Three Weeks in October Read online

  “Yes. A no-choice life.”

  We flew over Cyprus and soon after the captain announced the Israeli coastline. The lights of Tel-Aviv were spread out on both sides of the aircraft. Someone started singing and clapping and others joined. I had unwanted tears in my eyes, pride and fear of homecoming mixed with the thought of separation from Amnon. He was giving me instructions now.

  “I’ll put you in a cab. You take both suitcases and sort them out at home. I’ll send for mine tomorrow. I’ll go home to get my uniform and join my unit. Will try to call you as soon as I can.”

  “I am a reservist, too, you know. I’ll report tomorrow to my unit.”

  “Don’t play hero. I want you safe and well when this is over.”

  “The same to you.”

  We were taxiing along the runway and stopped in front of the building. The door swung open and a whiff of orange blossom hit the inside of the plane. I took a deep breath.

  “The best perfume in the world,” he smiled.

  “I thought Guerlain’s Chamade was.”

  “Forget it.”

  The scent filled me with unexpected joy. It was spring and there were wild flowers everywhere. I thought of the storks and seagulls flying back to Europe, and the lemon tree in blossom in the garden of my house. We didn’t kiss. He held my hand for a moment. I whispered, “Take care,” and he walked away.

  I waited long for the suitcases and it was long after midnight when I arrived at my apartment. I folded his things neatly in his case and closed it.

  CHAPTER

  7

  The country woke up on October 24, 1973, a Wednesday, as if it were a wedding day. Cease-fire was expected at any moment, and the words, “The war is over,” though not yet uttered by anybody, were ringing in every heart. The radio announced that cease-fire would be effective at 0700 hours. Our forces in the city of Suez’s outskirts isolated the 3rd Army and cut off all communicating roads between Cairo and Suez. The U.N. was preparing to establish observation posts along the cease-fire lines.

  It was a question of hours. The battle around the city of Suez was still on but the rest of the front was quiet. Occasional nervous shots only confirmed that for all practical and emotional purposes the war was over.

  On the last day of war I functioned mechanically. My head felt empty of analysis or assessment, and I couldn’t touch any food. Tears held back for long weeks flowed easily now, and from time to time I carelessly wiped my wet face. My mother must have taken the children out, for they were not there when I woke up.

  I had had plans for this day. I thought of the cake I had planned to bake, the bottle of champagne we would open. I was going to stay home and awake with the children and celebrate. Now it was emptiness and solitude with two vague thoughts settling in. No. 7 was still there, his identity bound to be discovered as he is about to die. The other thought was of Avi. I had grown newly fond of him. We had a language together, and had formed an attachment. I felt a slight pain thinking of his departure.

  I drove to the hospital as if nothing had changed and only a few days later it occurred to me that on this long last day the memory or absence of Daniel, my husband, hadn’t crossed my mind.

  There was no champagne, not much joy either. Relief, some tears, a lot of words, arguments, disbelief at moments and mostly fatigue.

  The Professor seemed exhausted for once. So did Leib, who sat with Julie in the hall. The public phone didn’t stop ringing, but people were less eager to receive calls. It seemed as if the glue had started melting. The big family around the radios and TV sets, with the staff and the relatives, the volunteers, the U.J.A. ladies’ missions, the social workers and the entertainers, this big family didn’t really exist. Suddenly there were just individuals. Patients rather than heroes, worried about their itching and bandages and uncertain futures. The tension and the public drama were to disappear soon, they sensed it already. They would remain invalids. Struggling, malfunctioning, unhappy reminders of a terrible war.

  “Did your husband call?” Shula asked me.

  “Who?”

  “Daniel. Your husband. He is across the canal, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. No, he didn’t call. Anything new in room 7?” I went to see him. No change, only that whatever life there was in him seemed to be floating away. The room was as close to an empty room as a place with someone in it can be. Hope gone, too, there was only the smell.

