Black Box

  In the night, while he slept, I lay awake, thinking of the rhesus monkey which was your only childhood friend inside the fences of the empty estate, and which you and your father dressed as a waiter, with a bow tie, and trained to serve a tray of pomegranate juice. Until one day it bit you in the neck, and you still carry the scar. The Armenian servant was ordered to shoot it, and you dug its grave and wrote an epitaph. And since then you have been alone.

  And I thought about the fact that you never asked to hear about my childhood, in Poland and here, and that I was too ashamed to tell you about it. My father, like my husband, was a schoolteacher. We lived in a cramped apartment, whose gloominess even on summer days is engraved on my memory as the gloom of a cavern. There was a brown clock on the wall. I had a brown coat. From the ground floor rose the smell of the bakery. The narrow street was paved with stone, and streetcars ran along it every now and again. At night there was my father’s asthmatic coughing fits. When I was five we received a permit to go to Palestine. For seven years we lived in a wooden hut by Nes Ziona. Father got a job as a plasterer in a building cooperative, but he never lost his short-tempered teacherly manner until he was killed falling from a scaffold. My mother died less than a year later. She died of a children’s disease, measles, on the festival of the trees, Tu Bishevat. Rahel was sent away to be educated in the kibbutz where she still lives, while I was enrolled in an institution of the Working Women’s Council. After that I was a platoon clerk in the army. Five months before I was discharged you were put in charge of the platoon. What was it about you that caught my heart? To try to answer the question I’ll write down here for you our son’s ten commandments, in random order but in his own words: I. Pity them all. II. Take more notice of the stars. III. Against being bitter. IV. Against making fun. V. Against hating. VI. Bastards are still human beings, not shit. VII. Against beating up. VIII. Against killing. IX. Not to eat each other. X. Cool it.

  These halting words are the exact opposite of you. As far as the stars are from a mole. The icy malice that radiated from you like a bluish arctic glow and made the other girls in the battalion hate you to the point of hysteria was what caught my heart. Your air of indifferent mastery. The cruelty that you exuded like a scent. The greyness of your eyes, like the smoke from your pipe. The murderous sharpness of your tongue at any hint of opposition. Your wolfish glee at the sight of the terror you spread. The contempt you could emit like a flamethrower, and shoot like a searing jet at your friends, your subordinates, or the gaggle of secretaries and typists who were always petrified by your presence. I was drawn to you as though bewitched from muddy depths of primeval female subservience, ancient servitude from before words existed, the submission of a Neanderthal female whose survival instinct and fear of hunger and cold make her throw herself at the feet of the roughest of the hunters, the hairy savage who will tie her hands behind her back and drag her, captive, to his cave.

  I remember the crisp hail of military words that you fired from the corner of your mouth: Negative. Affirmative. Roger. Rubbish. Full stop. Scram.

  You delivered this barrage almost without parting your lips. And always on the verge of a whisper, as though you were sparing not only with words but also with the use of your voice and your face muscles. Your predator’s jaws, which on rare occasions bared your lower teeth in a bitter, condescending grimace that served you as a smile: “What’s going on here, sweetie? Nothing better to do than sit on the stove and warm your holy places at the army’s expense?” Or: “If you only had in your head ten percent of what you’ve got in your bust, Einstein himself would sign up with you for evening classes.” Or: “That inventory report you drew up for me looks like a recipe for strudel. Why not write me a report instead about what you’re like in bed. Maybe there at least you’re good for something?” Sometimes your victim burst into tears. And then you would ponder, look at her as at a dying insect, and hiss: “All right, give her a candy, somebody, and explain to her that she’s just been saved from a court-martial.” Then you turned on your heel as though on a spring and slipped pantherlike from the room. And I, driven by a blind impulse, used to provoke you sometimes, despite the danger or because of it. I would say, for example, “Morning, sir. Here’s your coffee. Perhaps you fancy a little belly dance with it?” Or: “Sir, if you’re really dying to see what I’ve got underneath my skirt, don’t bother to peep, just give me the order and I’ll draw up an inventory report for you on everything there is to see there.” Every wisecrack of this kind cost me confinement to barracks or loss of leave. Several times you punished me for insolence. Once you made me spend twenty-four hours in the guardroom. Next day—do you remember?—you asked: “Well, have you got rid of your urge, cutie?” I smiled provocatively and answered: “On the contrary, sir. I’m all aflame.” Your wolfish jaws gaped as though to bite, and you snarled through your teeth: “Do you want me to teach you what to do in a condition like yours, sweetie?” The girls started to snicker. They had giggles behind their hands. And I gave as good as I got: “Should I wait for an order to report, sir?”

