I went inside. The taboun oven emitted a strong smell of seared meat, ash, and burned bread. N. hit the old woman hard and shouted something unintelligible, and she fell, and with the force of her fall the dead body moved, and the younger woman leapt to face N., her eyes sparks of hostility, and she spat in his face; he looked at her, slowly wiped away her spittle as if he were enjoying this moment, glared at me, and smiled. He tore off her scarf and stuffed it into the old woman’s mouth, and she gurgled and it seemed like they wanted to escape, but she couldn’t even stand up, and he yelled: All Arab women are the means of production of murderers, you shit of a communist, amity among nations, you take a good look at Raffi’s green shirt, it’s his shirt that the Araboosh is wearing, I gave it to Raffi only yesterday, and now the Araboosh is wearing it and Raffi’s dead with his dick in his mouth.
N. pulled out a blunt sapper’s knife designed for slitting bags of TNT and began stabbing the younger woman. The whole gang, even those who’d been lying under the fig tree, now stood in silence by the wall whose windows opened onto the tree. I jumped to help the woman. They saw what I wanted to do and held me back. What’s wrong with you? they said. He’s your friend, isn’t he? Let him vent his anger. I said, Don’t let him kill her, and they shouted, Him? Her? What’s the difference? Ginger held me back with the terrible strength he had in his arms, and N. looked at me and laughed, Go play them some Bach with your intellectual of a father, you shit of a mama’s boy, you piece of nothing from that socialist Hashomer Hatzair, how can you fucking sleep at night with all the Arabs you’ve killed? What, the Arabs you shot aren’t amity among nations? Aren’t they your brothers, you piece of shit? They’re not binational? And what about Abdel Khader al-Husseini at the Castel?
And like an idiot I said, But it wasn’t me who killed him, it was someone who was with me who hit him, I fired but missed. As I said it I realized that perhaps I wanted to be the one who’d killed Abdel Khader al-Husseini at the Castel, and was ashamed of myself. N. said contemptuously, You fired and missed. You probably wanted to wipe his ass with amity among nations.
The woman went on shouting at N., Jabaar! Jabaar! You think you’re such a hero! And as if to spite him she managed to take the scarf out of the old woman’s mouth. N. dealt her a sharp samurai blow, the way we’d seen in a film a few months ago, and then he screamed and pinned the woman to the floor and blood burst from her mouth and eyes, and he shouted, Look at how she falls, look at how Arabs die, that’s how they fall and die, slowly, slowly, only Jews die on their feet or slashed to ribbons on a tree.
The back door opened and a little boy of about eight came running in. His belly was distended and flies swarmed around his hair like a coronet. I stood there staring and unfocused. N. grabbed the frightened boy whose face, under the dirt and soot from the taboun oven, I can’t really recall after more than sixty years, but I think it was lovely. The boy laughed nervously and seemed afraid, and N. held him close and shouted, Look at what a shit this little Arab is! The old woman groaned, and I shouted at N., Don’t touch him, he’s just a kid, have pity on him, and N. laughed, What, you’re worried about him, Bubbeleh*?
He held the boy with one hand and with the other brought the knife to his throat, and I could see the tremor in his hand from the power of his grip. The boy screamed, and N. gave an alien laugh and said to me, Will you sing him “The Bird Has a Nest Among the Trees”? Remember, you told me that you asked your teacher mother how can a nest be among the trees? What? The national poet Bialik didn’t know that nests aren’t among the trees but in them? A new spasm was expelled from the part of his soul that grew up with Arabs in the small town, and he shouted, What’s going to happen in ten years? This nice little boy will grow up and go home and take a rifle and come to your backyard and sit in the trees, and you and your father will whistle Beethoven to him, and he’ll shoot you in the balls. If you’ve got balls.
Stop it! I yelled, and the boy’s throat was already red, and Ginger shouted at me, What a baby you are, Yoram, leave N. alone, he’s angry. And I, who had loved N. for many years, before and after, trembled. I was flooded with a wave of anger and remorse. I aimed my Thompson at N. and said, Either you leave the boy alone or I’ll shoot you.
Beads of cold sweat dripped from my forehead. I was parched. The guys stood by the wall and were silent. I pissed my pants and the Thompson was shaking. N. burst out laughing. Listen, you Arab ass-kisser, if you shoot the kid then I won’t slaughter him and if you don’t shoot him, I’ll slaughter his dead mother too, who’s maybe not even dead. He kicked her. She moved and he said, The whore isn’t dead, look at how the Arabs die without dignity. And you, kill your poor kid already. Two minutes. If you don’t shoot the kid, I’ll start in with my knife.
Everybody stood waiting. I was standing there with all my seventeen and a half years and aimed the Thompson at N. I took careful aim, I felt the tension, my hands weren’t trembling now, I knew I was right, that mean rightness strengthened muscles in me I didn’t know I had, and I could hear the blood flowing in my veins and I thought of my father and my friends from Hashomer Hatzair, with their binational state, for which back then, and even now, I had the only conceivable solution but one I couldn’t live with, and I aimed at N. and a shot was heard. A cloud of dust rose, and N. was standing there alive and well, but the boy fell, like a butterfly at first and then dropped like a stone. The bullet was aimed at N., I know I was aiming at him, but it was the boy who was killed. I wasn’t the best shot in the world but not the worst either, and the range was only a little more than two meters. The bread in the taboun oven stank. Through the window I saw a dog running and an extinguished bonfire and vines and a crooked tamarisk and the mountains beyond it, and I saw Bab el-Wad in whose hills we would be buried when we died. I put out the taboun with a bucket of water that stood there, I covered the boy’s body with a bloodstained blanket, I kissed his face, and moved his mother toward him and covered her with my paratrooper jacket, and went outside.
I joined the guys who’d gone back into the shade of the tree and we lay down. Nobody said a word. N. came outside trembling and tried to hug me but I shoved him away. They looked at us, waiting for something, I didn’t know what.
Later we went back to Kiryat Anavim. We buried two dead, including Raffi who’d been hung on the tree, and I went into the tent and came out and went to one of the senior officers, if that’s what you could call them, and told him what had happened. He asked who’d been killed. I said I wouldn’t tell him. For some reason or another he didn’t realize that I’d murdered a child. The senior officers barely knew the fighters, we died unnamed. We kept quiet and went on fighting and dying, and the officers, except for a few, were busy being officers.
After a day on the grass I didn’t submit to indifference and brought charges against N. What charges! There wasn’t even a state yet. We were partisans. I gathered everybody on the lawn. Benny Marshak came, who didn’t really want the hullabaloo but realized that as the political commissioner he had to go along with me, and he ordered that a trial be held. Then, reluctantly, everybody sat down and smoked and I related what had happened. They pitied me for being such a fool. N. sat there smiling silently. When I’d finished, he got up and told a story. He told us that once, near his small town, there was a Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz, and the kibbutzniks wanted amity among nations and used to invite the Arabs to their parties in the kibbutz dining hall. They’d dance with them. They liked them. When he spoke about how he peeled a cucumber, we’d drool. And he went on, There was one Arab, the nicest of them, whose name was Jamil. The kibbutz idiots would kiss Jamil for the world of tomorrow and amity among nations. And they’d bring him to their tents and feed him delicacies and try and teach him to read to bring culture to the oppressed. Then the fighting broke out and a gang attacked the kibbutz and who d’you think it was led by? Jamil. He knew every path and every tent. That amity among nations led them to the tents. He was the greatest ever in amity among nations, ala keyf keyf keyfaq—the great, great, greatest ever!