by Amos Kollek
“Go to hell!”
“Actually,” I mused, “I don’t even think you’re right about Ram.”
“What?”
“You know Rotman?”
“Our Rotman?”
“That’s the man. Let me tell you a story about Ram and Rotman.”
I was wondering contemptuously what made me so talkative all of a sudden, but I carried on just the same. I told Ruthi my story.
A few weeks after I got into the company we left the camp and started a month of field exercise. It was a relatively hard time with little sleep and no leaves. On the last night we parachuted onto the seashore, and then we had to walk to the camp. It was a distance of about 50 kilometers and there was supposed to be a competition between the three platoons to see which of them would get all its men to the camp first.
The first 45 kilometers went pretty well. They were hectic, but we were walking fast and making good time. Then, all of a sudden one soldier sat down on the ground and said he couldn’t walk any more. Rotman was one of the biggest men in the company. He wasn’t just big, he was also tough. He was a damned good soldier when he wanted to be, but he seldom cared. He was a difficult guy to handle, undisciplined and aggressive. When he was in one of his bleak, melancholic moods, which was quite often, he would give his superiors a real hard time. Ram had been in charge of our platoon that night as our second lieutenant was in the hospital with a broken leg. He looked back over his shoulder to discover the source of some unexpected complaining. Observing Rotman’s figure sitting in the middle of the path, he quickly walked back.
“What’s the matter?”
“I can’t walk any more, sir.”
Rotman looked at Ram with a grim, indifferent expression.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?”
Rotman shook his head.
“Can’t walk any more,” he repeated.
Ram looked at the small cunning eyes and his anger rose. He was sure this was just a show. He grabbed the big, husky man by the collar and pulled him to his feet.
“You walk.”
“I cannot move, sir.”
Around them, the soldiers began to gather and halt, looking curiously at the scene.
Ram spun around, angrily.
“You carry on,” he said to the soldiers. “Don’t anyone stop.”
He waited till they moved away, then turned back to Rotman.
“Now you walk too.”
“I really hate to refuse, sir,” the other said calmly, “but I just can’t move any more.”
Ram cooled himself down.
“Why not?” he asked quietly.
“My stomach hurts, and my legs.”
I stopped alongside them. Ram turned to me briskly.
“See that no one slows down.”
“All right,” he returned to Rotman, quite calmly, “you can’t walk, I’ll carry you then.”
He caught the soldier by his feet and by his shoulders, and with a sudden effort hoisted him over his back. Rotman wasn’t exactly a lightweight, but neither was Ram, and straightening his back, Ram half-ran, half-walked until he reached the head of the line of men.
“O.K.,” he told the weary, astonished soldiers who stared at him, “I know you’re tired. So am I. It’s a quarter past seven now. At eight we’ll be in the camp. Then you can rest.”
He turned his back to them and, bracing himself, started moving again, half-walking and half-running as before. The rest followed him, impressed, and trying not to lag behind. I brought up the rear for a while, but after we covered about three more kilometers I moved forward and caught up with Ram. His face was red and he was sweating all over, but he didn’t slow down.
“Why kill yourself?” I said. “Let the soldiers carry him.”
“Don’t let’s waste time,” he said curtly.
I knew he wanted to win the competition, and I knew he was furious at the strong guy he was carrying. That could make him quite unbreakable, but carrying eighty-five kilos for five kilometers was a tough task, even for Ram.
“I feel sick,” Rotman said quietly.
I believed him. He couldn’t have been having a good time. Ram’s shoulders were bony and hard.
“Shut up.”
We kept on.
For the last kilometer I carried Rotman myself and it nearly broke me, although I had never been weak. But we were walking very fast. Our platoon was the first to reach the base and that improved our mood. On the last few hundred meters, between the gate and our tents, we even managed to sing at the top of our voices.
At the end of the day, the soldiers of the platoon got a free evening. Ram didn’t feel like leaving the camp so I hitchhiked to Netania alone and went to see a movie.
Ram sat in the canteen for a while. Then, around ten, he decided that there was nothing better to do than go to sleep. He started walking toward the encampment. As he was passing by the platoon’s camp, he heard loud voices from one of the tents arguing. He stopped by and listened.
“What was all that show for?” a voice asked.
“Wanted to teach our great big officer a lesson. Educate him a bit,” Rotman said. “He finished the officers’ course as a distinguished cadet, so he thinks he’s a god.”
“Oh, come on. He is a good officer.”
“So?”
There was silence.
“I am surprised at you,” someone said sardonically, “that you of all people should break down like that.”
Rotman laughed softly.
“Could have walked another 50 kilometers easily. What for? Guy wanted his men to be first, so I figured out I might as well spoil his party. Childish thing, competition.”
“We did win though.”
“How could I guess he’d carry me the whole way? Guy likes punishing himself.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I don’t like officers,” he added simply.
Ram walked slowly away. He stopped and leaned against a tall eucalyptus tree, surprised at the bitterness he felt. Maybe he’s right, he thought. Maybe I’m just trying too hard. Rotman was no fool, the bastard. But then, what’s the use in doing anything if you’re not doing the best you can?
