Be My Knife

by David Grossman

  I already wanted to turn around, to leave without even touching the door—and suddenly I heard myself say, “Okay, I’ll have a room for a week.” And Thief-Eyes started laughing and said, “For a week? What are you going to do here that will take a week?” And idiot that I am, I was offended and drew myself up and said, “What? Do you rent only by the hour here?” He nodded slowly, inspecting me as if, of the two of us, I was the shady character. Or I was underage or something. He said, “So, do we want to pay by the hour, Doctor?” I saw that I was already getting myself into trouble and, in a mad attempt to save my honor, bargained with him, told him I would pay only by the day. So at least he would know that I’m no one’s sucker. To which he responded, “Oooh, he wants to rent by the day,” immediately took out a calculator, and calculated and rounded up and asked for the entire bill in advance. I said, “What, do you think I’ll sneak out in the middle of my stay?” and he smiled andtold me there are many kinds of fish in the sea. And I, just because of his foul smile, took out my wallet and weighed on his palm one month’s worth minimum wage, and even justified it in some wild self-persuasion: What, I’m going to go out now and look for another room? He smiled and sniggered, and I, as I always do when I see that someone is cheating me, began to give in to it, more and more—I got swindled on purpose and derived some little stinking pleasure out of it. You aren’t familiar with that pleasure (but people do love a clown to laugh at, don’t they?).

  Oh well. Spilt milk, etc. I went up to my room and found it to be tiny, stuffy—and instead of the lovely sight of the sea, my view is of the back yard of a pool bar. There’s only a tiny dresser and a huge bed that nearly fills the whole room—and a door that doesn’t really lock, and you can see the corridor through the crack in the door. I must have been very tired, because I crawled into bed and tucked my knees into my chest and slept for three solid hours, just the way I used to in the army when they sent me to some godforsaken base in the middle of nowhere. The first thing I would do was find an empty bed and curl up. It also reminds me of how Ido looked just after he was born, when we brought him home from the hospital. He looked like a little ball of yarn, rolled around himself in an unfamiliar place. He slept in despair, insistent and lonely—

  Listen, it’s really stuffy in here and the light is terribly weak. I’m going out to breathe.

  I have been walking for ten straight hours today, maybe more, since half-past five in the morning. Just so I would not have to go back there. I haven’t walked this much since my military training. Through the streets by the water, on the shore, on the wave breakers, walking slowly with no direction or purpose. Down the beach, and back up again—evaporating. Entering a café or pizzeria for a little cold synthetic fuel and returning.

  It’s terribly hot—those last hot days of autumn—the sun is focused on me through a magnifying glass and the wind doesn’t stop. People are bending at the waist, walking headfirst into this wind—it’s hard to swallow, and hard to breathe, and it cuts your throat going down. Sand flies into your face like grains of glass.

  I don’t really have any stories to tell you. I just saw a mailbox and thought, Why not? Last night was horrible. I thought I was stronger than that. I don’t know if I can pass another night like this. The voiceswere the worst (every time I succeeded in falling asleep, a scream woke me up. As if they were waiting for me to nod off to scream). It’s strange that there are more screams of pain than of pleasure in a place like this.

  What else? How are you? Has the meeting with the educational administration already happened? Did you succeed in arguing down the principal without your voice shaking?

  I really don’t know what the point is of sending you this piece of paper. There is none. Just staying in touch. Perhaps tomorrow I will write again. Take care of yourself.

  No exciting news. Nothing has changed in the past two hours—except that when I stopped by the hotel to get my sunglasses, the manager jumped out from behind the counter, practically blocking my way, with the excuse “They’re cleaning in there right now.” And I realized that while I’m out, he is doubling profits on my account! I thought about yelling at him. But I kept silent. I didn’t argue. I felt myself becoming hollow, weak, a child, in the face of such filth. I turned around and went back to the street without saying a word. Maybe I should look for a new hotel (but he will never give me my money back). I don’t have too much time left here anyway. I have decided to approach this as an adventure. At least I’ll have a good story to tell the kids someday (if I have any more).

