Drunken Angel (9781936740062) (9 page)

The next day, reported to the Ministry of the Interior to change my status from Temporary Resident to New Immigrant. Within a month full Israeli citizenship was conferred upon me, and with it, given my youth and single status, the mandate to report for immediate military service.

Soon to wear the uniform of an Israeli soldier, I skipped classes and wandered, elated, through Hebrew University campus in a kind of daze, my call-up papers folded in my shirt pocket, astonished to think that very soon, for the first time in millennia and only forty years after Hitler had chased my mother through the woods, I would serve in defense of the Jewish state. Was no longer an outside observer to history, passive and belt-whipped audience to its anecdotes and tales. Now, armed, I would write my own legends.

I CARRIED THE MAG, A BELGIAN FIELD MACHINE gun, along with 250 rounds of ammunition on my back. My combat infantry unit trained to the point of delirium, the effort so strenuous that one kid named Claudio, nineteen, from Argentina, stepped outside his tent and died of a heart attack. We stood around an Israeli flag, in a U-shaped formation, crying.

There were frequent injuries. Once I hurt my arm so bad that it swelled to football size and I ran a fever. Eyes bright, flushed face burning, I showed the arm to the sergeant as we stood in a pouring rain, about to embark on a night patrol. “So what,” he said. “Army is not where you get healthy.” Through hostile villages we passed, moved as one body. You couldn't hear us. Before starting out the sergeant had us hop up and down, just once, listening to hear if buckles jiggled, canteens blooped. Everything on us was taped down, tied. “You are panthers,” he told us, “Indian braves! No one hears you. No one sees you.” Then set out at forced march pace, each loaded down with gear, into the night, for fifteen, twenty
kilometers, over hills, into wadis, and slipped so quietly along that not even the pariah dogs barked.

Once, on a trip to the Golan, we climbed in full gear a steep, nearly vertical butte overlooking an abysslike wadi where wild eagles circled with echoing cries, and as I fought for handholds and the boot heels of the soldier just above me kicked gravel in my face, had the eerie sense of having been here before, two thousand years ago, with a sword and shield, bearing the Star of David strapped to my back.

After several months of rigorous training, was sent north to guard and patrol along the Lebanese border. Cringed during artillery barrages in tiny outposts with night vision scope trained on the sky, watching for hang gliding terrorists slipping in quietly on wind currents.

One night, on a march through hostile territory, while attempting to assist a fellow soldier who had collapsed from fatigue, my elbow was smashed and I rode to the hospital in an ambulance with a soldier profusely bleeding from a gun wound. For the next few weeks drifted in a fever from ward to ward, shot full of antibiotics and bandaged and rebandaged. Then, because the wrong kind of soft cast was plastered to my arm, forming calcium deposits, the attending doctor, a major, ordered me held down as he snapped the arm straight and shattered the deposits. I fainted.

I was disqualified from combat duty for nine months—the duration of my regular service—and told I'd be reinstated with a combat unit once in the Reserves. The fact that I knew perfect English, held a BA in lit, and could write with professional proficiency got me temporarily reassigned to the army press corps, first in Tel Aviv at General Headquarters and later in the choicest and cushiest spot in the entire Israeli Army: the IDF press corps office in Jerusalem.

Nattily wounded, fashionable in my jaunty infantry beret, and
wearing an old .38 Webly British revolver on my hip, I resurrected Hemingway's ghost in my cocky strut. Often, my assignments involved escorting foreign correspondents and combat photogs into “hot zones” in Lebanon or the West Bank, which entitled me to wear temporary officer tags, though in rank but a private. Entire companies on parade, thinking a general approached, came to attention with a snappy presentation of arms. Smartly, I saluted back.

After a day out in the field with the correspondents, we repaired to some local bar to get wasted. I drank with them in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and in Nahariya, in a little bistro just off the military checkpoint to Lebanon. The reporters and photogs swilled like pros and we all got blasted. Sometimes I led them into Lebanon, to meet Major Haddad, commander of the South Lebanese militia, a smart, pencil-mustached gentleman in pressed green fatigues, who hopped from jeeps like a cowboy and was escorted everywhere by gunfighter bodyguards wearing bullet-lined holsters with white-handled six-shooters. Other times, I took them into zones where Katyusha rockets spiraled black streaks through the sky, the photogs' shutters clicking to freeze-frame the explosions.

