David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

Nevertheless, that spring Aron fell in love. One evening, on his way across the yard of the Wizo Nursery School, he caught a glimpse of Zacky Smitanka making out with Dorit Alush on the bench. Aron ducked off the path before they noticed him, slinked along the hedges till he found the hole in the fence, and slipped through. He hurried home and sat around in the gloom of his bedroom, silent, empty. Reluctantly he dragged his feet in to supper. Mama came over to him right away and pressed her lips to his forehead, and for a minute he thought she was going to kiss him because she knew what he was feeling, a mother’s heart, so he closed his eyes helplessly, nearly bursting with the softness of her lips on his forehead, where they lingered, hovered a moment, pressed down again; she hadn’t kissed him in ages and he never dreamed he wanted her to so badly, but no, he didn’t have a fever, she reported dryly, sitting down again. So why do you look like that? growled Papa, suppressing his annoyance. Like what? asked Aron weakly. Squashed like a pacha, said Mama. Like someone sat on your face. He sighed and shrugged his shoulders, imagining Dorit Alush’s long brown leg jerking up and down with pain or pleasure, who knew how many more smutty surprises were lurking out there. Papa was silent. Mama was silent too. Aron left the table and said he didn’t feel so good, and he put on his pajamas and got into bed, and tried with all his might to fall asleep, to sink deeper and deeper, deeper than his mind and memory, and he must have succeeded, because through thealchemy of despair, the only philosophy he really knew, Aron’s first love blossomed overnight.

Aliza Lieber, Miri Tamari, Rina Fichman; dizzily he circled among them on a mystic quest, a seeker of love. Ariella Biltzky, Osnat Berlin, Tammy Lerner; everyday girls lit up from within, shyly inclining their sunflower faces; Ruthy Zuckerman, Hanni Altschuller, Hanni Hirsch, Orna Agami; he loved them all despite their flaws, and presently, because of them, those minor imperfections that seemed like secret clues intended for him alone; Ruchama Taub, Gila Shalgi, even chubby Naomi Feingold for ten days (till he found out her brother had six toes on his left foot); he loved them whole and he loved them piecemeal; sometimes he lost his heart to a cheek, the grace of a hand, the lilt of a giggle, and ignored their cruder appendages; he became infatuated with Varda Koppler for a week of illusion and dark jealousy over her soldier pen pal, when he noticed her lisp. And then he discovered a dimple on Malka Shlein and the crater of a vaccination on the adorable arm of Adina Ringle, and it filled him with wonder that in every girl he studied closely there was something worthy of his eternal love, and he circulated like a courier bursting with the secret knowledge he carried, speaking out to them in his quiet way; Esty Parsitz, Aviva Castlenuovo, Nira Vered … the glass slipper worked overtime.

Yaeli Kedmi was a year younger, in seventh grade, and for the past few years she’d been walking home from school with him and the other neighborhood kids. She was small and demure, but her cheeks were full, and better than he knew her face or voice he knew the shiny black mantle of her wavy hair. Since the age of nine she had trailed along, and they were used to her silence, her modesty. Rarely did anyone address her, nor were they particularly careful with secrets in her presence: she was What’s-her-name Yaeli whom they were supposed to keep an eye on at the Bet Hakerem intersection till she drifted away without a word at the corner of Bialik Street.

But one afternoon Aron accompanied Yochi to her ballet class in the Valley of the Cross near the new wing they were building at the Israel Museum. What interested him there were the blasts of dynamite every day around five and the shock waves that filled the air, and when Yochi went to change into her costume, Aron watched the younger girls just finishing their lesson, among whom he suddenly spotted Yaeli. She wore a tight black leotard, and her arms and legs didn’t look skinny anymore,they looked gracefully slender as she danced, like the swiggles of a sharpened pencil, and the billowing hair which had always seemed heavy and overlavish on such a tiny frame, flowed around her now as she pirouetted, glorious, sublime.

