The Zigzag Kid

by David Grossman

  Had it been possible, I would have stayed at his house from morning till night. But Chaim always wanted to go out. He said it was stifling at home, that his mother drove him crazy. I couldn’t understand what drove him crazy. She was just concerned about him, like a mother should be, and it didn’t bother me a bit that she came into the room every other minute, slowly blinking her blue eyes like a doll, saying “Chaim?” or sometimes “Chaimke?” I even looked forward to her intrusions and to the way she would ask us in her soft, deep voice if everything was all right, if we wanted a glass of freshly squeezed fruit juice or a plate of cookies. And I was so attuned to her maternal devotions that I could predict to the second the next time she would walk into the room.

  The best days were the days when Chaim was sick. I would go over to visit him and watch as he lay in bed, with his high forehead and black hair on a big white pillow, and his face so pale, it was almost transparent, looking handsome and weak, but also safe from all the dangers out there. On such days I would sit in class with super-Nonny concentration, writing down every word the teacher said and copying the homework assignment from the blackboard so that I would be able to report in full to Chaim after school, particularly when his mother was in the room with us. She would come in every few minutes to smooth the sheets or plump his pillow, and being so weak, he had to submit. And she had a special way of covering him and tucking the blanket around him, till he was swaddled like a baby up to his chin. Sometimes she would take his temperature, not with a thermometer, but with her lips on his forehead, closing her eyes as Chaim’s closed, and they would stay like this awhile, until eventually she would open her eyes and say, “You’re still running a little fever. I think you’d better sleep now. Amnon can come back again tomorrow.”

  She was forever testing me. Chaim said she always did that to his friends. Anyone deemed unworthy was banished forever. That’s how it had been wherever they lived, both in Israel and abroad. On the other hand, if his mother approved of you, you had a chance of being invited for Friday-night dinner, which was apparently a very big deal.

  I was intrigued by this Friday-night business. Chaim told me that they set the table with special china from Switzerland. They always had interesting guests for dinner, mostly colleagues of his father; each member of the family would choose a meaningful passage to read aloud, and after dessert, Chaim would play the piano.

  The words “a meaningful passage” made me laugh, but on Sundays (Chaim wasn’t allowed to play outside on the Sabbath because that was a family day) I would rush over to ask him about the Friday-night dinner, about who came and what they’d talked about and which “meaningful passages” everyone read. Sometimes I would go out on Friday nights—because, in any case, that’s when Dad and Gabi took care of all the stuff they’d put off during the week—and I would roller-skate past Chaim’s house or climb up into my tree house and try to peek through the heavy curtains and see or hear a “meaningful passage.”

  On other days, between four and five-thirty, I would listen to Chaim practice the piano. It amazed me that nobody had to force him to play. He wanted to, of his own free will. When I don’t practice, life feels empty, he would say. But how could a boy who knew so much and who had traveled all over the world say life felt empty unless he plunked on the piano for an hour and a half each day. I asked him to explain to me in simple human terms how playing the piano fulfilled him. I just wanted to understand what he meant, so maybe I could find fulfillment playing piano, too.

  But he couldn’t explain it. He said there were no words to describe a thing like that. And I got mad and said, At least try to explain. You know how to talk, don’t you? Make an effort to explain in simple Hebrew how musical sounds can fill a person’s life. I mean, are they made of cement? Earth? Water?

  And Chaim nodded pensively, and wrinkled his high forehead, and said he was sorry but he just couldn’t explain, it was something that happened deep inside so it was impossible to describe it to someone outside. At which point I stopped asking. Because if to him I was someone outside, then I wasn’t interested anymore. Besides, I’d learned from Dad to be suspicious of such things. Dad used to say, “I can only believe in what I see and touch! Have you ever seen love? Have you ever seen emotion? Have you ever held an ideal in your hand? Me, I come from a line of simple peddlers, and all I know is: you have to touch the merchandise!”

