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Promises
translated from the Hebrew by Alan Sacks

During a break in my radiation sessions, I met Motke in the outclinic next to the medical center. He was a buddy who had served so many years with me as a reservist in our recon platoon that I had forgotten when we first met. Though pale and weak, he pulled me down beside him on the bench across from the doctors' room. He was thrilled to see me. With a tug at my shirt, he said:

"Do you remember that ambush in the summer of '69? When I was wounded in the battle below Ufana? That innocent little Syrian village, shepherds' hovels and thick Tabor oaks with peeling trunks sprouting right out of the basalt walls. What an ambush, so deceptive. The fields of basalt became a living hell when the Syrians opened fire on us with 20 millimeter guns. Do you remember the shower of ricochets? Do you remember the sickening whistle of stone chips? How long did the whole ambush last? Ten minutes? A quarter of an hour? How long did that murderous fire rake us? It seemed like an eternity to me. I lost my faith in watches then. And when the fire died down, and the slow as molasses rescue team finally arrived, I looked back over my shoulder once more towards that picturesque Syrian hamlet, towards that sweet mirage, Ufana, a handful of low houses, their roofs flat and dark, planted among the gloomy knolls. An astonishing nest of unexpected evil.

"I was evacuated too, because of a light wound in my back from one of those treacherous ricochets off the hostile basalt. Do you remember how I tried to make a joke of it all the way to the aid station? From where I was lying in the evacuation carrier, I wanted to lift the men from their depression. It was awful there in the armored carrier. I remember that I pretended to be a famous radio announcer, mimicking him as I broadcast the incident at Ufana. I was precise and excited, true to the horror as if I'd been a broadcaster from birth. The boys helped me with the game, chiming the portentous warning beeps just before the news, after which I imitated the famous announcer's grave, pretentious voice.

"Slowly and with emphasis, I read the names of the boys lying on me inside the evacuation carrier. I deliberately threw in the names of our buddies who had stayed behind at the base in Kuneitra and hadn't been wounded in the ambush. Lucky stiffs! We were all lightheaded from the tension, the shock of surprise, our wounds and the wonderful feeling that we had been saved. Who could control his excitement at a time like that?

"'Motke,' I vowed to myself between bone-jarring jolts of the galloping carrier, 'Motke,' if you manage to get out of here in one piece; if you make it to the landing zone at Kuneitra safe and sound; if you survive the flight to the hospital, you'll never comeback. You can wipe the illusion of ruined Ufana, the track of dust sifting beneath you, the basalt mounds and the skeins of vines, from your life's map. You can erase from your life the grooved floor of the carrier and the red hot hood of the scout car on which you lay when the 20 millimeter shells unexpectedly burst from the bunkers concealed at Ufana. From now on, you'll be wrapped in a soft, cushy flak jacket. You'll take care of yourself from here on like a woman at the end of her pregnancy. And you'll give up your killer cigarettes.

"So, while we lay on the floor of the carrier in a sweating, bleeding pile of wounded men, we swore one another solemn, inviolable oaths. No more foul, life-shortening habits. An end to smoking, to overeating and infidelity. As the wounded were loaded onto a helicopter, I looked back again towards the foot of the distant hills overlooking the ruined town and the barren knolls around it. For the last time in my life, I saw the little village of Ufana feigning innocence in the soft morning light and swaying with the wind's refreshing breeze as if in a dream.

"Where am I, and where is the flak jacket around me? Where am I and what has become of those vows? Do you think I've stopped smoking? Have I forsaken gluttony and adultery? It seems to me that my appetites for all these have even grown since I was wounded: more cigarettes, more pig-outs and, yes, more cheating on my wife, too. How could I have treated myself like a woman ready to deliver? Look, I didn't even know how to behave when my wife went into labor with our children. Where is that feeling of intoxication, that sense of promises never to be broken, beneath a heap of wounded men? To live better and as soon as we came off the chopper at the hospital's cramped landing zone, even before I was staggered by the scent of the sea, I had already forgotten my vows.

