The Book of Intimate Grammar

by David Grossman

  It’s a heavy gray dinner hour. Aron tries to swallow, but he can’t. He just can’t. The food sticks in his throat. He mustn’t, mustn’t, put any more in. There’s no room left. Through lowered lids he peeks at Papa. At his slowly grinding jaws. Nothing will ever stand in their way. Throw in a hunk of meat and watch them devour it. Throw in a plastic box or a tin can or even an old car, they’ll tear up anything. Furtively he counts on his fingers: twenty-five days now since Mama and Papa stopped talking. And she doesn’t sing anymore, not even “We’re off to work in the morning.” You’re staring at me again. No, I’m not. I want you to eat, you hear, not sit there dreaming with your mouth open. I’m not dreaming. Everyone else is … The last few words are swallowed in an angry murmur. She sticks the serving spoon in the mashed potatoes and fills up Papa’s plate again. He watches, sighing, swallowing spit, and once again he lifts his fork. Slowly he consumes everything. Down to the last crumb. But the question is, will Papa eat the third helping Mama inevitably offers when he’s done? Because a few hours from now What’s-her-name will be serving him another huge meal. As Mama very well knows. As everyone in the building knows. All the same she heapshis plate full. At precisely one-fifty-five Papa ate chicken. Aron is scientific about these things. Yochi eats in silence, her soft greasy face glued to the plate. Aron is watching her out of the corner of his eye in her desperate struggle with the appetite she inherited from Papa. Her hand goes out to the bread basket, with a will of its own. She summons it back. A few more mouthfuls of chicken and the hand slides out to the bread basket again. Next time, the third time, he knows she will succumb. Aron chews and chews and chews, swirling the mush around in his cheeks: if he swallows this, he will explode. It will mix with the pasty mush churning in his stomach. Yochi’s hand goes out and snatches the bread—I was right—which she devours pleasurelessly. No one speaks. Aron picks at the food on his plate. To make sure Mama didn’t sneak in any chicken. The way she does in the vegetable soup. No one would catch him eating food that used to be alive. He chews with downcast eyes to avoid the chicken-wing remains on their plates. He moves the soda squirter in front of him to block out Mama’s plate, and furtively overturns the saltcellar from the Galei Kinneret Hotel on the bread board to eclipse what he can of Papa’s plate. Slowly he masticates the bread and mashed potatoes till he can’t tell the bread from the mashed potatoes, using his cheeks as warehouses. Twenty-five days. And Giora said a man has to do it three or four times a week, at least, otherwise he might burst. Papa’s jaws go up and down. Up and down. And in Aron’s tummy there’s a month’s worth of food spinning round and round. He can feel it spin: like the revolving drum of a washing machine. There go the tomatoes and the mashed potatoes, there goes the eggplant. There goes the rice and the bread and the bananas and sour cream they made him eat the day before yesterday. Yochi asks him to pass the borscht. “With pleasure,” he responds. And Yochi stares at him quizzically, then smiles and says with a perfectly straight face, “Oh, thank you ever so.” Silence. Everyone eats. Those jaws again. Mama scoops another mound of mashed potatoes onto Papa’s plate. The plate he just cleared, gasps Aron. Papa contemplates this latest mound. The steam from the mashed potatoes condenses into beads of sweat around his chin and down his cheeks. He breathes in deeply and lets out a groan. Breadcrumbs fly across the table. Aron grips the edge of the table. Papa unbuckles his belt and lets his body spill out into the room. Aron says: “Would you be so kind as to pass the bread.” Yochi smiles wanly. “The pumpernickel, sir?” Aron laughs. “If you please.” He looksaround with a smile. But Mama buries her face in the plate, and Papa turns red. Aron is mortified: what if Papa thinks they’re making fun of him with their formal Hebrew? But they aren’t making fun of him, honestly. Aron uses words like that in his imagination all the time, when he pretends he lives with gentlefolk who found him as a baby. Maybe he and Yochi should talk like that whenever they’re at home alone together. She’s so good at it. Not that it’s surprising, when all she does is read books or write letters. Aron wants to add something, but first he has to check on how things are going out there; Papa’s forgotten about him; he eyes the heaping plateful before him with dismay, picks up a thick piece of bread, weighs it in his hand, tears out a chunk of snow-white dough, and impales it on the tip of his finger: in his day at the bakery, bread was bread. He squooshes the unfortunate crumb and flicks it at the sink. Then he concentrates on his plate again, picking at the potatoes, noisily sucking on a drumstick. Aron waits till Papa’s eyes turn glassy with the drumstick in his mouth and mutters to Yochi: “How very delectable,” and ducks his head and stuffs more mashed potatoes into his mouth, and more bread, and pickles, anything and everything to avoid looking up again. Because the drumstick has frozen in Papa’s hand. Yochi too buries her face in her plate. Some secret thing inside him, a hazy memory, a quiver of joy, swims minnow-like, shimmering in his blood, while Aron plunges faithfully on, toward the one chance in a million, the flare of union and the spark of life, with Papa behind him, gloomy, dark, thrusting his body forward, and his flabby flesh gets stuck in the entrance—pow!

