David Grossman - A Horse Walks Into a Bar

His face looks like someone is wringing it out with an iron hand. “And to tell you the truth? Up until that moment I didn’t even know what a son of a thousand bitches I was. I didn’t realize what kind of filth I had inside me until I became nothing but filth from top to bottom, and I learned what a person is and what he’s worth. In a few minutes I grasped it all, I got it, I calculated it, my brain did the whole calculation in half a second—plus this, minus that, another minus, one more, and that’s it, it’s for life, and it doesn’t come off and it won’t ever come off.”

His hands grip and twist each other. In the prevailing silence, I force myself to try and remember, or at least guess, where I was in those moments, at four o’clock in the afternoon, just as the military vehicle pulled up to the cemetery. Maybe I was coming back from the shooting range with the platoon. Or maybe we were practicing formations on the parade court. I need to understand what happened earlier that day, in the late-morning hours, when I saw him come back from the tent with the backpack, then follow the drill sergeant to the truck. Why didn’t I get up and run to him? I should have run over to him, walked him to the truck, asked what happened. I was his friend, wasn’t I?

“The driver flies, his whole body’s pressing the wheel. Pale as a ghost. People in the cars next to us look at me. People on the street look. I could tell they all knew exactly where we were going and what was going through my heart. How did they know? I didn’t know it myself yet, certainly not everything, because all that time I still kept doing my accounting, and every few seconds I’d remember another thing and another thing and I’d add it to my fucking list, my selektzia, right, left, left, left…”

He chuckles apologetically. Halts his head jerks with his hand.

“For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how all these people on the street knew what I’d decided before I myself knew, and how they knew what a shit I was. I remember one old guy spat on the sidewalk when we drove past him, and a religious guy with sidelocks literally ran away from me when the driver stopped to ask him how to get to Givat Shaul. And a woman walking with her little boy turned his head away from me. It was all signs.

“And I remember that the driver, all the way to the cemetery, didn’t look me in the eye or even turn his face halfway to me. His sister had all but disappeared. I couldn’t hear her breathing. The baby, too. And it was because of the baby being so quiet that I starting wondering what was going on, what had I done, and why was everyone being like that?

“ ’Cause I realized something bad had happened on the last leg of the drive, from home to here, or maybe even from the minute I’d left Be’er Ora. But what? What had happened? And what did everyone want from me? I mean, it was just thoughts, just flies buzzing around my brain, and nothing could happen from thoughts, no one can control their thoughts, you can’t stop your brain, or tell it to think only this or only that. Right?”

The room is quiet. He doesn’t look up at us.

As if he is still afraid of the answer.

“And I couldn’t understand it, I just couldn’t, but I didn’t have anyone to ask. I was alone. And all that stuff made a new thought settle down in my head: This must be it. It must have already happened. I’ve already given the verdict.”

He stretches his arms up, then down, then out to the sides, searching for a way to breathe. He doesn’t look at me, but I can feel that now, perhaps more than at any other moment this evening, he is asking me to see him.

“And the thing is, I didn’t know how it got that way at all. I couldn’t pinpoint where it had happened that I’d decided. I quickly tried to reverse what I thought, I swear I did, honestly, and anyway, what the fuck? Why the hell did I end up deciding that way? The whole time I’d had something completely different in my mind, my whole life I’d had something different, but then without even thinking—who the hell gives these things a second thought?” His voice cracks into a panicked scream. “And now this, all of a sudden? Why did I flip-flop at the last minute and decide the most opposite from what I really wanted? How could a whole lifetime flip over on me in one second just because of the stupid, random thoughts of a stupid kid…”

He plunges into the armchair.

“Those few moments,” he murmurs, “and the whole drive, and the whole fucking accounting…” He turns his hands over slowly and examines his palms with a curiosity that embodies a lifetime. “Such dirt on me, such pollution…God, all the way to my bones…”

—

If I’d only stood up and run to him before he got into the truck and left. Even though it was in the middle of a lesson. Even though the sergeant was with him and would probably have yelled at me. Even though I have no doubt—and I guess I didn’t have any then either—that everyone would have made fun of me for the rest of the camp. They’d have made me their punching bag. Instead of him.

—

He holds his head in his hands, pressing his temples. I don’t know what he’s thinking about now, but I pick myself up from the sandy quad and run to him. I can vividly remember the route. The path lined with whitewashed stones. The parade lot with the flag. The big army tents. The barracks. The sergeant shouting at me, threatening. I ignore him. I get to Dovaleh and walk beside him. He notices me and keeps walking, crushed under the weight of the backpack. He looks stunned. I reach out and touch his shoulder, and he stops and stares at me. Maybe he’s trying to figure out what I want from him after everything that happened. What’s the status between us now? I ask him: What happened? Where are they taking you? He shrugs his shoulders and looks at the drill sergeant and asks him what happened. And the drill sergeant answers him.

And if he doesn’t answer, I ask Dovaleh again.

And he asks the drill sergeant.

And we do that until he answers.

—

“Sometimes I think the filth of that reckoning hasn’t worked itself out of my blood to this day. And it can’t. How could it? That kind of filth…” He searches for the right word, his fingers milking it out of the air: “It’s radioactive. Yeah. My own private Chernobyl. A single moment that lasts a lifetime, still poisoning anything I come close to, to this day. Every person I touch.”

The club is silent.

“Or marry. Or give birth to.”

I turn and glance at the girl who was about to leave but stayed. She is weeping into her hands. Her shoulders shake.

“Go on,” whispers a large woman with a mane of curls.

He stares out hazily in the direction of the voice, nodding wearily. Only now do I realize something invaluable: he has not given a single hint, this entire evening, that I was there with him at the camp. He hasn’t turned me in.

“What more is there to tell. We got to Givat Shaul, and that place is a conveyor belt, a factory, three funerals an hour, bam-bam-bam, how you gonna find the right one? We parked on the sidewalk, left the sister and her baby in the pickup, and me and the driver took off in a mad rush all over the place.

“And don’t forget it’s my first funeral. I didn’t even know where to look or what to look for or where the person who died is supposed to be, where’s he gonna come from suddenly, and whether you can see him or if he’s covered. I saw people standing around in groups, each group in a different area, and I didn’t know what they were waiting for or who was in charge or what we were supposed to do.

“Then I saw this Bulgarian redhead, and I knew he worked with Dad, he supplied lotions and shampoos, and next to him was a woman who worked at Taas, a shift manager who Mom was dead scared of, and a little behind them I saw Silviu, Dad’s partner, with a bunch of flowers in his hand.