People, old, young, women wrapped in kerchiefs, lie curled up in the desert. In their hands they hold photos. On their faces is the terror of the dream that may not be a dream anymore. He says to her: In an hour I'll take you back to the teleprinter! He wants her in the wet sand of the morning dew in the filtered and serene light, and when they stopped at a damaged car they saw a soldier connecting an electric razor to the battery and shaving. He stood naked in the morning chill and trembled. The soldier asked: Are you by any chance not dead people searching for their parents?
You're a son-of-a-bitch, he said to the soldier, we're going to make us our sons right here.
So who's the son-of-a-bitch here, said the soldier and went on shaving.
In the evening, after the teleprinter, he waited for her as if he hadn't seen her in a year. They went to the culture center. A month ago, Nasser said here that he'd throw the Jews into the sea. This doesn't look like a sea, said some sergeant major. But he wasn't laughing now. Airplanes tore the sky in sudden sallies. An arrogant atmosphere of numb tension prevailed. They sat facing a television set. They set up an antenna to receive broadcasts from Jerusalem that were just starting. Through the former Egyptian transmitter they can see the end of the war in the north. And H. Herzog talking about our forces. I'm drinking the wine of Latrun brought by the conquerors of Latrun, he thinks, and looks at H. Herzog talking about our forces, how terrific is H. Herzog, he's a General (Res.) and can talk; what and where to. He's also combed and talks with abysmal seriousness about wars. Wars aren't such a serious matter, H. Herzog. Our forces are a youth with a paper flower who shaves naked at a destroyed car and then dies. Or first dies and then shaves. Our forces is a man with a James Bond case who comes to wars from America and they're still drinking his whiskey here. Our forces is also H. Herzog himself telling what our forces are, what they do, did, will do.
When they went out they looked toward a dark point lighted for a moment by two spotlights. In the crisscross of the spotlights a half-track of the Burial Society was seen. Instead of a cannon, a hut was set up there. In the hut were our forces, their memory for a blessing. He said: See how they pack the children whose parents are searching for them in the sands. People dressed like crows with sidelocks and ritual fringes, and love thy neighbor as thyself, they put the children in the hut on the half-track. In their hands they hold prayer books they'd sometimes stick in their coat pockets. Even the driver wears a kippah, but he doesn't wear a coat over the prayer shawl. A young Hasid stood there, his face very pale, looked at the crisscross of the lights and sang: This is what my heart desires, pity please and do not overlook… He's also our forces, H. Herzog, he said.
When Boaz came to Rebecca's house, the old woman said, The Captain died. Boaz didn't respond but went into the bathroom, waited until the great-grandson of Ahbed brought him new clothes, filled the bathtub with hot water, and sat for a long time and rubbed his body. Noga phoned and he told her the Captain died.
Tape / -
Captain (Colonel) Jose Menkin A. Goldenberg died three days after the war began. That was one of the rare days when Rebecca allowed the Captain to come when it wasn't Wednesday night. When he drank the eternal tea the great-grandson of Ahbed poured for him, he saw Rebecca's legs under the table. He said: I see through the dress, as if your clothes were transparent, I don't see anything but bones and spots, he added pensively. Outside, supersonic booms were heard, and Rebecca said: Watch out, Captain, you look like you are covered with clouds. The Captain said: When we stood on the Kastel and talked about the memorial to Dante, I knew there would be a war, I saw an army ready, but it wasn't ready, I saw things that were to happen and that means I'm one foot in the future and the future of a person over eighty years old isn't an alternative to death anymore. And Rebecca said something and almost regretted the tone that didn't suit her, she said almost pleading: Don't die yet, I think I need you. He said: Interesting how beautiful you look without the clothes that disappeared from you, and she blushed and said: One by one they all go, don't let him take you, Menkin… not yet. Rebecca looked in his misty eyes and in her mind a memory surfaced of the river that pierced her, a sourish taste of blood rose from her insides to her lips and she said: When you see me naked after fifty years, Menkin, and I recall how I became pregnant from the river and begat Boaz, I start to be fond of you, Menkin…
In his attempt to smile, the Captain felt his bones dissolving, he stood up, kissed Rebecca's hand, and very slowly walked to his house. She watched him, but because her vision was blurred, she could see only an unclear mass walking on the path planted by Dana. The mass disappeared into the house and suddenly her throat felt dry. The Captain came to his room and felt the air running out of his lungs, his throat was choked, his body heavy. He lay in his bed, very slowly stretched his legs, even though it hurt, lit the table lamp, put his false teeth in a glass from which he sipped a little water, then he shook the glass to drizzle a little water on his hair, the glass was almost emptied, and he put his hat on his chest, his sword across his body, didn't take off his boots, but polished the medals he pinned on, and with his last strength, with a comb he held in a trembling hand, he combed the wet hair, and unable to see himself in a mirror he folded his hands, and when he saw the phosphorescent clock showing three a.m., he managed to pound the clock, stop time, and die.
