David Grossman - A Horse Walks Into a Bar

“I told the driver that was it and he stood still, gave me some distance, said something like ‘Be tough, kid.’ And the truth is, it was hard for me to leave him. I don’t even know his name. If he happens to be here tonight, could he raise his hand? He’ll get a free drink on the house, eh?”

Judging by his strained, stubborn look, he seems to honestly believe it’s a possibility.

“Where are you?” He snorts. “Where are you, my righteous comic brother, who told me jokes the whole way and lied about the joke contest? I looked into it a while ago. I’m doing some housecleaning, you know, tying up loose ends. I asked around, made some inquiries, I googled, I looked through old issues of Bamahaneh, but there was no such thing, ever, no joke contest in the army, he just made it up for me, that sneaky Jokerman. Wanted to soften the blow a little. Where are you, my good man?

“Now stay with me, don’t let go of my hand for a second. The driver went back to the pickup, and I walked over to the people standing around. I remember walking slowly, like I was stepping on broken glass, but my eyes raced around like crazy. There’s a neighbor from our building, the lady who always fights with us ’cause all the rags we hang out to dry drip on her laundry, and now she’s here. And there’s the doctor who does cupping on Dad when he has high blood pressure, and there’s the woman from Mom’s shtetl who brings her books in Polish, and there’s that guy, and there’s that other woman.

“There were maybe twenty of them. I didn’t know we knew so many people. Hardly anyone spoke to us around the neighborhood. Maybe they were from the barbershop? I don’t know. I didn’t go near them. I couldn’t see him or her. Then a few people caught sight of me and they pointed and whispered. I let the backpack slide off my body. I didn’t have the strength to carry anything anymore.”

He hugs his body.

“Suddenly a tall guy with a black-broom beard from Chevra Kadisha comes over to me and says, ‘Are you the orphan? Are you the Greenstein orphan? Where were you? We’ve been waiting for you!’ He grabs my hand, hard, like he wants to strangle it, and pulls me with him. As we walk, he sticks a cardboard yarmulke on my head—”

Dovaleh locks onto me now with his eyes. I give him everything I have and everything I don’t have.

“He rushed me to this stone building, took me inside. I didn’t look. I shut my eyes. I thought maybe Mom or Dad would be there, waiting. Thought I’d hear my name. In her voice or his. But I didn’t hear anything. I opened my eyes. They weren’t there. Just a big religious guy with his sleeves rolled up rushing along the side of the room carrying a shovel. The one with the beard dragged me across the room and through another door. I was in a smaller room now, with big sinks on one side, and a bucket and some towels or wet sheets. There was a long sort of trolley with a bundle laid on it, wrapped in white fabric, and then I realized that was it: there was a person in there. The guy says to me: ‘Ask for forgiveness.’ But I—”

Dovaleh drops his head to his chest, hugging himself tightly.

“I didn’t move. So he poked his finger into my shoulder from behind: ‘Ask for forgiveness.’ I said, ‘Ask who?’ And I didn’t look in that direction, except that suddenly I got a thought in my head that it actually wasn’t a very long bundle, so maybe it wasn’t her—it wasn’t her! Maybe I was just scared, my mind playing tricks on me. And then I felt happier than I’ve ever felt in my life, before or since. It was a wild happiness, like I myself had been saved from death. He shoved me on the shoulder again: ‘Go on, ask for forgiveness.’ So I asked again: ‘But from who?’ And then the penny dropped and he stopped prodding me and asked, ‘Don’t you know?’ I said I didn’t. And he panicked: ‘They didn’t tell you?’ Again I said no. He crouched down to my level, and I saw his eyes opposite mine, and he said, quietly and gently, ‘But this is your mother here.’

“And then what do I remember? I remember…I do, I wish I didn’t remember so much, maybe there’d be space left in my mind for other things. The Chevra Kadisha guy quickly takes me back to the big room, and the people I’d seen outside were gathered in the room now, and when I walked inside the crowd parted, and I saw my father leaning on his partner’s shoulder, he could barely stand on his own feet, he hung like a baby on Silviu and didn’t even see me. And I thought…what did I think…”

He takes a deep breath. Far deeper than the depth of his body.

“I thought I should go up and hug him. But I couldn’t go, and I definitely couldn’t look in his eyes. People behind me said, ‘Go on, go to Dad, go on already, kaddishel, you have to say the prayers,’ and Silviu whispered to him that I was there, and he looked up and his eyes opened wide like he’d seen the Messiah. He let go of Silviu and wobbled over to me with his arms open and he shouted and cried out her name and my name together. He looked suddenly old, wailing in Yiddish in front of everyone about how it was just the two of us now, and how could such a catastrophe have befallen us, and why did we deserve it, we never hurt anyone. I didn’t move, I didn’t take a step toward him. I just looked at his face and thought what an idiot he was for not understanding that it could have been the complete opposite—one single millimeter this way or that and it could have been the opposite. And I thought: If he hugs me now or even just touches me I’ll hit him, I’ll kill him, I can do it, I’m all-powerful, everything I say comes true. And the second I had that thought, my body flipped me upside down. Flung me up, threw me on my hands, the yarmulke fell off, and I heard everyone breathing and it went quiet.

“I started running away, and he ran after me, and he still didn’t understand and he shouted in Yiddish for me to stop, to come back, but it was all upside down with me, I made everything upside down. I could see from the bottom how all the people made way when I walked through them, and I left the room and no one had the guts to stop me. He ran after me and yelled and cried, until he stopped in the doorway. I stopped, too, in the parking lot, and we stood there looking at each other, me this way and him the other way, and then I saw for real that he wasn’t worth anything without her, and that all his power in life came from her being with him. He turned into half a human in that one instant.

“He looked at me, I saw his eyes slowly get closer together, and I had the clear sense that he was beginning to understand. I don’t know how, but he had animal instincts about that kind of thing. You’ll never convince me he didn’t. In that one second, he grasped everything I’d done on the way, my whole lousy accounting. He read it all on my face in one second. He held both hands up, and I think—no, I’m sure—he cursed me. Because what came out of his mouth was a shout I’ve never heard come out of a human being. It sounded like I’d killed him. And I fell down that very minute. My hands buckled and I flattened on the asphalt.

“People in the parking lot looked at us. I don’t know what he said to me, what the curse was, maybe it was all in my head, but I saw his face and I could feel it was one hell of a curse, and at that point I still didn’t know it would hold up my whole life, but that’s how it was, everywhere I went, anywhere I ran.

“Listen to this: that was the first time it went through my mind that maybe I hadn’t understood anything, and that he really was prepared to lie on that gurney in her place. When it came to her, he didn’t do any accounting. He really did love her.”

His body goes limp. “Well, of course…,” he murmurs and fades away for a long minute.