David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

This was a rude invasion of their privacy, and they turned to him with quiet dignity, their furry triangular heads merging first, then one behind the other, coolly studying him, till he bowed before the scepters in their eyes. And then they scampered away.

Aron chased after them, cutting across footpaths, jumping fences. Stop it, Aron, are you crazy, he panted; the cats aligned their backs in search of another refuge, and Aron practically stumbled over them into their honeysuckle hideaway. The two stared at him in sheer amazement, and Aron could imagine how he must appear to them. Then a look flashed between them, their ears twitched. An agreement had been reached. With a sudden shiver they leaped out into the street. Aron gave up the chase. What did he care about cats, a boy his age. See that, you’ve gone and torn your shirt. And suddenly he was bounding after them.

He followed them up Hechalutz Boulevard, and around the corner to Hagai Street, where they surprised him and scampered into the valley. He’d never seen cats in the valley before. Panting hard, he chased them, his face aflame, calling silently, Stop, stop; they were going too fast, and though he knew it was wrong to do what he was doing, he realizedhe couldn’t stop himself now. The cats paused a minute, okay, now turn around and go home, accept defeat, and again they took off with Aron after them, and he peeled himself off, layer by layer, and inside him there was something that ebbed and flowed and flooded his consciousness, but what did he care, Mutzi-Chaim used to nestle in the palm of his hand, and now look at her, strutting around with her tail in the air, to show off that pinkiness opening up, and the yellow tomcat pointed his ear at the little mouth. Hey, wait a minute, be fair, but they wouldn’t stop, they lagged behind just long enough for him to catch up and then sprang full speed ahead, past the campfire sites where the fourth-grade Scouts came for their initiations, past the soccer field, and the rock ledge, and the cave where he sometimes took a shit; he could barely see, could barely breathe, he scanned the twilight for their eyes, which flashed at him like yellow droplets, thick as resin, blinking out of the bushes, and suddenly he noticed they were no longer in front but flanking him, like a pair of jailors past the tiny sewage stream and into the junkyard, where he collapsed in a heap.

When Aron caught his breath again he saw that the cats had vanished in the dusk. He lay heaving on the ground in the wavy shadow of an ancient Tupolino. Last year he’d used this car for practice, but it was too easy, all four doors were a cinch to open, and he decided not to drag it across the valley, after all, to use in his act for the end-of-the-school-year party. He tried to prop himself up against the car door or the refrigerator next to it, but he didn’t have the strength. Next year he’d show them. He’d get hold of a suitcase with steel locks. He’d escape out of a barrel nailed shut with a sheet of canvas around it, or maybe a big glass cage. He giggled to himself: How silly to go chasing cats like that. He struggled to his feet and made his way up the path to the building project. Those cats, what a riot. He really had them hypnotized.

When he reached the sidewalk in front of the building project he peered this way and that. No sign of Gideon. That was strange. He went through the hallway into the back yard. On the asphalt, outside the trash bins, he signed his autograph in piss, but ran out because there were too many letters in Kleinfeld. Phew, what a fright he gave those cats. What persistence. He shook it once, he shook it twice, the last drop fell in his pants, as usual.

And suddenly, somehow, he was knocking at the door upstairs, andManny, Gideon’s big brother, opened it wearing a gym shirt and said Gideon wasn’t home yet, but come in, he’ll probably be back soon. Aron said he just dropped by to check, and Manny said Sure, sure, and went back to his calisthenics on the carpet. Aron sat down on the sofa, now he realized how exhausted he was from all that running. Never mind. It keeps you fit. He leafed abstractedly through the Guinness Book of World Records in English, glancing up from time to time to follow Manny’s muscles bulging walnutlike as he got in shape to be a pilot in the air force. Aron mouthed the English captions: the fastest man in the world, the biggest omelette, the longest fingernail. Still, Gideon didn’t come home. Eddy, the student lodger, had opened the door twice already to ask if Mira was back yet. He’s waiting for her like I’m waiting for Gideon, mused Aron as he sprawled on the sofa, closed his eyes, and fell to Aroning, thinking about Mira, Gideon’s mother, smiling behind dark reading glasses, a petite, retiring woman, he imagined her mouth now, red and soft; what time is it, twenty to six.

Manny’s breathing was starting to grate on him. The guy’s a fitness freak, he said to himself in the language of the boys at school. The words didn’t suit him. Manny had the same ears as Gideon and their mother. Little pointy ones. Manny’s sweat smelled like the locker room at school after the eighth-graders’ gym class. Only a few of the boys in his class had that smell. Let’s see, Avi Sasson had it, and Hanan Schweiky had it, and Eli Ben-Zikri the hood had it for sure, and what about Meirky Blutreich and Meirky Ganz … He counted on his fingers. Quite a few, actually. This smell too would have to be added to the list, ah, screw ’em. What’s this, he chided himself, talking dirty like you know who. But the clock on the buffet showed a quarter to six, so maybe Gideon really did go to the early show of Dr. No .

“So, Aharon, you’ve come again, I see,” said Gideon’s father, entering in his bathrobe, his hairy legs showing. “Gideon isn’t home yet. How about a nice cup of tea?”

Gideon’s father pronounced his name the way they do on the radio, Aharon, with the accent on the last syllable, which sounded a little silly; ridiculous, in fact. Aron had once heard him telling Gideon: “I’ll always love you as a son, but you have to earn my friendship.” It made Aron cringe to hear Gideon’s father say those words in the course of sometrivial argument. Aron was aghast, how could he talk like that to another human being, even if he was his son.

“Please, don’t be shy,” he said, holding out a box of cat tongues. Aron shrugged politely, the way he’d been taught. In this house manners were important. It wasn’t phoniness. It was refinement.

“Go on, have some. Gideon just loves them. Cat tongues are his favorite chocolates.”

Chocolates, he drawled, in a voice both disdainful and self-deprecating, always wary, always sly. How could Gideon stand him. And on top of everything, he didn’t have a job. He wasn’t prepared to go out and work from eight to four like other people. That’s why they had to take in a lodger, and Gideon’s mother, Mira, wore her fingers to the bone typing. Once or twice Gideon had mentioned that his father was doing research for a book or something, but none of the neighbors thought much of him. In the morning you’d see him mincing across the valley to the university, maybe he sat in the library there. But usually he stayed at home, stinking up the house; he even did the cooking and the ironing, and hung the laundry out to dry. You’d have to shoot me before I let a man in my kitchen, said Aron’s mother. What, let a man futz around with the pots all day.

Mr. Strashnov was tall and limp, with prematurely sagging cheeks and chiselled lips that were permanently pursed, as though keeping in a secret. He would shout down to Gideon from the balcony, “Gi-deon!” like a radio announcer, as though Gideon were some personage out of the Bible, instead of an ordinary kid from the building project. “Gideon!” he called again, though the whole neighborhood heard him the first time, including Papa on his balcony, cooling his feet after a hard day at work. Aron would rush upstairs in time to see the evening paper flutter over Papa’s smile, as he muttered a silent curse at Gideon’s father.