Three Weeks in October Read online

  We were wed on a summer afternoon, the modest ceremony followed by a reception in Beni’s garden. Wedding gifts—mostly pots and pans and flower vases—piled up in the bedroom and Daniel was as confused and slightly bored as I was. We held hands reassuring each other and drove to his apartment later. There was no honeymoon. Lovemaking was satisfactory, if not passionate, and we sheltered each other into self-sufficiency. In a week we had a daily routine; after a couple of months we needed very few words and communicated without them. There was work, a few friends, and later a new apartment and the first child.

  The doorbell interrupted my thoughts. There was an unshaven red-eyed soldier who smiled faintly. “No alarm. Just a letter from the colonel.”

  He handed me an envelope.

  I asked him in for coffee, but he had no time. “Twenty-four-hour leave,” he said, “so much to do,” and winked. He left and I opened the letter.

  “My Amalia,” it read, “I don’t know where to start, so I’ll leave the tales to my return. I am glad I am here—less exhausted than those who have been fighting, some fresh ideas. We are going to evacuate soon, I suppose, but the Egyptians will not forget our presence here, in Africa, so near Cairo. It’s primitive and beautiful, an oasis of tropical plants and waterways, flat and docile. So different from the Sinai we knew together. Beni is still superman though many of his men are dead. I miss you and the children, more than you can imagine, and think of all the things we have done together, the small things and the big ones we shall still do.

  “The destruction of this war only emphasizes the need to live fully, and the routine we have created for ourselves will have to change. I doubt that this is the last war, so between now and the next one we shall have to swallow life in bigger doses. Only here do I realize what you’ve been through at the hospital. I’ll try to call you, please take care and kiss the children. I love you. D.”

  The children were home, like hand-delivered birthday gifts. Runny noses and pink faces, shining eyes and half-sentences, little fingers hugging me and wet lips on my cheeks. With them there were no thoughts of the past, no dreams of the future, just joy of now and here and no time for question marks.

  It was a sunny day and we packed our lunch in a basket and walked to the nearby field to look for snails, ragworts and turtles. We sat on the wet grass and our shoes were heavy with mud. We ran among the winter flowers and invented funny names for them. Two falcons hovered above us searching prey and a black cloud approached from the west, above the sea, pushing the blue away. I didn’t believe in omens but it was time to go home.

  As I put the children to bed and listened to the news, I felt strange. For weeks now I had been in the ward at this time. The hospital quickly became a memory, but the habit of ordinary life hadn’t yet resumed. Something was different. Not only the absence of Daniel, whose letter I read to the boys, but the sense of security that I always felt with nightfall. Children tucked in bed after a bath, a Bach record in the background, the hot cup of tea and a warm hand-knitted pullover were not sufficient. I had doubts. Doubts about our strength, our victory, our future, our reason.

  I called Shula in the hospital. She assured me all was calm and promised to say good-night to Avi for me. No. 7’s condition had worsened in the last hours and Leib was in the room with him.

  I said I’d come in the morning and she wished me pleasant dreams. I seldom had dreams and I couldn’t sleep. For the first time in weeks I was in bed at night, and my eyes remained wide open. My head felt empty, one thought chasing another and then evaporating as I sank into a world of flimsy fantasy.

  I wanted to fall in love. Not again, but differently. I saw myself running along a beach on an exotic island, Fiji, Jamaica, Martinique, any strange name. And there I meet someone I know. Not a face I can identify, and not a stranger, but someone who was, is, there all along. We are walking in the moonlight, there are palm trees and night birds and the sound of waves caressing billions of sand grains. We make love, we touch, we say silly things and I am filled to saturation with a heaving growing emotion until I lose control. The man is always a silhouette—wide shouldered and tall. Young, but not boyish. His voice is deep and I can’t see his face. The man has no face, and I, too, am only a silhouette. Lighter, legs longer than mine, hair darker, eyes greener, everything accentuated and perfected. I didn’t really want it to happen. I wasn’t an adventurer; I was afraid of the unknown. I would never make it alone to Martinique anyway, and missing heartbeats because of great emotions frightened me. But it was good to lie awake and imagine, then pull the blanket up, curl into its folds and sleep.

