David Grossman: A Horse Walks Into a Bar

The audience is swept along with him.

“Really, you tell me, Netanya—don’t you think it’s insane what goes through people’s minds when they put up notices about their lost pets? LOST: GOLDEN HAMSTER WITH A LIMP IN ONE LEG, SUFFERS FROM CATARACTS, GLUTEN SENSITIVITY, AND ALMOND-MILK ALLERGY. Helloooo! What is your problem? I’ll tell you right now where he is without even looking: your hamster’s at the nursing home!”

The crowd laughs heartily and relaxes a little, sensing that somewhere out there a dangerous wrong turn has been righted.

—

“I want you to come to my show,” he said on the phone, after finally breaking into my stubborn memory. We dredged up a few surprisingly pleasant recollections from our twice-weekly walks from Bayit va-Gan to the bus that took me home to Talpiot. He talked about those walks with great enthusiasm: “It was a real friendship we started there,” he said a couple of times and giggled with bemused happiness. “We’d walk and talk for ages. Walkie-talkie friendship,” he continued, reminiscing in minute detail, as though that brief attachment were the best thing that had ever happened to him.

I listened patiently and waited to find out exactly what he wanted me to do, so that I could refuse without offending him too much and get him back out of my life.

“What kind of show is it you want me to see?” I cut in when he paused for a breath.

“Well, basically…,” he spluttered, “I do stand-up.”

“Oh, that’s not for me,” I said, relieved.

“So you know stand-up?” He laughed. “I guess I didn’t think you’d ever…Have you ever seen a show?”

“Every so often, on TV. Don’t take it personally, but it’s really not something I relate to.” All at once I broke free of the paralysis that had beset me the moment I answered the phone. If there was any mystery in his overture, any vague promise—to renew an old friendship, for example—it now dissipated: stand-up comedy. “Listen,” I said, “I’m not your demographic. All that kidding around, the jokes, the performing, it’s not for me, not at my age. I’m sorry.”

He spoke slowly. “Okay, you’ve certainly made yourself clear. No one could accuse you of being ambiguous.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said, and the dog pricked up her ears and gave me a worried look. “I’m sure there are lots of people who enjoy that type of entertainment, I’m not judging anyone, to each his own…”

I must have said a few more things of that ilk. I don’t remember it all, fortunately. I have nothing to say in my defense, except that from the very beginning I’d had the feeling—perhaps a dim memory—that this man resembled a skeleton key (that childhood phrase suddenly came back to me), and that I had to be very careful.

But of course even that could not justify my attack. Because all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I came down on him as though he represented the flippancy of the entire human race in all its guises. “And the fact that for guys like you,” I seethed, “everything is just fodder for jokes, every single thing and every single person, anything goes, why not, as long as you have a modicum of improvisational talent and you’re a quick thinker, then you can make a joke or a parody or a caricature out of anything—illness, death, war, it’s all fair game, hey?”

There was a long silence. The blood slowly drained from my head, leaving a cold feeling in my brain. And astonishment at myself, at what I had turned into.

I heard him breathe. I felt Tamara shrinking inside me. You’re full of anger, she said. I’m full of yearning, I thought. Can’t you see? I have a toxic case of yearning.

“On the other hand,” he murmured in a wizened, gloomy voice that I found crushing, “the truth is I’m not as excited about stand-up as I used to be. I was once, yes, it used to be like tightrope walking for me. At any minute you could crash and burn in front of the whole audience. You miss the point by a hairsbreadth, you put a word in at the wrong part of a line, your voice gets a little higher instead of lower—the crowd goes cold on you right then and there. But a second later you touch them the right way and they spread their legs.”

The dog drank some water. Her long ears touched the floor on either side of the dish. She has big bald patches all over her body and she’s almost blind. The vet wants me to put her down. He’s thirty-one. I imagine that in his view I’m also a candidate for euthanasia. I put my feet up on a chair and tried to calm down. Three years ago, because of these outbursts, I lost my job. And it occurs to me: Who knows what I’ve lost now?

“On the other other hand,” he went on, and only then did I realize how long the silence had lasted, each of us lost in his own thoughts, “when you do stand-up you sometimes make people laugh, and that’s no small thing.”

He said the last few words softly, as if to himself, and I thought: He’s right, that is no small thing. It’s a big thing. Take me, for example: I can barely remember the sound of my own laughter. I almost asked him if we could start the whole conversation over from scratch, like two human beings this time, so that I could at least explain how I was able to forget him, how an aversion to remembering one enormous painful memory can slowly dull and blot out huge parts of the past.

“What do I want from you?” He took a deep breath. “Well, to tell you the truth, I’m not even sure it’s relevant anymore.”

“I understand you want me to come to your show.”

“Yes.”

“But what for? Why do you need me there?”

“Look, that’s the tricky part…I don’t even know how to say…It sounds weird to ask this of someone.” He chuckled. “Bottom line, I’ve thought about this a lot, I’ve been chewing it over for a long time, and I couldn’t decide, I wasn’t sure, but I finally realized you’re the only person I can ask.”

There was something new in his voice. He sounded almost pleading. The desperation of a final request. I took my feet off the chair.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“I want you to look at me,” he spurted. “I want you to see me, really see me, and then afterward tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“What you saw.”

—

“Listen up, Netanya baby! We’re gonna throw down the mother of all shows tonight! Yours truly facing hundreds of bra-tossing fans! Yeah, open up that hook, table ten, set ’em free…there you go! I think we heard a two-cannon salute there, right?!”

The crowd laughs, but it’s a short, flat laugh. The young people laugh slightly longer, and the man onstage is displeased. His hand circles in front of his face as if seeking out the spot that will hurt most. People watch the hand, fascinated, as the fingers spread apart and ripple back together. This makes no sense, I think. This doesn’t happen, people don’t just hit themselves like that.

“Putz,” he says hoarsely, and it seems as though the hand is the one whispering. “ Putz! They didn’t laugh properly again! How are you going to get through this night?” He flashes a frozen smile from behind the bars of his fingers. “These aren’t the laughs you used to get,” he says with contemplative sadness, chatting to himself as we listen in. “Maybe you’re in the wrong line of work, Dovaleh, maybe it’s time to step down.” He drones on with a matter-of-fact calmness that is ghastly. “Yep, get out of the business, hang up your boots, and—while you’re at it—yourself. But what do you say, should we try the parrot? One last chance?” He moves his hand away from his face but leaves it hovering in the air. “So this guy had a parrot that wouldn’t stop cursing. From the minute he opened his eyes till he went to sleep he cursed the most vulgar, disgusting cusses you can think of. And the guy was this terribly cultured, educated, polite gentleman…”