Beaufort Read online

  BEAUFORT

  CONTENTS

  COVER PAGE

  TITLE PAGE

  WHAT HE CAN'T DO ANYMORE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  SECOND TOUR OF DUTY

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  I WILL STILL

  AFTERWORD: BETWEEN TRUTH AND IMAGINATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  COPYRIGHT

  BEAUFORT

  WHAT HE CAN'T

  DO ANYMORE

  Yonatan can't see us growing ugly anymore. “We'll never be as handsome as we are today,” he would always say, and I would ask if that was meant to make us feel better, because it didn't.

  What? Are you totally out of it? How could you not know this game? No way you don't know it. It's called “What He Can't Do Anymore,” and it's what everyone plays when a friend is killed. You toss his name into the air and whoever's there at the time has to say something about what he can't do anymore. Sometimes it goes on for hours. Like on the soccer field, in the middle of a penalty kick. Late at night, too, for no good reason, you wake everyone up about half a minute after they've dropped off to sleep. Or when you're at home, working on your girlfriend, not thinking about us at all, when the last thing in the world you want is to play the game, well, BAM! the phone rings and it's us on the line. “Yonatan can't . . .” we say, and you have to—everyone has to—reel off some association, that's the rule, and you can't repeat what's already been said. Here's what I'm talking about:

  Yonatan can't take his little brother to a movie anymore. Yonatan can't watch Hapoel bring home the soccer trophy anymore. Yonatan can't listen to the latest disc by Zion Golan anymore. He can't see Tom with the ugliest slut in Nahariya anymore, and after he laughed at all of us, that little Mongoloid. He'll never know how fucked up it is when you can't get it up. He'll never know how great it is when your mother's proud of you for getting accepted to college. Even a community college. He won't be at his grandfather's funeral, he won't know if his sister gets married, he won't take a piss with us from the highest peak in South America, he won't ski in Chacaltaya, he won't screw the hottest Peruvian chick in Casa Fistuk.

  Yonatan can't know anymore the feeling of renting an apartment with his girlfriend. Yonatan can't know anymore what it is to go with her to Castro clothes and come out with the new winter collection, or to Roladin Bakery in the middle of the night, when it's raining, because all of a sudden she wants a doughnut, and anyway you're a jerk, you never knew how to say no to her. And here I am thinking how lucky I am that I've already had the chance to run out for doughnuts in the rain.

  He'll never cheat on her. He'll never know what it's like to fuck the living daylights out of the sexiest babe in the country, some whore from Haifa who lures you into a one-night stand and then you understand, too late, that it wasn't worth it, and the love of your life has left you. He'll never know how much that hurts. And he'll never know what it's like to sit on the grass with a kid that's his very own, telling him stories about how we were bigger than life in those ambushes in Lebanon, how we pulled off some magnificent stuff up there. There are lots of things Yonatan can't do anymore.

  Yonatan won't know what song they played at his grave when he died: “Shir Hamaalot,” a psalm done Middle Eastern-style. It became his song. Everyone who was killed has a song that sticks with his friends from the time of the funeral. For months you listen and never get sick of it.

  Yonatan will never know how River the medic cried over his body, how he wouldn't calm down, how he fell apart, to pieces. Wailed like a baby. Yonatan'll never know how Furman and I spent a whole day in the trenches and down the slopes looking for his missing head. When the missile hit the guard post his head blew off and rolled down to the Litani River. We didn't want to believe it had rolled all the way down, to the river, but that's exactly what happened, and in the end we gave up. Nothing we could do about it. I leaned over in that heavy smoke and grabbed his body with both hands, a body with no head. He'll never know. And how the fire kept burning all around and we kept shooting and shooting and shooting in every possible direction, like that was supposed to make us feel better. And how everyone was shattered from it. The day before, we'd danced the waltz in our freezing dugout. We lit candles, we were happy. And then it ended. He'll never ever know, there's no chance of it.

