Three Weeks in October Page 9

  When I loved Amnon I gave no thought to the possibility of his death in battle. Daniel I met in war, and together we dreamed of a red-roofed house and pots of jasmine on the windowsill. The boys were so small and young, I could easily afford thinking of peace in their lifetime, if I had to think of it at all.

  With a cup of coffee and a sandwich, I settled on the sofa and opened the brown envelope. I didn’t plan to read it now, just leaf through.

  I was really looking for names, any name which would be real enough, with a face and a phone number to get me on a road which might lead somewhere. About halfway through the quick reading I stopped with a jolt. There was the name Daniel, just Daniel. I hurried down the page … then the initials D.D. He was referring to my husband!

  From the little I had read it was obvious that our No. 7, if this were he, was someone with a borrowed identity, drafted for a job that had to be done and forgotten. There was something terrifying about the diary, the little I could understand of it. There was no warmth, no human contacts. A person working hard to sever attachments, to erase footmarks. A phantom, doing something, then evaporating and making sure no traces were left.

  Daniel’s name, if it were my Daniel, explained the fact that Arik Berkov was a name unlisted anywhere. Daniel had been what we termed jokingly, “a spy in Europe.” He had worked with teams of operators. Though an unamusing coincidence, this could easily be one of them.

  There were vague indications of relationships in Israel and in Europe, but they were mentioned only in order to be crossed off a list. The man, whoever he was, was working hard at being a loner, almost a nobody, yet there was no death wish, nor was he a failure.

  There were no evaluations of people, no superlatives or even adjectives. A cold account of a life trying to diminish its significance to the minimum possible. He was completely unconcerned with his own predicament.

  Then, strangely, the last few pages were different. The writer had discovered something new. Some of the apathy was gone. He was referring to a girl named O. He wrote about desert plants and even mentioned the beauty of sunsets. A few lines indicated the need to look for a job and there were apologetic words concerning a previous job, his mother, someone called G.

  I knew I should give the diary to someone. I had no right to read it, and if I were right about his being an agent, it might even be classified. I decided to talk to Daniel and was sure he’d tell me what to do.

  I put the diary aside, beginning to have qualms about my ability to comprehend. It was frightening and at the same time intriguing. Daniel, my husband, that was a different matter. I thought I knew him well, but I realized how little I knew about him.

  CHAPTER

  8

  I wasn’t at all tired. I planned not to go to work that evening. My mother had left the apartment impeccably clean, and lunch for the children was all prepared.

  I sat and looked at the familiar living room. A low coffee table, four armchairs and a sofa, embroidered cushions and a whitewashed wall with two original paintings and a few lithographs. Yet, as my eyes examined the objects, I felt strangely out of place. As if the past few weeks had been spent in limbo, as if I were waking up from anesthesia, coming back to life from a shelter. I realized the paradox. I had escaped the war by plunging into the horrors of it. The burnt limbs and faces, the amputees, the invalids, the dead, they became abstract in the nightly duty, and the sound of guns and shells, the diving of aircraft and the roar of tanks advancing—this reality was so far away—sounds overcome and numbed by the silence of hospital corridors. I knew a terrible event had taken place, but I didn’t feel it. People died, but I didn’t know them. We claimed a victory, but I didn’t rejoice in it, and when we were defeated at the beginning, I wasn’t frightened. As if I weren’t really there. I wasn’t even sure about the date or the day of the week.

  I picked up the newspaper. The Red Cross was trying to obtain a list of prisoners of war. The Israeli army sent medicines and plasma to the surrounded Egyptian 3rd Division. Women volunteers were asked to distribute mail. There were maps of the cease-fire lines and I vaguely guessed where Beni’s Headquarters was located.

  I looked at the ads. A black Great Dane answering to the name Tet was missing, a reward offered. A white convertible Subaru stolen, another reward. Three weddings and two Bar Mitzvahs postponed. Announcements of nightclubs reopening. A fashion show in the Sheraton Hotel, all profits to the Soldier’s Fund. Free entrance to soldiers at the Opera House (The Barber of Seville). Cigarette manufacturers apologizing for shortages caused by giving priority to the front.

