Be My Knife

by David Grossman

  It’s none of my business.)

  I am, every time, mystified by the contrast between your sound, composed mind, the stable, calm motherhood within you—and the fluid tosses of your head, the unexpected leaps, unexpected even from you. I see you pacing through the oak grove above the Kinneret, erect and serious-looking, and hugging yourself hard, looking for your lost peace of mind, pushing me away again and again …

  What’s that? It’s just a smile. I remembered how in your first letters you said, time and again, that it was hard for you to believe that such a storm was created in me from one quick look at you (“And what if I don’t have another side to my face, what if you only cut a picture of a woman out of the night for yourself?”). And then you slowly started to explain to yourself that it always begins like that, really—from a single look at a stranger. And now, what you wrote me from there on the rock, that only a “narrow-minded and material” sort of person could consider us strangers—earlier, when I woke up (it’s half past three), I sat in the living room, in the darkness, curled up on the armchair. I was thinking about you and me, about what is happening so unexpectedly to us in the middle of our lives, and I was happy that I was, by chance, by myself a little at home, in complete silence. I invited you to be with me, and you came. I usually try not to think about you when I’m here, in my everyday life. I try to keep strictly to the law of the separation of governing bodies. I hesitate whether to tell you when I do always think of you, always—when I’m taking a shower, or when I’m, what to do, taking a piss. Yes, when I see it.

  And I tried to figure out, between me and myself, whether I am at all capable of being a lightning rod for anyone—I saw that you were very much troubled by this, but it is difficult for me to give you a clear answer, one that is real, earnest—no one ever asked me such a thing. No one ever asked. And no one ever asked as directly as you, in such a cutting, single-minded way, and with such desire.

  I guess they saw the answer in me right away.

  But then again—do you remember when I wrote to you that the moment I saw you I felt, for the first time, a strong, clear desire to have another person inside me? So maybe this is an indirect answer to your question. I just asked myself, Is it still so? And I answered, Yes, even more. Much more.

  Tell me, how is it that I am not scared of wanting such a thing—how can anyone let another person inside herself, anyway? Seriously, Miriam—tonight I suddenly grasped what an amazing thing it is, quivering with generosity and compassion, that a person can let another person penetrate even just her body! This completely natural thing suddenly seems almost abnormal! And people are doing it without thinking twice (so I hear), penetrating and letting themselves be penetrated—even a fuck is sometimes a cliché—or perhaps, in order to make such an intrusion possible, you must purposely not allow yourself that kind of understanding? Is that it?

  Can you imagine—for a moment, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it anymore, those familiar swimming motions—do it regularly, I mean.

  So, probably out of that slight panic, I dwelt on one of my favorite hobbies: I sat with my eyes closed and relived one of the fucks from my private collection—you are the first person I am telling this to (because you told me about Adam and Eve’s first time, perhaps). It reminds me of how I would try to replay complete soccer games in my head as a child—and these days, what to do, fucks, my little adulteries, the most agreeable way to transcend norms, as Nabokov once put it to me during a long ride to the base in the Sinai.

  I can’t do it with all of them, of course—six or seven at most (it has been a few years since a new one has been added to the collection). The most special ones, the ones during which I was in the rarest and most desirable state of consciousness. Dreaming and awake at the same time, completely drowsy, and also open to receiving every move of her hand and body, and what she said, and how she breathed—and I can retrace the curve of her hips and the location of her beauty marks (where do you have them? I know about the one under your lip—in my opinion, it is actually a microfilm you are smuggling on your innocent face—but where do you have more?). I don’t forget a detail in this silent reliving, and don’t ask me how—I don’t have a clue: I am like those chess geniuseswho can remember the moves of hundreds of games by heart. What do you know, Miriam? This might be my hidden genius, my grand crusade ( my art…)?

  Now I shall seal the envelope and the pleasure of waiting will begin.

  Yair

  (Morning)

  I still want you to know whom you’re dealing with. I think I went easy on myself tonight regarding the “lightning rod.”

  Because I … I use all of my powers to keep myself balanced.Not a millimeter less or more than total precise balance. I’m not particularly proud to be writing this, but the foundation that has been laid for my emotional stability is the size of a peanut. Really. You saw what happened to me a week ago. It scares me, how easily I can lose it, collapse in a blink. It’s also so easy for me to want to stop existing, give up everything.

  And you’re asking me if I can be a lightning rod for someone? Me? Why, everyone around me has to always perform at the peak of his health and normality, and yes, of course you were right about something when you wrote about Maya being my “mother-base.” Yes, that’s the way it is, and you can’t shake it. And isn’t it nice that all those closest to me keep so strictly to the mandatory entry code of membership that my small club requires.

  That’s it. I puked it out. The most pathetic in me. Miserable. Spoiled. A soggy mess. But it’s important to me that you know. It sometimes amazes me how obedient they all are, how they subconsciously fulfill their requirements. All of them are born healthy, develop to maturity nicely, and are never tempted to fall prey to some incurable disease or defect. Nor do they die suddenly! There’s no dying with me! Not even in old age—only after I go will they be allowed to even consider it! Even my parents are probably forced to stay alive only so they won’t die during the springtime of my existence—we shouldn’t even talk about my father, who for several years has been stuck in the guts of the end of his life, only because of my draconian laws.

