Be My Knife

by David Grossman

  This is the exact way I see the “performance” to which I’ve condemned myself before you with that letter; actually, with all of them. From the beginning. Don’t know what happened to me. In one moment my heart overflowed and flooded into the wide spaces in my brain. What actually happened? I remember seeing you, there were people around you, there was a lively discussion and you didn’t participate. Suddenly your lips sank and you smiled a strange smile, a sorrowful smile, no harder than that, the smile of a person who has found out that very minute that she has lost her last hope, the hope for her soul, no less, but who knows that from now on, this is the way it has to be, and that she will have to go on living with that loss … and that was the moment I entered your life. A kind of odd, unhappy moment, but I didn’t even have time to think about it, because in that moment I saw my name lying on the bottom of your smile and I leaped. On the other hand, perhaps my name wasn’t written there, perhaps I so wanted you to know that I could see it and that you weren’t alone that I jumped too quickly. This is not new for me, either; you should know, I have a long gloomy history of such unripe leaps—in work, and in my life, and in family matters, it was already happening in school, and in the army, and in letters to the editor—in any place I felt that something was being held back or blocked; no matter what the reason was, whether because of opacity or cowardiceor stupidity or simply because “you just don’t do that.” In such a moment, I always rebel, on purpose, out of spite (says my father)—not true, when I rebel it’s a rescue mission—I thought you understood, it is you who first dared to write the word “wish”—and then I am flooded, at once, you saw it. And damn the name of the laws of nature and society that determine, let’s say, that a certain person’s soul must be satisfied with only its separate existence, alone, within his own skin.

  Or alone, within his own pit.

  It’s silly to keep on explaining (and I can’t stop), but it is always this way. Somewhere, very close, something is building up, someone is begging to burst out already, something that will suffocate if it doesn’t crack, and even though I don’t know its being, its choked scream is clear to me. You asked me what kind of music I listen to when I’m at home and when I am at work, and especially when I am writing to you. You asked as if you assumed that I am always surrounded by music. I’m sorry to disappoint you, I’m not very musical. I am, in my opinion, dysmusical (all in all, I went and bought the Children’s Cornerby Debussy and I listened to it in my car again and again, and, of course, Emma Kirkby singing Monteverdi, and perhaps someday I’ll understand what you said). But I always listen to that scream and immediately understand it, not with my ears but with my stomach, my pulse, my womb, and you hear it, too. You heard me this way, so why, suddenly, don’t you hear it?

  Oh well, what’s the point. Besides what you decide. For me, it’s just important for you to know that I understand exactly what is happening inside me now, and what you think of me. Why, it’s a regular torture, Miriam, that I am always both, the one standing with a stern face, arms crossed over my chest—and the one who is suddenly gutted and falls and falls, and while falling is still arguing with the stern one, screaming on the way to his doom, Let me live! Let me feel! Let me make mistakes!

  But I am certainly, undoubtedly, the other one as well. What can you do? The pursed lips that spit out in disgust, You already know how it will end, you will return to me, crawling, as usual, says he dryly (he has symptoms of dehydration in his tissues). And the donkey foal continues screaming all the while—because, Miriam, maybe he will succeed just once—by mistake of course, because, by imperial decree, such acts of compassion could happen only by mistake. But maybe he will finally hit the target, just once—no! Touch the target, touch, touch one alien soul, actually touch, soul to soul, tissue to tissue. One single time, one soul outof the four billion Chinese in the world (in this situation, suddenly everyone seems Chinese) will crack open in front of him and yield its harvest—

  And so he falls and screams in his breaking, reedy voice, which continues to change throughout his life.

  Then again, it appears, of course, that around every such scream are ten wise, learned, moderate, and impartial men; and they consult and request to confirm whether we had crossed that bridge too soon—perhaps this was just one of your flimsy ideas (so they tell me, dryly, with dry lips)—one of those ideas that ripen only in nightly darkness and evaporate in the light of day, meaning—just another damaged crossbreed that might be born deformed and defective.

  And I … you should see me there. Actually, you did see it. This is what probably repulsed you. Because I know exactly how I look in those moments, when I plead with them for no less than to take complete pity on me. Why lie, Miriam? I know, in my deepest depths, that if it was in their power to do so, they would never approve of me either, just as you haven’t (“is not entitled to official stamp of authorization,” they would have determined). So I run between them, almost hysterical, begging them to consent to see what I am seeing, that at least one of them could see it as I do, because if one other can see it—just another one is enough, you don’t need any more than that—suddenly it will exist and be, and be redeemed, and then something in me will be “authorized.” But just try to explain something like that to them.