  And yet, deep in my heart, I knew that Chaim wasn’t lying to me, that he wasn’t trying to convince me of anything. That’s what drew me to Chaim, but it depressed me, too, because I was always trying to convince people I was telling the truth, even when I was lying (especially when I was lying), while Chaim was exactly the opposite. For him it was enough that he believed himself, he didn’t require others to think as he did. Others who were outsiders, that is.

  I made a habit of climbing up to my tree house every afternoon to lie down between four and five-thirty. And there I would listen to Chaim practice the piano, and think, or fall asleep, or reflect on the meaning of an empty life—was it like a vast hall you wandered through with nowhere to rest, or like a huge unfurnished room where every word you said echoed back to you. And aren’t I lucky, I thought, that my life is so full, with such a lot to do: my hobbies, and police investigations, and calisthenics. I didn’t waste my time on useless thoughts, did I? And supposing there were dull, empty days from time to time; now, thanks to Chaim and our friendship, each day was full and exciting.

  Sometimes I would ask myself why a genius like him was so keen on a kid like me. I mean, compared to him (artistically speaking), I was kind of backward and still had a lot to learn. Even then I realized with an aching heart that I might never become like Chaim, that I might live my whole life as a lowly soccer player, a climber of telephone poles, an artiste of make-believe.

  Sometimes Micah would join me in the tree house and ask what the matter was and why I always kept to myself. I would silence him with a wave of my hand and point to the source of Chaim Stauber’s music. And Micah would shake his heavy head and say that music bored him. Once or twice I flew into a rage over his contempt for meaningful things, but eventually I gave up and just felt sorry for him.

  The minute Chaim Stauber finished practicing he would come flying out to play with me. All the culture and serenity would fade away. His mother had no inkling of what happened to him when he left the house. Thanks to my face and my cautious behavior whenever I paid them a visit, she was sure I was a mild-mannered, responsible boy like Chaim. From Chaim’s stories I gathered that eventually she would make friends with the neighbors and start to ask them questions about me, and when she found out who and what I was, she would realize I had been putting on an act around them, pretending to be a sensitive, dependable child, when in fact I was just the opposite.

  Though not really the opposite, I felt, and even cried out in protest against the inevitable verdict, and wished I could explain it to her: because in non-opposite reality I am like that, even though I’m not like that. I could never be sure what I was going to be next. And yet whenever I was at their house, I was truly good, almost innocent. Unbeknownst to her, the week before the final contest I clipped my pinky nail. A wave of devotion and responsibility would engulf me whenever she walked into Chaim’s room and asked us softly whether we’d like a nice drink of fresh-squeezed juice now and a plate of butter cookies.

  I knew she’d find out, though. It was a miracle that she hadn’t already.

  But Chaim Stauber had.

  No, not that I was wild, and sometimes more than just wild. That he liked, which may have been the problem: that was all he liked about me. Once I’d finished showing him everything I could do, and taken him to all my secret places and taught him how to crawl through the sewer pipe, and scare drivers with death-defying leaps from the sidewalk, how to swipe cakes from Sarah’s store, and how to glue a dog and cat together with rubber cement, and how to take money out of the charity box in the synagogue, and how to make a yellow scorpion commit suicide,
and a hundred and one other tricks I knew—then he got a little tired of me.

  I have to write the truth about it, even though it still hurts.

  He got tired of me, all right. It didn’t take him long to explore my depths.

  I realized this before he did. I had long prepared myself for the moment of abandonment. And when I saw his eyes go blank when I started to tell him something, I felt awful and empty and unwanted.

  My mind started working overtime. For example, I came up with the idea of going over to the university and catching some gambusia fish in the pond outside the Canada building. Is that allowed? asked Chaim Stauber, and when I answered no, he asked, a little disappointed, “Is that all, just no?” I immediately answered that in fact it was absolutely against the law, it was stealing from a scientific institution, and he said, “Cool—let’s go!”

  So we went off to catch gambusia fish with nylon bags, and poured them into the big fountain at the entrance to the university where the tourists throw coins. We did it five or six times, and a month later the fountain was so full of gambusias, they had to change the water.

