Be My Knife

by David Grossman

  This week she announced to me with a shy, conspiratorial smile that she has decided to let him grow a mustache.

  And you would probably ask why I didn’t stand in front of them, yelling at them and demanding my own Zorba,because I needed it, let’s say, like air for breath, like medicine. Oh, no way. Me making demands this way? Not for me—no, for me there is theft, in wide circles, approaching, retreating—and I also became introduced to a new kind of pleasure, the Coveting Crookedness, as we will so cleverly call it (it’s like the name of a new tea, made with the almond essence of my bile, isn’t it?). Listen, I’m talking about that pleasant pain, the bitter sweetness that dissolves deep in your guts, twisting you and everything you are, knotting you up like intestines with an infected open ulcer sucking everything out of you from the inside. With all the usual piercing pain and humiliation. You already know how to meet these feelings inside you—and afterward you learn how to reproduce them within you—your poorest but most private property, to which you keep returning—and for what else? The taste of home. The smell of home. And here it comes again—unsheathed, stabbing, ready to use at any moment—feel it, get acquainted: this is me.This is my body and my soul, recognizing each other once again; I can actually hear the whisper of the internal password (srsrsrsrsr …). I think perhaps you should wear thick gloves when you hold these pages.

  It is so easy to infect with this filth. I was infected so easily. Have you experienced the ritual of complete excommunication concealed in the statement “I hope you have children like you!”? Yes, you have. How did you put it—those certain looks with those twisted lips, silences that negate you, turn you into dust and ashes, and how little it takes to damage a person for good …

  Apparently you know it, at least as I do: “Miriam (did she pronounceyour name the wrong way?), Miriam, just don’t be whatever people are saying about you” …

  I’m not surprised. Sometimes I think that maybe it was this wound that so attracted me to you from the first moment. Your election campaign, public smile. Your mouth at that moment (I haven’t written it to you yet)—the edges of your mouth, like two hungry fledglings scurrying into the shelter of their mother’s wings, or into their guess of the shadow of their mother’s wings. But you—and I don’t understand how—you were probably saved from this fate, you somehow escaped or reinvented yourself all over again. Successfully, more or less. Perhaps this is why you are so afraid, like a fear of death, to return there, even for a moment, for the length of a single piece of paper, for me?

  August 8-9

  Maybe it has been too long since I let myself get angry about it, how they came to me at night and weeded my brain so they could plant their seeds for self-inspection gears. Imagine what it must be like to read Zorbain terror—and how can you believe that such miserable terror is capable of clouding the eye of the Zorbic sun? Do you remember when you danced the sirtaki with me and Anthony Quinn in your living room? But where were you when I was a child?

  There was no one.

  I used to read only when they weren’t at home (this is final: I will not tell you about them. I had a mother and I had a father—but the child I was had no parents—you guessed right: my parents bore an orphan).

  I’m surprised by the freshness of those memories and the emotions that well up thinking about them. Cigarette?

  No, I know, I remember. But I did laugh when I read in the beginning of our letters that without even thinking you connected the smell of smoke from my pages to the passion burning and rising from me.

  Sometimes I am amazed how willing you are to believe in the fantasy that I am.

  Perhaps, instead of all these heavy matters, we’ll talk a little bit about the fantasy you are to me?

  Whenever you tell me some new detail about yourself—that prior to Amos you were married for five (Siberian) years to that sadistic genius;that you always blush only on your left cheek; that you have refused to drive a car for years; or that Amos has a son from a previous marriage—or anything else, important or incidental, that I didn’t know about you and never imagined—I feel a little spiritual effort in my soul, as if I have to “push” that little detail inside, to fit it into your image, like pushing a book onto a shelf that’s already very crowded. But the moment it’s done, all the other details, all my knowledge of you I have gathered so meticulously from the beginning, rearranges itself around that change.

  And because we are already on the topic of new, surprising knowledge, then let me take off my many-faceted joker’s hat in your honor. There is really nothing for me to say—it was truly a fatal, elegant knockout: I never imagined that the man with you, that titan putz in the sweater, wasn’t your husband. (So who was he? Because he was guarding you jealously, at least like a headguard, if not a bodyguard. The way husbands do.)

  You completely confounded me. The tranquillity with which you described all the other men in your life, one by one. The one with whom you go swimming; and the painter from Beit Zayit, who sounds to me as if he’s terribly in love with you; and the blind guy with whom you correspond in Braille (did you learn it especially for him?). And how do you have time for all of them in your busy week? And you actually forgot to mention the three yeshiva students who study with you, in secret, once a week … Just tell me, write me a description of what your husband looks like. I mean, which shadow with a knife between its teeth do I have to beware of now?

  Well, fine, fine, don’t be angry, just a little sting of remonstration because my small mistake had given you “a tiny, tickling, theatrical pleasure,” and you didn’t even feel like correcting me …

  You asked me again if I feel cheated by you, and I tried to understand how I truly feel about you, with all your twists and turns. It’s not a simple question, Miriam, and the answer itself is changing, and turning and twisting in me, and still hasn’t cooled and coalesced into an opinion.

