late, and the festival had already begun. It was a golden spring afternoon in mid-May. The sun was a great orange ball lowering behind the Sereni building, the community hall of the kibbutz. Hundreds of the kibbutz members and their children, all in white shirts and blue trousers, were crowded on the vast lawn in the golden light. Above us fluttered our national white-and-azure flags together with the red flags of the workers’ movement.
A trumpet sounded and everyone became quiet. The kibbutz choir began singing, and many members joined in. Then, from the second-floor veranda, a boy and a girl recited “The Silver Tray,” a poem about the youth who were the tray upon which independence was given to the Jewish nation. The words poured from their lips like silver. The trumpet sounded again, and we all stood at attention. The kibbutz’s spokesman read aloud the name of each of the fallen in the struggle for statehood. He read the name of my father, Zvi, and at that moment I saw my mother sitting by herself, smoking a cigarette. The choir went on in four-part harmony, and we all followed and sang together, in one mighty voice, the anthems: “Hatikva” (The Hope), the anthem of the State of Israel, and then the “Internationale.” The air was full of positive energy.
When the event was over, families began gathering to continue the festivities. I was about to approach my mother, and suddenly ZBB elbowed me. I turned toward him. He indicated with his eyes, and when I followed his look, I saw the girl I was falling in love with. She stood apart from us, slender and slight, part of a covey of girls her own age. Zur grinned at me. I felt a heavy blush heat up my face. How in the world could ZBB have known that this was the one I wanted? There were a lot of girls around, some of them very good-looking. But Zur saw something, and somehow he knew.
After the grand feast with the entire kibbutz in the public dining room we had to leave and return to base. We parted from my mother and the lit, flower-filled hall and walked in the dark to our Willis. Zur drove the pickup; he never gave the wheel to anybody else. And I sat looking at him from the corner of my eye, confused, as if he had somehow found a way to control me.
IT TOOK ME YEARS TO BE ABLE to explain in logical terms how he had done it. Life taught me also, gradually, how to fill in the missing pieces in the puzzles put before me. First it happened in aerial combat and then in commanding men. Time and again I was faced with situations where the facts available to me were only part of a larger whole, and some of them were questionable, too. Still, these were the premises upon which I had to decide and act. Under pressure, I learned to see—that is, to infer and create a complete picture. It was necessary to do it that way, though it was a delicate and even dangerous act. In combat flight, which is—like playing jazz—a fast performing art form based on deep culture and improvisation in varying situations—the necessary base for creativity and invention is the ability to collect diverse pieces of information and fill the missing parts with imagination and association, to create a multidimensional mental picture. This is the meaning of seeing. Finally I came to realize that seeing does not come just from the outside. A major part of it wells up from the inside. Zur knew how to see.
Only after this event did I get up enough courage to propose friendship to this girl. Ali, in her direct way, answered with a short note that ended, “Yes, I accept.”
YES, ZBB WAS BOTH SCARY and attractive.
What made it easier for me in his company was this clumsy and anxious body of his that caused him so much suffering. He trembled when we were about to train at being taken prisoner by the enemy. This is the toughest part of the training in the flying school. We knew we were going for a hike in the mountains, that we were to try to hide and escape, but there was no chance. Somewhere along the way, we would be caught and taken to an unknown location, where interrogators would exert physical and mental pressure to extract information from us. Zur was pitiably frightened of this. He felt he would be unable to stand the physical pressures and the abuse, and believed he was going to bring shame on himself and on his father, Itamar, who was a high-ranking and respected officer in the reserves. So he began to try to toughen up. He wanted me to box with him and to punch him in the face. I didn’t want to do it, so he pushed me by banging his head into a light pole.
After we finished wrestling, he dragged me to the base swimming pool and demanded that I teach him to dive from the highest board. He shook with terror. Again and again he walked to the edge with trembling legs, stopped, and sat down to think it over, unable to take the plunge. Eventually he climbed down, in despair. Those sweet guys in our class, mainly the veterans such as Umsh, Goldie, and Yakir, scorned him. They changed his nickname from ZBB, Zur Ben-Barak, to RBB—Run, Bloody Bastard.
But he passed the prisoner survival training with flying colors, and after that I saw him break the fear barrier.
It began with an accident. We already were flying Stearman biplane trainers, and one day ZBB taxied his plane a little too fast. He saw the other plane a little too late and was a little too slow to brake and crashed into it. The airplanes crunched together, their propellers flailing and sending cloth and pieces of wood flying. This was an unforgivable screwup, and nobody doubted that this was the end of ZBB’s career in the air force.
Saturday passed with fraying nerves. Zur hid in a corner under his blanket for the whole weekend, refusing to taste the food I brought him from the dining room. Suddenly he got up, pulled me to the swimming pool, climbed to the top springboard, closed his eyes, rolled in the air, and did a belly flop on the water. I understood; he wanted to die.
Next morning he was summoned to see the commander. He was judged and punished but not washed out. Later, because of his talents and strong character, he stood out more and more, and when we got our wings, Zur Ben-Barak was already known as a winner.
MY TURN CAME. I ROSE TO MY FEET and faced them all, blushing.
I was of medium height, very thin, and suffered a lot because of my round and childish face. I didn’t like myself. My hair especially irritated me: it was black and curly. Elderly ladies loved to pat it, so in protest I shaved my head. I most hated my eyes, inherited from my mother, Shosh, who got them from her father, Nathaniel. My younger daughter, Ella, looks at me with these same eyes. When I saw these eyes in the mirror, light-colored and vulnerable, they made me feel restless.
And now, exposed before Yak and all the Scorpions, I had difficulty saying anything. I was never the kind who found speaking easy. I always found the right words, but later, after time had passed.
At least I had a hero to remember: the amputee Soviet fighter pilot Alexei Merseyev. Many times I have dreamed of the moment when they all were waiting for his return from the fight for the motherland, against the Nazi Messerschmitts. I imagined the squadron commander spitting, “Enough. Merseyev is out of fuel. He is not coming back. Let’s go.” And right then, in total silence like a shadow, Merseyev’s aircraft arrived, gliding down, down, his propeller stopped. His airplane clipped the birch treetops and touched down on the first meter of the runway. But this was neither the place nor the audience to blab my dreams to. And I had no way to tell that like Merseyev within just a few short years, I would come back from air combat, my fuel tanks dry, dead-stick landing like a leaf on the first meter of a far-off runway. When I took my helmet off, two cuts would drip blood from where I had bitten through my lower lip.
Here I was, a mere second lieutenant, the new kid in school. My mother had taught me that things should be kept inside. One does not hang one’s laundry out in public. I chose to limit myself to absolute basics: name, rank, and serial number.
Zorik watched me, waiting. I added something in a low voice.
“What did you say? Give us something on you, Spector! And speak up!”
I repeated, “I came here to defend our country.”
They thought this was really funny. In the healthy roar of the laughter the investigation was all but forgotten. I flushed as I stooped to collect my file and hurried back to dive in among my friends. I dug into the box and found in it a notebook, a pencil, and two books:
When I looked up again, I found those two figures themselves, bent over the table, watching me intently. Yak’s eyes were brown and pensive; Ivry’s pale blue, large and stern. Opposite them, Sam Khetz made a face and winked.
Then I relaxed. I passed the examination, and all would be well. And most important, everything had been kept inside.