  And then I can’t take it anymore (I am documenting the whole process for you here), and the moment of fuck-it-all arrives. The moment when I finally think, for example, What am I worth if I’m not sending these? My soul swells to you, and I’m flying, just as I flew to you, here, even now, it is me there, flying, continuing to fly to you, to whoever agrees to believe with me, look, laugh. It’s me, the weak fuse in the network—every network, every bond, every touch, every tension, every friction—or any possible combination of me with those—and with you. And now, as I watch it sink and sputter between us, I am asking you, again, one final time, to believe in us. Perhaps we will touch a gold vein, by chance—we almost did, already, there were a few moments of light, and I have gotten used to your annoying High Court integrity (and also to your funny confusion of words when you’re excited). And where will I again find such a childish, mature woman who is capable of meditatingon Adam and Eve’s first lovemaking, taking such pleasure in how naturally they discovered what is good to do, and what happiness and delight it is to discover only by way of nature …

  You see, I remember everything. I may be destroying all evidence of your existence—I’m forced to, by the Sanctity of the Bond, and the rest—but you exist inside me in a way that scares me, because what am I going to do now, surrounded by this entire new existence that doesn’t want me?!

  Here I am before you: I am the donkey foal. I am the hole in the fence, the crack through which mistakes and treachery—and also bald ridicule—drip into the house. It has been this way since childhood, ever since I can remember myself I have been the hole, how unmasculine. And to whom else could I say such a thing? Believe me, believe that at least—in my moments of flight, moments of gliding, I am the most me, the me that is meant to be. And in a surprising manner, it is a moment full of happiness, generally—it is a full moment, it is everything together, and I wish I had a way to spend my entire life in such a moment.

  And then, of course, there is the thump of the landing, and lots of dust around, and terrible silence, and I am sobering up from all that I was for a moment, cautiously looking around. And I start to freeze from the cold that surrounds me within and without, a cold that only clowns and fools know. So it is true that once or twice in my life it so happened that I was a living seed and a brilliant idea, but mostly—no more than spit. And if you want one, I am, for example, stuck in this time in my life like Heine in the grave of his mattresses with forty thousand books and pamphlets and magazines piling up around me. I had an idea, you see? A great idea …

  That’s it. Sometimes you survive a glorious leap like Nakhshon and get credited in the Bible; mostly, you find out that the pool below you was empty. But always—even if you succeed—you’re somehow terr
ibly alone when you go back to all the rest, and to their appraising looks, that suddenly seem to you as if they’re ahem-ing with their eyes. And my father would say to me, The whole body wants to pee, but you know what to take out to do the job.

  This is how I feel now, and it destroys me, I can’t stand such a look from you; because for a completely different glance of yours, I decided to jump headfirst, on three, whatever the dangers, “and not less than everything,”by the demands of T. S. Eliot’s requirements. And now I’m eating myself up for not having been more cautious.

  Because I could have written to you a sophisticated, caressing letter, and clouded my intentions, and seduced you slowly, and flirted with ease, and definitely have met body to body, by all the common rules of the adulterous games accepted and in play in the grown-up community. When I think of things I wrote to you, things I told you about my family, or things that, because of you, I told myself about my family, that horrible sentence about three people living together—I feel like castrating myself, tearing out my own tongue!

  June 7

  Enough, enough. What an unbearable night. (And to think that you might not even be capable of imagining my suffering!) I never told you how it started, exactly; I mean, I told you only so much. I think I’ve repeated that much at least thirty times by now, but I was only telling you about yourself, about what I saw in you. And I can’t have this end without your knowing what was happening inside me in those moments.

  So here it is, in short order, and then we can finish with it. One night, about two months ago, I saw you. You were standing in the middle of a large group that had gathered around you, and especially around your husband. A whole flock of respectable teachers and educators, and everybody sighed over how hard it is to succeed in the education racket, how long it takes to see the fruit of your labors. Someone—of course-mentioned Khoni and the Circle, and another tale, about the old man who planted a carob tree for his grandchildren, and your husband—excuse me, your “man” (although it seems to me that he certainly sees himself as a “husband”)—was going on about some complicated genetic experiment he’s been working on now for ten years. I can’t be too precise about the details, because I wasn’t really concentrating too hard on what he was saying. Please send him my apologies. The bitter truth is, his story was long and boring. A lot of factsin it, something about rabbit fertility, I think, and about the instinct, in times of stress, to draw the fetus back into the womb (?). Doesn’t matter. In any case, everyone listened to him, with his infectious self-confidence and that special manner of speaking, slowly, authoritatively. A man like that knows the world will fall silentand listen, raptly, as soon as he opens his mouth. He uses a full range of facial expressions brilliantly, and has the self-possession of a mature male, what with those long cheeks and developed jawline and thick brow … By God, you’re lucky, Miriam. You got the best male of the herd. Darwin is saluting you from his grave. Of course, the two of you made a wonderful pair, clearly, scaling the high altitudes together—you see how I was still free there, meaning, free to make that mistake?

  Then your husband let out a burst of laughter, and that was it: I remember how astonished I was by the strong, manly, sparklinglaughter that surged out of him. How I shrank from it—as if he had caught me doing something shameful. I don’t even know what he was laughing about, or at whom, but everyone was laughing along with him; it was as if they wanted to, for a moment, dance among those commanding rays pouring from his beaming face. I looked at you by chance—perhaps because you were the only woman there, and I was searching for understanding from or protection in you—and I saw you weren’t laughing. On the contrary, you shivered and hugged yourself; perhaps his laughter (which you probably love) revived some painful memory inside you. Or maybe it just horrified you as much as it did me.

