The Drive

by Yair Assulin

  “So tell us why you’re here,” said David in a gentle voice, and I don’t know if I thought this at the time, but today it’s clear that it was just for show. Again I was faced with the problem of how to explain things that can’t be put into words. Again I didn’t know how to explain the stomachaches every Sunday, the fears, the desire to jump in front of a car or shatter my hand or foot. Again I could not explain the nausea I felt every time I entered the base, the vomiting on Saturday nights and the long hours spent crying in the synagogue.

  “I don’t know where to start,” I said.

  “From the beginning,” he said, and I thought how trite and pathetic that line was.

  “Yes,” I said, “from the beginning,” wondering what the beginning was. “So the beginning,” I said after a moment, “is that I joined a combat unit and did basic training for combat until they discovered I had asthma and transferred me to Intelligence, and that’s where everything went wrong, and I don’t really know how to explain what went wrong or how, but I just know that I can’t tolerate the situation there. My soul can’t tolerate it.”

  “What do you mean, can’t tolerate it?” asked David, and I had the feeling he was scolding me for saying something so conclusive.

  “Like I said, I’m just overcome with fear and severe pain in my stomach and my heart when I’m there, and I get to states where . . . ” Here I fell silent.

  “I have to know what your problem is in order to treat it, don’t I?” David said after a few seconds. “Come on then, try to define it more specifically.”

  “I can’t tell you a specific problem, I really can’t. I just know that that place, that base, those people, the air of that place, all of it . . . that I can’t be there. I want to, I mean, I’m asking you to transfer me somewhere else, I’m really asking you.” After a pause I added, “I don’t know how I can go back there.”

  I remember now that his face remained indifferent to all my pleas. I remember the part in the middle of his hair, and his big eyes. Nothing moved in them. He repeated the same questions about why I felt the way I did, and asked again that I explain exactly what problems I had “there,” meaning on the base. I repeated that I couldn’t explain it, and I recounted the long sleepless nights, the pain, the desire to be injured so I could get leave, the frustration of walking around with a trash bag when it was raining and picking up cigarette butts, the feeling of suffocation. “And to tell you the truth,” I said, “apart from the actual need to leave that base, there isn’t really anything I can put my finger on. There’s nothing particular that is the reason for this pain, for this extremely strong need to leave that place.”

  The conversation in that small room, which was painted white, with all sorts of pictures of Michal with her family, like in any office, is very blurry in my memory. Over and over again I try to replay all the verbiage that was uttered, word for word. Over and over again I try to reconstruct the looks, the tone of voice, but all I can remember is exactly the same questions asked repeatedly, and the cadence that became sterner as the conversation went on. It’s an interesting thing the way the soul edits our memory for us, I think to myself—the way it filters out things it finds unnecessary. The way sometimes a person remembers one moment but not the preceding moment or the following one.

  IV.

  The conclusion of the meeting, which came when David realized I couldn’t say anything more than I already had, is something I do remember clearly. After a brief silence, he asked me to wait outside until they called me. I remember his tone: businesslike, unfriendly. Not wisecracking like before, as though he didn’t want to create an atmosphere of consolation or hope, like a woman who has made up her mind to leave and doesn’t want to give her man the wrong impression.

  I also remember Michal’s face. It lacked any emotion of its own. Every few moments she looked at David to see what expression was on his face, and then she put the exact same one on hers. Once again, I sat heavily on a metal bench in the hallway. I remember my feet drumming nervously on the floor, I remember an electric shock going through my feet, I remember my heart constricting.

  After a few moments they called me back in. The air in the room was still and their faces were impervious. “Look”—I remember David’s firm voice—“to be honest, there’s not much we can do with you. We’ve heard what you have to say, but you have to understand that we don’t have the authority to transfer a soldier. You see, we’re mental health, not the adjutancy, not for your unit and definitely not for the whole army.”

  I remember my heart sinking—actually crashing into my stomach. I bit my lip as I listened to the words coming out of his big, menacing mouth. I remember the disappointment that flooded me and climbed up my throat. “But can’t you write . . . ” I tried, but he cut me off like an impatient slaughterer who’s already seen hundreds of thousands of chickens pass in front of him with pleading eyes: “No. We can’t. We simply have no way of transferring you.”

  “But I can’t go back there,” I said.

  His face turned severe. “Tell me,” he said suddenly, as if he’d just remembered something, “do you even want to do your army service at all?”

  “Yes,” I replied, “if I didn’t want to serve I’d ask to get out, wouldn’t I?”

  “And do you think you’re capable of it, mentally?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you must know that a soldier doesn’t decide where he serves or in what conditions. You do know that, right?” My heart pounded and my tongue froze. “Do you know that?” he asked again. I gave a feeble nod. “If that move you made with your head means yes, and if you want to, and you think you can keep serving in the army, then you have to serve wherever you’re posted.”

  “But there are loads of places in the army,” I tried, making an exhausted attempt to fight for logic. “And if I want to serve it doesn’t mean it has to be there. I don’t understand: If a person wants to serve, like everyone else, why can’t he get help with that?”

