ELISHA PORAT

Clean Slate: Part 3

How much more do I remember of that eventful day? Nearly everything that happened. I am slightly uncertain only of the order of events. I remember the exhausting ride from the Golan Heights to Bnei Brak. I remember the tense return in the dark, then the way a vicious quarrel sprang up in our shack. Shuka Mashiah lost all control of his actions. He pointed his Uzi, cocked and ready, at Moshe from the motor pool. Only my own unexpected presence of mind in the crisis prevented a fatal burst. I pounced on him just as we had been drilled in basic training years and years before. I raised the barrel with my left hand towards the pocked metal sheeting on the ceiling of our decrepit shack while with my right, which was still nimble at the time, I pressed hard on the magazine catch and tried to re- tract it. Shuka squeezed the trigger in anger, and the bolt snapped free into the barrel. But the magazine had already ejected onto the sleeping bag and no shots were fired.

Then, and only then, when the magazine clattered to the floor, and each man watching breathed a deep and secret sigh of relief, the platoon's indifferent commander glanced up from the evening newspaper we had bought on the road. "Enough horsing around, boys," he said, "I want you to settle down now. Don't go too far. I know how to blow my stack, too." He lowered his eyes to the page again. I paled. So did Shuka Mashiah on his bed. Moshe from the motor pool bent over him, and the other men backed against the walls, also turned white. Suddenly, I couldn't breathe. Something heavy seemed to strangle me. I threw the empty Uzi at the platoon commander's bed and said, "That's enough for me. I need to get outside for some fresh air."

What I really wanted was for the platoon commander to step in and take charge of the quarrel. Instead, he merely drawled across his newspaper, "You're all just getting too excited. I'll bet any of you that Shuka would not have fired."

I stumbled to the door and down the wooden steps. The frigid air cut through me like a razor blade. A cold, dry night had settled over the hill. A freezing wind roared in from the east, shearing everything in its path. The sky was so clear, and the stars so close, I felt that, if there is such a thing in this world as the smell of stars, I could catch their scent. He should at least get up from the newspaper. He should at least say, "I'm confiscating the Uzi until the inquiry is over." He could have dressed down both of them: "You two, the shooter and the target, I'm putting you both in detention until the end of proceedings. Come on, don't dawdle, hurry over to the battalion stockade." His indifference drove me crazy. A sudden weakness seized me. I reproached myself for interfering in a quarrel that was not my own. On the other hand, it was true that only a split second separated ejection of the magazine from a burst of fire from the cocked Uzi. A shiver rippled through me at the thought of what might have happened after the shooting. I suddenly felt the gnawing urge to smoke a cigarette.

I stood by the shack on the side sheltered from the savage wind. A rime of frost glittered on the flanks of the vehicles and the silvery gas tanks and the glistening roofs. A dark night, yet so bright within. I could easily guess the location of the checkpost by the forest, where the road made its first sharp curve on the way to the quarry. Beyond the road, it was possible to see the outlines of the abandoned orchard, the thin limbs of the bare almond trees and the slender branches of the lone poplar. All this was real. It was no dream. This was truly happening. I stood bundled in layers of wool and cloth against the damp and the cold. The dumbstruck men still sat on the other side of the thin wall. Only after I left did they begin to understand the tragedy we had all escaped. I was wracked by the urge for a smoke.

What was it about Shuka Mashiah that so inflamed Franco the driver and Moshe from the motor pool? What was it that even the petite clerk in the law office bore him a grudge? Was he indeed an inveterate liar or did he merely affect the look of a crook? Did the lust for filthy lucre make his head spin and draw him into shameless, transparent lies? Until then, I had never met a real impostor. Here and there, I had heard stories, but I had never lived with him at close quarters, cheek to jowl, one bed next to the other. Is that how a real impostor looks? As we stood in Bnei Brak early that afternoon, he seemed so well-mannered, polite and gentle at the cafe table, so fastidious and extremely eager to be of help. He showed himself a smooth talker there. How clear everything became when he dissected the fine print. "The contracts are not hard," he smiled, "it is the clients who are hard." What, indeed, was he, a failed student of the law? An exam cheater caught and expelled from the university? Someone who had bought his legal degree by correspondence? They knew him for what he was at the law office and still willingly took him in. But in wartime, they were glad to see any mobilized soldier home on a short leave, even if he was but a lowly messenger boy.

The guard on duty stopped when he came upon me on his rounds. I begged him for a cigarette but he had only pecan nuts he chewed, sent by his wife from the farm. I took some of the pecans. At first, I found them difficult to crack. I was still jittery and my fingers would not obey me. He showed me the easy way to split them and their slightly bitter taste calmed me down. I told him what had happened in the shack. He had heard nothing outside besides the usual shouts, which gave him no cause at all for suspicion.

Anyway, what did he care what happened to that sleek platoon clerk of ours? "He got what was coming to him," the guard said. "I saw how he wallowed in the snow. Don't take pity on him. Too bad the boys didn't give him a fat snow ball between the legs."

"I was with him today in Bnei Brak," I said.

"So what's the problem?" asked the guard. "Give me a good car and I can make the trip there in less than three hours."

"Yes," I said, "but it's what we saw on the way. This country has gone crazy. Nothing has changed."

The guard said, "Look, the war will hardly be over before everyone goes back to his little schemes. Jews, what do you want. The war hasn't ended yet and the Jews are already cheating one another. Look at our impostor. That dandy isn't worth spit," said the guard, "it's really a shame to get excited over him. I'm just sorry the boys didn't jam his ass with snow."

I returned to the shack. It suddenly felt cold. The fever that had gripped me after the attempted shooting was gone. The nuts grated on my teeth and their bitter taste calmed me down. I no longer hungered so painfully for a cigarette. Inside, too, tempers had cooled. The men busied themselves, a night like any other at the post. They read the newspaper, played backgammon, made love to the telephone. Shuka Mashiah was one of those waiting in a seat for the phone. When he began to talk with the woman in Tiberias, the unit erupted with him in shouts of joy. "How are you, my little darling? How was your day?" All the listeners lost their hearts to his beautiful, innocent divorcelah. They clung to the phone cord, sent her their warmest regards and swore like merry sailors. Shuka was warned that if he pushed them back and didn't let them eavesdrop on his sweet nothings, they would drown him again in a bath of snow outside. "Don't listen to them," he shouted to her through the tumult. "They're just sick, starving soldiers." And they yelled to her, the way street urchins years ago harassed necking couples, "Don't believe him like a fool. He's lying to you again through his teeth. Don't believe him."

PART 2 | PART 4

(Translated from the Hebrew by Alan Sacks)