One doesn’t always know when one meets a genius. Then, I thought he was a slacker. He had been assigned with the rest of us Israeli army basic training graduates to a course for drivers of armored personnel carriers. Each time, while the rest of us were learning the theory and later the practice of driving the troop carrier, he would volunteer for guard duty. (Guard duty was supposed to be shared among us.)
“But you’ll never get your license,” I protested. He looked at me and a beatific smile slowly formed on his face. On the last day of the course, after going up and down endless hills of sand in the vehicle, I returned to the tent covered with dust. He looked at me and the same smile appeared.
I next met him during army reserve duty some months later. We were both sent to the Sinai. We recognized one another from the course. “I wonder how it’ll be out there,” I ventured.
“Stick with me,” he advised.
In a base in the middle of the desert, we lined up to receive assignments. The sergeant asked for a volunteer for communications. My adviser stepped forward, pulling me with him. “We volunteer.” Compliant being that I am, I said nothing.
“I only need one,” the sergeant said.
“We have to be together,” my adviser interposed. “We are new immigrants. We don’t speak Hebrew good.”
The sergeant chose another fellow.
Later, he began to select drivers. When we were left, the sergeant asked, “What do you two drive?”
I was about to say that I had completed the course on the troop carrier when my adviser spoke up quickly. “We have only an 02 license for private vehicles, not an 03 for trucks. And my car is an automatic.” I drove a shift car but kept quiet. “He has an 02 license, too.” I was about to mention, again, that I had completed the course on driving the troop carrier, but my adviser divined my intention and forestalled me. “We are new immigrants,” he said. “We don’t know Hebrew good.”
The sergeant threw up his hands and assigned us to a smaller base nearby.
That was on a Wednesday. The next day the reservists who had already been there a while were due to receive home leave.
“Maybe we can go home, too,” my adviser suggested.
“Are you crazy?” I replied. “We just arrived!”
“We’ll see,” he said knowingly.
The next morning he approached the company commander and asked for a pass. I volunteered to stay, saying I had just arrived. I didn’t want to be associated with his chutzpah. He said something about having something to clear up at home. He received a pass. I was told that next week I could go and he would stay.
As he walked away with his pass, he whispered, “Next week, we’ll both go.”
(As it turned out, I received a pass the day after he left – the company commander tired of seeing me walking around aimlessly without anybody to talk to.)
The next week began promising. At dinner on the day of our return from leave, my adviser met a Romanian who had an office job. My adviser started speaking a friendly Romanian. In two minutes they guy promised to help get a pass from the commander for the weekend. “I can arrange anything for you,” my adviser later translated his offer. In a few minutes my adviser was in the Romanian’s office to use the telephone to call home (having left home all of five hours before). Having managed that, he pulled me out the door.
“Where to?” I asked.
“The canteen.”
I should have known. There he purchased three shaving cream sprays, three tubes of toothpaste, five bags of nuts (to go with the five purchased earlier in the day when he also bought six packs of cigarettes).
I stood breathless in admiration. I was in the presence of a maestro.
The evening “businesswise” turned out to be small change. He stopped off at the medical station only for some nose drops “in case,” as he explained.
The following morning was also largely uneventful. He made a phone call to his wife at work, and even did a little work himself.
Things picked up in the afternoon. Talking to another Romanian, he learned that a number of trucks were scheduled to be taken for repairs in Ashkelon on Wednesday. Previous to the receipt of this information, Thursday had been the day he had been planning to get leave to go home. “I am going to approach the company commander and ask him if we can go with the trucks – and from Ashkelon home.”
I was pleased by the “we”, if doubtful.
“Aren’t you stretching it a bit? He won’t let you go a day earlier than anyone else.”
It was then that he revealed his philosophy (and perhaps the key to his success) in his reply: “Nothing to lose by asking.”
“Come with me,” he said, pulling me out the door.
“Where to?” I asked.
“I was once stationed in the Negev and managed to get a new pair of army pants from the supply clerk. They’re a bit small on me now. To the supply shed. There’s a Romanian who works there . . .” He in fact managed to stretch the pants into a shirt also which, he told the supply clerk, had to match the color of his new pants. (He liked newness – in receiving our army coats on arrival at the base, he had taken one large and one medium, both seemingly new. I wanted to try them on there, but he said, “back at the barracks.” At the barracks he tried them both on, as did I. We both liked the bigger one, but he convinced me that the medium would fit me well enough for the short tour of duty we had.)