  Avi, too, asked me whether Daniel called. I felt awkward. As if I had joined the club too late. I now belonged to the directly involved, only the involvement didn’t mean danger anymore. I entered the theater when the play was over; I arrived in time for the curtain calls.

  Having been asked, I wondered why Daniel hadn’t called, but there were too many acceptable explanations so I let it go.

  Avi told me about Nadav. His family came to visit during the day. So did his girlfriend. Nadav tried to explain to her that he was deformed under the silver sulfadiazine and bandage. She wouldn’t take him seriously, tried to joke and pretend that she couldn’t care less. He asked her not to come again and when she wouldn’t listen, he shouted and ordered her out. He then undid the dressing, as painful as it was (and utterly forbidden), grinding his teeth.

  His mother almost fainted. The sight was both terrifying and nauseating. He asked his father to get him a mirror and the old man obeyed him. Avi rang for the nurse. Nadav was in ghastly pain. He glanced at the mirror and threw it on the floor when the nurse entered in panic. Another nurse took the parents out and the Professor explained to them the plastic surgery technique while Nadav was re-dressed and sedated. Later a psychologist came, thinking she had to calm Avi, too. Breakdowns are infectious, you know. She was young and pretty, the psychologist, and Avi embarrassed her by looking at her breasts and playing dumb. Tomorrow they’ll parade in nose and ear cases from the Six Day War, a living proof to the miraculous advance of plastic surgery.

  The Professor asked the staff into his room. He mumbled a few words about “the day we have all been waiting for,” and then explained clearly that for us, in white, the war wasn’t over yet. The cease-fire would cause depression in the patients, they might feel left out once the attention dwindles, and it was our duty, the staff and the volunteers who could continue for a while, not to let them fall into self-pity and despair. “Normal life will resume,” he said. “For them the fight is still a long one, and they need our help and care and love more than before. Now they are heroes, next week they will be handicapped bums, rejected lovers, fighting shame and loneliness.”

  End of speech, nods of agreement, slight embarrassment at potential accusations.

  Later he addressed me separately. Night duty wouldn’t be necessary anymore as we don’t expect emergencies. If I could come during the day for a few hours he’d appreciate it. Also, would I remind the major in charge of absentees and the unidentified of No. 7 in our ward?

  The sudden exhaustion that engulfed the ward affected me, too.

  Avi’s bell was buzzing. Nadav was still asleep and Avi woke up. Water was the excuse, but he didn’t seem sleepy.

  “Well, Sister,” he said as if addressing a meeting. “It is good-bye for us?”

  “Don’t be silly. Go to sleep. I won’t leave this ward before you do.”

  “Only when we do, one of us has something to go back to.”

  “The other still has a choice. Isn’t that what you always wanted, the freedom to choose?”

  “Is it? Did I really choose to return here, or did I simply have to? Not that fighting wars is more meaningful than the research I’m supposed to do next.”

  “Meaningful is for the boy scouts. Here it’s a life, some kind of life. Mostly hysterical and loaded with self-importance. You still have a choice. You also have parents, a wife, a child.”

  “They’ll all go back. Julie will tell her Springfield psychiatrist all about it. Did you see how Leib blushes when he sees her?”

  “Maybe she likes him. They seem to have something in
common.”

  “Please believe me, I don’t care. This hospital bed makes one, made me, very self-centered. I’ve been spending whole days thinking of my body, my wounds, my recovery, my scars and now—my future.”

  “You can get out of bed in a wheelchair now, pretty soon on your feet. You have enough time to figure out what next.”

  He changed the subject. “Your husband will return soon. What will your life be like?”

  “Daniel didn’t go south for the war. He thought they could use him when the fighting was over.” I tiptoed toward the door.

  “Please don’t leave me.”

  “I’m tired, we’ll talk later.”

  “I mean don’t leave tomorrow or the day after.”

  “Good-night.”

