David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

Finally Gideon turned toward him with a withering look and Aron stopped in his tracks before the circle, devastated by Gideon’s haste to condemn him for his one silly weakness when he was missing the point. Oh, he knew exactly how he seemed to Gideon just then: like a fighter pilot whose plane crashes while he’s showing off over the air base. And suddenly Aron’s legs turned to jelly and the scene dissolved before his eyes. If Gideon could be so wrong about him — And he turned from them in resignation and slinked away into the darkness.

“Hey, tell me something,” said Aron flimsily, searching for words to fill the heavy silence, “how’re your eyes?” “Pretty lousy, thank you,” answered Gideon, stiffly polite. His left eye was still weak and he kept seeing this crooked little thread in front of him all the time, so his mom told him to have it checked at the Sick Fund clinic, but he was sure it would go away in time. Aron suggested that perhaps he ought to start taking three pills a week instead of two, and Gideon answered that it might do more harm than good. What harm, asked Aron distantly, his lips pursed with lies: Grandma Lilly and Mama have been taking those pills for years, which is why they don’t need glasses. He put his hand in his back pocket and pulled out the square of waxed paper with a yellow pill inside. Gideon reached for it, and Aron’s split-second hesitation upset the little bubble on the level between them; once he wouldn’t have noticed, it all started with that awful business: now he was forced to learn the language of exile; and then he added, all innocence, “I hear they can be real bastards at flight school,” and he feltthe chilly contraction of Gideon inside him. “I read somewhere that they have instruments they poke in your eyes.” He still hadn’t given the pill to Gideon, who continued to hold out his hand, pretending not to notice the delay. A coarse-haired bow had scratched against the catgut of his new malevolence. Suddenly Aron turned around, whistled for Gummy, and said, “Here, boy, good dog,” and scratched him under the chin, and on the belly, where it makes their leg jerk, and he knew that Gideon was boiling mad now and fed up to here and that he was only controlling himself because he needed the pill. “Knock it off, Aron,” cried Gideon. “Quit acting like such a nitwit over some dog who’s probably dead by now, I mean, what are you trying to prove?!” Aron looked up at him and said in a tremulous voice that he could do what he wanted with Gummy; Gideon, relenting on account of the pill, said Aron knew darned well that his mother got rid of Gummy two years ago after she saw him mounting the Boteneros’ bitch out by the trash bins, but Aron protested that he would go on raising Gummy any way he liked till it was Gummy’s time to die, in about twelve years, so Gideon could mind his own business; Gideon stared back at him and said, “You know, Aron, sometimes I just can’t figure you out,” and Aron pouted and wanted to scream, Oh yeah? And how about you and your stupid knapsack, what are you trying to prove, strapping it on like an army tracker, and why does your pal Zacky wear a gold chain around his neck and carry that six-blade pocketknife he keeps snapping all the time; he didn’t really know what Gummy had to do with the knapsack or the pocketknife; he only knew that he personally couldn’t stand toting all that stuff around. “Go ahead, take it!” He suddenly raised his voice, distressed to be in this unsought position.

Gideon gulped down the pill without water.

“Listen,” he said all of a sudden, “I … Count me out this time.”

Aron stared at him blankly till he realized that Gideon was referring to the stakeout. “So you’re turning chicken on me? Like Zacky? Terrific.” He said it like an actor delivering the wrong line.

“I’m no chicken and you know it.” Again they were silent and withdrawn, as though all their energy had ebbed away. Adults, Aron reflected, carry things around with them, like wallets and pens and cards and stuff, and coins and beads and rings and key chains; why have I been breaking so many pencils lately, and losing pens, he frowned at his hand, and yesterday at supper I knocked my glass over again, andat school I slammed the door on my finger, and what about the way I always miss a few times before I get the straw in the bottle? And he wondered if anyone had noticed yet, a few days ago when Papa asked him to change a light bulb, he screwed it the wrong way and it shattered in his hand.

“You want to know what I think?” said Gideon, “we’ve been going along with your ideas since age zero, every summer you come up with a spy or a buried treasure, or we spend months trying to discover an unknown substance”; he rattled off the list as though proving a point, but despite himself, he softened. “And remember the time you convinced us old Kaminer was a werewolf …” Gideon chuckled and Aron smiled. “And we sneaked into their apartment.” “And found a woman’s wig,” Gideon recalled. “See? I told you. It must have come from one of his victims!” “Oh sure, and there was this huge carpenter’s file there, and you told us that’s what he used to file his teeth …” “Well, what about that calendar? How do you explain that?” “What calendar?” “The one with the red marks that show when the moon is full!” And Gideon shook his head and sighed. “Oi, Ari, the ideas you used to come up with,” and Aron thought, And still do, if you’re with me. “And remember the last time we sneaked into What’s-her-name’s?” Aron nodded silently. Little did Gideon suspect that Aron had been back there at least once a week ever since. “Do you still have the key, that passkey?” Aron pulled it out of his pocket and showed it to Gideon. He’d bought it three years before from Eli Ben-Zikri, who had initiated him into the mystery of locks and keys with obscene allusions which to this day excited him whenever he tried a new lock. In return Aron had given Eli the key to the bomb shelter of the building project, the long, narrow cellar where people stored what they didn’t have room for in their crowded apartments. And suddenly the shelter began to expand; no matter how much stuff people brought down, miraculously there was always room for more; and Aron shivered at the thought of what would happen if anyone found out.

“And remember the time Kaminer came back from dialysis and almost caught us?” “Lucky I made Zacky stand guard outside,” said Aron proudly. Aron and his foolproof plans. “Poor Zacky, you always made him wait outside, didn’t you?” Gideon chuckled.

They smiled at each other, a wan smile of complicity. A brief respite. “And remember the time you decided Peretz Atias was a member ofthe Ku Klux Klan.” Gideon groaned with mirth, stretching this thread of grace even more, till Aron began to suspect he would try to shirk his duty. “And you would suddenly decide someone walking down the street was an Egyptian spy, and we’d follow him until he started getting suspicious …”

Aron cleared his throat, to release the nectar of longing. “Okay, then, who’s Yigal Flusser?!”

“Yigal Flu … oh, right: twenty-seven years old.”

“Twenty-four.”

“Twenty-four. He escaped to Egypt and spied against Israel. And he fell in love with the wife of What’s-his-name … Altshuller, the guy who was in prison there! But which prison?”

“Abassia Prison! And who else was in with them?”

“Just a second, don’t tell me … Victor Gershon from Pardes Hanna. And Nissim Abusarrur.”

“Not bad. And what was the name of the Egyptian interrogator?”

“Uh … I forget.” Gideon shrugged his shoulders.

“You forget? Colonel Shams of Egyptian counterintelligence.”

“Right. Shams … and you wanted to train us to survive his interrogations … You really had a thing about spies and traitors.”