by Bethany Ball
Yakov shook his head as he walked across the scrub and brush of the Jordan River Valley. The air was so hot and dry it feels combustible.
L’JahHanim!
Yakov and Vivienne married. They had children. Ziv, Keren, Dror, Shira, and finally Marc. Marc was not a proper name for a kibbutz boy, an Israeli. But Vivienne—who regretted at times that she chose Israel and did not stay in France—wanted a child with a French name. Anyway, she said, I am tired of naming children after bushes, trees, and acronyms, she said. Let this boy have a proper name. A name one could share with a boy in France, or America. Ziv, Keren, and Dror went off to the army and Yakov grew more powerful in the local councils. He created a construction company with a wealthy Druze man from Beit Jann. He and Vivienne stayed in their tiny apartment. They ate in the dining room like everyone else. His prestige grew. The money he earned went back to the kibbutz. He took a small salary, only. His old classmate from the Balfour School, Yitzhak Rabin, asked him to become the finance minister and he does this for four years, traveling to Jordan, Algeria, and Egypt. He was the guest of kings and prime ministers. He believed in two states. Only through commerce can we wage peace, he said to everyone who would listen, and for a short time it looked as though there would be peace.
And yet, around him the settlements grew with Yakov’s cement and Yakov’s equipment and Yakov was ashamed of them. It was one thing to buy land but another to take what does not belong to them. Meanwhile, the kibbutz was very rich. One of the few successful ones left in Israel. He kept his thoughts to himself as everyone around him talked of how Israel must continue, the Jews must go on, and he said to himself but never aloud: Ah, but why must the Jews go on? Are we not all men?
L’JahHanim!
Chapter 16
Napoleonic Château
Alan Attal is virile but old now. He is almost seventy. His denim is tight, not quite blue, not quite gray. The back pockets run down his backside in the new modern style. He pours glasses of cognac until the bottle is finished and then pours tequila. The men, the different generations of commandos, take wide seats in their beach chairs. Their legs outstretched, their chairs pulled away from one another. The Mediterranean crashes against the beach at Antalya in the Turkish Riviera. They are all drunk in their linen shirts and leather sandals. The wives are back in the rooms of the resort, not permitted to join the evening parliaments the ex-soldiers hold. Anyway, they’ve heard all the stories a thousand times before. They are bored of them.
Attal continues: The commanders tell me first to go to Jerusalem to get papers to leave for France. They tell me: Do not put on your passport you are from a kibbutz. Do not tell anyone your people are farmers. Say you are from the city. Say you are from a fashionable district in the city. That your father is a diplomat, a businessman, a university professor. Anything, please, but a farmer!
I ask, But why?
The commanders tell me: You are going to France. You are going there for one year to train. If they know you are farmers’ children, they will have no respect for you.
This to me is unbelievable! In Israel, of course we are the best in the world, what does it matter what our fathers did? What is dishonorable about farming? But I am excited too, to go to France, and so I go to Jerusalem and a passport is made for me. I say my father is a lawyer. I was born in the Upper Galilee but I say I was born in Haifa.
We go to France because France is where the best diving equipment is made. Of course France, because since Jacques Cousteau, they own the sea. That is true. The technology of the sea, the French own. But what is really funny is that the French have not won a war since Napoleon. No, this is true. Think about it. And now I will tell you why.
First, we arrive, myself and two other officers plus six trainees, to a chalet in Toulon. The chalet is built about ten meters off a cliff with buttresses that go down to the sea to hold it up. It is quite a thing to behold! And very old. Maybe three centuries. It is, what can I say? It is a castle. This is where twenty officers live. Just twenty. Can you imagine?
