Afterward we lay together, just like that, in the middle of the base, and she cried and moved up and down, and I was afraid that someone would come into my room, even though half the company had gone out to make an arrest. I didn't care that I was an officer who was violating army orders and I didn't care that she had a boyfriend and that I knew the boyfriend, and I didn't care that I also had a girl waiting for me at home with a coquettish sort of patience. I felt hot and my socks were scrunched up in my shoes, and that bugged me and was the only thing I thought about, and I felt as though I was filled with something green and I was dumbfounded.
When it was over we embraced but not out of love - only so we wouldn't see each other's face. I could feel how her heart was pounding and how her tears were soaking into my olive-green collar and I thought to myself, God help me for what I did. And again I was terribly afraid that someone would come in and see me and also her.
We were in Nablus and it was summer and there was an air conditioner in the room that blew a fuse every five minutes. Outside it was night and the guard on duty in the pillbox was singing a Mosh Ben Ari song in a hoarse and loud voice. She and I went on clinging, enfolded in each other. It was hot but we were covered with an open sleeping bag because we were afraid to see ourselves, clothes rolled up like that, with shoes and army shirts open with sweat stains. I tried to do up her bra again and thought to myself that you can make love without making love at all.
A six-two-four walkie-talkie lay under the bed. It was so quiet in the room that I could hear the faint growls coming out of it. My company commander informed me that they were moving out of Joseph's Tomb and I knew that the long convoy of armored vehicles was now winding its way through the stinking streets of this city, and a tired mob was pelting them with rocks and stones.
They're on the way back from the arrest now, I said to her in a whisper. Yes, she said. I heard. Afterward we broke the embrace and I felt how my whole stomach was wet with sweat and with wilted hair, and I felt that sick slipperiness on my body and I knew she felt it, too. Batsheva got up and buttoned her shirt and tucked it into her pants, and fixed the rubber bands in her shoes. I also sat up on the bed and didn't look at her and took off my shoes in order to fix my socks, which were scrunched up inside.
Afterward she fixed her hair in front of the small mirror I had in the room, and I saw how she held the elastic band between her teeth, and how she lifted her clean arms up and arranged the ponytail with a gentle twist and I was happy that she again looked somewhat pretty to me.
The long convoy entered the base and I went out to receive the soldiers who had returned from the arrest, and she arrived too and stood next to me with cookies she had prepared for the weary soldiers, and I smelled my scent on her and felt nauseous. The soldiers got out of the Safaron, and the company commander got out of his huge armored jeep and came over to me and said: You have to escort the Safaron down below, there has to be an officer to take this stinking Arab to jail.
The soldiers attacked the cookies and Batsheva smiled and told them: Calm down, it wasn't such a big deal, what you did tonight. I said to the CC: No problem, bro, I'll go down there with him, but how will I get back to the base? And the CC told me: Sleep in the base of the auxiliary unit; I spoke to Klieger, he has organized a place for you to sleep there. A-okay, I said, and got into the Safaron, very tired. The CC came over and said to me with a smile and a wink: Don't sit up front, sit next to him. He's a dangerous prisoner, he gave us trouble.
I moved to the back part of the vehicle and sat down next to the bound prisoner. His eyes were covered with a strip of white flannelette and his hands were bound with white plastic cuffs. I knew they hurt and were cutting into his flesh, but there was nothing for me to do, and anyway it didn't really interest me. I took out his green ID card, which they always stick into a prisoner's pocket, and looked at the name and the photo.
The driver of the Safaron pulled out and turned on Mizrahi music at an insane volume. Will you turn it down, I screamed at him, but he didn't hear me, or maybe he heard but decided to ignore me. The prisoner sitting on my right was named Daoud Suleiman. I always liked to see Arab names written in Hebrew. In the Palestinian ID cards I saw the inflexibility of my own language and the Arabic roundness that it lacked. The Daoud in the photo was a good-looking kid who was born in '88, a year after me. His eyes were clear and his lips were thin and beautiful, and his neck was thin and tanned and Arab and clean.
I looked at the bound Daoud next to me and searched for the good-looking kid from the picture. The prisoner wore a faded red shirt, large, tattered jeans and ugly sandals that seemed to be falling apart. The driver, who was moving the Safaron along slowly and cumbersomely, suddenly lowered the volume of the music and turned to me.
You don't know what laughs they had during the arrest, the driver screamed over the roar of the engine. What happened, I asked, what was the deal? The driver coughed and went on shouting. I wasn't there, but when your company went into his house with the stun grenades and the break-in equipment, the guy's elderly father got so scared that he pissed in his pants. The driver lit a cigarette and went on talking. All the soldiers, including the CC, laughed till their guts burst - and of all people the prisoner next to you started to cry. Bro, what wouldn't I do to have been there, what laughs. I just imagine the situation, with the father with the pee stain on his pants and the son crying and all the soldiers laughing, and it's enough to make me die of laughter.
