SHE ARRIVED A few days before the blood seeped into the sand. Three hundred, maybe four hundred meters stood between the outpost and the bus station with the white chalk graffiti announcing You’ve reached the end of the world, and by the time she had covered the distance, the rumor about the mysterious soldier was already whistling throughout the outpost like a bullet.
Cleaning duty was immediately suspended.
One after the other we let go of our brooms, garbage bags, and plastic bottles filled with sand and cigarette butts, and stared as she approached us in black boots, a camera hanging around her neck and white sunglasses that gleamed in the distance.
Even Yanai, who was on guard duty, rushed out of the security booth at the gate. He looked in the cracked mirror hanging outside the door, straightened his tactical vest, and ran his hand over his buzz cut. Then he winked at us and said, “This one. This one’s going to be my wife.”
By the time she made it to the security gate, half the platoon was waiting for her. We stood elbow to elbow while Yanai opened the iron gate that screeched nervously. She slid up her white sunglasses, wiped the sweat off her face, and revealed a strange pair of eyes. One blue, one brown.
“Finest girl who’s ever stepped foot in the outpost,” someone whispered, and we nodded.
“Welcome to Neptune,” Yanai greeted her.
“Why Neptune?” she asked, as he was probably planning all along.
“Rumor has it that this outpost is as far from planet Earth as Neptune, if not farther,” he replied, and she started laughing a split second before he completed the sentence, as if she was used to these kinds of jokes. Then she said that she served in the military newspaper unit, which we hadn’t even known existed until that moment. She said her job was to travel to outposts all over the country and find soldiers with interesting stories.
“And why are you here, princess?” Yanai asked.
“For you, prince,” she sneered, and said she had traveled here all the way from a kibbutz in the Golan Heights, which was covered in snow these days. She had heard there was a soldier in our platoon who graduated with a law degree from the most prestigious university in England and had left everything behind to enlist in the IDF. She explained that was a story people would want to hear, and then looked to her left, at us, and asked if anyone knew where she could find him. I noticed a ladybug tattoo on her neck.
We all knew who she was looking for, but no one was in a rush to answer; maybe because we feared that if we told her, she’d vanish as quickly as she had appeared.
“I’m not sure who you’re talking about,” Yanai eventually said, the very guy who took every opportunity to remind us that he scored a 96 on his Hebrew finals without ever learning the meaning of the expression “to give up.” He shifted the sling of his gun behind his back and took a few steps closer to her. “You’ll have to put out a bit more if you want help. More details, I mean. Name, rank, hobbies.”
She smiled, embarrassed. I was hoping that someone braver than me would tell him to cut the crap, but other than someone’s feeble “Come on, Yanai, stop it,” none of us protested.
“Sit with us for a bit, we’ll sort you out, don’t worry.” Yanai reached out to touch her hair. She jerked her head and took two steps back. Her black bag was pressed up against the fence. Her right sleeve caught on the wire, leaving a small tear. A single drop of blood dripped onto the sand. I think I was the only one who noticed.
“Don’t get your panties all in a bunch, sweetheart,” Yanai called out and drew closer to her, standing right in her face. “I don’t bite.”
Her face turned red. She looked away from him, at us, but we didn’t say a word.
For years I blamed Yanai for everything that happened afterward, his vanity, his inability to restrain himself, the ridiculous thought that it was only a matter of seconds until she fell for his charms. But today I know that it wasn’t Yanai, it was something about the outpost itself.
They say it was a soldier from the November ’02 draft who started the whole thing. That he was the one who carved the question proudly displayed above the broken urinal in the grunts’ latrines: “If a tree falls in Neptune, does it make a sound?”
This heralded other bursts of creativity: “If a soldier shouts ‘No more!!’ in Neptune, is he really shouting?”
“If a soldier goes batshit in Neptune, will he ever see the headshrinker?”
“If Waxman the CO shoots a camel in Neptune, does he finally get to join the recon battalion?”
Slowly but surely these jokes turned into serious philosophical debates that went on for hours. We found ourselves arguing heatedly about whether the “Neptune tree” phenomenon existed only within the confines of the outpost or also along the road that led to the bus station. Whether it had existed here since time immemorial or was born only when the outpost was built. And so, without expecting it, we started to get the creeping feeling that the things that happened in Neptune had eluded the space-time continuum. We had reached an unspoken agreement that it was okay to pull a cat’s tail because they didn’t really exist, or to cheat on your girlfriend, if you could just find someone to do it with.