  Until once, one rainy winter night, you offered me a lift into town. A thunderstorm accompanied the jeep along the coast road, we were battered by sweeping rain, and you subjected me to the ordeal of your icy silence. We drove for half an hour without exchanging two words, our eyes fixed hypnotically on the rhythmic struggle of the windshield wipers against the deluge. Once, the jeep skidded, traced a loop on the road, and without saying a word you managed to regain control of the steering wheel. Twenty or thirty kilometers later you suddenly said: “What’s up? You suddenly been struck dumb?” And for the first time I imagined I caught a hint of hesitation in your voice and was filled with childish glee. “Negative, sir. I simply thought you were working out a plan for the conquest of Baghdad in your head and I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Conquest, sure, and how! But what’s all this about Baghdad? Is that your pet name?”

  “Tell me something, Alex, while we’re on the subject of conquests. Is it true what the girls say, that you’ve got a bit of a problem in that department?”

  You ignored my daring to call you by your first name. Looking as though you were about to punch me in the face, you turned toward me and hissed: “What problem?”

  “You’d better keep your eyes on the road. I don’t want to get killed with you. Rumor has it in the platoon that you have a problem with girls? That you’ve never had a girl friend? Or is it maybe just because you’re wedded to your tanks?”

  “That’s not a problem”—you chuckled in the darkness—“that’s the solution.”

  “Then it might interest you to know that the girls are of the opinion that your solution is our problem. That what we ought to do is pair you off with one of us who will volunteer to sacrifice herself for the sake of the others.”

  In the half-light of the jeep as it tore through the curtains of rain, by the beat of your foot on the accelerator, I could sense the pallor spreading on your face. “What’s going on here?” you asked, struggling unsuccessfully to conceal from me the tremor in your voice. “What is this, a panel discussion on the commanding officer’s sex life?”

  And then, at the first traffic light as we entered Tel Aviv from the north, you suddenly asked dejectedly: “Tell me something, Brandstetter, do you . . . really loathe me?”

  Instead of replying, I asked you to stop the jeep after the traffic light, and pull off the road. And without another word I drew your head to my lips. As I had already done a thousand times in my imagination. Then, maliciously, I burst out laughing and said that I could see that you really did have to be taught everything from scratch. Because apparently you’d never even managed to kiss. And the time had come to show you which was the butt and which was the trigger. That if you would just give the order, I’d put you on an intensive training course.

  And indeed I found you a virgin. And clumsy. And stiff. You didn’t even manage to pronounce my name without stammering. When I got undressed, you a
verted your gaze. At least six weeks passed before you allowed me to leave the light on and look at your naked body: slim, youthful, as if your uniform was part of your flesh. You were very strong and timid, and my caresses seemed to tickle you. They made you shudder. The hairs on the back of your neck stood on end whenever I ran my hand up and down your back. Every time I touched your manhood it was as though you got an electric shock. Sometimes in the crux of pleasure I burst out laughing, and you immediately recoiled.

  And yet also the wildness of your desperate craving during our first nights, your overwhelming desire, which could not be extinguished but would flare up anew almost as soon as it was gratified. Your orgasms, which were wrenched out of you with a piercing roar, like someone being shot with a hail of bullets. All this set my senses in a whirl. I was unquenchable too.

