Martyrs’ Crossing by Amy Wilentz

took Reuven a long time to get to the point. Yizhar realized he was still holding the company’s picture in his hand. Well, he’d just have to go on holding it. To put it down now would surely spark Reuven’s slow-burning but inexorable curiosity.
    Ah, damage already done. Here he comes. Reuven lumbered toward the desk, and came around behind it. He looked at Yizhar to see if he would be stopped or scolded, then peered over Yizhar’s shoulder.
    â€œOh, yeah,” he said. The picture was a familiar one to Reuven, who spent about half of every working day in Yizhar’s office. “Gertler.”
    Yizhar put the picture back down on his desk.
    â€œIrit’s got a thing for him,” Reuven said.
    â€œDoes she?” he asked.
    â€œShe’s weird.”
    Reuven was so insightful.
    â€œLots of women like him,” Reuven went on.
    â€œHe was always very attractive,” Yizhar said. “Especially in uniform.”
    â€œHunh,” Reuven replied, picking up the picture. He held it up to his face, almost touching his nose. He turned it this way and that, like a faceted jewel. “You know, it’s funny. You can smell a drunk, just by the way he looks. Something about the eyes.”
    Reuven was not an articulate man, but he had instinct.
    â€œYes,” Yizhar said.
    Reuven put the picture down.
    â€œYou’ll manage Hajimi, too, Colonel,” Reuven said.
    â€œThanks so much, Sergeant,” he said. But all irony, in fact, all subtlety, was lost on Reuven. Like everyone in the army, Reuven knew almost every military story there was to know, whatever there was to know of it. There had been rumors about Gertler’s case, on the outside, but on the inside everyone had what they thought was a pretty firm grasp of the facts. After what had happened to poor Shimon, Yizhar was left with the results: Gertler was a shell of a man, a general who failed at the most important moment in the battle. It had been Yizhar’s first experience packaging problems for Israel.
    â€œWell,” Reuven said. He looked around the room, then back at Yizhar. “Don’t work too late.”
    â€œDon’t you worry, Sergeant,” Yizhar said. “Hakol b’seder.” Everything’s okay.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    I RIT CLOMPED OUT at seven-thirty. It was always good to see her go, although tonight, he felt a little wistful about that stripe of white flesh. Maybe he wasn’t being generous enough. Something about her little line of nakedness, her one bolt of daring, seemed vulnerable, and maybe not so unappealing. Maybe that little stripe was a highway that led in to her inmost being, and Yizhar was always looking for a way in to anyone’s character.
    He closed up the files, and put his keys and his electronic identification card into his pocket. Dinner from the Thais down the street, he thought. Outside in the cool evening air, the hush and murmur of nighttime put him out of sorts. He was exhausted and the streets sounded like sleep—the gentle buzz of generators, the hum and sputter of old lightbulbs in flickering signs, the quiet, insistent rumble of police vans patrolling the streets, the sound of tires on newly laid tar—but he was not sleeping. When he walked down King George, he noticed that the big clock at the Hamashbir department store was off by an hour, even though it had been almost five months since the time had moved back. One year, they hadn’t bothered to change the clock at all, just waited until the time moved forward again. Oh, Jerusalem, Yizhar thought. What did an hour matter?
    In front of the pharmacy on Jaffa, under the impassive gaze of the winged Assyrian lion that was carved into the cornice of the Generali building, a bomb squad wearing extreme protective regalia inspected parked cars. As if flesh could be protected from fire and dynamite by thick plastic shields. Yizhar shook his head. He and the Generali lion