Three Weeks in October Read online

  He was a pessimist. He saw disasters around the corner and talked a lot about the next war.

  “Not that we won’t win it, but there will be losses.” He used to say he knew who would die in the next war. “Sometimes I look at my men, and I know the doomed ones. I almost feel like getting them a transfer, as if my premonition is going to contribute to their death.”

  “What about you?” I tried to be lighthearted about it. Surely he wasn’t a candidate.

  “No. I’ll be all right. Not immune, but they won’t get me. I’m beyond, in age and rank, the stage of being burnt alive in a shelled tank. It used to terrify me in ’56.”

  And here I am, I thought, in Ward L, filled with armor casualties caught in burning tanks. How different my life would have been were Amnon still around! Then faces, as in a movie, in a series of associations passed through my head. Rina, the Rabbi at the funeral, Uri as a boy, as a soldier, Daniel, my own children, my wedding, my own fearful face in the desert when I heard of Amnon’s death. Then back to Ward L and Avi, Leib and finally No. 7, faceless, nameless. Always back to No. 7, as if he signified something important for all of us.

  Morning light invaded my memories when the public phone rang. The overseas operator had a person-to-person call for Avi. I plugged the phone in room 7. Avi was asleep and I tried to wake him gently. He jerked up, which hurt him, cursed and swore again when he saw my frightened expression.

  “I’m sorry. A call from the States.”

  “Hell. Don’t they know of time difference. What time is it?”

  “Five the next day. Talk and go back to sleep.” I gave him the receiver and left the room.

  “You don’t have to be so well-mannered. You can listen in. No secrets, Sister.”

  It was his wife. They were all coming over. The minute they could get on a flight. Does he need anything, do the hotels function, is it safe to bring the child, what’s the weather like?

  He was amused and furious. One minute it’s a family mourning over a wounded son, the next day he is a travel agent running a postwar tourist attraction.

  “Come and see Israel licking its wounds. Reductions in the Hilton shelter for parents of injured and dead. Half price on air tickets for those in time for a funeral.”

  “Stop it. It’s good that they are concerned with the minor things, kind of self-defense. Your father can take over for one of the overworked radiologists. Anyway, you’ll be happy to see your daughter.”

  “Sure. Straight from Springfield, ponytail and Bugs Bunny. A nice introduction to a country I described as one long white beach with seashells and watermelon stands. All my neurotic wife needs is the storyless story of my roommate.”

  “We all cope with it somehow.”

  “Do we? We push it aside and keep thinking. Remember T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men’—that’s what I keep reciting when I look at him. Please get me out of this room.”

  I waited for the day nurse. The Professor came in first and, as he always did, went straight to room 7. There he stood looking at his mystery patient, every morning expecting the miracle which didn’t happen.

  Avi mentioned to him the possibility of a transfer.

  “In a couple of days, I think. It’s quieter here, good for you.”

  “Sure it’s quiet. What it doesn’t do to my eardrums, it does to my nerves. My family may show up. I’d rather see them surrounded by all those handsome noisy burnt heroes in the big room.”

  “You can take Major Ilan’s bed, he is leaving soon. Only there, his roommate is an amputee, and phantom pains are not good company either.”

  “Any good news this morning?”

  “Still talk of a cease-fire, in a couple of days or so. Last days’ battles are the worst, though. Done in haste, a certain carelessness, as if fate’s verdict is given already and there is no danger.”

  I spoke with the day nurse; she thought, if I could and didn’t mind, that she could use me better during the night.

  “Too many help during the day. We lose control. Mothers and wives of volunteers and teen-agers and missions of ladies bringing in transistor radios and chocolates and shaving cream. What we really need is a guard to keep them away. In your calm manner,” she said, “you are a great help.” Calm manner. Quiet way. This was me. Insignificant in the background. Unobtrusive manner of giving urine bottles, watching infusion containers without screaming in ecstasy, serving food without doing a belly dance. Reassuring, a good listener, a bore maybe.

