As we are walking along she asks about the battalion. We talk about my photos, and I remind her of the ones I took of her at the radio set. She wants to see the pictures. So I suggest stopping off at my place on the way to the movie theater. Everything is going according to plan. I don’t want to waste valuable hours in a dark movie theater.
In my room I get out a pile of photos for her. While she is looking through them I pour two glasses of arak.5
"No thanks."
"Are you a soldier or a doll?"
She drinks a glassful. Mozart is playing on the radio. I sit cross-legged in front of her and begin working on the bottle.
Among the photos are some I took of the massacre at Latrun. One of them was taken about a hundred meters from the Arab attackers, after most of our unit had already fled and only very few remained. On the photo are four completely exhausted men. They are carrying a wounded man on a stretcher. The picture was taken with a camera that didn’t cost more than three lira. But the image is very sharp - the face of the wounded man, the blood dripping from his chest, and the worn-out faces of his rescuers.
"What a fantastic picture," says Yucki.
I can remember the wounded man and hate her at that moment. To get my revenge I show her some special horror photos - the Egyptian buried by Position 125, with his leg still sticking out of the ground, the Sudanese who was covered in petrol and burned because we were too lazy to dig him a grave, the picture of the three-year-old boy whose father had been shot. She quickly loses all interest in the photos.
"Come on, that’s enough of these awful pictures." She sits next to me on the sofa. "This evening there is no war, OK?"
I kiss her. Silly girl. Does she think we can shut the war away in a drawer and open the peace drawer? Her blouse slips out of her skirt. I stroke her back and cover her body with kisses. Why not really? Why can’t the war be shut in a drawer?
"If you help me, I will forget the war." I hold her close to me.
"That is not very nice," she moans. I almost laugh out loud. That’s not very nice! And sending us to die or to kill others, is that nice? A poor Fellah who is hit in the head by a bullet is also sure to find that not very nice.