SAKAL WAS THE one who finally put a stop to it. He had been serving in the company longer than any of us, with only a month and a pre-discharge talk with the regiment commander standing between him and the beaches of Thailand. Sakal was the company sergeant major, a role that had turned him into a broken and tired soldier, but also a higher authority on all matters of seniority, rank promotion, and ETS. He had been two years ahead of me in high school. We were both music majors, but he studied classical and I jazz. And while he was strict about not speaking to us younger soldiers, I knew he was fond of me. Sometimes, when I was standing in line in the mess hall, he’d pat me on my back, and I’m also pretty sure he was the one who left the Pink Floyd CD under my bed, maybe as a reminder that there had been life before this wasteland and there would be life after it.
“What the fuck’s going on here?” he yelled, approaching in field pants, holding a wet toothbrush. He shoved me and a few other soldiers out of his way, giving a blaring whistle. Before Yanai realized what was going on, Sakal was already standing in front of him, asking the female soldier what she was doing here. She stood up straight and explained, then took a step forward without missing the opportunity to step on Yanai’s foot.
“You’re looking for Korczak, sweetheart,” Sakal said. He turned around, stood on his tiptoes, and swept his gaze across us until he spotted me standing behind the others.
“Go with him, the fatty with the curls will take you,” he said, pointing at me.
I wasn’t offended by Sakal’s description. I was aware of the way I looked, but at that moment I felt that my large body stood in my way, rendering me incapable of hiding in a crowd. And I didn’t want to accept the assignment of leading her to Korczak, to be marked by Yanai and the rest as the one who had taken away the only female soldier ever to arrive at Neptune of her own volition. I tried making myself smaller and lowered my gaze to the ground, recalling the first time I played hide-and-seek only to be instantly found.
“Show me where he is,” she said, grabbing my left elbow and pulling me toward a row of buildings, letting go only when we were outside everyone’s field of vision. She lowered her sunglasses and picked up her pace.
“Are you sure you’re looking for Korczak?” I asked, just to make her say something. She slowed down, catching me panting, struggling to keep up.
“We’ll find that out together,” she said, smiling a comforting smile. Her words, alluding to a shared future, alleviated my fear of getting on everyone’s wrong side.
“Yanai’s just a jerk,” I said when we started walking again.
“That’s his name?”
I nodded.
“Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I’ve met worse.” She asked how long we’d been serving in the outpost. I told her that the seniors were closing in on six months, but us juniors had only arrived from the training base three weeks ago.
“You don’t look that young,” she complimented me.
“Neither do you,” I said, and immediately started apologizing profusely for how that came out. She laughed. It made me happy. She asked whether Korczak was a junior or a senior.
“Junior, but he’s twenty-four, just immigrated here.”
“No kidding. And his name is really Korczak?”
“Nickname.” I told her that on our first night at Neptune the soldiers from the senior platoon woke us up in the middle of the night. They made us stand outside in the lineup square while Sakal presented the Ten Rookie Commandments, from the unconditional requirement to salute a senior soldier to the strict rule against eating chocolate pudding cups. After he read the commandments, Sakal pulled Korczak aside and told him he was aware he was three years his senior, and that he had no intention of pulling rank on a guy who could be his grandfather.
“But Korczak wouldn’t have it, he demanded to be treated the same as everybody else. Which is why they started calling him Korczak, because he’s like that guy from the Holocaust who went with the children.”
“A righteous man,” she said. Instantly regretting having portrayed him in such a good light, I mentioned that it was simply the logical thing to do, and that it was just surprising because Korczak was a loner.
“Don’t take it personally if he’s not too excited to see you. He’s just that kind of person.”
“Believe me, a display of excitement is the last thing I want from anyone around here,” she replied and kept walking.
KORCZAK WAS LYING on the top bunk of one of the many bunk beds in his room. A large piece of cardboard was perched against the windowpane, blocking the sunlight but not the heat. I wasn’t sure we would find him there. When he wasn’t on guard duty, Korczak would disappear for hours on end, and we’d try to guess where he’d pop up next. We usually got it wrong. On the second week of boot camp, the master sergeant of the training base caught him planting an herb garden behind the armory, and Yanai swore that only a week ago he had seen him walking out of the latrines after spending the entire morning there with an education corps guidebook. We were all familiar with Korczak’s book obsession. His idea of combat-ready was having something to read on him, and this time was no exception; we found him with his face buried in words again, lying on the bunk with a flashlight strapped to his head and his eyes fixed on a small black book. Military bunks weren’t designed for people as tall as him, and his large feet—one bare and the other in a gray sock—dangled over the bed.
“You have a visitor,” I said. He didn’t respond.
She approached the bed, tilted her head, and asked if he was reading The Stranger.
