596
PARTISAN REVIEW
in the blacked-out library with a flashlight, studying machine guns,
mortars, propellants, and explosives. He slept on a cot in the lab, beside
the optic spectrometer. With other students who wou ld join the Science
Corps, he broke into restricted cabinets and made off with all the sul–
phuric acid his heart desired .
If
you've been to a planetarium, you know how the stars slide as the
long-barreled projector turns and alters attitude. The swirling white pin–
points reach new coordinates and the dome is filled with an unfamiliar
sky. So,
I
believe, with Avram. On the walls of his capacious mind, he
repositioned his needs, aims, and dreams. Then he was ready for the
Hell Car, as such cars are still called.
AT SIX-THIRTY IN THE MORNING, Avram was thrown out of his cot onto
the floor. He shook himself and looked down at his watch and his cup,
now in pieces, though he'd left them both on the windowsill. The noise
was so overwhelming that he couldn't hear around its edges, and took
a second to connect it with the shattered cup.
When he knew that the continual roar came from downtown, he
commandeered a taxi on its way back from the Hadassah clinic. The
driver babbled that two cars loaded with TNT, by British soldiers, had
blown Ben Yehuda Street to high heaven. The driver's knuckles looked
livid on his filthy hands-these days, it took a long time to save water
rations for bathing.
It
was no reflection on the cabby that he looked like
he'd been dug out of what he'd seen.
Though Avram did not describe it to me,
I
can guess, indeed
I
can
document, what he saw on Ben Yehuda Street.
A human chain of guards repulsed a crowd. A man circulated in
pajamas, clothes in his arms, putting them down and picking them up;
he couldn't get dressed outdoors in the midst of shouting crowds.
Flames nodded from crumbled buildings as a bulldozer moved a foun–
dation, and corpses were carried out on stretchers. Entire families in
pajamas were digging with cutlery, calling names into the holes they
made. Avram, squeezing between backs and elbows, registered the fact
that his favorite cafe was a pit surrounded by stones. He assisted the res–
cue team handing out sandwiches, while a matron in pink flannel
shrieked at him: the Strausses who'd lived over her for twenty years
were now in the basement! and the sandwiches stank! they were an out–
rage. Avram agreed they could be better. He spotted a British tank in the
street and ducked further into the crowd, but not before he saw the man
on the tank-a subaltern, shoulder flashes of the Royal Engineers, tidy,
aloof, put off. Back to the lab, Avram thought. He turned to go and