  Yonatan can't sniff that sweet sweat mixed with the faint smell of shampoo during a long night of wild sex and cuddling, like the week we all had after we left Lebanon, when everything ended. Yonatan will never even know we left Lebanon.

  1

  A LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE LOST A LOT of people since we lost Yonatan. We've lost others since then, too, because another war broke out and everything got more savage. But more indifferent, too. And who's got enough time on his hands to deal with what happened back then? When it broke out we lost Barnoy. Then another eleven guys. And when the numbers stabilized at nine hundred and twenty and it looked like it was over, we lost Koka's brother, who'd followed in his footsteps and enlisted with us. We've made love a thousand times since then, it's not like we haven't, and we've laughed a thousand times. We went on to other places, we escaped and came back, we remembered. But quietly. We imagined how we'll return to the fortress, to our mountain. There'll be a hotel there, maybe. Or a place for lovers to park. Or maybe it will be deserted. There'll be peace. And I will lead her along the paths, we'll walk hand in hand. “Here, baby, this is exactly where it happened.” And stone by stone I'll show her. She might even ask if that's the whole story. “How can that be the whole story? What made you cry so much, it's actually really beautiful and peaceful here, everything's green with trees, and quiet. This is the place where you broke down?”

  Try to imagine that they stick you high up on a mountain cliff, higher than the roof of the Azrieli Building. How could you not have a breathtaking view? Here it's wide expanses of green countryside checkered with patches of brown and red, snowy mountains, frothing rivers, narrow, winding, deserted European roads, and the sweetest wind there is. Zitlawi used to say that air like this should be bottled and sold to rich people on the north side of Tel Aviv. Christ, what quality. So fucking pastoral you could cut the calm with a knife. Our sunsets, too, they're the most beautiful on the planet, and the sunrises are even more beautiful, glimmering serenity from the roof of the world. Bring a girl or two here when the sky is orange and you've got it made. And dawn, an amazing cocktail of deep blue and turquoise and wine red and thin strips of pink, like an oil painting on canvas. And the deep wadi that twists away from the big rock we're sitting on. Try to explain how this could be the place where you broke down.

  But from that night I remember the lights of Kiryat Shmona, on the Israeli side of the border, as they recede on the horizon, and everyone's beating hearts—I swear it, I can hear them as we make our way up to the top that very first time. And from minute to minute it's getting colder. There's not a living soul around except for us, practically not a single village in our zone, either. The convoy crawls along, gets swallowed up in a thick fog, there's no seeing more than a hundred yards ahead. Tanks are spread along the road to provide cover for us. From a slit near the roof of the Safari I try to figure out how far along
we've come, silently poring over the map of danger spots and racing through an abbreviated battle history, muttering because no talking is allowed. Where will the evil flare out from? I suddenly have the urge to shout to the commanding officer that we've gone too far, but I bite my lip and remain silent. From this moment on nobody can tell me anymore “You haven't got a clue what Lebanon is, wait'll you get there.” I'm there, finally, that's what's important. Along line, heavy traffic: a supply Safari, a GI Safari, a diesel Safari, behind these an ordnance truck with a big crane, an Abir truck carrying a doctor and a medic, another GI Safari, the commander's Hummer, the lieutenant's Hummer, and an Electronic Warfare Hummer. Oshri asks if I've brought my lucky underwear with me. I gesture to him that I'm wearing them. After all, our good fortune depends on my lucky underwear. I'm wearing them, even if that means thirty-two days without washing them.

  And I remember how the gate of the outpost opens to let us in, how the Safari comes to a halt inside a cloud. Everyone grabs hold of whatever's lying around—bags, equipment, your own or someone else's—and runs like hell inside. The commanders curse under their breath—“Out of the vehicles, run, get a move on!”—and people go down, people come up, you're not allowed to stand in place, you have to grab some shelter. When the parking area fills up with dozens of soldiers the enemy fires salvoes of mortar shells. And I try, but I can't see anything, don't recognize anyone around me, grab hold of the shirt of some soldier I don't know and get pulled along after him. I'm thrown into a crowded maze, surrounded by thick concrete on all sides, long passageways with no entrance or exit, rooms leading to steep dead-end stairways, cul-de-sacs, and a collection of larger rooms lit up in red, with low ceilings and stretchers. Thirty seconds later I'm already in one of the bomb shelters, a long and narrow alcove, a kind of underground cavern with concave walls covered in rusting metal and cramped three-layer bunk beds hanging by heavy iron chains from the ceiling.