  Great, that was over; now I had to think of something new to light up his eyes. Because that’s what he wanted, for us to share adventures, and ever more daring exploits; only, it got too complicated, because all I wanted was to be with him, to listen to him talking about the Civil War and the Incas and Mozart and the Gypsies, and all the other things he would tell me in his calm, gentle way, without showing off. I wanted to look at the thick black hair combed back from his high and handsome forehead. That’s all I wanted. That and no more. I think he must be the only boy I have never tried to sell or rent something to for an hour. If he expressed interest in something of mine, I’d just give it to him as a present. For me, his friendship was a present.

  I blush to remember the pranks I planned to keep Chaim with me. If Dad had discovered some of the things I did, he would have sent me to juvenile court. One night Chaim and I sneaked out and poured sugar into the gas tank of our principal’s car, which ruined the motor, and for years the car stood dead in front of his house with a dead motor, a sign of our wickedness.1

  But I couldn’t help it. Chaim found new friends who were apparently more interesting. Maybe they could talk to him about Mozart and the Incas. Maybe they understood what he meant by “a full life.”

  And I was stuck with Micah. I was mean to him. I tormented him. He didn’t understand what was going on, or maybe he did. Maybe he liked my tormenting him because that made the ugliness in me stand out even more.

  One day in class, Chaim Stauber said something about bullfights, that in Spain there are six bulls killed in every bullfight. When I came home that day I did what any decent citizen would do after hearing a thing like that—I called the police.

  I told Gabi to stop whatever she was doing and tell me everything she knew about bullfights.

  Gabi took a cab to the public library. She came home with a sheet of paper on which she had copied out what the encyclopedia said. We hurried to the kitchen, where she read it to me. She didn’t ask any questions. With one swift glance she saw the whole story on my face, muttered, “Knowledge is power, eh?,” and went on reading. I closed my eyes, letting her every word imprint itself just where my brain was sore with jealousy.

  Next morning I found an opportunity to tell Chaim that the little sword they plunge into the bull at the beginning of the corrida is called a banderilla, and that it’s shaped like a bee’s stinger so it will pierce the hide and be hard to take out. Chaim listened earnestly and said he didn’t know that, but did I know the difference between a matador and a torero?

  Gabi worked hard to solve that one. She called up some friends and even one of her old professors, and the conclusion was that a torero is anyone who participates in a bullfight, but only the matador kills the bull.

  The next day at recess I blurted the information out to Chaim, explaining that in Portugal they don’t kill the bulls, and in Spain an outstanding matador receives the bull’s ear as a prize, sometimes both ears, and if he’s absolutely tremendous like Paco Camino (“the greatest of them all,” I added), he receives the tail as well. There was a flickering in Chaim’s eyes. He said his father had promised to find him postcards of a real bullfight which he would then be able to show me. And I made the innocent suggestion that he should look for postcards showing the banderillas, because “they’re really spectacular” (I swear, that’s what I said!), so we’d see the bright paper ribbons hanging from the barbed darts.

  And I walked off.

  And Chaim followed me.

  And then cautiously, in a roundabout way, he returned.

  Day after day we would exchange useful information about the corrida, the costumes, the different sorts of knives and lances. He would finish practicing at five-thirty and hurry to my tree house, where we would spend a couple of minutes, limiting our conversation to a single topic. This was the suitable thing to do. Our revived friendship was too shaky to overburden now. Maybe Chaim sensed how raw with pain I was.

  There was an unspoken pact between us, a pact of mercy, and we were careful not to speak of things he knew about but I didn’t. He truly was one of a kind.

  We would chat about the famous matadors I knew of from the material Gabi found for me, or about those tragic instances when a bull killed a matador, or the various methods of thrusting a sword. With a shiver of delight, we would savor names like Rafaelo di Paula, Ricardo Torres, and Luis Machaniti, and quiz each other on their famous fights and where they got an ear or a tail and where they had surrendered their glorious lives … And after a few minutes of such small talk, flimsy as a cobweb but iridescent in the light, Chaim would politely take his leave, and I would recline on my back for an hour, content and benevolent enough to tolerate Micah’s face slowly rising through the branches.