  Mama hurries to the refrigerator, and a strange blush spreads over her cheeks, but Aron peeks and sees she’s trying not to smile. She’s on my side. She understands that I’m loyal to her. Now he feels a little like a matador, advancing and retreating, cheered on by beautiful women. They continue to eat. In silence. And suddenly Papa says with his mouth full, “Pass me the salt whatzit.”

  Unthinkingly Aron blurts out, “The saltcellar.”

  A terrible silence follows. You can hear the drumming of the rain. Papa bulges invincibly. “What did you say?”

  Aron is silent. He turns pale. Caught out. The quivering inside him has stopped, the pleasure has vanished.

  “Repeat what you just said.”

  “Here, take it, Papa.” He holds the saltcellar upside down. He dare not turn it right side up. It trickles into his hand.

  “What’s that you call it?”

  “It’s … a saltcellar.”

  “Now listen here, Mr. Inallectual: you open your ears and hear me good: I say we call it ‘the salt whatzit.’”

  “Okay. Here, take it.”

  “No. First repeat after me: ‘the salt whatzit.’”

  “Please, Papa, take it.” His whiny voice, his boy-soprano shame. He is pouting and the tears well in his eyes. The salt trickles out on the table. Mama is silent. Yochi is silent.

  “You say ‘the salt whatzit’ or so help me, I’ll take my belt with the brass buckle to you.”

  “Say it already!” shrieks Mama, who only a moment ago was gloating at the sink. “God in heaven! Say it already so we can have some quiet!”

  Aron tries. He really does, but he can’t. The words just won’t come out of him. His lips twist and tremble. Let me go, Mr. Lion, and one day I shall help you in return; how can a mouse like you help the king of beasts; I have a plan: I’ll win the lottery, I’ll win the Toto, you won’t have to work so hard at the workers’ council anymore, I’ll save our home, the light will shine again. Yochi watches pityingly. Her mouth is full. Papa cages him in, his face swelling ever larger.

  “Let him be, Moshe!” screams Mama, throwing down the drumstick. “Never mind all the food I cooked. What do you want with him? Eat and be quiet!”

  “I won’t have him laughing at me! What does he think, he can laugh at me in my own house? He won’t eat his dinner, our food’s not good enough for him! And the way he talks, just like a girl, tatee-tatee-tata! Thinks he can look down on me, like a, like some damned commissar. And I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut. You say ‘the salt whatzit’ right now or else!”