  But because you are asking me now, I thought that perhaps, instead of an answer, you could go and look at The Family of Man(which I like a lot, too). There are two photographs in there, two facing pages I like to look at: on one side you see students listening to a lecturer in some university. He is not in the photo—their look is pointed, focused on him, andit seems that whatever he is teaching is certainly interesting to them. But on the opposite page you see people from an African tribe, listening to an old man telling them a story. Children and grown-ups sit among the crowd, they are naked and so is he; his hands are moving in front of them, and they all have the same expression: they are bewitched.

  (There is no such hour)

  I want to make a deal with you.

  It’s a strange one—and embarrassing even to explain. But you’re the only person I can share this with.

  It’s about Yokhai and the operation he’s going to have in January. I want to give you half of my luck for the surgery. Don’t laugh—don’t say anything! I know it sounds false and idiotic—and in exchange, please treat it like a good-luck charm, a superstition, but please, please don’t reject my proposal (if it doesn’t help, it certainly can’t hurt).

  And it’s not that I’m exceptionally lucky, but my life has been managing itself more or less well. And with everything that has been happening at work (annoying in itself), I think that in the past few years, Fortune’s kept a little twisted smile toward me. I also have to confess that I have made this “deal” twice: once with a woman who was facing a risky surgery and once with a woman who couldn’t get pregnant. And in both cases, everything worked out. By the way, the two women didn’t know I made the particular pact in question. They were, in their own ways, very close to me; but not close enough for me to tell them what I was doing.

  This transaction is not without its own bureaucratic procedures—I have to know ahead of time the exact day and time you will be needing my luck, and then I begin to practice aiming it at you (actually, at Yokhai). And on the day of the operation itself, I will actually free myself from all my obligations, “strip” myself of my luck, and “project�
� it to him with all the power of my will (you will only have to write me how long after the surgery he will need this transmission of mine).

  And please don’t worry about me during this time period—it is true that on the certain day that I “strip” away my luck and, less so for two or three days after, little incidents of misfortune occur in unreasonable quantities (it is quite amazing to see how they draw themselves up and attack from every possible direction), but so far, it has all added up toonly a few lost keys, a flat tire, and a surprise tax audit. And luck begins to grow again very shortly afterward (I swear!). In my opinion, shaving it from time to time is good for its growth.

  Don’t respond. Don’t say yes or no. I said it—you heard me.

  August 10

  Only to report that the child has probably returned to roost.

  It must be my nightmares—or because of our correspondence. Perhaps it was because of that night around your house—something in me hasn’t been able to calm down since then. I hesitated over whether I should even tell you about it, about giving him the right to exist by writing to you about him. But almost every night I am filled with some kind of darkness, torn, a length of fabric swaying in the void. And now he’s standing there again. It has been three or four nights at this point, and he is standing there, right now, at this very moment, insistent and shivering among the bushes; there is actually a child’s shape lurking in the darkness there. And I’m going to tell you something—I have never written anything so insane, so ludicrous.

  He and I have fallen into a little nightly bedtime ceremony. Even though, immediately after his debut, I cut that confusing bush down with the decisiveness of a Soviet censor. But he has returned, night after night, and plants himself by the door. It’s a pity you are not here—I would show him to you.

  A skinny boy, slightly hunched over, a slumped, shy flatterer. Only I know how exposed he is, know that his soul is constantly being mercilessly stirred up; how passionately he wants to give of himself and surrender. But as you said—if only he believed that he could, and that if he did, someone would be there to receive him.

  Let’s be honest here—he’s a slightly effeminate boy, soft, a blabberer and a braggart—I look at him now and immediately remember the experience of being him—the constant nervous buzz, the quick sequences of surprises causing his heart to beat uncontrollably fast; you were right—you can see his heart through his peeled skin, sensitive as a parpur’s, beating and beating.

  His presence disgusts me (are you surprised?). I’m taken by a strong impulse to turn him over to the hands of the authorities of the private educationsystem in which I studied. Because my personal tutors were grand masters in their field. Do you know what I’m talking about? What do you know, anyway? Well, a little at this point. Enough. These tutors knew the correct gait, posture, and speech—what you are allowed to say and what you should shut up about. What is better not to say, to avoid getting laughed at; how to always pick up your shoulders so you will appear wider, to close your mouth so you won’t look like a complete idiot. Like a fragile ethrog swaddled in tissue paper all year long, I was educated by two peerless pedagogues, the best—my parents, may their memories be blessed, who never missed or overlooked a single sorrowful defect of mine! With the dedication of years of hard work, they succeeded in improving me, sanding me down, until I could be presented to society without too much embarrassment. These days, it doesn’t even involve much effort on my part: I’m quite good at imitating most of the moves and sounds of a mature male, an elder in the community—and you can certainly say that the plaster mold of the death mask has more or less already dissolved and sunk in through my skin, into my body, my cells, as it was supposed to.