  Every morning, during office hours, my loins would melt at the sight of your taut body in the uniform that you used to starch and press ruthlessly. If my eyes happened on that spot that I tried so hard not to look at, where the zip of your trousers met the buckle of your military belt, my nipples stiffened. Our secret was kept for a fortnight. Then dumbfounded gossip erupted among the secretaries and typists.

  Slowly our nights were enriched. How happy I was in my heart of hearts about the experiments I had had before you. You were an eager pupil, and I an enthusiastic teacher. Almost until dawn we used to drink each other like a pair of vampires. Our backs were covered with scratches and our shoulders with love bites. In the mornings our eyes were so red from lack of sleep it looked as though we had both been crying. In my little room, at night, between one surge of desire and the next, you used to lecture me in that resonant bass voice of yours about the Roman Empire. About the battle of the Horns of Hattin. About the Thirty Years’ War. About Clausewitz, von Schlieffen, De Gaulle. About what you termed the “morphological absurdities” of the Israeli Army. I could not understand it all, but I found a strange fascination in the troop movements, the bugles, the standards, the cries of the dying Romans that you conjured up between my sheets. Sometimes I would climb on top of you in mid-sentence and make your lecture tail off in a grunt.

  Then you gave in and agreed to go with me to the theater. To sit in a café with me on a Friday afternoon. Even to go swimming. I went off with you for long weekend trips to remote valleys in Galilee. We slept in your German sleeping bag. Your submachine gun, cocked and in a safe position, was by your head the whole time. Our bodies amazed us. Words hardly existed. If I asked myself what was happening, what you meant to me, what would happen to us, I did not find the shadow of an answer, only my feverish desire.

  Until one day—it was after I’d finished my military service, six months or so after the night of the jeep and the lightning, and of all places in the shabby restaurant of the gas station at Gedera—you said to me suddenly: “Let’s talk seriously.”

  “About Kutuzov? About the battle for Monte Cassino?”

  “No. Let’s talk about us.”

  “While on the subject of excellence on the battlefield?”

  “While on the subject of changing the subject. Be serious, Brandstetter.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, as though teasing, and suddenly, belatedly noticing a tormented film over your eyes, I said: “Has something happened, Alec?”

  You shut up. For a long while you eyed the cheap plastic salt shaker. Then, without looking at me, you said that you did not think you were “an easy man.” Perhaps I tried to answer, but you laid your hand on top of mine and said: “Give me a moment, Ilana, don’t interrupt. This is difficult for me.” I said nothing. And you fell silent again. At the end of your silence you said that you lived “all your life apart, in the inner meaning of the word.” You asked whether I understood. You asked what I could see in “such a . . . stiff man.” Without waiting for an answer you went on hurriedly, with a slight stammer: “You’re my only friend. Of either sex. And my first. You’re also . . . Shall I pour you some beer? Do you mind if I . . . talk a little?” You poured out the rest of the beer for me, absent-mindedly drank it yourself, and told me that you intended never to marry. “A family—you know I have no idea how to handle all that. Are you hot? Do you want us to leave?” Your dream was to be a strategist. Or something like a military theoretician. And not in uniform. To leave the army, go back to the university in Jerusalem, take a second and a third degree, “and in fact apart from you, Brandstetter. That is . . . up to the time you raped me . . . girls weren’t exactly my territory. Nothing doing. Even though I’m a big boy of twenty-eight. Nothing. That is . . . apart from . . . sexual urges. Which actually gave me quite a lot of trouble. But apart from the urge . . . not a thing. I’ve never managed to . . . to make friends. Or to study up on romance. As a matter of fact, I haven’t even made friends with men particularly. Don’t get me wrong. In the intellectual, or professional, area I do have a sort of . . . circle. More or less. A group of like-minded people. But as for emotion and all that . . . it always made me feel pressured. I used to ask myself why I should start having feelings for strangers. Or for strange women. Until I . . . met you. Until you took up with me. The fact of the matter is that even with you I felt under pressure. Only, there’s something between us, isn’t there? I can’t define it. Maybe we’re . . . two of a kind.”

