clean clothes. Now we are sitting, packed closely together, in the room which is much too small. The chief wants to talk to us.
"What can he want to tell us at such a late hour, it is already after ten?" Zuzik wonders.
"For sure the important news that we start two weeks’ leave tomorrow," Nachshe fantasizes.
"Or maybe three weeks? There is a ceasefire after all. We are owed it!"
"There is a rumor that we all get two weeks’ leave and then a week in a rest home."
"I don’t want any rest home. Let me stay at home. That is restful enough," Tarzan says.
"Don’t expect too much," Sancho warns. "A week is the most you’ll get. You’ll also be complimented on what good soldiers you are and how you have upheld the battalion’s honor."
In this moment being praised is also important to us. We are like little children waiting for Papa to come and tell us how good we are. Our faces, too, look like children’s faces: smooth cheeks, red from scrubbing, wet, combed hair. I am the only one who hasn’t shaved off his beard.
The room is filled with a good atmosphere. Half the company has been destroyed in the eleven days. But we are alive and unharmed! We like each other despite everything.
Tarzan for example. It is quite impossible to discuss anything with him. But after the battle around Position 125 he went on foot to the Egyptian lines to look for wounded. Nachshe is a complete egoist who only thinks of himself. But on the way to Beit Jamal he got out of the jeep in the middle of a storm of bullets to pick up Nuni’s body. There is no doubt that Kebab murders because he enjoys killing. But he has remained with us the whole time although every-body knows that he suffers fearful panic before every action. And even Zuzik, our unholy virgin, is loved by all. He simply belongs with us.
"But really," Tarzan whispers, almost to himself. "I wouldn’t have believed that I would still be alive."
"You are too heavy for us to carry to the cemetery," says Sancho. But Tarzan has put into words what we are all thinking. None of us has dared to hope that he would still be alive.