  I changed to a flannel dressing gown and put the uniform in the washing machine. I filled a bath and washed my hair, and for the sense of luxury rubbed some moisturizing cream on my face. From the mirror an adult woman looked back at me. Not wrinkled or marked by time, just mature, like at the end of a chapter. Something was over and my face expressed it. A resignation. Acceptance rather than aspiration.

  As if the things never done, emotions never felt, sensations never experienced were to remain in the “never” category. It used to be a game I played with myself. Listing all the “nevers.” I have never had champagne (Amnon thought it overrated). I have never taken a cruise or been on an island. I have never screamed in horror, never made love to a stranger. It was a long and mostly frivolous list, and nothing on it could be classed as a serious deprivation. I also didn’t have a secret. Something hilariously good or frightfully bad that was hidden deep in me that I wished no one to know about. No heroism either. Every man I knew could tell battle stories and they all had heroic moments. They had been shot at and advanced under fire, they had saved a friend from death, they had rescued a wounded commander or taken a hill single-handed. Not that they boasted, but they had a moment of heroism to recall, to justify lesser moments, to casually tell their sons about. When I took hospital duty, I half-entertained the thought of such heroic moments involving myself. To be the only one around to notice a failing heartbeat, or a block in an important lifesaving infusion. To help someone will himself to a full recovery in spite of expectations. This never happened. The trained nurses were there, watchful and alert. Leib was always there, and all the instruments and machinery worked without fail. Our only failure was No. 7, and though I concentrated my ambition and intelligence and heart on him, all I could manage was to gather a few pieces of information which, even when deciphered, couldn’t help him regain consciousness.

  The phone rang for a while before I picked it up. It was Julie, calling from the airport.

  “Another good-bye,” she said. “There is a delay in the flight. Did I wake you?”

  “No. Just thinking about all the things I’ve never done.”

  “Try the opposite. I’m sure it makes an impressive list.”

  “Sure. Have a good trip home.”

  “I’m calling to say I’ll be back. I know, because I find it very difficult to leave.”

  “But you are leaving.”

  “I’m trying to be honest. None of you said, ‘Please stay.’”

  “And if we did?”

  “I would have stayed.”

  “You would still regard it as an adventure.”

  “Yes, but without guilt. Home is no paradise either.”

  “You can do something about your life.”

  “We fall into a routine. Child, house-care, tennis, friends, make-believe activities. We count time to the moment when it will be true to say, ‘It’s too late to start now.’”

  “You are young, and pretty, and intelligent.”

  “You sound like my mother-in-law. I am also selfish and lazy and—gosh. They are calling my flight! I’ll come back soon.”

  “Please do. Shalom.”

  I could see her rushing to the departure gate, in blue denims and a large Vuitton carryall bag. Something between a Peeping Tom and an analyst. I wondered what made her and Avi split.

  And what made Daniel and me stay together? What made us get married in the first place,
share a life, be parents to two children?

  It was need and affection on first sight, rather than love. Amnon was dead and I was crying over my loss when Daniel appeared. Not for fear of solitude, not because of a shattered future we could have had together, but rather pain felt at a physical disappearance. A body, a voice, laughter in the eyes, gestures of hands never to be seen or heard or felt again. We weren’t one entity, and I wasn’t halved by his death. I remained fully there, changed perhaps, but functioning, and Daniel understood it.

  He wasn’t overly gentle about it. He didn’t join me for condolence. He respected my grief, but offered me a beginning of something new.

  It was the end of the Six Day War. Romance was neither possible nor wanted. Courting meant a bar of chocolate, a fresh evening paper and two new pairs of khaki socks. On the third day after the war he brought his sleeping bag and smoothed the sand under mine. Our first double bed under starry Sinai sky, without touching. We smiled together rather than laughed, and we talked little about past or future. The war was over and reservists were returning home or going on leave. We stayed. It was safe and isolated, and the small world of brigade Headquarters offered comfort and protection.

