by Amos Kollek
She paused and I saw Joy looking at the number tattooed on my mother’s arm.
“I don’t know if it’s easy for everyone to understand all that.”
Joy didn’t say anything more.
“Everything is relative,” I told my mother drily. “Your generation still sees this country as a miracle. To those of us who were born when it was already here and made, it doesn’t look so fantastic. We can even see things that could have been better.”
“Yes,” my father said. “You cannot appreciate anything, you just think you deserve everything.”
“Well,” said my mother, rising, “shall we sit on the terrace? It’s very hot tonight.”
“I think I have to go,” Joy said, “if you’ll excuse me.”
“Already?” my father asked.
“Yes. You have been most kind. I am grateful.”
“Can’t you stay a bit longer?” my mother asked.
“I really have to go.”
Both my parents looked at me. I said nothing.
“Well, good night,” Joy said, offering her hand to my mother who took it uncertainly. She nodded politely at my father. “Thank you, good-bye.”
I walked with her through the long corridor to the front door. We went out into the garden and to the street.
I had reached the car and put the key in the door, when I noticed she wasn’t by my side, and I looked around. She was walking slowly away, on the pavement.
“Hey.”
She turned and stood motionless.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
I left the car and reached her with a few quick steps. I looked at her face, and thought I could detect a thin, bitter smile.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just quitting, lollipop.”
“Didn’t like the food?”
She smiled. It was quite a broad smile this time, almost a grin, but it still didn’t reach her eyes, and it still was bitter.
“The food was O.K.,” she said. “I just don’t like pushing myself on people. I just didn’t get the feeling I belong. I don’t think your parents think I belong. They are probably right. I don’t think I’d have fun in their company, so I’m quitting.”
“Lollipop,” I repeated.
“That’s that, I guess,” she said.
“O.K., so what are you going to do?”
“I want to be on my own until I can make up my mind, that’s all.”
“All right.”
Her blue eyes gleamed in the dark, steady, and unblinking. Something heavy took a seat in my chest and stayed there.
“I’ll drive you home.”
“No. I’ll be on my way,” she said. “Good night.”
“I wish you wouldn’t go,” I said softly.
I thought she hesitated for a moment, then she shook her head.
“I’d better,” she said and started walking away.
I looked after her. She suddenly stopped and turned back.
“Oh,” she said. “I’ll send you your novel outline with my remarks. I think it’s pretty good.”
I looked after her retreating figure and she suddenly seemed small and frail, like a little girl. Her high-heeled shoes clip-clopped away until their sound faded into the silence of the night. I walked back into the house.
As I passed by the living room I heard the rattling of a paper and my father’s assertive voice came through the half-opened door.
“Assaf.”
I walked into the room and sat on the sofa. I leaned back and watched him.
“Has she gone?”
I nodded.
He sat facing me in his big armchair, his chin leaning on his fist. He did not talk, so I sat silently too. I picked up a few almonds from a small glass plate that stood on the table in front of him and started flipping them in the air and catching them in my mouth.
“Do you like her very much?”
I made a meaningless face and stooped to pick up an almond from the carpet.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
I grimaced.
“I am not in the least against it.”
I just looked at him.
“I wouldn’t be particularly for your getting married,” he said. “You are much too young and it would only cause complications. But otherwise …”
His eyebrows rose thoughtfully.
“Anyway, I don’t think you want to get married.”
I chewed and then spat the almond into the ashtray. It was a bitter one.
“Maybe your mother has a somewhat different attitude than I,” he said. “She had a different background and is altogether a bit more …” He paused briefly. “Conservative.”
He hesitated, playing with the newspaper.
“She did go through a most horrible time during the war, and everything here means more to her, or in a different way, than to many other people.”
I rubbed my face with the palm of my hand.
He put the paper back on the table.
“What does the young group in the party think?” he asked. “Do they oppose the majority on any big issue?”
“No,” I said. “This young group has not much to say as far as I can see. They just sit and wait their turn. They have a long time to wait.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is strange that there are no new shining stars in politics in this country.”
He paused.
“You wouldn’t have a hard time making it, if you wanted to.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re writing a book?”
“Yes.”
“And then you’ll try to make a movie out of it if it goes?”
Not bad, I thought.
“Maybe.”
“That will take a lot of money.”
“Should be about half a million.”
“Possibly,” he said. Then he added, “Nothing comes free in this world. You play along with me, I’ll play along with you.”
“We’ll see about that.”