  So they kept talking, all extremely interested; what am I talking about— fascinatedby the conversation in that way they are all so very good at, but you weren’t there anymore. It was amazing—I saw how you sneaked away from everyone without moving one step; you simply took advantage of the momentary diversion to disappear. And I also saw where you disappeared to. Something behind your eyes opened and closed, one flash of a secret door, and suddenly only your body was left standing there, sad, abandoned by you (that I will never be able to tell you about it again, your fair, soft body, butter and honey—). You dropped your head a bit, and held yourself in your hands, as if you were cradling your child-self, and your baby-self, and ripples and furrows of wonder started trembling on your forehead, like that of a girl hearing a long, complicated, sad story; yes, your whole face started sailing upon your face. And I unconsciously felt my heart reaching out to you in the dance of the donkey foal; there is probably still a gap where I am missing a rib from that moment, everything went crazy and so did I.

  (Don’t worry, I’ll be leaving your life in a moment, last throes.) Now I can allow myself to remember how that large group of students swarmed around you immediately afterward—do you remember?

  It’s strange how I managed to erase it from my memory until now. They practically kidnapped you from the adults for the favor of having a photo taken with you—they almost carried you on their shoulders. And that one moment you passed by me, and I saw you were still daydreaming a little, but starting to make the effort to smile on the outside; it was a completely different smile, public, fluorescent—would you look at how completely I had forgotten about it?

  But maybe I didn’t forget it. Maybe it was this thrilling peep into your inner workings that let me know, immediately, that you would understand me?

  Because it was a moment of “your ignominy.” Without understanding it yet, I think I recognized it: this smile, a bit like a contraction. You were wearing an election-campaign smile for a moment … What am I saying? You? An election campaign? Yes, yes, I am certainly never wrong about these things. So, even you? Elected over and over again, charming, yes, emblazoning yourself on the eyes of strangers. (And now I’m even sorrier that we won’t continue this.)

  And I don’t know if you felt what came next, perhaps you hadn’t yet fully recovered your senses. Your students, a herd of oafs and clods, teenagers, scrapers of facial scruff—how they all started fighting for the privilege of being the closest to you, so they could touch you, suckle a look or a smile from you, announce whatever terribly important problem was troubling them at exactly that moment. It was kind of funny to watch—

  “Funny” is not the right word. Pity for the parpur. Because even the man standing to the side had, in that same moment a bizarre, unexpected impulse—it’s actually embarrassing to recall—the same wild urge to open wide his fledgling mouth in a madness of sudden, terrible hunger—Me me, Teacher, me me …

  Enough. Enough. I’m humiliating myself even more with every word. Please, take a piece of paper, write a few words, just one will do—yes or no. I don’t have the energy for a long letter from you now. Write “I’m sorry, I tried to get used to it, to you, I really did try hard, but I couldn’t forgive your turmoil, your misleading statements.”

  Well, fine. We are agreed. At least we know where we stand. My heart will probably continue to shout out your name for a little while longer; and eventually, it will heal. Perhaps I’ll return to Ramat Rakhel, or some other place out of town. Some place with no people, that can beours, at least long enough so I can yell out with all my strength, “Miriam! Miriam! Mir-yam!”

  Yair

  Don’t worry, another day, or two, slowly, the letters will peel away, and the only thing left will be my clockwork scream to you-hee-haw, hee-haw!

  June 10

  It so happened that your letter arrived after I was already completely exhausted. I opened the mailbox, simply out of habit, the same way I’ve done tens of times in the last week, and your white envelope was there. I stood there, looking at it—and didn’t feel a thing. Just tired. Perhaps afraid as well. Because I was hoping that I had already become used to thinking it was over. Frozen for good. And
where would I find the strength to undergo all the aches of defrosting?

  I read it, of course. Once, and again, and again. I still can’t understand how I could fall apart so quickly over a break of a single week. Can you believe it—I felt as if you were gone for at least a month.

  As if I was just waiting for an excuse to torture myself.

  I’ve nothing to add today. I’m glad you’re back, that we are together again. That you didn’t even think of disappearing on me. Just the opposite.

  And I’m still angry at you for not taking a moment to consider how much I would suffer. How could you, you, not know me? You could have at least sent a note before leaving, or a postcard from the Central Station at Rosh Pina. It would have delayed you by no more than ten minutes and saved me a lot of misery.

  On the other hand, I am starting to grasp that if you had the choice, you probably wouldn’t cause me suffering.

  So, we can fade this letter out on an optimistic note—you probably had no choice.

  June 10-11

  This is still not a response, not a real response, not the response you deserve for that letter, for the depths that revealed themselves to me as Iread and reread it. Mostly because of how you released me gently, rope by rope, from the knots of the trap I set for myself. Sparing me any and all embarrassment over the Gastric Juice Concerto I played for you.

  (They really let you leave work? Two weeks before the end of the school year?

  And what do they have to say about it at home?