Don't Ask Me If I Love

by Amos Kollek

  I talked for another ten minutes and, when I was through, there was a weak round of applause. I went to my seat, sullen and dissatisfied. I remained there for the following half hour until my successor had finished his speech and gotten noisy applause. I went out before the next one started talking.

  The cool breeze hit my face as I stepped out of the building and walked to the car, but it didn’t do me any good. I drove home and found it dark and deserted, except for the maid. I wondered if my mother had been there as well to watch the show. I had not seen her. I paced the halls trying to invent some way of occupying myself but I didn’t come up with anything reasonable. I didn’t come up with anything at all.

  Finally I went to my room and took out my paints and canvas. I started drawing with no knowledge of what I wanted to draw. I drew automatically, not because I felt like doing it, but because I remembered it used to help me relax.

  Out of habit I drew a face, but it wasn’t until much later that I noticed the close resemblance it had to Ram. It was a strong, handsome profile, and I went on working on it, becoming more and more absorbed in the face. When I finished the sketch, over an hour later, I decided that it was the best I had ever done. It was vital. I was impatient to see it painted and completed.

  I set the board with the canvas on my chair and put the oil colors on the pallet. I had scarcely started painting when my father walked into the room. Only then did it occur to me that I had forgotten to lock the door, but it was too late.

  He stood looking down at me with his impassive cold stare. It irritated me immensely, and I stared stubbornly at the canvas hoping he would go away, and knowing he wouldn’t.

  Up on the cupboard, the clock struck twelve. I looked at my watch and back at the canvas.

  “So you really had to mess things up, didn’t you?”

  The voice was calm, but there was an edge to it.

  “You just had to go and ruin everything you’ve gained till now in one stupid quarter of an hour.” I heard him walking slowly toward me and his footsteps sounded dim and flat. “Why did you do it?”

  “I said what I thought I should.” I answered curtly, hoping he would go. I didn’t look at him.

  “I think there is a fact you have overlooked,” the voice said coldly, “as long as you live in this house and on our account, you have obligations to more than one person. You can’t just do what you want.”

  I tried to concentrate on the picture, mixing the red and yellow and white for the face and knowing that this time it was not going to work.

  “You know,” I said, matter-of-factly, carefully putting some paint on the brush, “I never wanted anything to do with politics. I’ll tell you why. First, I don’t like doing things in which in order to succeed I have to flatter people and run after them and wait patiently for my turn. Secondly, because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do what I really want to.” I carefully painted the line of the brow and put the brush down, I looked up at him. “I just don’t want any part of all that.”

  “The trouble with you,” he said scornfully, “is that you are getting too big for your britches.”

  I picked the brush up again and looked at the silent face on the canvas.

  “The trouble with you,” I said quietly, “is that you are too full of the idea that you are so bloody important. Do you really think that I’m impressed.”

  “Maybe not. That’s your misfortune.”

  “Looks like it.”

  He didn’t react for a moment. I was moving the brush caressingly over the neck when he suddenly leaned forward, and slammed the canvas board face down on the seat of the chair I had it propped up on.

  “Look at me when I’m talking to you, goddammit.”

  I put the painting back up. The little amount of paint on the screen was smeared to a shapeless stain, covering the thin, drawn lines of the eyes and the neck. I stared at it wordlessly.

  “Damn you!” he shouted. “Put that stupid thing away.”

  I picked up the board.

  “Go to hell,” I said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I FOUND a room the following day. It was in Baka, which is one of the older quarters of the new city. It was a small room, with no furniture except one bed, but it was the first one I found. It had a small toilet connected to it and a door opening into the yard. It cost thirty-five pounds a week. I found it suitable.

  In the afternoon I went to Eitan’s funeral. There was a large crowd of people gathered in the cemetery, and among them were a few officers from his company.

  Eitan had been killed by a shell when he was climbing out of his tank. It had cut his head off.

  He was buried in a plot on the eastern side of the hill, overlooking the city.

  I promised him I would bring a bouquet of roses, I thought, smiling grimly as I stood with my hands in my pockets on the rim of the crowd. Can’t even keep a bloody promise.

  “May he rest in peace,” the cantor sang, “as his family and all the people gathered here pray for him …”

  I saw Gad approaching me. He was wearing a white shirt and the expression on his face was obscure.

  “May his soul be bound in the bond of life, Amen.”

  “Lousy situation.” Gad said quietly, stopping close to me.

  “Yes.”

  He smiled.

  “I hear you made yourself unpopular last night.”

  “So?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What’s this white shirt doing on you?”

  “Oh that,” he said vaguely, “I have to be going to a wedding afterward.”

  “Whose? Yours?”

  “No, just a second cousin,” he grimaced, “it’s going to be a tiring day. I still haven’t met your American girl friend,” he said quietly, “I’m getting impatient.”

  “Looks like you’ve missed your chance.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Who do you think is going to be next?” he said, pondering. “There are not so many left.”

  “In that case,” I said, “it had better be you.”

