Don't Ask Me If I Love

by Amos Kollek

  After having a bad night’s sleep, I called Eitan the following morning. I felt like having a long sarcastic chat. Eitan liked talking about politics which he felt made no sense at all, and about the approaching hot summer. Since the Six Day War, every summer was described as hot, because of the constant firing on the Canal.

  Despite his frequent laughter at the world, Eitan was no less patriotic than anyone else.

  His mother answered the phone.

  “Is Eitan there?”

  “Who is it?”

  “Assaf.”

  “You’re sure calling at the last minute. He’s already got his pack on his back. Hold on a moment; I’ll call him.”

  After a few seconds he got on the line.

  “Hullo?”

  “Where the hell are you going?” I asked.

  “Three guesses.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “Yeah, they really like me lately, second time this year. I think I’m going to join the peace movement.”

  “The Canal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How many days?”

  “Forty,”

  “That’s a pity, I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Looks like you’ve missed your chance.”

  “You are missing my brilliant speech next Monday,” I said, “before a full house of excited delegates. You could have chosen a better time to walk out on me.”

  “What are you going to say, anyway?”

  “I had been depending on you for that.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, I’m really awfully sorry.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “I have to go now,” he said. “I’ve got a bloody long way to go.”

  He paused.

  “See that I get a plot overlooking the city.”

  “Anything for a friend,” I said. “I’ll be there with a bouquet of roses.”

  “See you, then.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “in one of the other worlds.”

  I hung up.

  That weekend I went to Eilat with Joy. I picked her up in the early afternoon and we sped south.

  It was slow and lazy and dreamlike in Eilat. The last time I had been there was five years before. I had come with Ram then, a short while before he was drafted into the army. We had spent our time swimming and listening to the stories and songs of the hippies who had been camping there. It had seemed like a new world. I had been fascinated at that time by their careless, timeless, purposeless way of life. Ram had been more reserved.

  I didn’t go looking for the hippies on my trip with Joy. We spent all our time by ourselves on the beach, and we also slept there. I was happy then. It seemed like a part of a novel I had read a long time before, then given up and forgotten.

  Joy was all smiles and vivaciousness. I enjoyed just watching her, splashing in the water like a child who’d found a new toy.

  Sitting by a small fire that Friday night, I decided that this was probably the charm of beautiful things. You knew they wouldn’t last, and that knowledge was what made them seem so complete. Joy was telling me about her early childhood in the state of Washington, and how she used to go camping with her family. It all of a sudden seemed like I had missed a wonderful thing by never having gone camping with my family. I think my father would have had a stroke if someone had as much as mentioned such an idea. I couldn’t picture him sitting on a beach in bathing trunks wearing a straw hat. He had to work for fun.

  Lying in the one sleeping bag we brought, which meant no sleeping, I felt warm and satisfied. Joy was moving around restlessly, giggling each time she stuck her elbow in my stomach and saying sorry sorry sorry. She also told me that once, before she had started studying psychology, she had considered becoming an actress. She said she had never quite given up the idea, but had decided that she would rather make herself more intellectual first, because once you start with a mania like acting, you don’t have time for much else. I told her not to worry, I would still make a star out of her one day, when I really got going in the movies. Sure, Joy said, that was what she was counting on. Her only fear was that she would grow old while I was getting started.

  The next day we started driving slowly back. We passed through the old Herodian fortress Masada, where the Hebrew zealots had killed themselves during their war against the Romans rather than surrender. Nowadays, I told Joy, the young tank corps recruits were sworn in, on the top of the rock, in the night, with the words “Masada shall not fall again” burning above their heads.

  Her face was anxious, as we stood upon the rock, looking at the hard wild desert below us.

  “No, it can’t fall again,” she said anxiously. “This country has so much going for it. It can’t fall.”

  As we were climbing down I tried to explain to her that we had only two alternatives, holding, or being pushed to the sea. As the latter was really no alternative at all, we had to hold, so we would. It was as simple as that.

  We reached Tel Aviv after dark and went to have pizza in Dizengoff, the so-called Fifth Avenue of the city. We walked for a while in the street, biting wolfishly at the food we had in our hands. There were many soldiers wandering around with their machine guns hanging at their sides, looking for girls to take to the beach, which was only two blocks away. There were many soldier-girls too and they would also go down to the beach, because, besides being soldiers, they were also girls. Joy watched all of it with wide curious eyes, clinging to my arm as we passed through the masses of hurrying people.

  “It’s fascinating,” she said. “It is so lively and free. No one seems to be scared or worried, just as if there weren’t any Arab countries around at all.”

  “What is there to be worried about?”

  The next morning I struggled to write an outline for my speech. I reminded myself that it should follow party policy as my father had advised, but when I tried to put it on paper, it didn’t come out right. It finally occurred to me that I could talk about a subject on which I would not clash with the majority of the party and still say things I believed to be true. I decided to speak about the tasks of the younger generation in the party. Having made up my mind about it, I felt a lot better and managed to put it out of my mind.

