The Book of Intimate Grammar

by David Grossman

  And here he sat, fully clad among the half-naked Tel Avivians, listening to their chatter with a hollow grin. Last year there were only boys in the gang, but this year there were girls too. As they talked and joked, the boys began to jab each other, right in the shoulder muscle, where it hurts the most, though luckily nobody did that to him. Nearby he could hear two kids snorting with laughter, trying to persuade Giora to steal a chicken from Gucha’s freezer: Hey, it’s your turn, what’re you scared of, just put it back when you’re finished and no one will ever know. Aron stood up. He shuffled down to the water, hands in his pockets, fiddling with the coin. Someone started humming “Pocket Ping-Pong.” Raucous laughter rang out behind him as he waded into the sea. How is it that kids learn the same things everywhere, like what to say and what to do; it’s as if they’re plugged into the same current; “with the fowl of the air in attendance,” for some reason this was the phrase that came to mind, followed, much to his annoyance, by an image of a frozen chicken, with its legs spread wide over the big round hole and Mama’s hand dripping blood after wringing out the innards, but he shook off the image and sailed it away on a receding wave. Then he took the coin out of his pocket and was about to throw it, may it sink a thousand fathoms and never return, amen, when Giora walked up beside him so suddenly he barely had time to close his fist around the coin.

  Don’t mind them, they’re only fooling, said Giora. Hey, did you hear about the chicken? I thought it up myself, brilliant, huh? Giora grinned at him as if the word “brilliant” were another sly dig, only Aron’s mind was elsewhere: what if the spy had caught on when he wiped off the greasy fingerprints with 70 percent alcohol; with all his might he pitched this troubling thought into a receding wave, but Giora, staring at the sea beside him, was positively unrelenting, and jabbered on about how the players on the Italian soccer team aren’t allowed to fuck before a game, it’s true—look at Gianni Rivera. Aron took a tiny step backward to protect the tips of his shoes from an oncoming wave. He’s really been sliding since his engagement to that sexy showgirl, have you noticed? Pay no attention, concentrate on the sea, thought Aron, trying to throw off his mounting despair; high and low he’d searched for thepictures, till finally weeks later he found them—the nerve of that spy —hidden in Papa’s tool chest. Yes, Aron gasped, the tool chest Papa used at least once a day, because there’s always something to fix around the house, lucky Papa’s so handy or the house’d fall to pieces, the electricity and the plumbing and the blinds, screw in to the right, unscrew a light bulb counterclockwise, same direction as a tap; he used to know that stuff by heart; go, wave, go, take it away, but there was Giora, looking out to sea, his voice booming over the breakers, telling Aron about this kid named Cockeyed Sammy, who’s feeling up his girlfriend for the first time and she says, Sorry, I can’t, I have the curse, so he says, Don’t worry, sticks and stones will break your bones, and Giora howled with laughter, staring hypnotically at the waves, and Aron thought, Away, away, but how did the pictures vanish from the tool chest, only to turn up again, after a week of frenzied searching, at the bottom of the drawer where Papa keeps the receipts, and how did they find their way from there into the first-aid box in Papa’s army kit bag, that’s where Aron found them, and he prayed there wouldn’t be a war. So Sammy’s girl keeps trying to explain, No, really, I have the curse, and Sammy says, Hey, didn’t I tell you not to worry, I’ll fix that son-of-a-bee. Aron groaned, the waves Giora reeled in were dark and sullen, hurling themselves at Aron’s shoes with their scum and seaweed and nylon bags, and Giora said, Tide’s in, and Aron searched his face for an allusion to the storm last year, which was, he suspected, when his problem began, maybe his brain had been deprived of oxygen or something, he was afraid to ask, because what if Giora gave a different answer, or blurted out more of the filthy secrets lurking behind his grin and the charcoal blotches on his coarsened features, and he slipped the coin back into his pocket, because he knew that Giora would only retrieve it if he threw it in, so he said, a little lamely, that he had to go home and rest now. Fine, said Giora, I’ll walk you back.

