When he lay on a cot in a tent on the seashore, in the small camp for soldiers who returned and didn't know where, or why they stayed there, he thought he didn't remember who Minna was and in fact he did remember, but it wasn't important to him. And then he realized that he was protecting somebody.
In the morning, he passed by a small hotel with a sign on its wall saying: "For Soldiers, Discount and Free Wash." He didn't know what was free and what was discounted and he went in. The clerk was snoozing and upstairs in the rooms, people were groaning. Maybe the clerk recorded their made-up names in his notebook. Boaz asked for what was free and found himself in a bathroom whose walls were filthy and whose mirrors were broken. He asked the man for toothpaste; the clerk was too tired to refuse. Boaz spread toothpaste on a fountain pen he took out of the kitbag and brushed his teeth. Then he wet his face and hair and combed his hair back with his fingers, and the broken mirror didn't give him any idea of how he looked. When he came out, the clerk said something about the war and hope and Boaz asked him if he was interested in buying gold teeth of Arabs. The clerk felt the toothpaste that Boaz returned to him and said: Enough already, everybody's got those jokes. Boaz didn't correct him, but went out, pounded his fist, and saw damp crumbling plaster, his hand was white from the blow and he walked along Hayarkon Street where the sea was seen flickering between the houses. A woman was hanging laundry out to dry and he wanted the sun to burn her men's clothes. When he came to the office, he saw a sign: "Office to Direct Soldiers Who Were Cut Off from Their Units." He climbed the stinking stairs and saw soldiers standing in a line. One of them said, There's a Romanian girl on Third Street, twenty cents a fuck. Boaz waited quietly and chewed imaginary gum. The soldiers wanted gum and he showed them a mouth with no gum. In the office sat a well-groomed officer wearing a handsome uniform, and his eyes were veiled in a panic that became beautiful in a properly functioning smile. Boaz appreciated that national authority. He answered the officer's questions calmly, pulled out the papers, and showed them to the officer. The officer said to him: Oh, you were there too, you deserve more, where's the weapon, they spoke a few minutes and a female soldier came in looking furious and wrote something on a small thin pink paper form. After he signed, he wanted to understand how far the female soldier's gigantic breasts reached, but she turned her back to him and said: Everybody, everybody, and he understood her, maybe in his heart he pitied her, with breasts like those to meet those dark schemes. When he went outside, he remembered dully that he had to go to the settlement, to Grandmother, but he knew the time hadn't yet come, he'd been moving around for a month now, he'd wait another few days. And he didn't know where he had been moving around for a month before he came here, the battles had ended before, he didn't remember what was the last battle, but he did remember saying to somebody, it's good that it's over but he didn't know if he really meant that. Different ants walked in a row toward a hole they had dug and in a nub sat a tree in a big pot. Somebody was watering the tree with a long hose and standing under the awning of a stationery store. From there you could see a big yard behind a house that might once have been a fashionable cafe. In the yard were pieces of chairs and posts with broken lanterns hanging on them. Boaz loaded the kitbag on his back, spread out his hands, bent down to balance the weight, as if he were walking on a tightrope, and walked toward the courtyard, where cats striped like tame tigers were yowling. He sat down in a broken chair in the courtyard and tried again to think. The ants and the beetles were a sign that his friends really did die and that he really did come back but if he could, he would have asked the officer more questions now, but since it was a waste of effort to go back up, he didn't. He fingered the money they had given him and didn't recognize the money. The money was written with Hebrew letters. That money already has a state, he said aloud and the cat jumped with trained wildness toward a broken lantern and planted its claws in it. So he went to the cafe not far from there and ordered coffee, cake, and a glass of soda. When he wanted to pay, he gave the waiter all the money and the waiter looked at him in shock, counted the necessary coins, and said, returning most of the money to him, You're funny today sir; but he said finny.
Boaz thought that as a funny, or finny, person, he had to see the car he had taken the day before but he knew that was only an excuse to return to some place, for no good reason, and the car surely wasn't there. He wanted to know where he should go. When he came, he saw the car parked where he had left it. The man from the grocery store who came outside to bring in the margarine thrown on the sidewalk by the driver of the worn-out and squeaky pickup truck said, You looking for an apartment here? There's one upstairs, rent control. Boaz said, That car is stolen! The man pondered a bit and bent over to pick up the margarine. Boaz picked up the case of margarine for him and dragged it inside. The man gave Boaz an Eskimo Pie and he nibbled at it. Boaz said, Cars should live in their own houses. The shopkeeper muttered something and said there were people here at night, but they left. And Boaz said they come and go all the time. Over the counter hung an announcement about food rationing and food coupons and Boaz read it carefully; the shopkeeper said, It'll be hot today. When he came out of the shop, he saw the driver in the distance, he leaped into the yard and climbed the tree. He looked and saw them checking the car and a person who looked like a plainclothes cop searched for fingerprints on the handle. That made him laugh, in the tree, and he slowly came down and started walking. They didn't even see him. He came to the tents, put down the kitbag, put on a clean but wrinkled shirt, and went out. After he sat for hours and looked at the sea, he went to Cafe Pilz. The music burst out and the waves of the sea looked silvery. He drank two spitfires and Menashke played songs on the accordion. Then they played a rumba and everybody danced. A girl Boaz later discovered in his arms tried to defend herself against the shock on his face. But she accepted Boaz's kiss with empty lips cut off from himself. She was offended and tried to look into his eyes but in the middle of the second kiss, with two spitfires in his belly and his head spinning, he left her slack-jawed and went toward London Square. She yelled something that was drowned in the noise of the sea. He expected her to be the daughter of the driver of the car and would sue him. So he groped in the empty pocket where he used to keep the gold teeth. Then he sat on a rock and looked at a bench not far from him. The bench was surely more comfortable to sit on because in the morning, when he went to the office, he saw that it was repainted. The sea spread out before him. The girl was still yelling, or the yelling was before and only the echo was heard now, the sea was locked because of the dark. The moon shed a little light but it was thin and curved and a car that might have broken down, parked with its lights on and illuminated the wrong section of the sea. Boaz leaned over the rock and behind it were white houses gleaming in the curved light, with eyes wide open he saw nonexistent eagles darting, swooping and a bright path, and a man yelling, they died, got to save the black. Boaz sat there terrified, shrouded in dread from some unknown source, thought about the baby that could have been born if the woman who got an indifferent kiss near Cafe Pilz was yelling something. Maybe Boaz was a bastard who fell on his head, he thought; maybe that's Minna, did I know her once, or not, Minna, and what does he have to do with all those Minnas, he told the baby kicking inside him: Wait a while, I'll give birth to you, pretty one, with two mothers, three fathers, and two grandfathers. Then he went down to the boardwalk and bumped into wires not reached by the car's headlights. Maybe they were laid here recently when the war was close to Tel Aviv, which always expected wars on her border.