of an old Spanish apartment, the blue paint is flaking off from the surface of a century-old narra door revealing its antique look, which is typical of old Spanish doors during the pre-war era in old Manila.

Bereft of any gilding, the door # 4 is accentuated by a rusted chime hanging at the topmost level of its vertical wooden frame. When the door opens, it creates a strident noise, a repetitive resonance of hinges evoking an eerie feeling. And one could almost hear the sound of footsteps of previous tenants coming in and out through the doorway.

How many of them? No one could tell but one thing is certain, the door has been a silent witness to the stories of those who came and passed though it. 

What is outside the door is relatively the same inside the apartment: old wooden furniture with faded shellac coating, holed and dilapidated ceiling and a coarse wooden floor that squeaks during summer, evident of the lack of maintenance by an eighty-year old Spanish-Filipino landlord.

The recent occupant of door # 4 is a forty-five-year old man who used to have a family, but rumor has it that his beloved wife abandoned him for a wealthy lover, bringing with her their three children ranging from 7 to 16 years old. Since then, the solitary tenant has been distant and aloof from his friends and neighbors. He rarely goes out from the apartment, except at evening time for his night shift job as a security guard at the National Museum.

But tonight, the occupant did not report to his work, the light at the living room is switched on, which he usually turns off before leaving from the apartment.

The interior of his apartment is bleak and dreary, the furniture is awkwardly arranged in a random setting, curtains are old and unchanged for weeks or months, and the wallpaper is peeling off from the wall. The wooden floor is littered with muddy boot prints, old newspapers and cigarette butts emitting a pungent smell into the air. The utensils on the table and at the kitchen are piling; strewn in disarray covered with grease and molds as though the place had been abandoned for years.   

On the narrow hallway leading to the three bedrooms, are frames of photographs tilted and dangling on either side of the wall. Below the wooden frames are names, places and dates when and where the photographs were taken.               

On the right side of the hallway, a hanged photograph of a boy blowing the seven candles on top of the birthday cake with other children gazing at him; his father is holding a huge box containing a birthday present. Parallel to the hanging frame is another picture of a young lovely woman breastfeeding her child with long curly hair down to her waist.                                                      

At the other side of the same hallway is a photograph of a newly-wed couple in black and white; their shimmering faces depict the happy moments of their wedding surrounded by their family members and relatives. Adjacent to the picture is a bigger frame of a family portrait of five; the happy couple is standing behind their three beautiful children, a young lad and two lovely girls. The boy’s name is Zachary, fifteen years old and the girls are Lily and Lolita, six and ten years old respectively.

By looking at the photographs on the wall, they portray typical family members teeming with love and affection with no hint of regret or discontent. Sometimes, though, photographs can be deceiving; they masked something hideous, which the posers are trying to conceal through their best images.

At the entrance and inside the master’s bedroom, scattered letters and cigarette butts are pullulating all over the floor. The ceiling is almost bare with cobwebs covering the wooden beams and electrical wirings. The place is totally cluttered that it could be mistaken as a storage room.

Beside the king-size bed is a small brown table with a dimly-lit capiz lamp. At the outer covering of the lamp is a pasted paper with undecipherable words inscribed on it. Hanging above the bed’s headboard is a relatively huge close-up portrait of a woman with metallic silver frame facing toward the door.

The glass frame is cracked, but the picture seems to defy the broken glass with its imposing presence. The woman’s portrait is captivating, a figure similar to the pictures in the hallway. She is in her late 30s, but her face retains a youthful look: deep-seated eyes, cheek boned and dimpled with aquiline nose.

The woman is the epitome of a mestiza Filipina, a mixture of Spanish and Filipino blood. However, despite her endearing presence, something inexplicable is lurking beneath her eyes, something deep that foretells deception and defiance. But she is also the kind of a woman that any man would dream to possess, and a very expensive woman to lose.

Meanwhile, silhouettes of human figure amid the shadows of foliage are delicately projected at the bedroom’s wall with streetlamp’s light cascading through the window. One noticeable shadow is the vertical figure of an abaca rope tied on the wooden beam at the ceiling. The other end is carefully entwined around the man’s neck; a wooden chair is standing on the floor, supporting the weight of his body.

