David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

From the pantry he watched them sit down to supper, reflecting how cozy the kitchen was at times like this, with everyone eating and talking at once, but the wistful scene dissolved before his eyes, and an arctic fog descended, full of ghoulish apparitions, naked bodies, tangled limbs, a dog on top of a woman; he suddenly felt the blood drain from his hand as he picked a boot up and reached into the lining with its smell of old fur, glancing bleakly at Yochi slouched over the table, angling for breadcrumbs with her little finger; and from Yochi’s jaundiced face to Grandma Lilly, not yet sixty and already senile, muttering to herself as she wandered around the house, and only a year ago she was so lucid, so cheerful, and then a tiny blood vessel got clogged up and that was that; how he pitied his parents, especially Mama, working so hard to keep Grandma’s illness a secret, to hide it from everybody, including their rummy friends on Friday night, and then he remembered it was Tuesday, and on Tuesdays Mama served bananas in sour cream with sugar on top in those orange dessert dishes, and while he wasn’t so crazy about squashed bananas, he liked to see the expression on Mama’s face when she served it to him, and he felt a pang; where were we, what were we thinking about, oh yes, his film collection, the negatives he picked up outside Photo Lichtman, and the pieces of celluloid he’d found, including one really long strip from an actual movie showing a tall woman with white eyeballs, white lips, and black, flowing hair, which meant that in real life she was blond, and she was standing in the doorway, talking to someone, and the subtitles said: “Don’t kid yourself, Rupert, no one is indispensable”; but what if Grandma died, she was a little girl once too, you know, there may be billions of people in the world, but there’s only one Grandma, and he checked again, carefully, but knew it was hopeless, he had seen what he had seen, and he heaved a sigh, how fragile life is, he never realized that before, yes, they would have to pull together as a team, in perfect loyalty, he melted with compassion for them, for their smugness and ignorance of what lurked behind the sock drawer. Slowly and carefully he unbuckled his sandal, and nearly fell asleep again over his outstretched foot, but who could have brought such a thing into this house and hidden it in thebedroom, and then he had another staggering thought, what if his finding the cards behind the drawer had made him, God forbid, an accessory in the crime, his fingerprints were smeared all over the pictures, so the agent who smuggled them in could use them as evidence to blackmail him, there were stories like that in the newspaper sometimes, and it was anyone’s guess what a person like that was capable of, and how would Aron be able to prove he was pure and innocent?

He felt exhausted, as if he’d just been through a terrible ordeal, like one of those poor children he read about in books who had to leave home and fend for themselves. Papa came out of the bathroom with shaving cream on his face. Aron lay low, and felt his soul evaporate into a single quivering strand; carefully he put the boot on his childish foot, and was startled to find everyone staring at him, even Yochi turned in her chair, and Grandma came closer and gawked at him, making him shrink even more, his bare foot drained white, his skin numb and cold.

Nu nu, said Papa. Nu nu what? said Mama. Nu nu, it fits, said Papa, and wrinkled his brow, as his lower lip covered the upper lip. That I can see for myself, said Mama, that much is obvious. Maybe the sock isn’t thick enough, suggested Papa, his mouth a red hole in a mountain of foam. It’s a heavy winter sock, said Mama, I specifically told him to get a heavy winter sock. But he’s worn those boots for two years in a row; Papa suddenly raised his voice. Tell that to him, not me, said Mama, turning away. Please, Mama, please buy me a new pair! whispered Aron. In your dreams, answered Mama, pulling off the boot. You’ll get new ones the day I have hair growing here, she said, indicating the palm of her hand with an arching of a furious eyebrow. Go on, y’alla. She pushed him away, stuffing last year’s newspapers back in the boots. Wash your hands and come to the table, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll finish every bite on your plate.

There was Rosaline, and Natalie, and Lizzy and the chimp, and Angela, the blind girl, and Roxana, his favorite, and Alfonso, the whip-cracking dwarf, ringmaster of the Pussy Circus. Each picture had a caption under it scribbled in Hebrew: “Giddyap! To the Racetrack of Desire,” said the one showing the black stallion named Ringo with zaftig Lizzy. “Now she sees …” said the one showing Fritz the chimp paired off with Angela, who knows by touch. The slovenly, unfamiliar writing was full of misspellings that irked him even more than the pictures did: corruption spread like mildew from the pictures to the words. He also noticed that the newspaper Alfonso was reading in the picture where Rosaline crouched between his hairy knees was in a foreign language. Looking through a magnifying glass, he saw it wasn’t English: the letters were crooked and clumsy, and he couldn’t make out the date either, though the magnifying glass did reveal a number of large, greasy fingerprints on some of the photos, especially the ones of Roxana. With the eyes of a detective, he examined the pictures one by one and deduced from the evidence that this circus was in serious financial trouble: the high-heeled shoes worn by smiling Natalie turned up on Angela, the blind girl, in the card with the silver horn, and Fritz’s eating trough reappeared in the picture where Alfonso uses Natalie as a saddle on Ringo. The pictures really disgusted him, yet every time his parents stepped out the door, he went running back to the sock drawer, he couldn’t help it, he had to take one last peek,and a moment later he was at it again, frantically thumbing through the cards, God forbid he should skip one; then he would slip them back in the envelope and continue sitting there, distraught, as though he’d just seen them for the first time, these joyless men and women, naked slaves of an invisible emperor, writhing together like hammy actors in a play, with twisted grins and bulging eyes.

Who then, he wondered, had smuggled these cards into the house, who were the girls, who was the photographer, and supposing the circus was still in town, on an ordinary street nearby where crowds of lecherous adults gathered even now to pay their homage to the emperor … One night he woke with a start: a distant blast, like an engine backfiring, had frightened him out of a deep sleep, and he lay rigidly in his bed, certain that not too far from the building project, amid whispered confessions and ghostly groans, the emperor’s slaves were pitching the circus tent, erecting the king pole for a hasty performance, and in the dim glow of the spotlight the ring looked like a huge red eyeball or a cavernous mouth, and Alfonso, in a top hat, cracked his whip while four grimacing, grease-smeared girls jumped obediently through a burning hoop …

He had to tell somebody. Zacky and Gideon were his two best friends, of course, but he couldn’t possibly tell Gideon. That would breach their noble silence, that would be a sacrilege. And Zacky, well, Zacky was worse than ever, sadly enough, though it wasn’t really his fault, it was just the change. Anyway, Zacky knew more than was good for him; what if he used dirty language and turned the mystery into something more disgusting than it already was.

At school, in class, Aron stares down at his desk. His teacher, Rivka Bar-Ilan, is talking about a rabbi who fled from Jerusalem during the Roman siege; her voice drones on, she barely moves her lips. “Now, did Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakai advise his followers to surrender because he was a traitor?” She hunts for names in her attendance notebook: “Michael Carny, answer the question.” Aron retreats into his thoughts again. Michael Carny sits across the room. He’s tall but limp, like a jellyfish. Giggly Rina Fichman at his side tries to whisper the answer out of the corner of her mouth. “No teamwork, please,” says the teacher wearily, scouring the rows with heavy-lidded eyes. “Well, Michael Carny?”