Back in the corridors of Beit Agron, I strolled the press building with the air of a military legend. My commander, a lieutenant colonel named Amir, didn't share my admiration for myself. He had me emptying wastebaskets and washing coffee cups. Or he'd call me on the carpet and, tilting back on the hind legs of his chair, eye me with the cruel scorn of a Turkish sultan. “So, here he is. And what is he? I'm not sure.”

“At your service, commander,” I'd say, grinning.

“I didn't tell you to speak! Why do you speak? Shut it! I don't like the way you're performing!”

“I don't hear any complaints. Gabe Pressman from NBC and I get along like a house on fire. And Bill Claiborne from the
Washington Post
thinks I'm the most knowledgeable person he's ever met in the Israeli Army.”

“Claiborne is a whore! He takes money from the Arabs. And this other dummy from NBC is an idiot. Did you see him when he picked up the Klatch? How many times did you have to tell him: ‘It's not a Russian AK-47, Gabe. It's a Chinese Kalashnikov!' But how many times did Mr. Gabe still crap it up and they had to reshoot it, over and over, what, how many times? This Pressman has hummus for brains! No wonder you two get along.”

“Amir, why are you so mad at me today, huh? I said something you don't like?”

“You're insolent! And you drink too much! You could be something in this army. Why do you think I had you brought down from Tel Aviv, huh?” He reached into a drawer and tossed out a copy of the
IDF Journal
, the army's first English-language information journal, which I had started while serving in Tel Aviv. “Everyone up to the chief of staff is impressed with this thing. I know you have talent. But you will amount to nothing.”

Caught off guard, voice trembling, I asked, “What makes you say that?”

“What do you think, your commander is an idiot? I don't smell it when you come back from your little field trips? I tell you, next time liquor is on you, you go to court martial and I'll have you thrown in jail! I swear it!”

I never copped to drinking. And certainly didn't mention the joints passed between me and the photogs from Agence France Presse and Reuters. Nor did I try to stop. There was no stopping. I liked drinking far too much. It was by far the most rewarding thing I knew to do. Drinking in uniform made me feel tragic and heroic, though, in truth, I felt lonely and often scared. To throw Amir off my scent, I stuck strictly to odorless vodka and ate heavy
foods before I imbibed, but nothing helped. Vodka still reeked and the food had no effect. I staggered into the office hungover, and as I'd correctly assumed, Amir had to turn a blind eye because very soon I'd muster out—just a matter of months. Until then the Israeli Army had far more serious things to worry about than a drunken immigrant with little time left to serve.

I MET EDNA AT THE SECRETARIAL POOL. SHE WAS at her desk, looking quite pretty, I thought, a touch less dour than usual.

“Hi, there!” I said. “Can I drop in on you this evening for a drink and a little conversation? It's been really lonely.”

“No!” she snapped without looking up from her keyboard.

“Oh!” I said, acting surprised.

I obtained her address and that night went over to her place, uninvited, without knowing what I might be interrupting. Knew absolutely nothing about her.

When she opened the door, wearing a beltless kimono and nothing underneath, she said: “I'm not going to ask what you're doing here. I know exactly what you want. What I'd like to know is, are you on some sort of wager among the soldiers or reporters to see if you can screw all the government press office secretaries in a row? Is that what this is about?”

She stood there with her breasts, belly, and legs fully expressed,
her womanhood covered with a torn black panty, dragging slut-tishly on a cigarette, completely unfazed by my hungry stare.

“May I come in?”

“What for?”

“How about a drink, to start? To be civilized.”

“You don't strike me as civilized.”

“Well, I'm lonely. I'm very, very lonely. That's a civilized emotion.”

She laughed with this slatternly laugh. “I see. And what does lonely boy want?”

“Nothing! A drink. A little decent conversation.”

“That sounds boring.”

“Well, it will be fun. Depending on how things go.”

“Things?” Her face contorted scornfully. “What ‘things'?”

My face fell. “Look, the truth is,” I lied, “I'm broke and don't have what to eat. I'm ashamed to tell my commander. He'll know what I've been spending my food allotment on. Out boozing with the press boys. At first, they buy for you. Then you end up buying for them. They're real pros. I got cleaned out knocking back a few with the BBC guy.”

