David Grossman - A Horse Walks Into a Bar

Some people raise their glasses to him. A few couples enter noisily—the men clap as they walk—and sit down at a group of tables near the bar. They wave hello at him, and the women call out his name. He squints and waves back in a vague, nearsighted way. Over and over again he turns to look at my table in the back of the room. From the minute he got onstage he’s been seeking my eyes. But I can’t look straight at him. I dislike the air in here. I dislike the air he breathes.

“Any of you over fifty-seven?” A few hands go up. He surveys them and nods in awe. “I’m impressed, Netanya! That’s some bitchin’ life span you got yourselves here! I mean, it’s no easy feat to reach that age in a place like this, is it? Yoav, put the spotlight on the crowd so we can see. Lady, I said fifty-seven, not seventy-five…Wait up, guys, one at a time, there’s enough Dovaleh to go around. Yes, table four, what did you say? You’re turning fifty-seven, too? Fifty- eight ? Amazing! Deep! Ahead of your time! And when is that happening, did you say? Tomorrow? Happy birthday! What’s your name, sir? What’s that? Come again? Yor— Yorai ? Are you kidding me? Shit, man, your parents really shafted you, eh?”

The man named Yorai laughs heartily. His plump wife leans on him, caressing his bald head.

“The lady next to you, dude, the one marking her territory on you—is that Mrs. Yorai? Be strong, my brother. I mean, you were probably hoping ‘Yorai’ was the last blow, right? You were only three when you realized what your parents had done to you”—he walks slowly along the stage, playing an invisible violin—“sitting all alone in the corner of the nursery, munching on the raw onion Mom put in your lunch box, watching the other kids play together, and you told yourself: Buck up, Yorai, lightning doesn’t strike twice. Surprise! It did strike twice! Good evening to you, Mrs. Yorai! Tell me, honey, might you be interested in letting us in, just between friends, on what mischievous surprise you’re preparing for your husband’s special day? I mean, I look at you and I know exactly what’s going through your mind right now: ‘Because it’s your birthday, Yorai darling, I’ll say yes tonight, but don’t you dare do to me what you tried on July 10, 1986!’ ” The audience falls about, including the lady, who is convulsed, her face contorted with laughter. “Now tell me, Mrs. Yorai”—he lowers his voice to a whisper—“just between you and me, do you really think your necklaces and chains can hide all those chins? No, seriously, does it seem fair to you, in these days of national austerity, when plenty of young couples in Israel have to make do with one chin”—he strokes his own receding chin, which at times gives him the appearance of a frightened rodent—“and you’re just coasting along happily with two—no, wait: three! Lady, the skin of that goiter alone is enough for a whole new row of tents down at Occupy Tel Aviv!”

A few scattered laughs. The lady’s grin is stretched thin over her teeth.

“And by the way, Netanya, since we’re on the topic of my theory of economics, I would like to note at this point and for the avoidance of doubt that I am all for a comprehensive reform of the capital market.” He stops, breathless, puts his hands on his hips, and snorts. “I’m a genius, I’m telling you, words come out of my mouth that even I don’t understand. Listen up, I’ve been convinced for at least the past ten minutes that taxation should be calculated solely according to the payer’s weight—a flesh tax!” Another glance in my direction, a lingering look, almost alarmed, trying to extricate from within me the gaunt boy he remembers. “What could be more just than that, I ask you? It’s the most reasonable thing in the world!” He lifts his shirt up again, this time rolling it slowly, seductively, exposing us to a sunken belly with a horizontal scar, a narrow chest, and frighteningly prominent ribs, the taut skin shriveled and dotted with ulcers. “It could go by chins, like we said, but as far as I’m concerned, we could have tax brackets.” His shirt is still hiked up. Some people stare reluctantly, others turn away and let out soft whistles. He considers the responses with bare, ravenous fervor. “I demand a progressive flesh tax! Assessments shall be based on spare tires, potbellies, asses, thighs, cellulite, man boobs, and that bit that dangles up here on women’s arms! The good thing about my method is there’s no finagling and no misinterpreting: you gain the weight, you pay the rate!” He finally lets his shirt drop. “But seriously, for the life of me I cannot understand what’s up with taking taxes from people who make money. Where’s the logic in that? Listen, Netanya, and listen closely: taxes should only be levied on people who the state has reasonable cause to believe are happy. People who smile to themselves, people who are young, healthy, optimistic, who whistle in the daytime, who get laid at night. Those are the only shitheads who should be paying taxes, and they should be stripped of everything they own!”

Most of the audience claps supportively, but a few, mostly the younger people, round their lips and boo. He wipes the sweat off his forehead and cheeks with a huge red circus-clown handkerchief and lets the two groups bicker among themselves for a while, to everyone’s delight. Meanwhile, he gets his breath back, shades his eyes, and looks for me again, insisting on my eyes. Here it is now—a shared flicker that no one but the two of us, I hope, can detect. You came, his look says. Look what time has done to us, here I am before you, show me no mercy.

He quickly turns away and puts his hand up to quiet the audience. “What? I couldn’t hear you. Speak up, table nine! Yes, but first I just want you to explain how you people do that, because I’ve never been able to figure it out. What do you mean, do what? That thing where you join your eyebrows together! No, honestly, tell us, do you sew one to the other? Do they teach you how to do it at your ethnic boot camp?” He pauses for an instant, then barrels ahead: “Talking about browbeating, my father was a hard-line Revisionist. He idolized Jabotinsky—respect!” A few vigorous, defiant rounds of applause come from some tables, and he waves his hand dismissively. “Okay, table nine, talk to me. Don’t hold back, it’s on me. What? No, I wasn’t joking, Gargamel, it really is my birthday. Exactly at this minute, more or less, in the old Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, my mother, Sarah Greenstein, went into labor! Unbelievable, isn’t it? A woman who claimed to want only the best for me, and yet she gave birth to me! I mean, think about how many trials and prisons and investigations and crime series there are because of murder, but I’ve yet to hear a single case involving birth! Nothing about premeditated birth, negligent birth, accidental birth, not even incitement to birth! And don’t forget we’re talking about a crime where the victim is a minor!” He fans air into his wide-open mouth as though he’s suffocating. “Is there a judge in the house? A lawyer?”

I withdraw into my seat. Don’t let his gaze take hold of me. Luckily for me, three young couples sitting nearby signal to him. Turns out they’re law students from one of those new colleges. “Get out!” he screams in a terrible bellow and waves his arms and kicks his legs, and the audience showers them with whistles and boos. “The angel of death”—he laughs breathlessly—“appears before a lawyer and says his time has come. The lawyer starts crying and wailing: ‘But I’m only forty!’ Angel of death says, ‘Not according to your billable hours!’ ” A quick punch, a complete spin around. The students laugh even harder than the others.