Be My Knife

by David Grossman

  Because there is always that small chance that if she hadn’t been so repulsed, she might have been able to save him from his tragedy.

  Yes, I know, if she had “recognized” him (or in your words, “approved”), it wouldn’t have been Kafka’s story anymore but a children’s story, like, say, that Moomintroll story.

  A hug. I left you a note somewhere in the area of the dam—let’s see if you can find it.

  August 17 (12:15 p.m. by the dam)

  M.

  In your last letter, you didn’t smile, not once. I could see you holding something against me (?). That maybe, because of me, the old, open insult of your childhood has been resurrected in you with a painful sharpness.

  Maybe it is because of me. I don’t know. Maybe it was that thing you said, right at the beginning of all this, about there being something in me you had been forced to hide all your life.

  (But what was that thing you didn’t say?)

  August 20

  You still insist? You want to meet me, “the whole me”? A complete meeting? Or at the very least—without deciding ahead of time what will transpire at such a meeting? Without canceling out any possibilities in advance? “In the whole me,” meaning, my soul andmy body? Oh well!A Turkish pimp with moist eyes and a drooping mustache slips in like a mongoose and flashes a pack of oily, naked photos of me in stimulating positions in front of your eyes. But don’t believe it! It’s only a photomontage, you better check that merchandise very well. And I believe that now comes the time when I lay my cards (the shuffled half deck, of course) on the table, so you can reconsider your proposal, weigh it carefully in this matter—because I have a body and a face that are not mine.Some ridiculous, terrible mistake must have been made in the mischievous lottery of life—they planted me in a body and face that my soul has been rejecting for years—

  Come, Miriam, please, you will have to move back a few feet and put your fingers in your ears, because, God, for once I have to let this pass through those glands of venom in my throat. I had the soul of a volcano as a child—fire and lava and flying scalding stones, and Picasso and King David and Meir Harziyon, and Maciste and Zorba all together. But my face and body—well, you already know what I think about them. And all nine of my souls were going wild, like tongues of fire in me—and the most important thing is that I was full of joy—because I still didn’t know what I looked like. Do you understand? I hadn’t yet been phrased and identified and defined from every possible angle (why don’t they make people get a license to use certain words, the way you have to get licensed for a handgun?). Nothing could stand in my way then—the only question was what to choose—espionage, art, commando missions, travel, crime, love—of course, love, from the moment I was born, don’t even ask me what kind of shame I caused my parents—by the time I reached kindergarten! I was a four-year-old peanut, but since that point I have never stopped trying to bestow my affections on whoever didn’t run away fast enough. Don’t be too impressed, now: most of my beloveds didn’t even know I existed. Why, to this very day I have to forcibly invade a woman’s field of vision if I am interested in getting her attention. As you know very well. But in my thoughts, in my imagination—no limit, no limit! I knew with an insane confidence throughout my childhood that what was happening to me in the meanwhile was only a preface. It was only a hard test, only a tough preparatory exam for the moment life would finally begin—and suddenly I would hatch out of this worm, Jacob out of the pale Yid from the shtetl, and be Tarzan and the lion all at once. I would glow with the full spectrum of the colored fires burningwithin me … Oh, the fantasies I had—I could scream from my yearning for them. Huge red and yellow tongues, dancing and teasing one another—

  But in the meantime, you have to lower your head and suffer quietly. For instance, my father would speak to me, for months at a time, in the female gender: Yaira come and Yaira go. Why? Because he saw me fighting with a kid from our neighborhood on the sidewalk in front of the house. I actually knocked this kid down right away—a miracle occurred, they were pulling for me in heaven and sent me one who was actually weaker. Unfortunately, after knocking him down, I immediately stood up and walked away, leaving him lying there, whining on the sidewalk—and I didn’t break his bones like a gever,and didn’t tear his balls off, and didn’t do any of the things my father, watching through a closed window, wanted me to do, terribly. I raised my head for a moment when we were fighting and saw his face: my father’s face, behind the glass, twisting, turning purple, and crumpling and warped as if it were melting in a fire. Without even knowing what he was doing, he stuck his two fists deep against his mouth, and I saw how his teeth sank into the knuckles, a blend of bloodthirstiness and the terror of an abandoned puppy. My poor father.

  When I returned home, he was already waiting for me, the thin brown one in hand, which he could, in one whistling pull, whip out from his belt loops. He beat me instinctively, mechanically. The thin brown one worked overtime. To this day, this is how we joke about such moments in my family. How Yeery made Father mad, and the thin brown one worked overtime, and we all laugh until we’re in tears. It doesn’t matter. He was whipping me, and when that didn’t provide him the necessary satisfaction, he attacked me with his fists, beating me with his fists, which he had bitten until they bled, and his little soft body fluttered and shook. He raged with blood-red eyes—this man, whom I had never seen fight, not in his life. He always became gentle and considerate and flattering if someone pushed in front of us in line at the movies. When his car was blocked in the parking lot by the general-depury, his boss, you should have seen him bowing and scraping. And in front of the general-deputy’s child, for that matter. And once, when that stinking corpse of a neighbor, that Surkis the murderer, slapped me on the street for shouting between two and four in the afternoon, my father immediately withdrew from the balcony into the apartment,so he wouldn’t see it. But I saw him.He hit me—and I shrank, reminding myself the entire time, It’s fine, it has to happen this way, fathers hit children, what do you expect, that it works the other way around? His beatings were just part of the great test—this is what I thought.

