David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

Varda Koppler turns around in her seat, searching for eyes to avoid. She’s short and skinny and has tiny breasts, and she keeps stretching her blouse all the time. Varda Koppler has a grown-up face, with a big, strong nose and smoldering eyes, but she has the body of a little chick. It’s strange. Like a campfire on a matchstick. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know how girls feel about their breasts, or maybe it’s no big deal for them, like a shoulder or a knee would be for him. Varda wears a ring on every finger. She can’t wait to grow up. She has a pen pal, a soldier from the Golani unit, and she knows army secrets. Koby Kimchi in the next seat looks up at her and sighs, and Aron reflects: Here we’ve been together since kindergarten, yet it feels as if we’re separating.

But why is he so heavy-hearted. Last year on the school trip to Tiberias they sat around the lake at night, after the teachers went back to the hostel, and built a campfire and laughed and talked till dawn, and dozed off in a heap, like some huge, weird animal that breathed with one enormous lung. Aron was the first to open his eyes in the morning. The Sea of Galilee was smooth and pure, and the morning twilight quivered upon it like a harp string.

Twelve minutes left.

Will this class never be over. And there’s still math. Fifty minutes. Another countdown, then it starts all over again. And during recess he’ll have to copy the answers to two math problems he didn’t finish yesterday. So he won’t even have ten minutes for soccer. If it takes a workman three days to tear down a wall, how many days will it takehim to tear down a house … He turns around in his seat, wriggling in a way that lets him see Adina Ringle’s watch. Still twelve minutes! I’m telling you, this lesson will go on forever. They’ll be stuck in this room for the rest of their lives: while other kids go out to recess, run home, grow up, join the army, get married, their class will be forgotten, until at last, one fine day the saving bell will ring and they’ll hobble out to the sun-filled schoolyard, trembling and bewildered, blinking in amazement, thronged by the children of the next generation. He smiles inside, so no one will notice he’s awake. Dorit Alush, the cow in the next seat, looks up at him with her muddy eyes. Moo.

I don’t believe it, still twelve minutes! Is there something wrong with all the clocks? Has some mad magician frozen time? How will I get through twelve whole minutes? Okay, here’s how we do it: yes. Far, far away in Tel Mond prison lives a convicted murderer, sentenced to life. Or better yet, Papa, a Russian soldier guarding the armory for three years in the freezing cold, hopping from foot to foot in the snow, another month and he will be released, then another week, another day, another twelve minutes, oh joy, and suddenly, wait, what’s this, two men approach and ask him to accompany them for five minutes, but instead they board a train, and for eight long days he wriggles in his seat, they never say a word to him, and in Moscow, the prison, Taganka, Lu-byanka, Aron faints and an interrogator who looks like the Angel of Death beats his face to a steak, and what did Aron think of, what kept him going, I’ll tell you what, his memories of schooldays, of the children in his class, this is what he clings to with what’s left of his mind when they send him to Komi, to the frozen taiga, to chop trees for the railroad, oi Zioma, you momzer, damn you, Zioma, and all around him people are dropping like flies, from hunger, from disease, they go out of their mind like you go out of a room, and he heaves his ax, wistfully remembering the happy faces of his classmates long ago; there was that girl, yes, what was her name, Varda Koppler, a little thing with smoldering eyes, and there was Gil Kaplan, and Eli Ben-Zikri, the hood; together we passed our childhood days in a sunny classroom with pictures on the walls, and a map of Israel, and plenty of fresh air, and there was recess. Aron feels himself reviving: Hey, this is great, where were we, and all around him people are dropping like flies, but you can’t bury the dead here in winter, the earth is frozen solid, hard as marble, and if you make trouble they throw you in the cellar with thecorpses, you spend one night down there and you come out raving, eight long hours; and he doesn’t give in, he fights, he seals himself off hermetically — hurry now, use your brains — in the cellar, in all this horror; think about the war you waged as a child, don’t ask, someone smuggled pictures into the house, and there was nobody to turn to, he had to face the enemy alone, oh if only he could have talked to Yochi about it. Yochi, who are you kidding, he giggles. In our house you learn to hold your tongue. In our house you never hear a dirty word. Mama and Papa leave their bedroom door ajar. Aron and Yochi never talk about such things, not even when they’re alone together. Even the time they fished her curse out of the toilet, and Aron was scared and wanted to ask her things, he felt too much like a traitor because he’d scowled at her with the rest of them, and now it was every man for himself, he would have to fight this war alone: but who was the enemy? Okay, let’s go, we’re freezing, it’s pitch dark, there’s a crackling sound, the dead are stirring, their bones contract in the icy cold, you could go crazy with that noise, but you know what scared him the most, what worried him more than anything, a pack of dirty pictures, that’s right, and once in desperation he set a trap, he wound a yellow thread around the envelope before replacing it in the drawer. And then he stayed in the house all day, on the lookout for the enemy agent, listening for the sound of drawers opening. And the next morning when he ran to the drawer, lo and behold, the thread was gone. He could have sworn there hadn’t been any strangers in the house. Nervously Aron stretches in his seat. Remember, Aron. Remember this. The way it used to be. A time will come when you’ll miss all this, when you’ll melt at the very thought of it! And one day, long ago, when he was seven or eight, he ran home and found Papa holding Mama against the salon wall, hugging her and squeezing her into the corner, funny he should remember that just now, and when Mama caught sight of Aron over Papa’s shoulder, she tried to push Papa away—“The boy!”—but he didn’t want to let her go, or maybe he couldn’t, Aron had learned since then that it can happen to dogs too, Papa must have gotten stuck; he pulled his face away, but the rest of him clung to her with a will of its own, it wasn’t Papa’s fault, some higher force was making him do it. “Stop already! The boy!” she rasped, and finally he unstuck himself and stood in the corner, panting shamefacedly, but a little smile slithered over his lips, oozing with the slime inside him, and his arms, which a moment ago hadlooked too long, dangling ape-like at his sides, began to shrink to their natural proportions, and that was the last time, thank God: only Aron couldn’t afford to take chances, he always coughed outside the door, he was so used to doing it, he barely remembered why anymore, though there wasn’t really much point, since it had never happened again.

Eleven minutes. What is this? He’s been halfway around the world and only one minute has gone by? He leans back against the uncomfortable chair. Dorit Alush is the girl Zacky likes, but Aron feels indifferent toward her. They have nothing in common. They’ve been deskmates for two months now. Nitza Knoller, their homeroom teacher, moved him up to Dorit’s desk because she couldn’t see him behind Hanan Schweiky anymore. Dorit and Aron rarely speak. All day she chews the same stick of gum, and every class she draws a picture of a boy with long, straight bangs. That’s the only face she knows how to draw. She’s probably drawn a thousand of them by now. At least she could add a mustache for variety. What does he know about her, though, not much. That her father has a stall at the Machaneh Yehuda market where he displays his homemade mechanical diver toys in a tank of water. Maybe their house is full of diver toys. Aron feels like scribbling on her picture. He has an urge to rip it up. What would happen if he lit a match and burned it? She’d only draw another one. And someday she’ll forget Aron Kleinfeld and the millions of hours they sat together. Oops, his foot slips, he kicks the desk. At least her hand moves and she frowns at him. Maybe she will remember him after all.