  I started thinking about movies. With my book coming out in nine months and hopefully becoming a reasonable success, I could easily develop it into a script and perhaps get money to produce it. Joy, I thought, could play one of the main parts.

  If worst comes to worst, I thought, I could probably get some money from my father. After all, I had pretty much been going his way.

  That afternoon, I took myself to a movie. When I came back, I sat down and wrote the outline for my speech in a few moments. After supper, I went happily to bed with a thriller I had taken from my father’s study. I read it passionately till two o’clock in the morning and then had a bar of chocolate and a Coke and went to sleep.

  I woke up late in the morning and strolled lazily down to the kitchen. I made myself breakfast and turned on the radio for the twelve o’clock news. The announcer was reading out the names of the three soldiers killed in action the previous night on the Canal, but I was not listening to him. I was chewing my buttered toast noisily, trying to figure out how much a low-budget hour-and-a-half movie would have to cost. I couldn’t make up my mind if it was absolutely necessary for it to be in color. I was inclined to think so.

  It was only after he had read the weather forecast that the announcer read out the names again, and this time I did not miss them. It still took me a few seconds to figure out who Eitan Sharon, aged twenty-two from Jerusalem, could be. But I managed it. I switched the radio off and walked up to my room, still biting on my last piece of toast. I lay down on my bed, putting the thriller carefully on the floor. I tried to go back to sleep, but I was not tired, so after a while I got up and took a cold shower and got dressed.

  A bit later my mother called me down for lunch. Surprisingly, my father was also there. Such occasions were rare.


  “Hi,” he said to me. “All ready for tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  He stuffed the food into his mouth, satisfied, “We’ll see how it turns out.”

  “Assaf,” my mother said, “why don’t you finish your meat?”

  “Not hungry.”

  “Why?”

  “Had a late breakfast.”

  “Should go quite well, this evening,” my father said, chewing. “The Prime Minister will be there and most of the party’s ministers. You should make a good impression. It’s tricky-nothing provocative, but somehow original—you understand?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Think you can do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you like the potatoes, Assaf?”

  I stood up.

  “Where are you going, Assaf?”

  “Out.”

  “You didn’t finish eating yet.”

  “I just did.”

  “You …”

  “Leave him be,” my father cut in. “So he is not hungry. Just don’t work yourself up,” he said to me. “You shouldn’t be tired tonight.”

  I stood politely until he finished speaking and then I walked out.

  I went upstairs and got my driver’s license and a few pounds and shoved them in my pockets. I went down to the car, and pulled quickly away from the curb heading for the main road. On the way I passed my father’s car, but he did not see me. He was absorbed in his newspaper. The driver nodded to me.

  Like hell I’m going to speak tonight, I thought.

  Fifty minutes later, I parked in the lot by Joy’s house. It was two-thirty.

  I climbed up the stairs and knocked on her door. Waiting there it occurred to me for the first time that she had a job and wouldn’t be in. I tried the door, but it was locked and I smashed my shoe into it. It only knocked some paint off.

  I drove back into the center of town and found a movie. It was a stupid American sex comedy, but I thought I might as well be there as sitting in the car. After it was over, I had some coffee in a small place near Joy’s house. It was after seven when I paid my bill and walked out into the cold evening air.

  When I approached the door, I could hear voices coming from inside. I waited for a second and then knocked.

  Joy, with her hair up, wearing a black leather dress, opened the door. She had on heavy make-up and small silver earrings. Her eyebrows arched in surprise.

  “Hullo,” she said brightly.

  Over her shoulder I saw a bearded young man and a plain-looking girl, sitting on her bed.

  “Well,” Joy said brightly, “come in, won’t you? It’s a lucky thing you showed up, because we were going to go out and I would have had no date.”

  She walked into the room and I followed her, grimacing.

  “Glad to meet you,” the plain girl said plainly, and smiled up at me.

  “Hi!” The bearded one’s name was Jim.

  “Sit down,” Joy said. “We’ll be leaving in a minute. This is Jim’s birthday so we’re celebrating. Would you believe he is twenty-six?”

  “No …”

  “But he is,” she said happily, putting on two silver high-heeled shoes. “They are old friends, from Berkeley. Anyway,” she added, “first we’ll go and have a good meal and then, a night club or something.”

  “I won’t be joining you,” I said, “if you’ll excuse me.”

  “I certainly will not.”

  “Come on,” Jim said, “be my guest.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “but I think I’ll be leaving.”

  Joy’s eyes were cold with anger.

  “What are you doing,” she said, “spoiling the evening for me?”

  I did not answer.

  She was puzzled. The other two were becoming embarrassed.

  Joy walked out the door, and I followed her.

  “What is it?” she asked me warily, turning to face me, once we were out on the roof.