“I assume that if the IDF enlisted you, you’re equipped with the cognitive ability to read,” he replied. He looked up and blinded her with the flashlight before returning to his book. “On the other hand,” he whispered, “I’ve been wrong about that before.”
“What’s the book about?” she asked, her casual tone trying to mask the insult.
He replied that it wasn’t entirely clear. “Basically, about a guy who kills another guy because of the sun.”
She thought for a moment and then said that there was a time when killing because of the sun would have made no sense to her, but since enlisting it didn’t sound that far-fetched.
Korczak looked at her again. “Spend a few days here and you’ll wonder why it doesn’t happen on a daily basis.”
Placing her hand on the bunk, she said it was impressive he was able to read such a complicated book.
“Actually, I’m just looking at the drawings, don’t forget I’m a grunt.”
She smiled and explained that she meant the language, because he had recently immigrated.
“I lived here for a few years in the past, so you could say I’m cheating.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes,” he replied without further comment. I think that if she had asked, he would have explained.
“You’re from London?”
“Cheshire, if that means anything to you.”
“Oh! You’re the cat!”
Korczak lowered his book. “Have you still not realized that you’ve made it to Wonderland?” he asked, bursting into laughter. “He’s the White Rabbit,” he said and pointed at me. “And you, you’re Alice.”
“Why is she Alice?” I asked. Korczak didn’t reply.
She told him she had come to the outpost just for him, that she heard he had enlisted in the paratroopers after earning a law degree from Oxford. She said she thought it was a great story. “People like to know what wonderful soldiers we have,” she noted, and removed the cap of the camera lens. “It would make them happy to hear about you.”
He was silent for a moment. “Then you’re going to be just as disappointed as my mom was, since I don’t have a degree.”
She laughed before realizing he wasn’t joking. “But your CO, he told me, I mean, I spoke to him a few times …”
“My CO is an idiot who doesn’t know his soldiers,” he interrupted her. “I’m willing to bet you he doesn’t even know my name.” Korczak explained that he had dropped out at the beginning of his third year in law school, and that he had spent the two years leading up to his conscription as a clerk in a dilapidated city hall building. “You can put that in, I’m sure it’ll get you a Pulitzer.”
I saw how the muscles in her face slackened; the realization that her whole trip was in vain was slowly seeping in. She sat on the lower bunk, held her head in her hands, and got up again.
“Okay, listen, I know what we’ll do. We can say you went to law school without mentioning whether you graduated. A few white lies never killed anyone,” she said, and placed her hand on his.
Korczak grimaced, shook off her hand, and returned to his book. “The nation will just have to make do without me,” he announced.
She had yet to realize that she had already lost him. I think it wasn’t the idea of lying that bothered him so much but the fact that the entire conversation had a clear agenda.
She tried to persuade him. At first he gave only monosyllabic answers, but eventually he stopped responding altogether. Finally she gave up and walked out of the room, with me in tow. She sat down on the curb and took out a cigarette. She asked me if I had a lighter. I said I didn’t.
“What a shitty day,” she mumbled under her breath, stepping on a piece of broken glass lying on the road. “I don’t get it, do you have to be an asshole to serve here?” she wondered out loud, and quickly corrected herself. “I mean, not you. You’re sweet, really.”
I escorted her back to the security gate. A moment before we parted ways she gave me a hug and took a pen out of her pocket. She rolled up my right sleeve and wrote her number on my forearm.
“Try talking to Korczak,” she asked. “If you get him to change his mind, give me a call.”
She gave me another hug, and this time a kiss on the cheek too. I think she wanted the other soldiers to see. Then she turned around and walked back to the bus station, disappearing into the desert from which she had come.
I heard clapping behind me.
“Well, did you fuck her?” Yanai yelled out the window of the security booth, but I pretended not to hear. I quickly slunk off to my room, trying not to make eye contact. I kept turning it over in my mind, the prickly touch of her pen etching blue ink into my skin.
I KEPT HER number in my cell phone under the name “Girl from the north.” I also wrote it down in three different places, but still tried to preserve the traces of the digits she had scrawled on me. Most of them faded after two days, but during the weekend leave briefing on Thursday evening, I could still make out the four and the seven.
The briefing took place earlier than usual because Waxman and the other officers had to stay overnight at the training base for a regimental day seminar. Waxman glanced at his watch and announced that we had less than twelve hours before our weekend leave; that he wanted to believe a company of combat soldiers could get through one night without a babysitter. Then everyone scattered and I went up to the watchtower for guard duty.
