Kellerman, Jonathan - The Theatre

The last thirty minutes had been a nightmare of artillery barrage and screams, the splintering of olive trees that whispered eerily as they fell, calls for stretchers and medics, the moans of the dead and dying echoing longer than could be explained by any law of physics. Three hundred meters to the southwest, the Old British Police School was ablaze, the UNRWA stores used as sniping posts by the Jordanians crackling like a campfire. Curved trajectory shells arced from Legion positions, followed by grenades and automatic-weapons fire that tilled the soil in murderous puffs, sowing hot metal seeds that would never bear fruit.

The first two men in the company had fallen simultaneously, just seconds after setting out for a shallow trench that fronted the U.N. water tank, a sniper hideout that the infrared scopes had been unable to pinpoint. The third to die was an apple-cheeked kibbutznik named Kobi Altman. The fall of his comrades had inspired him to improvise-leaping up and exposing himself on all sides as he stormed the trench, spraying it with his Uzi. Killing ten Jordanians before being cut down by the eleventh. As he buckled, Gavrieli and Daniel rushed forward, firing blindly into the trench, finishing off the last Legionnaire.

Gavrieli knelt by the rim of the trench, inspecting it, his Uzi poised for fire. Daniel slung Kobi's body over his shoulder and waited.

No sounds, no movement. Gavrieli nodded. The two of them hunched low and crept forward slowly, Gavrieli taking hold of Kobi's feet in order to share the burden. They searched for a safe spot to leave the body, a vantage point from which a grenade could be lobbed at the spindly legs of the water tower. Their plan was clear: Shielded by the aftermath of explosion, they'd run toward the big bunker on the northwest of the hill where scores of Legionnaires had settled in, firing without challenge. Lobbing in more grenades, hoping the concrete would yield to their charges. If they lived, they'd come back for Kobi.

Gavrieli scanned the slope for shelter, pointed finally to a stunted olive sapling. They slithered two meters before the thunder of recoilless guns slapped them back toward the trench.

The big guns fired again. The earth shuddered under Daniel; he felt himself lifted like a feather and slammed back down. Clawing at the soil, he dug his nails in so as not to fall backward into the mass of corpses that filled the trench. Waiting.

The recoilless attack ended.

Gavrieli pointed again. A tracer bullet shot out from the big bunker and died in a mid-air starburst, casting scarlet stripes over the commander's face. No arrogance now-he looked old, dirt-streaked and damaged, acid-etched by grief and fatigue.

The two of them began crawling toward the sapling, toward where they'd left Kobi's body, turned at the same time at the sound from the trench.

A man had crawled out, one of the corpses come to life-a ghost that stood, swaying in the darkness, clutching a rifle and searching for a target.

Gavrieli charged the apparition and took a bullet in the chest.

He crumpled. Daniel feinted to the right and retreated into the darkness, dropping silently to the ground, his Uzi pinned beneath him. He needed to get at the weapon but feared that any movement would betray his location.

The Jordanian advanced, stalking, firing where Daniel had been, missing but getting warmer.

Daniel tried to roll over. The underbrush crackled faintly. His heart was pounding-he was certain the Legionnaire could hear it.

The Jordanian stopped. Daniel held his breath.

The Jordanian fired; Daniel rolled away.

Moments of silence, stretched cruelly long; his lungs threatened to burst.

Gavrieli groaned. The Jordanian turned, aimed, prepared to finish him off.

Daniel rose to his knees, grabbing the Uzi at the same lime. The Legionnaire heard it, realized what was happening, made c split-second decision-the right one-firing at the unwounded enemy.

Daniel had no chance to return fire. He dropped, felt the bullet shave his temple.

The Jordanian kept firing. Daniel molded himself into the earth, wanting to merge with it, to seek the safety of burial.

The fall had knocked the Uzi loose. It clatterd against a rock. The Jordanian swiveled and shot at it.

Daniel propelled himself forward, grabbed for the Legionnaire's ankles. The two of them went down, tumbling backward into the ditch.

They snarled and sobbed, tore and bit, rolling through muck and gore. Siamese twins, the rifle sandwiched between them like some deadly umbilical cord. Pressing against each other in a deadly death-hug. Beneath them was a cushion of dead flesh, still warm and yielding, stinking of blood and cordite, the rancid issue of loosened bowels.

