A. Yehoshua - A Woman in Jerusalem

They say the threat of nuclear destruction has passed. Our former enemies are now our friends and the doomsday weapons are rotting in their silos. The pinpricks of terrorists and suicide bombers don’t call for underground cities. And that, young man, has spelled the end of a career soldier’s world. I, who once served in war’s inner sanctum, have become a butler and a lackey. In the old command rooms, in which every drill made history’s heart skip a beat, I entertain the tourists with Disneywars.

You tell me, young man: Is it so? Is peace here to stay? Can we be so surethat a new threat — now, today, tonight — won’t send usback into hiding?

After all, even if we trust your twenty-twenty vision, you can’t deny there’s something worrying about an unfamiliar armoured vehicle approaching the gate with its lights raking over us, especially when it has a coffin in tow. That’s a bad omen for an ageing sergeant whom nobody needs anymore.

The “minor detour” to the newly opened tourist site in an old and still partially functioning military base turned out to be a difficult two-hour journey, climbing precipitously and then dropping just as fast. Perhaps this was why, when stopped at the gate by a beetle-browed veteran sergeant with a mouth full of gold teeth, who insisted that security regulations forbade the entry of unidentified military vehicles, the tired drivers put up no resistance and left their vehicle outside, instructing their passengers to take their personal belongings and follow the old warrior several hundred metres to their lodgings. Leaving the coffin on its trailer, they let themselves be led, not to the guesthouse, which was half a floor underground, but to the barracks room, where three soldiers lay asleep by a crackling stove. The sergeant handed them blankets, pointed to some mattresses stacked against a wall, and suggested they get some sleep; the reception officer would register them properly in the morning.

The elderly consul, by now exhausted, took a mattress, dragged it to a corner, pulled off his coat and shoes, and collapsed, taking a last rueful look at his disappointing detour before covering his head with an army blanket. The human resources manager said nothing. His military experience had taught him that a stern silence was the best tactic when his troops were aware of a blunder. Choosing a mattress, he added two blankets to the one he’d been given and lay down in the corner opposite the consul’s. The two brothers chose the third corner, where they nested side by side; the fourth corner was claimed by the journalist. In high spirits after his well-received homily on love, he invited the photographer to join him and even to take his picture in commemoration of the day’s trek before he bundled up and turned his head to the wall.

The boy alone took his time finding a place. After standing pensively in the middle of the room in his pilot’s cap, as if looking for something he had lost, he knelt by the stove and tossed a few scattered coals into the fire. He had slept most of the way and did not seem tired now. When the old sergeant arrived with a pail of hot tea, he helped pour it into cups and hand it out to the travellers.

The human resources manager, having learned the local word for thank you from the consul, murmured it when the boy bashfully offered him a carefully held cup of steaming tea. The boy smiled at him, his delicate, coal-smudged fingers grazing the manager’s own. The sweet beverage hit the spot. He would have liked a second cup, but the sergeant had already taken away the pail. There was nothing left to do but signal the boy to turn out the lights.

“What is this? Boot camp all over again?”

The giggly voice from under the blanket was the weasel’s. The resource manager, knowing that he would have trouble falling asleep and that any banter would only make it worse, shut his eyes. At once his ears were assailed by the snoring of the consul, whose saw strokes were answered by those of a sleeping soldier.

It was 2.30 a.m. As if mesmerized by the flames that illuminated his perfect features, the boy went on crouching by the stove. Now that the others were asleep, the emissary could look at him more closely. Though he knew that the boy was aware of his gaze, he could not take his eyes off him. It’s all because of his mother, he thought. I wouldn’t look at her in the morgue and now I can’t stop looking at her reflection.

He was not the only one. The old sergeant, too, could not sleep. Returning, ostensibly to add coals to the stove, he was soon questioning the youngster and listening to his version of their strange expedition. The conversation took place in low tones, and the human resources manager followed it by watching the boy’s gestures and the white-haired sergeant’s expression. Like others of his age, the sergeant inspired the resource manager’s confidence and trust; he even made him miss the grand old man himself, the company owner. Recollecting that he had been out of touch with him for nearly a day, he rose from his mattress and displayed the satellite phone and its charger to the talking pair, miming the empty battery and notching two fingers for an outlet.

The surprised sergeant took the instrument and held it in his palm while consulting the boy to make sure he had understood. Undaunted by such a challenge in the middle of the night, he seemed pleased to have found a task worthy of him. Without further ado, he stuck the phone and charger into a pocket of his greatcoat and went off.

For a moment, the human resources manager was alarmed. But before he could call the sergeant back, the boy laughingly reassured him in his own language. He smiled back, patting the blond head and returning to the blankets in his corner. The boy, too, appeared to think that it was time to sleep, for he took a mattress and stood debating where to put it. After a while, as if declaring his faith in the man who had approved his mother’s last journey, he set the mattress down beside him, pulled off his shoes, and began removing his overalls. Not only did he not mind the cold, he seemed to enjoy braving it. The resource manager, who had first noticed this at the airport, was not surprised when the boy stripped off his underwear in the heated room and knelt pale-skinned, smelling of stale sweat, to spread a blanket.

The human resources manager had a teenage daughter and had always been careful to avoid seeing her or her friends in the nude. Not since his high school days had he been in the presence of a naked adolescent, let alone one so ambiguous, half child and half adult, so masculine and yet also feminine. The boy had sloping shoulders and delicate feet, and his golden pubic hair had yet to declare itself. Even in the darkness his supple torso, extending from the bare buttocks, could not hide the signs, both recent and old, of scratches and actual bites, fingerprints of the delinquency the consul suspected him of. It was a suspicion confirmed by the look on his face, at once arrogant and desperate. The resource manager wondered if his nakedness was an extortion of payment, not only for his forgotten mother but also for the entire false promise of Jerusalem.

The boy got under the covers slowly, as if reluctant to part from his own naked form. His face was turned towards the man he had chosen to sleep beside. A breath away from him, the resource manager now had a close-up of the eyes that slanted upward from the bridge of a flattened nose. Confident that even the mother’s magic in this boy who so moved him could not shake an inner resolve that had never failed him before, he looked away to avoid misunderstanding and said “goodnight” in Hebrew.

The boy, as if he were determined to expunge from his soul every last word of the language of the country that had killed his mother, merely smiled remotely and languidly shut his eyes. I know you’re just pretending, thought the resource manager. Good night, then, and sweet dreams.