  “What’s happening, Nonny?”

  One week, two weeks. A fine thread. If it tore, I would plummet to the end of time, I could not endure another such blow. Gabi worked like a demon. Every day she would phone the cultural attaché at the Spanish embassy and pump him for more information. She went to visit her parents in Nes Ziona and came back with a book of poems by García Lorca, who wrote about bullfights; I, meanwhile, began to spy on Pessia, the cow our neighbor Mautner brought with him when he left his kibbutz. Pessia had never been dehorned, so she now boasted two splendid bony protuberances which were of no use to her whatsoever. Pessia had a quiet, easygoing nature. She loved to stand in the little meadow behind Mautner’s house, chewing the long grass with a sideways movement of her puffy lips, so dreamily content that her black eyes shone with something nearly human. One day I ran before her, waving a red towel I had swiped from the clothesline. As she watched bewilderedly, her tail started swishing like a pendulum, and I wondered if maybe she had some Spanish blood. That evening, in a mood of sublime pathos, Gabi recited “The Goring and the Death” from Lorca’s “Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías,” a poem in memory of a dead matador. There were lines like “The bass strings began to throb at five in the afternoon. The wounds burned with the heat of suns at five in the afternoon. Horrifying five in the afternoon!”

  Gabi finished reading. Her face was dark. Her hand trembled, and her head fell backward as though it had been severed with a sword. I shivered under the covers. Lorca’s words passed through me like a heady wine. I pulled the blanket over my head and my bed seemed to burst into flames. Later, after the horrible incident, Gabi remarked that if she had foreseen how Lorca’s poem would affect me, she’d have stuck to When We Were Very Young. But all that night she let the words resound through the room and flash blood-red behind my dreaming lids … The next day, at the water fountain, I announced to Chaim and Micah that I’d made up my mind. I had decided on my goal in life:

  To be the first Israeli matador.

  Silence. The skies of Spain turned red above me.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” whispered Chaim in awe. “You’re going to bre
ak into Mautner’s yard?”

  “Yeah, sure, why not? I’ll fight that bull if it’s the last thing I do.”

  And it probably would be. Because Mautner was a very tough character.

  “She’s a cow,” observed Micah. “Pessia is a cow.”

  A wave of terror, terror of myself, washed over me. The little motor in my head was buzzing like a wasp.

  “Well, she does have horns,” Chaim answered slowly, beginning to grasp that what I was proposing here was the wildest, wickedest exploit yet, the ultimate proof of my friendship.

  “So, are you guys in?” I asked. “I’ll need two picadors with swords.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Gory visions whirled through my brain with piercing cries and shrill admonitions. But then Chaim’s eyes lit up like torches, and we both began to titter nervously. Micah looked on with contempt, or maybe glee, because he’d already guessed what would happen. I ignored him. I didn’t want to see his boring face anymore. What did he know about courage, and madness, and friendship, and thrilling escapades, and a life of meaning? Chaim and I joined hands and started jumping up and down and screaming, but quietly, lest his mother turn up and see my seven deadly sins upon us.

  14

  Wanted: Dulcinea

  “Ah what a meal!” said Felix, setting his fork down and smiling with contentment.

  A rosy dimness spread over the restaurant. Petal-pink candles illumined every table. My tummy was round and full, and on my plate were the remains of the best dinner I had ever eaten in my life. For an hors d’oeuvre, Felix ordered goose-liver pâté, followed by cream of asparagus soup and duck à l’orange. I could barely resist the juicy steaks I saw on passing trays, but I controlled myself and dined on rice and fried potatoes instead—incredibly delicious rice and fried potatoes! Twice I asked for a second helping, and then I ordered fresh mushroom soup and stuffed peppers with almonds and pine nuts, and three servings of chocolate mousse for dessert, and when Felix asked what I thought of the food, I answered sincerely that the chef at the police cafeteria had a lot to learn.