Where the Jackals Howl (12 page)

At night he sketched. All the drawers of his cupboard were crammed with drawings and photographs, plaster models, detailed arithmetical calculations regarding the properties of raw materials, development costs, building techniques, mechanical equipment, manpower, synchronized schedules for construction and communication projects, integrated systems, geometrical and architectonic principles expressed numerically and in diagrams. There were also timetables for trains faster than the fastest trains in existence, winding railways plunging into giant tunnels, carved out of the bedrock of imaginary lands. Avenues of a thousand fountains bathed in dazzling light, crossroads of dream cities that never were and could never be. Exquisite spires of tall cities rising beyond the line of the mountain peaks and looking down on the bays of the sea, blue rollers breaking on the threshold of silence.

A
T FOUR
o'clock in the morning the wind began to walk the streets. It plucked the lid from a rusty garbage can and tossed it against the asphalt road and the stone steps.

Light, brisk footsteps approached the door of the apartment. For two hours the stranger had been loitering between the ground floor and Dov's apartment. Now he suddenly began to hurry. He was running, racing up the stairs two at a time. He had no time to spare. What's the matter, where's the fire, Dov grumbled.

He stood up and stumbled to the door, his shoulders drooping.

Many years before, Dov used to seal the shutters of his little room on the edge of the kibbutz, closing the window and the curtain, shutting the stillness into the room and the night with its darkness outside. He would sit on the carpet and build a tower of bricks for his children: raising it higher and higher, laughing, making jokes, laying brick upon brick until it reached his waist, reached his shoulders, with the children watching in disbelief and starting to gasp and giggle in anticipation, and sure enough, in the end there was always an avalanche. From the sofa came the sound of Zeshka's knitting needles, calmly going about their business. And the smell of coffee and the smell of children washed spotlessly clean. Outside, beyond the walls, the shutters and the curtain, the jackals were crying piteously. Geula laughed and Ehud laughed and Dov, too, would smile a neat smile to himself as if saying: Good.

The jackals are pathetic creatures, dripping saliva and mad-eyed. Their footsteps are soft and their tails quiver. Their eyes shoot out sparks of cunning or despair, their ears prick up, their mouths hang open and their white teeth flash, spittle and foam drip from their jaws.

The jackals circle on tiptoe. Their snouts are soft and moist. They dare not approach the lights of the perimeter fence. Around and around they shuffle, mustering as if in readiness for some obscure ritual. A ring of jackals prowls every night about the circle of shadows that encloses the island of light. Till daybreak they fill the darkness with their weeping, and their hunger breaks in waves against the illuminated island and its fences. But sometimes one of them goes insane and with bared teeth invades the enemy's fortress, snatching up chickens, biting horses or cattle, until the watchmen kill him with an accurate volley from medium range. Then his brothers break into mourning, a howl of terror and impotence and rage and anticipation of the coming day.

Day will come. Or night.

Slowly, like black-robed priests in a ceremony of mourning, they will approach the young man's corpse in no man's land. With agile steps, as if caressing, not treading, the dust of the earth. With dripping muzzles. First they will form a circle, at a distance, and sniff softly. Then one of them will approach the body and bend down, probing with the tip of his snout. A lick, or a final sniff. Another will advance and rip open the tunic with razor-sharp teeth. A third and a fourth and a fifth will come to lap his blood. Then the first will give a low chuckle. The oldest jackal will cut himself a portion with his gleaming curved teeth. And then the whole pack will roar with laughter.

An everlasting curse stands between house dwellers and those who live in mountains and ravines. It happens sometimes in the middle of the night that a plump house-dog hears the voice of his accursed brother. It is not from the dark fields that this voice comes; the dog's detested foe dwells in his own heart. “Ehud,” said Dov, and he gripped the doorknob.

