Yoram Kaniuk - The Last Jew

Then they stood above, and the people, except for that silver-haired mustached man, went to their houses and Boaz told about the decisive battle on the Kastel. Henkin stopped his ears. He didn't want to hear. And so Teacher Henkin, stubbornly but courageously, missed the only chance he was given in his life to hear about one battle in which his son fought wisely and heroically.

After Abdul Khadr el-Husseini was killed by mistake, said Boaz, and any one of us could have shot him, including Menahem, he said and looked at Henkin, all the Arabs fled and then came a reinforcement of commanders and we saw them enter the path, yelling, but they didn't hear and then it was too late and Simon Alfasi shouted: "Privates retreat, the commanders will cover the retreat," and thirty-three commanders were killed to defend Boaz and Menahem and Joseph. Afterward, the Arabs discovered the body of their leader and they fled… And that started the decisive turning point in the War of Independence… Menahem's one shot!

Or yours, shouted Henkin who heard the last words.

Or mine, said Boaz sadly.

Henkin started thinking about the next Independence Day: Nineteen years have passed and what am I doing? I'm helping erect a tombstone for Dante that will look toward Menahem's Jerusalem, while for my poets I left abandoned graves in the old cemetery of Tel Aviv. And out of pondering and an ancient sense of treachery, Henkin said: I see shadows on the horizon, Boaz, and Boaz said: What shadows, and the Captain looked and said: There will be a war, and Boaz thought: They're making fun, those old men, what war can you see, but he didn't say a thing and looked at the old Bukharan who started singing again.

In the evening, the Captain sat with Rebecca. Rebecca said: He's probably fed up with memory books and he wants to be a memorial to himself, but without my Psalms, he won't succeed. And the Captain said: But what will become of us, Rebecca? He thought about Ebenezer who had recently come back and painted his house, and Rebecca said: What will be? All my enemies are dead, all I've got left is you, Captain, Roots is waiting for me, you're suffering from eight diseases and you won't recover from any of them, what do you want from an old woman like me?

Tape / -

Boaz was one of the first to go. Then Noga was mobilized too. Hasha Masha asked, Why you all of a sudden? And Noga, who came to visit her, said: They'll find something for me, I'm not considered married and the lists got mixed up. People stuck pieces of tape on windowpanes, Rebecca sat in her armchair and contemplated her life and didn't find anything in it that wasn't compelled in advance. Planes flew low and shook the house. The great-grandson of Ahbed disappeared, but came back. At the airport, foreign residents were evacuated. The Captain said: They built an Auschwitz here with a philharmonic orchestra and now they sit and wait. Why don't they strike? He wore his uniform and asked to be mobilized, but nobody even paid attention to his lunacy. Dayan was appointed Minister of Defense. Eskhol delivered a speech. On television, hordes of Egyptian recruits were seen marching to throw the Jews into the sea. The nation of Israel, said the Captain, sees Chmielnitski and Hitler assaulting it, and I pity Nasser. He was the only one who pitied him at that time. Early in the morning, the red sheet was hoisted and without music, and in a thin still voice, the nation of Israel went to the great war against fat Frieda who lay under the dog, thought Ebenezer, the fist clenched for three weeks gaped open.

And five days later everything was almost calm.

Tape / -

She took off her clothes and put them on the cot. Outside reigned the impermeable desert dark. In the next bed he lay, she couldn't imagine how he looked. She played a game of imagining him from his breathing, from the smell of shoes and socks. She strained her eyes and saw shadows. Outside voices sawed. Her skin shuddered and she rolled herself up in damp army blankets smelling faintly of Lysol. She lay down, her eyes gazing at the ceiling of the tent. He said: Wonder what you look like in the light. She said: I also want to know what you look like. Every night you're here and not seen. In the morning you disappear before I open my eyes. By the time I come back at night, you're in bed.

My name's Boaz, he told her. I'm a grown-up child who survived the wars. Killing and not killed. On the Richter scale of my metaphysical biology, I'm a nine. Your wonderful youth can be smelled. All I know about you is that you've got a lover, that you have difficult dreams I can hear, you're somebody one can definitely fall in love with, if one forgets the inconceivable and unbearable problems of love. For years now I haven't managed to die in just wars, and in unjust wars I don't die either. Maybe justice has nothing to do with death in war? Now that the war is ending soon, I'm still here. During the day I shoot the routed enemy. You've got a female rustle among your clothes. When you undress in the dark, there are tears in my eyes.

She said: That's nice of you. My stupid officer pushes me around all day. He's got clean fingernails, smells like perfume. You sound like a person who flourishes in wars.

I make no demands on you. It's true, I love another man. But you come back with a smell of death and dark. Last night I smelled blood. You sound like a professional soldier. You bring weapons in your hands, you kill and sleep, sleep and kill. In that shelling you slept like a baby. I don't know why they put us in the same tent. My officer tried to start with me again today. I erupted. He has soft, warm hands. He talked to me about twilight in a distant city, said I remind him of that. It was cold and the sergeant on duty yelled: I'll put all of them under arrest, and all of them cleaned the mud and the mud kept coming in. As far as I'm concerned, you should go to jail for mud. I'll smoke a cigarette now. And you?

I'm trying to think if you're pretty. That drives me nuts. Do you have breasts? Big ones? Small ones? And your face, terrific, I'm not terrific either, few people like me. I don't believe in marriage. And I don't believe in love, either, but I'm starting to doubt my ability not to love. Why do people want so much to be loved? All the fools and dummies ultimately find somebody who loves them. And the worst bastards also have friends and women. You can see that from the funerals. The dumber the man the bigger his funeral.

Today I got out of the half-track. I went to search for a land mine. In the distance I saw people in the desert. Men in coats and suits and tunics and women in pants and head kerchiefs. They were straying, aimlessly, their eyes burning from the desert wind. Hundreds of men and women. One of them had a red scarf. I yelled at them to watch out. There are land mines, I said, and they didn't hear and weren't scared. They showed me pictures of their sons. Every one had a picture of his son, you know the high school graduation pictures they make with the faces of stranglers of old women? Those are their sweeties, and they were searching for their sweeties in the desert. Everybody asks if I know his son. Missing, they say. One woman told me: You surely know him. Surely, why should I know him, but I said: Maybe, maybe I knew him. She said, search for him for me. I've got to find him. "Surely," that's the compelling word, don't you think? You with your small or big breasts. After the woman with the red scarf disappeared I smoked a cigarette. Some of the sons in the pictures had scared faces. Do you think those with scared faces die more than those whose faces aren't scared? I'd like you to have my picture… with an erect cock. Like now. You'll take the picture with the erect cock, walk in the sands and ask if somebody knows me. Maybe some poor girl I once inserted a souvenir into. She'll say: The shmuck's buried not far from here. And you, will you weep?