I didn’t like guarding at night. Most soldiers don’t like pulling all-nighters in the tower. For me the reason wasn’t tiredness or lack of sleep, but rather the elusive feeling that if I were ever to lose my mind, it would probably happen there. As if the soul’s defense mechanisms were weaker at night. There was something about nights in the tower that magnified the feeling of detachment, the feeling that even if a missile were to destroy the entire outpost, no one would know. I would look at the dark sand for hours, wondering whether one day, in the distant future, Neptune would become the center of the world; that maybe a million years from now, right where I was standing, there would be a swimming pool, and dozens of kids diving into the water one after the other, not knowing a thing about the desperate soldier who had once stood there.
Around 2:00 A.M., shortly before my shift was over, I noticed a commotion starting down in the outpost, unusual for that time of night. Soldiers were crowding around the cabin showers. I peered through my binoculars, trying to see what the fuss was all about, but I couldn’t make out a thing until one soldier burst through the crowd. It was Yanai. He was running toward his room in nothing but a towel and underwear, clearly agitated. Sakal emerged slightly after him, walking in the direction of the lineup square with slow and confident steps. Holding a plastic chair, he placed it in the middle of the square and stood on it. Another soldier, who couldn’t stop laughing, handed him a megaphone, and Sakal tapped on it a few times.
“Hear ye, hear ye!” he called out, then waited for the rest of the soldiers to come out of their rooms with bleary-eyed confusion. Sakal raised his hand and announced that a severe crime had been committed in Neptune that night.
“The smart-ass will stand rookie trial!” he announced, and added that the defendant must report to the CO’s office with an advocate, and that everyone was invited to come and witness for themselves the fate of rookies who broke the rules.
My replacement arrived twenty minutes before my shift ended, said that he thought a shitstorm was brewing and that he wanted to stay as far away from it as possible. I knew he was right, but my curiosity got the better of me.
THE DOOR WAS OPEN. A few soldiers were huddled together on the bunks, listening to Yanai’s shaky voice.
“Bejo started yelling at me to get out of the shower. He said that he and two other guys were sitting outside the canteen and saw me leaving the CO’s room with a grilled cheese. I told them it couldn’t have been me, that I was in the shower washing my hair like a little girl for an hour, but he wouldn’t listen. Then Sakal showed up, got the entire story from him and now is putting me on trial.” His left hand continued to shake even after he finished talking. His eyes were red. It was the first time I ever saw him like that. “They’re going to fuck me over.”
“Come on, bro, they only really beat the shit out of rookies in Golani, here it’s just for kicks, they don’t actually hurt you,” someone said.
Yanai nodded.
“Yeah, you’re right, bro.” He got up and started pacing the room. “They better not piss me off even more, because if they do I’ll beat the crap out of every last one of them.” Maybe he felt better tossing around these empty threats.
“Okay. So I need an advocate to come to this shit with me. Any takers?”
No one said a word.
“What, am I the only real man around here?” he wondered in an irritated, unhinged tone. I think Yanai knew that wasn’t the reason. The simple truth was that no one could stand him. He fixed his eyes on the uneven floor tiles.
“Did you do it?” A voice emerged from the corner of the room. It was Korczak, sitting in a crouching position. “Did you eat the grilled cheese?”
“No, they just want to teach me a lesson because I’m an asshole.”
“Then I’ll come.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Korczak replied.
Yanai bit his lip. “Thanks, bro. I appreciate it.”
Korczak stood up and started scanning the room.
“Has anyone seen Kenan?” he asked. At first I thought I misheard. But after a moment he asked again if anyone had seen me.
“He’s probably hiding somewhere stuffing his face with a pita,” some soldier sitting next to Yanai said. Yanai immediately slapped him on the head. “You moron, he’s here.”
Someone else yelled in my direction that they were just joking around, but I was more concerned with Korczak’s intentions.
“I want you to come with us.”
“I just got off guard duty, I’m beat,” I said, yawning, failing to understand how once again I was finding myself smack in the middle of everything. “Why me?”
“Because Sakal has a soft spot for you, that’s why.”
“He’s right. So Sakal might just go easier on me,” Yanai said.
“Can’t do any harm, that’s for sure. Don’t worry, he won’t do anything to you,” Korczak added.
I tried weighing the pros and cons as quickly as I could, but before I could reach a definitive conclusion, Korczak turned around, placed his hand on Yanai’s head, and moved it from side to side. “You cut your hair today?” he asked him. “Which number clipper did you use?”
“Three.”
Korczak mumbled that he had a few things to take care of before the trial and left the room.
It was the first time he irritated me, getting me in this mess without thinking twice.
“That Korczak’s an odd one,” Yanai said, standing beside me.
“Annoying one,” I replied.
“Yeah, right?” Yanai scratched his head. “You know, if this is too much for you, you don’t have to come, we’re cool.”