  I found myself work as a supervisor of some construction being done in the Old City. I worked from seven till two-thirty in the afternoon and I liked it. I knew it was senseless but I enjoyed it. I was satisfied with the fact that it made no sense. I lived like this for three weeks, being disturbed by no one and talking to no one except the other workers and my landlord. I used to come to my room every afternoon feeling pleasantly tired and go to sleep until the evening. Then I would fix myself a few sandwiches, salad and coffee and sit and read a book or sometimes go to a movie. My parents didn’t know where I was and I had no visitors. I knew that they would find out soon enough and then there would be a scene. My mother never would accept a son of hers leaving like that. It would imply that he was dissatisfied with something about his home.

  But I was not worried about my parents finding me. I didn’t have much time anyway, the thirtieth of the month was approaching.

  It would have been flawless, except for Joy. My thoughts about her became increasingly disturbing. I welcomed the approaching month of reserves. At least it would leave no place for conflicts. My parents, I recalled, did not know I had to go. I had never gotten around to mentioning it to them. I was glad of that, too.

  After three weeks I checked out. I had one suitcase of personal belongings and I took it with me to the camp. I told my landlord he needn’t keep the room for me. If I wanted it again I’d know where to look. He said O.K. I paid him a hundred and five pounds out of the four hundred I had made, and stuffed the rest in my breast pocket. Then I said good-bye and left.

  On the first day we received all our supplies, clothes and weapons, and got organized. Then a few busses transported us east, to the Jordan Valley. It was familiar scenery and in the beginning I thought this was going to be the same thing all over again. Only, this time there was no Ram, and there wasn’t even Ruthi. But then, the reserves wasn’t exactly the same as t
he kind of army I had gotten used to for three years. The atmosphere was free and informal, and the topics of conversation were usually concerned with civilian, not military life. The soldiers did not necessarily shave every day, some grew long hair, and some were bald. Most of them had golden wedding rings on their fingers and they were fond of showing snapshots of their wives and children to one another.

  There, I thought to myself, looking at the picture of a fat, naked two month’s old monkey: Babies, that’s all you need. That is what happens when you get stuck on a broad. No more freedom to do what you want, just a plain, stupid, good-for-nothing family man.

  But it was no good. I didn’t need more than three days to realize it was not going to work.

  During the long hot days and endless nights on the post I came to the conclusion that I was hooked. I had time enough to work it all out cautiously and with great care and the conclusion remained the same. What is more, I thought grimly, even if you’d had a reasonable chance, you’ve messed it up in the last few weeks playing games. And now, the army.

  I finally made up my mind to write her a long letter, and try to explain (I wasn’t sure what). It took me almost a week and gave me something to do in my free time. I didn’t have many friends in my company, I needed a lot more than thirty-four days to make friends. The letter was six long pages, when I was finally through writing it, and I felt satisfied. This had to work on her, I thought. If anything could do it, this was it. I read it with growing confidence and then gave it to the company clerk, who was in charge of handling the mail. I wrote the address of my military post inside and on the envelope and calculated that I should get an answer within six days. It gave me something to look forward to.

  One evening in the second week of my reserve duty, two soldiers were wounded by a bazooka shell during a terrorists’ attack. There was a lot of firing and noise for about an hour without anyone’s knowing too well what was actually going on. In the morning a single deserted body was found not far from the post and there were signs that the other side had had more casualties than that. We had two wounded and they were both transferred to a hospital on the same night. One of them had only been scratched and he was back two days later but the other I never saw again. His friend, returning from the hospital, said they had to cut his leg off, above the knee. It would be harder for him, therefore, to use an artificial leg and it would take more time for him to learn how. He didn’t know any more details.

  It seemed strange to me, unnatural. It was all right for soldiers in the regular army to get wounded, but it was inappropriate for the reserves. They were civilians. They had just taken a month off from their work. They weren’t playing it for real, were they? Don’t ever get wounded, I told myself, get killed if you want to, but don’t get wounded.

  As the third week went by I was getting restless because there was no letter from Joy. I seemed to be the only guy in the company who received no mail. It didn’t make sense to me. Joy wouldn’t be the type not to answer. Even if she were really irritated, she would still bother to write a few lines.

  But then, maybe she is sick, or dead, or married, I thought, how should I know?

  Finally I decided to ask for a twenty-four-hour leave on the next weekend, if I had had no mail by then. I didn’t have the patience of the older people around me. I felt a stranger, out of place among these peaceful good-tempered men.

  They were mostly kibbutz members and they were always as patient and self-content as elephants.

  On Thursday morning, instead of going to arrange my twenty-four-hour leave, I went with the rest of the company on a chase. It was, of course, something that could not have been foreseen, and had to be dealt with, fast. There seemed to have been a penetration by eight to ten people in the night. Their tracks had been found on the sand path along the river. We did not use helicopters but were driven as far as our vehicles could go and then started closing in on foot, on a crest of hills. It was an ambiguous business and likely to take a lot of time. I was still preoccupied with Joy, but gradually my thoughts shifted to the rocks and bushes around us. The general atmosphere got to me too. The general atmosphere was one of tense alertness.

