Three Weeks in October Page 12

  “Very British, indeed,” Beni summed up. “Very inconspicuous in this area, just blending in with the retreating Egyptians or the advancing Israelis. You think he is alive and having his tea in a Suez cafe, do you? Or is he clad in a djellaba and riding a camel?” He tore up the picture and threw the bits away.

  The cook came in with a tray and I had to admit that, east or west of Suez, this was a good meal. When the dishes were removed and the map placed once again on the folding wooden table, we both assumed a professional look and discussed the operation. We disagreed from the beginning. Beni thought I should follow the armor and infantry, stay a safe distance behind and go into the area when it was ours.

  “If he is hiding,” he said, “and has managed so far, he can stick it out another couple of days. No need to take risks. If the cease-fire is implemented and the city is in our hands, the 3rd Army cut off and surrounded, you can take your time, walk the streets, knock politely on doors, ask questions—get to the man and fly him back to Tel-Aviv, stopping here for coffee.”

  I knew it couldn’t be done that way. I had to search for him in the confusion of the battle. If he had survived so far, we couldn’t have him killed “by mistake” by our infantry, or blown to pieces by an air bomb or artillery shell. I also doubted that we would be able to complete occupation of a city as large as Suez. Cease-fire might be declared just as the battle is on, and I might miss him by two street corners or one hour.

  We settled for somewhere in between. I was to follow the first wave of attack. I was not to cross into a sector which was not fully in our hands, but I would try to achieve it all before cease-fire was finally declared and observed.

  “Just limit yourself to two places,” he actually ordered. “If he isn’t in the villa or the office, you let go. Get into the jeep and return here for supper. Is that a deal?”

  He had to make a few calls, and I walked out for some air. The sky was bright but not as starry as I had imagined. Occasionally I could hear gusts of small gun fire.

  It was another world. Unfamiliar, unlike deserts we knew, and not half as exotic as Beni tried to make it. The lack of contact with Phoenix did disturb me. He was a fastidious operator, handy with all electronic devices and very professional. There were many possible explanations—he could have been wounded, even hospitalized. He may have saved his skin and gone into hiding, without any equipment. He may be doing his job fervently, gathering information and trusting we’d come for him. He could be dead, too. But as long as there was no proof of that, it was our duty to try. Obviously, he had failed at some point. The Egyptian attack was a total surprise, and if he were there, on the spot, and noticed nothing, it was an unforgivable failure—unless he was sure we knew what to him seemed so obvious from the other side.

  Whatever, I figured, I have to give it a try. The good old sense of responsibility settled comfortably in. Like in Europe ten years ago. I was responsible whether I liked the agents or not, whether they delivered or not.

  When I returned to the trailer, Beni was still on the phone. It occurred to me that it had been only one day since I left home, that I hadn’t thought of the children since the day I left them. That was entirely schizophrenic. Here, in the field, on the eve of an operation, I functioned and operated as a single man. As if the years in between had never happened. I had to apply my brain and memory, with an effort, to reconstruct our bedroom. Where was the telephone at home? What shirt did I wear yesterday? The children from this distance seemed smaller than they actually were. Small heads, fine features, static slides without sound rather than a lively presence.

  “Wouldn’t you like to call Amalia?” Beni suggested, as if he could read her name in my expression.

  “It’s too late. I’ll call tomorrow. If she calls here when I am away, find an excuse and tell her I’ll call back.”

  “I call my wife daily. The one day I didn’t manage, she was already mourning me. Tears, sedation and all. Is it that bad up there? They never had to wait so long.”

  “It’s nervousness. Frustration and incredibility. The first few days we were told—the public was told—we were winning. In minds and hearts it was a repetition of 1967. Then the truth came out and people refused to believe. All the trust and confidence disappeared. The well-being of years fell apart and the supermen dream shattered. Then rumors of the number of casualties, no contact with the front and no possible end.”

  “And when we began advancing? When we crossed the canal?”

