Don't Ask Me If I Love

by Amos Kollek

  I was relieved to wake up. I put on the light and peered out the window. The moon had disappeared already but the sun was not yet up. It was a little bit after three. I resented the obviousness of the dream. It left me with a bitter taste. I dressed and started hunting for a book, but there was nothing new on my shelf; 1 had read them all. I overcame an impulse to drive over to Joy’s place.

  I lay on my bed and waited for the sun to rise.

  Sprawled in the back seat of a bus, a few hours later, I tried to catch up on my sleep. Ram was sitting next to me and reading the morning paper. Time’s a-wasting, I thought bitterly. If I had enlisted when I should have, I would be chasing Joy at my leisure, between lectures at the university and swimming in the sea. Who needed the army?

  Ram frowned at Nixon’s picture and turned to the back page.

  I remembered Gad saying that Nixon would be the end of Israel after completely ruining the United States first. He didn’t even dislike the American President. He just considered him simple.

  Gad was a born pessimist, he didn’t believe that anything would ever turn out right.

  He isn’t doing so bad for himself right now though, I thought grimly, doing his second year in the university while you are stuck here guarding that stupid river.

  Gad claimed he was studying economics in order to be rich. He didn’t really care so much for money, he said, but there was nothing else to do except live well while you could. Anyway, nothing could possibly last long. With that stream of Russian arms and Chinese arms supporting the weaker side.

  I tried to brush my thoughts away. Gad held no charm for me. He had a good mind but it was always calculating and scheming and plotting. I didn’t like him.

  In three weeks, I said to myself, it will be all over. Ram and I were supposed to get a three-week leave before our discharge. It was a custom in the army. It was supposed to help the soldier find a job and get settled in civilian life. What’s three weeks against three years?

  I sat up in my seat and leaned on the window sill, looking at the bare landscape we were passing. The light brown color of the soil dominated the scene but there were also increasing amounts of green. From time to time, we passed groups of Arab villagers who stood by the road and followed us with their dark, sulky eyes. I was never sure if all of them really hated us. The young, half-naked brown children often cursed at us as we drove along, but sometimes they would wave and show their big white teeth in what could easily be taken for a friendly smile. But then, those were the smaller kids.

  “I wonder if the Russians are really going to move soldiers into this area,” Ram said from behind his newspaper. “If they do, we could be in a spot.”

  “Can’t expect the Arabs to fight the whole of Israel by themselves.” I said. “They’ve only got seven countries around here.”

  “On the other hand, Russia is farther from here than from Czechoslovakia.”

  “If we could be independent,” I said, “if we didn’t have to crawl to the Americans for every breath of air, they wouldn’t stand a chance, even if they could bring the whole Russian army.”

  “Oh, they won’t beat us,” he said confidently, “they could just make life a lot harder.”

  “Make it a five years’ service. You’d love it.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Anything you say, chief.”

  We arrived in the camp early and went to our residence. It was before ten. The soldiers were not due before eleven, and weren’t supposed to go on duty until after lunch.

  The camp was set on an old Jordanian base, about two miles west of the river. It consisted of a number of long asbestos huts, of the same color as the sand. They were usually teeming and swarming with flies and mosquitoes and always hot as long as the sun was out. Life fell into a routine that was only disturbed when one of our posts was attacked by guerrillas, or when we had to chase them through the hills to the caves. Gradually, that too became a routine. We would lose some soldiers but they lost many more. I often wondered to my self why they repeated the same mistakes over and over. They were always caught and killed in the same manner. They learned little from experience. That was lucky because there were always more of them than of us.

  I went to my room, stretched on my bed and waited for the time to pass. After a while, Ram appeared and sat on one of the beds. He stared quietly at the ceiling for a long time, while neither of us talked. Outside the big trucks unloaded the freshly returned soldiers. Their voices, discussing their girl friends of the previous night, filled the air and finally faded away as they strolled to their huts.

  Ram got up and shook himself back to life.

  “Have everyone in the yard by eleven-thirty, will you?” he said and walked out of the room.

  I turned on my small radio, and went to sleep.

  After lunch, the company was gathered outside the mess hall, and Yoav, the company commander, made his usual short speech. He outlined the scheduled activities for the next days. There was nothing extraordinary about any of them.

  Thus, another week started.

  In the evening, Ram took the company for a lo-kilometer run. He used to do that every Sunday, if there wasn’t anything more important to do. Ram was the best long-distance runner in the regiment. I was sitting alone in the canteen with a bar of chocolate and a few bottles of Coke, when he gathered the men outside in the yard. There were about forty of them there, the upper parts of their bodies bare, all the soldiers that weren’t on duty that night.

  “O.K.,” Ram was saying quietly, “all the lame and sick can fall out.”

  No one did.

  I raised my eyebrows, and took a big swig; Ram’s methods often surprised me.

  “Let’s go then.”

  He turned, and started running into the darkness. The three lines of men soon disappeared after him.

  Ram believed that soldiers with six months of army behind them could be trusted with some free choice in matters that weren’t strictly operational. He didn’t force soldiers to run 10 kilometers if they said they were sick. After all, people could feel sick, he told me. It had even happened to him.