  Rani coughed in his sleep. I gave him some water and watched him smile and sleep again. He wouldn’t let go of my hand, and I sat there watching his curly head on the pillow. One bed with one child, not the rows of white beds in the large room in the ward. Did we always suppress the thought of another war, watching our children? It couldn’t happen to us. Amnon thought so and he is gone, his son is alive but an invalid. Daniel is in the middle of mine fields and No. 7 is parentless. Rani let go of my hand and I looked at Ofer, for the first time thinking of him in uniform and feeling a pain in my chest. As if all the tears in the world formed a huge wave mounting and stopping just there, between the ribs and the throat. I didn’t cry. It couldn’t happen. This had to be the last war.

  When I entered the ward the next morning I knew we were all losers. In daylight I saw the corners and the scars, and even the white, which at night showed clean recovery, seemed gray and stained. Behind the laughter and greetings of the boys there was a touch of defeat. Futility was stronger than victory and the sunlight pouring in exposed us all. Leib greeted me with a fatigued smile. He was leaving. Two surgeons had returned from field hospitals, and though he was asked to stay, he felt he had done his share.

  I hoped he wouldn’t crack the usual half-joke, “See you next war,” but he did. Banality was contagious, too. He gave me a couple of novels he’d read and liked, and promised to write. We walked together to the last room. Two monitors were brought in during the night; Arik’s life was a hopeless countdown now. His entire existence was horizontal lines, jumping occasionally, reaching electronic peaks and forming yellow canyons on a screen.

  “That’s it,” Leib sighed. “A matter of hours. Makes me leave with a sense of failure, guilt perhaps.”

  “You saved many others.”

  “I never counted my gains, only the losses.”

  “He won’t die nameless, for what it’s worth.”

  “It makes it worse in a way. It’s a definite life reaching an end, not a bundle of matter and bandages.”

  Leib stayed in the room staring at the screen, and I went to talk to Avi.

  “Happy to present to you my daylight self,” he smiled.

  “My pleasure. You look awful. Had a good night?”

  He was well enough to flirt and there was nothing brotherly in the way he held my hand.

  “The sun becomes you,” he stated. “You should change your hairdo and get out of uniform and you could be quite smashing.”

  “Thanks. We are friends, remember?”

  “My sister is blushing. I’m a few years late, but you should give me a second chance.”

  Did he remember? A thousand years ago he gave me a ride home on his bicycle. When we were near the garden gate he suggested we share a cigarette. We were teenagers. I was plump and unhappy with my looks and his pimples hid among the freckles. It was spring and the smell of the cheap cigarette mixed with the purest of orange blossom odor. He said he didn’t really like the brother-sister theme we played. He touched my hand which held his bike and said in all seriousness, “You attract me sexually.” I didn’t laugh then. I didn’t answer or move, as if his words in themselves meant doing something wrong or premature. There were girls who “gave” and others who didn’t, like myself. He thought my silence meant consent and his thin fine hand moved hesitantly to the brassiere’s hook. There was a light in my parents’ bedroom window and I man
aged to say, “Not here.”

  “Let’s go somewhere then.”

  “Why do something we shall regret?”

  Once I regained my speech, he let go, and we discussed it in length. Talking things over was as intimate then as doing them. We shared a secret. He thought love followed the touching of breasts and I said it should precede it. In a clownish gesture he kissed the top of my head, promised to try again, and I entered the house feeling very womanly.

  It never happened again, we never talked about it, and I never before remembered the scene.

  Now he was a war casualty, a volunteer from the States, Julie’s estranged husband and the father of Karen. I was Daniel’s wife and mother of two and though not for a second did I wish to encourage him, I felt a sense of warmth at the thought of being wanted, as casual as it was.