  Not with Amnon. Then I could be crazy, do things that normally would be only daydreams. Dress funny, talk funny, do the unexpected, argue, fight and then laugh and be free.

  The day nurse touched my shoulder.

  “Go to sleep, we need you fit tonight, it’s not over yet. Not at all.”

  She too was a bore, so we got along well. Did she, too, have fantasies? Did she ever have an Amnon to be wild with? Hair in a bun, impeccable starched apron and cap, small soft hands, she didn’t look it.

  I drove into town to do some shopping for the children. Little toys, sweets, warm underwear, compensating for absence.

  The shops were all open and the main street quite gay. Every woman in town seemed to be shopping nervously, holding a shopping bag or a baby or both. I sat in the cafe where I first met Amnon. The wooden chairs had been replaced by plastic ones and the coffee wasn’t as good. I felt guilty, the way most civilians did. A sunny winter day in a pavement cafe. Somewhere there was a battle. Somewhere there were soldiers, sons and fathers of others, running, falling, shooting, advancing and retreating and reloading and advancing again. Somewhere there were other sounds, shells exploding, bombs falling, chains of tanks, communication sets, hoarse voices of exhausted commanders, jets diving. And it wasn’t in the movie house, it was “our forces.” And “our forces” were people we knew and the sounds and the sights didn’t reach us and when we switched off the radio it was as if it had never happened. Here, in the city, there was a life free of bullets and shells, not even sirens. Just the expression in women’s eyes, remembering and waiting, dreaming and waiting, hoping and counting the lonely nights and long days and waiting.

  “Anything else?” the old waiter asked.

  I paid and stood up. I remembered him from years back. For him I was just another face, for me he was a reminder of my other life, as brief as it had been.

  Next to the cafe, I walked into a bookstore. The owner knew me, for I came in quite often.

  “Not much business?” I asked.

  “On the contrary. Women buy, either to escape into reading or just for the sake of purchasing. How is the family?” Whenever anybody dared ask, they lowered their eyes. It was a risky question these days.

  “Fine. My husband is not in combat, my brother was heard from a couple of days ago. I am stationed in the hospital.” He asked me to see a relative in Ward B, if I happened to pass by, and asked me about the surgeon there.

  “Do you have Paul Valéry’s Monsieur Teste?”

  He pondered. “No, it was a small edition, never reprinted.”

  I mumbled something about having bought it there with a friend ten years back.

  “Must have been before ’67,” he said.

  “See you soon.”

  I drove along the waterfront. Black clouds were gathering and I hoped to make it home before the heavy rain.

  Whenever anyone talked about the next war, it was placed in summer or spring. “If there is no war next summer, we may go abroad,” Daniel said every winter. So did Amnon. War in the winter or late fall was all wrong for both sides. Yet it was raining, roads became paths of sticky mud, visibility was lowest, nights were chilly and the war did go on. Only in the burns ward did they think winter war was preferable because fluid loss was lower. Women were knitting woolen caps and pullovers “for the front,” truckloads of woolen socks were passed out and army kitchens were busy warming up soup.

  When I got into bed it was raining, when I woke up the battle on the Hermon was on.

 
I remembered Ilan’s map on Avi’s body. Mt. Hermon and the city of Suez, two battles to go.

  I got up and started cleaning the apartment. A battle was going on in the north, in narrow paths and up the cliffs, in the fog and wetness, and I had to do something to keep busy. I mopped the floors, did the hand laundry and cleaned the bathroom with fury and boredom and utter frustration. I could hear helicopters and planes going by, north or south, carrying ammunition or casualties. I could hear the baby next door crying, a loud voice of a neighbor on the phone, winter birds, seagulls and wagtails, leaves falling, my own tired footsteps behind the vacuum cleaner. And this was the war. The toughest of the wars, and my anxiety was only skin-deep. I wore the mask of a worried person. I didn’t want people to die or be injured, but there was no earthquake deep inside. A wait, a vigil, time counted and measured mechanically. I wanted to care more, I wanted to cry. There were no tears, just a lot of work to do, and I carried on with shame and guilt until my mother came and the children arrived and it was time to return to the hospital.