A note of helplessness crept into his voice, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t help but feel some compassion toward him. “I’ll come. I just hope it’ll help.”
“You’re a real champ, bro,” he said, giving me a gentle pat on the back.
Half an hour later the two of us were standing outside the CO’s office. Korczak appeared only moments before the trial began, an inexplicable smile plastered on his face.
“Where were you?” I asked, already ticked off, but Korczak wouldn’t say.
“Lower your head and keep your eyes on the floor,” he told Yanai, and before he managed to explain, the door opened and Bejo was standing there.
“You have twenty seconds to put your berets on backward, take off your boot blousers, and enter the room silently,” he said, and we quickly followed the orders.
KORCZAK WAS THE first to enter, then Yanai and me.
“Salute your seniors,” Bejo demanded, and told us to stand against the wall. We obeyed. Eight or nine seniors were sitting to our left on two frayed leather couches, looking at us with the solemn expressions of a grand jury. Sakal was standing in front of us, in the middle of the room, in a puffed fleece jacket and green baseball cap, the Israeli flag and company symbol hanging on the wall behind him. He was holding the seniors’ stick—a thinly carved branch that granted its holder the authority to rule on matters of seniority, and served as an unconsoling consolation prize for those who were about to be discharged.
“Soldier, state your name, rank, and personal number,” Sakal said.
Yanai replied. His beret fell on the floor, but he didn’t notice.
“You’re charged with breaking three rules,” Sakal announced. “Entering the company commander’s room without permission, eating cheese, and the unauthorized use of a toaster. Are you ready to be tried before the higher court of rookie affairs?”
Yanai nodded.
“Excellent. And do you plead guilty?”
“No,” he stuttered, still staring at the floor as Korczak had told him to.
Sakal smiled.
“Then let’s move on to the witnesses,” he said as he turned to the seniors on the couches.
“Who here was near the canteen and saw a soldier leave this room with a grilled cheese?”
Three soldiers raised their hands.
“And can any of you point to the perpetrator?”
The three of them pointed at Yanai. Sakal, who seemed amused by the entire situation, shrugged.
“Three against one,” he said, and waved the stick in the air. “Off with his head!” he yelled.
Yanai whimpered, recoiling as if a stray ball was heading in his direction. He tried to shield his face with his right hand.
The soldiers on the couches started laughing.
“We’re just fooling around, cupcake,” Sakal said with a smirk. “Don’t worry, we’ll knock you around for half a minute and call it a day.”
“Sakal, you’re fucking brutal, man, cut him some slack,” one of the seniors called out. “He’s about to piss his pants.”
Sakal took two steps back. “You’re right, twenty-nine seconds,” he said, and grabbed Yanai’s neck. “And remember it’s only ’cause I got a soft heart, you know you deserve worse.”
Yanai looked up.
“Wait!” Korczak roared. “I’m his advocate, right? Give me one minute and I’ll prove to you he’s innocent.”
“It’s the fatty who ate the grilled cheese!” Bejo parroted Korczak’s British accent. Everybody started laughing again except Sakal, who seemed intrigued by the suggestion.
“A minute and you’ll prove he didn’t do it?”
“Korczak, knock it off,” Yanai whispered to him. “It’ll just make them angrier.”
“Cut it out already,” I said, backing Yanai.
“I don’t want it!” Yanai yelled, but Sakal wasn’t interested. “You should’ve thought about that before you chose him,” he told Yanai and sat on the couch with the other seniors. He picked up the megaphone that lay on the floor beside him and announced: “One minute, advocate, give it to us.”
“You’re a fucking screwball,” Yanai hissed at Korczak and looked at me helplessly.
With one hand behind his back, Korczak took a few steps toward the seniors.
“Who saw him leave this room?” he asked.
The three raised their hands again.
“And you were sitting outside the canteen, right? So what you saw was in fact his back?”
“Sweetheart, we may be old but our vision’s still twenty-twenty,” Bejo said.
Korczak took a step back.
“Okay.” He stood next to Yanai without saying another word.
“That’s it?” Sakal’s voice blared through the megaphone.
“Yup, that was my only question.”
“Wow, they got real geniuses at Oxford, huh?” Sakal said, and the rest of the soldiers behind him snickered like a well-rehearsed choir.
“Now if you could only open the door and turn off the light,” Korczak added casually.
“What did you say?” Sakal asked.
“Turn off the light and open the door,” Korczak repeated in a slow, clear tone. “It’s really rather simple actions. I can do them myself if you’d like.”
Bejo raised his hand in protest.