  In his recruiting days, when his platoon had done the traditional 8-kilometer “white circle,” for the first time, Ram hardly made it. He had been lying on his bunk, coughing and sweating, when the squad commander called everyone out. Ram cursed under his breath as he got to his feet. He disliked any kind of evasion. Soldiers were not supposed to have an easy time. He had liked making the extra effort that was a part of army life. But he knew he was finished for the day. There was no sense in overlooking the fact that he just wasn’t well.

  He got out of the tent and joined the rest of the soldiers. Most faces revealed displeasure. The “white circle,” the sandy pathway circling the camp, was not well liked by the young recruits.

  “O.K. Let’s start hearing about all your sicknesses,” the corporal said scornfully, “but it won’t help you, nobody’s staying here who isn’t dead.”

  Ram, listening to the jeering voice, disapproved of its owner and of its owner’s attitude. He thought about it as they started running and he still had it in the back of his mind when they were doing the last few hundred meters. He could see the faint light coming through the window of the supply room and he fixed his eyes on it, and tried to empty his mind of any other thought. When we get to the light, he thought obscurely, trying to wet his dry lips with his dry tongue, we will stop, that can’t be too hard. When they reached the light and stopped, he ran a few meters more into the small group of eucalyptus trees, puked out his lunch and then lay on his back on the dry, brown leaves and closed his eyes. A corporal who discovered him there an hour later, walked him to the sickroom. He remained there for two days till his fever was down and he was back to normal again. Ram told me he had felt very silly about that incident. He disliked weaknesses in himself.

  I was sitting in the canteen when the group of runners returned. A few minutes later, after Ram had relieved them, he walked in.
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br />   “Give me a big gulp from that thing and I’m gone,” he said cheerfully as he approached me. “What would Coca-Cola ever do without you?”

  “They’d give up,” I said as he picked the sixth and last bottle from my table and emptied it. “Not all of it, for God’s sake, not all of it.”

  “I’m going to visit the northern posts,” he announced, ignoring my protest. “Want to come?”

  “Are you kidding me? It’s way past my bedtime.”

  He shrugged. “Well, don’t say I didn’t give you the chance.”

  “Much obliged, but I’d rather go to sleep.”

  “O.K.”

  He started moving away, and stopped.

  “Want to do me a favor?”

  “No.”

  “See that the cook has hot coffee when the ambush squads are back.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, see you.”

  Ram was going out a lot on patrols and night reconnaissances. His impending release made him intensify his efforts and activities to the maximum. He couldn’t stand the thought of resting. I, on the other hand, was having myself a relatively easy time. As a platoon sergeant, there wasn’t a great deal I had to do. And what I didn’t have to do, I didn’t do.

  “I am willing to bet you ten to one,” Ruthi, the company clerk, said to me, “that he will sign up as a career officer, before his time is up.”

  We were sitting in the canteen on a late Friday evening, listening to the old music that blared from an old, crackling record player. The company commander had picked it up earlier in the evening, along with a few records and a couple of female guests, from a mysterious distant camp. The whole company, including the officers, had remained on our base. There had been rumors that some activity could be expected. Most soldiers were on guard duty or laying in ambush. Those of the cadre who weren’t otherwise occupied, were gathered in the canteen, having a reasonably good time.

  “Not Ram,” I said. “I’ve been watching over him.”

  “Brother,” she said, “so have I.”

  Ruthi had been with our company for the last three months. She was a pretty girl with blue eyes and short black hair. The soldiers liked her. In the small world of weary, bored men, her presence had a magical effect on morale. It gave the people the feeling they were not altogether cut off from their previous normal way of life.

  We sat in a corner and watched the C.C. and another officer tangoing vigorously with two of the unknown girls. It was an amusing sight. The C.C. was six feet four with a neck that would have looked big on a bull. The fragile-looking girl he was holding gently, careful not to break her, completely disappeared in his huge arms.

  The captain was one of the soldiers whom the chief of staff had commended for bravery and leadership during the Six Days War. He had personally destroyed two machine-gun posts during the fighting in Gaza and then led his men into the bunkers, suffering no casualties. He had been a lieutenant at the time, and was promoted soon afterward. He was one of those men who were expected to be generals at thirty-five, if they ever lived to be twenty-five in the first place. I didn’t particularly like the C.C., but I admired his courage. He and Ram were good friends and had great respect for each other. I knew the captain was pressing Ram not to leave the army. Occasionally, I was afraid he was going to succeed with that mission. The trouble with this kind of man, I thought, looking at the broad shouldered officer who was smiling jovially down at his partner, squeezing her delicately with his massive powerful hands, the trouble with these men is that they identify so much with the army. There must be something wrong with a person who wants only to be a soldier.

  “How do you like him?” I asked Ruthi, pointing to the captain’s swaying figure with my thumb.

  “I don’t know,” she said indifferently, “he’s O.K.”

  “Maybe you could have the next dance with him.”

  “Don’t guess I will.”

