David Grossman - A Horse Walks Into a Bar

“Okay, you’re right, you’re right!” He holds up his hands in surrender and laughs with nothing but affection and grace. “And why think about all that stuff anyway? There’s loads of time until that happens, and Yoav is absolutely right—no politics! It’s not gonna happen until our kids are grown up anyway, so it’s their problem. And who told them to stick around here eating up what we shit out? So why get annoyed about it now? Why all the fighting and arguing and civil warring? Why think about it? Why think at all? Hands together for not thinking! ” Pale green tendons bulge on his neck as he cheers. “Hey, Yoavi! Why not give us some more light so we can see what’s going on here? Flood it! Yeah, flood the room…Hey there, honeys, so nice of you to drop by! I gather Adi Ashkenazi’s gig was sold out, eh? Listen, are you hot? How can you not be hot? Look at me dripping all over the place up here.” He sniffs his armpit and inhales deeply. “ Ahhhh! Where are the musk traders when you need them? Turn the AC up, dude! Waste some money on us for once! It’s on me! Where were we?”

He is agitated and unfocused. The hurricane of incitement doesn’t seem to have helped him overcome what that tiny little woman did to him. I can sense it. The crowd can sense it.

“We covered the bug in the wand… Biladi biladi …Our screwed kids…Would the stenographer please repeat the last few sentences…” He zigzags across the stage and slips a troubled look at the little woman sitting with her head down. His face stretches into a toxic jeer. I’m beginning to identify the expression. A flash of internal violence. Or perhaps outward violence deeply buried.

“A nice boy, eh? A good boy …,” he murmurs, and his face twists as if his heart were being trampled. “You’re a riot, I swear! Where’d I come up with you? Is this what I get for my birthday, a soothsayer? What’s up with you, Netanya? You couldn’t bring a bottle of Dom Pérignon? You had to go all original on my ass? I mean, think about it, performers of my caliber around the world, they get a hot naked chick jumping out of a cake, you know? This one could maybe jump out of an Oreo! Just kidding, don’t make that face, come on, dolly, it’s all in good humor, don’t cry, no…Oh, come on…No, sweetie…”

She’s not crying. Her face is contorted in pain, but she doesn’t cry. He stares at her, and his face unknowingly reflects hers. He goes over to the armchair and sits down. He looks exhausted, defeated. Someone carps: “Let’s go, wake up!” A thin man in a blue tracksuit calls out, “Come on, let’s get this show on the road! Are you gonna do group therapy with her now?” That gets a lot of laughs. People start to rouse, as if from a strange dream. A woman sitting at a table near the bar calls out: “Why don’t you have a swig of milk?” Her friends clap, and from a few tables around the room come bursts of laughter and calls of encouragement. Dovaleh pricks up one finger, feels around behind the armchair, and pulls out a big red flask. Some members of the audience are already laughing delightedly, and I try to understand these people who come to his shows for the second or third time: What is he giving them?

So utterly threadbare—what is it that he has to give?

Maybe it’s a good thing I stayed, I think with a strange tingle of excitement. It’s a good thing I stayed to see this after all.

He waves the flask around. In big black handwritten letters, in English, it says: MILK. The audience cheers. He slowly opens the lid, takes a sip, licks his lips greedily, and grins: “Ah…The taste of yesteryear, as the whore said when she sucked off the old man.” He drinks again, quickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Then he puts the flask on the floor between his feet and sits on the armchair awhile longer. He gives the little lady a long look and shakes his head, looking baffled. He leans forward with his whole upper body, drops his head to his knees and his arms alongside his legs. You can hardly detect the movement of his body breathing.

The room is very quiet again; the air suddenly feels dense. The thought that he might never get up passes, I think, through everyone’s mind. As though each of us feels that somewhere out there, in some distant and capricious courtroom, a coin has been flipped that could come down either way.

How did he do that? I wonder. How, in such a short time, did he manage to turn the audience, even me to some extent, into household members of his soul? And into its hostages?

He’s in no hurry to get up out of this strange position. On the contrary, he sinks deeper and deeper. The sparse braid falls over his skull now, which from this angle—with his body hunched over—looks incredibly tiny and old, much older than his age, almost shriveled.

I look around carefully, so as not to break a single thread. Most of the people are leaning forward, staring at him, transfixed. One of the young bikers slowly licks his lower lip. It’s practically the only movement I detect.

When he finally pulls his body out of the depths of the armchair and gets to his feet and straightens up and faces us, there is something new in his face.

“Wait, hold up, quiet! Stop everything and start over. Start the whole evening from scratch! It was all a mistake! Delete! Backspace! It’s not that you didn’t get it—you guys are awesome. It’s not you, it’s me. I didn’t get how big of a break I’ve been given. My God…” He holds his head in both hands. “You won’t believe what’s going to happen here tonight, Netanya! O Netanya, city of diamonds, you’re a lucky-ducky audience. You are going to be given a miracle here this evening. You’ve hit the jackpot!” He talks to the audience, but his eyes are stabbing at mine, trying to tell me something urgent, something too complicated for a look. “Yours truly has decided, after thorough consideration and in consultation with the Gato Negro generously diluted by the manager with tap water—more power to you, Yoav, my love—anyway, I’ve decided…What have I decided…Let’s see…I’m getting tongue-tied. Oh yeah: I’ve decided, as a personal token of my appreciation for you coming out to celebrate my birthday, even though a little bird whispered to me—the whisper, by the way, is because she lost her voice, bird flu—that you might have actually forgotten that it was my birth…”

He’s treading water. Distracting us while he digests a complicated idea that has come to him, planning his next move.

“But you came anyway, and because of that generosity, because you came out en masse to party with me, I have spontaneously decided to give you a little souvenir tonight, something from the heart. That’s the kind of guy I am. Generosity is my middle name. Dov Giving Greenstein, that’s what it’ll say on my tombstone. And underneath that: HERE LIES GREAT POTENTIAL. And a bit farther down: ’98 SUBARU AVAILABLE, MINT CONDITION. But between you and me, my friends, what do I have to give you? Money, as we’ve established, I have none of. Nothing but the shirt on my back—and I barely even have a back. And I have five kids, but I don’t have any of them, and my biggest achievement in life is that I produced a family that is large and united—against me. Bottom line, Netanya, you get it—I have nothing. But I’m still going to give you something that I’ve never given anyone else. Untarnished. A life story. Yeah, those are the best stories. I’m into this, I’m into this—what’s wrong, table six? What’s the panic, dude? It’s just a story, you won’t have to work your brain gland too hard, you won’t even notice you have one. It’s just words. Wind and chimes. In one ear, out the other.”

He looks at me again. His eyes drill into me urgently, pleadingly.