David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

Love made him gentle and happy. He suddenly remembered howhappy he could be. In the morning, before dressing, he would lie in bed with his hand under his head and stare up at the bright blue sky, feeling as though about to return from a long, long journey. And then he would jump out of bed to greet the new day. One evening, when he got a splinter in his finger and Mama was sterilizing a needle over the burner to take it out for him, he almost started crying, his throat felt choked, and Mama thought he was scared or something and started teasing him, though he was really moved to tears that she cared about him and loved him so. From one day to the next he dropped his secret experiments, forgot about them, blotted them out. Once when he found a couple of cigarette butts in his school-bag pocket, he blithely tossed them away. As though they happened to get there by chance. He dismissed the things of the past. Even that strange last summer and his winter hibernation. A new leaf. A new leaf. When they sent him out to buy something at the corner grocery, he volunteered to go all the way to the shopping center just to be able to pass her house and smell the flowering honeysuckle in the yard. There was a place in his stomach, under his heart, that would glow with pain whenever he longed for Yaeli, and at recess one time he agreed to join the kids for soccer, and showed them how a real champion plays, and reveled in the game, running and kicking, and even scored a goal, and everyone sighed: what a waste that someone like Arik Kleinfeld should hang up his shoes, maybe there’s some way we can convince him to start practicing with the team again for the eighth-grade cup at the end of the year. He left the field flushed and exhilarated, and ran to the water fountain, where out of the corner of his eye he saw she had broken away from a cluster of girls and was coming over to drink. His courage failed. He leaned over nervously and took a sip, and saw her wavy black mane so near he closed his eyes, and drank up vigorously, till he remembered the falling water level in the Sea of Galilee.

They peeked at each other, and Aron blushed as he blurted out, “I saw you at Madame Nikova’s.” Her lip swelled, and her teeth sparkled like pearls for him. How could she be so calm. Calmer than he was. Quietly she said, “I want to be a dancer when I grow up.” “I used to play the guitar,” said Aron, all aflutter. “But you quit.” She didn’t ask. She knew. Maybe she was even chiding him for it. She knew everything about him. It was no use trying to improve his image in her eyes. I stand before you. Help me. You must have noticed what I’m goingthrough. It’s a good thing I don’t have to say it in words. But I am getting better now, it’s still a secret, Yaeli, but I feel I really am. Everything is opening up inside me. Thanks to you-know-who. “I’m going to take it up again,” Aron mustered the strength to answer. “I got a new guitar for my bar mitzvah and I’m going to start playing it soon.” Yaeli smiled at him. She believed him. The magic would work. Their hands lingering on the water fountain were twins, and Aron, who knew exactly what his hands looked like, didn’t pull them back, with all his strength he didn’t pull them back, so she would know everything about him, from her he would keep no secrets, so that a standard of absolute truth and sincerity would prevail from the start, even if it hurt. “My name is Aron,” he foolishly blurted, but it wasn’t foolish at all: he was offering his name to her, his name with everything in it. She smiled. Again her netherlip protruded, curiously, affectionately. The janitor rang the school bell.

It was the same the day after. And the day after that. A fine, transparent web. The kids walked home amid the usual clamor, laughing, shouting, fooling around, with every word a silent clue, the cooing of a carrier pigeon: Did you hear what he said? Remind you of anything? What do they understand, these dimwits, these outsiders.

And meanwhile, unconsciously, unintentionally, Gideon slows his pace from time to time, hanging back till Aron catches up with him, and then, what do you know, he wants to talk, it’s been months since he and Aron talked so familiarly, in front of everyone yet, and Zacky Smitanka stares at them dumbfounded, shrinking and lowering as if the spark of life has gone out of him, his little black eyes drying up in the desert of his face, and then he punches gangly Michael Carny on the back of the neck. What’s happening, Giraffe, how’s the weather up there? And a minor skirmish follows which Gideon doesn’t even notice; he’s talking to Aron, peering into his face, inspecting it so closely Aron has to practice some complicated maneuvers to win a glance from her eyes, but subterfuge is also a spice, she’s ready, at last, and Aron feels rewarded for having kept himself pure throughout the difficult times; he never once sullied himself, in word or deed, was never so much as tempted to rub down there; he knew how he would feel if he did it without a real urge, and even in the days of the maddening fear, his heart had told him how much he would hate himself if he ever gave in like certain others who sell themselves with lust and shame and receivetheir sticky voucher in return; but not him; he never succumbed. Never cheapened himself. And now therefore his joy is resurrected, the dead letter of his childhood lost so long in the mazes of bureaucracy had at last been delivered. Careful now! A chill was sneaking up; a beady eye, a cruel Cyclopean eye slowly opened inside his head, searching for him: What’s all this happiness? Who’s that there being so happy? And right away — like a spy destroying his documents before the authorities catch him — he banishes Yaeli from his thoughts. And walks ahead with a swagger. And then it flickers tentatively deep in his stomach, exactly where it burned when he used to think about his problem; yes, that’s where his joy is coming from. Hush, that’s classified, he must never let anything imperil his love; he will fight this time. Indeed he will.

“Hey, what if”—he says at the top of his voice to Gideon, who is trying to catch up with him. (What if what? He only said that to distract them)—“what if there were these people, see, people you could rent your pimples to if you wanted?” Gideon laughs. “You and your ideas,” and turns to Michael Carny, who has approached for protection against Zacky’s punches, saying, “Kleinfeld and his zany ideas!” The first kind word in a long long time. “No, seriously, Gideon, what if there were these people who could take over your pimples and pains, say, even for a week. So if you had a school trip to go on and you broke an arm, all you’d have to do is deposit it with this person for a week …” Gideon laughs again and pats Aron on the shoulder. Aron, deeply thrilled, peeks over and knows she’s heard, and, best of all, that she’s witnessed Gideon’s hand touching his shoulder, the electric circuit closing between their bodies, without a hiss; it was like, say, in physics, with object A and object B, any two objects, only one of them was Aron’s body, and it was so bright, so accessible and unreserved, that another boy, a certain object A, could simply reach out and touch him, pat him on the shoulder. And overwhelmed with joy, he leaps up waving his hands in the air, doing his impersonation of Rodensky, the comedian, and Gideon, who has been watching attentively, responds with his own rather lame imitation.

And now that astute and sober-minded Gideon had given the go-ahead, they started romping, flying like a storm through the paths of Memorial Park, frightening a group of kindergarten children, shaking down the fruit from a carob tree, and Hanan Schweiky and Meirky Blutreich flanked the war monument with an empty bottle in one handand a rolled-up sweater for a soccer ball, and everyone guessed what they were spoofing and shouted the movie advertisement in unison, “We call it near-beer!” And Yaeli watched this hullabaloo with a placid expression, a smile tapering at the corners of her mouth, as though she guessed whose anonymous presence had launched this merry ship. But don’t think about it, not in your head, under the gaze of the evil eye. Still the firecracker whistled, flashed red in his belly, scorched beneath his heart, where it might yet spontaneously, effortlessly, burst into being amid many little pinpricks of pleasure, exactly where it burns when he eats an omelette fried in oil; forget the details, look over there, see Hanan Schweiky jumping up on the bench to do that routine from Comedy Night, puffing his cheeks and sticking out his stomach, and Aron and the others join in, oh, please let his voice crack now, please, God, it’s coming, it’s coming — and Gideon casts an anxious glance at him, flowing back to his friend over bubbly streams, detecting the gleam of a tiny vein in the heart of a derelict gold mine.