  WELCOME TO DOWNTOWN someone has carved over the doorway, and inside the air is stuffy, suffocating, a stench of sweat overwhelms you again and again, in waves. This pit, called “the submarine,” is where my entire life will be taking place from now on. I consider a quick trip to the toilet. A seasoned sergeant tells me to follow the blue light to the end of the hall and take a right, but he informs me I'll need a battle vest and a helmet. I decide to hold it in. What's the matter, is there a war on or something? I'm really not in the mood to go up in smoke here right now. Back then it seemed like it was light-years away when all it was was thirty, forty feet, three green toilets with a graffiti welcome—I CAME, I SAW, I CONQUERED. JULIUS CAESAR—and an official military sign commanding users DO NOT LEAVE PIECES OF SHIT ON THE TOILET SEAT so there is never any chance of forgetting where you are living. And in the morning, with the first sunrise, as the view of Lebanon spreads out before us like an endless green ocean, our commanding officer makes his opening statement, which he has undoubtedly been rehearsing for weeks, maybe months, or maybe it has been handed down through the generations: “Welcome. If there is a heaven, this is what it looks like, and if there is a hell, this is how it feels. The Beaufort outpost.”

  Once, Lila asked me what exactly Beaufort is and I thought how difficult it is to explain in words. You have to be there to understand, and even that's not enough. Because Beaufort is a lot of things. Like any military outpost, Beaufort is backgammon, Turkish coffee, and cheese toasts. You play backgammon for cheese toasts, whoever loses makes them for everyone—killer cheese toasts with pesto. When things are really boring, you play poker for cigarettes. Beaufort is living without a single second of privacy, long weeks with the squad, one bed pushed up against the next, the ability to pick out the smell from every guy's boots in your sleep. With your eyes closed and at any given moment being able to name the guy who farted by the smell alone. This is how true friendship is measured. Beaufort is lying to your mother on the phone so she won't worry. You always say, “Everything's great, I just finished showering and I'm off to bed,” when in fact you haven't showered for twenty-one days, the water in the tanks has been used up, and in another minute you're going up for guard duty. And not just any guard duty but the scariest position there is. When she asks when you're coming home you answer in code. “Mom, you know the name of the neighbor's dog? I'm out of here on the day that begins with the same letter.” What's most important is to keep Hezbollah from listening in and figuring out when to bomb your convoy. You really want to tell her you love her, that you miss her, but you can't, because your entire squad is there. If you say it you'll be giving them ammunition for months, they'll tear you apart with humiliation. And then there's the worst situation of all: in the middle of a conversation with your mother the mortar shells start blowing up around you. She hears an explosion and then the line goes dead. She's over there shaking, certain her kid's been killed, waiting on the balcony for a visit from the army bereavement team. You can't stop thinking about her, feeling sorry for her, but it might be days before the phone line to the command post can be reconnected. Worry. That's the reason I preferred not to call at all. I told my mother I'd been transferred to a base right on the border, near the fence, Lebanon lite, not at all deep in—not way deep in Lebanon—so that she'd sleep at night. Gut feeling, you ask? She knew the truth the whole time, even if she won't admit it to this day.

  Beaufort is the Southern Lebanese Army, local Christians, a crazy bunch of Phalangists. Cigarettes in their mouths all day long. Smelly, wild, funny. They come in every morning at eight o'clock and we put a guard on them. They build, renovate whatever's been destroyed by the air raids, do what they're told. They're not allowed inside the secure area, not even permitted near the dining room.