 

First there was a light cough. Then a shudder. Great weariness. A shivering fit. A shuffling of feet. Sit down. Lie down. Fall. The pain was sharp and persistent, like a Latin monk repeating and repeating a thousand times the same obscure verse. The jackal pack of the Bethlehem hills gave a laugh. Their laughter ran through the empty streets of the night, Ramat Rachel, Talpiot, Bakah, the German Colony and the Greek Colony, Talbiah, and like a monkey the laughter climbed the gutters of the house and penetrated inward in a thousand jagged splinters. When the kibbutz was founded we believed that we really could turn over a new leaf, but there are things that cannot be set right and should be left as they have been since the beginning of time. I said, There are things that man can do if he wants them with all his heart. But I did not know that there is no point in leaving a fingerprint on the face of the water. I am the last, my child, and I am not laughing.

T
HE FIRST
cracks appeared in the east, above the Mount of Olives and between the two towers. A light-shunning bird let out a shriek of hatred. Stealthily some pale-red force arrived and slipped through the chinks in the eastern shutter. Flocks of birds began frantically ripping the silence.

And then it was day. Kerosene sellers began to sing. Children with satchels appeared on their way to school. Yellow smells arose from vegetable stands. Newspaper vendors proclaimed the great tidings. A minister's car appeared in the street, its tires squealing on the asphalt. Shop after shop opened up, folding iron shutters like winking eyes.

Around a stall laden with antiques stood a crowd of rosy-cheeked tourists. There was excitement. Among the knickknacks on the stall were sacred pictures on parchment screens, all of fine craftsmanship, genuine leather, strong and ancient, declared Rashid Effendi.

How sublime are the distant bells of the monasteries. How contemptible, how savage and irreverent are these jackals, answering the pure message of the bells with their twisted laughter. Malice inspires them, incorrigible malice, malice and sacrilege.

1962

I
N THE AUTUMN
the provocations intensified. There was no longer any reason for restraint. Our unit was ordered to cross the border at night and raid Dar an-Nashef.

“Tonight a nest of murderers will be wiped off the face of the earth,” our commander declared in his deep, calm voice, “and the whole Coastal Plain can breathe freely.” The men replied with a great cheer. Itcheh shouted loudest of all.

The whitewashed huts of the base camp looked clean and cheerful. Already the busy supply men were grappling with the steel doors of the armory. Mortars and heavy machine guns were brought out from the darkness into the light and laid in neat rectangles on the edge of the parade ground.

The last rays of the sun were fading in the west. Soon there was no dividing line between the peaks of the mountains to the east and the cloud banks that stooped over them. A small group of staff officers, wrapped in windbreakers, were conferring around a map that was spread out on the ground and held down by a stone at each corner. They were studying the map by the light of a pocket flashlight, and their voices were muffled. One man suddenly left the group and went bounding off toward the operations room: Rosenthal, thin and always immaculate; rumor had it that he was the son of a well-known candy manufacturer. Then a voice was heard calling out in the darkness, “Itamar, come on, it's getting late.” And another voice replied, “Go to hell. Leave me alone.”

The battalion paraded in readiness for the sortie. On the edge of the square, facing the combatants who meandered sleepily into position in ragged ranks of three, stood a noisy group of general-duty men. They did not look sleepy; on the contrary, they were feverishly excited, talking in whispers, pointing with their fingers, giggling in shame or malice. Among them was a medical orderly named Nahum Hirsch who was forever scratching his cheeks; he had shaved in a hurry and his skin smarted with irritating little wounds. He took off his glasses and, staring at the combat troops, made a joke that was lost on his fellow orderlies. Nahum Hirsch rephrased the joke. They still did not find it funny, perhaps it was too subtle for them to understand. They told him to shut up. So he kept quiet. But the night would not keep quiet; it began to resound with all kinds of different noises. From a distant orchard we heard the sound of an irrigation pump, throbbing as if dividing time itself into equal symmetrical squares. Next the generator began its dull persistent hum, and along the perimeter fences of the camp the searchlights were switched on. The parade ground, too, was suddenly floodlit, so that the soldiers and their weapons suddenly appeared pure white.