  I told Shula I could be found on the bench in the garden. I needed air. I sat there shivering in spite of the wind jacket, trying to convince myself that the war that was over had lasted only a few weeks. It wasn’t a lifetime, it wasn’t one cycle over and a new one about to begin, but just an interval after which everything resumes.

  An interval which caused all sophistication to disappear. The small things seemed meaningless—a headache, a bad meal, an unpleasant remark by someone, being cold, or hot, or uncomfortable, being tired or bored, it was all trivial. Everything that constitutes the normal flow of everyday sensations, not activities, was pushed away. The big things weren’t there either. The big words and the profound thoughts, philosophic attitudes and deep convictions, these, too, were put aside. There was just existence; life itself acquired an importance, no matter which rules or standards or codes you lived by. The only morality was to be, and the rest belonged to memories or hopes which could not be placed in terms of definite time. As if war were an independent life cycle, from birth to death, with new boundaries encircling thoughts, feelings and actions, provisory but unbreakable.

  On Yom Kippur, when the war started, all my thoughts were turned to Amnon. As if all the evils of all wars and battles could be summed up in his death.

  And he was killed in another war that was supposed to be the last war.

  Only it was summer then. And I was with a unit in the Sinai with not much to do except move onward with my commander, take messages, write notes, work on his diary and jump from the half-track to a ditch whenever everybody else did. We weren’t that much younger, only that fast victory is a youthful experience. We were joking and laughing, and the songs on the radio were pompous and happy. On the fourth day of the war we were deep into the Sinai, our forces were approaching the canal, and in spite of the casualties, there was an exhilarating sensation of superman ability. On that night Amnon died. His tank was hit, and what he said could never happen to him, just did. At dawn, when we met with the division he belonged to, I heard of his death.

  I was sitting on my kit-bag eating apricots which had been flown down to us with other fresh supplies. Next to me two generals conferred with my commander; I wasn’t listening until I heard Amnon’s surname mentioned. It was followed by the briefest moment of silence, the respectful silence you give to the brave dead even in the midst of a battle talk.

  When they left, I asked my commander. He confirmed what I had heard.

  “Did you know him? They say he was quite a guy. Didn’t have to pop his head out under fire though.”

  What could I tell him? That Amnon didn’t believe it could happen to him, that we were lovers, that we had just returned from Paris together, that our love story had to end anyway and that’s one way stories end?

  So I cried. It was hot and dry and the tears mixed with the dust that covered my face to form a muddy mask. I cried, and carried on with whatever I was supposed to do, and wiped my nose and tears and we drove on and I thought there will be no end to my crying unless something will help me stop it.

  The something was someone. Daniel, then a stranger, came to report to the commander and stopped near me with concern. Which made me cry louder. I don’t know what helped him guess, unless it is obvious that girls don’t cry in war because they have lost a pair of earrings or a job.

  “Someone you love was killed?” It was a statement. I stopped crying. I nodded and took the box of Kleenex and the cigarette he offered me.

  My feet were numb and the bench was wet. I returned to the ward. Everyone, really everyone, was fast asleep. Out of habit, the radio was still switched on, broadcasting light music.

  I drove into town in the morning. A brisk wind slapped the pavements and tossed the leaves in aimless circles. Very few people were around, and none too joyful. Along the beach some seagulls searched for prey and the sound of the towering waves somehow calmed me.

  A policewoman approached my parked car. I must have looked terrible for she asked me if I were in trouble.

  “No. The war is really over,” I said. “Just relaxing.”

  “It’s going to rain,” she offered.

  I drove on, not really wanting to go home, missing Daniel as part of the sudden normalcy imposed on us.

  “So,” my mother welcomed me when I opened the door. “That’s it.” Her short statements always offended me somehow. She continued, “Now you can tend to your children, put some weight on. Daniel will be home soon, back to the routine.”

  “It’s not over in the hospital.”

  “It is in the library. I have to be back to work, normal hours.”

  “Who would want to read books now?”

