David Grossman: A Horse Walks Into a Bar

“ ‘Eat up,’ she says, sounding very pleased with herself. I put the cookie in my mouth and chew and I feel like throwing up. ‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?’ she asks.

“And by the way, we’ve long finished with the desert. There’s green fields now, and regular cars, civilian ones, not army ones. I try to guess by the road signs how much longer to Jerusalem, but I don’t know anything about all these intercity roads and I can’t even figure out if we have an hour left, or half an hour, or three hours, and I don’t want to ask. The sandwich and the egg keep repeating on me with the cookies.

“Let me tell you guys a joke,” Dovaleh begs now, as if to say: I need a joke urgently, just a little one to sweeten my mouth. But two women at two different tables shout almost in unison: “Keep telling the story.” They glance at each other awkwardly, and one gives her husband a sideways look. Dovaleh sighs, stretches, cracks his knuckles, takes a deep breath.

“And then the sister just throws out at me like it’s nothing: ‘And how are things for you with Dad? You get along, you two?’

“I remember my stomach turned over right then and there, and I just cut myself out of the place: I’m not here. I’m not anywhere. I’m not even allowed to be in any place. And you should know—open parentheses for a sec—that I have a thousand tricks for not being, I’m a world champion at not being, but all of a sudden I can’t remember a single one of my tricks. I’m not kidding you. When he used to hit me, I’d practice stopping my heartbeat. I could get it down to twenty or thirty a minute, like I was hibernating, that’s what I was aiming for, that was the dream. You’ll think this is funny, but I also practiced spreading the pain out from the place that got hit to the other parts of my body, so it would be evenly divided—you know, equitable distribution of resources. While he was hitting I would imagine a column of ants coming to take the pain from my face or my stomach, and within seconds the ants would crumble it apart and move the crumbs to parts of my body that are more indifferent to pain.”

He sways back and forth slightly, lost in himself. The light from above engulfs him in a misty veil. But then he opens his eyes and gives the little lady a long look, and then—he’s doing it again—he moves his gaze to me with that same measured gesture, passing a flame from one candle to another. I still don’t understand what he means by doing that, or what he’s asking me to take from that woman, but I feel that he needs a token of approval from me, and I confirm with my eyes that he and she and I are holding some triangle of thread here, which perhaps one day I will understand.

“But his sister is just like him. Won’t give up. ‘I couldn’t hear you,’ she says and puts her hand on my shoulder, ‘What was that?’ I grip the door handle hard. What the hell is she doing putting her hand on me? And what’s with all these questions? Maybe the driver does know something and he told her? My brain starts working overtime: How long was I actually asleep in the truck outside their house until they woke me? She had enough time to make the sandwiches and the hard-boiled eggs and the drinks, so maybe he stood next to her in the kitchen and told her everything? Even things I still don’t know? I feel nauseous again. If I open the door right here, I can roll over on the road, I’ll get a little banged up, but then I’ll run into the fields and they won’t find me until after the funeral, and then everything will be over and I won’t have to do anything, and anyway who said I have to do anything, and where did I get this idea that it’s all on me? ‘We’re okay,’ I tell her. ‘We get along, but it’s better with Mom.’

“Don’t ask me why those words came out. I never told anyone in the world what things were like in our home, not ever, not even kids in class, not even my best friends, they didn’t hear a word out of me, so what the hell am I doing pouring my heart out to a stranger? To a woman whose name I don’t even know? And anyway, what business of hers is it who I get along with and who I’m not so hot with? I feel awful. My eyes go dim. I start thinking—don’t laugh now—that maybe there was something in her cookies that makes you talk, like in a police interrogation, until you confess.”

Sleepwalking terror on his face: he’s there. All of him is there.

“And the driver says to her quietly, ‘Leave him alone, maybe he doesn’t wanna talk about that now.’ ‘Of course he does,’ she says. ‘What else do you think he can talk about at a time like this? About monkeys in Africa? About your lamebrain jokes? Isn’t that right, kid? Don’t you want to talk about it?’ She leans over and puts her hand on my shoulder again, and I smell something familiar, but I can’t place it, some kind of sweet perfume coming from her, or maybe it’s from the baby, and I breathe it in deeply, and I tell her yes.

“ ‘I told you,’ she says and tugs his ear hard, and he shouts ‘Ouch!’ and grabs his ear, and I remember thinking that, even though they fought a lot, you could tell they were siblings, and it sucked that I didn’t have any. And the other thing that’s in my head the whole time is that she knew her brother who died, the one the driver never knew. How can she manage to hold both of them in her mind?”

He pauses and looks at the little lady. She yawns repeatedly, rests her head on both hands, but her eyes are wide open and she watches him with intention and effort. He sits down at the edge of the stage with his legs dangling. The blood from his nose has congealed on his mouth and chin and painted two stripes on his shirt.

“I remember everything suddenly. That’s what’s amazing about this evening. I want you to know. You’ve done a great thing for me today by staying. I suddenly remember everything, and not in my sleep but like it’s happening right now, this minute. For example, I remember sitting in the truck thinking that until we get there I have to be like an animal that doesn’t understand anything about human life. A monkey or an ostrich or a fly, just as long as I don’t understand any human speech or behavior. And I mustn’t think. The most important thing now is to not think about anyone and not to want anything or anyone. Except that maybe I can think a few good things. But what would be considered a good thing now? Good for him? Good for her? I’m dead scared of making the tiniest mistake.”

With effort he manages a crooked smile. His upper lip is very swollen, and his speech is getting more and more slurred.

“Where was I…,” he murmurs. “Where was I…”

No one answers. He sighs and goes on.

“I suddenly got the idea of thinking about a soft-boiled egg. Don’t look at me like that. When I was little I couldn’t stand eating soft-boiled eggs, the runny stuff made me gag, and the two of them would get mad and say I had to eat it, that all the vitamins were in that part, and there was yelling and slapping. Where food was concerned, by the way, she had no qualms about hitting. In the end, when nothing else worked, they’d tell me that if I didn’t eat my egg they’d leave the house and never come back. But I still wouldn’t eat it. So they’d put their coats on and pick up the key and stand in the doorway saying goodbye. And scared as I was to be left alone, I still didn’t eat it. I don’t know where I got the guts to stand up to them, and I argued, too, playing for time, and I just wanted it to stay like that forever, with them standing next to each other and talking to me, both the same way…”

He smiles to himself. He seems to be shrinking, his legs swinging in the air.

“So this is what I’m thinking about the soft egg: that maybe it’s something I should see, just that, over and over and over again until we get there, like a movie with a happy ending. I happen to look in the rearview mirror and I see that his sister’s eyes are full of tears again. She’s sitting there crying quietly. And then it really all comes up at once—the salami, the cookies, everything. I yell at the driver to stop—now! I jump out and puke my guts out on the front tire. I vomit out everything she fed me and it doesn’t stop, there’s more and more. My mother always holds my head when I throw up. First time in my life I’m throwing up on my own.”