The Book of Intimate Grammar

by David Grossman

  He broke away, slogging through the crowds, ducking down a half-deserted alley where three little children accosted him and bopped him with their plastic squeak hammers, calling after him, “Pumpkinhead! Pumpkinhead!” But he just kept walking to avoid a fracas, smiling inwardly at their mistake, they thought he was their age. Then two skinny hoods grabbed his arm and dragged him over to a deck of playingcards spread out on the sidewalk: Bet one pound, take home ten, everyone’s a winner here. He wriggled free, nauseated by the wine on their breath, and darted off again, sealing out the music that blared at him from the tall buildings and puffing out the smoke he had inhaled from the air so it wouldn’t pollute him inside; what’s the time, they were probably having a campfire about now, charred potatoes on a wire, blackened fingers smudging an autograph on somebody’s cheek, the smell of smoke in her hair, her quiet laughter. Take the hair out of my mouth, would you please, Gideon, my hands are covered with soot. A gangly old man without a face emerged from the shadows and walked up to Aron, holding out his hand. I thought you weren’t coming, he simpered. Didn’t Simo tell you to be here at eight? Aron stared at him uncomprehendingly, shivering down his spine, the voice sounded familiar, and suddenly he felt a skinny hand on the back of his neck with squidlike fingers, and heard him snicker in his ear, Shall we go for a little walk, Simo tells me you’re new around here. Aron veered around and sank his teeth into the slippery hand; he snapped at the fingers hard as he could till he felt the flesh break, and didn’t stop there, flesh and blood, he bit down murderously, to kill, to annihilate once and for all, but when he tasted the blood he spat it out and fled for his life, shuddering and shaking, while the faceless man collapsed in the alley, howling with pain and bewilderment, and Aron kept running, spitting out every drop of saliva in his mouth, maybe the man had a contagious disease, what was that all about, maybe he wanted to force him into joining a gang of robbers; Aron didn’t know where he was anymore, the din from the loudspeakers pursued him through the alleyways. The streets had no names, the houses no numbers; he trembled so, his hands started fluttering at his sides; if only a miracle would happen and Yochi would appear now, calling to him with open arms: Come here, li’l brother.

  At last he found himself in the crowded street again and heaved a sigh of relief. The faces of the people streaming in on every side shone red and yellow under the colored lights. Aron stopped to glance at his watch. It would be six or seven hours before he could go home. He sank exhaustedly on the curb. People bumped into him, stepped over him, cursed him angrily. He cradled his head in his hands. Through the legs of the revelers he saw another group of children. He studied them carefully: this time they were strangers, but so what. They all lookedthe same when they were dancing. Cavorting. With wild exuberance. He searched for the most attractive couple. Two by two he examined them. Swallowed them longingly with his eyes. He caught his breath, stretched out on the sidewalk. All tired out, but no malingering, he had to check them over by the book. No exceptions. He cleared his throat. Sat up a little. He chose a few more couples out of the crowd. He swore to be honest with himself. To admit the truth, even if it hurt. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t find any real happiness in them. He felt the urgency in their steamy shouts of jubilation, to be as alike as they possibly could, to know that which Aron—like a deaf man watching faces in the audience—could only surmise by their quivering movements, that they wanted to surrender to it, crying out in airy rapture, in sheer oblivion, before the alarm buttons went off in their horrified hearts.

  So he stared at their dancing feet, his face bare and his secrets scrawled rudely upon it. A group of children noticed him sitting there, moving his lips, and pointed at him conspicuously. Someone spilled the dregs of a juice bottle over his head, drip, drip, it leaked into his collar. He ignored it. Easily. What did he care if he was wet. There, they quit and walked away. Relieved, as if a vicious hand had suddenly let go of him, he stretched his legs out and leaned back. Relieved of the pain, of the unbearable heaviness in his heart. Just like that, for no particular reason, a brief respite. Who knew what he would have to pay for it.

