so it lay there like a transparent resin or a scum on the face of the world, resisting the solving of the mystery. But there can be no mystery that cannot be solved, felt the commander, and he refused to step off the path of the transport of sorrow. He stood there motionless, holding a STOP! sign up in the air, thinking he was in the right place, and then, when he’d only barely dodged the frenzied vehicles of sorrow, he realized the times had still not changed. Everybody was still thinking in well-trodden categories that reliably (as they saw it) divided the world into plus and minus, light and dark, male and female, leaving no place whatsoever for all those who, deliberately or otherwise, stepped out of the black-and-white picture and did what they could to free up some small space, the seats of future change, which would slowly grow until they took their place in the new world. A new world, thought the commander, and that same moment he remembered how much goodwill and readiness his soldiers had brought to fixing up the checkpoint, how they scrubbed everything several times over, as the grime had soaked so deeply into the grain of all things, until each object shone as if it were new. And later they sat in the dark and munched on the fruit they’d picked that day in an orchard that they’d happened upon by chance while they were on their way to the checkpoint. The gate to the orchard was open as if enticing them in, and they happily threw themselves into picking the fruit. There were apples to be had, and apricots, pears, peaches, and plums. While the soldiers picked the fruit, at first stealthily and then louder, the commander went on to the bottom of the orchard, curious about why there seemed to be no proprietor in sight. The orchard was vast, as if it had no end, and the commander was about to give up when he finally spotted the cottage where the orchard guard or owner presumably lived. The outer door was ajar, as was the inner door, and the commander suddenly felt his heart pound, his fingers clutched his pistol tighter, his mouth grew unbearably dry. The commander knew what this was: his body’s danger reflex, but what sort of danger could there be among the fruit trees? Nevertheless he pulled out his pistol, bent over, and studied the windows. From a great distance the voices of the soldiers wafted his way, no louder than the buzzing of bees. The commander realized he ought to have brought with him at least one other soldier, to meet the security minimum, too late now. He determined the angle along which he should approach the cottage without being spotted from the windows, and step by step, slowly, quietly, he reached the front door. By the doorway, in a pool of blood, lay a middle-aged man. His mouth was slightly agape, he looked as if he’d died from the strain of singing, but in fact somebody had slit his throat ear to ear. The commander stepped carefully over the murdered man, and then he heard a woman’s unintelligible voice coming from the lower part of the cottage, the cellar, or ground floor. The commander noticed a set of cement stairs leading to the lower area, and he slowly started down. The garbled voices began to take shape, and he could already tell that the voices were of two men and a woman. The men were saying something, even laughing, while the woman’s voice only moaned. There was another woman, however, in the room, as the commander later saw, but she was opening her mouth in vain, and made no sound at all. One of the men was holding her and slapping her each time she tried to shut her eyes or turn her head away. “Look,” said the man each time. “Look, when I tell you, look and learn!” And what she was supposed to be watching was a little girl, about ten, clearly her daughter, who was being raped by the other man, panting and dripping with sweat. Both of them were soldiers, but the commander couldn’t recognize the uniforms, the more so because of the drips of sweat pouring into his eyes. His recognition would have changed nothing. Their actions would have been the same. First he stepped softly into the room, rested the pistol on the head of the soldier who was raping the little girl, signaled to the other to shut up, then, without a word, he pulled the trigger, and while the soldier crumpled to the floor, he put his gun to the head of the other soldier, told the woman to close her eyes, and fired a second shot. The soldier slithered down the wall and pulled the woman down with him. The woman’s voice suddenly returned, and she began screaming with all her might. She crawled over to the other end of the room where her bloodied daughter lay. The child shuddered and pulled away from the woman’s touch, and only then did she squirm free of the soldier’s legs, lying across hers like paperweights. The commander tore his gaze from the woman and girl, turned, and went back to the orchard. He didn’t say a word to the others, but urged the soldiers to finish picking fruit and continue on their way toward the checkpoint. The daily routine at the checkpoint, however, and the accelerated pace with which things began to