  “Look,” he said with an impatience that, in retrospect, I interpret as just another act, like his friendliness at the beginning and his severity in the middle, “I’ll say it again: we are not the adjutancy and not human resources. We are mental health. See?” He gestured at the room: “This is the mental health building, and I told you, either you want to get out of the army and you think you’re not capable of doing it and that it’s damaging you, etc., or you go back to your unit like any other soldier. We are going to write a letter for you now that recommends being as considerate of you as possible. That’s the most we can do.”

  “What do you mean, considerate?” I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. “They won’t do anything with that. They clearly said they wouldn’t transfer me anywhere if there wasn’t a strong recommendation from the MHO.”

  “And I’m telling you again,” he said, “this is the most we can do.”

  Then there was a silence, and he dictated the letter to Michal: “Recommend adjusting mental profile to rank of forty-five. Radicalism in thought, childishness, narcissism. Please allow for the soldier’s condition.” My legs ached; I had unbearable pressure in my calves. I was weak and my hands were sweating. I thought about an animated film, Samson the Hero, which Mom bought me on video when I was a little boy and I watched over and over and over again. I remembered Samson’s love for Delilah and all the times she tried to discover the secret to his strength, using all sorts of ruses, and the scene in the film where he killed two hundred and fifty warriors with a donkey’s jawbone. Then I remembered the movie’s ending, when the Philistines displayed Samson proudly in their palace after they’d captured him: his hair was shaved and he was powerless and defeated. The crowds came to see the lion that had become a lamb, and they made fun of him and poured wine on his face and booed him, and Samson asked God to give him strength one last time. Just one more time, so he could avenge all those who had humiliated him and thereby debased the name of the Lord. Then he spread out his arms and toppled the palace on top of e
veryone inside it.

  I looked at David and Michal again. I silently recited a verse from Psalms, then practically yelled at them: “My blood will be on your hands!” I told David, “My blood will be on your hands,” the way I’d said it to Dror on the beach that day when he’d refused to break my hand. “If you force me to go back there even though I’m telling you honestly that I can’t go back there, then my blood will be on your hands. I’m telling you—it’s on your hands.”

  I felt my gut turning inside out and I saw his eyes lift up from the paper and he looked at me. There was something frightening in his gaze, as though he could have strangled me.

  “What did you say?” he asked with restrained anger.

  “I said my blood will be on your hands. I said I can’t go back there. I just can’t. Why does it have to be so complicated?”

  He sat quietly for a few moments and looked down at the desk. Then he looked up and said softly, “If you can’t go back there then I’m discharging you from the army.”

  I remember the blow those words delivered to me, like a powerful punch in the windpipe. I wasn’t such an idealist that serving in the army seemed sacred, but still, the possibility of getting out of the army was not something I could consider. Getting out of life, yes. But not out of the army.

  “What does it have to do with getting out of the army?” I asked, and I realized my previous statement hadn’t toppled any palaces or killed any people.

  “If you can’t go back there, as you say, then it seems you really can’t serve in the army,” he declared, and he told Michal to throw away the form and start a new one recommending that I be declared mentally unfit and discharged.

  I remember the fear and stress that filled me. I remember seeing Dad’s face in my mind’s eye as I imagined telling him that I’d been discharged. I remember the sharp pain that cleaved my heart over and over again.

  “But I don’t want to get out of the army,” I said with my last remaining strength. “I really don’t.”

  “In that case,” he said, “I will repeat this for the last time: either you go back to your base with the recommendation we’re writing and you tolerate it, or we’re discharging you.”

  “I don’t want to get out of the army,” I repeated. I was defeated, humiliated.

  “Then can you go back there?” he asked. “Will you survive there?” As he spoke, I noticed him signaling for Michal to resume with the previous form, the one he’d told her to throw away. He continued to dictate the first recommendation, and when she’d finished he told me to wait for a few more minutes so that Michal could photocopy it and give it to me.

  I don’t remember Michal’s face when she handed me the letter. I was dumbstruck. All I wanted to do was cry. I remember my feet walking toward the exit, striking the old floor tiles heavily. I remember the sight of the other soldiers laughing or staring into space, and all sorts of people in civilian clothes walking with cups of coffee or medical files in their hands. Everything was like an old silent movie: soundless. Very pale colors.

  V.

  When I was a boy I was often afraid that I had pinworms. I could feel them, or rather I could feel my anus itching and prickling and I thought it was worms, and I was scared they would eat me from the inside. I probably once heard an adult saying that if you eat a lot of chocolate you get worms in your rear end. That’s what they used to say in front of us children: rear end. I remember how I’d scratch hard and try to get them out of me, or at least kill them. I remember a bothersome pain that was impossible to ignore, the kind that radiates through the body. Like an earache that hurts your throat too, and your head and sometimes even your neck. I remember having frequent earaches as a child, and every time my ears hurt I would go to Mom and Dad’s bed, and I would wake Dad up and tell him I couldn’t sleep because of the pain, and he would get up and warm the ear drops and put them in my ears, one in each, and then he would stroke my back until I fell asleep.

