Two young men stood at the door of a cafe that looked locked. They knocked on the door, but nobody opened it. He could imagine the cafe owner leaving, escaping in a boat, and not yet back. A girl in a short dress was standing in a shaded niche next to the door. For a moment, she rolled up her dress a little and the two young men laughed and approached her as in a slow dance, she raised the dress as if her hands were the hands of a doctor, but the touch was hesitant, wounded, and the lights of a passing car showed some profound contempt flickering deep in her eyes. The lights of the car that might have broken down were extinguished now and the sea was still silvered, calm, sealed in moon shadows. A cop passed by on a bike now and shone a flashlight on the bench Boaz had almost sat on before. Clouds of suspicions in the place were plastered but tangible. An ancient smell of damp and phony chill came from the park. For a moment he felt a secret bliss that he could feel a common fate with those two young men and share the girl's contempt for their springy steps, but the girl looked scared of the cop, turned around and lowered her dress with perhaps unexpected coarseness, they stood still again in front of the locked door and one of them started weeping. Now Boaz could make out how big they were, like wild bulls he used to see between Marar and the settlement. They were surely searching for a fille de joie with braids and a pinafore, their childhood love, he thought. But there was a war, and if two fools like them didn't die, they were superfluous like me. The two strode toward Hayarkon Street and from there to the Red House. In the Red House, somebody was playing the "Internationale" on a mandolin. An unseen woman was singing in a whisper the words that moved toward the sea and were mixed in it. Near the house was a barbed wire fence and two women soldiers with Sten guns were guarding it. The fence was rusty and behind it were only limestone hills and sea. The cannon that may really have stood here once was moved. Inside the Red House a forehead was seen and near it two crests of male hair. The overgrown young men stood facing the women soldiers and spoke coarsely. The women soldiers enveloped themselves in a secret mantle that had long ago been forced on them and tried not to get angry, and, even more, the second one (the first one was fatter) tried not to smile. The girl Boaz had earlier invented with the pinafore and flaxen hair, twelve years old, naive, now passed by the women soldiers, on her way to a belated piano lesson. The balconies in the house opposite, surely her parents' house, were wreathed in plants and flowers and a pleasant smell rose from the recently watered flowers. The little girl's beauty stunned the two young men walking behind her. They wept aloud again and the two female soldiers tried not to pity them. The little girl saved the moment for him and Boaz saw her laugh with the sudden joy of breasts that may have started sprouting. One of the two women soldiers said: Soldiers come and weep all the time, go know. Right, said the second woman soldier, a lot of weepers returned, what was there, and Boaz said: A lake of tears was there and anybody who returned brought the tears with him, but you guarded the secret ship here and you didn't know. The woman soldier said, The cannon, and Boaz said: But there is no cannon, and she said So what, just because there's no cannon, there's no need to guard? He tried to understand her logic, but the crescent moon now cast its full light and they saw how much his look was shrouded in disgust and they were afraid to get mixed up in some emotional adventure that wasn't yet wanted and they turned their stiff backs on him. The plump one looked better from behind.
At night he slept in his clothes and sweated even though it wasn't especially hot. In the morning he opened his eyes wide to the voice of a person standing over him and looking from his angle of vision as if he were tearing the tent with his kinky hair. The man read Boaz a new order of the day and Boaz, who was already awake and feeling the wetness of his clothes, said: I'm discharged, dummy. The man tried to be friendly. His yellowed teeth seemed to be searching for a more suitable mouth. The man said: That's your shock, Boaz, you don't remember me? Boaz looked at him and didn't remember. He said, fine, let's go, and since he didn't need to get dressed he went outside, took some sand, and rubbed it on his neck and his face. Then they walked among people who seemed for some reason to be rushing like actors in a silent movie. They went into a little cafe and Boaz was afraid he had lost his hearing. He said to the man: Yell something, and the man yelled, and Boaz said, I heard you, over and out. And then he put a finger in his ear and rummaged around a little while and said, I hear. The man said, He hears, that'll be fine. The woman who owned the place looked at Boaz. She saw how wrinkled he was and because of that she seemed to know his pain personally and she said: Take off your clothes and I'll clean them for you. But Boaz said: There's no point, take some money and bring me new clothes, pick them out yourself. He took off his clothes and remained in a black undershirt and shorts, he also enjoyed her obedience, sat in his shorts and undershirt with a man he surely didn't know, or else he wouldn't have sat with him in a cafe, and people who peeped inside saw a man in an undershirt and shorts and asked what happened and Boaz yelled: The enemy killed my clothes, that man raped my mother, pretends he's my father. The man laughed and Boaz didn't. He drank coffee and ate a roll and on it he slowly spread margarine and he didn't know if it was what he had dragged in from the sidewalk to the shop earlier or a week ago, and suddenly he wanted to know who Minna was. Maybe she really was the daughter of Gilboa the contractor? Boaz licked the jam from the jar and drank more coffee. At first he tried to count the cups of coffee, then he stopped. The woman came back with a bundle of new clothes and took pins out of the shirt, when the sleeves dropped down, he felt some excitement, as if a baby were born, he tried on the new clothes, took the bundle of old clothes outside and put it next to the bundle of clothes forgotten downstairs by new immigrants peeping from their rented room upstairs, or maybe they were waiting for the right time to bring them upstairs. Nor did they know what to do with the new flowerpots that were given them. The man sitting with him said, You have to forget, Boaz, come back home, they've started searching for you, they said you've been wandering around for a month now, I don't know why they're so worried about you, you've got a grandmother with citrus groves and vineyards and you've got money. What, you need help?
Not me, said Boaz and licked the jar of jam some more.
It says here, said the man, that the battles were hard. Boaz asked where it said and the man showed him a sheet of paper. The paper said Boaz Schneerson, fourth brigade, Har-El. Boaz said: What else does it say? And the man said: It says that you were mobilized in 'forty-seven. That you were trained in boats in Caesarea and then fought in Jerusalem. It says you took part in-and he listed one battle after another until Boaz got bored and stopped listening. The man added, you wound up in an ambush, so what? It says you played dead. That you lay and they shot at the dead, every moment you knew you'd die and you didn't, there were crows and vultures there, maybe hawks? Maybe falcons? Maybe eagles? I can imagine that it was awful, it says here that afterward you got up and there were another two who got up at the same time and you all ran.
I don't remember, said Boaz.
The man smiled and said, they didn't go down to the valley with the dead because the Jews had an atom bomb. And the bomb there was a Davidka shell, which explodes once every seven shots. Fifty percent of the giant shells don't explode. The shells really were gigantic, said Boaz, and they were shaped like an atom bomb.