Far away, on the foothills of the eastern mountains, rose the beam of the enemy searchlight. It began wandering nervously, aimlessly, across the sky. Once or twice the trails of falling stars were caught in this beam and their light was swallowed by its glare. The combat troops huddled over their final cigarettes. Some had already taken a last deep gulp of smoke and were stubbing out the butts on the rubber soles of their heavy boots. Others tried hard to smoke slowly. A convoy of trucks with dimmed lights moved to the edge of the square and stopped there, engines still running. The commander said: “Tonight we shall obliterate Dar an-Nashef and bring a bit of peace to the Coastal Plain. We shall operate in two columns and with two rear-guard parties. We shall try to cause a minimum of civilian casualties, but we won't leave a stone standing in that nest of murderers. Every man is to act precisely in accordance with his instructions. In the event of any unforeseen development, or if any man gets cut off from the rest, then use the brains that God gave you and I've sharpened for you. That is all. Take care. And I don't want anyone drinking cold water when he's sweating. I promised your mothers I'd take care of you. Now, let's get going.”

The squad answered him with a clicking of buckles on shoulder straps. Without any further signal, all began jumping lightly up and down in place, listening for any tinkling of metal or splashing of water in a canteen that had not been properly filled. Then a group of general-duty men walked between the lines, carrying tin pots full of soot. They passed from soldier to soldier, and each dipped his finger in the soot and smeared it on his cheeks, forehead, and chin: if the light of the enemy's searchlights should catch their faces as they crawled on their stomachs toward the objective, the soot would prevent their sweating skin from giving them away. To Nahum Hirsch, the medical orderly, the procedure looked like some primeval initiation ritual, and the men carrying soot were like priests.

 

The battalion began trudging toward the trucks. The girls swooped upon them: clerks, typists, and nurses, all handing out candy and chewing gum. Itcheh flung his bear-like arms around the waist of Bruria, the adjutant, swung her through the air in a wide circle, and roared, “Make sure our cognac's ready, girls, or you won't get any pretty souvenirs!”

There was laughter. And silence again.

Nahum Hirsch wanted to boil over with anger or disgust, but laughter got the better of him and he laughed with the rest of them and he was still laughing to himself as the soldiers began climbing aboard the trucks that waited for them with lights dimmed.

A
ND THEN
the enemy threw up into the sky three nervous flares, red, green, and purple. Dar an-Nashef crouched there at the foot of the eastern mountains, chewing its fingernails in fear. All its lights were extinguished. The darkness of guilt or of terror brooded over its cottages. Only the beam of the searchlight rose from it, probing the sky as if the danger lay there. At that very moment our reconnaissance party was making its way through the dense orchards toward the crossroads that were to be blocked against enemy reinforcements.

 

The general-duty men, those who never took part in any raid and for that reason were dubbed by Itcheh Les Misérables, began crowding around the trucks, staring awkwardly at the combat troops. They tried to cheer them up with jokes. Nahum Hirsch put his arm around little Yonich, then clapped him twice on the shoulder and whispered, “A sheep in wolf's clothing, eh?” It was supposed to sound ironical, but his voice betrayed him, and the words rang with venom.

Yonich was not one of the combat troops but a general-duty man. He was a refugee from Yugoslavia, a gloomy little survivor who served the men of our unit from behind the canteen counter. Sometimes they called him the Biscuit Brigadier. His face was deformed, set in a permanent grimace. The right side of his mouth was always smiling as if he found everything endlessly funny; the left was as grim as death. Some said that the Germans had twisted his face once and for all in some labor camp or in the selection process. Or perhaps it was the Yugoslav partisans who had broken his chin or his jaw with a punch, telling him to stop getting on their nerves with his Jewish misery.

Why had they decided this time to put little Yonich, of all people, into the task force, and authorize him to join in the raid against Dar an-Nashef? Perhaps they saw him as a sort of mascot. His little body looked ludicrous, almost pathetic, in the straps of the tattered harness. Evidently one of the officers had seen some kind of subtle humor in putting Yonich in the task force. He was to serve as personal runner to the unit commander, keeping close to him throughout the progress of the battle and ready to leap up when necessary and run to the commanders of the back-up troops, keeping communications going. He had been told: “You're going to have to run like hell, pal. Imagine that the biscuits are here and the customer's over there, and at the same time there's somebody waiting for soda and somebody else who wants cigarettes and matches.”