“Enough, he’s turning this into a circus,” he said. Sakal persisted in his silence, looking at Korczak with curiosity.
“Give me one more second, I’ll prove it to you.”
Sakal leaned his weight against the seniors’ stick to pull himself up, then walked toward the advocate.
“I’m giving you one chance. But so help me God if either of you try to make a run for it,” he said. It was only when their faces were inches from each other that I realized there was more than a show of kindness there; that maybe Sakal was seeking validation from Korczak. He wanted the company’s intellectual to acknowledge his status.
Before any of the seniors managed to protest, Korczak had already turned off the light and opened the door. A streetlight from the other side of the outpost cast a faint glow on the two blurry figures that entered. Korczak closed the door, and the room was filled with complete darkness. I felt a pair of hands pulling me forward.
“Don’t move,” Korczak whispered, turning me around and positioning me somewhere in the room.
When Korczak switched the light back on, all I saw in front of me was the white wall nearly pressed against my face. There were people beside me, but I couldn’t make them out.
“What is this shit?” one of the seniors cried out.
“You said you recognized Yanai from behind,” Korczak replied. “So let’s just make sure you’re right.” At that moment, with nothing to cling to but his voice, I realized the audacity of his tone, of his insistence not to grant even a shred of respect to those he deemed undeserving.
“I’m not going along with this shit,” someone yelled. “In any other company they’d have had their asses whooped by now.”
“Bejo, calm the fuck down,” Sakal said. “You know what? The guy has a point. Tell him who you saw and we’ll be done with this.”
The room went quiet. I tilted my head forward so that my nose touched the cold wall. I heard the quiet, strained breathing of one of the guys standing beside me. It was Yanai, I was sure of it.
“So I’m acquitting him,” Sakal announced.
“What did you say?”
“If you can’t point out the person who stole the grilled cheese, I’m acquitting him,” Sakal said, raising his voice.
“Fuck that,” Bejo hissed and took two noisy steps in our direction. The figures around me tensed. I heard buzzed whispers, but I didn’t know what they meant.
“That’s him,” Bejo finally said, and I froze.
“You’re sure?” Sakal asked.
Another round of whispers followed. “Absolutely,” Bejo replied. “It’s the left one, I know it.”
“Turn around,” Sakal ordered us, and we instantly obeyed. Once again Yanai let out a yelp that echoed throughout the room. Only this time it wasn’t a fearful whimper but a sigh of relief. He was standing in the middle of the row, next to the outpost’s cook. On his left was an ordnance soldier who had been sent to the outpost for a two-week detention. Their faces bore no resemblance to each other, but Yanai and the ordnance soldier were more or less the same height and had the same skin tone. That’s when I finally realized the whole stunt had been planned down to the last detail. Korczak had even managed to get the ordnance guy the same buzz cut.
Yanai and Korczak exchanged a brief glance, trying their best not to smile, but ultimately failing. The momentary solidarity made me a bit jealous. Stunned, the senior soldiers rose to their feet and stood in front of us, struggling to understand. Sounds of protest resumed, but Sakal soon silenced them with a shout.
“Okay. I have to admit it isn’t too clear who did it,” the judge said, and sat down on the couch. Yanai held his chest in disbelief, while Bejo shot him a murderous glare. Sakal picked up the megaphone again and turned up the volume.
“Due to these recent findings, I have no choice but to issue a new verdict,” he announced, then paused for a moment. “The four of them will get their ass whooped, and we’ll make it a full minute, so no one will feel left out.”
“But you don’t know who did it!” Korczak screamed.
“That’s right,” Sakal replied with a triumphant smile. “You may be some kind of genius but you still couldn’t figure out that it never mattered.”
Korczak’s cry was swallowed up by the seniors’ whistles and cheers. Before I managed to understand how I had turned into one of the defendants, Bejo and the other seniors were charging at us. Yanai pushed me back, trying to protect me. It didn’t really help. I felt the first punch land above my stomach, in the lower rib. I tried raising my hands to shield my head, but I couldn’t. The punches intensified.
I’m not sure how long it lasted. Probably not that long.
I DIDN’T SEE him snatch the gun. But there was Korczak, standing with his back to me, holding a short-barrel M16 inches from Bejo’s forehead. Two other soldiers drew their weapons at Korczak, and the room became as still as if we were all playing red light, green light.
At least four guys were yelling at Korczak to drop the weapon. He didn’t respond.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Bejo said.
“I really don’t know,” he replied, and something about the uncertainty of his answer was more unnerving than an explicit threat.
Bejo closed his eyes. “You’re fucking crazy,” he said. His balding forehead gleamed with beads of sweat.