Rebecca went into her room, locked the door, and for two days she didn't come out. When the great-grandson of Ahbed claimed that the corpse was rotting, she yelled at him not to come near her. Two days later, planes were heard passing over the house on their way north, and Rebecca went out of the room wearing a black dress and asked Ahbed to make her something to eat. She sat alone to eat and said: What great generals are starting to die now!
Nobody knew how to bury him. His splendid lying in bed evoked admiration and amazement mixed with an intoxicating atmosphere of victory. The rabbi waged a hard struggle not only with Rebecca but also with Mr. Klomin and a few other old men who began to show a suspicious fondness for the Captain. When Mr. Klomin went to the small church in Jaffa, there wasn't a single person alive who remembered the Captain. In the beautiful house among swans and rare birds where the old man dressed in white sank into the ground, lived three old Arabs. The rabbi who left before in high dudgeon now returned from Roots in an almost philosophical mood, a sense of death stuck to him too, but he still firmly refused to bury the Captain in Roots. Rebecca argued with an implacable vehemence that her husband had founded Roots even though of course he wasn't to blame for the stupid name they gave the cemetery, and she had, she claimed, the right of veto. The phrase "right of veto" she had heard on the radio in interpretations of H. Herzog about the war Boaz was fighting now to make Nehemiah's desired and dubious future present, she said.
Nor in the Captain's papers did they find anything to indicate how to bury him. The valises and crates said: "To Boaz Schneerson." Rebecca and Mr. Klomin searched in those closets and cases with Boaz's name. Mr. Klomin, who wore white in honor of the resurrected kingdom of Israel-but also his joy for the kingdom and his worry about the disgrace that would be brought down on it by the leaders of Israel who surely didn't understand the greatness of the hour-didn't cover his pain at the death of his one friend. Among the objects they found a hundred and fifty poems, some written by the Captain and some ancient poems, handwritten, love poems to the throat and neck, the breasts and shoulders of a beautiful lady, addressed to Rebecca, even though they were never sent to her. She wondered how Joseph's poems had come into the Captain's hands, but then she said to herself with a logic characteristic of the Captain: He was an editor of a French newspaper in Cairo, so! In the suitcases were secret plans of various undergrounds, models of memorials to the poet Dante Alighieri, a plan, called "secret," for irrigating the Negev, a booklet in the Captain's handwriting titled "Indications of the Burial Place of Moses, Hagar, Jacob, and Alcibiades the Greek," and even Mr. Klomin didn't recognize the last name on the list or what he had to do with Moses, Hagar, and Jacob. There were descriptions of passes to the Land of Israel from the north, the east, and the south, including the Mitla and Gidi passes in the Sinai desert. Precise and old descriptions of the Santa Katerina rift in the Sinai which was now occupied, plans for war and crossing rivers, a war of armor against armor as a revolutionary tactic, which apparently had not yet been tried or had been tried before the invention of the tank. There were also books of the Jew ish religion and the Greek Orthodox religion, Midrashim Eyn-Ya akov with a dedication in an old-fashioned, curled hand to Yossel Goldenberg, Argentinean books of war, "Books of the True Faith to the Children of the Religion of Moses Who Saw the Truth," dried flowers, maps of lands neither Mr. Klomin nor the geography teacher-who was summoned-could identify, maps of military campaigns with notes in a secret writing, copies of Mr. Klomin's letters from a state whose name was torn from the envelopes and its stamps destroyed. There were alphabetical lists of heads of the underground and the Haganah in the thirties and forties, leaders of Arab gangs, a list of the sexual perversions of high British officials, documentation of their acts, the copy of a secret correspondence between the chief of the American air force and the British attache about bombing or not bombing the railroad tracks to Auschwitz, various notes, including an announcement of the mufti of Jerusalem that "it's better for the English not to support the Jewish foul deed and not to believe their lies about what is happening in Europe as it were."