  “People didn’t know what to believe anymore. The loss was heavier than the gain. The loss was measured by lives, the gain—square miles.”

  I continued, “I don’t think you know Rudi, he lives in Ramat-Gan. His son was killed in the Chinese Farm Battle. I went to see him. We served together in London and he returned a year ago after a long absence.

  “It was his only son. He was sitting on the sofa in his small apartment, hugging his wife and crying. He didn’t register my entrance, but when I was about to leave he grabbed me. He threw at me all the accusations possible. The politicians who didn’t lead, the generals who didn’t plan, the service that didn’t warn, the illusions we padded our nest with until we were smothered into blindness. There was nothing I could say. He was right and he was entirely wrong. A man in pain doesn’t have to be sensible anyway. I left him and went to see my boss in the service. I wanted him to go and visit Rudi, talk to him, help him get rid of his bitterness.

  “Before I managed to talk he told me Gideon was wounded, asked me to take over this operation. I mentioned Rudi to him, told him what state he was in. You know what he said? ‘I can’t face these things.’”

  “‘These things,’ those were the words he used! My boss, too, has a son fighting the Syrians somewhere. Defense mechanism? So I went home and left Amalia a note and here I am. You did ask how were things away from the battlefield …”

  I wasn’t sure whether Beni was still with me. He was facing me but his eyes seemed to stare at something beyond.

  “What time should I leave for David’s Headquarters?”

  “We’ll decide tomorrow. They are dug in, and if there is still exchange of artillery fire, we’ll have to find the right moment. Do you know how many families I have to visit when I return? How many mothers and wives I have to see? Do you know how it scares me?”

  “It does help them.”

  “Like another marble on the tomb. Not that they blame me. They know I’ve exposed myself, never far away from danger. The first visit I manage. We sit and I tell them about the battle in which they lost their son or father or husband. The children are brought in and I shake their hands and pat their heads. Then the second visit, and the tenth and a dozen more and I feel the whole world is composed of orphans and widows and tears and sighs. I feel I represent everything they will hate forever. The uniform, the red beret, my dusty boots, my trite remarks about sacrifice and devotion. I feel like a rotten jukebox—feed it a bereaved family and it produces a neat little speech.”

  We were both tired. He was at the end of a battle, I was facing one, we both needed rest and time alone. He walked with me to the tent next to the trailer. I was issued field uniform, a new helmet and submachine gun.

  “I have no identity discs,” I mentioned.

  “Do you have an officers’ identity card?”

  This I did have, and we left it at that. I was given a sleeping bag and a blanket for the night and said goodnight to Beni who climbed back to the trailer.

  I chose the soft patch next to a half-track and got into the sleeping bag. I didn’t like tents, I didn’t like underground shelters. I felt safest in the open air. In spite of long training at sleeping anytime, anywhere, I couldn’t fall asleep. Vague thundering sounds from the south indicated a sporadic exchange of fire. Someone was making sure every fifteen minutes or so that their presence was noticed.

  Amalia should be home now. My mother-in-law, whom I trusted but didn’t like, was back in her apartment. Rani and Ofer would be fast asleep. Will t
hey remember this war? I felt strange, as if something had been damaged in my system. The ability to be alone and enjoy solitude was still there, but not without an effort. I was a part of a family; I wasn’t a young man anymore. I wasn’t as comfortable in the sleeping bag as I used to be, and there was something sterile in the taste of danger which used to excite me. I didn’t miss the slippers and the late night talk with Amalia, or the home cooking or the children’s presence. I was only two days away from home. It wasn’t that what I left I longed for, it was that what I found was not the way I remembered it. Priorities had changed. I wasn’t anxious to get into a battle, take risks, run like a fool seeking shelter under fire or crossing a minefield. I had a home, I had responsibilities—by choice, by love. The front-line sense of freedom I must have lost forever. My thoughts drifted in small whirlpools rather than from a continuous line. A sense of guilt about my father surged and filled me. I had never been patient with him. He had made the big decision, which formed and determined my own life—to immigrate to Israel from Poland in the thirties—and this remained the only bond between us. Since then he had always chosen wrong. He had tried a kibbutz, then a cooperative, ended a failure in business and died a bitter, grumbling, penniless merchant. He left Poland to give his family a new life, with new dimensions, and resumed here, after twenty years of complaining, the life he had chosen to leave—a servile life, dependent on money lenders and careless partners and customers. I avoided him when I became independent. I refused to believe he could be changed, and when my mother died, I stopped seeing him altogether. He had no dreams, no aspirations, no faith. I owed him the fact that I was born here. Had he chosen otherwise, I would have been a child in Dachau, but I had a happy childhood in a kibbutz in the Galilee, while cousins of mine, never met or heard from, were shipped in cattle trains to gas chambers.