  “I wanted to see you alone,” I said. “I wanted to see you alone, that is all.”

  She shifted her weight from one leg to the other impatiently.

  “Well, I am not alone, you can see that.”

  “You could get rid of them.”

  “Get rid of them? I see. Just like that. Do you know that these are almost the only American friends I have seen since 1 came to this damned country, and they’ll be leaving in a few days.”

  She paused. “But then, what would you care about that?”

  She almost spat the words.

  “All right,” I said, “let’s not get upset. I’ll be leaving. I shouldn’t have been here tonight, anyway.”

  “Assaf, your behavior is insulting.”

  “I am sorry,” I said, “I won’t stay.”

  “Why?”

  “I came to see you. I don’t want to be with them, not tonight.”

  Her eyes were gleaming in the dark.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “I get the feeling that all you want to do with me is sleep with me.”

  I was silent for a moment.

  “Well-” I said.

  I turned and went through the emergency exit into the building and down the stairs. I got into the car and drove back to Jerusalem. I arrived at the concert hall where the meeting was taking place, shortly after eight-thirty.

  It was supposed to have started at eight.

  The hall was crowded and hot and filled with smoke. The chairman of the committee was speaking when I arrived. He saw me and winked, and I walked through the long passage between the two blocks of benches and sat down in one of the front rows. I felt strangely calm and comfortable and remote and far away. The crowd around me seemed like an empty space; it didn’t mean a thing.

  The audience clapped in mild enthusiasm, and I realized the speaker was finishing his speech.

  I leaned backward in my chair and closed my eyes.

  “I will now let,” the chairman was saying, “a younger and probably more promising person than, myself”—he paused, waiting for applause for that gallant gesture of modesty; he got some, and then went on—”say what he has to say. And I am sure he has things to say. Assaf Ryke.”

  I went up to the stage and shook the chairman’s hand.

  “You get a funny impression from following the news in this country. We have all been raised, at least my generation has, that more than anything else we want peace. Yet, from following the statements of ministers and government officials one gets the impression that they are afraid of peace. Whenever anyone makes any suggestions for a solution, our leaders point to the Arab or Russian interest behind it, and turn it down. One gets the feeling that our leaders, deep in their hearts, do not believe in the possibility of peace. They believe that the Jews’ fate is to fight for their right to exist from generation to generation. History seems to support this feeling. We don’t believe in the possibility of peace any more and therefore we are not willing to give up anything we have accomplished as a necessary step toward achieving it. I think this is where we go wrong.”

  I paused. In the first row I saw a few disapproving faces. I went on.

  “I am not an optimist and I think that the Russian and Arab leaders will try to prevent any solution for quite a while anyway. But if we want peace, ever, we should be willing to make the first steps. Our status as victors permits and suggests that we should be the ones to initiate it. We have to make it harder for the Arabs to maintain their hostility. We have to get world opinion on our side.

  “A peaceful solution will necessarily require our giving up land. Let us realize that and form a policy in accordance with that realization. Our government has no clear line on the boundary question. It is a mass of contradictory opinions.

  “I want to make absolutely clear that there is no political group I resent more than those who deny our right to this country. I do not question that right. But I believe that we also have to be practical.

  “My proposal is simply this: that we express ou
r willingness to give back the West Bank and Sinai if that will make it possible for us to reach an agreement for peace. Let’s give it a chance. By demonstrating our willingness to meet the Arabs halfway, we have nothing to lose. If they reject our offer they will have a harder time with world opinion and also among themselves. If they accept, it could at least be the beginning of a solution. Should there be peace we would not need all that land with its Arab population. We want this to be an Israeli country.

  “That is, if we want peace at any cost.

  “I know there are many people who believe the present situation is safer than a doubtful peace within narrower borders. After all, the number of people getting killed in the fighting, scarcely reaches a third of those killed in road accidents, only they’re younger. So maybe we could just keep it as it is.

  “But for how long?

  “The younger generation in this country does not believe in the eternal Jewish fate of suffering. They don’t want just to fight all the time, they want to live, too. In the long run, young people may start doubting if it is really an absolute necessity that they carry arms all the time. They might come to the conclusion, right or wrong, that they should rebel and try to change the way things are handled.

  “We have to avoid this. We cannot afford doubts, let alone revolutions. We have been strong because we have been immune to both these things.

  “The government must begin to take the younger generation into consideration. This country, which depends so much on its young people, has too little place for them in the political arena. This is wrong. Why aren’t there more young people in the government and the Knesset? Why does one have to be middle-aged in order to have a say on the national affairs and actions of Israel?

  “We have to make any possible effort toward peace. The government has to give the young people the feeling that it’s doing everything it can to end the fighting. Maybe those efforts will even see results, who knows? But let us not lose any more time.”

  I caught sight of my father’s face for the first time. He was sitting in the third row looking at me. His face showed no expression, but it was very pale.