  It occurred to me slowly that people were actually expecting trouble here. Their faces were set, and flushed from effort. I had a superstitious disbelief in the possibility of anything’s happening to me. I was due back home in two weeks. Who would shoot at me?

  We climbed a steep hill, walking in threes, quite far from each other. We had a good part of the small crest covered in a wide half-circle. There were two more groups searching, because there were two more crests with caves. They had to be somewhere within the three crests but we had no idea in which.

  I could feel the tension growing as we were coming to the top. The caves were still a few hundred feet away, on the very top, and it was going to be there or not at all, I could hear the quietness grow.

  The burst of fire came almost at the instant when we finally saw the caves. They were about a hundred yards away and a little bit above our level.

  I took a few running steps and threw myself on the ground behind a small mound of sand. I peered carefully from behind it, but the fire did not come near me. It was not directed at my area at all. They were aiming somewhere far to my left, and it was easy to locate where they were shooting from. Looking carefully I decided that all the firing came from a single cave, the one closest to us. I figured that there weren’t more than four automatic weapons in operation there all together.

  I heard someone call my name and I looked back. I saw the bowed figure of my platoon commander, a twenty-five-year-old tall, thin boy with strawlike hair and a freckled face. He waved for me to come down to him; there were a few more figures lying there. I lay on my side, holding the submachine gun pressed to my chest and rolled down to them.

  “O.K.,” the lieutenant said, as I came to a halt by his side, breathing quickly, “that makes enough of us.” He had to shout because both sides were doing a. full-time job shooting, not bothering to be quiet about it. “We’ll outflank from there,” he continued, waving to our right, where it was hardest to approach because the slope was steepest, but where it was also well concealed from the caves. “We’ll get heavy cover,” he said, a boyish smile popping on his face and disappearing just as fast, “and they won’t ever see us, so don’t get nervous.”

  Looking at him I found it hard to believe that he was already out of high school but I brushed that thought aside.

  “O.K.,” the lieutenant shouted, staring ahead of him. “Let’s go.”

  The six of us descended a few yards and then started a wide U-turn that brought us to the foot of the hill, on the other side. We climbed up in a row, with the lieutenant first and me last, until we were close to the top. That brought us about sixty meters to the right side of the caves, at approximately the same height. We stopped for a moment to catch our breath. There was a loud, intensive humming of automatic weapons from the other side, where our soldiers were lying, and no reply from the caves.

  We waited there for a few seconds, kneeling close together. Then the lieutenant raised his hand and waved.

  “O.K.,” he said again, more as if to himself, “let’s go.”

  We started moving in the same order as before.

  “The first is the one we want,” he said.

  There were no signs of life from the cave as we came near it. The lieutenant got behind the rock that marked the entrance and threw a grenade in. He reminded me of a high school boy throwing a tennis ball. He was very calm. He waited for the explosion and then passed quickly to the other side. The next two soldiers did the same, then the three of us left on the other side dove into the cave pouring bullets all over. It was carried out just like an exercise and it felt like an exercise, smooth and automatic. There were six figures pressed to the walls of the cave and none of them had the time to move. By the time my eyes got used to the semi-darkness inside they were all sprawled lifelessly on the ground and my magazine was empt
y of bullets. I put it in the pouch and stuffed in another. It was totally impersonal, I didn’t even get a good glimpse at the faces.

  “It is possible not all of them are here,” the freckled thin boy said, as if to himself, brushing back a wet yellow curl that sneaked from his helmet and fell on his brow. He took a grenade out of his kit. “We’ll have to take a look in the other two.” He looked around at us. “O.K.”

  We went into both caves, following our grenades and bullets, breathing hard and looking hard, but there was no one there.

  Outside, the shooting had ceased completely and when our submachine guns stopped operating, unnatural silence prevailed.

  We stood in the third cave, which was also the smallest, with our ears still ringing from the shooting and our faces shining with sweat. The lieutenant paced around, bowing his head because the cave was so low, and looking aimlessly at the walls.

  “Looks like that’s about all, huh?”

  His voice sounded strangely loud, after the short silence.

  No one answered.

  He hung his weapon on his shoulder and shrugged.

  I turned and walked slowly out, idly removing the second empty magazine from my submachine gun. The sun hit me in the eyes as I popped my head out of the cave and straightened my body in the fresh air.

  I closed my eyes and stepped to the side, turning my head away from the blinding light and leaning with my shoulder on the warm rocky wall. I scratched my back with the empty magazine and opened my eyes.

  My first reaction was to close them again in disbelief, but this reaction didn’t hold.

  Right in front of me, about ten yards away, kneeling between two big pieces of rock was the small figure of a man. His face was dark in contrast with the khaki clothes and his black eyes were fixed on me in a stiff stare. His rifle rested in his hands, leaning on his bended knees with the barrel pointing downward.

  I stared back at him and in some separate part of my brain I was calling myself all the dirty names I could think of. I dropped the empty magazine on the ground and reached to the pouch for a new one, still cursing myself and never moving my eyes from his face.