ELISHA PORAT

Clean Slate: Part 2

I remember one icy morning clear and crystalline as the tang of a glass bell. Shuka Mashiah rose early as usual and flung himself into the snow accumulated in the encampment. He undressed and rubbed his red body with handfuls of packed snow. Where had he learned such alien habits of hygiene? He gargled cheerfully, danced on the snow and inhaled the cold, translucent air. Each morning, he made a short run around the basalt compound. Burning his skin, he leapt over low stone walls and hopped into the armored personnel carrier encrusted with ice. The boys set an ambush for him and waited for the right moment to bring him down. His morning acrobatics disgusted them. When he was done, he would do nothing the rest of the day. He stuck like a leech to the tongue-tied cook, bullying him and shooing him to the coffee on the stove. He pestered the platoon's blasé commander, meddled in our files and fixed the rosters for guard duty and leaves.

When he finished his exercises and dashed home to the glowing hut, the boys blocked him outside the door. He was dragged just as he was, in his long underwear and winter issue undershirt, back into the snow. The daily ceremony of pampering his body enraged the boys. Franco the driver swore to pay him back with a good whipping. "Shukeleh you cuteseleh, I'm begging you, take off that undershirt for just a minute. Come on, let's see that manly body of yours you tend every morning." He groveled before them in the snow, naked, but the boys showed him no mercy. "Shukeleh you cuteseleh, come on, let's see what you have under your long johns." The boys pulled off his underwear and pounded his genitals with fistfuls of crushed snow. He screamed and pleaded and tried to alert the platoon commander. No one heard his cries for help. Sobbing, he turned red to the roots of his thinning hair and tried to kick the boys assaulting him. "Shukeleh you cuteseleh, show us the jewels between your legs."

He growled in the snow. The boys laughed in his face at his threats. "Listen to me, Shuka, listen to a man of experience. Stop annoying us with your ritual of skin creams and ointments, spare us your toupee. You're nothing but a platoon clerk, a lowly paper shuffler, no more. You are not the platoon commander's lieutenant. Nor are you the adjutant. Really, you are nobody. You do not plan the ambushes or decide where the guard posts will be. You can't deny anyone a pass. Make an impression with your papers on the recruits. What a miserable little clerk you are, a worm prettying himself with cosmetics." They planted themselves in a circle over him. He writhed in the snow, his pink flesh sparkling as far as the eye could see in the glass-like clarity of the morning. Finally, they stamped on his body as though he were a bag of trash.

Then the door of the shack slowly opened and the platoon commander stretched his limbs and yawned into the bright sun.

"That's enough, leave Shuka alone I say." The boys walked off, disappearing into the kitchen and the fuel depot and the ammunition dump. Some returned to the bunker to clear the door of snow that had drifted up during the night. Shuka Mashiah smiled at the platoon commander and quickly slipped on his long underwear. "Keeping in shape, eh, Shuka? I've never seen such a health fanatic. I swear, you're as fit and sleek as a cat. How do you manage it? Hurry up, Shuka, after breakfast we have to drive to battalion headquarters. There is plenty of work ahead of us. Come on now, get dressed." The platoon commander walked to the urination wall at the edge and leisurely relieved himself as though he had seen nothing and heard nothing, as though he did not understand what no one could have failed to grasp from the sight before him.

Meanwhile, Franco the driver grabbed Shuka and, out of sight of the others, dragged him away from the shack. "Just a moment," said Franco, "we're not done yet." A brief fist fight broke out, ending with Shuka once again prone and helpless in the snow. The boys rushed back, got him to his feet and helped him into the shack. "Hey, health worm, you heard what the platoon commander said. You have to get going." He was thrown into his bed and cried soundlessly on the soaking sleeping bag until his pale skin regained its unalloyed pink hue. In the motley language he had acquired in Bnei Brak, he muttered oaths of vengeance. It was not long before he made a complete recovery, truly a cat that always lands on its feet. Already, his sharp tongue had the cook serving him at his beck and call and heeding his command to fry up the pancakes at once for the early trip to brigade HQ. By the afternoon, he was seated again in his makeshift office between the tight rows of beds. He stretched out with the telephone, telling his little darling, the beautiful and innocent divorcelah, how pleasant mornings were here in the trenches.

And how quiet everything now was. The cannons did not thunder and fluttering flocks of black jackdaws flew past outside. Their chatter was music to his ears. They roosted by the camp's little garbage dump. "My sweet, did you know that a small, abandoned orchard was left there? Some bare almond trees and a poor poplar. Our cook is excellent and generous to boot. No homemade porridge can warm your heart like the chocolate porridge he cooks on chilly mornings. What is there for you to complain about, sugar? You know there was never a time when life was so kind to us. Oh, as for the price of the lot that cheat of an agent offered you, don't you dare listen to him. That crook, a liar and the son of a liar. He's another of those war parasites taking advantage of unsuspecting women in uniform. No signature, no notice and no documents until its time for a leave. Then together, my darling, together we will go and see about buying the lot."

When the platoon commander and his aides returned that evening from a long reconnaissance tour, the kerosene heaters were already burning, the shack already alight. The skittish motor of the generator raised a racket behind the earthen embankment. Shuka Mashiah, snapping at the cook's heels, drove him into the kitchen. "Hop to it, dinner for the platoon commander. And make sure its hot. And a small serving, too, for these bone-chilled men. You've wasted enough time today. You play cards the whole day long, shoot dice at night, drink against regulations, the works. Don't think we don't see or know it. This platoon's tireless clerk records it all in his files. It's our good fortune that he received first rate preparation in the law office."

Just then, the platoon commander spoke up in a loud voice audible throughout the little post. "Make any good deals today, Shuka? Did you sell cheap flats to half the battalion? Tell us, where do you get it all, eh? You're agent and broker and contractor all in one. Don't you gild the lily just a little, Shuka? No need for caution?" The boys stared at him. All the blows suffered that morning, all the humiliation, everything was blotted out as though it had never happened. He told them with a laugh how his pious neighbors in the cramped house in Bnei Brak had seen him off. But he omitted the whispers, "Fear not, O worm Jacob. Our prayers will protect you. Go, go, don't worry, your share of crumbs from the cake of war will still be there." Nor did he tell them that he could swiftly translate those words into Yiddish. He did not need to tell the boys everything. He had said more than enough that day.

PART 1 | PART 3

(Translated from the Hebrew by Alan Sacks)