Anyway, you can’t change your character; nobody ever changes. You can only think you change, but that is all. Stupid thinking, he told himself irritated, you better go to sleep. That’s the best thing you can do right now.
There was a faint sound of footsteps and he forced his eyes to open. The fly of the tent had been turned aside and a tall figure emerged and started walking on the path toward him. Ram watched him silently. The soldier kept advancing in his direction, humming in a low voice. When Ram spoke, Rotman still did not see him because of the dark.
“Rotman.”
The big figure flinched. Then it stopped and looked hesitantly around.
“Rotman.”
The wandering gaze fell on Ram’s face in the shadow of the tree.
“Yes, sir.”
Ram straightened himself and dropped his arms down to his hips. He stared curiously at the set, tense face beside him.
“How are you feeling?”
“What?” He seemed surprised. “O.K., I’m O.K. now.”
“Feet don’t hurt any more?”
“No.”
“And the stomach?”
“No, sir.” His voice regained its usual placidness. “I am feeling fine now.”
Ram looked at him thoughtfully.
“Well, that’s good,” he said softly.
Then, he swung his right arm back and drove his fist into the soldier’s stomach. His expression still remained thoughtful and curious as Rotman took two steps back and doubled up. He opened his mouth in a desperate attempt to breathe. Ram hit him in the jaw, putting all his weight behind the blow. Rotman crumbled and fell to the ground. Ram bent over him and looked down.
“It’s against army rules, actually,” he said thoughtfully.
He got no answer to that.
“So
you see,” I said, concluding my story, “even Ram’s a sentimental baby sometimes.”
Ruthi looked at me dubiously.
“Did he complain?”
“Who, Rotman? No. He isn’t that type. Ram told me he wasn’t worried about that, he was just worried he wouldn’t be able to hit him hard enough to prevent him from getting up and hitting back.” I laughed for no good reason. “Rotman is a toughy himself.”
“It seems.”
We reached her hut and stopped by the door. She looked rather good just then, in the dark, although I never went much for girls in uniform. Joy’s image, in her light white dress appeared before my eyes and insisted on staying there.
I grimaced.
“Well, then, I guess I’ll go to bed,” Ruthi said.
“If you don’t invite me, I won’t join you,” I said, “so I’m going to my room.”
She frowned.
“You didn’t really give it much of a try, did you?”
“I sensed the uselessness of such an attempt.”
“Did you?”
She fished her key out, and turned to the door.
“Good night.”
“Flights of angels,” I said.
As I walked away, Eitan’s stupid remark that one always misses the army once he’s out of it floated into my mind. It irritated me for a moment, until I reminded myself that he had said it sarcastically. Eitan never meant anything he said. He had a good sense of humor, that’s why I liked him. He said that the Israeli situation was getting to stupid to be taken seriously. Once you started thinking seriously you could find yourself concluding that we couldn’t beat the Russians. Nor the Chinese.
Life was O.K. so long as you didn’t think.
Eitan had been an officer in the tank corps. Now he was studying art in Jerusalem. A strange combination. I passed by Ram’s shack. There was light coming from his window, so I stepped into his room. He was sitting on his bed with a newspaper, trying to fill in a crossword puzzle. His two roommates were still in the canteen. I sat on one of the empty beds.
“A philosopher, starting with B, five letters.”
“Try Bacon,” I suggested.
“Looks reasonable.”
He wrote it down and lapsed into silence again. From time to time he added something with his pencil, never lifting his face.
“Do you really like doing that?” I asked, curious.
“It’s not so bad.”
I shrugged.
“Freud’s term for sexual energy?”
“Try libido.”
“That works.”
“Ruthi says you irritate her.”
His eyebrows went up.
“Why?”
“Not expressing yourself openly.”
“Oh.” He wrote something down. “She’s a nice girl, though.”
“I think I’ll go to sleep,” I said. “I drank too much Coke.”
He put his paper down and looked at me.
“You have only two more weeks to go,” he said. “You must be counting the minutes.”
“I’m holding my breath. How much do you have?”
“Oh, the same.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll be going.”
I moved toward the door. He suddenly got up and walked after me.
“Let’s hear some clever opinions,” he said, to my utter surprise. “Do you think it’s really the right thing for me to study political science?” He was smiling, half-apologetically, but his eyes were keen, and his brow a bit wrinkled. It embarrassed me to realize that I wasn’t sure what to say.
He strolled back to his bed and sat down.
“If I stay in the army, I’ll probably get killed some day.”
He drew a circle on the sheet with his thumb and then smoothed it with his palm.
“You don’t last long in this sort of profession. The funny thing is, I don’t think I want to die.”
He looked up at me apologetically.
“It is awfully stupid,” he said curiously.
I leaned on the door and stuck my hands in my pockets.
“One can always go back to the army,” I said. “What’s the rush? After a year or two out you will be able to see for yourself. Studying can’t do you anything but good. The army is an awfully limiting institution.”
