David Grossman - A Horse Walks Into a Bar

Perhaps fifteen times or more, his head jerks left like a stuck hand on a clock. A rustle of grumbles and protests comes from the audience. People shift in their seats and exchange looks. But there are also hesitant chuckles, especially from the younger crowd. The two bikers are the only ones who allow themselves to laugh out loud. Their nose rings and lip rings glimmer. The woman at the table next to me throws them a look and gets up and walks out with a loud sigh. People stare at her. Her helpless husband stays seated for a moment, then hurries after her.

Dovaleh walks over to a little blackboard on a wooden easel at the back of the stage, which I haven’t noticed until now. He picks up a piece of red chalk and draws a straight line, and next to it another line, shorter and bent. Giggles and whispers from the audience.

“Imagine a Dovaleh that looks like this: kind of dumb, face just asking to be slapped, glasses this thick, shorts with a belt that comes up somewhere around the nipples—my dad used to buy them four sizes too big for me; he had high hopes. Now turn all that upside down and stand it on its hands. Yeah? Got it? See the trick?” He stops to consider for a moment, then throws himself to the ground, hands reaching out to the wooden floor. His lower body falters as he tries to hoist himself up. His legs flutter and he falls onto one side, cheek flattened against the boards.

“Everywhere I went, that’s how I was. On my way to school with my backpack dangling in front, and inside the house, in the hallway, from the bedroom to the kitchen, back and forth a thousand times, until Dad got home. And in the neighborhood, through the yards, down the steps and up the steps, easy peasy, fall down, get up again, jump onto my hands again.” He keeps on talking. It’s disturbing to see him like that, sprawled there motionless, only the mouth alive, open, moving. “I don’t know where I got it from. Actually I do know, I was putting on a play for my mother, that’s where it started. I used to perform these sketches for her in the evening, before Figaro got home and we’d get all respectable. One day, I don’t know, I just put my hands on the floor, threw my legs up, fell over once, fell over twice, Mom clapped her hands, thought I was doing it to make her laugh, maybe I was, I spent my whole life trying to make her laugh.” He stops. Shuts his eyes. All at once he is just a body. Lifeless. I believe I hear another desperate murmur pass through the room: What is going on here?

He gets up. Quietly gathers his body parts from the floor one after the other—arm, leg, head, hand, buttocks—like someone picking up scattered articles of clothing. A quiet laugh seeps into the audience, a kind I haven’t heard yet tonight. A soft laugh of wonder at his precision, his subtlety, his theatrical wisdom.

“I could tell my mom was enjoying it, so I threw my legs up again, swayed, fell down, threw them up again, and she laughed. I actually heard her laugh. So I tried again and again, until I found my spot and my head got right. And I got calm, I got happy. All I could hear was the blood in my ears, and then quiet, all the noise stopped, and I felt like I’d finally found one place in the air of the world where there was no one except me.”

He snickers awkwardly, and I remember what he asked me to see in him: the thing that comes out of a person against his will. The thing that only one person in the world might have.

“More?” he asks, almost shyly.

“How ’bout a joke or two, dude?” someone calls out, and another man grunts: “We came to hear jokes!” A woman shouts back at them: “Can’t you see he’s the joke today?” She rakes in a whole avalanche of laughs.

“And I had no problem balancing,” he goes on, but I can see that he’s hurt, his lips turn white. “In fact, I’d always felt a little shaky when I was the regular way, on my feet, almost like I was falling, and I was scared the whole time. There was this beautiful tradition in our neighborhood: Hit the Dovaleh. Nothing serious, here a slap, there a kick, a little punch in the stomach. It wasn’t malicious, just, you know, technical, the way you stamp a time card. Have you hit your Dovaleh yet today? ”

A sharp look at the woman who made fun of him. The audience laughs. I don’t. I saw it happen in Be’er Ora, at the Gadna camp, for four whole days.

“But when I was on my hands, you know, no one beats up a kid walking upside down. That’s a fact. Let’s say you want to slap an upside-down kid—well, how are you gonna get to his face? I mean, you’re not gonna bend all the way down to the ground and slap him, right? Or say you wanna kick him. Where exactly would you do that? Where are his balls now anyway? Confusing, eh? Illusory! And maybe you even start to be a little afraid of him. Yeah, ’cause an upside-down kid is no joke. Sometimes”—he sneaks a look at the medium—“you even think he’s a crazy kid. Mom, Mom, look, a boy walking on his hands! Shut up and look at the man slitting his wrists! Ouch…” He sighs. “I was a total nutcase. You can ask her what a joke I was around the neighborhood.” He jerks his thumb in her direction without looking at her. She is listening as though weighing every word, and she keeps shaking her head firmly: no.

“Jesus, how much more…” He throws his hands up and looks at me, for some reason, and again I think he is holding me responsible for her presence here, as though I had intentionally summoned a hostile witness.

“She’s getting under my skin,” he says to himself out loud. “I can’t do this, she’s messing up my pacing, I’m trying to construct a story and this woman…” He massages his chest, hard. “You guys listen to me, not to her, okay? I really was screwed up, I didn’t know how to play the game, not any game. What are you shaking your head at, little lady? Did you know me better than I knew myself?” He’s getting irritated now.

This is no longer a show. There is something here, and the audience is drawn to it, although anxiously, and apparently people are willing to give up on what they came here for, at least for a few minutes. I try to overcome the paralysis that grips me again. I try to wake myself up, to prepare for what is coming. I have no doubt that it’s coming.

“Here’s an example. Some guy comes up to my dad one day and tells him I was doing this or doing that and I was walking on my hands. Someone saw me on the street walking upside down behind my mom. And just so you understand—parentheses—ours truly’s job was to wait for her at five-thirty at the bus stop when she got back from her shift and walk her home and make sure she didn’t get lost, didn’t end up in places, didn’t sneak into castles and dine at kings’ feasts…just pretend you understand. Good city, Netanya.” The crowd laughs, and I remember the “senior official” and the way he kept glancing nervously at the Doxa on his thin wrist.

“And there was another bonus, which was that when I walked on my hands no one noticed her, see? She could walk around all day long with her face on the ground and the schmatte on her head and the rubber boots, and now suddenly no one looks at her all crooked like she always thinks they do, and the neighbors don’t say things about her, and men don’t peek at her from behind shutters—they’re all just looking at me all the time and she gets a free pass.” He talks fast and hard, determined to thwart any attempt to stop him, and the audience rustles, responding physically to the invisible tug-of-war between them and him.

“But then Old Daddy Shatterhand gets wind of me walking around upside down and doesn’t think twice before beating the crap out of me, along with all his regular talk about how I’m an embarrassment to his name, how because of me people make fun of him behind his back, how they don’t respect him, and if he hears I’m doing it again he’ll break my hands, and for good measure he’ll hang me upside down from the chandelier. When he got angry, Daddy-o, he’d get all poetic on my ass, and the real kicker was the combination of poetic imagery with the look in his eyes. Seriously, you’ve never seen anything like it.” He snickers; the snicker does not work out well. “Picture black marbles. Got that? Little black marbles except they’re made of iron. Something was wrong with those eyes, they were too close together, too round. I’m telling you, you look into those eyes for two seconds and you feel like a little animal is flipping the whole evolution thing over on you.”