  You do understand that it isn’t only death that has to obey me—any diversion, every break of the blessed routine is forbidden. If Maya, for instance, would happen upon the thought—even approach the notion—of falling in love with someone else, leaving me, leaving me to my pack ofjealousy-bloodhounds, it would be the end of me, as simple as that, a five-kilo sledgehammer on the heart of the parpur. That is my unwritten law: whoever wishes to be close to me commits to my soul. Because any common idiot can see how easy it would be to kill me. One look aimed and fired at me will do. I’m not joking: somewhere inside me I am convinced that whoever sees me, even strangers on the street, can, without knowing me, immediately know where it is possible to crack me open with one touch, to negate me with a word. And even though—apparently—all the people surrounding me these days don’t do it, don’t put me out of my misery for some reason, I don’t quite understand, I’m a little suspicious—what are they conspiring over? And you too, yes, you over there, the unseen, the written one—keep us safe, take care of both of us, even in the places where I am at my most pathetic, where I’m only half a man—be doubly strong, you can do it, I can tell, you have the fortitude for that—be our bodyguard (it’s interesting that in Hebrew it is “headguard,” whereas in English it is “bodyguard”)—

  I’m not sure I’ll send this mess. What did it spring from? I don’t know why these streams of filth have been passing through me, after I felt so close to you last night. I’m thinking about what you said in your last letter, about the strange impulse I sometimes have to make myself ugly in your honor, that dream you had about the strange vegetable seller who is putting the rotten tomatoes on top. If it is true, then take this into consideration as well—because I do feel that I have given you something here that I have never before dared to give myself.

  I have to send it, right?

  June 11 />
  (I didn’t have to wait for even four hours. They must have crossed on their way. When you read mine, you’ll probably understand how odd it is that you are responding to things you hadn’t read yet.)

  Miriam,

  I think that our meeting in the sprinklers is the wrong story. This is not the way I want to reach you.

  Not only because you laughed at me for refusing to believe in the banal wonder of a real meeting between two people, even on a bus, in a bank, at a reunion party, or simply in a vegetable market—but because somehow, really, two strangers sitting in the grass and finding themselvesembracing in water—somehow, after your letter, after you said I put too much effort into romanticizing reality … I don’t know, all of a sudden it seems boorish and forced to me, a water show full of hydrotechnic tricks. It doesn’t suit you, nor is it in accordance with the softness with which I want to reach out to you, the quietness that surrounds you, and certainly not what you wrote in the last lines, that surprising explosion that I still don’t know what to do with.

  Still, it is still extremely important to me that you agree that “sprinklers” are also possible between us, and—that everything is possible between us: we’ll have many of these first dates, and each time discover ourselves all over again. Why give up anything? Why give up “everything”? I want everythingwith you. You are the only person I can want everything with. Maybe, only through this excess, this waste, this “everything” can it slowly reveal itself to us—the elemental ore that can be created only between us, that can never be created between any other two people?

  Of course you were right that reality itself is also a wonder and a miracle, I too am well practiced in saying such pretty things in a soft, veiled tone—if you’ll excuse me—but don’t forget that “reality” itself is, when it comes down to it, only a momentary coincidence on the surface of a huge sphere crackling with possibilities that will never be realized. And each and every one of them could have told us a completely different story about ourselves, played us differently. Why shouldn’t we come to each other from the least expected places, from the dark side of the brain?

  I want to have tendifferent affairs with you! Why not? Each one of them speaking—no, shouting out, for a completely different man in me. Men unfamiliar to me. This is why people try to connect with one another, isn’t it? I’m asking you the same question you wrote me, exactly—if I would ever be brave enough to look deep into your eyes and read for you what you yourself cannot read there. I wish I could answer you with full confidence. I don’t know (but is this why, in the very first moment, I stood in your blind spot?).

  Am I asking too much? Perhaps. But why settle for less? We spend all our lives just “settling” anyway—and I want to touch everything with you, with wide, sweeping, generous motions, as if I knew it was for the last time in my life! And how is it that you were capable of stopping yourself in the same moment that you finally started to give part of yourself,from deep inside you—“my ignominies,” you said, as if you were just joking, or trying on one of my words, but suddenly it became serious, didn’t it? “And why don’t you finally stop calling every insult thrown at you ignominies?!” Without warning, you became furious, but that word—I felt it cling to you, stick to you, as if you had to say it again, and again, and again, to shake it off you, but also to touch it, one more time—“What is the connection, anyway, between insults, wounds, and ignominies?” “Why do I keep feeling some strange pleasure in the way you keep confusing wounds with ignominies?” The more you repeated it, the more you said it, it fused to you, to your body, even closer, harder, and then you—

  Explain it to me, Miriam—the war you are fighting that leaves you searching, at the end of some days, so desperately for a clear will to get up the next morning—what are you talking about, exactly? And where on earth did you get this crazy (and false) feeling that you are a person who should not create anything new in this world? I’m the person who keeps changing his face, is the consistently unstable, destructive force between us. Don’t forget!