Breakfast was to start at nine a.m., an unheard-of time. We’d all been up since five a.m. and so were very hungry and also a little confused. We wondered if it were not a French holiday? But no, it is like this every day. It took some getting used to. Especially for us farmers, you see! We were led through a giant hall to an even bigger one. This second room was the dining room. There, the six officers sat around a large table. There were places set for us. Crystal goblets, silverware and napkins. You know, the whole works. We had been trained in our table manners before coming but had not expected to ever use this training! Three butlers came in and each of the French officers received three newspapers each. We officers were brought the International Herald Tribune, in English, which none of us could read. It was not a heavy breakfast, the French being French, you know, there was no salad and no eggs. Just nice baguettes and croissants and very good jam. A little cheese and really very bad coffee.
After breakfast we sat in the large hall on sofas and settees and talked about the mission we would have that evening. It was all going very well with the men when a bell was rung. It was eleven thirty, time for lunch. We were very happy as the breakfast had been so light—but delicious, you understand. I was the most junior and I watched the men around me. It was there that I learned the fabric napkin must be carefully placed on the lap and not tucked up into the shirt or left ignored on the table.
The men talked more at lunch. It was more casual, perhaps because of the wine. The officers would request, you know, an 1860s Château blah blah blah from their butlers, who would go down to the wine cellar and fetch it. They would order a bottle for us too. They were very generous. The butlers offered soup from silver tureens with silver ladles. The French spoke of their country estates, their peerages, their staffs, their families, and their cars. They asked us polite questions about our families and about Israel and we answered as best we could. The best families in Israel, as you well know, are from the farms and kibbutzim and I suspect the same is true for France, but those soldiers didn’t see it that way. Still, they were all very nice to us.
Those French officers! You know. They haven’t won a war since Napoleon! But, they know how to live.
After our two-hour lunch we took a rest. Rest! A menucha in the middle of the day! We Israelis had begun to relax into this new lifestyle. I couldn’t believe I was to be here for one year. I’d left my wife back on the kibbutz at home and my two-year-old son too, so you know this was very difficult. After the rest, we discussed the evening operation. There was a long dinner with roast beef, many courses. Dark comes late in France. I don’t know why this is so, but the summer light there is magnificent. We left for the operation at ten p.m. Truth be told, we were quite eager to get down to business. We are not used to doing so little. There was new equipment to try. We were eager to get into the sea.
The sea was warm and calm. There were some unexpected delays but we were used to it. We were surprised when the French began to pull back, saying, It’s eleven o’clock. It was too late for them, you see. It was past their bedtime!
Those marvelous people!
The next day was parachuting day. In the army there, as here, you get compensated per jump. One day a week would be reserved for this. In Israel, of course we do this one time a month, maybe every two months. Not so in France. We flew up in those planes and jumped out, landing in a perfect field of fresh lavender. We were driven back to the airfield, where the plane was waiting for us, fueled and ready to go. Had we misunderstood something? No! We were to go up and jump again! We jumped with the men six more times that day; two of the French officers jumped twice more than that. This, you see, is how they raised their pay each month. It was extraordinary! My God—the fuel alone!
On Friday evening, the mistresses would come to visit. The wives and children were seen strictly on holidays. On Friday evenings, the men had dinner in their private chambers. We
Israeli officers would eat together then and sing songs for Shabbat and get drunk on their fine wine and cognacs.
Those French officers! You know, the French Army has not won a war since Napoleon! Think about it. You’ll see I’m right! World War I, World War II, Algeria, Vietnam . . . not one! But those French, they know how to live. You know who lives better than a French Navy commando? A Catholic bishop! No really, that was a joke they used to tell.
Best year of my life, that year in France.
The men move on to other stories. A waiter brings a bucket of Turkish beer and places it in the center of the circle. One of the men, a forty-year-old reservist, begins to tell the story of Shai Skymatsky, who stood in his underwear on the beach trying to flag down an entire operation at sea.
Chapter 17
The End for Yakov
The earth is cold for all, in the end.
