“A Messy Leave” appeared in Hebrew in Al Hamishmar in December 1949, and later, in an English translation by I. M. Lask, in the magazine Israel (Tel Aviv); it is Mr. Lask’s translation that is given here.

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Well, there I was sitting in the barred cell in a mood as messy as the clothes I was wearing. The sight of the iron bars gave me the feeling of Inquisition torture chambers. From the deeps of memory those bars brought up the horrible forceps that dentists use, which in turn reminded me of what I could not help feeling already. Namely and to wit, that I was as hungry as a jackal.

But at length the door opened and in wandered a police officer, still three-quarters asleep, with the ends of his pajama trousers sticking out from under his coat.

“What’s your name?” he asked in an annoyed tone.

“I whistled,” I answered in helpless indifference.

“What’s your name?” he repeated, as though he had not heard.

“I whistled.”

“What’s your name? What do they call you?”

And he amplified his question with his gestures.

“They call me Iwhistled,” I yelled into his ear. “When I was a little chap I couldn’t whistle, and once I ran in on the gang shouting: ‘Boys, I whistled‘; and ever since then they call me Iwhistled.”

“Where do you live?” and he took out his notebook.

“In the Negev.”

“What street?” he went on.

“Listen, Comrade,” I made a last desperate effort, “I am a member of a Negev kibbutz. I have a week’s leave and it’s over tomorrow. If you try to hold me up here you’ll have to deal with our Secretaryess. And I’m not responsible for what she may do.”

“Sit quiet!” said the officer between his teeth, and for greater security opened the door leading to the police room. Then he went on:

What’s your business down there in the Negev?

I put a brake on the wind.

A burst of laughter nearly knocked me over. All the policemen in the station were milling round the door of the cell, listening in.

“I told you he’s tra-la-la,” said the ginger fellow.

“Puts a brake on the wind! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“If we hadn’t caught him he’d have messed the whole town up with tar.”

The officer went on questioning me, and I began sweating. But all of a sudden he was called away. A gang of thieves had been caught. They had broken into an apartment, put the owners to sleep with some sleeping powder or something, and then, instead of being careful, they had fallen asleep themselves.

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So There I was, left alone with all my sad thoughts. The long-awaited leave had finally arrived. More than half a year had passed since my last one. Then we had marched through the streets of the town, proud and dirty, sporting beards and mops of hair, and proudly displaying our camel-insignia on our necks and chests. Mothers pointed us out, telling their little ones: “They’re from the Negev.” The girls strewed compliments on the bushy beards, thinking not of the beards but of what was behind them. And the little scamps ran behind us yelling: “Go to the zoo, go to the zoo.”

In those days the Negev was a firm of repute in the country. The Negev was the war objective. It was the future, the anvil for the hammer of the nation. (I pinched this metaphor from my uncle, who’s a blacksmith.) On all sides the songs were promising us, “We shall build you, build you up, thirsty, thirsty Negev.” On every wall and billboard, letters that looked just like clenched fists banged and boomed: “YOUNG Man, Young Woman, The Negev Is Waiting For You.”

But half a year had passed since then. Only a few of us were left. We were trying to plant trees. We were trying to put a brake on the wind. (And why should that make them laugh?) We were trying to dig wells. And a few months had passed that way, and now the time for my leave had come round, the leave I had been waiting for so long. At last I would see my old friends, who presumably would not let me go but would get all the tales of the far-famed Negev out of me, with all its prospects, absorption capacity, and so on. They would certainly want to know how we live. At the Saturday evening gatherings in the Pinati Café there was bound to be somebody who would say reminiscently, “Have you heard, gang, our Iwhistled has become an important fellow. He belongs to a kibbutz in the Negev.” And maybe some inquisitive journalist would get hold of me for the real dope about water in the Negev and so on.

No sooner had I left the bus after five hours of bone-shaking, than the city received me with a tremendous advertisement in twelve colors, reading: “Young Men, Young Women, Join The Post Office. Salary Prospects And High Grading.”

Without understanding what it was all about I strode through the streets, bemused by the noise of the cars and the crowds, feeling as though I were going through some wadi with steep walls and could hear a sudden spate of water coursing down behind me.

All of a sudden I bumped into my old friend David, marching along importantly with a portfolio in his hand.

“Shalom, David!” I thundered at him.

“Shalom and how may you be,” he answered me easily, as though I had come to ask a loan of him. He inspected me from head to foot.