The man appears to be wallowing in extreme desolation. Tears are dripping like a loosened faucet from his hollowed eyes while listening to the song of The Beatles playing on an old turntable stereo at the corner of the bedroom. The neighborhood is quiet outside the apartment; the nocturnal sound of crickets is faint and distant, the atmosphere is abysmal…

When the music stops, the abrupt sound of a fallen chair reverberates; the man and his shadows on a faded wall are silently swinging like a pendulum…

Promises (Elisha Porat)

translated from the Hebrew by Alan Sacks

During a break in my radiation sessions, I met Motke in the outclinic next to the medical center. He was a buddy who had served so many years with me as a reservist in our recon platoon that I had forgotten when we first met. Though pale and weak, hepulled me down beside him on the bench across from the doctors'room. He was thrilled to see me. With a tug at my shirt, he said:

"Do you remember that ambush in the summer of '69? When I was wounded in the battle below Ufana? That innocent little Syrian village, shepherds' hovels and thick Tabor oaks with peeling trunks sprouting right out of the basalt walls. What an ambush, so deceptive. The fields of basalt became a living hell when the Syrians opened fire on us with 20 millimeter guns. Do you remember the shower of ricochets? Do you remember the sickening whistle of stone chips? How long did the whole ambush last? Ten minutes? A quarter of an hour? How long did that murderous fire rake us? Itseemed like an eternity to me. I lost my faith in watches then. And when the fire died down, and the slow as molasses rescue team finally arrived, I looked back over my shoulder once more towards that picturesque Syrian hamlet, towards that sweet mirage, Ufana, a handful of low houses, their roofs flat and dark, planted among the gloomy knolls. An astonishing nest of unexpected evil.

" I was evacuated too, because of a light wound in my back from one of those treacherous ricochets off the hostile basalt. Do you remember how I tried to make a joke of it all the way to the aid station? From where I was lying in the evacuation carrier, I wanted to lift the men from their depression. It was awful there in the armored carrier. I remember that I pretended to be a famous radio announcer, mimicking him as I broadcast the incident at Ufana. I was precise and excited, true to the horror as if I'd been a broadcaster from birth. The boys helped me with the game,chiming the portentous warning beeps just before the news, afterwhich I imitated the famous announcer's grave, pretentious voice.

"Slowly and with emphasis, I read the names of the boys lying on meinside the evacuation carrier. I deliberately threw in the namesof our buddies who had stayed behind at the base in Kuneitra andhadn't been wounded in the ambush. Lucky stiffs! We were all lightheaded from the tension, the shock of surprise, our woundsand the wonderful feeling that we had been saved. Who could control his excitement at a time like that?

"'Motke,' I vowed to myself between bonejarring jolts of the galloping carrier, 'Motke,' if you manage to get out of here in one piece; if you make it to the landing zone at Kuneitra safe and sound; if you survive the flight to the hospital, you'll never comeback. You can wipe the illusion of ruined Ufana, the track of dust sifting beneath you, the basalt mounds and the skeins of vines, from your life's map. You can erase from your life the grooved floor of the carrier and the redhot hood of the scout car on which you lay when the 20 millimeter shells unexpectedly burst from thebunkers concealed at Ufana. From now on, you'll be wrapped in asoft, cushy flak jacket. You'll take care of yourself from here onlike a woman at the end of her pregnancy. And you'll give up your.killer cigarettes.
"So, while we lay on the floor of the carrier in a sweating, bleeding pile of wounded men, we swore one another solemn, inviolable oaths. No more foul, lifeshortening habits. An end tosmoking, to overeating and infidelity. As the wounded were loadedonto a helicopter, I looked back again towards the foot of thedistant hills overlooking the ruined town and the barren knollsaround it. For the last time in my life, I saw the little villageof Ufana feigning innocence in the soft morning light and swayingwith the wind's refreshing breeze as if in a dream.

"Where am I, and where is the flak jacket around me? Where amI and what has become of those vows? Do you think I've stopped smoking? Have I forsaken gluttony and adultery? It seems to methat my appetites for all these have even grown since I was wounded: more cigarettes, more pigouts and, yes, more cheating on mywife, too. How could I have treated myself like a woman ready todeliver? Look, I didn't even know how to behave when my wife went into labor with our children. Where is that feeling of intoxication, that sense of promises never to be broken, beneath a heap of wounded men? To live better and as soon as we came off the chopper at the hospital's cramped landing zone, even before I was staggered by the scent of the sea, I had already forgotten my vows.
"Why was I punished? Why were the guys punished? Who thehell is it who decides who'll be wounded? What would have happened if I had dawdled on my final leave, as my wife had begged me, andnot hurried off to join the patrol that was hit?.