A significant part of sexual attraction, I thought, is rooted in a feeling of inferiority. That is why Christian girls seem to be so sexy. I remembered how we had learned in school about the anti-semitism in Europe and how Jews were being treated by the Christians like dogs. In my phantasies it was always the sneering Gentile girls that were so attractive. I wanted to do it to all of them. There must be something psychological to it. Maybe intercourse is really like conquering, and it has to be the conquering of something superior in a way, in order to make it really worth while. It is probably for the same reason that so many Christian girls come here and jump into bed with everyone they meet. Christians must feel inferior to Jews because of the reputation Jews have for their intellect.
The attraction, I thought, comes from the fact that it is taboo. I never felt attracted to Arab girls. Israelis don’t feel inferior to Arabs.
“Think about it,” my father said.
“I will.”
I got up and yawned.
“I’ll go to bed, if that’s O.K. with you.”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be going to bed myself soon.”
You play it his way, sure, I thought, climbing up to my room. Half a million for a movie could make it worth while. You’ve just got to get started, I told myself, then you’ve got it made. It’s the beginning that’s hard.
That lousy broad.
Chapter Twelve
FOUR days later I got a large envelope through the mail. It contained my papers and Joy’s notes. They were mostly corrections of grammar, spelling mistakes, and style. There were also a few remarks about the plot and the development of the stories. Reading it all, I realized she had done a rather thorough job. I accepted most of her comments and suggestions; they made good sense to me. On the last page I found a short line: Don’t rush it too much, this could be good.
I hoped she would call or show up, but as the days passed there was no sign of life from her.
For four weeks I locked myself up in my room and wrote, typing frantically with two aching fingers. At the end of that time I was through with the book.
I thought it was pretty good.
It was told in the first person and was the story of a disaffected young man. He is so disaffected that he is able to climb straight to the top and become an extremely successful businessman. He had a talent for exploiting people and making use of every situation, and he doesn’t mind doing either. His decline begins when he stops caring about his success too, and finds that he has nothing to long for, because he has it all anyway. In the last scene he dies in the Six Day War during a private attack on an enemy post that will probably earn him a handful of decorations. He is twenty-eight at the time and he is bitter because he doesn’t think he’s the type to sacrifice his life.
In its final form, the story was a hundred and eighty-two pages. It was a bit less than I had expected, but I couldn’t force myself to work on it any more, so I hoped it would do.
I sent two copies to two different publishing houses in America, and decided to wait for a while and see what happened.
That same evening I went over to Joy’s place, thinking that this was a sufficient excuse to celebrate, but the windows were dark, and she wasn’t there. I sat out in the car for over an hour and waited, wondering how she would look, but no one showed up.
At home I found a group of people, all connected in one way or another to the military industry, who had come for an after-supper drink and talk.
The Defense Minister was there.
Seeing him, I went into the living room. The man had always fascinated me. He was not as boring and crisp and flat as most other politicians, he had charm. A rough, brutal kind of charm. He was good looking in a strange way, but his chief appeal to me lay in his direct, quick, I-don’t-give-a-damn manner. He was known to join patrols on the Suez Canal, and ambush squads in the Jordan Valley. His face and hands were tanned and bruised, but that was one of the sources of his popularity. With him, soldiers didn’t get the feeling they were the only ones who had to risk their lives.
My father, who was standing with him at a corner of the room, waved to me to join them. I picked up my glass and walked over.
“Good evening,” I said to the massive, tough-looking man.
He nodded and flashed his magnetic smile.
“How is the youth doing?” he asked, stuffing some peanuts into his mouth.
“How do you mean?”
“How is the morale among the students?”
“It’s all right,” I said, “still.”
His face showed curiosity.
“Still?”
“As long as they don’t start seriously doubting the government’s policy.”
“I wonder,” he said, looking at my father and then at me, “if there is a chance of this new left catching on with students here.”
He paused.
“We don’t need student riots here,” he added.
“Students don’t have time for riots,” I said. “When they are not in the reserves, they are busy catching up with the exams they missed.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “maybe we’ll have to add some more annual days of reserve duty anyway.” He winked boyishly.
“Better not,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, amused.
“If students do start rioting, you’ll have a tough case on your hands, the toughest yet.”
“I am trying to persuade this boy to go into politics,” my father said mildly. “Young blood is needed there.”
“That is so,” the minister said, watching me with his hawklike stare.
Eating peanuts didn’t go well with his image.
“He is not excited about it.”
“He is right. It is not a job for human beings.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“It’s going to be a hard summer,” the Minister of Defense said to my father. “We have to increase missile production. It will be vital.”
I moved away, draining my glass, and put it on a table near a fat American millionaire. He looked up at me and smiled absent-mindedly. I smiled back at him and wandered out of the room. I heard my father saying something about building a new factory for aircraft engines, and I closed the door behind me.
I walked into the kitchen and took a Coke bottle out of the refrigerator. I wondered when he would get the Israel Prize again; it would probably take some time. This year an honorary doctorate from the university would have to do.