  That’s how I felt then too on my way out of the mental health building, on the big base that was full of trees and buildings and trailers and signs, and the insignia of various units, and soldiers walking like mice inside a huge cage. It was a violent pain, like the worms. But this time it wasn’t worms and they weren’t in my rear end, but huge lumps of pain inside my stomach, hitting me from inside, exploding all over my body.

  I remember how I stood on the square outside the building and the sun hit my face. I felt the need to urinate, and I wanted to eat, and my face was dry and I wanted to put my head under a faucet and wet my hair. At first I thought of going back inside to use the bathroom and wash my face, but when I turned around and saw the glass door and the “Mental Health” sign in big green letters, and next to them the Medical Corps insignia with the snake and sword, I couldn’t go in. My feet started pulling me, as if by force, toward the gate I’d entered through that morning, after a sleepless night, hoping that someone here would help me stop being afraid of the army, hoping that here they could give me back my ability to sit in a room and listen to music without my heart sinking every time the army crept into my thoughts. I thought that on the way home I’d ask Dad to stop somewhere, and we could eat and I could use the bathroom and together we’d think about what to do.

  “What to do,” I think now. As if there were something we hadn’t done before I got to the MHO, at the end of my rope, my soul riddled with holes.

  VI.

  At the gate, my feet froze. I suddenly realized I couldn’t leave in that state, without knowing what was going to happen the next day. Or more accurately, knowing exactly what would happen the next day—that I would have to go back to that cursed base which the law of this country compelled me to be on, and to start the pain and the bad feelings all over again. I stood next to the guard and pictured the bus stop outside the base, and the entry and the mess hall and the barracks and the synagogue and the looks on the faces of the soldiers and the lieutenant colonel and the first lieutenant, Dan. I imagined him asking me—in a teasing voice or a reproachful one—whether the MHO had ended up saying I was fine, which would mean that everything I’d said about how I couldn’t do it and I felt horrible was just an act.

  Then I remembered that day when I went to the base near Nablus so that Dan could write the evaluation for the MHO, and how everyone who knew me looked at me like I was crazy. The thoughts chased one another at a mad pace. I was already picturing the soldiers sitting on the benches outside the office, laughing at the nutcase whose gun was taken away because he wanted to put a bullet through his head. I could already hear that soldier whom the lieutenant colonel had woken up that night, when I was crumpled next to the green trash can, telling them all how he got woken up and told to take my weapon away, and how he saw me crying. I could already hear him saying that I cried like a cunt, and that right from the start, back when he pranked me and sent me out at midnight to sign off on some equipment at the quartermaster’s and I believed him, he knew I was screwed up. Then I could hear how everyone laughed and he repeated: “Like a cunt, I’m telling you, like a total cunt.”

  I pictured the paths on the base, which get muddy in winter, and I pictured the minutes before morning roll call. I saw myself jumping off the top bunk and quickly getting dressed and shoving my feet into my boots. I remembered the verse from Psalms that I would whisper as the drill sergeant passed among the soldiers to see if anyone’s boots were slightly dirty, and the inconceivable fear that he would call on me and send me to polish my boots and then report to his office, and that he’d judge me and maybe make me stay on the base for Shabbat.

  I raised my head and looked at the guard again. It wasn’t the same soldier from the morning; instead there was a blond female soldier smoking a cigarette. I looked at the cars parked outside and thought how lucky it was that Dad hadn’t found a parking spot near the gate, because I didn’t want to leave yet and abandon my fate to hell, and if he’d parked closer then he’d have already seen me standing there and he’d probably get out of the car
and ask what had happened, and he’d put his hand on my shoulder or stroke my cheek and say there was nothing left to do, there was no point hanging around here, we should go home, there was no choice, I’d have to try again and see how I handled it.

  VII.

  I turned around and went back. My bladder was pressing and I went to look for a toilet. After I peed, I sat down on a bench and stared into space. I can’t go home like this, I thought to myself. I looked at two female soldiers walking arm in arm. I wanted to call Ayala. I suddenly missed her high-pitched voice. I wanted to hear her say that she’d always be there for me, no matter what happened. I wanted to tell her about everything that happened with the MHO, and about how even he didn’t help me, and that I didn’t know what to do and my stomach ached with despair.

  I suddenly felt a strong need to tell her I loved her, to just get those words out to someone, to her. To tell her that I wanted to marry her. Here, now, without any romance or drama. To just be with her throughout this life.

  I knew she’d probably say, again, that I had to get out of this stinking army and start my life, and that I shouldn’t let this country destroy me, and that it didn’t make sense that a country that was supposed to protect me should destroy me like this. She’d say that if the MHO had offered me a discharge, I should go back in and tell him that’s what I wanted. Then she’d probably say that, as for getting married, we’d do it “when the time comes.” When the time comes. She always liked those poetic phrases.

  “Some people die in battle and some people die on a bench outside the MHO.” That’s the sentence that came to mind when I thought about what I would tell her, and I imagined her laughing. I enjoyed imagining her laughing. I remembered how on my eighteenth birthday we were on the beach, and she hugged me from behind and said that from now on I could do whatever I wanted. She asked if “when the time comes” I would take her as my wife. I remembered the innocence I felt in my gut when I heard those words. Now I think how hollow they were and how much dishonesty they contained.