  Beaufort is guard duty. Sixteen hours a day. How do you stay sane after thousands of dead hours? We're all fucked up in different ways, just do me a favor and don't choke it during guard duty. “Choke it” is our way of saying “jack off.” It's not that there aren't guys who choke it; they choke it big time. You won't believe this but a lot of people get super horny from our green jungle atmosphere. I'm not kidding. Nature is totally romantic, sensual. You would lose control, too. And it's not only nature that makes us horny. The Sayas network at 67 MHz, used for open transmissions between the outposts, can also give you a hard-on sometimes. It's not an official network—it got its underground nickname from a radio broadcaster who specializes in melancholy late-night chats—but everyone knows it because everyone, at one stage of boredom or another, tunes the dial to Sayas, the guys' favorite, where they can talk bullshit all night long and melt from the female voices. That's because girls from the command post are on the other end, in the war room, hot as fire, no AC, no boys, no reason not to unbutton their shirts a little, let off some steam. They sprawl across their chairs—I'll bet on it—stretching their muscles, spreading their legs, dripping hormones, dying for someone to make them laugh and slowly flirt with them and in the end make a little date with them back in Israel. Why not? Give them what they really need. Sure, baby, I got lots of weapons. I got my short-barrel M16 flat top, a real beauty. And my Glock, a fantastic pistol. And I also have . . . my personal weapon. Measure it? You want me to? No problem, sure, I'm happy to measure it for you, actually forgot how long it is, apologies, baby. That's the way you talk, making it up as you go along, turning yourself on, and they giggle, toying and teasing on that very thin border, one step over the line, one step back, and you're dying to believe that maybe at the end of the night, when all the other guys drop out, the girls are left alone, poor things, to satisfy one another. What, you don't think so? A few strokes, great stuff, nobody's ever died of it. Just don't build any major expectations: the nicer her voice is over the airwaves, the more of a dog she is. I take full responsibility for that statement, I've been disappointed often enough in my life. A high squeaky voice, on the other hand, means you might want to invest a little time, because she's got mile-long tits. It's a fact, I'm not jerking you around.

  Beaufort is going out on seventy-
two-hour ambushes with a huge supply of beef jerky in your knapsack. You can't believe how much of that stuff you can eat in three days. Beef jerky with chocolate and beef jerky with strawberry jam. And how much you can talk and talk without really saying anything. Pretty soon you reach the stage where you know everything about everyone. Who did what, when, with who, why, in what position, and what he was thinking about while he was doing it. I can tell you about their parents, their brothers and sisters, their not-so-close friends, their darkest perversions. There's a lot of alone time, too, when you're fed up with all that talking. You think about yourself, your home. You wonder if your mother is hanging laundry just now, or maybe she's watching Dudu Topaz on television. Lila's probably showering now, too. Or maybe she's cheating on me.

  Freezing cold—we call it “cold enough for foxes” up here, ice-cube cold, the nose is frozen and the extremities neutralized. The feet have been numb for ages. Fingers, too. That's Beaufort. You have cold burns all over but your belly is burning hot, dripping sweat even. At these times everyone starts thinking about some asshole drinking coffee on Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv. And here's fucking me, smelling like diesel oil, sweating from fear, lying in the middle of nowhere and nobody's going to help me if I die. Not the guy in that café on Sheinkin Street, that's for sure. When I'm blown to pieces a few minutes from now he'll keep drinking from his mug, probably at the very moment it happens he'll tell some joke and everyone will fake a laugh and then he'll go screw his girlfriend, he won't even turn on the news, and as far as he is concerned, nothing will have happened this evening. Because it's business as usual for him. He drives to his desk job at army headquarters every morning in the car that Daddy bought him, finishes the army every afternoon at four o'clock, and drinks coffee with whipped cream all the time. Blond hair, five o'clock shadow, sort of ugly. Hate him? You bet, it helps sometimes. Hatred is an excellent solution to boredom.