  Until, suddenly, right by my front door—an infected and inferior organ of mine escaped from my body and started leaping in the dance of fools, the donkey jig.

  And there is one moment—

  (Why not, I’ve already spilled my guts.)

  There is a moment when he suddenly bangs at the door for me, when I immediately work myself into a high panic. Please don’t tell me it is only childish imagination, of course it is, it is exactly the imagination of my childhood—it hits me, leaving me altogether paralyzed, it gets my blood pumping crazily for a few seconds, and I can’t fight it. I have to see him, to produce him emerging from the darkness, approaching me; he’s running to me, barreling down to my front door, so I can—

  Do you like these little private games of mine?

  What would you have done in my place, anyway? Well, you are much more generous than I am. You even agreed to allow me inside you. I’m not that noble—I’m terrified. I just slam the door in his face, night after night, with all my strength and with all my locks, and hurry to the bedroom. And Maya had better be there, just so I can look at her for a moment, acknowledge her again, the presence of her full, warm body, the absolute validity of her surprisingly small feet. To gaze upon them andcalm myself down—to immediately panic again—such a narrow base for two adults and a child to hold on to.

  Oh well, I have to go to sleep. You don’t have to respond to this scribbled nonsense. By the way, I read something in Ido’s kids’ magazine that I thought would interest you: you have a dinosaur’s footprint in Beit Zayit. Did you know that? A dinosaur passed by your place a million years ago and left a huge footprint. Interesting, don’t you think? I also tried your tze-tze recipe tonight before trying to sleep. But I think I put too much liquor in it. (It doesn’t matter. If I get a letter from you in the afternoon, the night is already lost.) Enough, good night!

  Y.

  (Well, I lay down for almost an hour out of politeness, but I’m afraid I did not explain myself fully)—You know what? I will allow him to enter my house, once, on purpose; I’ll force him to enter, so I can take him and walk him by the ear and show him, without mercy: refrigerator; dishwasher; a living room with a highly decorative set of armchairs. Here’s a bedroom with a queen-size Ha-Zore’a bed. Here we have a woman. A full, soft woman with round, beautiful breasts, taking her clothes off right now—for me! And then, when his eyes already start to burn with the held-back tears of loneliness and abandonment, I will lay the final, fatal blow: drag him by the scruff of the neck to the little room at the end of the hall and yell, Well, look at what we have here! Surprise! A child! I made a child in this world! Look closely, so you can understand that you have already lost the fight between us, honey: I have a child! I escaped from you and I made something that exists, independently, in the outside world! Check my trademark, stamped on the shape of his fingers, his eyes and hair! And if you don’t find the rest familiar—you know why? It doesn’t belong to you! I swear, I feel like pushing his head, hard, into Ido’s bed, the way you drown a kitten—Look closely, you can even touch him—why not? Touch him, feel him: a child who has been created from another’s matter as well. Who is not me—and not you! Because I, with my initiative, succeeded in escaping the fate you had laid out for me. I allied myself with another chromosome pool, free from my matter, and especially from yours—and this is how. I have managed tocreate one thing from good, strong, healthy matter in this world, with a warranty that’s been good for almost five years now, get it, baby?

  What the hell am I saying?

  As if Ido proves anything about me.

  I have no peace. What a scorcher outside. The air wraps itself around you and sticks to you like rubber.

  August 11

  … and just as I was about to send you a letter this morning, I got your note from the university library. It delights me just to think of you sitting in the Judaica Reading Room, writing those wild, excited sentences while you slide in a graceful slalom to copy sentences from History of the People of Israel in Ancient Times—in the same breath!—every time a fellow teacher passes by you. I was thinking for the thousandth time just what fun it is that we found each other in the huge pile of peas. How lucky we are to be from the same country, and the same language, and the same Paporish and Douvshani schoolbooks
… By the way, about the quotation you couldn’t remember (when I tried to “dress myself” with the letter in which you told me about Yokhai)—

  I admit it, it took me a while to get to it, but tomorrow at dawn I will send out my speedy messengers to look it up—and in seven days (no more than twenty-four hours by the clock) I will have the full quotation with the exact reference. I promise.

  When I was writing you yesterday, I again felt how peculiar this whole letters business is: by the time you open a letter of mine and accept its truth, I am already somewhere else. When I read your letters, I am actually inside a moment of yours that has passed; I am with you inside a time you are no longer inhabiting. This works out to each of us being faithful to each other’s abandoned moments … What do you think? Perhaps this is the source of the sadness aroused in me by almost every one of your letters, with no connection to its context—even your funny, wonderful note from the university. Life is passing by.

  August 11-12

  Immediately go and scold your three silken students for their ignorance: Rabbi Nakhman of Breslev is the source for the forgotten quotation!

  In the Moharan Collection, in the chapter “Impregnation of Barren Women,” he discusses “human beings who sleep through their days.” Either because of works of pettiness, or because of passions and bad deeds, or because they have eaten spiritual food that reduced their minds to a state of sleep …