  My recollections of the next hour are vague. Nadav wheeled himself in, proud of the progress he was making. I saw the bent figure of Professor Rothman hurrying along the corridor, past the open door. There was commotion at the far end of the ward. The day nurses followed the Professor, returned, passed again. I must have felt that whatever was happening needed professional attention, so I stayed glued to the chair clutching Avi’s hand.

  Avi summoned Leib when he caught sight of him. The doctor said to him in English, “He died. The guy in the last room.”

  “Arik,” I said. “That was his name. Arik Berkov.”

  They must have disconnected the tubes, electrodes, needles in minutes for before long, still sitting there unable to move, I saw the nurse pushing the bed out. It hit the wall and mechanically I said, “Watch out.” I couldn’t see the corpse. A sheet covered the bandaged head. We never knew him really alive.

  I must have fainted when the bed was transferred. I remember circles, gray and white, growing wider, then narrowing, and a strong nausea.

  When I came to, I was in the Professor’s room, a cold towel on my forehead and a strong smell of valerian in my nostrils.

  I tried to sit and couldn’t and mumbled words of apology. Leib tried to talk to me and, suddenly aggressive, I hushed him.

  The nurse said she had called my mother and she was home with the children. I couldn’t drive, and one of the interns would take me home.

  The Professor asked to be left alone with me.

  “I know you cared. You refused to accept the void. For us it didn’t matter. A life saved, fought for, has a biological identity, even if relatives don’t surround the bed. To us he had identity just as much as the next patient.”

  “I know you tried.”

  “You had an accusing look at times. As if we were letting him die, as if he were an object to us. It wasn’t true.”

  “My head feels heavy.”

  “Gideon will take you home. Better take a few days off. We are slowly returning to normal. You’re always welcome as a visitor.”

  No, he didn’t say we shall meet in the next war. He, too, felt he had had his share and managed to think about it as the last one.

  A doctor called Gideon drove me home. I asked him to tell Avi I’d call him. He helped me to the apartment, stroked the heads of the children, and explained to my mother that I needed rest.

  “Accumulation, you know. It happens to all of us. A spring unwinding. I just returned to the ward today. A patient died, perhaps someone she was attached to.”

  He left. I closed the bedroom door and lay on the bed in my uniform. I shivered and felt an enormous wave mount up from my chest, choking and heaving, and the tears were streaming.

  I, too, was a loser. Not a victim, not a sacrifice, just a plain loser. I clung to margins, held to edges and sought security in outskirts, corners. Now I was thrown in and helpless, pathetic in my inability to cope without even the comfort of self-pity.

  Daniel, I whispered. I wanted him. How I needed him now. His words, his touch, his silence.

  Yes, I talked to him. We will swallow life hungrily. We shall do things never done, dream and fulfill, and there on the beach in Jamaica my lover’s silhouette suddenly had a face and it was Daniel’s. We shall reach the sky and the horizon and fly together and love. “Oh, please,” I whispered, “come back soon.”

  BOOK TWO

  DANIEL

  CHAPTER

  9

  I left Amalia a short note, packed a few things and changed. The khaki uniform was too clean, too starched, too well ironed. The war was almost over, and I felt like a toy soldier walking down the stairs of the apartment house. It was foolish to leave, but impossible to stay: Beni had insisted he could use me.

  I drove past the outskirts of Tel-Aviv and along the shore road heading south. When the orange groves were behind me and the first sand dunes appeared pale yellow and wet, I felt better. The green fields, the forests and the hills covered with flowers I associated with picnics and the children. The bare desert, cracked land, treeless landscape was man’s land. Men behind camels or driving jeeps or inside tanks. Men exposed to each other—as enemies or friends. I stopped near Gaza for some soldiers returning to their units from a short leave. They fell asleep as I turned west into the Sinai. Refidim, the large dusty camp in the center of Sinai, was as far as I could go in my own car. Last time it was with Amalia’s head in my lap, sleeping while I caressed her hair. A day earlier I had proposed to her and I still wondered whether it was instinctive or the result of thought. It didn’t matter. I was committed and had no regrets. There was something compact about her, earthy without being vulgar, strong without the need to prove it. Perhaps for the first time I had met a woman who was free of the feminine paraphernalia, the games, the caprices, the makeup inside and outside. There were no tears, no exclamation marks, no coyness, no miniature tragedies, no pretense of dependence. No feminine mystery either, just the profound mystery of another human being, another complex of brain and heart to be explored and shared. There was no vanity, only self-esteem, knowledge of what was there and what was lacking, no perfection.