  But what was I saying?

  You, wanting to meet me, “the whole me,” asking to meet the child I was as well and reconcile the two of us, so I’ll look at him differently, differently than how he was looked at in my parents’ house. I remember every word you wrote. In the margin, you wrote in pencil that “under no circumstances will we meet like two pedophiles, that’s theirlanguage, Yair. We’ll meet like two children.” You see, I remember it exactly—you wouldn’t believe how many phrases and sentences I remember by heart, your words and tune together: “I can’t go on like this anymore; this distance from you with this vagueness, because what is happening between us is too vast for me to contain. I need your touch terribly, your touch, please, enough of this, come to me, in your body, in the whole of you, in the materials with which you were made, the unbroken and the defective, the torn or the double, but come, with open arms, as if you were giving a gift. And if you find it hard, tell yourself that Miriam wants to meet the child that you were; give me that pleasure, because in spite of all of your slurs, I am sure he was a beautiful child …”

  And again, Miriam, time after time, you approach me and unlock my most secret doors with sacred keys that only you have—how do you have such a sixth sense about me? Just hear this story.

  (No. It has to be a separate letter, in a separate envelope, as it was.)

  August 20

  Once upon a time, at the age of twelve, more or less, it was evening, and he returned home from a movie he saw with Shai, who was his best friend until they entered the service. They said their goodbyes in front of Shai’s building, and the boy continued on his way home, alone; you-already-know-who was expecting him there. So do you wonder that he walked so slowly?

  Look at him, walking alone on a side street, trying to preserve the sweetness of the movie that had been lost to him while riding the bus, becauseof th
e scorn and laughter, focused solely on him, from three little thugs (who, at that time, were called hoodlums). Shai, his white legs shaking in his pants, was sitting next to him. Now the notorious wits of these two, which struck such terror into the hearts of students and even teachers, exploded and splattered all over their faces like an overambitious gum bubble.

  He walked through the silent, empty streets, trying with all his might to forget what he felt when Shai looked the other way, and sat blind and deaf, making himself absent from the situation. He knew he would have behaved in the exact same way if the situations were reversed, and he almost wept, cursing his weakness and vowing that, by God, from this day forward he would stop stealing money from the Holy Wallet to buy books. From now on, he would steal money only so he could buy dumbbells and practice pumping his muscles all day and night, like an animal. He knew it wouldn’t help him either, because he didn’t have that thingwithin him that immediately connects dreams to muscles in one decisive motion. That can transform the internal Tarzan roaring in your heart into a fist cracking a hooligan’s jaw on the bus. That mysterious thing that probably makes an ishinto a gever.He also knew that even if he was able to hit someone, sometime, everyone would be able to tell that it didn’t really come naturally to him; and while he was walking, deep in thought, two women approached him in the street, one young and one old—well, not really old. A grown-up. And they were strolling along peacefully, talking between themselves with silent voices, their arms linked together, glowing with some kind of warmth that he immediately woke to and was alive to.

  And as he passed them (dressed in his good pants that Father made him wear before going out, hair carefully combed with a side part), he thought he heard one of them, he couldn’t tell which one, whisper to the other, “What a beautiful boy.”

  Oh well. I’ve already started this, so I don’t really have a choice, do I?

  He continued walking, and had made it a few steps farther, when those words penetrated him and stopped him. He was ashamed to be standing like that in the middle of the street and dragged himself into one of the apartment building entrances, and stood there in the darkness, shivering, sucking on those four words—

  Within sixty seconds, of course, he started tormenting himself with doubts. Had he heard correctly? Was one of them actually looking at himand still saying what he thought he heard? And if she did say it, was it the young one or the older—and I hoped it was the young one, because he was already vaguely aware of the fact that old women have a bit more compassion for children who look like him—if it was the younger one, the pretty one, the modernone, then his situation might not be all that bad. Because she was speaking purely objectively with regard to him—she doesn’t know him, never saw him in her life, but when she did see him, it was as if she hadto say those words, before she could even think about it, thus giving an almost scientific validity to her statement.

  But did she really say it? He wasn’t completely sure; maybe they had been discussing a film they saw, quoting lines from it—or they could have said, “What a dutiful goy,” or “Cuts are disputable joys,” or maybe they were thinking about some otherboy that they both know who really fit that description?

  It’s a bit silly to stretch it out, don’t you think? But that’s the thing—those words never saw light—only wave after wave of endless darkness.

  So what did he do? He stood in that dark entrance, practically shaking from his distress and confusion—maybe he should run after them and explain, in his most weighty, measured voice, “Excuse me, but when I was passing by you before, one of you made a remark regarding some specific boy—an insignificant remark, true—but due to a rare coincidence that comment has a marked importance—fatal, actually—yes, a matter of life and death that is difficult to lay out in detail at the moment, a matter of national security, actually—so could you please, even if it sounds a bit odd, would you mind repeating what you so briefly mentioned when I passed you?”