  (Or perhaps, now that I’m thinking about it, perhaps it is some kind of illusion you are creating for me, the story you are choosing to tell me about yourself. But why would you tell me such a horrible story?)

  Do you understand the kind of state you left me in by not explaining anything?—“ … and sometimes the feeling that every living thing, even the two little kittens Nilly gave birth to yesterday and, as is her way, left for me to nurse, even they are like stolen fire for the moments they are in my hands.” And you immediately fell silent. There were quite a few empty lines toward the end of the page, and I didn’t know how to fill them—my imagination went wild—and when you returned, summoned in front of me, your face was back to normal and you told me something small and irrelevant—if you’ll excuse my teacherly remarks. I think you just wanted to end your letter politely. It is very nice that your son has now devoted himself to an operation so prestigious as counting to a million (a way not worse than any other to waste your life)—you finally told me, clearly, that you have a son—I was starting to worry—but how could you leaveme like that after mentioning those things?

  Enough, enough—let’s unclench our fists—our dark secrets are always less terrible than we imagine them—so give yourself to me, withoutwalls, without reservations—write to me, for instance. Tell me—in a completely separate letter—a one-sentence letter—tell me the first thing, the first thought, the first flicker flashing in your mind when you read this letter. (Yes, yes! Now! At this very minute! Write it down, put it in an envelope, and send it, even before your “official” reply, even before dealing with all the complications inherent with me within you.)—

  June 14

  Boom!

  So now it’s my turn?

  After we come, we’ll fall asleep, lying close together. Your back will be stuck to my belly, and I will squeeze my toes like clothespins on your ankles, so you won’t fly away on me during the night, and we’ll be like a picture from a nature book: a length cut of a fruit. I am the peel, you are the flesh.

  Yair

  P.S. I didn’t believe you would dare so much.

  June 17

  And when we lie down together, I would like to close my eyes and gently touch the edge of your hairline somewhere under your navel (your belly button), so I can, with the tips of my fingers, feel the place, one of the places, that delicate silky place, where you changed from a child into a woman.

  Y.

  June 18

  One out of turn:

  Yesterday I walked down through Queen Heleni Alley. A child, nine or ten years old, was walking in front of me. We were alone. The alley was dark, and once in a while he glanced back and quickened his pace. But even when I walk slowly, I walk pretty quickly. I could feel his fear.I could remember this kind of fear well. And I wondered how I could put him at ease without embarrassing him. Then he tried to leap away—but he twisted his leg badly, and now he dragged it along behind him, whimpering in pain. This is how we walked, together, at a fixed distance, until we reached the end of the alley. He’s limping outside, and I, inside.

  Y.

  The problem with these quickies, obviously, is that you’re hungry again after an hour (although “sometimes, the way you touch me—it is one touch, the same I feel in that spot of pain and pleasure” will do for me for at least a week).

  June 19

  Have you written to me yet? Have you sent it yet? When does your box get emptied?

  (Just a little exercise of my agitation muscles—don’t want them to get flaccid. That way you can always recognize me.)

  About those final assumptions of yours—you were triply wrong: I am not writing to you from prison. I am not sick and bedridden with some terrible disease. I am not even an Israeli spy for Damascus or Moscow on a brief vacation home before returning to the cold-I am all three.

  What else? Not much.

  A lot: your fingers trembling when you find my envelopes in your box in the teachers
’ lounge.

  It’s the same for me, what do you think? First I examine with a touch—how thick is the new letter? How much food will I have to savor over the next days and nights—

  To answer your (surprisingly weird) question—hands and digital together (but why is that important anyway?).

  Oh, I remember something I keep forgetting to ask you: do you have any—this is silly, I know, but anyway—do you happen to have any connection to a Chinese newspaper (completely in Chinese!), a weekly magazine published in Shanghai that I’ve started receiving lately out of nowhere—I didn’t order it.

  If you don’t, forget the question.

  This is not a letter. It is just a nightly humming, a whistle in the dark until you return to me.

  (It never ceases to amaze me—how my desiccated life chose to expose a giant breast for me.)

  Yair

  June 21

  An open mouth or a hole in a tree trunk? I’m struggling to decide—but so filled with joy—because there weren’t any words there!

  I didn’t know you painted, too. The line and the black and the power of your touch.

  I swear by my life: someday I will dance for you. I won’t care if we are surrounded by people—I will just look into your eyes and I will dance.

  But in the meantime, I need to write, don’t I? So then, in honor of your black strokes:

  A shrunken black monkey, let’s say, scrambling over his mistress’s belly.

  Does that make any sense to you? No matter. We allowed ourselves the freedom to mumble. To me, it means: the master bought it for her at one of the fairs he passed through in his journeys. The master is always on a journey, the master’s journey. The monkey is tame. It was bought for the lady’s pleasure, but not for its own. God forbid—do you understand? It always has to remember its place—the place of the replacer, the guard, until the master returns (and perhaps there isn’t any master at all).