“Where do you work?” he asked me.

“In the Negev,” I proudly responded.

“In which department and which ministry?” he made his question more specific.

“What ministry!” I felt insulted. “I belong to a kibbutz in the Negev.”

“Oh, like that is it. Well then, shalom to you again.” And he turned and went his way.

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For six full minutes I stood stock-still, gazing at the spot on the corner where David had vanished from view. When the seventh minute began I sighed, a deep deep sigh, and took my way to my parents’ home. Next day I began a series of visits to my relations and acquaintances. My eyes were already accustomed to the change in the atmosphere, so here and there I saw all kinds of advertisements in queer styles. On one billboard I read a proclamation: “Halutz Youth: Following The Establishment of the State, the best forces of the halutz youth are required for the legal profession. halutz youth—join the school of economics and law.”

Then there was a fragment from some party statement: “halutz youth is called upon to participate in the great objective of establishing the state, and should pioneer in the civil service.”

Or a proclamation in a slightly different style: “listen youth! you who conquered the dry land, volunteer now for the merchant marine. good prospects of rising in rank.”

I dropped in to pay a visit to my former teacher at the high school. I was very fond of him. He always left me with the impression that he knew what you were up to behind his back. After the second glass of tea we began reminiscing about his numerous pupils who had been my classmates. I asked and he answered.

“Where’s Shmulik?”

“Shmulik’s an air pilot.”

“Where’s Shimon?”

“Gone abroad to study.”

“Where’s Joshua?”

“Working in the Kirya.”

And so all down the line. But finally the teacher sighed: “Ah well, Iwhistled, you were a gifted pupil. I hoped that something would come out of you, and you’ve been and gone and vanished in the Negev. It’s a pity, a real pity.”

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I went along to pay a visit to Gila, a relation of mine, a practical sort of girl who looks well ahead. When she was twelve years old she decided that I would be just about the right shape of husband for her when the time came, and for the past six years she had been trying to persuade me to be a fatalist and give in to things as they are. I was fed up with the halutzim spouting from all the advertisement billboards, offices, and cafés, which made me feel that I was crawling in the very dust! So I would have been quite liable to turn to Gila and surrender unconditionally, telling her: “Gila, remember what you told me when we said goodbye half a year ago?”

As soon as I came in she fell on my neck with fancy cake and nuts and chocolate, all wrapped up in smiles.

“What are you doing, Iwhistled? Where have you vanished to?”

“Me, I’m not in town,” I decided to be careful.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m not an airman,” I answered.

“What a pity!” she sighed. “Where d’you work?”

“I’m not a government official at the Kirya,” I went on preparing her for the worst.

“How much are you getting a month?” she was still gunning for me.

“I haven’t a car of my own,” I dodged the issue in my turn.

But there’s no dodging Gila. She took me by my shirt button and gave me a look.

“How much do you get?”

I began laughing in sheer despair.

“Three pounds is what I get.”

“Three pounds a day! Why, that’s wonderful!”

And she began totting up on her fingers.

“Not a day,” I went on laughing. “Three pounds a week.”

“A week?” she said in astonishment. “How’s it possible?”

“Yes,” I began explaining, “three pounds a week and leave once in half a year.” And I went on, in sheer relief at being able to get it off my chest. “I’m a member of a kibbutz in the Negev. What do you think of it?”

She didn’t trouble to answer, but called into the other room: “Mother, put the white dress back in the closet. I’m not going out this evening, I have a headache.”

And so I reached this cursed night. I wandered round the streets of the town all by myself, after fleeing from my mother’s heartfelt persuasiveness: “You can be in a kibbutz, but why does it have to be the Negev?”

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The leave passed and it was about time for me to return to my distant hill with its seedlings and rows of trees, planted as windbreaks. And all my comrades and acquaintances here would promptly forget me because they were so busy with important matters, and the whole town would go on with all its noise and rush, and nobody would remember the youngsters obstinately setting out each plant and seedling in those distant and desolate wastes. Yet we were the offshoots of this very town, and we were the ones who ensured its calm and security. I strolled about through the empty streets. It was after midnight already and I thought about my leave, which had vanished like smoke. I remembered how they received us with jubilation; and how the Negev had yelled and screeched from every wall. And I came to the conclusion that something had changed during those months. There were new songs in the air, and the old battle cries had been forgotten.