Aron stepped back in confusion and stood by the entrance door, staring at Yaeli. Rina Nikova, the aging ballet mistress, clapped her hands and gave him a start — he thought she was going to point at him. He tried to assume an air of indifference, but it melted in the heat leaking out of him. Madame Nikova explained something to the girls in her thick Russian accent. Yaeli did not look his way. Again the music played, and they practiced the arabesque as Aron devoured Yaeli’s face, so lovely and delicately drawn with a sharp quick line; and her gaze of concentration when she practiced the “cat step”; and her milky skin; the note of defiance in her nose; her slanty almond eyes, which seemed unable to decide whether to be brown like his or hazel; and the smile that hovered over her full red mouth, the netherlip swollen. Aron could feel his heart pound, it was happening, a burst of light; Yaeli danced before him so airy and free — free as a bird, the words beat through him like wings in flight — and then he knew, he knew with certainty that she was a vegetarian as he had been, and he also knew that this time, for her sake, he would assert his vegetarianism, and then, most miraculously, with a single look and a single heartbeat, Yaeli was redeemed.

Yochi came back wearing her leotard, moving leadenly. By now it was impossible not to notice she was fat, and the only reason Madame Nikova didn’t kick her out was that soon she would be going into the army. Her legs were flabby, and her buttocks fairly burst out of the leotard. Approximately two years before, though she had perfectly smooth legs inherited from Grandma Lilly, Yochi started waxing off the hair so it would grow back thicker and she could remove it like all the other girls. Now, as she slowly twirled before his eyes, he could see the black dots on her calves and for a moment he was angry with her, hostile even, but it wasn’t her fault, poor thing, what with Papa’s appetite and Mama’s constipation, and still he felt angry when she was pushed back into the third row with the beginners, a dove among the sparrows.

Madame Nikova clapped three times. Lesson over, she declared, and a stream of girls burbled out to the dressing room. Aron backed offand leaned against the wall, blushing with shyness and excitement, dizzy with the mingled scents of orange blossom, perspiration, kittens. A pair of legs paused in front of him as he stared fixedly at the floor, two legs he had once thought scrawny, bony, which were now most definitely slender and shapely, and for a split second he glanced up at her with a trembling heart and wobbling knees, and the expression she wore was gentle, but also defiant and playful and self-assured: I saw you looking, said her eyes, I was dancing for you, can you believe it’s me?

The next day, on their way home from school, Aron didn’t dare exchange glances with her. Zacky and Gideon walked in the lead as usual, arguing boisterously, with Aron at their side lagging slightly behind, listening to them through Yaeli’s ears. How well she must know them all, he realized, she had absorbed so much over the years, and he wondered what she thought about him, and about his problem. Zacky told a joke he’d read in the book about Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, and Gideon grumbled that jokes like that ought to be banned because they’re bad for national morale, and Hanan Schweiky hollered, Stop lecturing, Strashnov, and let Zacky give us another one. Aron was disgusted at their coarseness and vulgarity, how would he be able to protect Yaeli’s innocence, and when Zacky started making fun of Morduch, the blind beggar, and tossed him a nail instead of a coin, Aron drew away from them in protest. Yaeli trailed behind the group as usual, weighed down by her school bag, drooping under the crowning glory of her heavy hair; he glanced at her furtively. She dances even when she’s standing still, he thought, not just at Madame Nikova’s, and who had been idiot enough to suppose she was tagging along; his eyes lingered on her sprightly feet, she had a little red scar by the buckle of her sandal and it made him burst with love. When the rest of them went into the supermarket, he almost dared to lag behind and go through the automatic door all by himself, he could do it, because with every breath he felt a new fullness inside him, and still he hesitated, maybe he wasn’t quite ready yet, and he sneaked in with a young woman pushing a stroller and caught up with the other kids. He waited his chance to say something to Yaeli, to make contact with her somehow. As they were crossing Bet Hakerem Street he hung back, and when she barged ahead he blurted, almost gruffly, “Look out, car coming,” and saw her neck turn rosy.