David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

Papa groans with pleasure and asks them to scratch a little higher, nu, by the whatzit. The spine, the spine, Aron corrects him in a whisper. You’d think he’d know a simple word like that. Mama and Yochi start from opposite sides and work toward the middle, till he’s positively bursting with bliss. Imagine Papa trying to pronounce something long and complicated, like hippopotamus, or that word in the health book — hypothalamus, or even an easy word, like firefly: could a big fat tongue like his pronounce it without flubbing, and wouldn’t it be awful if it tied itself in a knot forever trying to say flierflifflfflff! Aron wants to jump out the kitchen window right now, run to the Wizo Nursery School, and squat in the dark, but the windowsill is full of jars, jars of pickled cucumbers and pickled peppers and sauerkraut and pimientos and olives and pearl onions, even carrots; there’s nothing she doesn’t pickle, no vegetable is safe with Mama around.

Nimbly snipping, he tries to be careful. Only his fingertips move. And the women are busy massaging Papa from top to bottom. You could melt just thinking about it. They’ve never given him such a long one before. It’s impossible to see the whole of him from here; maybe they dismantled him and later they’ll put him back together again, only this time they’ll decide how. And if you throw back your head a little you see a section of shoulder and Mama’s fingers lingering on the muscles, examining something, scratching with her fingernail, trying to find out if it’s real, and then she gives another little scratch. Hey, what kind of massage is this. And her fingers start tickling, coochie-coochie-coo! AndPapa squirms and squeals with laughter, and she tickles him all the way up his arm, accidentally shoving Yochi and Grandma out of the way, allowing herself the liberty of a little smile, she hasn’t smiled like that in weeks, and Papa’s mouth is squashed against the Bordeaux sofa in a saggy grin, you could easily mistake it for a frown, and the question is whether that mouth could manage a word like “thread,” and Aron pictures a golden thread shining in the sunlight, dripping honey, like a guitar string still aquiver with the melody a moment after it was strummed. Threa-d, murmurs Aron with fine-drawn lips, with deep devotion, threa-d, like a string plucked out of his depths, lyrical and sweet, but airy too, and hazy like the halos around those people in his negatives, and he can easily slip through any crack, through a needle’s eye. He tilts his head, eyes shut, lips parted like the mouth of an urn, uttering “Threa-d,” like the whistle of the wind, gentle but cutting, and he smiles to himself: Papa can’t get in, like a thread with a knot at the end. Ha ha: Aron the passing thread, thready-Aron passes, while Papa, the knot-man, with his face and his body and his blackheads — wham! Aron is all the way in now, alone inside where everything is soft, translucent, simple as a diagram, pure and simple, all aglow with a firefly light; there is a little light in everything, even the steel wool for scrubbing panels has a mysterious spark, even dark purple grapes have a dusky gleam, or a thick drop of blood on the tip of your finger, that too, if you say it right with deep devotion, “a drop of blood,” you see a beacon flashing forth as from a distant lighthouse, and certain words, if you know how to pronounce them in a special way, not from the outside but as though you were calling their names, right away they turn to you, they show you their pink penetralia, they purr to you and they’re yours, they’ll do anything you want; take “bell,” for instance, he rolls it over his tongue as though tasting it for the first time ever, “bellll,” or “honeysuckle,” or “lion” or “legend” or “coal” or “melody” or “gleam” or “velvet,” melting on his tongue, sloughing off their earthly guises, till suddenly there is red heat, a cinder of memory spreading its glow as it slowly disappears into his mouth, for Lo, this bath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is expiated.

He pushes himself on the tabouret which Mama likened to King Farouk wearing a fez, and leans forward to watch, carefully so as not to let anything leak out. He observes the salon: the three women working on Papa’s back like cranes on a water buffalo. Grandma seems tobe getting tired. Even now that she’s had an operation, the power controlling her mind is pretty weak. Mama settles her on the Franzousky, so she’ll rest. She sniffs her from behind in case she made. Grandma’s eyes are covered with a membrane. Just don’t let her die in the house. And Mama mutters under her breath, How long can we go on keeping her at home like this? And if Grandma makes in the middle of the salon, he thinks, they’ll kill her for certain. And after the “thorough” yet, when everything’s shiny and clean. And on such a special day, the day Papa came home. Mama will murder her on the spot. He cringes and freezes all over. Only his lips are still Aron, and he slowly puckers them till they let out a whistle, the secret ultrasonic whistle only females can hear, and then they follow you blindly and do whatever you want. But he didn’t believe Giora, not even at the time. He puckers his lips. Concentrates. Forgets the rest. Forgets what’s building up inside him, dense and ugly. His lips weave a web.