  “Still waiting for the special someone?”

  “Maybe.”

  Ram had taken the C.C.’s jeep earlier in the evening and gone on a private checking patrol of his own. I was feeling that this was the cause of Ruthi’s irritation, but didn’t bother to ask.

  “Have some Coke,” I told her.

  The C.C. and his girl passed by our table as they danced. He winked at me. “Got the champagne ready for your party?” he asked.

  Ram and I were to celebrate the occasion of our discharge in the usual manner by buying drinks for everybody and making a sad speech.

  “We’re still raising the money for it.”

  He laughed and danced away toward the other side of the room.

  I opened another bottle.

  “Well, well, what do you know,” said Ruthi, whistling quietly through her teeth. Ram, with his submachine gun hanging loosely on his shoulder, was coming through the door, gently pushing a young Arab of seventeen or eighteen in front of him. The Arab was in khaki clothes and barefoot. He looked rather scared.

  The C.C. stopped dancing and walked over to where Ram and his prisoner were standing, as did the rest of us.

  It turned out that Ram had spotted his prisoner some two kilometers north of the camp. As he turned on his searchlight, ready to open fire, he realized that the man was unarmed. So, instead of shooting, he started the motor and chased him with the jeep. Ram was a crazy driver when he chose to be, and he caught the fleeing man.

  The C.C. said the prisoner would have to stay in the camp for the night. In the morning, he would be transferred to headquarters. The young Arab insisted that he had been on his way to visit his family, when he was captured.

  I asked Ram to sit down and help himself to a drink, but he said he had to do something about the young Arab first, and that he would come back later. After Ram left with his prisoner, the C.C. started dancing again and I sat back at the table with Ruthi, continuing to waste soft drinks.

  Ram took his Arab to the small cell that served as the camp’s prison. It was in the same shack as the guardroom. He locked him in there, and freed the soldier who had been put in the previous day for a discipline offense.

  Afterward, he went into the guardroom and told the soldier who was on duty there to look after the prisoner and give him something to eat. When he was through with that, Ram came back to the canteen. It was past twelve when he joined us at the table. He sat down and put his submachine gun under the table. Finishing one of my nearly empty bottles, he looked at me wearily.

  “So how are you making out with my girl friend here?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said gloomily. “I don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”

  “You mean you’ve already finished your day’s work?” Ruthi asked Ram sardonically, opening big blue, wondering eyes.

  “Almost.”

  “Think you can really spend some time here?”

  “A bit.”

  “Then, will you dance with me, officer, sir?”

  He smiled.

  “You know I never dance,” he said apologetically.

  “Well then,” she said, “it looks like I’ll have to ask the C.C. himself, after all.”

  Ram looked down at the table. His face was tired. When he looked up at her again she was staring steadily at the dance floor. Her fingers tapped on the table to the rhythm of the music, but her face was hard.

  No one spoke. We all sat and watched the dancers. I thought to myself it was lucky the next day was Saturday. I was getting rather tired.

  Finally, Ram picked up his weapon and got to his feet.

  “I’ll go and see if everyone is on his watch and then I’ll hit the sack,” he said to both of us and to no one in particular. “See you around.”

  He walked away.

  Ruthi looked at his retreating back and put a bottle to her mouth. She drank and then slammed it angrily on the table.

  “That man!” she said with sudden fury. “You can’t get to him. I don’t know what’s driving him. Dammit. I can’t get to him at all.”

>   “O.K.,” I said. “Take it easy.”

  “I don’t understand that guy,” she went on with her monologue. “What kick does he get out of life? What kick does he get out of all this? I don’t believe he enjoys any damn thing, except doing his goddam duty, saving his country, and keeping everyone happy. He gets on my nerves.”

  “Drink some more, it’s Friday night, remember? Everyone should have a good time.”

  “You know,” she said, “do you know that he is the only goddam officer in this camp who never tried to make me?”

  “Tough luck.”

  “It tastes lousy, actually,” she said, putting down another empty bottle with disgust. “I don’t understand him.”

  I shrugged.

  “Why don’t you go and tell him?”

  She laughed.

  “Oh, God,” she said. “I am beginning to feel unhappy. I should go to sleep.”

  “Haven’t danced with the C.C. yet.”

  “Oh, screw him.”

  “Now, is that any way to talk?”

  She rose to her feet.

  “Well.”

  I got up too.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’ll accompany you. A young lady shouldn’t walk all alone in the streets at night.”

  “That’s so true,” she said icily.

  The shack in which she lived was on the other side of the camp. We walked slowly on the sand paths among the asbestos huts. After a while Ruthi said, “It’s funny how peaceful and secure this place seems. It almost gives you the feeling there has never been a Fatah.”

  Then she laughed.

  “Well, I guess,” she said, “that while Ram is out there checking the guards, this place is safe.”

  “Probably.”

  “I really like that guy,” she said, “but it irritates me so much that he seems to have no feelings.”

  “For God’s sake. Can’t you change the subject for two seconds.”

  Her face was darker than the night.

  “You’re another one,” she said venomously.

  “You don’t say.”