“I think you’re overreacting a bit, don’t you?” Sakal called out in a calm, almost cordial tone. He was sitting alone on the couch, seemingly indifferent to the situation. “It’s a shame, we were having such a nice time.”
Korczak kept aiming his weapon at Bejo, shifting his gaze toward the judge on the couch.
“Let them go.”
Sakal got up and walked toward the door.
“No problem,” he replied. “I’ll let everyone out of here, just calm down and drop your weapon. It’s all good.”
Korczak must have felt that Sakal’s instant surrender was suspicious, because he drew the barrel even closer to Bejo’s head. Then he looked at the four of us and nodded toward the door, signaling us to get out.
None of us moved.
“It’s all good, guys,” Sakal said while opening the door. “Go, don’t worry about it, it’s all good.”
The ordnance guy and the cook ran outside. I didn’t move. Yanai walked toward Korczak and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“You took it too far, man,” he said, making sure the whole room knew he had nothing to do with it.
“Come on, let’s go,” he said to me while moving toward the door, but I didn’t budge.
“Hey, get the fuck out of here,” Sakal grumbled and pushed me. I tried to stand firm, waved my hand in protest, I think I even shouted. But it was all for show. The truth is, all I wanted was to get out of there. I managed to look back one last time before the door shut. I saw Korczak cave, his hand slowly letting go of the weapon, which fell near his feet, and Bejo leaping at the tall Brit who collapsed onto the floor.
I waited for the door to be locked before trying to open it. So someone there would think I tried to help. Then I turned around. Yanai was no longer there. No one was there. I fled to my room, almost running. I lay on the bunk in my uniform, didn’t even take off my shoes. I covered myself with the blanket, wrapping it as tightly around my body as I could, like my mom used to do when I was a kid. I looked up at the metal frame of the bunk above me. I tried counting sheep. I failed.
I GOT OUT of bed at the break of dawn and started packing my weekend bag. Then I went to Korczak’s room and stood by the half-open door. I pushed it an inch farther and peeked inside. The few rays penetrating the piece of cardboard against the window landed on Korczak’s body. I heard him snoring. He had a big scratch on his cheek that sent shivers through my body. I didn’t notice any other marks. I don’t know how long I stood there staring at him. At some point he started coughing, and I flinched, taking two steps back.
When I left his room I called Waxman, without knowing what I was going to say. He didn’t pick up. He didn’t answer the second time either. I sent him a text saying that it was urgent and started wandering around the base, watching the sun take over the desert. I had to tell someone. I had to make sure the details made it out of Neptune and reached the real world, somewhere out there.
So I called her. I had the feeling she’d understand, but it didn’t really matter to me anymore if she didn’t. I wanted to talk to her. She picked up after the third ring, with a fresh morning voice. I pictured her waking up in her house up north, on a bed covered in snow. I told her everything. About the grilled cheese and the trial; Sakal and Korczak; the beating and the weapon. She asked me to slow down, to explain. She lingered on the details, led me inside my own words, and I gave into the softness of her speech.
She listened until I had nothing more to say, and then reassured me almost without words. With gentle breaths. She said she’d look into it, that she knew people who would do something about it, that they wouldn’t let this kind of behavior just blow over.
“If I have to, I’ll even call Carmela Menashe, the military reporter,” she announced. “The fact that Yanai’s an idiot doesn’t mean he deserves this.” She made it clear it might take her some time, but she promised to do whatever she could.
“Can you hang in there?” she asked, and I almost said that for her I could do anything.
“Yes,” I replied.
“You’re brave, that’s good.”
And despite all the horrible things that had happened the previous night, I found myself boarding the bus with a smile that couldn’t be wiped off. I took a seat in one of the back rows and put in my earphones without listening to anything. I imagined her voice while falling in and out of sleep. About an hour before we reached Tel Aviv, Sakal appeared at the front of the bus and sat down beside me.
“That old woman won’t stop talking.”
I felt my blood coursing faster and faster through my veins. I tried to appear indifferent.
“What are you listening to?” he asked while shoving his bag beneath his seat. I pretended I didn’t hear the question, and after a few moments he gave up. Sakal tilted his head to the right, looking at the old woman sitting in the opposite row. She was rummaging through two overflowing grocery bags, mumbling that she couldn’t find her glasses. He bent forward, lit up the floor with his cell phone screen, and reemerged from the abyss with a pair of black-rimmed glasses, handing them to the woman.
“Bless you,” she said. Sakal smiled and went back to staring at the seat in front of him.
“I’m not the giant asshole you think I am,” he said.
“What?” I asked, feigning ignorance.
“I know what you think of me. I used to be like you once.”
“Like me?”