Next stop. “Don’t you want to call home?” he asked. I did, but often it was an involved procedure finding and getting to use the telephone. “Come, there is a Romanian with a telephone in his office.” “He has six fingers on each hand,” my ever-observant friend whispered me, as we entered. He was probably jealous, I mused, although he worked his schemes as if he had twelve fingers on each hand. Yet I admired him. He was building an empire at the same time that I dawdled in his wake and came up with crumbs left over from his banquet.
The next day was dull. My adviser managed to receive from another Romanian he had met a towel to replace one he had lost. He next arranged via a Romanian to get a haircut (otherwise reserved for regular army soldiers and not for reservists) later in the day. I neglected to mention that the night before, he had played poker and won a thousand pounds. He rounded off the morning with a trip to the canteen where he purchased razor blades, a number of packs of nuts, and packages of candy.
In the afternoon he had his haircut. There he argued with the barber (not a Romanian) to get a “civilian” rather than a “military” style haircut, and ended up with half and half. The barber said, he was doing him a favor by giving a reservist a haircut at all. Had the barber been a Romanian . . .
The remainder of the afternoon was spent in various negotiations to get off on Wednesday (with the trucks) or, at worst, Thursday. Sometimes he took me along on his machinations, sometimes he preferred to work alone.
He went to the doctor for some pills for his throat. The doctor (needless to say, a Romanian) gave them to him.
The afternoon was capped by a visit to the company commander to ask for a pass to go home in one of the trucks on Wednesday, or by bus on Thursday. He brought along pencils, pens, crayons, and other items he had astutely promised the commander to bring (from civilian work – he didn’t buy them of course) and now was a fortuitous time to deliver them. What a professional!
He ‘rested’ that evening by buying at the canteen five bags of nuts, three of assorted candies, three of cheese bites, two of potato chips, and some candy bars. The rest of the evening was spent in intelligence gathering: what time exactly were the four trucks scheduled to leave – at four, five, or six –there were different rumors. A couple of hours later, he was able to pinpoint the time – four o’clock. Armed with this information, he went to see the company commander. He received a pass, probably written on one of his gift pens. “You can go the following day,” he told me after he came out of the commander’s office. Fair enough – he got to leave a day earlier, but then he had done all the work. I was a beneficiary.
Perhaps to console me (although I was quite satisfied since receiving passes two weeks in a row was rare), my guide told me that the other reservists who had come to Sinai had been working hard all hours of the day and night driving. He had made it a point to check on this.
We were scheduled to move with the others to a location further away in order to set up a field camp. My adviser was not pleased with this prospect: it meant work. However, he did not appear unduly worried. “I am taking part in a little card game this evening,” he said.
“With some Romanians?” I asked.
He winked back.
The next morning he informed me that he had won only two hundred pounds. And one other thing: he was remaining here on the base. With the Romanians, I thought.
The next weekend, as reward for a number of days of hard work which included erecting tents, I received a pass home. In Tel Aviv, at the stop for the return bus to base who greeted me warmly? My Romanian Virgil. He, too, had received a pass home. I congratulated him somewhat begrudgingly. “Not only that,” he replied blithely, “but I flew home. One-half hour instead of four by bus.”
“How did you manage that?” I asked, by now not overly surprised.
“There is this Romanian chap . . .” I shut my ears.
The next time we met was at the base upon completion of our duty tour.
“One more bus trip and home,” I said to him.
“Bus trip?” he said, raising his eyebrows in a disdainful manner. ”We will travel by plane.”
Though pleased by the “we,” I was skeptical. Such things happened to him, not to me.
At the airfield he ran around brandishing a document, cajoling ticket issuers, and otherwise seemingly making a nuisance of himself. He appeared to be having some difficulty. I was torn between secretly pleased at his inability to pull it off, and hoping he would succeed in order that we could fly home.
“We’ll go by bus,” I told him when he returned, as I assumed, in failure. “No we won’t,” he said, producing two tickets with the ease of a card shark flourishing two aces from his sleeve.
On the plane I sat back and relaxed, coffee in hand. At home my wife asked me how I got home so fast.
I winked. “I know this Romanian . . .”
_________
The prose, poetry, and humor of Larry Lefkowitz have been published in magazines, journals, anthologies, and online. More than 150 of his stories have been published.