  It’s clear that, even at this very moment, he is renting out my bed again and I better not return until night. I could have purchased the entire Hilton chain with what I paid him.

  Today is Abu-Gosh Day, isn’t it? Have fun. Raise a cup of coffee to me.

  I finished my round. An hour and ten minutes. I have found one sympathetic mailbox. In front of a little café that I like to sit in.

  Do you know what I was thinking about earlier? For no good reason? In the “Cleaning Lady Who Lasted One Day” letter—do you remember it? You were describing Anna’s pregnancy in detail, all the anxieties associated with it, the fear that her delicate body couldn’t handle it—and every other moment the girl would come in to ask you where the bleach was, or the window spray—and your letter became more andmore tortured, tense—and you will notlet her spoil this letter, you will notget up from the table for her—and she’s already told you she doesn’t like ironing. Oh, really then, what does she like? She likes to wash the floor, that’s the best—but how much floor do we have in this house?!

  I was sitting down, reading it and completely entering into the pregnancy with you. It was an amazing letter. It was—by the way—as if you needed to relive each and every stage of her pregnancy all over again in writing—and her slightest mood swings. I remembered thinking that I had never read such an exciting, intimate, personal description of pregnancy, not in any book. But I couldn’t help smiling at the parallel scene developing between you and your cleaning lady. “Don’t you dare laugh!” you shouted at me all of a sudden—you got really angry—“What are you laughing at? What do you know? How can you? I’m paying her a fortune so I can put aside a little time for myself to do things that are important to me, that are crucial to my life!” And then the wind was knocked out of you—as if your body ran out of the substance that it needed to maintain any pretense of calm. You were so real to me, lost and sinking. You asked me, When do you think I will finally grow up? When will I learn to give orders to my cleaning lady without feeling guilty or ashamed over being a fraud of a mother and a housewife and a woman …

  Your mother had laid into you right away, of course—she never missed a trick, or the chance to make that kind of crack—

  Are you surprised at the fluidity of my memory? Have you started suspecting that I have been playing against my own rules and stopped destroying the evidence of you?

  You see, every spy has his moment of weakness (how did you put it? That you keep my letters in spite of the “Sanctity of the Bond,” because it helps you find a little sanctity in the bond). My moment was—I don’t remember when. When you told me about the watch Yokhai smashed—the see-through one Anna gave you. You were in tears when you asked me what kind of watch I have. I laughed it off as an unimportant detail—you immediately wrote back to me: “But everything is important. How can you still not understand that everything you say is important, is precious to me, all your ‘details.’” …

  It was then that I asked myself, What am I worth if I am able to rip up all your pages, with all your “details”?

  Once I made the decision—they suddenly rose out of the darkness, from all sorts of strange hiding places that would probably stir up both your mockery and compassion—if not disgust—more and more of your pages appeared from more ancient eras. I couldn’t even imagine how many letters of yours I simply couldn’t tear up.

  Which is why I have some superb reading material here with me-and not a little of it. Actu
ally, there’s quite a lot. Tens, maybe hundreds of your pages, your words. I took hardly any clothing with me, only a bagful of your letters. Folded, squashed, used—most of them a little blue from the back pocket of my jeans.

  And there are so many precious details: the coffee that you, you and that girl, drank together after a big fight over the ironing—and you made peace and concluded that it wasn’t going to work out—but said your goodbyes as friends. And two hours went by until you got back to me—exhausted by wiping counters and cleaning windows, your pants rolled up to your knees and a red handkerchief on your head—to tell me that twenty years ago, whenever you would ask Anna what her dream was, she would answer, “‘My dream? To be a frustrated housewife!’ And look at me now, making her dream come true …”

  I’m softening up, huh? Licking every word of yours. Hup, let’s move out and put our shoulder to the day.