Daniel's face was pushed into the cushion; he felt a lifeless hand graze his mouth, the fingers still warm. A syrupy stickiness ran over his face. He twisted around and got his hands around the rifle. The Jordanian managed to regain superiority, freed the weapon.

The Legionnaire was hatless. Daniel took hold of his hair and yanked the man toward him, could see he was young-smooth-faced and thin-lipped with a feathery mustache.

He tried to bite the Jordanian's chin.

The Jordanian writhed out of his grasp. They tugged and flailed, fighting for the rifle, avoiding the bayonet that capped the barrel.

All at once the Jordanian let go of the rifle. Daniel felt sweaty hands clamp around his neck. An internal darkness began to meld with the one that time had wrought. He pried the fingers loose, kicked violently at the Jordanian's groin.

The Jordanian cried out in pain. They rolled and thrashed through a sea of dead flesh. Daniel felt the bayonet nick his cheek. He clawed purposefully, went for the Jordanian's eyes, got a thumb over the lower ridge of the socket, kept clawing upward and popped the eyeball loose.

The Legionnaire stopped for a split second; then agony and shock seemed to double his strength. He struck out wildly, sunk his teeth in Daniel's shoulder and held on until Daniel broke three of his fingers, hearing them crack like twigs.

Incredibly, the Jordanian kept going. Gnashing and grunting, more machine than man, he pulled away from the murderous embrace, lifted the rifle, and brought the butt down on Daniel's solar plexus. The flesh-cushion lightened the impact of the blow but Daniel felt the air go out of him. He was swimmingin pain and momentarily helpless as the Jordanian raised the rifle again-not attempting to fire, trying to take the Jew's life in a more intimate manner: stabbing down with the bayonet, his eyeless socket a deep black hole, his mouth contorted in a silent howl.

I'm going to be killed by a ghost, thought Daniel, still sucking for air as the bayonet came down. He forced himself to roll; the blade made a dull sound as it sank into a corpse. As the Legionnaire yanked it loose, Daniel reached out to grab the weapon.

Not quick enough-the Jordanian had it again. But he was screaming now, begging Allah for mercy, clawing at his face. His eyeball was hanging from its cord, bobbing against his cheek, artificial-looking like some macabre theater prop. The reality of his injury had hit him.

Daniel tried to push himself upward, found himself swallowed by torsos and flaccid limbs

The Jordanian was trying to push the eye back in with his broken fingers. Fumbling pitifully as his other hand stabbed wildly with the bayonet.

Daniel grabbed for the moving weapon, touched metal, not wood. Felt the tip of the bayonet enter his left hand through the palm, a biting, searing pain that coursed down his arm and into the base of his spine. His eyes closed reflexively, his ears rang, he tried to break free, but his hand remained impaled bv the bayonet as the Jordanian pushed him down, twisting, destroying him.

It was that image of destruction, the thought of himself as just more human garbage added to the heap in the trench, that fueled him.

He raised both feet and kicked, arched his body upward like a rocket. The wounded hand remained pinioned, sinking into the corpse-cushion.

He was throwing the rest of himself at the Jordanian now, not caring about the fiery mass that had once been his left hand, just wanting something to remain intact.

Wrenching upward with abandon, he felt the blade churning, turning, severing nerves, ligaments, and tendons. Gritting his teeth, he traveled somewhere beyond pain as his boot made contact with the Jordanian's jaw and he was finally free.

The rifle fell to one side, tearing more of the hand. He pulled loose, liberated the ravaged tissue.

The Jordanian had recovered from the kick, was trying to bite him again. Daniel slammed the heel of his good hand under the bridge of the man's nose, went after him as he fell, ripping at his face like a jackal gone mad-tearing an ear off, gouging out the other eye, turning the enemy to garbage that whimpered helplessly as Daniel formed a talon with his undamaged hand and used it to crush the Jordanian's larynx.

He kept useless, leaking pad, but what else was there to do with it? Squeezing and clawing and forcing out the life spirit.

When the young Jordanian had stopped twitching, Daniel turned his head and vomited.

He collapsed, lay there for a second, atop the pile of bodies. Then gunfire and Gavrieli's whimpers brought him to his elbows. He foraged in the trench, managed to pull a bloody shirt off a corpse and used a clean corner of the garment to bind his hand, which now felt as if it had been fried in hot grease.

