David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

Five whole days. Rapture. Too bad his wife stopped coming, though, reflected Edna, really and truly this is what she thought; despite the woman’s coarseness and her perplexing insults, Edna regretted that she and the girl had disappeared: because they too were needed here, to complete the picture and the pleasure too; she was fond of the quiet, sad-looking boy, but didn’t they once have a bigger child, no, she was probably mistaken; sometimes he would look up at her in a way that made her want to hug him, to comfort him. There was something wrong with the boy. Worms perhaps: he headed for the bathroom almost as soon as they stepped through the door, and sometimes he stayed in there for hours, whatever did he … a naughty smile played on her lips. Ooo, such dirty thoughts! she scolded herself, but who knows, maybe it’s true about little boys that age. She stretched her limbs with mild sensual surprise, no, it couldn’t be, here, in my house? And again she giggled, coyly, magnanimously: Oh, let him have a little pleasure, there’s plenty to go around, and she bit her lip, surprised and blushing with the sudden realization of what the woman meant by those insults which only last night had seemed so preposterous, the charge that Edna and her husband were — She tittered at the notion, what an insane idea, to suspect her of THAT?! With HIM?! Or maybe it was the child the woman wanted to protect with her animal instincts? Edna threw her head back the way she had been doing these past few days, with a thrill of release and lightheartedness that ran all the way down her spine, and then to perpetuate this new private joke of hers, she left Aron a treat in the bathroom, a kind of friendly wink, nothing cheap or vulgar, heaven forbid, just a book of erotic Indian art, conspicuously placed on top of the magazine basket after she had leafed through it, it had been years since she looked at it, she remembered that picture of the prince andhis inamorata, the prince inside his inamorata, drinking tea to prolong their ecstasy.

Aron would emerge from her bathroom looking weary and a little dejected; Edna watched him out of the corner of her eye, absorbed in the pounding of the heavy sledgehammer, as he staggered giddily back to his place like a sailor crossing the deck in a howling gale, and sat down with a sigh on one of her carpets; she noticed his favorite was the Armenian one, so she left a cushion there for him with a Bukharan coverlet, and he would stumble over — it was alarming to see a boy so tired — and curl up on it with drooping lids. From time to time she would glance over. Ah, the capacity of the young to sleep: in this horrible noise, with all the hammering and the storms outside, the boy would doze like a kitten. Inside her linen closet she found him a blanket imbued with memories, the one they had wrapped around three-year-old Nona on the long journey from Hungary to Palestine, with which, ai-lee-lu-lee, she covered him now. When the work was done, Papa would wake him. Son-of-a-gun, you fell asleep again. I did not. Go on, look how red your eyes are. I was awake, Papa, really. Were not, were not, you were sound asleep; and sometimes he could hardly wake him up, he had to shake him gently, or roughly, the boy was out like a light. Then Papa would raise him slowly to his feet, surprised at the way his drowsy limbs kept slumping back to the floor, and he would kneel before him, his big Gepetto face waxing serious, and lift him effortlessly in his arms, and Edna would pull his cap on over Papa’s shoulder: Wait, it’s covering his eyes, and he would whisper goodbye to her, and she would whisper goodbye to him, so as not to wake Aron, and on the way out Aron would cock an eye and nestle close to Papa, shivering with the cold, with the screaming black wind, and together now, they were together, they fled through the forest at midnight, in a wagon, in the storm, but yesterday something happened, shame on you, Edna, she and Papa forgot he was there, they simply forgot him, he was huddled in the corner, Edna didn’t find him till later that evening when she heard Hinda calling his name from the balcony; she was alarmed and quickly went to search for him, and sure enough, there he was, sleeping fitfully on her carpet, gripping the fringe as though he were afraid to fall back to earth, his head tucked underneath the blanket, and for a moment, oh, let him stay, hide him here like one of the souvenir dolls, like the Greeklegionnaire with the red hat and the long black tassel who so resembled the mustachioed gendarme she had tried to outface as he stood on guard at the palace in Athens, staring into his eyes for three sultry days, five hours at a time, until his duty was almost over, and then she would run off, only to reappear the following day; yes, she would keep the boy as a souvenir of the renovations, to remind her what happened here and how the wall trembled, and softly she woke him, and dressed him in his uniform, the thick green sweater and the oversized coat and woolen cap, and she led him, sleepwalking, leaning unsteadily against her shoulder, smiling out of a dream, down the stairs and along the path into his building, where she left him in a heap on the mat outside the apartment, knocked on the door for him, and fled.