  This debt made me feel guilty. Only when my own sons were born did I understand it, and it was too late to make up for it. It didn’t matter much. I wasn’t tormented by it, not even upset. Why I should think of him now, here in Africa, God only knows.

  I must have slept a few hours. As I woke up the sun was breaking through a cloud of wet mist in the east. I joined Beni who had just gotten up, and we listened together to the sound of heavy guns firing in the distance.

  “Some cease-fire,” he snapped.

  “I hope we are taking advantage of it.”

  “Just line-straightening. I am told to stay put, but when you drive south you’ll run into convoys of reinforcement. There are three bridges now and they are all jammed with everything from water-tankers to ammunition trucks and journalists in buses.”

  “When am I leaving?”

  “Whenever you are ready. Gabi, a captain, will escort you to David. Make sure you keep your helmet on and don’t get off the road. It may be a long drive.”

  We had a cup of coffee together. Beni was busy on the phone receiving and giving orders. It was only five in the morning, but there was a feeling of urgency, as if everything had to be done quickly before the morning and the war were really over.

  Gabi arrived with a radio jeep. I sat next to him and waved to Beni. He didn’t wave back, just mumbled something inaudible, and we drove east in the direction of the Great Bitter Lake.

  For four hours we drove through the bridgehead. The jeep moved expertly among scores of tanks labeled “Cairo Express,” trucks, tankers, buses and half-tracks. We eagerly watched three dogfights between Migs and Israeli Mirages—the Migs always ending in a spiral descent and an explosion. A dozen times we sought shelter in ditches when Egyptian gunners were aiming at the convoy. The ground around us had been smashed and furrowed by shells, and bloated corpses lay sprawled next to charred vehicles and incinerated tanks. The pressure of the helmet protecting my head and the smell of death made me slightly dizzy. But the creeping sense of having gone through all this before relaxed me.

  The tanks speeded up between bursts of fire. Clouds of dust made it impossible to see. An occasional palm tree seemed entirely out of place. We were real, the white smoke and the planes were real. The sweet-water canal, the pathetic patches of cultivated land, the ruined mud shacks looked like a theatrical decor.

  Gabi concentrated on the road. The shells were of no interest to him. The problem was to survive the traffic, and I was sure he was cursing me every inch of the way.

  By lunch time we were south of the main Suez road and on a hill overlooking an active battlefield. We found David holding a can of peeled grapefruit sections and looking through a pair of binoculars.

  I couldn’t help smiling. The scene was far better than all the stories I had heard about David—and there were many stories. He was tall and his long limbs seemed to interwind peculiarly. His shoelaces were undone, but he was clean-shaven and must have used an after-shave lotion amply. He had an ugly face, features put together by a joker—long nose, small eyes close together, thick lips and square chin. He was famous for his calm in battle, for his use of dirty language in the softest of voices. He was also famous for his courage, his women, his extravagances.

  He looked at us, acknowledged Gabi’s presence and addressed me. “You must be the master spy.”

  “Daniel Darom,” I said and we shook hands.

  “Sit down, son,” he said. This I learned later was a compliment, for he addressed most reservists as “daddy.” “Son” was reserved for soldiers and friends.