  And in the midst of this, in the split-second interval between the blow and the pain, with the instinct of an elderly fourteen-and-a-half-year-old, he knew that the dancers were just as miserable as he was. That having a body is itself a defect. That even this gaiety they yielded to, this frenzied urge, was inwardly childish and playful, not deep, not really theirs, he sensed without words for it, in the darkened cell of his nascent mind: and all they have is a consolation prize, wonderful but strange and callow, the kind you use up quickly, in the shadows, with humiliating greed, with dark forebodings; this, like a letter, they would pass on to others …

  Sometime later, around midnight, he headed home from the center of town. Slowly plodding through the streets, he continued his little experiment, forced to add the new blister on his foot to the repertory, to time the yelps of pain; how long did it take them to reach his brain, did they mingle there like echoes, and sometimes he would count howmany times he could hop on one foot before his thigh muscle started shaking, or he would stare directly into the blinding streetlamps, observing the influence of light on his pupils; what does that have to do with anything, though maybe it did have something to do with it, maybe he would draw sudden insight from it, a flash of brilliance from the pupil of his eye. He repeated the facts again, he would have to juggle them in order to solve the riddle, to break them down and build something new, healthy, lively; it would be interesting to know what was going on there now, maybe at midnight everybody kissed, maybe they’ve gone even further, maybe they kiss with their tongues by this time. He tore a hair out of his cowlick. Three seconds of pain. That’s interesting: this morning it was five.

  When he finally approached the house, he heard raucous voices and music inside. There were Menachem and Aliza Bergman on the balcony with Yosaleh and Hanna Stock, snorting with laughter at something or maybe someone, not him, of course, though he did hear them say “rarin’” to go, which sounded for a minute like “Aron”; but their voices had that tone he knew, and he retreated deftly into the shadows, where he saw them suddenly switch to the code; Yosaleh Stock lit a cigarette and there was suddenly red lipstick on Aliza Bergman’s lips. Maybe they did notice something after all. How long was the party going to last? He wandered around the neighborhood. What if he went upstairs and rang the bell and said hello to everyone and walked through the hall to his bedroom: We all went home so we’ll be able to wake up fresh at 4 a.m. to watch the sunrise, and he turned away in shame. Maybe he’d wander around for a while. Maybe he’d go do a mitzvah at the hospital where Grandma used to be. The night shift was on now. He could volunteer to change sheets, for instance. This party might last till morning, and when he said goodbye nobody even asked where he was going. What an idiot he was not to take his passkey. Then he could have taken a little nap in the shelter. Or sneaked into Edna Bloom’s, he thought with surprise, shivering as he fled from the empty space of her apartment, with a backward glance at the imaginary thing that might jump out and grab him and lock him up inside, and so he ran to the end of the street, and only then slowed down, out of breath, with a stitch in his side, and shambled aimlessly, hugging himself with cold, and again and again he thought about Yaeli, but he was so tired, so tired, his jealousy and pain were muffled. Maybe this was the momentto start the separation. Be realistic, she’s not for you. He even evoked an unpretty picture of her as she emerged from the oven, bloated and puffy, and for a moment he could imagine how she would look one day. She’s not for you. You need someone different. Someone more … More what? More sad, he thought. Tentatively he spoke her name: Yaeli, Yaeli. Nothing. Only a dull and distant pain passing through him, and so he continued, careful to stay half-asleep throughout the operation, and he tried to decide rationally who his next love would be; he felt so logical, he began by crossing off all the ineligible women of the world, like Mama, for instance, and Yochi and Grandma Lilly and
Gucha and Rivche and Itka, and women who were out because they were too old, like Golda Meir and Bebe Idelson and Henrietta Szold, yes, go on, and how about the ones in hospitals and mental institutions, like Rivche’s Lealeh; there, you see, so many women who can never be yours, one Yaeli more or less won’t make any difference, and how about the millions of women in China and Japan whom he would never even set eyes on, or the Arab women he had to disqualify because they were enemies and stank, and he came to the conclusion that his love would have to be Jewish and live in Israel, because how else could they meet, and as he sleepwalked through the darkness under the bowing cypress trees, he eliminated all Jewish women of Moroccan, Kurdish, and Turkish descent, he knew Mama would never let him bring one home and he didn’t have the strength to fight her now, and after brief consideration he eliminated Bulgarians too, and hesitated over Romanians, she always warned him that Romanians are almost one of ours but not quite, that they try to marry up, she had this complicated hierarchy of Ashkenazim and Franks, and finally he went through the list of suitable girls he knew, checking them off one by one, like Rina Fichman, she could definitely be right but it seemed she was taken already; Naomi Feingold might be the best one in fact, except what about that brother of hers; and then, as he traipsed back along the narrow road that led to the building project, surely they were gone by now, he realized after all that the only girl who was eligible to be the love of his life was Yaeli, and the thought of it woke him up with the pain of an open wound when the bandage is torn off, and he heard the chirring in his ears again: No answer, no answer, no answer, and now he stood in front of the building where the noisy party was still in full swing. Now where? Down to the valley, maybe, dare he go therein the dark, to hide in the cave till the party was over. He shuffled along, turning down the side street that led to the valley, skulking near fences every time the headlights of a passing car rushed by, but at the end of the street, on the edge of the valley, the utter darkness filled him with terror and he couldn’t go through with it. He sat on a rock, laid his head on his arms, and dozed off, awaking in a panic every minute, where am I, cruelly banging his kneecap, tearing out hairs, muttering, This is war, this is life or death, and dozed off again, tired out, and life, if he ever lived it, if his disaster didn’t portend an untimely death, would in all likelihood force him to be constantly alert, constantly juggling, without pride, without distinction, what would such a life be worth. But what choice is there? He heaved a bitter sigh: Calm down, you’re becoming hysterical, you’re exaggerating, there are plenty of kids your age who haven’t started growing yet, you might start growing any minute. Right away, in fact. But what about his measurements, he argued with himself; every morning he measured himself, in the morning the cartilage between the vertebrae is still unabraded, which makes a difference of about three millimeters in his favor, and thanks to the marks Papa drew for him once on the door, Aron knew for a fact, every time he left or entered his bedroom, that he was no taller now than he had been at ten and a half, he was exactly the same height and weight; so what, stupid, he didn’t need measurements, he knew from the pangs in his heart and the coded communications, the idiom of his most intimate grammar, that this was no temporary delay, it was becoming, God forbid, the thing itself, and just as he had felt chosen somehow before his problem started, now he felt chosen, too, same difference, which gave his disaster a certain dark and twisted logic: it was his disaster, out of which he had been fashioned.