"Why was I punished? Why were the guys punished? Who the hell is it who decides who'll be wounded? What would have happened if I had dawdled on my final leave, as my wife had begged me, and not hurried off to join the patrol that was hit?

"As you can see, you understand how it is, I recovered quickly enough from my wound. I was lucky, the injury wasn't serious. But some thoughts still gnaw at me. I went back to work, to stress, bosses' orders and silly arguments with the employees under me. As for the family, I really tried to bridge the chasms between me and my wife. Her devotion during the first days of my injury knew no bounds. But that, it turned out, only made things worse between us because it galled me that I didn't know how to repay her. I really thought in the beginning that a small miracle had occurred, giving our love a fresh start. Then, little by little, matters sank back into their old, oppressive rut. I couldn't even thank her the way I wanted. We fell into the old quarrels, the usual jabs and predictable reconciliations. Imagine, I even wanted to surprise her with a short trip abroad, but by the time I began making the necessary arrangements, I saw that it was ridiculous, absolutely pointless. I was all mixed-up, befuddled like a boy, when I told her, in my roundabout way, about the trip I had canceled.

"But the situation today is much worse. You can see that it isn't the light wound from the Ufana battle. I've had plenty of time between radiation treatments to vow all the vows in the world and change my perverted habits 77 times. And how does all that help? On the contrary, now I can smoke all those forbidden cigarettes serene in the knowledge that these are definitely my last ones. I can overeat to my heart's content because I know, even without the doctors' nagging, that these are my last binges. I struggle only with my affairs. It's hard to cheat on your wife when you're sick. I don't get around so well, either. There are bad spells of weakness when I'm unwillingly driven to reestablish the old alliance with my wife and make the mistake of mumbling a partial confession in her ears. But she isn't satisfied with an incomplete story. With rising fury, she wrings further details from me in my weakened state: more names, more places, more dates.

"It's unbelievable how much suffering there is in the world. It sometimes seems to me that my entire life has been nothing but a hectic passage from one station of pain to another. Sometimes, I find happiness in knowing that others suffer, too. Fortunately, I don't have to share in all the heartache around me. I could not bear up under that burden. But sometimes, right after my treatments, when I feel especially miserable, I'm suddenly ashamed, I yearn to be completely different and share in all the world's grief. Look around me here, in the hallway, in the waiting rooms and at the doctors' doors. So much suffering is concentrated here.

"After my wound at Ufana, when I knew that I hadn't been badly hurt and would soon recover, and might even make something out of it, I was filled with a childish desire to contemplate everything as a reporter would. In other words, with detachment and an outsider's eye. Once again, I made myself an announcer like the famous one on the radio and reported directly from the fire fighting the north, my own personal suffering front. Yes, it's a real scandal, that impulsiveness of mine, how inane I am, whipped on by a passion for games. Among the wounded thrown on top of me were some very badly hurt. One of the boys was even in danger of losing his life. Do you remember how we all pulled together then? The whole unit called up, guys refusing to be released just so they could spend time with the wounded. What a spirit of brotherhood bound us all. We were so close. There was a bedrock faith that everything had to turn out all right. We were all united in fear and love and averting pain.

"Wrap myself in a soft flak jacket for the rest of my life? Pamper myself in my remaining years like a woman expecting any moment? What nonsense. What mindless idiocy. Promise myself that I'll abstain from adultery? What a naive, childish way to bribe the one who toys with our lives. You can see that even this little payoff wasn't wanted. When I turn around and close my eyes, I see Ufana's black basalt mounds once again, the bursts of fire and smoke from the 20 millimeter guns. With difficulty, I stop myself from dropping and crawling beneath the scout car, from feverishly burrowing into the layer of wicked basalt. I must remain erect. I must see with my eyes, and feel with all my body, how the swift, unseen sliver of metal flew at me in a wholly indifferent, metallic malevolence, struck and changed my entire life." The door to the doctors' room across from us opened, and a nurse came out and called,

"Motke, come in, please."

I rose and stood beside him.

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