obvious from the looks on the faces of the people present that the Scorpions had checked this shrimp out before. The best shooter received his file with a handshake from Zorik and sat down. Zorik, with his pointy nose, had already sensed with whom he was dealing, and within a couple of days Sheani would be selected leader of the “fast turnaround” team of pilots, who must put an end to the irritating ascendancy of the wild mechanics of Lt. Gad Sandek, the technical officer of the squadron.
Fast turnaround contests were common competitive events back then. The rival teams, ten players each, would careen crazily out of the ammunition dumps, dragging and pushing trolleys loaded with external fuel tanks, heavy bombs, fuses, and strips of cannon rounds. The competitors then would jump and climb all over the aircraft, crawling under it, all at full speed—all you could hear was wham, bam. Arm it, fuel it, and prepare it to go out again. As in a festival, the whole squadron would be around cheering and shouting encouragement, smearing the name of the opposing team. When all was done—this would be in minutes and seconds—Sandek would arrive to check that all was done right. Then the winning team would collect its prize—an evening pass in town, or something like that.
Everybody in the air force was involved in the fast turnaround contests. We all knew that this was the “force multiplier” of the IAF, the trick that could produce the equivalent of two hundred aircraft from the mere hundred we actually had. These contests required intelligence, a lot of physical power, and strong leadership. Uri Sheani was definitely the right man.
In the last weeks Uri began dating Shula, a petite parachute-folder, who also brought a friend for me. Madlene was a very good-looking girl who sat with long legs crossed, holding her cigarette between slim fingers, but when they went out to the rustling eucalyptus leaves and the perfumed darkness, I didn’t go. I preferred to stay sitting on a stool in front of the bar in the officers’ mess. I was in love with a girl from the kibbutz—a supple, flat- chested primrose—and preferred to listen to “Tammy” and “For Alize,” sucking slowly the Coke bottle and dreaming of those virgin lips.
THE ROOM WARMED UP.
The flight jackets came off, and finally I was able to discern—thanks to the major’s insignia on one of them —which of the men was our commander, Yak. I stared at the slender, modest, pensive figure who sat in the corner, totally silent, as if he were only a guest, and let Zorik flood the room with his bubbling energy. Yak had a fine, delicate face with a straight nose and small brown eyes with long lashes. On his upper lip was a thin pencil mustache. He looked soft, almost feminine.
I nudged Umsh. What, is this Yak, the pride of the Israeli fighter pilots? I was expecting somebody very different—a bull of a guy like Aki or Daniel Vardon. At that time I didn’t perceive the intense intelligence radiating from this slender person. Neither I nor anybody else imagined how distant from the Scorpions Yak already was, cooking inside his brain the historic victory that was going to save the Jewish state within seven years. And no one at the time could interpret correctly the early signs of alienation and aloofness that were already showing in Yak’s behavior and that would eventually lead to his own destruction.
But now he searched in his pocket, produced a pipe, filled it slowly, and lit it. The sweet scent of tobacco filled the room. I was thrilled, for this finally was a real sign. Douglas Bader, an amputee hero of the Battle of Britain, used to smoke a pipe all the time, even in the cockpit of his Spitfire.
I vowed to get me a pipe as soon as I could.
IT WAS GOLDIE’S TURN. Immediately, the room was filled with smiles.
Ami Goldstein, Goldie, the most distinguished member of our class, was a small, fair man with blue eyes and a yellow mustache. His unflappable good humor and quick wit inspired everyone. When his fast thinking and meticulous implementation, and the way he cut directly to the heart of things became evident, we understood he was a serious guy. Goldie became the golden boy of our class.
He had a sense of humor and a skill with language that could define a person or an issue in a few words. He coined phrases with staying power. All the time he introduced or invented new, funny ideas. Soon we all were speaking his idiom, which became our secret language. I myself received from Goldie for free the nickname “Spike.” Having been raised on a kibbutz, I hadn’t been exposed to American films and didn’t know the cartoon dumb bulldog who always reacts too late and too much. The nickname Spike, since it came from Goldie, did not offend me. After a time I thought that maybe there was something to it.
Besides his humor, Goldie had clear goals in life.
“Life is divided into two stages,” he would say. In the beginning, according to his theory, you are in the stage of “BSA” (being shouted at), because everybody reprimands you. Later you develop and become an “SAEE” (shouts at everyone else). “I have no time or patience for the first stage,” he told me. “My aim in life is to shorten it, and get up to the level of the ‘shouters’ as soon as possible.”
Later, when we got to night flying, Goldie had a tough time. For some reason his Harvard went wild time and again in the darkness. Sometimes he would run out of runway while landing, go off into the fields, and flip over. By dumb luck, Ami was not injured on such occasions. In one of those accidents, when he crawled out from under the upended airplane among the smoking gooseneck kerosene lamps that served for runway lights, the boss was waiting for him with a long face.
“What was it this time, Goldstein?”
The small man, covered with mud, giggled. “Suddenly the Harvard growled at me, like a wolf.”
“So what did you do?” asked Maj. Harry Barak, our commander, in his heavy Australian accent. This was the moment of truth—Harry was going to determine Goldstein’s fate, whether he would continue with us or go back to the ground troops.
“I growled back at him, like a bigger wolf.”
The flight instructors around Harry howled with laughter, like wolves, and he was fascinated. He decided to give Goldie a few more lessons. Finally Goldie got night landings figured out, too.
Goldie was purposeful and charming. We all knew that before any of us would be toddling, Goldie would already be running. And as Goldie finished his presentation to the Scorpions and returned to his seat, one almost could hear the “click.” Goldie was already one of the gang.
ZBB, ZUR BEN-BARAK, was no doubt the smartest of us, and a heavyweight by any measure. In spite of his cumbersome body and his flat-footed goose gait, he was quick in biting. From the dark, wrinkled, almost old face shone amazing eyes, gray-green and alive, that saw everything. And there was a brain behind the bright eyes that recorded and cataloged to the minutest detail, and retrieved at the appropriate moment for use, though not without adding a little extra something wicked. Zur’s brain was a rare calculating tool, sharp and acute. It lost no item of information. He was in love with details, remembered them, knew how to caress them into a whole picture and to produce witty, surprising inferences. He had mastered numbers and was fond of demonstrating his exceptional ability. Even though he was the best pupil in the class—an able painter with notebooks full of elaborate drawings in dimensions and colors—he was slow to grasp the mechanics of flight. But he improved his performance daily, not repeating any mistake. The flight instructors appreciated this and were competing to teach him.
His body was another problem.
In the evenings he was torn by intense desires. Restless, he would drag me along to the soldiers’ mess to watch him undressing the girls with his eyes. He would weigh breasts, legs, and buttocks, evaluate and analyze them. He would approach the girls, court them and flatter them, distribute cigarettes and chocolate—a rare item that was given to us air cadets as a nutrition additive—then corner two or three girls with his body against a wall. I was an innocent; I hated this approach and was ashamed of such behavior. All I wanted was to go back to my room to study or sleep. But Zur needed a squire and was trying to teach me.
“Why did you volunteer for pilot training? Huh?”
I was both scared of and attracted to him.
There was something mysterious in ZBB, something similar to my mother, Shoshana. Like her, he had a frightening quality that enabled him to know things he had no way of knowing. Those bright eyes could, at times, be like an X-ray machine. This capability to assemble banal details and produce unexpected generalizations—to infer the missing piece of the puzzle—sometimes seemed magical. On occasions he caught a glimpse into the future.
Once I invited him to join me in an Independence Day event at my kibbutz, Givat-Brenner. We arrived a little