  A car slowed to a halt very near him, with its lights dimmed, and the couple in it started writhing and moaning, but Aron didn’t wake up, he slept like a stone, counting their breaths; by ninety-one it’s usually over, sometimes ninety-five at most; he knows these things, it’s always the same, with minimal variations. A long bare foot jutted out through the open window, and in important matters they have no choice; when it comes it comes, it grabs them by the claws and won’t let go, and it’s seventy-five already, and the clumsy back goes up and down, why do they always groan like that, and maybe it has to go in and out a few times before it connects, and soon we’ll hear the krechtzes; ninety-one,ninety-two, what’s this, a hitch, some technical difficulty, ninety-nine wow, a hundred already, and he continued to count in sheer amazement, awakened by the sight of the bare brown foot with the painted toenails which began to squirm, one hundred and thirty-seven already, here come the krechtzes, thank God, maybe he miscounted, maybe he was so tired that he counted faster than he usually did at home, one two three and four groans jumbled up; now she’ll whisper to him, Pull out, and five and six; what’s the matter with her, she’s supposed to scream, Pull out, arois, it’s been like that for nights already, and then he’ll cling to her with all his might, he won’t want to pull out, and she’ll push him and scream in a whisper the whole house can hear, Arois arois, be careful, pull out, arois charois marois parois, but the lady in the car doesn’t push him away, she doesn’t scream, Pull out, they just keep panting and groaning, going up and down like a giant piston, with the bare foot wriggling and squirming out the window, and the long toes stretching out farther and farther, soon they’ll stretch all the way to Aron, maybe she can’t hear him, but the whole world can hear him now. Aron counts the groans in astonishment, seven, eight, nine, maybe he’ll find a use for these details someday, maybe someday the question that has been plaguing him for so long—ever since he saw that curious amber glob in the handkerchief—would be answered once and for all: when exactly do they decide to piss the sperm, and he sat up, suddenly excited, that is, if they do decide! As if it were something they could decide! You stupid idiot! And he started banging his kneecap with one hand, sticking the other between his teeth and biting it hard, to keep from sobbing, and the darkness whirled before his eyes as the animals ran around and around and grabbed each other’s tails in their mouths, chasing faster and faster; what timing and precision were needed here, to prevent them from crashing, because just as they’re about to, a long hand, a reliable hand, will reach out and grab them in midair, but what if it misses them, what if someday they explode into a thousand pieces, or maybe it happened already.