I didn't respond to the driver and he turned up the music again and threw the burning cigarette butt out the window. I looked at the wretched, bound Daoud again and saw wet stains on the flannelette, near his eyes. I examined the picture on the green card again and I saw how beautiful this Daoud is, how young and fresh. And how far the blooming image in his portrait is from the bound, crushed and withered stalk by my side.
The raucous music continued to pound our ears, but spurred me to move close to Daoud. I placed my loaded weapon on the seat and moved next to him. Daoud felt my closeness and shifted uneasily in his seat. His back was thrust forward because of his hands being bound behind it, and his neck stretched in a swan-like probing movement in order to examine the new situation.
The driver was busy with his driving and with the thunderous music and I was filled with feelings for the handcuffed kid, younger than me by a year, who had just seen his father piss in his pants. With a burst of heartfelt pity I placed a supportive and embracing arm on him, and then another, so that I hugged him quickly. The Arab shrank in his place and instinctively fought me, but I gripped him strongly, with love and compassion. Gradually I felt how his body went limp and how he surrendered himself to the embrace and melted like margarine. Yes, he definitely needed that.
The Safaron shook and vibrated and roared from the engine and we sat embraced, cuddled and huddled. I sniffed Daoud and he had a hot smell of sweat and urine, and of a burned-out bonfire. I stroked his back gently and compassionately and felt how his body was beating and pulsing and trembling, and I knew that maybe I was hurting instead of helping.
Afterward I stroked his head and the black hair on it. I felt how the flannelette was too tight on his face and I knew he didn't want to see me, so I left it on him. On his face was the stubble of a long night, but his neck was stretched and swan-like, exactly like in the picture.
We were so close and we sweated and the whole vehicle shook and we shook together with it and I examined his lips, which were thin and open, and I saw in his mouth the kind of white dryness someone gets when he's thirsty, and I knew how he felt because I had felt that way in my mouth when I'd slept with Batsheva an hour before.
I removed my embracing arms from Daoud and held his bowed head with them. Daoud squirmed on his seat and I drew my lips close to the black bristles that sprouted on his cheekbones. I smelled on Daoud all the compassion and revulsion that exist in the world and I gave him a soft fluttering kiss. Daoud took fright but did not shout and did not move away from me. Even if he had shouted no one would have heard.
My whole body wanted him, wanted to reconcile, to ask forgiveness, to take him back to his father who must have long since finished showering and washing off the terrible shame that had been visited on him in front of his astounded children. Daoud tried to pull away from me but I grabbed him by his heavy head and plied him with kisses, loving motherly kisses. At first I kissed gently, with tenderness and latent innocence, but in an instant I was ablaze with biblical passion, and I embraced him violently and wiped away my tears on his neck and passed pitying and caressing hands over his stooped shoulders; the hands were the hands of yearning officers.
The driver entered the base of the central brigade and all the lights shone on me and on Daoud like the flashes of a camera. I stopped hugging him and moved away. I took up my gun and asked the driver if he knew how to get to the detention center with all the Arabs; he said he did.
The Safaron stopped next to the detention center and the guards there helped me take the blind Daoud down the steps of the small truck. Did he give you trouble, the guard on the left asked me. No, I said, he behaved well. The other guard checked Daoud's pocket and asked: Didn't you bring the ID card? I said, No, I wasn't at the arrest, I don't have a clue. Afterward the guard smiled and coughed and said: Too bad you didn't have the chance to be there, I heard that some old Arab pissed in his pants, he was so afraid.
There was a shiny stain on Daoud's neck from my tears and I was afraid they would see this. One of the guards called the war room of my base to speak to the CC, and the CC came on the walkie-talkie and said the ID card was in the prisoner's pocket, like always. The guards searched his pockets again, including the small one in his shirt, but didn't find anything, because the ID card of Daoud and of his beautiful eyes, which I will never see, was in my own pocket.
The Safaron driver was eager to hit the hay and climbed into the vehicle to look for the card, but returned empty-handed. I don't have a clue, I said. I don't know the procedures here. The two guards smiled and one said: You're the officer here, you tell us what to do.
In the end we left Daoud in overnight detention, in the hope that in the morning the interrogators who would beat him would be able to extract from him details of his misdeeds and his blurred, cardless identity. I bade the guards farewell and the Safaron driver took me to the base of the auxiliary unit, five minutes away. I entered, found an empty room and lay down in it, sweating and sticky, seeking some rest.
There was a small, seemingly embarrassed light in the room that entered through a window which someone had once painted black, but the black was peeling. I took the ID card out of my pocket, with Daoud's green eyes and delicate neck, and thought about all I had done tonight, about the supine love I shared with Batsheva, and about the miserable desire with which I had assaulted the handcuffed Daoud, and I swallowed salty saliva and I was lonely and again had no idea why or wherefore.
This story received a special citation in the Haaretz Hebrew short story competition held during Passover. Yair Agmon, 23, lives in Jerusalem. A book by him will be published in 2012 by Zmora Bitan.
Translated by Ralph Mandel
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