  Thus adopted, I crouched next to him and was introduced to the other officers. Gabi turned to leave. I gave him a letter I wrote to Amalia which he promised to give to a pilot in Faid airport on his way.

  “Have some grapefruit sections,” David offered.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Easy guest, ah? Hospitality I’ll shower you with later. Right now we can’t even talk spy business. Not until we screw Ras-Adabiyah. See them running, son?”

  I didn’t see anybody or anything. On David’s map, immaculately clean under plastic in spite of the endless number of grapefruit sections and sardines eaten over it, I saw Adabiyah. It was south of the city of Suez on the gulf.

  “You didn’t go through Suez yet?” There must have been a trace of panic in my voice.

  “Don’t worry, son. What’s for the service, we leave to you. No, that’s tomorrow, if Kissinger and Golda and Sadat will allow us, if the U.N. doesn’t stop us, and if the weather is good—which I promise you it will be.”

  He had earphones attached to his helmet and his gray hair could barely be seen. He talked every few seconds to a small microphone extending from his helmet, but his expression was the same when he was talking to us and to tank commanders trotting south to capture the next point.

  So when he said, “Screw the bitches,” pausing between the words and taking his time to pronounce each, we weren’t sure who he was talking to.

  There was something exhilarating in the atmosphere. A slow sun was setting behind us, beyond Cairo and the Nile, and David emanated confidence which spread to each of us, comforting and soothing.

  He must have lost half his brigade in the battles so far. The casualties were replaced, and he kept asking for the names of the new voices he was talking to. As if he were at a cocktail party—“And what did you say your name was, son?”

  Suddenly he got up, hovering above us on his long legs and stretching his arms. “Fucking dunes,” he said. “Let’s get out of here, children.”

  He fitted his limbs into the front seat of a jeep, while we climbed on a half-track and followed him. One of the officers explained to me that we were returning to the provisory camp on the Suez-Cairo road. Judging by the sounds, the battle was nearing an end. The shelling became sporadic, though it never stopped, and as it grew darker we reached a well-fortified Egyptian camp where David’s Headquarters was situated. A low tent served as a war room. Other than a few intelligence officers near the maps and a well-equipped communication center, the war room was quiet. Two journalists were hectically writing reports next to a wooden table, while a gentle steam
rose from a tea kettle on the field gas stove.

  David excused himself and disappeared, and I used the water tanker outside to remove a thick layer of dust from my face and hands.

  I didn’t feel tired, I didn’t feel out of place, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. It was a kind of home. Not busy with people one didn’t know like division Headquarters. Just doing a job, doing it well and projecting a sense of professional pride and efficiency.

  I thought of Amalia, of myself telling Amalia about it. I wondered whether she, too, like so many women one heard of, would find David irresistible.

  There was a message for me from Beni. I got him on the line.

  “You got out in time,” he said. “We were shelled occasionally, and spent a lousy day figuring out where the next bazooka projectile was going to hit. What’s with you?”

  “I feel great. David’s men got to Adabiyah and the outskirts of Suez. The fertilizing plant or something. What’s with the cease-fire?”

  “Keep your fingers crossed. It seems we claim they broke it and we are fighting back. I doubt if it’ll be effective before sometime tomorrow.”

  “The 3rd Army is surrounded entirely.” I gave him information he must have had already. “Soon they’ll ask for food and water. It’s good to feel on top of it again.”

  “How is David treating you?”

  “Like his own son.”

  “You too … Take care. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  David returned with a fresh can of grapefruit sections. “The fucking cook,” he said, “has got a stomachache. How do you like that! To be accurate—he’s got diarrhea. Doesn’t that boost your appetite!”

  He sent one of the junior officers to take care of the kitchen. “Before he dies, ask the cook for the soup recipe and get someone to prepare it.”

  He noticed the journalists. “Hello, writers,” he said to them. “Two of the commanders will be in to report later so you can get your ‘human touch’ and little anecdotes. It was a good day and tomorrow will be even better. Now if you’ll excuse me, the press briefing is over and I’d like to indulge in classified tactics.”