59

The days passed. There were battles on every front. No one spoke about casualties, but I could see my friends before my eyes, climbing steep hills and storming fortified positions. They were climbing with all their strength, and while climbing, they reached out to Yechiel and pulled him up so he wouldn’t fall or be left behind.

Robert had gotten a lot stronger over the past months, but at our last meeting, he seemed wounded from within. I, like a fool, looked at him with a critical eye and didn’t even offer him a single kind word of my own.

I was afraid that when the fighting died down they would send me back to the kibbutz. I would be on display there, and everyone would pity me. That fear depressed me, and not only in the light of day.

At night I dreamed that my friends were dragging me, and I was gripping my bed and screaming, Leave me alone! This is where I belong now! But my friends, who had received instructions from the woman responsible for the war-wounded, held me with bony fingers that dug into my shoulders and pulled me. Don’t hurt me! I shouted with all my might, warning them with my last breath that all of Dr. Winter’s work was going down the drain; the connections would be severed and there would be no alternative to amputating my legs. I would remain a cripple all my life. That plea also fell on deaf ears. Fortunately, I then woke up and was rescued from that suffering.

—

Benno came to visit me and brought me greetings from my friends. All of them were at the front together, and they had already experienced short battles. Some had been wounded, but no one had died.

It seemed that danger had done Benno good. He looked tan and robust. His voice was hearty and a bit hoarse. He spoke about the expanses of the Negev and the beauty of the desert, as if he weren’t the Benno I knew but a man who had overcome his sorrow.

“And who was wounded?” I asked.

“Light wounds.” He made a dismissive gesture with his right hand.

I didn’t believe him, but I refrained from asking for details.

Benno didn’t talk about music, and I had the feeling that, to some degree, the progress of the battles, the gains and conquests, compensated for the loss of flexibility in his fingers. But before he left, he told me, “After the war, I’m going to try to get a violin. I haven’t given up on playing. Life without playing music isn’t a life. If you find someone who’s willing to lend me his violin, I’ll be very grateful. I’ll never be a soloist, but I believe I can play in an orchestra. I promised my parents, before they separated us, that I’d keep playing every day. There were times during the war when music played strongly in my mind. I was sure it would be retained in my fingers, too. I was wrong. If your fingers don’t move on the strings, they lose their agility.

“But now I have energy, and I want with all my might to return to the violin. When I was a boy, I didn’t like practicing exercises, and I tried to avoid them. But Mother watched over me and sat next to me for two full hours every day, so that I’d do all my tasks. That was that.”

Pessimism and sarcasm had fallen away from Benno. For a moment, the child within him resurfaced—the boy whose mother supervised him and worried about his progress.

“And how are things with you?” he asked me like a brother.

“There’s been improvement in my walking, but I have a long way to go,” I confided in him.

“And the writing?”

I showed him the opening passage I had written. He read it and called out jubilantly, “How beautiful! Even if I copied out seven books, I couldn’t manage to write a passage like that. Wonderful! You’ll be an author. I have no doubt you’ll be an author. Are you pleased with yourself?”

“No. It’s a long road, full of obstacles.”

“If I were you, I’d be pleased. ‘Unseen, the changes will come.’ That’s a fine sentence. I’m proud of you. A great beginning. After the war, we’ll sit and talk. I feel that we have a lot in common.”

“Will the war will be long?” I asked.

“In my opinion, it will be short. It has changed us beyond recognition. I, in any event, feel that I have changed. I learned to respect my friends. We’re working like a solid team. We help one another and overcome the obstacles the war presents.”

“Too bad I can’t be with you.”

“You have a different task. You’re fighting on a different front. You’ll be our storyteller. I have no doubt you’ll recount everything that life did to us.”

“I haven’t started yet. I need plenty of grace.”

“You’ll do it. All your friends support you.”

“I don’t deserve it yet.”

“My time is up. I’ve got to go. See you soon,” Benno said, and dashed out.

An hour after he left, sobs welled up from within me, prolonged sobbing that wouldn’t let go of me. Fear crept into my soul that I wouldn’t fulfill the hopes they had pinned on me.

—

I saw the Bible teacher Slobotsky in my sleep. I told him that I had copied many passages from the Bible, even a whole chapter of the book of Job.

He looked at me skeptically and asked, “Copying or studying?”

“Copying,” I disclosed.

“And what does the copying teach you?”

“I connect with the words and their melody. I do it with great awareness.”

“That’s a new invention,” he said, chuckling. It was a laugh that pained me.

“Is it forbidden to copy?”

“You’re allowed, but what for?”

“I want to become a writer.”

“How strange. When did that occur to you?”

“My father was a writer.”

“And you want to follow in his footsteps?”

“I don’t know what my father wrote. I never read his work. I was a boy. But I want to continue from the exact place where he left off.”

“That also seems a little strange to me.”

“The Hebrew letters will show me the way. They won’t mislead me.”

“I can’t believe my ears.”

“Believe me, Mr. Slobotsky, I took possession of the Hebrew letters through great suffering, and now they are part of me.”

“A person mustn’t be blamed in his sorrow,” he said in a voice that sounded gloomy to me, and close to tears.

I woke up, and I was glad that this had been a night vision and not reality. I kept myself from falling back to sleep, so that Slobotsky wouldn’t return and be puzzled by my decision.