Joker wakes me after an hour exactly. I sit there, wrapped in a woolen blanket and still freezing. The night is dark. In the distance the lights of the Kibbutz twinkle. The cicadas chirp. I try to eat up the rest of the emergency rations but they have no taste at all. I try to think about something. But my thoughts have no shape.
Strange. Only five months ago I would have enjoyed reading a serious book. Now it is too much for me to concentrate on a cheap novel. We don’t even have girls in our heads any more. They appear more often in dirty jokes than as the object of real lust.
What did Freud have to say about that? No idea. If Freud had been a private in the infantry, and had to keep watch for four hours every night, then he would not have had the time or the energy to worry about the psychopathology of everyday (or every night’s) life.
The hands of the clock move agonizingly slowly. Ten more min-utes, eight more, five, three. I can wake Zuzik now. He needs three minutes to wake up. He is lying rolled up like a hedgehog, and I give him a kick in the bump I assume to be his backside.
"Yob tvoyu Mat. Pigdog" he curses in his sleep.
"Yob tvoyu yourself! Get up. You’re on!"
"What time is it?"
"Three minutes before half past."
"Why are you waking me up now, you ass?" He wobbles his head and blinks. I lie down, pull the covers over my head, and fall asleep.
I dream about school. We are in the sixth or seventh class and the teacher is explaining to us something from the Talmud, about a bull or a cow. Nobody is listening, we all find it deadly boring. The red-headed boy sitting next to me has a pistol bullet with him, which we are examining surreptitiously. Disturbances are sweeping the land, our older brothers are auxiliary policemen, and we are getting bored at school. Suddenly I hear my name. "What did Rabbi Gamliel say about that?" asks the teacher. I don’t know what he is talking about. The whole class is staring at me and grinning with schadenfreude. The bullet falls to the ground with a clatter. "What was that?" asks the teacher. "A Mauser cartridge caliber 11.56," I stutter. "No: caliber 11.54," shouts the redhead. "Quiet!" roars the teacher. "Shame on you. Go to the director."
Someone nudges me. "Rabbi Gamliel said ... he said ..." but