  “Whoever did before. Don’t be dramatic. It isn’t the first nor the last war and—other than the dead and their families—people will emerge unmarked.”

  Perhaps she was right. The papers wrote of trauma and an earthquake. Accusations flew in all directions. But perhaps my square mother was right; in her organized brain cells lay truth, sharp and simple.

  “Someone named Julie telephoned. A major from Absentees left a number. Shula called to say the Professor’s son-in-law was killed just before the cease-fire. What are your plans now?”

  I wasn’t listening. I could see the Professor’s tired face twist in pain, a pain that remains on faces of the bereaved for the rest of their lives.

  “Are you going back there tonight?” she repeated.

  “Just to visit. I’ll be working in the mornings now. I’ll send the children to school, and when they are away I’ll be in the ward, that’s all. I need some sleep now.” From my bedroom I called the major. He was friendly and anxious to talk.

  “We may have found a clue to the guy in your ward you seemed to care about.”

  “No. 7?”

  “Is that what you call him? A landlady in Beer-Sheba called this morning. Wondering about someone who rented a room in her house. He sent himself letters for a while, then stopped. He had no relatives, an odd fellow.”

  “What makes you think that may be him?”

  “Just a hunch. Maybe simply because I can’t accept the fact that nobody has identified him for so long. She is sending the letters and some of his stuff with one of my men. I can bring it to the ward tonight.”

  “Thanks for calling me.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’ve noticed your concern. It must have bothered you. And the Professor, too.”

  “He lost his son-in-law yesterday.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Then the silence following the news. How often did we sense its heaviness these weeks, and found no way to break it. A silence at the end of chatter, where words had no meaning, between the verbal message and the pain.

  I called Julie in her hotel. She was waiting for the call, wanted to know if she could bring her daughter, Karen, over in the afternoon.

  “She should meet some children, she’s lonely for company.” Later, she said, I could drive them both to the hospital. She might stay the night helping Leib sort out his papers, and the child would return with her grandparents.

  I said all right, mechanically, to everything. I wanted to sleep and I wasn’t really listening.

  When I woke up the house looked like a birthday part
y. My own boys played with Avi’s child, the neighbor’s children baked cookies with my mother and Julie, and toys, drawings, records and picture books were all over the place.

  I smiled. It felt good. The austere mood of the past weeks must have affected the children. In the best of times my mother couldn’t tolerate disorder, but in honor of our guests she let it go. The house felt warm and the cookies in the oven had a wonderful smell. The boys were loud and laughing and their kisses tasted like the raspberry juice they had just drunk. For a brief second I pretended this was my life, a kettle on the stove, something in the oven, two lovely children, a loving husband who would soon be back, green plants in pots, helpful mother, friendly neighbor, a secure if unexciting nest. I pretended the rest was fringes. The living memory of Amnon, myself the way I used to be, my hidden fancies and the hospital.

  My brother Boaz called. He will not be coming home soon. He was on the Golan Heights. Now that the war is over, he likes it there. He had things to do, and in particular didn’t want to face the hysterical civilian routine.

  My brother was a proof of the invalidity of genetics. He was unlike anybody in the family. He was as opposed to my mother’s orderly being as anyone could be, and had none of the sensitivity and warmth of my father. He never communicated with me either. His world was woven of dreams and wild fancies; the unexpected constituted his routine. He never held a job, or a friend, never accomplished anything more than merely existing. The term “family” seemed to have had no meaning for him. He was a nomad without being nervous, placid yet interested in extremes, helpful and generous without caring or loving.

  Julie wanted to talk and we took the teacup to my bedroom.

  “I’m leaving in a couple of days.”

  I looked at her. The face was lively without being intelligent, the eyes soft but not kind. She was a foreigner.

  “I thought you wanted to stay, to find things to do.”

  “It’s not my scene. With Avi it will never work, and the rest of you I can admire but not understand.”

  “You get along well with Leib, there will be other friends.”