“A kid. I didn’t think these kinds of things happened.”
I didn’t respond. We made eye contact for a brief second.
“He’s fine, just so you know. Got some bruises but nothing serious,” he said. “Bejo checked him when it was over to make sure we didn’t accidentally break any bones. Trust me, it’s nothing compared to what the regiment commander would have done to him if he had found out he threatened another soldier with a weapon.”
I felt like making a snide remark about the senior platoon’s kindness, but I didn’t dare.
“You’ll turn out the same,” he said, closing his eyes again.
“No, I won’t,” I quickly retorted, taken aback by his bizarre claim.
“You just wait,” he said. “A few more months in Neptune or any other shithole outpost, and you’ll get it. Believe me, you’ll get it.”
I wanted to argue with him. To explain how wrong he was, that I was nothing like him. But suddenly I was afraid that if I tried arguing, he’d somehow prove I was wrong. So I didn’t say anything.
When we got off at the central bus station in Tel Aviv he told me he was going straight to an afternoon concert at a music club, and asked if I wanted to join him. I appreciated his attempt to appease me without making an official apology.
“This whole thing is going to blow up,” I told him. I felt it was unfair not to warn him after all the times he’d been kind to me. I told him that I’d spoken to the soldier from the military newspaper. I said that she knew a reporter from Kol Yisrael. “I don’t want to screw anyone over, Sakal, least of all you. But someone’s got to take care of this.”
Sakal smiled. It was that same mischievous smile he had when issuing his verdict.
“You really are a kid,” he said, then paused as if considering whether or not to elaborate. “You think this was a coincidence? That Yanai hits on the CO’s girlfriend and three days later we beat the shit out of him?”
I tried to grasp the full meaning of what he was saying, but I couldn’t.
“Whose girlfriend? Waxman’s? What are you talking about?” I asked him, but he didn’t answer.
“What are you talking about, Sakal?” I shouted at him. He put his hand on my shoulder. “What are you talking about?”
Sakal wouldn’t say a word. He turned around, cut in line, and entered the station. I stood still, trying not to think. I started to wander aimlessly outside the station. So many thoughts were racing through my head that I almost stepped on a kitten. I tripped. The kitten crossed the road, almost getting run over twice. I sat down on the curb and took my cell phone out of my pocket. I stared for a few moments at the name I’d given her in my contacts, “Girl from the north.” Then I tried calling her again. She didn’t answer.
IT WASN’T UNTIL SUNDAY, when I returned to Neptune, that I had heard about Korczak’s disappearance. The last person to have seen him was the ordnance guy who slept in the same room; he said that before he fell asleep he saw Korczak reading in his bunk. When he woke up, Korczak was gone. Six other soldiers heard the shot. They spent the entire Saturday looking for him. The only evidence they found was a cartridge near the canteen and a few feet away, a puddle of blood soaked into the sand.
They didn’t find Korczak. Neither his body nor his weapon. Soldiers from the criminal investigation division arrived, investigated, and came up empty-handed; they declared him a missing person. I told them about the rookie trial, said it might have had something to do with that, but they didn’t seem too interested. Rumors began to spread. A soldier who was on guard in the watchtower that night claimed he saw a tall figure hitchhiking from the bus station, and Bejo said that a friend of his from the adjutancy couldn’t find Korczak’s records on any computer. In a matter of days, a strange Neptunian thought started creeping in that maybe Korczak was simply a figment of our imaginations. An outpost apparition.
If it hadn’t been for his mother, I would probably have filed these events under my long list of bizarre military experiences. But two weeks after he disappeared, his mother showed up—a shriveled woman wrapped in a scarf and red coat, who walked through the gate one morning dragging a suitcase almost as big as herself. She approached each and every soldier on the base, asking in her heavy British accent if anyone had seen her son. She spent the whole day under the blazing winter sun, moving frenziedly from room to room, locker to locker, searching with trembling hands for the precise point in time and space in which her child had disappeared.
The image of her searching for him behind the green dumpsters has been haunting me for years; resurfacing intermittently at random moments in my life. A few years ago I even hired a private investigator to try to find out what happened to him. I was hoping the attempt alone would grant me some peace of mind. The only revelation was a fine from a small library in one of the kibbutzim up north. Six overdue books, all by South American authors. I tried reading some of them in the hope of finding a clue—but there was none. And still, oddly enough, this discovery offered some kind of comfort. It reinforced my secret and irrational thought that maybe Korczak had existed as a kind of transcendental man, in the physical sense, and that the outburst of violence on that night had frightened him out of his lanky, awkward body and returned him to his original form—a consciousness that lived only between the lines of books that he read.