  I noticed at the gate an unusual commotion. Cars coming and going, ambulances, doctors and nurses gathering around the emergency ward.

  “Just preparing,” someone said. “The Hermon battle is still on and we won’t know yet how many we’ll get tonight.”

  Ward L was quiet. Room was made for more beds, three guys from the big room left and two more were transferred to the orthopedic ward. The staff was all there, day nurses stayed on and the Professor took a nap in his own room.

  Major Ilan in a wheelchair was holding the map and talking on the phone. Others gathered around him, as he was a source of information.

  “It started well,” he said. “The paratroopers did a good job. It was a face-to-face, snipers and hand grenades battle. The infantry division is in now, trying to get another stronghold, and there it’s bloody. It looks like it’ll last the whole night.”

  “I wish cease-fire had started yesterday,” Shula whispered.

  “Without the Hermon?” Ilan jerked.

  “Without more dead.”

  “Sure. Another defeatist. Another couple of years when the Syrians are there and shoot down at you from the white height of the mountain, you may regret every dumb pacifist thought you have now.”

  Lea tried to hush her husband.

  “We are all nervous, that’s all. It seemed almost over and now, emergency again, and casualties, and how much can people take.”

  “As much as necessary. Whatever we manage to take before a cease-fire is a lifesaver in the future. We are not fighting to secure a ski resort.”

  The supper trolley arrived and interrupted a hopeless argument. When I arrived with the food in room 7 I thought I had entered the wrong place.

  Avi lifted himself up with effort and pointed at No. 7. He was as still as before, not a wrinkle in the sheet, but in the evening silence we could clearly hear the vague sound of a man crying. And there were tears. The mouth didn’t twitch, the body seemed dead, but somewhere in this bundle of mystery the tear glands were operating and alive, and the liquid salty drops rolled down to be absorbed in white gauze from the cheekbones down.

  “How long has he been crying?”

  “Just a minute ago. I talked to him, having nothing to do, the way I do often when we are alone, and suddenly I felt his presence. He didn’t say a word, but I sensed a difference. So I looked up and I saw the tears.”

  I left the room to call the Professor. He was asleep, but the minute I touched his shoulder he was wide awake.

  “The unidentified. He seems to be crying, weeping that is.”

  The Professor’s face brightened, without a smile. We walked to the room and stood above No. 7 and watched. The tears were still flowing, but not a sound or a motion.

  “I talked to him,” Avi said. “I asked for his name a hundred times but there is no reaction.”

  “Keep talking. You, too, Amalia, better stay here a while and watch. Perhaps it’s a beginning, a crack we can use and widen.”

  He must have seen similar tears before, for he was less hopeful than I thought. I mentioned it to Avi.

  “Sure. He passes urine, too, perhaps it’s a kind of reflex, or a drug that was injected into him. Did it ever occur to you he may be pulling our legs? Just quietly taking a leave from our petty preoccupations?”

  “Back to cynical, are you? Any news from the family?”

  “Any day, Sister, and if you are a real friend you’ll get them on a six-day tour of battlefronts, a trip to liberated Africa or the holy Mt. Hermon or whatever tourists will be shown after this war. How is your family?”

  “All right. Runny noses, crying more than usual. I am not a very good homemaker these days.”

  “You’ve changed a great deal altogether. I didn’t want to talk about it, but since you asked.”

  “I didn’t ask anything.”

  “Still. It’s not the fun girl we knew. A sparkle is missing. Either you are very bored, or very tired, or very hungry for something that isn’t there. Drifting in and out of scenes without participating. Not aloof or remote, just absent.”

  “So, doctor, what’s the cure, supposing the diagnosis is right?”

  “An exciting job or a fantastic lover. The second is better.”

  “Thanks a lot. Very banal too. ‘Find a lover and your problems will disappear.’ Nonsense. I wish it were that easy.”

