David Grossman: Falling out of time

MAN:

Tell me,

tell me

about us

that night.

WOMAN:

I sense something

secret: you are tearing off

the bandages

so you may drink

your blood, provisions

for your journey to there .

MAN:

That night,

tell me

about us

that night.

WOMAN:

You

circle

around me

like a beast

of prey. You close

in on me

like a nightmare.

That night, that

night.

You want to hear about

that night.

We sat on these chairs,

you there, me here.

You smoked. I remember

your face came

and went in the smoke,

less and less

each time. Less

you, less

man.

MAN:

We waited

in silence

for morning.

No

morning

came.

No

blood

flowed.

I stood up, I wrapped you

in a blanket,

you gripped my hand, looked

straight into my eyes: the man

and woman

we had been

nodded farewell.

WOMAN:

No

wafted dark

and cold

from the walls,

bound my body,

closed and barred

my womb. I thought:

They are sealing

the home that once

was me.

MAN:

Speak. Tell me

more. What did we say?

Who spoke first? It was very quiet,

wasn’t it? I remember breaths.

And your hands twisting

together. Everything else

is erased.

WOMAN:

Cold, quiet fire burned

around us.

The world outside shriveled,

sighed, dwindled

into a single dot,

scant,

black,

malignant.

I thought: We must

leave.

I knew: There’s nowhere

left.

MAN:

The minute

it happened,

the minute

it became—

WOMAN:

In an instant we were cast out

to a land of exile.

They came at night, knocked on our door,

and said: At such and such time,

in this or that place, your son

thus and thus.

They quickly wove

a dense web, hour

and minute and location,

but the web had a hole in it, you

see? The dense web

must have had a hole,

and our son

fell

through.

TOWN CHRONICLER: As she speaks these words, he stops circling her. She looks at him with dulled eyes. Lost, arms limp, he faces her, as if struck at that moment by an arrow shot long ago.

WOMAN:

Will I ever again

see you

as you are,

rather than as

he is not?

MAN:

I can remember

you without

his noneness — your innocent,

hopeful smile — and I can remember

myself without his noneness. But not

him. Strange: him

without his noneness, I can no longer

remember. And as time goes by

it starts to seem as though

even when he was,

there were signs

of his noneness.

WOMAN:

Sometimes, you know,

I miss

that ravaged,

bloody

she.

Sometimes I believe her

more than I believe

myself.

MAN:

She is the reason I take

my life

in your hands and ask

you a question

I myself

do not understand:

Will you go with me?

There—

to him?

WOMAN:

That night I thought:

Now we will separate. We cannot live

together any longer. When I tell you

yes,

you will embrace

the no, embrace

the empty space

of him.

MAN:

How will we cleave together?

I wondered that night.

How will we crave each other?

When I kiss you,

my tongue will be slashed

by the shards of his name

in your mouth—

WOMAN:

How will you look into my eyes

with him there,

an embryo

in the black

of my pupils?

Every look, every touch,

will pierce. How will we love,

I thought that night.

How will we love, when

in deep love

he was

conceived.

MAN:

The

moment

it happened—

WOMAN:

It happened? Look

at me, tell me:

Did it happen?

MAN:

And it billows up

abundantly,

an endless

wellspring. And I

know — as long as

I breathe,

I will draw

and drink and drip

that blackened

moment.

WOMAN:

Mourning condemns

the living

to the grimmest solitude,

much like the loneliness

in which disease

enclothes

the ailing.

MAN:

But in that loneliness,

where — like soul

departing body—

I am torn

from myself, there

I am no longer alone,

no longer alone,

ever since .

And I am not

just one there,

and never will be

only one—

WOMAN:

There I touch his

inner self,

his gulf,

as I have

never touched

a person

in the world—

MAN:

And he,

he also touches

me from

there, and his touch—

no one has ever

touched me in that way.

(silence)

WOMAN:

If there were such a thing

as there ,

and there isn’t,

you know — but if

there were,

they would have already gone

there.

One of everyone would have

got up and gone. And how

far will you go,

and how will you know

your way back,

and what if you don’t

come back, and even if

you find it—

and you won’t,

because it isn’t—

if you find it, you will not

come back,

they will not let you

back, and if you do

come back, how

will you be, you might

come back so different

that you won’t

come back,

and what about me,

how will I be if you don’t

come back, or if

you come back

so different that you don’t

come back?

TOWN CHRONICLER: She gets up and embraces him. Her hands scamper over his body. Her mouth probes his face, his eyes, his lips. From my post in the shadows, outside their window, it looks as if she is throwing herself over him like a blanket on a fire.

WOMAN:

That night I thought:

Now we will never

separate.

Even if we want to,

how can we?

Who will sustain him, who will

embrace

if our two bodies do not

envelop

his empty fullness?

MAN:

Come,

what could be simpler?

Without mulling or wondering

or thinking: his mother

and father

get up and go

to him.

WOMAN:

In whose eyes will we look to see him,

present and absent?

In whose hand

will we intertwine fingers

to weave him

fleetingly

in our flesh?

Don’t go.

MAN:

The eyes,

one single

spark

from his eyes—

how can we,

how may we

not try?

WOMAN:

And what will you tell him,

you miserable madman?

What will you say? That hours

after him, the hunger awoke

in you?

That your body

and mine, like a pair

of ticks, clutched

at life and clung

to each other and forced us

to live?

MAN:

If we can be with him

for one more moment,

perhaps he, too,

will be

for one more

moment,

a look—

a breath—

WOMAN:

And then what?

What will become

of him?

And of us?

MAN:

Perhaps we’ll die like he did, instantly.

Or, facing him, suspended,

we will swing

between the living

and the dead—

but that we know. Five years

on the gallows of grief.

(pause)

The smell

from your body

when your anguish

plunges on you,

lunges;

the bitter smell in which

I always find