  Trucks arrived with fresh supplies, a helicopter brought mail and papers, tents were erected and we had facilities for washing and laundering. I had no desire to go anywhere. I did some paperwork, and Daniel was busy with postwar planning and logistics. We started peeling layers from each other when we were alone. We never mentioned Amnon or Daniel’s girlfriend (Beni mentioned her casually one day and got a silencing look from Daniel), but we talked about our childhood and families.

  It was like feeding a computer with data. To be stored, classified and analyzed without sentiments or unnecessary detail. Just information.

  An army camp in the desert creates its own life rhythm. Everybody and everything is silhouetted clearly as if on an immense stage made of yellow dunes, shifting slightly but lacking variety. No corners, no doors to hide behind, no trees or bushes to escape to, and every footstep, though soundless, leaves a trace deeper than real size. When we wanted to be alone, we climbed an empty damaged halftrack. It was a real treat to drive the jeep ten miles to where the flat plateau ended and folded gently down to a sunbaked plain.

  Beni found out for me the date of Amnon’s funeral—or rather the transfer from a provisory cemetery to one near his home. Daniel didn’t say anything when I mentioned I’d like to go north on that day, merely offered to drive me there. “If we have the time,” he added, “we may go to Jerusalem and see the Wall.”

  Amnon was to be buried in the fertile red soil among orange orchards; his death gave us new territories, a new united Jerusalem and an access to the longed-for Wailing Wall. Or so they said, meaning, “It’s worth it.” The sacrifice was accepted and rewarded, and I wondered then whether mothers and wives and sons of the dead thought it was worth it. Was it really easier to accept the absence of a dear one, if one had the ancient stones of the Wall instead, and the Golan Heights and this majestic desert we camped in? These thoughts were irrelevant. It wasn’t a bargain one settled for beforehand. It was the way things happened in war, uncalculated, inexplicable, the total gain never to be measured against the loss of one life.

  We took Beni’s jeep to drive north. We crossed the old frontier, unmarked now, and breathed in the healthy smells of cow manure, fresh cornfields and barley stems after the harvest. With sunset we arrived in Tel-Aviv. The streets were crowded, traffic heavy as usual, and though many men were in uniform, the city felt as civilian as ever. There was so much to say and we talked so little. Daniel was to pick me up the next day at noon, drive to Jerusalem and try to make it back to Headquarters by night. He gave me his address and phone number, in case I changed my mind, and left me in front of my mother’s house.

  I didn’t want to go back to my apartment. I was afraid of Amnon’s presence there and perhaps a sense of guilt crept in, too. Homecoming was pleasant. My little brother, a young teen-ager then, wanted war stories, and my mother was all affection, cheesecake, chicken soup and herb shampoo thrown in.

  I ate, bathed, chatted, but felt fidgety and restless. I sensed my mother’s love and care, but she wasn’t really the person I longed to be with. So I tried to be gentle about it. “I have to see whether my apartment is still there. I’ll come tomorrow, we’ll talk some more.”

  “But we have hardly seen you. There is so much to tell,” she sighed.

  She didn’t nag or press, and I walked out of there leaving laundry behind and feeling rotten.

  It was a short bus ride to Daniel’s place. There was light in his window, and the dusty jeep was parked in front. Just before knocking on the door it occurred to me he might not be alone. If he had company—there was no sound—he didn’t have to open. I tapped gently.

  Daniel out of uniform looked older, more ordinary and very friendly. I started to apologize, but he gently put his hand to my mouth and then replaced it with his lips. I wasn’t even annoyed by the fact that he expected me, and we walked to the bedroom as if we’d done it many times before.