  “Nu, Aron, say ‘the salt whatzit’ already, so we can eat in peace!” shouts Mama, and Aron gives her a long look; he really does feel sorry for her, slaving in the kitchen all day to feed him so he can grow up and be normal. He shuts his ears from inside, Aroning slowly down, till suddenly they’re speaking a language he doesn’t understand, these str
angers from far, far away, and he vows to stay with them, to helpthem cope, to bring a little sunshine into their trying lives; see them scowl as they tell him the news of some terrible disaster, some evil, hateful person has hurt them. Saltcellar, thinks Aron, somersaultcellar, his heart leaps: what a funny word, but something has happened meanwhile, a wicked emperor captured Mama and Papa, and he’s threatening to execute them unless Aron swallows a bite of the “birdy” in his defiant mouth; he swivels his head from side to side. Locks his lips. A heavy hand, red and hairy, squeezes his cheeks together, forces his mouth open, and thrusts the wing inside. Okay, maybe it’ll accidentally knock out his milk tooth. And his poor, poor parents, tied to the stake, they know he took a vow, they’d never ask him to do such an ignoble thing. His eyes blur with tears. I’ll do it for your sake, he whispers, with the tender flesh between his teeth, and he takes a bite of this once living chicken and chews it and swallows it, and the drum in his tummy spins the yellow meat around. But don’t worry, he bravely reassures his weeping parents as the emperor’s men untie their fetters, they may defile my lips, they may defile my body, but the essence of me will be pure forever. Long live the saltcellar, long live the somersaultcellar, and Aron, with a chicken wing sticking out of his mouth, flies blissful as a light beam, in the radiant splendor of his word.

  They ate in perfect silence again. Aron swallowed. But he never betrayed himself, he never said “the salt whatzit.” Papa sat down, growling with malevolence. Staring at the heaping plate. Yochi’s foot touched Aron’s reassuringly. Forks scraped. In a gnarly, tearful voice Mama asked Papa if he wanted more, the chicken came out so good today. With great effort Papa raised his head. He stared at her in horror. Slowly he turned to the clock on the wall. His bull neck reappeared between his shoulders. Shutting his eyes, he nodded in reply.

  23

  Two kitchen walls; the wall in the hallway; the little storage loft over the bathroom; the wall between the kitchen and the pantry; half the wall between the hallway and the salon … The neighbors, expert by now at deciphering Papa’s moods, recognized the difference instantly: after a long spell of fatigue, Papa was back to his old self again, smashing the walls with renewed vigor, till they crumbled into dust. He shattered the bathroom and, one by one, knocked out the delicate tiles, cracking the basin in the process as well as the laundry rack and the ornamental mirror where Edna had beheld herself rising from the bath. It was difficult for him to be careful, to curb his ambitions. His flexing smithy muscles twisted over his back and shoulders and ripped through his dark blue work shirt. Once when he needed some wooden beams and Edna pointed to a stack of doors, he sawed up two of them without a moment’s hesitation. During most of the next few days he worked on Og, the giant ladder, demolishing the storage loft in the hallway, indifferent to the peculiar rain of picture postcards and maps of distant lands, high-school papers and university notebooks, gaudy albums and collections of trading cards and silver foil and “gold stars,” and frilly dresses, and broken dolls, and little red shoes, and a cuddly teddy bear with a faint smell of urine, and scores of black-and-white photos pelting down on his back like arrows. For three hours a day the building project trembled, the Boteneros, the Smitankas, the Kaminers, the Strashnovs; the plaster crumbled in their apartments, thefurniture jiggled like herons aflutter in an aviary as the beating wings of their migrant friends pass overhead, and the dust from the ruins of Edna’s apartment fell upon the dying grass and the laundry lines on their balconies, but no one dared complain to Papa, right, that’s all they needed, he looked like a wild beast; poor Hinda, she must be made of steel to put up with a man like that.

