The commander threw up, the oars were swept away, and I yelled to Ari-nom-de-plume; I read in the Youth Encyclopedia that wooden boats don’t sink. Amid the tumult and the stinging rain and the whistling wind and the looming waves Ari-nom-de-plume yelled back that he hoped the boat read the encyclopedia too. We were apparently off Givat Olga and the British radar station. We heard a siren and for a moment through the fog and rain we glimpsed a British motorboat trying to forge its way toward us and it fired a few rounds but couldn’t make it through the waves. The motorboat was carried so high that it came down with a tremendous crash, and I yelled to Ari-nom-de-plume, as I swallowed seawater, that according to what I’d read in the encyclopedia, a metal boat like the British one would sink but a wooden one like ours would float, and we should hold on to the sides and the main thing is not to get too close to the shoreline because a boat’s speed increases in a storm and there are big rocks on the Netanya and Herzliya coastline.
The commander recovered from the faintness that had gripped him and he heard me and said he thinks I’m right. The boat filled with water and capsized, but just like the Youth Encyclopedia said it didn’t sink. We clutched the sides and swam with it for about six hours. Swimming for hours in winter, in freezing water, without food or drink, put us in the grip of dizziness, and because we had nothing else to do we sang stupid songs. “Get being last right out of your mind, as for being first, you’re always behind,” and “Samara hop hop, with the white-winged gull,” and “A fisherman his net did haul, zum zum zum, then he found he’d lost his balls,” and “Every wave a memento bears.” My head was spinning, my arms were like lumps of lead. Ari-nom-de-plume was swimming next to me. There was a moment when I lost consciousness and he grabbed me. He had terrible strength in his hands. We knew that this might be the end of us. One cried Mama, Mama, but she didn’t hear, and when he realized that nothing could help him, he stopped.
At the end of that chaotic sail we reached the Yarkon estuary. Headquarters at Sdot Yam had heard what had happened to us, and sailors went out searching for us in the heightening storm and found us off the estuary. Young members of Hapoel Yam jumped into the water and dragged us one by one, frozen and exhausted, into the Hapoel Yam hut and gave us blankets and dried us off. They put us into a hot shower and gave us dry clothes. They gave us water and sandwiches and said that we should all go home and those not from Tel Aviv should come to the Palmach tents by the Yona camp, which had already been taken from the British. Ari-nom-de-plume and I set off toward home through the exhibition grounds, where today they sell faucets and ice cream. The buildings were shattered and the crooked statue of the Hebrew worker stood there. We wore battle dress and gray flannel pants, which they used to issue to the Aliya Bet illegal immigration people for trips to Europe, warm shirts and sweaters, and we were wearing new shoes. Three of my friends who were youth leaders in Hashomer Hatzair were standing by the statue. Each had a bicycle. They were wearing shorts. They weren’t wearing jackets. They looked at me and my flannel pants and shoes and sneered and said angrily that I should be ashamed of myself because I’d become a capitalist and an imperialist and an oppressor of the workers and had run off to kill Arabs, and all because of the gray pants. Salt was still stuck to my eyelashes and I couldn’t tell them where I’d been and anyway I had no inclination to tell them what six hours in the freezing sea means. We were the Palmach. I went home and went to sleep.
I woke up the next morning and my hands were rigid and I couldn’t move my fingers and even under the blankets I was shivering. My mother wanted to know what had happened but we were forbidden to say where we’d been. Later, Ari-nom-de-plume, who looked like new, came over and said that the order is to lift a car from by the sycamore at Silicate. I said I didn’t know how to drive and Ari-nom-de-plume said I had nothing to worry about. We went to Silicate and looked left and right. The rain was bucketing down, there wasn’t a soul in the street and he got into the car, bent down, connected wires under the dashboard, and told me to jump in. A man in pajamas appeared from the doorway of one of the buildings and ran after us in the rain, and Ari-nom-de-plume shouted, Don’t worry, mister, the car will be waiting for you in Hadera. We got to Hadera and Ari-nom-de-plume left the car by the bus station and we walked through the sand dunes for an hour to get to the camp.
One of the kibbutzniks bought provisions from Hamashbir and said he’d seen seven cars parked in a field by the Hadera bus station, and Ari-nom-de-plume said, It’s because they sow them, and with a drop of rain and dung they’ll grow into a forest.
One afternoon all the instructors vanished — perhaps they’d been called out on an operation — and we did as we pleased, we played cards, and the senior intake passed the culture hour by blowing out candles with farts. I went to the sand dunes with Ari-nom-de-plume and we sat there among the thorny bushes. Suddenly Ari-nom-de-plume punched a rock and yelled something, I didn’t understand what, his words were confused, and then in a soft voice he started to tell me about his mother and father, how they had no money to bury his father, and how once, before he went back to portering and died, he’d started bringing girls home. Then he bought a Harley-Davidson to do the haulage, and had been killed when driving behind a truck and the motorcycle overturned. The girls snatched the money, jumped off, and fled, and he remained dead on his own, and Ari-nom-de-plume was taken to identify him and he told me that he looked like a meat patty.
He laughed and then said, I was only kidding, you mama’s boy, your dad’s sweetie, with his pipe and the Germans on his gramophone. He wanted me to know, and then we suddenly saw — blurred at first by the flying sand, and then much more clearly — a young man with a burned face walking in the sand, his hair ash, a basket in his hand. As we moved closer to him we saw there was a human head in it.
Ari-nom-de-plume said, You see? That’s what my father looked like, Hello Dad, and he gave the saddest laugh I can remember. We spoke to the man with the basket but he was evidently dumb and also couldn’t hear. The head in the basket was ugly but it also had a kind of deep beauty like the head of Jesus in the altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald in Colmar, a work my father loved. The man tried to speak, his mouth gaped. He seemed horror-stricken. The words would not come and he fell. Ari-nom-de-plume ran back to the camp, and I sat staring at the two heads because the man with the basket also looked like a dead man and blood flowed from his mouth. Ari-nom-de-plume brought an officer I didn’t know, maybe he was just visiting, a short guy who seemed determined and gave the impression that he knew who the man was and what to do. He examined him and said, He’s dead! I said, But there aren’t any signs of violence. He was silent and checked the man’s clothes, I searched with him and there were no documents on him. The officer checked his private parts and discovered that his genitals were mutilated. He looked here and there and told us not to move. He went off. We waited. Ari-nom-de-plume and I sat there and smoked. It was cold. The officer, who suddenly had a name, Kuti, returned about an hour later. Kuti who? He said, It doesn’t matter, friend. I’m not your friend. You’re an insolent young pup.
A police jeep from Hadera arrived. They checked out the man. They examined the head. A doctor had come with them. They were looking for something. They seemed worried. They took shovels from the jeep and the four of us had to dig a deep pit where the soil was soft beneath a scar of sand, and we buried the man with the head in the basket. Kuti made us swear we’d seen nothing.