All of a sudden my gloomy thoughts struck against a black object. This was a pot of tar for mending the roads. I compared the pot to my own mood, and regretfully decided that both of them were equally black. Then suddenly I had an idea. I remembered how when I had been an urchin in the Youth Units we used to go out at midnight with tins of paste and cover the whole city with posters and proclamations. And I promptly became enthusiastic. Something like a sandstorm began raging through my chest. I must give vent, I decided, to the cry of my desolation. Feverishly I put pieces of wood under the pot, and set them alight. Then I dashed home, furtively put on working clothes, took my bicycle and set off. The pitch was bubbling and boiling in the pot. I took a big brush, dipped it in the tar, and began scrawling huge letters: “youngsters, the negev is still empty!”

My workmanship pleased me, just as though I were a modern painter that nobody can understand but himself. I went on enthusiastically.

On the plate-glass window of a pharmacy I scrawled: “the only remedy is negev settlement.”

I splashed myself all over with tar: I was head over heels in my labors. From house to house I sped on my bike with the tar and the brush. And with great satisfaction I felt that I was capable of messing up the whole town in the course of a single night.

Finally I reached the Knesset building. I dipped my brush in the pot and wrote: “knesset members, where are your sons?”

“Don’t worry, we’re here!” I heard a voice behind me. And two policemen grabbed me round the middle.

“What are you up to? Where are you from?”

“Hands off!” I told them. “I’m from the Negev.”

“From the Negev?” One of the policemen became alarmed. “Must be an infiltrator.” He stuck a whistle in his mouth and blew for all he was worth. Some more policemen promptly came dashing up.

“What’s happened, what’s going on?”

“We’ve caught an infiltrator,” said the policeman excitedly.

“Infiltrator my foot,” said the other angrily. “It’s simply a lunatic. He’s messed up the whole street with all kinds of old slogans about the Negev.”

“Must have read too many out-of-date newspapers and got mixed up,” remarked the third.

“What? Slogans?” a fourth broke in. “Slogans again? How much did you get for it? More incitement? Foreign influences! Undermining! Defamation!”

By this time all the policemen were wildly excited, and were shouting weird words in confusion. I lifted up my brush and yelled, the way our Secretaryess yells at meetings:

“Silence, Comrades!”

It had a wonderful effect. They shut up at once, murmuring:

“Silence! But real silence. Operation Silence!”

“Comrades!” I used the opportunity and began to speechify. “The expanses of the Negev are desolate and uninhabited. Without a wall of settlements there can be no security on the frontiers! Comrades! Comrades! Where is the halutz youth?”

“What do you mean where?” one of the policemen interrupted me. “The halutz youth is in the police.” And one of them produced a tired-looking newspaper and turned his torch on the lines of print: “the police summon the best of halutz youth to join its ranks at revised wages.”

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Here it seems my nerves must have given out. I found myself sitting in the prisoners’ cell.

While I was still deep in my thoughts, the officer came in cheerfully. I suppose he was counting on a rise in rank for catching the thieves who had fallen asleep in somebody else’s apartment.

“Listen, my lad,” said he to me, “we’ll forget the whole business. Luckily for you I can understand your mood. Once upon a time I was a member of a kibbutz as well, but times change, you understand. I’m looking for satisfaction, and in the police I get a kick out of it every time we catch a thief.”

“So you’re letting me go?”

“Yes.” And he called back into the policemen’s room:

“Give a general alarm, fetch in all the policemen, take tins of benzine and clean up all those messy inscriptions! We must clean up the town by morning!”

Then he turned a stern eye on me.

“To have to call all the police out for the sake of one rascal! If you had only come into my hands. . . .”

“You should be ashamed of yourself, you parasite.” I gave him what for at the top of my voice. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in the Negev?”

“Why, what’s happening? Have they opened a police station there?” he asked with genuine interest.

That did for me.

“Well then, depart in peace,” said the officer, “and remember the times in which you live.”

“Messy times,” said I. “Don’t you dare clean up the slogans. These tranquil citizens must be reminded of the real situation.”

“I’m sorry, but it makes the walls dirty.”

“I’ll publish it in the newspapers,” I all but burst out weeping, “and let everybody know what young folk are being trained for in the State of Israel.”

“We’ll deny it, and they won’t believe you,” said the officer.

“They’ll believe me, you’ll see! I’ll yell with all my force.”

“Of course you will, but nobody will hear you. After all, you’ll be in the Negev, and that’s so far away. . . .”

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