  Through virtually deserted streets they passed, Aron drooping in the heat, Giora striding briskly, going places, moving fast. And if a girl carries her handbag to the restroom, it doesn’t mean she needs to rest, it means she has to change her sanitary napkin because she’s bleeding; he grinned at Aron again, penetrating his obtuseness with a possibly ominous message: you never know, anything can turn out to be other than it seems, anything or anyone, and Aron started Aroning, pondering all the discoveries he’d made while searching for the lost pictures, likethe plastic pen from the drawer in the “little cripple,” with a girl floating inside, and when you pick it up, her top slides off and you see her boobs. And elsewhere he found a pile of faded photographs from Poland, one showing Grandma Lilly in a bathing suit, hugging a half-naked stranger whose arms were wound tightly around her waist. It was sickening the way her eyes and lips were opened toward him. And in the photo that showed her performing in a low-cut dress, you could see a stranger in the audience with spittle glistening on his lips; and far back in the medicine cabinet, on Mama’s side, he found a lacy black brassiere he’d never seen before, though she always used to let him stay in the room while she was changing; her breasts were small and white and wonderful, he liked to peek at them through a milky haze, yearning to feel their softness against his cheek, but why did Mama handle them so roughly, and now Aron saw the blue ribbon of water between the buildings on Ben Yehuda Street, and then suddenly he stopped in his tracks, as though someone had called his name, and he turned around and started walking back in the direction of the sea. Hey, dum-dum—Giora laughed—you’re going the wrong way. Who cares, muttered Aron, about to vomit lunch, hurrying to the beach while Giora talked about sumo wrestlers, who are trained from early youth to squeeze their balls up into their stomach for safety’s sake, and of all the nonsense Giora had been spouting, this had the most convincing ring, and he wondered how old you have to be to start training, and then Giora said he could tell just by sniffing when a woman walked past him whether she was hot or not, and Aron lagged behind, stepping lightly, pressing his legs together in distress, fanning his face with his hand, about to rush out to the waves, yes, and what about the packet of greasy rubbers he found rolled up in Papa’s army socks, or the dirty magazines he discovered in the storage loft over the bathroom, the latest issue was on top, and half the crossword puzzle was completed, in Mama’s handwriting yet; and then there was that letter from Zehava, Yochi’s best friend, who went to live in America and sent her a ring of kinky black hair taped to the paper with a little note saying: “My first curl!” Why had this trivia been hidden away, it was frightening; don’t think about it, wait, there’s still time! He headed for the water, almost running, Giora just ahead of him with his pointy nose, walking like Uncle Efraim. See, that one over there, you can tell she’s hot. Giora pointed as they passed a woman in a feathered hat. Sure, wise guy, thought Aron, youcan tell by the feather. Yeah, that one’s hot too, said Giora, though this time there were no feathers. So’s that one and so’s that one and so’s that one. They all were, apparently. Giora and Aron continued at a trot, down a narrow lane of rotting houses, and emerged at the seafront, on a filthy beach littered with nylon bags and cigarette butts and empty beer bottles sticking out of the sand, and Giora turned away from Aron and stared into the waves, compelling them shoreward, and explained that men have a biological need to fuck at least three or four times a week, because if the pressure builds up too much, it can be dangerous, and Aron tried to fend him off but Giora was unstoppable; there was a jingle in English he had to hear: Eef you vant to be a bradher put yoor fadher on yoor madher!; his voice was different suddenly, kind of quiet and alert, he seemed to be alluding to something, guiding Aron with clues and arrows and hot and cold to an understanding, an admission, but of what, and Giora scowled impatiently and added in the same tentative, cautious tone, You can always tell a woman’s been laid at
night if she sings in the morning, it’s a fact, he said, his face crusting over with cocky ignorance, and Aron beseeched him with his eyes: Go on, say it already, but Giora stared out at the waves again and cracked his knuckles, crack, crack. Aron shuddered. What if he cracked them off, and then his hands, and his wrists, and his arms, and his shoulders, all piled neatly on the sand, and then his vertebrae and then … everything seemed to be removable, interchangeable, anonymous, and in his anguish Aron blurted out that at home he did hear, well, Mama singing in the morning.

