Don't Ask Me If I Love by Amos Kollek Page B

reasonable.”
    He wrote it down and lapsed into silence again. From time to time he added something with his pencil, never lifting his face.
    â€œDo you really like doing that?” I asked, curious.
    â€œIt’s not so bad.”
    I shrugged.
    â€œFreud’s term for sexual energy?”
    â€œTry libido.”
    â€œThat works.”
    â€œRuthi says you irritate her.”
    His eyebrows went up.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œNot expressing yourself openly.”
    â€œOh.” He wrote something down. “She’s a nice girl, though.”
    â€œI think I’ll go to sleep,” I said. “I drank too much Coke.”
    He put his paper down and looked at me.
    â€œYou have only two more weeks to go,” he said. “You must be counting the minutes.”
    â€œI’m holding my breath. How much do you have?”
    â€œOh, the same.”
    â€œYeah, well, I’ll be going.”
    I moved toward the door. He suddenly got up and walked after me.
    â€œLet’s hear some clever opinions,” he said, to my utter surprise. “Do you think it’s really the right thing for me to study political science?” He was smiling, half-apologetically, but his eyes were keen, and his brow a bit wrinkled. It embarrassed me to realize that I wasn’t sure what to say.
    He strolled back to his bed and sat down.
    â€œIf I stay in the army, I’ll probably get killed some day.”
    He drew a circle on the sheet with his thumb and then smoothed it with his palm.
    â€œYou don’t last long in this sort of profession. The funny thing is, I don’t think I want to die.”
    He looked up at me apologetically.
    â€œIt is awfully stupid,” he said curiously.
    I leaned on the door and stuck my hands in my pockets.
    â€œOne can always go back to the army,” I said. “What’s the rush? After a year or two out you will be able to see for yourself. Studying can’t do you anything but good. The army is an awfully limiting institution.”
    He stared at his hands. I had an uneasy feeling that I hadn’t said what he was hoping to hear, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. When he looked at me again, his face had its usual blank expression.
    â€œWell,” he said, “it doesn’t matter. I’d better go to sleep. I don’t think I’m functioning too well right now.” He started unbuttoning his shirt.
    â€œO.K.”
    I opened the door.
    â€œStill thinking about this girl, Joy?”
    â€œNot much,” I said.
    Ram’s body was strong and brown and muscular. He had two small pale scars, on his chest, a souvenir from the war.
    â€œI think she is very nice.”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “Good night.”
    He smiled briefly.
    â€œSweet dreams.”
    I walked to my room and went to bed. I didn’t have sweet dreams. I was under the spell of words I had never expected to hear. They filled my mind. When did he ever talk in that manner? I couldn’t think of any such occasion, ever. Except maybe, that time when he told me about the war. Ram did not like telling stories, and I thought he knew the subject was not pleasant to me. We did get to talk about the war one time, though. He had been in one of his rare talkative moods, sitting in his room late one night. So he talked.
    His company had been stationed for about two weeks somewhere along the southern border, before they finally received the order to move. Those two weeks had been the hardest part of it all. They were nerve-wracking because the soldiers didn’t know what was going to happen. Ram, a very new officer, had tried to put all his time and efforts into training and organizing his platoon. There was not much sense, he reasoned, in trying to guess the future. They would have to solve their future problems when the time came. Throughout the two weeks, almost every day, the company commander said that the war was due to begin at any