Yakov remembers the port in Haifa. He, a native-born sabra of Israel, the son of Bulgarian Zionists, was going to America. He had borrowed money from the old rabbi, who was wise enough to know the Jordan Valley was too small for Yakov Solomon. He was going to sail steerage from Haifa to New York. He had big dreams and they were not going to sizzle like a drop of water in the Kinneret in August. They would not evaporate into airless air.
For Yakov is sick. No one knows it and Yakov doesn’t want to know it. But there it is. He can feel it.
He hobbles down the stairs of his house from his bedroom to his prized possession, a treadmill, hoists himself up and hits the on button. A little run and he’ll be right as rain. He sets the pace, a bit higher than normal. How he must look to the young people with their red, sweaty faces and their flab. Like a stallion! When did young people get so fat? With the junk they eat and the hamburgers and French fries and cola, all the time drinking this terrible cola imported from America.
Yakov has lived well, eaten well, drunk well, fucked well. He’d created the biggest collective construction company in the whole country. They had contracts in Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan. He could dance on tables with an empty bottle of vodka on his head as strong and mighty as any Cossack. He’d plowed through secretaries and kibbutzniks, goddesses, angels, and shrews. He’d enjoyed every one.
Every one. And then there was Vivienne. Still to this day as beautiful as the day he married her. So beautiful and intelligent that when she’d first come to the kibbutz, she made the Ashkenazi mad with spite. Vivienne despised him now. That was true. But it was part of her and it was part of what he loved about her. For Vivienne knew Yakov. In all senses, he was known by her. It made him glad to think of Vivienne as he ran on the treadmill, faster and faster, his heart rate struggling to keep up with the extraordinary pace of his legs. He was so fit. His doctor couldn’t believe it! So fit, he refused all medications. There is nothing in the world that cannot be cured with a salad before bed in lieu of dinner. It seemed to Yakov in that moment that he could outrun everything. He could outrun them all. His mother, dead now an impossible amount of time was waving to him, encouraging him to keep moving forward, and he ran and he ran toward her, his imaleh. There she was! Why, she’d been gone so long. He’d known her only from photographs. His legs were no longer beneath him, and in that brief but endless moment before his body hit the rubber track of the treadmill, he was flying.
Chapter 18
At Night You Dive
He wakes up from a deep sleep to the sound of shouts. It is three a.m. and the night is moonless. They shout: Equipment. Deck. Achshav! Now. There are blows and curses. Bodies thud to the floor, pushed and kicked from their cots. It’s winter and he can hear the rain on the plastic roof. Warm blankets are trampled on the cement floor.
He is pushed into a truck and driven to the port. He jumps from the truck with the rest of his unit. They pull on diving suits, still freezing wet from the morning practice. He curses the day he signed up. Right now, if he’d been smart, he could be the chauffeur for a general, sleeping soundly in an apartment in Tel Aviv. He could be in the Sinai smoking hash with the Bedouin, or even in the Jordan Valley in his kibbutz room sleeping off a night of heavy drinking. His powerful father had the connections to secure him any command he wanted. But instead, this: the slime from the port pushing bile into his esophagus.
He snaps his mask in place. Everyone around him does the same.
Finally, he lowers himself in off the side of the Kishon pier and watches the lights of Haifa. Longs for them. He longs for warm blankets and breakfasts. The yearning fills the vacuum until the dive is underway and then the fear comes. Water enters his suit at the neck, and runs down his back. He is grateful that his bladder is full. Later it will warm him. He sinks farther into the cold water, which is inky with oil that leaks from barges and ships. He can’t see his hands in front of his face. All he sees is the glowing compass on his wrist. He can hardly make out his partner swimming beside him. The black shadows he sees in front of him are rats.
He reaches his hand up and searches for the metal of the ship. He smacks his head hard against the side of it and his teeth rattle. He understands he’s between the mud and the metal hull. He must breathe—not too deeply—and relax the muscles in his shoulders. Fear is the water he swims in. If the fear gets the better of him, he will hyperventilate. This is how men drown.
