David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

In the salon the women are going over Papa. They have matching skin, he thinks, as though they were cut from the same cloth. Even Grandma resembles them now. Not in looks so much as the expression on her face while she works on Papa: at least she won’t be singing those songs to his back anymore; Papa’s face turned purple that time when they had the fight and Mama screamed at him, You promised, you promised, and his Adam’s apple bounced up all red, and a long, frightening moment later it began to slide back, and Aron stared, mesmerized, at the way it pushed down on his Polish, his language with Grandma Lilly; even when Mama wasn’t home they didn’t dare speak it anymore, they would sit in silence. Why did you let Mama have her way? Aron is seething. Why did you give in?

He goes to the sink and washes the cut on his finger. The faucet doesn’t shut all the way. There’s a leak. He sucks the blood from the cut. It’ll heal in time for your wedding. Heal, nothing. Wedding, nothing. Why did he have to inspect each stupid word, measuring it against his problem. But he’d barely thought about himself in the past few weeks. Where have you been and what have you been doing? Nothing. Just disappeared, that’s all. Went into hibernation. He saw a whole show in his dreams at night, for adults only. But how come they let him see it, why did they allow him. Hard and fast he peels the potato. What if, could it be, they wanted him to see. Go on. It’s the truth. They did it in front of him. They concealed nothing. Right from the first, after Papa’s return. Quartered potatoes squirt out from under his knife. A vertical furrow of outrage cuts the space between his eyebrows. They wanted him to see. They forced him to watch. Like the wrestling matches on Lebanon TV, the titans tangling and grappling together. Watch them and learn how to fight. He stares at his hand, which is empty. Pieces of potato lie scattered at his feet. Nonsense. All they did was tear down some walls, the rest is only in your mind. But what will happen to Edna now? Maybe he ought to inform someone. Like her parents. But I don’t know Hungarian. And a wave of indignity surged through him, as if they’d left him stranded among the islands of debris, and he nearly ran out to the salon, gasping with distress, needing to be hugged. But he did not run out. He did not move. He merely shuddered at the thought that he wasn’t running out to them. That there was no longer a boywho went running out to the salon whenever something troubled him, that he might never insinuate himself into their hearts again, how could he bear to touch their flesh, and now the chirring returns: I am one, it says to him, I am one and everything is one, and there is no law except for mine: there are no two ways of connecting electric wires. For every button there is but one hole. There is but one direction to turn the faucet. That is how it is and that is how it will always be. Nevermore will you fall into error and confusion. I’ve had my eye on you for quite a while.

Mama takes the cap off the lotion and begins the massage. Papa’s back is so enormous there are places left for Grandma and Yochi. Grandma lays her hands on him, and Mama watches tremulously. It’s a miracle. A miracle. And Aron has to make. Now of all times he feels it coming. He checks, astonished, vaguely hopeful, he’s had false alarms before. In his sleep a couple of times, but as soon as he noticed, it went away. His mind must have forced it back. So maybe this too is a false alarm. He sits up. Listening inward. Yes: a fluttering. A stirring, deep and winding, with a sticky blob of goo at the end, and a drop of moisture condenses there; oh help, Aron is aghast, why now, when he’s trapped in the kitchen, it’s getting stronger and stronger in there, whirling around, overpowering him, then receding, like an oval whisper, but it’s there all the same, strange, it came on just after the pounding stopped. Why didn’t you plan ahead, idiot, why now, when it’s a thousand times harder to run out of the house squeezing your legs together, and it’s scary in the valley and in the hiding place at the Wizo Nursery School, and where will you find an alternative to Edna’s?