  Then you talked about your plans again: to finish writing your doctoral thesis by 1964, and then work on a theory. War studies. Perhaps something more general, a thesis about violence in history. In all periods. Look for a common denominator. Maybe reach something like a personal solution. That is, a personal solution to a fundamental philosophical problem. So you said, and you continued for a little longer; then suddenly you shouted at the waiter that the place was swarming with flies, you started killing them, and you shut up. You asked for my “reaction.”

  And I, for the first time with you, used the word love. I said to you, more or less, that your sadness was my love. That you had aroused an emotional ambition in me. That you and I, the two of us, perhaps really were two of a kind. That I wanted to have a child with you. That you were a fascinating person. That if you would marry me, I would marry you.

  And that was the night, after that conversation in the filling station at Gedera, that your virility let you down in my bed. And you fell into a panic and desperate shame such as I have never seen in you ever, either before or since. And as your anxiety and your embarrassment grew, so your organ shrank at my fingers’ touch until it was almost swallowed up in its lair, like a little boy’s. And I, close to tears of joy, covered your whole body with my kisses and cradled your handsome, crew-cut head all night long in my arms, and I kissed you even in the corners of your eyes, because you were as precious to me that night as you would have been had I given birth to you. Then I knew that we were fused in each other. That we had become one flesh.

  It was a few weeks after that that you took me to see your father.

  And by the autumn we were married.

  Now you tell me this: Why have I written to you about these long-forgotten events? To scratch at old scars? To reopen our wounds for no reason? To decipher a black box? To hurt you all over again? To arouse your longings? Perhaps this too is a scheme to catch you once again in my net?

  I plead guilty on all six counts. I know no extenuating circumstances. Except perhaps for one: I loved you not despite your cruelty; I loved the dragon itself. And those Friday evenings when we used to entertain five or six Jerusalem couples, high-ranking army officers, clever young university lecturers, promising politicians. You used to serve the drinks at the start of the evening, exchange some witticisms with the female partners, and curl up in a corner armchair in the shade of your bookshelves. You followed the political discussion with an expression of suppressed irony, but without participating. As the discussion heated up, the faint wolf grin gradually spread on your lips. You stealthily kept the glasses topped up, and went back to concentrating on filling your pipe. When the discussion was at its height and they were all tearing one a
nother limb from limb, shouting and red in the face, you would choose your moment with the precision of a ballet dancer, and interject softly: “Hold on. I’m sorry. I don’t follow that.” The hubbub would die down at once and all eyes would fix on you. Lazily drawing out the syllables, you would say: “You’re all moving a little too fast for me. I’ve got a really elementary question.” And then you would shut up. You would concentrate on your pipe for a moment as though you were alone in the room, and then, out of the thick cloud, you would deliver a short Katyusha salvo at your guests. Demanding definitions of the terms they had been using carelessly. Laying bare with an icy chisel certain latent contradictions. Drawing in a few sentences some clever logical lines, as though tracing geometrical shapes. Directing a devastating rejoinder to one of the lions in the room, and surprising all of us by backing the opinion of the weakest intellect present. Setting up a compact argument and fortifying it with a preventive bombardment against any possible rejoinder. And concluding, to the general stupefaction, by indicating a possible weak point in your own argument, which no doubt had escaped everyone’s notice. In the ensuing silence you would turn to me and command: “Lady, these good people are too shy to tell you that they want some coffee.” Then you would start fiddling with your pipe again, as if to say that the break was over and it was time to resume the really serious business. I was enthralled by the frost of your polite ruthlessness. The moment the door closed behind the last departing couple I would wrench your neatly pressed best shirt out of your corduroy trousers and thrust my fingers into your back, into the hair on your chest. Only the following morning would I clear up and wash the dishes.