happen, helped other things to be forgotten, especially the things that happened when they were on their way there. And so the commander stopped and thought back as if he’d been away for twenty years and not just a month, plus or minus a day. He took one more glance at the half-gnawed body of the cook and then, following signs that only he could see, he bent over to touch a rock at the beginning of a narrow path. If this was the real path, he’d be able to feel three hollows. There they were, three, and the commander stood up, took three more steps of differing lengths, closed his eyes and turned around in a circle, and when he opened his eyes again he was in front of a light-blue door. He turned the handle and strode into the apartment. He walked around it, peered into each room, the bathroom, and the front hall. Everything was just as he’d left it, though it was actually all different. He washed his hands in the kitchen and looked for cookies. He could tell that he reeked of grime and sweat, but that, he decided, could wait. Into the living room he went, picked up the television remote and sat in an armchair. He clicked it on, the television began to hum, and the commander saw himself there on the screen. “How did I get here?” asked the commander. “How?” smiled the female talk-show host. “Here’s how,” she said, “we make every effort to keep close to our viewers and fulfill their most varied wishes.” The commander smiled, “Don’t tell me someone wished to see me.” He turned his face to the ceiling and loudly sniffed the air. The talk-show host asked him, concerned, if everything was all right. “Naturally,” answered the commander, and explained that he was sniffing to establish whether there were any enemies in the vicinity. “Do tell,” said the talk-show host. “You sniff them out, do you?” The commander looked at her: the talk-show host was wearing the shortest skirt and had the longest legs he had ever seen. “They,” said the commander, “have a different smell than we do.” The host twiddled a lock of hair, and said, “It must be they don’t bathe.” “No,” agreed the commander, “they never bathe and seldom use deodorant.” The talk-show host was about to say something, but she was interrupted by a voice from the crew. “We had a brief interruption, so we’ll run that again, ten seconds! Ready? Okay? Now!” The talk-show host licked her lips and said, “Our mystery guest today has just returned from combat. This is not your first war, is it? What has made this war different from all other wars?” The commander also licked his lips, frowned, and, with a pensive voice, said: “Oh, so many things. For instance the previous war was frontal, major and enduring battles were led with the deployment of armored units and aviation. This one now is much smaller and largely fought by guerilla groups, meaning it is much less expensive and less spectacular and compelling for the media.” The talk-show host glanced at a slip of paper shaking in her hand: “And here we already have a question from one of our viewers…. She would like to know whether soldiers curse a lot, and if they do curse, and she has heard them curse, what does the commander do about it?” The commander squirmed in the leather armchair, wiped the sweat from his forehead, remembering halfway through the gesture that he’d been told not to brush away his sweat because he’d smudge the powder they’d used on his face. “He doesn’t do anything,” said the commander, “because the young woman who asks would curse, too, if she herself were there.” The talk-show host laughed: “She’s no young woman, she’s fully grown. She’s my mother.” The commander tried to muster a smile to match her smile, but his upper lip had already pooled so much sweat that a little stream of it was dribbling off his chin; with broad sweeps he dabbed two spots while the director’s assistant scowled at him and shook her head. “And my last question,” announced the talk-show host, “did anything nice happen to you in this war?” The commander thought for a moment and then said, “I survived.” The talk-show host looked at him: “That’s it?” “That’s it,” repeated the commander, and he felt so awkward for a moment that he wanted to slap himself. But he managed to calm down, waited for the credits to scroll by, and meanwhile chatted with the talk-show host, staring freely at the shadow under her skirt until she uncrossed her legs. Then he got up and went to the bathroom, where he bashed himself with all his strength on the nose. The blow was painful, much more so than the commander had expected, his nose even changed shape and swelled right up, and blood ran from both nostrils. While stanching the flow with tissues and cold compresses, he remembered the cook and thought he should have covered the body with rocks and not abandoned him to the whims of the vultures. He felt a huge wave of exhaustion and he barely resisted the urge to lie down that instant, where he happened to be standing. He first went to the front door, turned the lock twice, and hooked the chain. A little additional security was never remiss. After all, there was a war on.