  For six years we’ve been together, sharing growing pains and rounding the edges. The Amalia I left today is the same person I married six years ago. No subdued looks of a domesticated female, no added glamor in order to fight fleeting time, the same earnestness I took with a smile, the efficiency I marveled at, the attempt at being an outsider, failing so often. Never since we met did I want another woman. I almost regretted the affairs I had had before. The futility and waste of time of the short flimsy relationships. The crudeness and simplicity of brief emotional involvements, the poverty and dullness of communication I had had with other women, were stains on my memory, without pleasure or joy or pride.

  For a moment I felt terrible about leaving the way I did. A coward. I had left a note as if Amalia were my landlady. I already missed the children, was afraid to think of them, as a physical pain surged in my chest whenever I did. I had a job to do, back in action. I was well equipped for it and I had no regrets, only I wish they could have been here with me, the three of them, in the back seat rather than in my mind. In the back seat the soldiers were asleep. Amalia was at the hospital or asleep at home, my children were safe and innocent and I was heading south, naturally, willingly, but with a heavy heart.

  I parked the car next to other civilian vehicles, woke up my passengers and locked the doors. From Headquarters I called Beni. He suggested I spend the night in Refidim, and drive out the next morning with one of his unit’s doctors who was expected in the field hospital that night.

  The girl-soldier in the communication center offered me coffee. It was too sweet but it was hot and I needed it.

  “They are fighting up north,” she said. That was all.

  “Have you been here all along?” She was a plump girl, brown hair gathered back and smooth skinned. Her eyes expressed sympathy without mischief.

  “No. When the war started I was near the canal. We were evacuated to Beer-Sheba and returned here a few days ago. Are you back from home leave? I haven’t seen you before.”

  “A six-year home leav
e. No. I’m joining Beni now. I left Refidim after the ’67 war. It’s changed.”

  “It’s a city now. Do you like music?”

  I didn’t answer. The question didn’t register.

  “There is a chamber-music concert tonight.”

  I left my bag with her. My name was written on the canvas with a felt pen.

  “Daniel Daron,” she read. “I am Dina. See you later.”

  I walked out, and buttoned my wind jacket. It wasn’t the desert camp I knew. The boots didn’t sink in the sand and the sky was overcast, then dark, without a sunset. Blackout was observed, and the headlights of vehicles coming and going were painted dark blue. I looked for the familiar—a face, a landscape, our old headquarters. I had memories. I was there, where things had happened to me, and I felt like a stranger surrounded by children. Young boys in uniform, well protected from the wind, hurried by. Nobody asked me who I was or what I wanted there. It felt like a foreign city where they were speaking a strange language or another planet. I followed the sound of a helicopter landing and arrived at the airstrip. The skeletons of Russian choppers were still there, leftovers from 1967, but unapproachable. Three helicopters landed, one after the other, and people hurried toward them. They were unloaded and reloaded and took off. And silence again. I thought of going to the field hospital to look for Beni’s doctor, then changed my mind and looked for the officers’ dining room.

  There was a concert tonight, Dina had said. Chamber music. For another hour I wandered about. It felt rather good not to know anybody. The war machine was operating; people did what they had to do. It wasn’t the endless chatter around a bonfire, no longer the small familiar group of people one has met before and is bound to meet again. It was a responsible and well-organized center delegating orders, sending supplies, taking in casualties, communicating with divisions and regiments miles away. Somewhere this machine had a heart, warmth, human feeling. In the hoarse voice of commanders, the care with which the stretchers were handled, even the way the girls handled the paperwork late into the night.