And so the days flowed by, and we diligently prepared, under the sharp eye of Sergeant Major Zuckerl and the wise leadership of Lieutenant Alfred Schauer, who would appear only rarely, for that great moment when, directed to the front line and screaming a powerful “Hoorah!” we would stab the chest of our cruel enemy with the bayonets of our guns, and those of us who wouldn’t lay down their bones would bring victory to our grateful motherland at the point of their bayonets and so forth.
But as it is everywhere, all barracks are actually two barracks; one doesn’t in any way resemble the other. In the first one you stomp your feet all day, military commands are shouted out, you sit under your gun, you clean the barrels of your gun with cleaning rods, soup barrels with fat and tasteless goulash are dragged around, soldiers’ trousers, torn by pointless squatting, are mended. The second barracks is the kingdom of tenderness, where letters are read or written, photographs of Mama or the sweetheart are shown, dreams about home are dreamed with open eyes staring at the ceiling, dreams about the cows or the little brother, and most of all—I feel embarrassed to tell you something like this about such a fearless outfit as ours—the most frequent dream is about the end of the war, which for us hadn’t even begun yet.
But the pinnacle of this kingdom of tenderness, its culmination, or better let’s say its throne, was the latrine. This was a long whitewashed shack at one end of the barracks. High above the squatting place there were small windows kind of like vents—and if you stepped on the horizontal plank, you could look outside. And outside, on the sidewalk directly opposite, gathered young mothers and brides, news was shouted back and forth, best regards from Joshka, he said you should write, what else do you need, and other such tidings, seemingly unimportant, but dear to the soldier’s heart. Outside, if you lifted your eyes from the sidewalk to the latrine, you could see the soldiers’ faces, moved and even weeping, eyes full of love or concern, lips sending soundless kisses to those standing below, and other similarly touching portraits within the square frames of the windows. But if you looked from within, from the side of the latrine, you would see a different truth that was in the form of a line of bare soldiers’ behinds, with their underpants pulled down. This was, so to speak, a military alert in case the observant Sergeant Major Zuckerl peeped inside. For this reason, and in order to prevent a sudden enemy attack at the rear, we would put one person on duty at the door. All it took was for him to cry out in alarm, “Zuckerl!” and only a second later we were peacefully squatting, the way it’s expected from a military unit disciplined in every respect.
The sergeant major would poke his head in, look over the lines and invariably say, “And quick now, this is not a sanatorium!”
In this way Sarah and I managed to see each other. She was standing across with her brother, Rabbi Shmuel Ben-David, who had some sort of special military status and was able to go outside. As we gazed at each other, Sarah seemed to me divinely beautiful, with these huge, slightly willful almond-shaped eyes with a grayish-green sparkle, and her black curly hair, ending in a heavy braid. Such must have been in those ancient times of Galilee the daughters of Israel, who would comb their hair by the edge of the lake of Genezareth, from the depths of whose lunar waters the silvery little waves reflected the Eye of God, moved to tenderness.
“How are you?” asked Sarah.
“Fine,” I said. “And you?”
She smiled and silently shrugged her shoulders.
The conversation, of course, wasn’t going well. I’m not one of those who know at any moment what to say to a girl. But the rabbi had a clue and said, “I’ll go to the pub for some cigarettes.”
We were left alone, if “alone” means a whole line of mothers, grandfathers, or sisters, under the gallery of soldiers’ portraits at the small windows, and everyone shouting, everyone wanting to know if the cow had calved. But still we were alone, we could hear only ourselves.
“Take care of yourself,” she said.
“I will,” I said.
“I hope it’ll all be over soon and that you’ll come home,” she said.
“I hope so too,” I said.
“I’ll be waiting for you,” she said after a long silence.
“All right,” I said.
And those who understand will realize that in these words and in the pauses between them was hidden all the tenderness of Solomon’s “Shir Hashirim,” in other words, the Song of Songs, all the lyricism of the world, all the music, all the artful techniques, invented through the millennia, to express the little word “love.” But not to soften your heart too much and God forbid to make you cry, I’ll let you take a look inside the latrine, where you’ll see me with my bare behind and pulled-down pants and then all the songs of Solomon will fly out of your head.