David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

Gideon and Aron are friends again. He repeats this in various ways to himself: Hey! They’re friends again! Or (coolly offhanded): You know those two guys, What’s-his-name and What’s-his-name, who used to hang around together and then sort of didn’t, well, now they do again. He laughs happily to himself. Open-armed they ran toward each other like actors in a movie, like children in a drawing with O-shaped mouths, as if they hadn’t seen each other every day for the past two years, as if there hadn’t been an understanding between them throughout the separation that once or twice a week Aron would hand Gideon a yellow pill which he swallowed without water, oh, if only he hadn’t, but now they met like travelers returning from afar, unpacking their suitcases together: naturally Gideon did most of the talking, because Aron didn’t have much to say. But Gideon didn’t mind that: he told Aron about being a leader in the youth movement, and about his brother Manny’s maneuvers in the Fouga Magister squadron, and about Manny’s new girlfriend and about the Lambretta Zacky put together out of junk; Aron merely nodded his head and listened intently, and again Gideon told about Manny’s girlfriend, who was from Kibbutz Bet Zera and who slept overnight in his and Manny’s room, and he told him about the air force youth battalion, and that after Independence Day they were going to learn how to shoot a Czech rifle, and about how Manny kicked him out of the room when his girlfriend slept over, and Aron listened and kept silent. Together they rambled through the streetsof the workers’ neighborhood, and Gideon told him casually that a boy and girl in his youth group had started going together, and he intended to have a serious talk with the kids about the social implications of pairing up at their age. Aron let nothing show on his face. Then Gideon launched the subject of Anat Fish, who did in the end go with her boyfriend Mickey Zik to the beach in Eilat, and shared a sleeping bag with him; this wasn’t Gideon’s usual way of speaking, he seemed to be winding himself around Aron and pleading for help, but Aron couldn’t figure out why. He said nothing. Gideon too fell silent and yawned widely. For a moment their new thread of intimacy seemed to slacken, everything turned gray and saggy, but it was enough for Aron to think Yaeli, to pull in his stomach so that it tickled in that new place under the heart, hush, mum’s the word; but now Gideon was warming up to him again, displaying exuberant signs of closeness, gabbing about some girl from another class who dropped out of the youth movement and joined the social set, and Aron thought, After all this time, Gideon doesn’t shave yet either, still has last year’s peach fuzz over his lip, though his eyebrows are thicker now, soon they’ll grow together over the bridge of his nose and then Gideon will look more serious than ever, but there’s plenty of time till then, okay, his voice has changed, but that’s not new, we’re used to that, when Aron would phone him — in the days of their estrangement — and hang up right away, he wasn’t always sure who’d answered, Gideon or his father, Gideon had taught himself to speak in an indifferent, expressionless voice without a smile or question mark at the end of a question, and then there was the matter of height; he was almost a whole head taller than Aron by now, though maybe he would stay there for a while, and if you looked at it objectively, he really wasn’t that far ahead of him, he just had a little more confidence, that’s all, a few more bones in his face, and he walked like a cowboy, spread-legged, and if God forbid the pills worked, but they wouldn’t, would they, his heart contracted, they were way past the prescription date, so they couldn’t affect him one way or another, and there was another explanation, just a hunch really, which Aron whispered to himself in a language he didn’t know: maybe, deep down inside, Gideon was waiting for him to catch up. And with a wild burst of enthusiasm Aron suggested that they go to Mandelbaum Gate tomorrow and watch the police convoy come down from the Israeli enclave on Mt. Scopus after a two-week shift; he always liked to read the newspaperdescription of the tension in the air as they crossed through Jordanian territory, peering through the holes in their armored vehicles till they were safely over the border, but Gideon didn’t seem to be listening and started in again about Zacky Smitanka, who made himself, yeah, we know, a Lambretta, how could Aron forget, they were out there every Friday, Zacky and his new buddies, hoody types like him with Lam-brettas and motorbikes and leather jackets, driving the neighbors crazy with the noise, and Papa comes down in his undershirt and says, Hey, gang, what’you doing, busting our heads with all that noise, but they know him and they’re not afraid, they crowd around him like puppy dogs, ask him for advice, and he teaches one guy how to tune the carburetor and change the plugs, and eventually he hops on for a trial spin, and the biker rides behind him, hugging his waist, and Papa tears down the street like a hooligan, roaring with laughter, and don’t forget that Zacky let Papa take the first run on his illegitimate Lambretta; Aron was peeking from behind the curtain just then and saw the look on Zacky’s face, the way Papa smiled at him and the way Zacky smiled at Papa, like a real moron who finally manages to bring home a good report card; and Gideon said that, by the way, he heard it from reliable sources, Zacky himself, what Zacky did with What’s-her-name, that cow, Dorit Alush, something called “between the legs.” He blurted the news out quickly, looking away, desperate for Aron to say something quickly and dispel the foul sound of those words, the kind of words that had never passed between them, and Aron didn’t respond; so that’s what Gideon was getting at, that’s why he was beating around the bush, he had broken their tacit agreement again, he was a traitor, always stretching the delicate membranes of their friendship to the limit, he was getting to be so darn tough, growing from the inside and breaking out, and Gideon sensed that Aron was withdrawing from him and tried to repair the damage by saying that in his opinion kids their age weren’t mature enough for real love, and that he’d vowed not to fall in love until after flight school, and then he would marry his first girlfriend, not someone easy like Manny’s girlfriend, uh-uh; Gideon turned to Aron, his face aglow with inner conviction, his sincere and honest face again, and he swore to him that he would never debase the most sacred thing of all; friendship with a girl — sure, definitely, but nothing dirty or nasty, and Aron nodded with all his might, to signal Gideon that he was on the right track, and Gideon kept watching Aron’s expressions,which guided him, and then said slowly, as though deciphering a secret bulletin from deep inside Aron, that he wished he could persuade the kids in the movement to obey the tenth commandment of socialist youth, sexual purity, and Aron almost shouted, Me too, I swear it, and his eyes were moist and shiny as Gideon looked into them and remarked much to his own surprise, You notice that kid, What’s-her-name, Yaeli, she’s really starting to grow up, isn’t she?

Aron turned aside and looked into the distance, feeling a little like someone trying to keep the pupil in the next seat from copying, but since this was Gideon, his good friend Gideon, he forced himself to turn back and asked weakly if Gideon really thought so, and Gideon said, Absolutely, haven’t you noticed, there’s something about her, she keeps to herself a lot but she has this quiet smile, too bad she’s a bourgeois Scout instead of a socialist. Well anyway, she’s still young enough to win over to the movement. Aron could no longer contain his myriad emotions and fervently confessed his love for her to Gideon, telling him about their secret glances and the conversation full of hidden meanings by the drinking fountain. He described the nights he lay awake and saw her dance before his eyes. He told him about the scraps of paper with her name written on them that he stuck in his sandwich at school and swallowed, sitting right next to her during recess, and how he went to the nurse’s room with some excuse and stole Yaeli’s dental records, and then hid them, and look, these are flowers from the honeysuckle bushes in front of her house, I keep them in my handkerchief.