The three women sat up with a start, as though someone had tickled them inside. As though someone had whispered their names. Even Grandma quivered. Only Papa lay inert and didn’t notice anything. Deaf and heavy, he sprawled on the sofa. Aron stopped in alarm, and the women went back to their task. Again Aron set his lips, forming his snare of a whistle, and with faithful precision wove his mighty web. Again the women turned around as in a trance, moonily picking up their colorful dusters, and while Papa rose on his elbows with a “Huh?” and a “Whuh?” they surrounded Aron with mincing softness, fluttering by him like feather clouds, titillating the creatures of his writhing back, rippling with the pleasures of the intimate tickle, with helpless, jellylike giggles of laughter, and Aron whispers “lion,” “honeysuckle,” “melody,” “legend,” and one by one the words present their sleek underbellies, giving out a reddish glow, revealing a tiny vibrant tongue inside that tintinnabulates with longing for his own supple tongue, his tongue unbound, his lump of flesh, and Aron grew sublimely giddy with self-transcendence, and one twilit moment later, swathed in darkening shame and the stench of primal disgrace, he slid off the tabouret onto the floor, where, strangely cool, he passed the runty knife over the cut on his middle finger again, watching the timorous spurt, and in his bowels, an amazing void, an emptiness like nothing he can remember, the emptiness of somebody else. And oh, the unbearable sting of bliss at that moment, long as eternity, when he flowed and flowed; givingbirth to himself, a small, beloved, stinking self; rid at last of the horrible anguish, the harsh dark secret, not his own, he had been forced to keep inside. Circumspectly he lay down with his cheek to the floor. The stench filled the kitchen. A fire in his pants. The blood trickled out near his open eye and he observed it. Like somebody else’s blood dripping into the cracks. In fact, everything was somebody else’s. He felt so light. Light enough to float. With naught to encumber his immortal soul. Aury. Aery. Ari. There was no doubt: from now on everything would change. To tell the truth, the ordeal has weakened him. Not just the events of the last few weeks. Forget that. But everything he’s been through in these three years of waste. His brains have weakened too. He forgets things. He’s not on the ball anymore the way he used to be. He finds it hard to concentrate. He scribbles nonsense on exam papers. It’s as if the whatzit in there were bloating up and crowding out everything else, pressing down and squashing it flat. He used to be known as a comedian. He could really make them laugh. Do impersonations of just about anyone. Now even the laughter center had pooped out on him, and he was gray and boring. Other kids were growing up while he — yeah right, he made lists of Adam’s apples and hairy legs and armpits and pimples and body odor. But Mama’s noticed something. She sits up suddenly. Her forehead wrinkles. And he will be redeemed. Oh yes, no two ways about it. He will remember all he has lost. And she blurts out a question to Yochi in Yiddish: Do you smell anything, Yochileh, and Yochi sniffs and says no. Because so help me, if she just made on the Franzousky, I’m taking her to Emergency first thing in the morning and leaving her there, a thousand doctors won’t persuade me to take her back, and Aron doesn’t even have to reach into his pocket and touch the onion strip to hear her thinking: No more happy times with Mamchu here. But Aron will be a good boy. He’ll change. He’ll learn how to play the guitar again, he’ll play his new guitar for them, he will play a golden flute and lead the other children in a song, he will be crowned a prince, tell stories, interpret dreams, fend off famines, trap the lustrous auras of this world in glassy marbles. Mama rushes over to Grandma and forces her to her feet, sniffs her from behind, and stays fixed for a moment. And to each and every aura Aron will give a name, a secret name, and he will string the names together on a fine golden thread, he himself will be that thread, and he will draw forth the soul of things and hide it between his lips … Again Mama sits up.Disconcertedly she pushes Grandma down on the Franzousky, and her nostrils quiver, scanning, tuning in, homing in on the kitchen, bouncing back to Grandma, then stubbornly returning to the kitchen, advancing, shrinking, and flaring slowly in double perplexity, in disbelief, in revulsion, until a lightning bolt of pagan horror flashes on her face.