  We were talking to each other while looking at No. 7 like an infusion bag emptying. The tears were shed at intervals now, then stopped.

  I switched off the light. Avi needed sleep more than all my chatter, and I had to clean beds and prepare them.

  I told the Professor that the crying spell was over. He merely nodded and I found myself saying, “I wish my tears were running these days.”

  “Many of us find it difficult to cry. The tension strangles the tears. Nurses feel inhuman because they don’t cry, are not moved by all the pain and agony surrounding them.”

  I regreted ever mentioning it, apologized and smiled.

  “I suppose it’ll all burst out one day. When it’s over. When we don’t have to be strong superwomen.”

  “I just talked to the Rambam Hospital in Haifa. They are preparing rooms, and we may not need the extra beds here.”

  “Better to have them ready and not use them.”

  I called home. Daniel wasn’t there. I woke my mother up. She was patient and understanding, her usual self. “No, Daniel didn’t say whether he was coming in tonight.” She had given the children cough syrup and they were sleeping well.

  The boys didn’t have a cough, but mother was a believer in preventive medicine. I apologized again and hung up. Then it crossed my mind that the same suggestion Avi had made to me might have occurred to Daniel. He had all the good reasons to have an affair. A wife who wouldn’t be touched as long as the war was on, a mother-in-law who put things in order before you even used them, a job, important, but away from the front line. He must feel old, perhaps unwanted, and yet he is handsome, virile, thoughtful and attractive to women.

  “He is not the type,” I always said to myself. But not being the type makes him more vulnerable and available. He may even be in love.

  With a girl like Amnon had, dashing, daring, careless, sensitive and entirely different from his wife. Maybe a married woman whose husband is fighting in the Hermon or stuck across the canal. He knew how to comfort loneliness.

  The more I thought of it the more real it seemed. While cleaning the first bed it was an amusing supposition, stretching sheets on the second bed advanced it to a clear possibility, and while pushing the third bed into place I already had it clear in my mind. It was a reality. Daniel, my model husband, was having an affair with a vivacious blond. She had deep brown eyes with a naughty expression. She was fun in bed and they carried on while the war was on, while I was fighting the smells and sights of Ward L.

  I finished working, satisfied with my new role as a victim, feeling slightly sorry for myself, someho
w heroic. I wasn’t just anybody, I was a betrayed woman.

  CHAPTER

  5

  On the bedside table I found a note. From Daniel. In casual, well-spaced words it said that he was going south, to be of whatever use he could be in his division Headquarters in the Sinai. Especially now that the war was about to end, there would be a need for logistic experts. He would be in touch whenever possible. Kiss the children and thank my mother, signed “love.” He didn’t write his name at the end. What for? Who else could it be?

  For a brief moment I carried on with my previous fantasy. He had a girl, he took off. He drove south perhaps, but not alone. I took a shower and relaxed. It was the obvious frustration, he needed to be involved, even if only at the end of the war. He had to be there. He was a man who fought well and often. Some of his friends were still in the front, and he couldn’t stand this nervous civilian inactivity any longer. It seemed natural and I felt it was the right thing to do. Were I in his place I would have done the same. Maybe earlier.

  It posed problems, of course. I hoped my mother would be cooperative, for it would mean more hours with the children, if I were to continue at the hospital. I didn’t dare think of life without the hospital routine.

  I knew the war would be over, the beds in Ward L would be occupied by sick civilians, the doctors would work regular hours and all the good volunteers would go home. I knew and welcomed the knowledge, but for me, Amalia, it was just a vague memory of what life before had been, rather than a desire to resume it afterward.

  I looked into the cupboard. Daniel had taken his uniform with him—battle dress and heavy shoes, underwear. In the bathroom his shaving kit and toothbrush were missing. It occurred to me we had never been apart since we had been married. We had never slept in a hotel bed or gone on a trip together. In six years there was not one day, for either of us, of not seeing the other. Now that he was gone—and not just for the day—he was still here. There was matter-of-factness in his absence, just as his presence had been taken for granted before. That’s because we are friends, I thought.