  Past the Dolphinarium on the beach, I find a little sewer stream. I walk alongside it and see, floating on the surface of the murky water, a strange white string—and think I am looking at a man’s sperm. Sailing along slowly. Changing its shape with the coursing of the water, with the blowing wind, looking like a long bird in flight for a moment—then like a question mark—like a woman’s profile—like a sword … I traveled with it all along its curves, all the way to the sea—and it never stopped changing its shape, even for a moment.

  I was pickpocketed. I don’t know how, because no one has touched me since I got here. The sons of bitches took everything—certificates, licenses, money, credit cards (I was lucky that they didn’t touch the letter Itook along for my morning shift—the one in which you told me about Yokhai). I was sitting there for two hours, calling all the authorities, nullifying every official layer of my existence.

  Except Maya. I haven’t spoken to her since I got here. Our little games of revenge. Because she could have called me, too, right?

  The thing is, because of paying the hotel in advance, I was left with—

  A meager 71 shekels and 40 agorot (if I had asked you, would you have sent me money?). I don’t know why it all amuses me so, the mess I’m in. You see it in movies sometimes—someone walks down the wrong steps, takes a certain turn as opposed to another, opens a door, and comes face to face with the wrong man—and is suddenly sucked into a nightmare.

  So I’m playing this hero (the poor, lonely hero) with myself a little.

  (Because some beauty always comes to rescue him eventually.)

  You don’t even realize how much this world is full of hints of you.

  Like the Magical Momentsradio show I’m listening to here over the beach restaurants’ speakers at two o’clock (“ Io sono il vento”by Aurelio Pierro was on today. I immediately saw your father howling along to it in his taxi, to the surprise of his passengers). Or your hidden beauty mark, hopping with impudent cheer onto a girl’s shoulder, onto a soldier’s cleavage, onto the cheek of an old woman.

  Just like that. A lottery stand. I go up to it and buy a ticket with the little money I have. A woman sits there, her face sealed off to the world, stone—and I look straight into her eyes and say, You’re wrong. You aren’t lucky. You, for the most part, are a series of coincidences—Fortuna is only the other face of that same Kremlin, and I will not accept half of your luck!

  And the woman doesn’t move a muscle and asks in a completely hollow voice, “Another ticket?” And I take out a few more shekels and buy the right to freely mutter out loud, Because the world considers me to be completely luckless. Look at my life and say it, look at me through my mother’s eyes and you will know immediately. And I still feel myself to be very lucky. And I am offering you all of it!

  (I won some pennies.)

  I sometimes pass with you through a few of the stops you made here growing up, trying to make you stand out in the middle of all the peopleand the scenery, like the children’s puzzles where you have to connect the dots with a single line, revealing a shape: in the window of a flower store, a huge sunflower, tall, graceful, and generous to the other flowers, a touch self-righteous … and in the next moment—how did you say it, “Even reality sometimes has the density of a dream”—In Ben Yehuda Street an old woman, hunched over and almost bald, is pushing an old man in a wheelchair. He mumbles constantly through his contorted face, as if he is cursing her in his heart. She bites her lip, stops again and again, patiently stroking his neck and head, looking at him with compassion. For three years the other Miriam with the dead legs and clumsy crutches sat next to you, and from fourth grade until the end of sixth grade she tormented you—and you wouldn’t tattle on her, hiding from everyone the blue bruises she gave you.

  As I write you, let me guess something else—I am positive you make secret deals with destiny, too—perhaps you felt it passing into you through her pinches—but you knew how strong you were, you knew you could absorb her paralysis without really getting hurt. Isn’t that right?

  Speak to me, I’m listening.

  I don’t know if you have started getting my letters from here, and I don’t know if you answered. I was hoping something from you would reach me—it wouldn’t hurt. I already know the letters I brought with me by heart. I can almost write them back to you.