I went up to my room and took a look at the list of my exams for the second semester. I threw the empty bottle at the wastebasket at the other side of the room and missed. It shattered on the floor into small, glittering pieces. I turned off the light and went to bed.
The following morning, around eight, my mother woke me up, saying I had a phone call. I jumped out of bed and landed on a few dozen splinters of glass. My mother opened big horrified eyes and raised a hand to her mouth. Cursing profoundly, I went to the phone, leaving a faint trail of red behind me.
“Hullo.”
“Know what today is?”
“It isn’t my day,” I said, thinking the opposite.
“O.K., but other than that,” Joy insisted.
“Friday, I guess.”
“Good Friday,” she said patiently. “The processions start at ten-thirty. Would be good for your education.”
“I’ll be over at ten.”
“Fine.”
The line went dead.
“This time I get you and keep you,” I told the receiver, and sat down for my mother to wrap my foot with the white bandage she had brought.
“You’ve probably never watched these ceremonies,” Joy remarked to me as we walked toward the Via Dolorosa. “It should be most interesting to see it carried out here in Jerusalem.”
“It will be wasted on me; I have no stomach for religion.”
“Who’s religious? It’s just beautiful.”
The place was swarming with people, from all countries and of all religions. The Arab shopkeepers were lying on the side of the way, smoking their nargiles, and watching the passers-by with a faraway look.
Even as we were advancing, elbowing our way through the sweating crowd of people, there was a long procession parading toward us. It was an American group and there were a few good-looking, miniskirted girls among them. In the lead were a priest and two elderly women carrying a wooden cross.
We stopped walking and pressed ourselves to the wall, watching the advancing procession.
“Isn’t it impressive?” Joy asked. “All those different people, united in their faith?”
“Hey, Margie!” one of the fat, elderly women carrying a cross whispered to the other ecstatically.
“What?”
“This is where Charlton Heston was kept prisoner in BenHur,” she whispered like thunder, pointing to the Antonia Fortress. “Right Here!”
“Oh, really, Sally?” the other said glowingly, looking hard over her shoulder, through her gold-rimmed glasses and stumbling against a small stone. She let out a high-pitched shriek but managed to steady herself and continue on her way.
A few middle-aged Negro women brought up the rear, singing “Jesus’ Blood Makes Us White as Snow,” smiling sheepishly at heaven.
“I don’t know,” I told Joy after they had all passed. “I don’t know about that.”
“Let’s go and see the fortress,” she suggested. “It’s an interesting building.”
Inside it was cool and pleasant. A few nuns strolled around, smiling politely at the visitors. We went through a hall built of huge stones which had a low ceiling and a slippery floor.
“Here Christ was given the cross,” Joy told me, “and from here they marched him through the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha, where he was crucified.”
There were some other visitors in the place besides us. There were a few hippies and a few young religious Jews. With their beards and long hair they all reminded me of Jesus. I was getting
to feeling holy.
We walked slowly out and came to the Expresso machines near the exit.
“Those technical miracles in the heart of history,” I said. “That is impressive,”
“Shshshsh.”
“That’s where he stopped for coffee?”
“Shshshsh.”
We went out.
“What now?” I asked, yawning.
“Let’s walk a bit. Don’t you want to walk a bit?”
“Anything with you.”
When we approached the Wailing Wall we could see the two groups by it, the men and women, doing their daily mourning.
“All those goddam people, standing by some goddam wall, crying for a goddam building that maybe stood here a goddam thousand years ago, when we don’t even get those dozen goddam Phantoms,” I said for conversation’s sake. “I just don’t believe it. Tell me it’s not true. I just don’t believe it.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No. I don’t approve. Why do they keep praying to Jesus or Moses when they’ve got much more contemporary folk singers?”
She was not impressed.
“This kind of faith,” she said, pointing to the Wall, “kept these people strong and united as a nation through only God knows what, and that’s a bloody miracle.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
We stood watching in silence. A few small Arab children came to us offering small wooden camels for sale. I waved them aside but they kept pushing against us saying “buy,” “beautiful camels,” and other such slogans they had mastered in English. There was no way of getting rid of them. They made their living like that. There was nothing else for them to do. Finally, I kicked one of them lightly in the behind. That made them leave.
Joy eyed me warily.
A group of tourists approached us, led by a guide. He was explaining to them in English the history and the meaning of the places around them. They came to a halt next to us. Joy removed her irritated gaze from me and placed it peacefully on the guide. She stepped forward and joined the group. I walked after her.
My eyes fell on a tall girl who was standing a bit outside of the group. She was wearing a light, revealing dress. She was dark haired and rather pretty. Our eyes met and a brief smile appeared on her lips.