  And a terrible thing happened in the building one morning: Esther Kaminer, wife of Avigdor Kaminer, did not wake up: she went to sleep a healthy woman and never opened her eyes again. All the neighbors, except for Papa and Edna Bloom, came outside and bowed their heads as the diminutive body was lifted into the ambulance. In the fifteen years since the project was constructed this was the first time anyone had died there. Avigdor Kaminer stood by, arms dangling, and the onlookers watched his hunched figure full of pity and concern: who would take care of him now that she was gone, who would keep him going? She fought like a tiger over him. Mama, who had a soft spot for Esther Kaminer, came home feeling suddenly old. It was a dreadful blow. But she gritted her teeth and baked a torte and a sesame cake so poor Kaminer would have something to serve his guests during the seven days of mourning; he’s as helpless as a baby, doesn’t even know how to fix himself a cup of tea, how will he manage with the laundry, how will he manage with the ironing? She heaved a sigh, remembering Mamchu, of all people, with a vague irritation; maybe there was a link here, between poor Esther Kaminer and Mamchu holding on to life like an animal, to the point of indecency. Some people just don’t know when their time has come, she grumbled, watching the margarine melt in the frying pan, and again with a pang she remembered Grandma Lilly, whose very survival seemed to clog the bowels of death and upset the laws of the universe.

  But the others blamed Papa and Edna Bloom in their hearts, him on account of the sledgehammer which must have jolted Esther’s internal plumbing—why, even a healthy person could break down from all that hammering day after day—and Edna they blamed on account of the air of repression she broadcast to the entire neighborhood. Mrs. Pinkus, the divorcée with the spotty face who never paid her house dues, lost control one time when Edna passed her on the stairway, looking pale and fragile with her new hair swirling around her brow like flames, and screamed at her, Stop the torture already, give in and be done with it—you think you have a diamond growing there, if you can’t satisfy him, pass him on to them that can. Edna stared silently at the hysterical woman and dizzily grabbed hold of the banister. If only he’d dare, she mused, tearing herself away from Mrs. Pinkus’s distorted face and trudging numbly up to her apartment. Why doesn’t he, though, what is he afraid of? Her thoughts were thick and murky, filling up her head. What is he afraid of? A fine thread of blood trickled out behind her as she carried her heavy basket with tomorrow’s dinner up the stairs. At the Atiases’ door she stopped to catch her breath. Maybe he was shy. But why should he be shy with her? A sealed letter with Mr. Lombroso’s signature had been lying under her bed for days, her bank clerk notified her sternly but with secret satisfaction that her account had been closed, red paper birds from the electric company and the gas people glided through the apartment, or glued themselves to the door, but she could always cook on the old Primus, and when she ran out of money for kerosene she could saw up the doors and the furniture and make a bonfire in the middle of the living room, and throw in her National Geographics,arranged and catalogued according to subject, the glory of her modest enterprise, and the oversized pages of her art books, born for burning, and her wooden sculptures and dolls from around the world. She started to climb the stairs again, shuffling her feet, how did everything get so complicated, wake up, save your soul, but where does he go when the hammering begins, as if she no longer existed for him, disappearing into the wall, forgetting all about her, all about her; she laughed out loud, shattered like a bottle on the prow of his ship as he sailed into the distance. And she leaned against the door of her apartment and saw the rash that had broken out over her slender legs. From hunger maybe. But food didn’t satisfy her anymore.

  And one night the telephone rang at the Kleinfelds’. Mama picked up the receiver, and, vey-is-mir, turned very white. Then she sent Aron to fetch Papa from What’s-her-name’s and sank down on the Pouritz. Mama, Mama, who was it, what happened? But only her finger moved, waving at him. Go already, bring him home right now even if he’s in the middle of Kol Nidre.

  He climbed the stairs of Entrance A, which reverberated to Papa’s blows, four flights up, slowly, cautiously, his legs wide apart, every footfall hurting more, stirring the mush in his tummy. He stopped and coughed in front of the door, to announce his presence, as usual, andknocked softly. And knocked again, a little harder; it was impossible to h
ear anything with all the noise. And again he coughed, and rang the bell, but didn’t hear it ring. Maybe the electricity had been cut off. What to do now, he couldn’t go home, he couldn’t just open the door. Till finally he dared, he closed his eyes and opened the door a narrow crack, and then he knew, he was certain that when he opened his eyes he would see Papa’s arms dangling to the floor, and the dirty smile smeared over his face, while some ingenious machine produced the sounds of hammering. But all he found was a cloud of dust, behind which he dimly discerned his papa’s bare back, as he smashed the wall of the bathroom down the hall.