Then he crawled out of the trench and went to Gavrieli.

The commander was alive, his eyes open, but his breathing sounded bad-feeble and echoed by a dry rattle. Gavrieli struggled, tossing and shaking as Daniel labored to unbutton his shirt. Finally he got it open, inspected the wound, and found it a neat, smallish hole. He knew the exit side could be worse, but couldn't move Gavrieli to check. The bullet had entered the right side of the chest, missing the heart but probably puncturing a lung. Daniel put his face to the ground, touched blood, but not enough to make him give up hope.

"You're all right," he said.

Gavrieli lifted one eyebrow and coughed. His eyes fluttered with pain and he started to shiver.

Daniel held him for a while, then climbed back into the trench. Fighting back his own pain, he yanked combat jackets off of two dead Jordanians. Clambering back up, he used one for a blanket, rolled the other into a pillow and placed it under Gavrieli's feet.

He found Gavrieli's radio and whispered a medic call, identifying his location and the status of the rest of the company, informing the communications officer that the trench had been neutralized, then wriggled over to Kobi's body. The kibbutznik's mouth was open; other than that, he looked strangely dignified. Daniel closed the mouth and went searching for both the Uzis.

After several moments of groping in the dark, he found Kobi's, then his, handle dented but still functional. He brought the weapons back to where Gavrieli lay and huddled beside the wounded man. Then he waited.

The battle continued to rage, but it seemed distant, someone else's problem. He heard machine-gun fire from the north, a recoilless response that shook the hills.

Once, Gavrieli gasped and Daniel thought he'd stopped breathing. But after a moment his respiration returned, weak but steady. Daniel stayed close by, checking him, keeping him warm. Cradling the Uzis, his arm enveloped by pain that seemed oddly reassuring.

Suffering meant life.

It took an hour for the rescuers to arrive. When they put him on the stretcher, he started to cry.

Three months later Gavrieli came to visit him at the rehab center. It was a hot day, choked by humidity, and Daniel was sitting on a covered patio, hating life.

Gavrieli had a beach tan. He wore a white knit shirt and white shorts-apres tennis, very dashing. The lung was healed, he announced, as if the state of his health had been Daniel's primary worry. The cracked ribs had mended. There was some residual pain and he'd lost weight, but overall he felt terrific.

Daniel, on the other hand, had started seeing himself as a cripple and a savage. His depression was deep and dark, surrendering only to bouts of itchy irritability. Days went by in a numbing, gray haze. Nights were worse-he fell into smothering, terrifying dreams and awoke to hopeless mornings.

"You look good too," Gavrieli lied. He poured a glass of fruit punch and, when Daniel refused it, drank it himself. The discrepancy between their conditions embarrassed Gavrieli; he coughed, winced, as if to show Daniel that he, too, was damaged. Daniel wanted to tell him to leave, remained silent, bound by manners and rank.

They made small talk for a turgid half hour, reminisced mechanically about the liberation of the Old City: Daniel had fought with the medics to be released for the march through the Dung Gate, ready to die under sniper fire. Listening to Rabbi Goren blow the shofar had made him sob with joy and relief, his pain spirited away for a golden moment in which everything seemed worthwhile. Now, even that memory was tarnished.

Gavrieli went on about the new, enlarged state of Israel, described his visit to Hebron, the Tomb of the Ancestors. Daniel nodded and blocked out his words, desiring only solitude, the selfish pleasures of victimization. Finally, Gavrieli sensed what was happening and got to his feet, looking peeved.

"By the way," he said, "you're a captain now. The papers should be coming any day now. Congratulations. See you soon."

"And you? What's your rank?"

But Gavrieli had started to walk away and didn't hear the question. Or pretended not to.

He had, in fact, been promoted to lieutenant colonel. Daniel saw him a year later at Hebrew U. wearing a lieutenant colonel's summer uniform bedecked with ribbons, strolling through campus among a small throng of admiring undergraduates.

Daniel had attended his last class of the day, was on the way home, as usual. He'd completed a year of law studies with good grades but no sense of accomplishment. The lectures seemed remote and pedantic, the textbooks a jumble of small-print irrelevancies designed to distract from the truth. He processed all of it without tasting, spat it out dutifully on exams, thinking of his courses as tubes of processed food ration, the kind he'd carried in his survival kit-barely enough to sustain him, a long way from satisfaction.