I stroke her thighs. In the dim light they are rounded and rosy.
"At least you might turn out the light." I don’t want to switch it off. I like the play of muscles on a moving body. That is so different from the bodies I have seen recently by the side of the road or in the field. Why think about the dead? The dead don’t have bodies, just stinking corpses. Here is a living body, a beautiful body. I press my face into it.
"You are crude!" Yucki yelps.
"Yes," I reply.
Her eyes are closed, her breathing heavy. But I am not excited in the least. It is as if I was not here at all. I am floating somewhere, smiling at us. I am sleeping with her as though fulfilling a duty, or to store mem-ories that I can recover later when I am back at the front.
* * *
She is lying next to me, smiling very gently. She strokes my hair as though I had done her a favor. I feel sick. How can I get up without upsetting her? She is relaxed and tired. And the dead at the roadside drift back into my mind.
"Come on, let’s go to the cafe," I suggest and get up.
"Why?" she asks, showing no desire to get up.
"I arranged to meet some people from the company," I lie.
She groans, gets up, and puts her clothes on. I drink a few more glasses of arak to wash the stale taste out of my mouth.
Despite the blackout the streets are full of life. The cafes are full to overflowing. People are streaming out of the movie theaters. On the other side of the street someone is trying to kiss a young woman who is laughing loudly.
"How much life there is here today!" The air is filled with jubila-tion and I am cheerful.
"What do you mean - today? It is always like this in the evening."
I get angry. Every evening? The day before yesterday? The day before that? We knew that this Tel Aviv existed somewhere, a par-adise of celebration and pleasure. But we were not aware that lively people were enjoying themselves, young and healthy, while we were racing in our jeeps into the enemy fire. Shit!
In Kassit,6 a large group of soldiers in smart uniforms. They are the ones that we call the "Romano House Foxes." A fewyoung writers and other members of the intelligentsia are among them. A distant