Papa is groaning hoarsely. You can hear his body relaxing, flowing, and Aron winces and fidgets on the edge of the tabouret, and the pain draws in like a wave, you can feel it starting, here it comes, bend over, crouch, oowwwww, his back and shoulders are so tense they hurt, okay, we made it through that wave, but he feels another one already, far away, maybe he should try making at home this time. Well now, that helped, thinking that, but just stop thinking about it, plan ahead! He looks up, pale-faced, with tiny beads of sweat on his forehead. Cautiously he peeks: Mama’s smearing a ton of lotion on Papa’s back. The cap on the bottle twists open in the same direction as the faucet. And if you twirl a spoon of honey around very fast it’ll stop dripping. Would you believe that inanimate objects are capable of laughing? Well, wouldyou? It’s a whistle-like laugh, like Michael Carny giggling with Rina Fichman, tsssssss , what a clown. And you turn the key in the lock to the right, not the left. The way you twist the cap on the toothpaste. Tsssssss . Or the cap of the massage lotion. Just as spring follows winter, just as a donkey can only give birth to a baby donkey. They look so busy out there, poking and squeezing and sighing. Their faces are inscrutable. Not that they really resemble each other; well, they do, actually but they’re different too; not in what’s in them: in what isn’t in them. Each has her own particular area to rub and knead which singles her out from the other two. Almost cruelly they press down on him. And they know it hurts, though he doesn’t complain. Look: they twiddle his flesh between their fingers like dough, tearing him to pieces. Melting him down. And the only thing he dares to do is groan. In submission. In repentance. Just don’t let their fingers become tangled in the forest of hair on his back or they’ll pull it out, skin and all. And suddenly Aron feels a whirlpool of pain sucking him irresistibly down. It takes every last bit of strength to escape it, and he sits leaning hard against the wall, perspiring, his eyes opened wide. What’s happening to him? Having to crap at a time like this. How long will he be able to hold it in? He jumps to his feet and turns off the leaky faucet. But there’s another drop swelling there, he stares at it with horror. Don’t look. Sit down. Bend over. No! Just the opposite! Get up. Stand straight. Hands in the air. Breathe deep. Press your cheek against the refrigerator. Hush now. Calm down. What were we thinking about? When? Never mind when, what were we thinking about, oh yes, about that kid in Ripley’s Believe It or Not: 300 incredible cases, who also suffered from a terrible stomachache, almost died of it, and when the doctors operated they found the undeveloped fetus of his twin inside. What inventiveness. And he makes a mental note that Hanan Schweiky has a visible mustache already. Today we had our third proof, in broad daylight, and what did we find on Gil Kaplan, pimples on his forehead and his chin; wait, no, that was Asa Kolodny, you’re getting confused, where’s your head, you used to have a good head; well, at least Gideon is still pure. Okay, he has an Adam’s apple and his voice is pretty much a lost cause, but we’ve managed to stop the rest of it for the time being. Aron sneaks back and sits down on the tabouret, holding the knife, tsssssss . Like babies start walking when they’re one, lose their milk teeth when they’re five. Like children always grow taller than their parents. Everyone progressespoint by point. Stage by stage. So this victory with Gideon is worthless anyway, maybe he still has some purity left, but the way he acts, he’s so competitive, and he gets embarrassed whenever Aron opens his mouth in front of other kids. You talk like a professor, he says, you talk the way they talk on the radio, he says, and this coming from Gideon, whose whole life — only when they’re alone together is he nice to Aron, like a mensch, and the minute other kids join in, he starts lecturing them, and Aron has never, but never, criticized him for it, so what’s left of that friendship, Aron muses sadly, it’s like all I ever worry about is his body, the rest I’ve lost. And we’re very fast at catching spies, says the pinchy chirring voice, we test them: can they slide a straw in the bottle on the first try, for instance. Tsssssss . Soon, the week after Passover, Gideon would go for tests at the clinic, they wanted to find out why he’s always so tired. A couple of times he almost fell asleep in class. All Aron needed now was for them to find something in his blood, traces or residues of something. Suddenly he’s up, choking, wanting out. Where to? You’re under house arrest. The foursome in the salon notice his impulsive movement and look up, taking him in at a single glance, and he slinks back to the kitchen. Sit down, you have more than half the potatoes left to peel. He used to be such a pro at this, yeah, yeah, who cares; what did he want from Gideon anyway, to keep him safe a little while longer, safe in a bubble of the present continuous, and once more he rises and nearly runs out. Here it comes again, what made it start, I ought to be grateful, and he sits back down, intent and molten, what’s going on, it feels like a little earthquake inside, shaking him up from head to toe, everything is erupting, everything is changing shape, a great sharp pyramid is slowly revolving in his guts, and say he was willing to compromise about one of his problems. Not that he would give in so easily, but let’s just say he — limped a little, okay? Limping is simple. Plenty of people limp. They have an accident, or maybe they were even born like that, with one leg shorter. And they limp. They can move the foot a little, like a broken screw. But limping is pretty clear-cut. It’s like an appliance breaking. It isn’t a curse. It’s not as if everything died inside. Come to think of it, Binyumin the gimp has pimples on his face. And he tries to imagine himself limping, and instantly it’s as if someone handed him a long list, and he can see himself tripping on the stairway or on the soccer field, or roller skating, or riding his bike, or folk dancing, right, we get the picture, or having todecide which foot to set forward as you step off the bus first so no one will notice, or going to the water fountain when they start playing chicken, and dropping out of the honor guard when they stand at attention beside the memorial plaque for fallen alumni on Independence Day. Enough already, he submits, angrily, wearily shaking his head. Or what if you were blind or deaf, or fat, or you stuttered or had a birthmark on your face, oh please, but what’s going on in his stomach, what were we thinking about, nothing, oh yes, how once, on the school trip to the Sea of Galilee, the best school trip they ever had, they visited a studio in an old Arab house and watched a potter at work throwing slabs of clay into slender urns or pudgy crocks. The clay decides, said the potter, and he let them feel it with their fingers, and the clay decided: a clumsy blob turned into a smooth and graceful pitcher with parted lips, don’t peek!