  With eyes like a vulture Giora veered. He forgot the waves. They lapped away. Instantly Aron regretted his betrayal. Of Mama, yet! Giora drew closer: “You mean every morning? You’re kidding. What does she sing?” And Aron sensed he’d desecrated something, but the feeling blurred into limp confusion and his mounting resentment of her for abandoning him. Every morning she comes into our room to raise the blinds, singing, “We’re off to work in the morning.” Giora shook his head like a schoolteacher prompting a dull-witted pupil to try a little harder. “I’m telling you,” said Aron. “That’s what she sings.” “Okay, but if she sings that every morning,” Giora concluded, “it’s not because she’s getting laid.” Aron shuddered to hear his parents spoken of like that. “But!” exclaimed Giora, guiding him toward the treasure, “does she ever sing anything else?” Aron thought awhile, and suddenly thewave inside him was rising again, maybe he’d feel better if he vomited. “Yes … sometimes she sings, nu, what’s that song from the opera … Carmen, it’s called …” “Get out of here!” Giora fumed. “What does she know about opera!?” “She went to see Carmenat the opera house in Tel Aviv,” protested Aron, “before she married Papa.” And the face of his father loomed out of the sea, grinning not at him but at Mama, the way he did when she put on airs, and hard as Aron tried to erase the vision—he needed that like a hole in the head right now—there it was against a background of ruffled seawater, bobbing and sinking below the waves, watching Mama tell how she saved her pennies for the bus fare to Tel Aviv and the ticket to the opera, in the days before she met Papa, who was starving in Jerusalem, and Aron watched him narrow his eyes at her, while she wistfully described the luxurious seats and the plush red curtain, and the gowns and hats of the shlochtas and yekketes; and Papa’s eyes flashed maliciously: “She isn’t just anybody, your mama, she’s a regular inallectual, in case you didn’t realize; who knows, if not for marrying me, she could be a great artiste, a Mozart at least, or a Whozit, the actress … Rovina.” “You wouldn’t understand!” raged Mama. “To you it means nothing, but not everyone’s like you!” “Oh sure, it must have been dandy to sit there for five hours listening to all the heehaa-heehaw! Heehaa-heehaw!” Eyeball to eyeball he brayed into her face, grimacing to remind her of her treachery, of what she really was, and the smile vanished from his eyes, heehaaheehaw! Heehaaheehaw! And he pushed till she yielded, the muscles aquiver in her face, like a savage succumbing to jungle drums. Haw-heehaaheehaw! brayed Papa, heehawheehaaheehaw! Like a donkey with his tail in the air. And Aron watched her, praying, Don’t give in, oh please, not this time, but behind those tears of rage and humiliation she was getting ready to laugh, preparing to surrender her pretensions and abandon her pathetic resolve to defect, and then, forsaking Aron, braying “Heehaw-heehaa,” amid tearful snorts and hiccups of contrition over the treachery of Carmen, “heehaaheehaw,” she sank down beside Papa, their faces moving closer, till for one horrible moment Aron could actually see the frayed heartstring only Papa knew how to pluck. “Are you telling me your mama sings opera”—he heard Giora’s voice from afar—“at seven o’clock in the morning?”

  In a flash he understood: Papa’s hands reached out of the waves, dripping with tangled seaweed. They were unmistakably his father’shands, dangling ape-like at his side, and now he imagined them stroking his hair, tending the fig tree, leaving greasy fingerprints on the pictures, yes, oh yes, and Giora, who had been carefully observing Aron’s face, exclaimed with awe: “Your papa sure must know how to bang!”

  With a great, bitter howl Aron was upon him. Giora ducked, but soon recovered and began to laugh, pretending to be afraid of little Aron as he hopped around him, blocking his punches, pounding him not very playfully on the head with a heavy fist, teaching Aron a lesson to the rhythm of “Oh, tico-tico-ti, oh, tico-tico-tu.” And Aron reeled like a drunkard, blinded by his tears, the tiny undefeated wrestling champion of his class, who didn’t know the meaning of fear, no one had dared to mess with him before; why, when he was eight years old he’d flattened Zacky in the yard, that was the start of their friendship. Zacky stuck to him like glue after that, but now Giora was showing him what the future held in store, offering him a crash course in the strategies of avoiding danger, groveling to musclemen and reviling yourself with a crooked smile for being a little runt—suddenly Giora hammerlocked him from behind, threw him down on the sand, and sat on his back. Aron stopped breathing, not because Giora was heavy, but because he was crushed by the discovery that a boy his own age could weigh so much. “Say you’re sorry.”

  Aron buried his face in the warm sand and choked back his tears.

  “Say you’re sorry.”

  The pain in his arm was becoming unbearable. He’ll break my arm and they’ll send me home.

  “Repeat after me”—Giora’s face loomed over him—“Eef you vant to be a bradher put yoor fadher on yoor madher.” His face was red, filled with loathing. Why does he hate me so much? What did I ever do to him?