David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

Once a week he and Gideon took Yaeli to the movies. They went halfsies on her ticket and she sat between them. After the movies they would treat her to a falafel or a shewarma, which she quickly devoured, and then they’d buy her pumpkin seeds in Bahari’s Lane, furtively peeping at the prostitutes but never saying anything. Then they’d go to Café Allenby for a frozen custard, a Creambo, and chocolate twisters; she had an alarming sweet tooth, and Aron worried about those pretty white teeth. On the bus home they always stood up so neither of them would miss the chance to sit with Yaeli. They tried their best to be fair to each other: when Gideon was sick, Aron skipped walking Yaeli home in order to keep to their three-way agreement; on Saturday nights, when the kids from Gideon’s youth group passed Yaeli’s Scout troop in the street, the two of them ignored each other, out of loyalty. Aron, who was probably in bed pretending to read just then, tortured himself with the thought that although he could trust them both wholeheartedly, Gideon and Yaeli existed together, even apart, in a world from which he was excluded. He and Gideon, when she wasn’t there, could speak of nothing but Yaeli. She filled their lives, and they carried her between them in gentle wonder. Every day she seemed to grow wiser. Wiser than either of them. They would go over and over her seemingly innocent remarks, looking for hidden meanings, discussing her taste in movie stars and pop singers; they went out and bought her a book of poems by Esther Kal, and read it aloud together before presenting it to Yaeli, and then they had a long conversation about it and felt how mature they were becoming. Every Thursday they would check her horoscope in Woman’s magazine, and peek at each other’s birth signs to find out what their love life held in store, and then they would listen to the Hit Parade on the radio and send in a postcard with Yaeli’s name on it for the big drawing, and because Yaeli had a subscription to Maariv Magazine for Youth they would read it cover to cover so they’d have something to talk about, and spend more time together, more and more and more.

But there was one thing marring Aron’s happiness: the bickering and arguing between Gideon and Yaeli. They drove each other crazy, those two, and God only knows what might have happened if Aron hadn’tbeen around to smooth things over with his silences and serious demeanor. Anything Yaeli said about public issues would set Gideon off, and his promises to Aron were promptly forgotten when she answered his orations with some smiling, skeptical remark. Even on Gideon’s birthday, when they went to Cafe Nava, they got into an argument. It started — who cares how it started, there was always some reason — Gideon said something about musicals, that they were stupid and superficial, and it was disgraceful the way they were starting to catch on in Israel, and Yaeli said she thought they were fantastic, that she’d give anything to dance in a musical someday with costumes and scenery and a huge cast, and when they’d finished exasperating each other, they fumed in silence, looking off in opposite directions, and then flared up again so suddenly Aron hardly noticed, till he heard Gideon say that school uniforms give youth a healthy sense of group identity and Yaeli stuck her tongue out: pffff! she made an offensive noise, that goody-goody outfit made her feel like a prisoner, and Aron stopped listening, bored with them, and looked up at the gray-blue sky, the evening sky of Jerusalem, as he waited patiently for the quarrel to subside, and tried to think of a special way to celebrate Yaeli’s birthday two weeks from now, she and Gideon were the same sun sign, and next winter all three of them would celebrate his birthday, and he stirred the tall glass before him, annoyed with Gideon for ordering filter coffee; Gideon didn’t like coffee, how could anyone like coffee or beer or cigarettes, no one in the world could stand the taste, it was all an act, he would never pretend for them, not even when he was eighty, so why did Yaeli have to order grain coffee, and he woke up to the sound of tempers flaring. “I personally wouldn’t use makeup,” Yaeli chafed. “But if an unattractive girl wants to help nature out and make herself look good, I say why not.” “By painting her face?!” Gideon exclaimed, turning white and sitting forward, his eyes glaring green and his voice aquiver. “Nobody will be able to scrape it off and get to the real girl underneath!” “I take it you speak from personal experience, Gideon?” Silence. Aron guessed he’d better say something quick to clear the air and pry Gideon’s face away from Yaeli’s, but something was wrong, there were muddy-green whirlpools in her eyes, and Gideon’s eyes were so deep inside them, so fixed and smoldering, the waves of fury receded and the strange muddy green gave way to an eerie catlike gleam; Aron was bewildered, he didn’t know how to conciliate them, for though it seemed to him thathe had listened to their every word, as usual he was left out or, rather, he had sunk into a cherished memory, a familiar memory, yes, about how he felt when Yaeli emerged like a butterfly at ballet class, because by falling in love with someone you save them from death in a way, not to mention yourself. “So what do you say, Kleinfeld, can we hear your opinion on the subject?” asked Yaeli, tearing her face from Gideon’s with cool impatience in her voice. “Would you like to share your thoughts with us now, or go on stirring your milk shake like a loon?”

He stopped abruptly and stared at his still fluttering fingers. Then he glanced at Yaeli with a helpless grin. Her face before him, her beautiful angry face; the defiant cast of her nose making her look almost predatory. And her eyes had never shone so fiercely green before, where did she get that green, and Aron gazed into them, trying to understand, to correct an error, diving and vanishing into himself and reemerging with unexpected vigor, with a life-or-death intensity, in a torrent of words and declarations. “I want to decide at what age I’ll die! I want to die when I reach thirty! On my thirtieth birthday! While I’m still young and strong, before old age sets in!” Shut up, will you shut up already, you’re making a big mistake, look at the expressions on their faces. “I want to commit suicide! When I hit my peak! I mean it, that way you can be happy, because you always know the end is coming, so you live your life to the fullest, you’re never bored, you never waste time …” His voice was fading. He mumbled, turning pale. Why didn’t I shut up. A hollow silence followed, people at nearby tables stared, all around his error loomed, his social gaffe, his breach of the rules of conversation, of the boundaries separating him from others. Shame and humiliation filled his heart, for his self-betrayal, for having divulged something unacceptable. “Kleinfeld the philosopher,” said Gideon, with a quick glance at the surrounding tables, and the three of them laughed a little too much, and Aron thought all was lost, all was illusion, he was not redeemed, not yet redeemed. Unconsciously he wound his fingers tightly around his wrist and began to squeeze, counting in silence, but he shook himself out of it. Enough of that! No more! Yet something had shifted in the distant darkness, stirred as if under the sea.

As Yaeli’s thirteenth birthday approached, Aron came up with a brilliant idea — they would bake a huge sweet challah in her likeness. Gideon was ecstatic and called it the most dynamite Ari plan ever. Aron treasured these words in the round little place that was like a miniatureplanet earth inside him, where he could be really happy sometimes at night watching a misty apparition with peach-colored cheeks and almond eyes take on life and substance, but mum’s the word.