In the morning as usual Papa went to the office. He would peek at his watch every other minute and push away the piles of tedious paperwork, musing, for the first time, that perhaps he had been wrong to listen to Hinda after the accident at the bakery seven years ago: for while he lay groaning with pain in the hospital, Hinda had been pulling strings, pleading, threatening, and when he finally regained consciousness, he learned that he had lost his cherished job at the bakery, and that Mama, with her own ten fingers, had converted him into an office clerk with pension rights. So his good friends at the bakery gave him a gold wristwatch, which he never wore, and the life of the night shift was suddenly over, the rugged labor he liked so well, the companionship on the dogwatch, the smell of baking dough, the soft plump rolls, a friendly grin under a floury mustache, a glowing cigarette outside the main door, the right to sleep through most of the day, hiding under his blanket from the burning rays of at least one fiery orb … Boy, those were the days, and look at him now, a paper pusher bickering with former friends about overtime and seniority.

Impatiently he reckoned the minutes, aching to get his hands on the sledgehammer, snatching pencils and snapping them in two like toothpicks. He couldn’t wait to begin again: the constant hammering never weighed on his spirits; on the contrary, with every blow he felt that slowly, stealthily, something was being chiseled inside him: the delicate contours of his soul.

At six-thirty every day he would lay down his hammer and ask Edna with a wink to turn her radio on so he could listen to Reuma Eldar discuss recent flash floods in the northern Negev; Aron, sequestered onthe carpet, opened a bleary eye to watch him, wondering why he had stopped hammering, and Edna too watched him nodding his heavy head. He seemed to be trying to decipher a secret message behind the simple words, intended for his ears alone. Never fear, Moshe’s here, thought Aron, but why doesn’t he keep working; the radio announcer spoke about vehicles trapped in riverbeds, and about crop damage at Kibbutz Or Haner. Papa pursed his lips and struck the wall, and Aron’s head drooped down on his shoulder …

And one day Edna worked up the courage to fix Papa a whopping sandwich of spicy Hungarian salami, which she set down silently beside his glass of juice. For Aron too she prepared a roll with salami. Papa said nothing. Only his eyebrows twitched and his forehead turned red. Aron stared down at this sandwich. Oh no, he thought, oh no. “Aren’t you hungry, then?” she asked distractedly, glancing at Papa. Oh no. Aron’s head swerved right and left, this whopping sandwich with the fat salami slices. But she’s a vegetarian, he screamed inside, unnerved, as Papa devoured the sandwich with gusto, emitting deep guttural noises; where are his manners, where’s his breeding, lucky for him Mama isn’t around to see, and he felt himself turn pale in the presence of those teeth, because she seemed to be mouthing the chewing sounds with Papa, and Aron stumbled off to the bathroom, perturbed and whimpering to himself, I should never have come here, with his left hand unconsciously clutching the right, choking the blood off at the wrist, but no, enough, you promised, you swore not to do that anymore, he loosened his fingers and stared at the white mark on his flesh. I should never have come, what’s so great about watching him tear down a wall, but Papa’s blows resounded in his heart, swiftly entering his bloodstream, forcing him to surrender; harder, harder he blinked, till tears came; maybe this way he could get rid of the bulge that was like a fist clenched inside, maybe a great gear would grind down, splitting it open, breaking through, and Papa seemed to overhear him: how strong he is today, the salami must have given him energy. It’s for your own good, listen to the hammering, soon he’ll burst through the blockage; this has been going on for almost two weeks, more problems, he’s never had it so long before. Harder, harder, groans Aron, his lips compressed with pain, and out there, beyond the wall, Edna was feeding Papa more of that succulent salami to nourish the mighty machine of his body; he nibbles from her hand and goes on working, blasting and chewing. Becareful, Edna, be careful, but when she wasn’t careful, the greedy jaws snapped shut on her slender pink finger, on her delicate palm, her dainty wrist, and still she didn’t run; then her shoulder, her neck, he was gobbling and slurping and gnawing the fragile body …