He stared at his hands. I had an uneasy feeling that I hadn’t said what he was hoping to hear, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. When he looked at me again, his face had its usual blank expression.
“Well,” he said, “it doesn’t matter. I’d better go to sleep. I don’t think I’m functioning too well right now.” He started unbuttoning his shirt.
“O.K.”
I opened the door.
“Still thinking about this girl, Joy?”
“Not much,” I said.
Ram’s body was strong and brown and muscular. He had two small pale scars, on his chest, a souvenir from the war.
“I think she is very nice.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Good night.”
He smiled briefly.
“Sweet dreams.”
I walked to my room and went to bed. I didn’t have sweet dreams. I was under the spell of words I had never expected to hear. They filled my mind. When did he ever talk in that manner? I couldn’t think of any such occasion, ever. Except maybe, that time when he told me about the war. Ram did not like telling stories, and I thought he knew the subject was not pleasant to me. We did get to talk about the war one time, though. He had been in one of his rare talkative moods, sitting in his room late one night. So he talked.
His company had been stationed for about two weeks somewhere along the southern border, before they finally received the order to move. Those two weeks had been the hardest part of it all. They were nerve-wracking because the soldiers didn’t know what was going to happen. Ram, a very new officer, had tried to put all his time and efforts into training and organizing his platoon. There was not much sense, he reasoned, in trying to guess the future. They would have to solve their future problems when the time came. Throughout the two weeks, almost every day, the company commander said that the war was due to begin at any minute. And with every day that passed the soldiers grew more doubtful. If they were really supposed to fight, what were they waiting for? The newspapers and radio discussed the possibility of the negotiations for a peace solution and of wakening the conscience of the world and the United Nations, a conscience which, every fool knew, was nonexistent. Many people had been making speeches, and many promises. They all amounted to a big, fat zero. What were they waiting for?
Ram, sitting on the sandy ground by himself, one warm June night, had been calculating indignantly what it had been that took the enthusiasm out of him. He didn’t really like any of this. He didn’t want to fight, he didn’t want to kill. He didn’t want to get killed. He would have liked it to go on forever in the training camp, where it was just make-believe. The fact is, second lieutenant, he told himself, that you are completely phony. And you don’t even know it yourself any more. That’s no way to talk to an officer, he thought sarcastically. Where are your manners? Let’s be polite with ourselves, he went on, maybe we’ll be dead soon.
Early next morning Ram’s company went across the border and started advancing into the desert. He sat in the half-track, not nervous and not worried any more. He was almost happy. No more bullshit. This was finally it. Finally the war.
The word didn’t seem to have meaning, in the beginning. They moved deeper and deeper into the sands without meeting any real resistance. From time to time there were single bursts of fire aimed at them, and far away they could see small, retreating figures. But none of it had any real meaning so far; maybe because none of the soldiers had been hurt.
The town of Han Yunis surrendered after offering only token resistance. As the long line of Israeli motorized forces passed through the main streets of the city, Ram found himself musing that maybe the whole war would be as easy as it had been so far. Through his thoughts he
heard the menacing hammering of a machine gun and he jerked up and looked around. A bowed figure in khaki was standing in one of the courtyards, behind a low concrete wall. The figure silhouetted against a large white flat held its long, gleaming weapon and was operating it smoothly, aiming straight at them. Ram grabbed his machine gun and fired two short bursts of fire. The speed and efficiency of his own movement surprised him. The figure collapsed on the wall immediately, dropping the machine gun on the ground. Ram turned his gaze back to the track. Got to be more careful, he told himself somberly, white flags or not. One of the soldiers caught his eye. A very comfortable soldier, leaning luxuriously on the metal wall of the track, and dozing in perfect indifference.
An indifferent bastard.
Ram knelt toward him and shook him violently by the sleeve of his shirt.
“It’s not bedtime yet!” he shouted over the screaming of the motor. The soldier moved from his position by the track’s side and leaned heavily on Ram’s arm, pouring on it a stream of red, hot fluid. All the soldiers watched him wordlessly. Then, hoisting him to his former position, Ram pulled back, wiping his hand on his shirt. He looked sideways again, digging his fingers into the deadly piece of metal in his hand. The white flags could be seen everywhere. Frightened faces peered out from behind them.
“Don’t rest,” he told his men, feeling hot fury inside himself. “Shoot anything that moves.”
But at it turned out, they left the town without further interruptions and moved on.
All the way to Gaza they did not meet with any genuine fighting. They didn’t see many enemy soldiers and those they saw were on the run. They couldn’t possibly lose, the opponent was not up to fighting them. They had expected trouble on entering Gaza, and didn’t meet with it. But they still had the posts on the surrounding hills to conquer. It was not an appealing task, but they did have the advantage of surprising the enemy. The Egyptians were entrenched with their backs facing Ram’s company. When they realized the Israelis were behind them, it was already too late and they started running.
Ram stormed forward in front of his men, shooting nonstop and not looking back to see how they were advancing. It was simple. There was no need to think of anything. He hoped he hadn’t left the others enough time to think, either.
When he reached the advance positions, he found them deserted. All the other positions were deserted too.