  I watched Amnon’s burial from a distance, wearing a fresh uniform. There were many funerals in the military cemetery. The small group around the open grave were just faces to me. Rina dressed in a black skirt and blouse, two children, an array of uncles and aunts wiping tears and noses, and a guard of honor saluting the lowered corpse. The sound of soft earth being piled on and the colors of the wreaths from the unit and the chocolate factory made me feel slightly faint. I wanted to cry and couldn’t, wanted to approach them and didn’t. They were burying a part of themselves. I was an onlooker, burying a part of my past to be replaced by something else. For them he was irreplaceable.

  Daniel met me at the cemetery gate. I was still holding the flowers I had bought when entering.

  “You forgot the flowers,” he said.

  “I’ll go alone some other time.”

  In all the years since we have never mentioned Amnon’s name, and though his memory rested with me, vivid and painful at times, it never hovered between us.

  On the way to Jerusalem Daniel proposed to me and I consented.

  I wasn’t even sure what it meant. “To be married,” was natural, something that eventually happened to people. It wasn’t a desire or a need or a goal to achieve. The victory offered excitement which was contagious, and a sense of elevation. We all felt larger than size, invincible supermen. Nothing was impossible. I said yes to Daniel because I trusted him. Because Amnon was buried and victory was won and I had no plans. I said yes because he loved me and we were friends.

  I was grateful to Daniel for his calm manner. We accepted the decision and left each other alone with it to digest and accommodate.

  From Jerusalem we returned to the Sinai, stopping in Tel-Aviv for an hour to call my mother and his sister and tell them we’d be married within a month. My mother reacted strangely. More hurt by not being consulted than elated by the good news.

  “Do I know him?” she asked.

  “Neither do I,” I tried to joke. Only it wasn’t a joke.

  I looked at marriage as a slow trip to discovery. I expected to find new things behind turns and adjust to them, resent or love them, compromise when I had to, or fight them. I was excited by the unknown and didn’t wish to prepare myself for it.

  We drove south from Tel-Aviv along the coast and past the green line into the desert and night. Daniel caressed my hand occasionally or fondly touched my hair, and by the time we approached the dim lights of our camp I was fast asleep, head resting on his knee. When he woke me up, I vaguely remembered that I had made a major decision that day—changed my life, committed myself—but I didn’t question it.

  “I can’t believe it,” Beni exclaimed, hearing our news.

  He had known Daniel for many years and through several wars. For a moment he gave me the impression that he thought Daniel deserved better.

  “I’m not good enough for your friend,” I l
aughed.

  “Quite the contrary. I can’t imagine him as a husband, but we welcome him to the club of the obedient.”

  I walked with Daniel for a while. Amid the charred enemy tanks and shell holes already filled with clean sand. Wounded monsters, incapacitated and dumb. Victory was exhilarating, but the destruction it caused others was nonetheless sad.

  “You can still change your mind,” he said, very calmly.

  “So can you.”

  “I know you better than you’ll ever know me. This may upset you. There are facts and sentiments in my past I could never share, not even look back at. You are open and inquisitive, and not having the keys to the locked door can hurt you.”

  “Do you love me, Daniel?”

  “I love you very much. I told you so last night, and I didn’t ask you the question. I’m not going to.”

  We left it at that and kissed under a starry moonless sky. He walked me to the tent I shared with two other girls, and I tiptoed in barefoot.

  I clearly remember I dreamed of snowflakes. Snow covering the dunes and the tents. There were no clouds and the stars shone and the snow fell like manna sliding off cannon barrels and choppers’ blades. I woke up to the blazing sun and the sudden morning heat. Woven into my new happiness was also a sense of resignation and acceptance. As if a cycle had closed and another one opened, trapping me comfortably.

  Marriage was about friendship, compromises, security and lowering of defenses. From high-heeled shoes into slippers, and some dreams to be locked in hidden compartments, the key thrown away.

  The word “forever” suddenly frightened me. The drifting would stop, I knew. There was a shore, and as beautiful as it was, it was “forever,” and as wide and deep as the new ground was, it was still an island surrounded by moral codes and taboos and limitations.