198
PARTISAN REVIEW
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 "mor–
phological 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 con–
jured up between my sheets. Sometimes I would climb on.top of you
in mid-sentence and make..
you~
lecture tail off in a grunt.
Then you gave in and agreed to go with me to the theater. To
sit in a cafe 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
mysel~what
was
happening, what you
m~ant
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
servi~e,
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
ab~ut
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
noticed a tormented ftlm over your eyes, I said: "Has something
happened, Alec?"
i'
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, llana, don't in–
terrupt. 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