  So he started running after them, slowly—then sprinting; and then he stopped again, confused and defeated, immediately turned around, and returned to the dark entrance, where he stood in front of the wall, heart fluttering in his throat, and felt like prey, still half-alive. He no longer cared if someone passed by and saw him—but those four words he might have heard, he wished he had heard, began to glide in mad joy, like four birds in a frozen garden—

  Well, what would you have done in his place?

  He knew that even if he caught up to those women, he wouldn’t dare to ask; because whoever asks a question like that aloud condemns himself to an eternal life of disgrace; and even if, let’s say, the two of them (the young one, too) tell him that indeed, their reference to a beautiful boy wasto him, he would never be able to truly believe them, because if they are given enough time to really look at him while he explains such an odd request, they will understand everything, it’s impossible to look at him without understanding his situation, and they will pity him and lie. Do you think that I wouldn’t run after them today, pleading with them to say it in a thousand and one ways; I am still running. I’m running after them today—Why, not a single day has really passed since that happened.

  Hey, you’re sticking around, aren’t you?

  I became so tired all of a sudden.

  It makes me happy that you like my private name. I never thought of it like that—that Yair, meaning, “will shine,” is a name that faces the future, or is “almost a promise.” I was also relieved that you are no longer worrying about whether Wind is my real surname. As long as my name shines on you.

  It took me months to discern the transparent streams of your humor—it’s just like that, passing through the lines, with its hands in its pockets, whistling lightly …

  Tell me—can you feel that I’ve been trying to hide a sudden, unjustifiable happiness for a whole minute now? Tears taste the same, but it’s as if the taps were switched … This treacherous, warm wellspring of joy that has no explanation, no justification from what I’ve just told you, except for the astonishing fact that I told you: Warning! All units at attention! Happiness leak! I will locate the source immediately! No—actually, no. All units—pay no attention. I want it to drip into me until I am swept away by it. And I don’t care that dogs are barking behind me, that the electric fence bears the writing “Family Will Make You Free!” Listen to me—I will still try to escape. I don’t think I’ll make it, but this time I have outside help—someone is waiting for me on the illuminated side. These are the kinds of gifts you give me. I’m not afraid of anything. I’m ready to shout with all the strength I have that I believe in the possibility of you and me coming out, toward each other, and actually meeting in the middle of the road. I believe in such wonders.

  I need to be alone with myself. Goodbye, Miriam.

  Yair

  (Now quickly—look inside yourself, see what it looks like when venom is injected in your blood, watch the live broadcast at the moment of thecrime: It’s a white room, four walls, no windows, no pictures—one tiny open eye is in each wall: four gaping eyes, no lids, no lashes, no breaks to blink—and each pair of eyes has one look, just one stable, permanent, frozen look in it; and enclosed by the walls, a blind rat runs along the floor.)

  August 21

  Don’t panic, this is not another scrawl. Just a good-night kiss.

  You once teased me, told me my letters are like balls of yarn—I know, I got so knotted up in myself that by now it might be impossible to untangle me. I’m not asking you to try: hold the ball of yarn in your hand, tucked between your two palms, just for a moment, for as long as you can, for one more month. It’s a big request, I know—but you are now at a perfect distance from me—the perfect distance of closeness and foreignness, and between my ignominy and my pride (you’re no longer a stranger). Don’t take that from me. How could I look Maya in the eye if I allowed her into the blind rat’s room? She’s my woman, I’m her gever. When she and I are together, my pupils never get shifty when I say gever.r />
  Yair

  August 23

  Thank you so much for your quick reply—you must have felt just what has been going through me since the last letter—

  And today, I want only to caress you, to comfort and be comforted … You practically ran to me with your writing. You gave me so much of yourself as a girl, of your mother, and especially your father—at last, someone in your childhood was gentle and loving (I found I completely misguessed him—I had imagined him stern and nosy and bitter, probably because I only knew of his “Why aren’t you happy, Miriam?”). But maybe he was too gentle for the difficult job he needed to do, to protect you from her.

  It amazes me that even though our homes were so different from each other’s, in a thousand small and large ways, both of us still “felt at home” in each other’s house. And when you described your loneliness, and at the same time how crowded it was, how you had to struggle for any privacy, I thought of how much it pleases me that only the two of us,out of all the millions living here in this country, know what the winner of the Chang Shui County Milking Contest looks like …

  Because whoever didn’t grow up in such a house might think that there is a complete contradiction between “loneliness” and “a struggle for privacy,” right? Only the person who grew up in that kind of house can know that feeling exactly, when that contradiction tears you apart.

  Just nod.

  How could you take it? (I actually want to shout, What have you got to do with such a woman, and how is it possible that you, you, came out of her!) And the efforts you have made, all these years, to try to be close to her to make her like you; in my opinion, it was very noble of you that you could, in that way, at such a young age, try and calm her anxiety about you … And what about the healing that you always talk about? Has it not happened between the two of you—not even once?