David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

Michael giggles in distress. “Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakai,” he repeatsslowly, as though the name itself should be enough to acquit him, but Rivka Bar-Ilan screws up her mouth and makes a mark in her notebook. “Hanan Schweiky.” “Yes, Teach?” Poor Hanan, half reclining on the desk, is diligently drawing a picture, his head resting in the crook of his left arm with his hand perched over it, parrotlike. Aron tries to collect himself and remember the question. They were talking about some traitor. But who? The noose tightens. You never see her lose her temper, though, not Rivka Bar-Ilan. She just keeps talking in that cool, indifferent voice, making those little marks in her notebook, and if you get three X’s beside your name, she sends you to the principal’s office.

This is their fifth and next-to-last class today, after this there’s math and then home. Meirky Blutreich in the row by the window is trying to focus sun rays on his lenses. There’s a long black line of fuzz from his sideburns to his cheeks, and a couple of times when he raised his arm, Aron thought he saw a shadow there. He tried to sneak a closer glimpse in the locker room before gym class, but no luck, and according to the new rule, you have to see it three times in broad daylight for it to count as incontrovertible evidence. Aron slips his hand in and cautiously touches himself. He’s as warm and smooth as a baby there. Now the teacher’s asking Zacky Smitanka, who naturally doesn’t know the answer either, and when she writes the X in her notebook, he spins around with a goofy smile on his face, as if to say, Fooled her, didn’t I? Twenty-four minutes to go, Gil Kaplan signals the class, two fingers and four fingers over his head. He has wavy hair like a movie star, and the girls say he sleeps with a net at night. Aron looks down at the grooves on his desk: fifteen days till summer vacation. Fifteen days times five hours a day equals seventy-five hours. Oh well.

Hanan Schweiky, the class comedian, bends down, sticks a piece of balloon in his mouth, and sucks it in. Then he sits up again looking innocent and starts rolling the balloon around under his desk. Something’s happening. Aliza Lieber, the redhead, takes her glasses off and sticks the sidepieces into the corners of her mouth. Aron watches her, she always does that, and suddenly it dawns on him that she’s trying to stretch her lips. He sits up straight; it’s a good thing the teacher is busy with Gil Kaplan now, otherwise she would have noticed the spark of interest, the gleam of light in the tedium spreading toward her. He glances furtively at Aliza Lieber. It’s true! She thinks she can stretchher lips that way! She thinks her mouth is too small! He sure has been making a lot of discoveries lately.

A sudden pop: the balloon. Raucous laughter, groans of protest. Meirky Blutreich, the troublemaker, ducks down the row to deliver a painful swat on the neck to Michael Carny, now cross-eyed with tears, whose fellow gigglepuss, Rina Fichman, jumps up and shouts at Meirky. Rivka Bar-Ilan raps the desk with her notebook. Not angrily, but leadenly: one, two, three. Her eyes show only weary contempt for this display. To no avail: the children crackle with indignation, zigzag curses across the aisle, explode with hilarity, and flash their eyes in a great electric storm that discharges the boredom of the classroom.

Aron sits quietly at his desk. At times like this he has learned to stay calm. Regarding the class with open eyes. Maybe it’s a sign that he’s changing. Maturing. Gideon sits there, serious and quiet like him. But he has a disapproving, even haughty look in his eyes. Aron doesn’t like that look. Next year Gideon will be a youth group leader. He quit Scouts because there wasn’t enough Zionist content for him, but he has no intention of joining a kibbutz. Gideon has principles, he plans his life to the last detail: in six and a half years he will join the air force like his brother Manny. Then he’ll work as a commercial pilot for El Al. Gideon gets a little puffed up at times, but the kids respect him, and even though he never goofs off in class, they know he isn’t a coward or anything, he just has principles. Still, Aron can’t help wondering when Gideon managed to develop such a responsible attitude — the two of them have been together practically all their lives; since they were born, in fact.

The class simmers down. Gil Kaplan flashes eighteen minutes to go. At least something worthwhile came out of that hullabaloo. “So we see that Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakai was neither a coward nor a traitor,” says the teacher. “He was a seeker of peace, and when he realized that the inhabitants of the besieged city were not going to survive without food, he left secretly to speak to the Roman governor, Titus Vespasian. And now, who can tell me how Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakai managed to escape — yes, I see you, Zachary — from the besieged city? Yes, Zachary, what is it?”

Zacky is suddenly speechless. His vigorously waving hand begins to wilt. Furious with himself for being such a numskull, he slouches dumblyin his seat. Rivka Bar-Ilan throws him a sidelong glance and sighs. Then she asks another boy, and Zacky spins around with his goofy grin as if to say, Fooled you again, didn’t I? Aron studies the grooves in the desk: with seventeen minutes to go, he has now entered the horse phase. Then, in descending order, come the donkey, fox, dog (these minutes run very close together), cat, rabbit, mouse, fly (the final minutes, and then the final half minutes): mosquito, amoeba, germ, atom. And next to the atom, which has to be imagined, comes the great picture of a bell and the words “Born Free.”

But it isn’t time yet. Don’t get excited. Imagine the horse phase lasting forever, and then suddenly Gil Kaplan locks hands over his head and flashes: Surprise! Thirteen minutes! Over a minute in the fox and we didn’t even notice.

In the back of the room, alone by the wall, sits David Lipschitz. His head keeps jerking to the left: click! click! Like a water sprinkler. It’s huge, his head. His hair is almost white. Aron has found a sly way of watching him. He takes a good long look in his direction, and absorbs his features: the scowling pink cheeks; the eyes blinking bitterly, darting madly around in the caves under his albino eyebrows. But why is he angry? Lately Aron has been trying to guess certain things: for instance, does he have his own room at home? And when did the change take place, or maybe he was born that way because his mother happened to look at an albino while she was pregnant with him. And did his parents really love him? Did his mother scream when she saw her baby was a freak? And did he have a younger brother or sister who was a comfort to his parents? And how would it feel to have a younger brother who was smarter and more normal than you were? Aron swerves around. David Lipschitz noticed. How could he have noticed? Aron sits up and concentrates on the teacher’s lips. In his film collection at home he has one negative that’s exactly like David: a boy with a big white head, slumping over a desk. Sometimes Aron holds the film up to the light and searches for the aura most of them have; and he tries to imagine Mr. Lipschitz walking into David’s room at night and laying his hand on David’s head, the way Papa does sometimes, but for different reasons. At home in front of the mirror once, Aron put his hand on his own head and started to jerk it. Strangely enough, the touch of his hand relaxed him, and right away the jerking stopped. Okay, so David’s father, the big shot from the Ministry of the Interior, comes home fromwork, finds David sitting in his room, staring morosely out the window at the children in the street, longing for Anat Fish. Gently he lays his hand on David’s bony head, and it jerks, once, twice, but then as he spreads his palm over it like a warm cap, it slowly yields to him and stops jerking, and for a moment when Aron stood before the mirror he imagined David’s scowling face becoming human, longing for comfort. He gazed in wonder at the sharp, expectant face, thinking: This is you. This is the boy you are. This is the face you have. He shut his eyes tightly and, when he opened them again, he saw only himself, okay, but that’s cheating, you deliberately put on the American expression, still, you can’t deny that your face shows life and hope for the future. And then he grimaced and watched himself in the mirror. Isn’t it strange how one little scowl can reveal the pattern of distortion? And he arranged his features and smoothed out the kinks.