  I wandered outside for a few hours. In the middle of the night as well—I had to escape—my head was pounding in there (they are destroying my beauty sleep for good). At around three in the morning I was standing by a traffic light in the central station area and knocked on a car window to ask for the way I lost. A fancy, well-accessorized man opened his window, made a sour face, and gave me one shekel. And out of an unfinished building some guy comes rushing out, shaking a little, rocking back and forth, yelling at me that this is his turf. Well, I wasn’t about to give up the money I earned fair and square! He cursed me and pushed me, and after a few seconds we were in the middle of a fight—but not really fighting. We hardly touched. Just a lot of kicking and punching the air. Most of my scratches are from the asphalt and myself. His hands were as weak as butter, and as the moments passed, I felt myself weakening along with him. What happened to me? I could have knocked him down flat, he was so completely stoned. All my life I have dreamed about how, once in my life, I would take someone like this apart—and when the opportunity presented itself, I felt his weakness sucking me in.

  So there we are: he and I, falling over from the swing of our own punches that never land or make contact in any way. We’re actually backing away from each other, gradually—but we never stop striking the air. Hardly any cars passed us by—no people. One boy, around ten years old, stood and watched us with interest and smoked. The entire time I saw the contortions of the man’s face in the yellow flickering of the traffic tight—his eyes were hardly open. He was actually fighting for his life against me—who the hell he thought I was is anyone’s guess. Then I guess I touched a wound—he made a terrible howl of pain, like a puppy whining. I have never heard such a cry from a grown man. And he fell, huddled up in pain. I left immediately, and in the back of an apartment building I puked until my soul came up. I spent the night terrified that he had died.

  I went back there this morning, right after the sunrise. He wasn’t there, I stood there for a few moments—and seemed to myself like a cat standing and sniffing at a spot where another cat got run over.

  Miriam—

  Nothing.

  There are comforts, too: this morning, in Ben Yehuda, a young woman ran after a bus. She managed to jump inside the back as the driver was closing the doors. But one of her shoes fell off into the road … One guy passing by picked up the shoe and without hesitating for a single moment started running, full-throttle, after the bus. I stood there, giddy from the sight—and then pulled myself together, stopped a taxi (didn’t even think about the money I barely have), and yelled at the driver to follow the guy—who, by the way, was running like a predator, like someone fighting for his life, pushing through the crowds, holding the shoe up high above his head, a shiny black shoe—and only after a few
long minutes did we manage to catch up to him—I yelled to him to jump inside—he instantly got the picture, hopped in as we were driving, and we hurried after the bus for a few more minutes. He sat next to me without even looking at me—the shoe filled the entire taxi. The driver started playing the game as well—and we weaved and sped, risking our lives—we were in the middle of a chase from the movies—until the bus stopped at the station by Atarim Square and we managed to catch up. The guy jumped out and ran onto the bus, and I saw him walking through the passengers, and saw how he delivered her shoe to her—and the bus drove away.

  After about fifty times, hearing people fucking not a meter away from me doesn’t excite me anymore. In the beginning it did, yes, even against my will and conscience—the moans alone did it—and they echo from every corner of this building twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes I think I keep hearing them even after whoever has been silent for a while. (Like the way Ido would sob and yell when I dropped him off at kindergarten—I would keep hearing it all day.)

  But—no longer. I guess I’ve grown used to it. I’m training myself to think of it more positively: for two and a half days I have been living in a huge engine room, with the noise and regular rhythms of increasingly louder piston squeaks. And the usual steam being expelled. And after a minute, everything begins all over again in another room. Sometimes I think all the rooms above and around me are trembling together—everything is shaking, vibrating—the beds squeak, the men moan, and the girls, each one in turn, let out their fake shouts—

  What I find strange is that, apart from the hotel owner, I haven’t yet seen a living soul here. Every time I leave my room, the place looks empty and abandoned.