“Cory?”

“Yes. Alex Cory. He wanted to go to Finks, the most expensive joint in town. I'm so hungry, I feel my blood sugar plunging. Have you got some bread or something lying around? A sandwich would really stabilize my metabolism.”

“GOD! You're something! Okay! A plate of food and a drink. Then out with you, you bloody incorrigible scamp!”

“Scamp?” I smiled, crossing the threshold. “Do people actually still use that word?”

“In South Africa.”

“Is that where you're from?”

“Cape Town. Here's the noodle pot. It's real meat. And whiskey's over there, in the cabinet. Plates and glasses. Cutlery in that drawer.”

I ate, drank like it was my last meal on earth. Then we smoked a joint and then another, and then drank more, and more again. She slurred her words, nearly slid off the couch. Had in her eye a leaden violence that I had seen in other drunks before. As though she really wasn't there. For that look I would have left, but she also wore the slatternly smile, irresistible. And looked like a Far Eastern hooker in that kimono.

“Lonely boy!” she slurred, hauling me to my feet. Said she had a little favor to ask. The lightbulb in her bedroom was out. Would I help?

“Show me.”

In the bedroom, she grinned and said: “Those nylons on the floor? Pick them up. That's right, lonely boy, pick up my nylons. And now tie me to the bedposts. Hands here. Ankles there. Wait. I want to take this off.” She shrugged off the robe and spread-eagled herself on the bed. Then instructed me to blindfold her with a curtain sash, which I did.

“And there you are,” I said when done, scrutinizing my handiwork.

She writhed. “Anything you like,” she said.

“Yes, of course,” I said, abstracted. “I did a good job on those knots, didn't I? You're completely at my mercy.”

She moaned.

It lasted for hours, most exciting sex I'd ever had. My trussed and blindfolded stag-mag girl, a little virgin sacrifice writhing on the newsprint alter of my garish libido. Cared nothing about her and could do anything I wished. Didn't need alcohol to keep it up. In fact, if anything, might need some to keep it down. Still, I
drank. Staggered around her, pouring booze on her belly, licking it off, splashing it on her nipples, suckling them, jamming myself into any orifice I pleased, drinking as I liked—naked, wicked, young, feeling like a god. Passed out with head cradled on her whiskey-soaked pubes.

IN THE MORNING, A SATURDAY, FRYING EGGS brought the urge to retch. My head pounded with pneumatic intensity. Edna came in wearing a pretty yellow sundress that made her seem country fresh. I felt aroused just by the sight of her, the memory of what we had done. But was too ill to offer more than a weak smile and “Hello” with barely any conviction. Felt sick enough to die.

“Knödelkopf,” she said, a Yiddish endearment for “matzo ball head.”

“Edna,” I said. Sat up, cradling my hungover brain. “That was absolutely incredible.”

“It was fun. First time you've done that?”

“Oh, yes. Most positively. Had fantasies about it but never dared to think that it was actually possible to find someone to do it with.”

She started a cigarette, handed it to me. “It's my favorite thing.”

I moved in with her one week later and remained with her through the end of my regular military service, after which I married her. Three hundred Jerusalem hipsters showed up for the wedding. As I helped Edna cut the cake I thought, I'll be out of this fiasco in six months.

After the ceremony, a band of about fifty of us staggered, stoned and drunk, to a nearby hotel where I'd rented a room for the after-party, stocked with cases of scotch. En route, Edna, blind drunk, still in wedding dress and veil, took off her white high heels and threw them into a ravine. She then removed her wedding ring—one that had belonged to every woman in her family for several generations—and tossed that in. Whereupon she took a long pull from a bottle in someone's hand, flagged down a strange car, and tried to jump in. The bewildered driver drove several hundred meters down the road with Edna half hanging out in her wedding gown and train, screeching drunken curses in Afrikaans. During this little escapade she fractured her arm, and we made a brief detour to the hospital, where we dropped her off to have it set. The rest of us returned hotelward, got wasted, and passed out on the floor or with vomit-caked faces cradled on the toilet seat or propped against furniture. It was a good night: no one fell to death from a window or killed someone in his or her car.