Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [140]
“Well, we have the advantage of no choice. We do not have the luxury of a defeat. One thing for certain we have over the Marines. Our rations.”
“You’ve got a taste for shit.”
Ben Asher’s mood became contemplative. “I never told you, writer, but I knew your uncle, Matti Zadok, intimately.”
“No, you never mentioned him.”
“I was only sixteen when I went into his Recon unit in the Palmach. I still carry his toe print on my ass. I wish he was here now. If we had to evacuate, he’d be the only man I know who could find his way out of here.”
“My father hardly ever spoke about his brother,” I said.
“Matti Zadok was always cloaked in mystery. I can tell you he was a great soldier. His major love was the desert. He’s a breed of Jew who was half coyote. He could look out over this same scene and see things that would have escaped our eyes. He read the landscape as though it were his woman’s body, sensing when there was water beneath the ground, ascertaining if a camel print was warm or two weeks old. No Bedouin could track him. Matti discovered dozens of minor antiquity sites, the kind that escape normal detection.”
The major stood, a chunk to be respected, like Uncle Matti. He surveyed all that his eyes could reach, as night fell. Perhaps he was hoping beyond hope that Zechariah’s column would suddenly appear on the horizon.
“Have you found what you were looking for here?” he asked me strangely.
“I’m not sure I know what I’m looking for.”
The major left and Shlomo sauntered in, buckling under the ammo he was toting. “Look,” he said, handing me a new carbine with an infrared night scope. “I got it from one of the wounded boys awaiting evacuation.”
“Neat piece.”
“The password for tonight is Yad Shimshon.”
I repeated it three times as Shlomo sighted in with his new toy.
Down went the sun! Deathly silence and coolness enveloped us instantly. I gulped down a pain pill. I was going to miss the morphine, but we were running low. There were two brave men in my family, Uncle Matti and Uncle Lazar. My father wasn’t of their ilk. That’s why he never mentioned Matti, because Matti had succeeded where he had failed in Palestine.
Why would my father remain silent about his brother, when he spent so much time bragging about me? Hell, I’ve never been anything to him but an alter ego. When I became a published author, he’d hold court on me, anytime, anyplace. He’d stand up at the cash register in the neighborhood deli and give an impromptu lecture about me to the lunch crowd. He’d walk around Rittenhouse Square with a pocket full of clippings and reviews and sit down beside total strangers on park benches and tell them the story of my life. He’d even go to the seminary and lecture about me to little sisters of the poor.
So, why the fuck doesn’t he love me? Why hasn’t he told me, just once, I was something very special as a writer? Why did he always pound a literary critique up my ass? Oh, Dad, you’re a weirdo, a real weirdo.
I wrapped up in a blanket and used my helmet for a pillow, just like in the old days. Shlomo sat over me, staring at a sky that was beginning to twinkle. How lucky I had been to have him assigned to me. Luckiest break I ever got as a writer.
“Good night, buddy,” I said.
“Good night, Gideon,” he answered.
SHLOMO
I WATCHED GIDEON sleep fitfully as the desert entered night. It was my favorite time in my favorite place because the skies were almost always clear and the entire universe put itself on display for me, alone.
I have a theory that Moses and the tribes came through Mitla Pass during the exodus from Egypt. I wrote my master’s thesis on the realities behind the biblical fantasies. Let me say, it didn’t become a bestseller, but on the other hand, more than one biblical scholar broke his head trying to disclaim my paper.
Gideon grunted. His hip was bothering him. Poor fellow. He almost got away clean with the parachute jump. What I liked about him was that he was scared out of his mind, but he jumped anyhow. Has it only been nine months since this little paskudnyak