"As you can see, you understand how it is, I recovered quicklyenough from my wound. I was lucky, the injury wasn't serious. Butsome thoughts still gnaw at me. I went back to work, to stress,bosses' orders and silly arguments with the employees under me. Asfor the family, I really tried to bridge the chasms between me andmy wife. Her devotion during the first days of my injury knew nobounds. But that, it turned out, only made things worse between usbecause it galled me that I didn't know how to repay her. I reallythought in the beginning that a small miracle had occurred, givingour love a fresh start. Then, little by little, matters sank backinto their old, oppressive rut. I couldn't even thank her the wayI wanted. We fell into the old quarrels, the usual jabs andpredictable reconciliations. Imagine, I even wanted to surpriseher with a short trip abroad, but by the time I began making thenecessary arrangements, I saw that it was ridiculous, absolutelypointless. I was all mixedup, befuddled like a boy, when I toldher, in my roundabout way, about the trip I had canceled.

"But the situation today is much worse. You can see that itisn't the light wound from the Ufana battle. I've had plenty oftime between radiation treatments to vow all the vows in the worldand change my perverted habits 77 times. And how does all thathelp? On the contrary, now I can smoke all those forbiddencigarettes serene in the knowledge that these are definitely mylast ones. I can overeat to my heart's content because I know,even without the doctors' nagging, that these are my last binges. I struggle only with my affairs. It's hard to cheat on your wife.when you're sick. I don't get around so well, either. There arebad spells of weakness when I'm unwillingly driven to reestablishthe old alliance with my wife and make the mistake of mumbling apartial confession in her ears. But she isn't satisfied with anincomplete story. With rising fury, she wrings further detailsfrom me in my weakened state: more names, more places, more dates.

"It's unbelievable how much suffering there is in the world. It sometimes seems to me that my entire life has been nothing buta hectic passage from one station of pain to another. Sometimes,I find happiness in knowing that others suffer, too. Fortunately,I don't have to share in all the heartache around me. I could notbear up under that burden. But sometimes, right after my treatments, when I feel especially miserable, I'm suddenly ashamed, Iyearn to be completely different and share in all the world'sgrief. Look around me here, in the hallway, in the waiting roomsand at the doctors' doors. So much suffering is concentrated here.

"After my wound at Ufana, when I knew that I hadn't been badlyhurt and would soon recover, and might even make something out ofit, I was filled with a childish desire to contemplate everythingas a reporter would. In other words, with detachment and anoutsider's eye. Once again, I made myself an announcer like thefamous one on the radio and reported directly from the firefightin the north, my own personal suffering front. Yes, it's a realscandal, that impulsiveness of mine, how inane I am, whipped on bya passion for games. Among the wounded thrown on top of me weresome very badly hurt. One of the boys was even in danger of losing.his life. Do you remember how we all pulled together then? Thewhole unit called up, guys refusing to be released just so theycould spend time with the wounded. What a spirit of brotherhoodbound us all. We were so close. There was a bedrock faith thateverything had to turn out all right. We were all united in fearand love and averting pain.

"Wrap myself in a soft flak jacket for the rest of my life? Pamper myself in my remaining years like a woman expecting anymoment? What nonsense. What mindless idiocy. Promise myself that I'll abstain from adultery? What a naive, childish way to bribethe one who toys with our lives. You can see that even this littlepayoff wasn't wanted. When I turn around and close my eyes, I see Ufana's black basalt mounds once again, the bursts of fire andsmoke from the 20 millimeter guns. With difficulty, I stop myself from dropping and crawling beneath the scout car, from feverishlyburrowing into the layer of wicked basalt. I must remain erect. I must see with my eyes, and feel with all my body, how the swift,unseen sliver of metal flew at me in a wholly indifferent, metallicmalevolence, struck and changed my entire life.The door to the doctors' room across from us opened, and anurse came out and called,
"Motke, come in, please."

I rose and stood beside him.

(c) All rights reserved .