David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

“To hell with you!” screamed Aron savagely. “To hell with all of you. I’ll go in alone! All alone!” And he stood up and ran away, with one last shriek in Gideon’s dumbstruck face, racing blindly through pitch darkness, into the huge black maw of the valley, sobbing and choking and screaming inside that he would never stop, he would break into strange houses, and escape out of boxes and trunks and cars, he would stay as he was, himself, forever.

One pleasant winter morning, the Sabbath of his bar mitzvah, Aron was called up to read from the Torah. As soon as he saw the scroll spread open with the tufted symbols, his nerves were calmed and he chanted jubilantly: Then flew unto me one of the seraphim, with a glowing stone in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from off the altar ; Papa was standing beside him, looking clumsy in his prayer shawl, his red face bobbing after the rabbi’s finger as Aron quavered: And He touched my mouth with it and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is expiated . The diminutive rabbi kept a vigilant eye on him, every pore on his face squeezed shut with concentration. Maybe he remembered that impertinent question Aron asked about Divine justice; narrowly suspicious, he watched the radiant son dance before his father with outstretched arms in the shower of sweets pelting down from the women’s gallery, and Aron, at the height of his rejoicing, felt the sudden sting of the rabbi’s eyes upon him.

Afterward the family went home and found two Orthodox Jews waiting at the door. They’d wheeled an old baby carriage all the way from Mea Shearim with a huge pot of noodle kugel swathed in towels to keep it warm. Mama hurried to the kitchen with Yochi, to cut the kugel and make last-minute changes in the refreshments, and Aron went to his room and sat in the window, one foot on the heater, looking out at the street, stabbing himself over and over with the daggerlike memoryof his rabbi’s side glance. When Shimmik and Itka’s Volkswagen pulled up, Aron jumped off the windowsill and lay supinely on his bed.

Two weeks before the bar mitzvah Mama took one of his shoes to the Persian cobbler in the market and gave him precise instructions, but the idiot made the shoes too big and Aron had to wear insoles. Mama bought him a pair of thick new socks, too, and when she rolled them around his fist to check the size she saw they were too big, but just this once, she asked, he could wear them, couldn’t he? Aron looked at the sock around his fist and said he’d heard that a person’s heart is the same size as his fist. Mama took one look at his fist and grabbed the sock, tfu, don’t believe everything you hear. When Aron put on the shoes he felt suddenly taller. Bending down he discovered they were elevator shoes. Mama was preoccupied with a speck of schmutz she’d found on her blouse, which she tried to rub out with a little spit. Aron was quiet. So, already he was starting to betray himself; how he despised himself for keeping silent.

Two by two, some trailing children, the relatives assembled in the salon. From time to time, Yochi peeked in to smile at him encouragingly and bring him the presents that had been left for him at the desk, as she put it. He received A Thousand Historical Characters and An Answer for Every Question ; the Kapa’i Kipnis Hebrew-English dictionary; two army mess kits with plates and cup; the six volumes of the collected works of Winston Churchill; and from Itka and Shimmik the Guinness Book of World Records they’d promised him long ago, when he was interested in that stuff. What would he do with it now, though? From the salon he heard a great commotion, but he made up his mind to stay in his room a little while longer. To pull himself together. He felt hot in his choking bow tie, in the heavy sweater Mama had knitted especially for him, in the outlandish jacket they’d bought him with the shoulder pads; Mama would skin him alive if he dared take anything off before the last of the guests left. He lay on his bed, joylessly leafing through the Guinness Book of World Records , exactly like the one at Gideon’s, which he already knew by heart, and thanks to which, you might say, he was top of his class in English; now he read about a farmer who stuffed a goose till it weighed fifty-eight kilos, and about bonsai trees in Japan, and about Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in the world, who died at the age of twenty-three because people of that type have a short lifespan, and he yawned as hard as he could for emphasis. The doorbellrang and Aron heard Mama and Papa merrily welcoming Ruja and Loniu, the parents of his cousin Omri, and after them, Efraim and Gucha, who had arrived from Tel Aviv. He waited a moment, yes, no, yes, no, but it was yes . “Efraim!” said Mama in a tight, sweet voice, “I see that Giora’s left you flatfooted!”

Aron pulled back the sleeves of his jacket and sweater and shirt, and glanced at the wristwatch from Grandma Lilly, a big heavy Duxa, with two movable metal rings. The idiot cobbler had pierced another three holes in the leather band, so the watch would fit snugly. Grandma Lilly didn’t even know she’d bought him such an expensive gift out of the savings Mama put aside for her. In honor of his bar mitzvah Mama had reupholstered her Pouritz, and tied her down with a colorful Bukharan shawl, to keep her from falling, she explained to everyone. Most of the guests were seeing Grandma in this state of rapid deterioration for the first time, and Mama finally opened her heart to Ruja and Rivche and told them what a gehinneh-geheinam she and Papa were living in, it was impossible, and for the first time she admitted to an outsider that one day they might be forced to put her in a home or the geriatric ward, not at Hadassah Hospital, where they don’t know the meaning of responsibility, but in Bikkur Holim Hospital, where the family had a little protectzia; there they would take good care of her, and watch her during the day and especially at night. Aron, in his room, sat up on his elbows and listened, but none of the guests seemed to object to their packing Grandma off. Even Yochi, who was standing in the kitchen so Mama knew she heard — that Yochi, she never misses a thing — even she resigned herself in silence to Grandma Lilly’s banishment, and none of them standing in a circle around the Pouritz asked whether a specialist had been consulted, whether she had had all the necessary tests, not that Aron asked either, he knew doctors only want to chop the patients up for diploma practice, and yet, in the hush around Grandma, who sat among them with bowed head, he longed to hear a voice ring out, the innocent voice of a child asking why they didn’t try to find proper treatment for her, maybe there were new medicines available, she wasn’t that old, sixty at most, and at her age a person could still be saved, but the silence around her grew heavier, and even without touching the onion strip he could hear them sigh and say, When it comes, it comes, it’s the will of God, man is a fly-by-night, here today, gone tomorrow.

And the doorbell rang and in walked Rochaleh and Gamliel. Mamahadn’t spoken to Gamliel for the twenty years or so since she married Papa, and now everyone was happy again, there were kisses and cheers and compliments all around, and Grandma’s doom was sealed. Aron in his bedroom let out a startled laugh: That’s it! It’s over. Finita la commedia. He rolled over on his side and pressed his knees to his stomach and made a stomach muscle with all his might. Gradually he relaxed. Straightened out. In the watch that Grandma gave him there were two more tiny watches: when you press the left button a blue space opens up and the watch tells the depth of the sea — to hell with the sea, he wasn’t going to Tel Aviv again this year even if they killed him — and when you press the right button you see what time it is in Alaska and New York and Moscow and Tokyo. He’d worn the watch for a week already and was living according to New York time, which is seven hours later than here, and seven hours is an eternity.