Now he is out from under the ship. He checks the glowing watch on his right wrist, and the compass. He remembers the instructions: Kick south at a moderate pace for twenty minutes to locate the mark. He sets off fast and the kicking warms him. The twenty minutes pass quickly, the black interrupted only by the green glow of his diving watch. This marks him as a navy commando. The hull of the second ship looms before him; his skin senses the metal bulk of it. The device is strapped to his back. He reaches behind him and releases it. It attaches to the bottom of the ship with a satisfying thud. The magnetic component snaps it into place. First mark made.
Leave politics to the politicians.
He finds his way out from under the boat, careful not to let the current drive him into the sharp rocks that line the port, and sets off to the next mission. He sees nothing, only black water. He swims blindly and eventually realizes he is under a garbage barge, at least one hundred meters long and one hundred meters wide. He glances down at his compass to find his coordinates and discovers that the rust from the barge has caused a deviation in the compass. The needle spins wildly. His legs are numb; their movements begin to slow. He pisses into his wet suit to warm the lower half of his body. The Mediterranean Sea he spent his summers in is 30 degrees Celsius in winter, and the thin fabric of his wet suit does little to warm him. He waves his arm in front of his face in rapid motion, and the phosphorescence glows its phantasmal light. His partner, attached to him by rope, does the same.
He wonders if this is the end, then, since without a compass he will go around and around until the oxygen tank is empty, and search and rescue comes to find him. If he surfaces without completing the exercise he will be thrown out of training and sent back to basic to join the ordinary soldiers. He’d rather die. Out of five thousand who started the training there are only fifty left. But only twenty-five will finish. Twenty days remain, and he longs for that day when he will stand up in full uniform before the army commander, who will salute him and say, Good job, soldier.
Remember the guy in the unit before his who got lost beneath a garbage barge and ran out of oxygen and began to lose consciousness? Before he passed out, he saw a murky, underwater room with a man sitting in a wooden chair holding a candle. He was bragging when he told them this, and they all laughed and slapped his back. But Marc remembers the wild fear in the man’s eyes when they resuscitated him.
He signals to Skymatsky through the phosphorus and they agree on a direction. They may or may not be fucked now. They may or may not find their way out from under the barge. Marc’s compass may or may not tell him the correct coordinates. He searches with his hands overhead for the rails of the
barge, finds them, and starts moving. All they need is a straight line in a single direction and a slow breath.
As soon as Marc is out from under the barge, he checks his watch. He’s been under twenty minutes. He has eight minutes of oxygen left, and fifteen minutes remain until their mission is finished. The compass strapped to Marc’s other wrist finds north. He has forty strokes east to find his mark, but already there’s too much CO2 in the tank and he’s started to breathe faster, his lungs hungry for oxygen. This is death for a diver and panic will only use up more oxygen. A good diver stays relaxed.
How are you? his mother, Vivienne, asks anxiously when she calls. She says if Marc isn’t allowed home the next weekend she’s going to call the commander of the army. He doesn’t tell her what he tells everyone. I am broken. My dick is broken, which is the expression everyone uses to mean, I am at the end. I can’t go on anymore. I’m finished. Instead Marc says, Everything is fine. I am fine. I have an extra day off for the holidays.
Breaths, like strokes, like meters, like everything else on a mission, are counted. Fast breaths are suicide. The powder that sucks the CO2 from the breathing mechanism is too damp to filter. The carbon dioxide is recirculating and Marc begins to hyperventilate. Relax. Slow the breathing. Ignore your pounding heart. Divers have passed out from too much carbon dioxide, and drowned if they were not found in time.
When Marc completes his training, back home they will say he has a diamond on the underside of his dick. Marc dreams of the day he will go to Koh Phangan and sit on the sand and dry out his skin from these months of wet and cold. At night in his cot, just before sleep hurls its thick, black curtain across his consciousness, Marc dreams of the brown skin of teenage Thai girls that he has heard about from his older cousins. They bragged to him about how cheap the girls were.
