He hurries to the back yard. It’ll be dark soon, getting chilly. Did she pack a sweater for camp, I wonder. What if she says, Gideon, I’m cold. He lurks in the shadows so no one will notice him. Avigdor Kaminer is going to empty the garbage with a little transistor radio pressed to his ear, can’t miss a minute of his program, even for the garbage. Hi, Aron, says Avigdor, so what do you say about the latest developments? Which latest developments? asks Aron reticently, he doesn’t feel like getting into a conversation now. You know, all the brouhaha in the news, with the Straits of Tiran-Shmiran. Aron cocksan eye and smiles at him cautiously. Hey, maybe Kaminer knows something, thanks to his dead wife. Slowly he answers him, in code, like a spy talking to an allied agent in enemy territory: Tiran-Shmiran Firan-Liran? But Kaminer didn’t hear him, he walked away, wagging his head in consternation. You have to be very careful now. That was a grave mistake. They could find you out. He skulks along the fence, half whispering, “Gideon, Gideon.” But why aren’t they back yet? Lucky for them they aren’t missing any classes, most of the classes have been canceled, the men teachers are away in the army. The seventh-graders volunteered to deliver mail. The sixth-graders are helping fill sandbags. Everyone is occupied. Everyone looks busy and worried. His own class has scattered and disappeared. Sometimes he opens the classroom door in the morning and sees the chairs overturned on the tables and the remnants of a grammar exercise on the blackboard, a lesson on exceptions to the rule. He tries out various seats. To see how other children view the classroom. Tries this seat and that. Experimenting: Gideon’s naturally, but also Michael Carny’s, Zacky Smitanka’s, and Eli Ben-Zikri’s. Even David Lipschitz’s. A creased map of the Middle East hangs on the wall, and you can barely find Israel on it, it’s so small. Maybe it’s shrunk even more, because of the recession, or because Egypt and Syria and Jordan and Lebanon are swelling up around it. Just looking at that map was enough to suffocate you. He ran a reluctant hand over it, fingering the cracks and wrinkles: like skin. Then he hurried out so no one would catch him there and ask questions. On the school bulletin board was a notice from last week. Grade 8-C, his class, would meet in front of the supermarket tomorrow, and be sent to dig trenches. Dig trenches? he was aghast: trenches for what?
He heard a scream and ran to the front of the building, his entrance, where a group of neighbors had gathered by the open shelter. Papa stood among them, shouting at the top of his lungs: he had gone down to check the shelter and make sure it was ready, and what did he find? Everything had been stolen! See for yourselves! Half our belongings were down there! Chairs and mattresses and the old buffet! And the neighbors crowded around and gaped in dismay, they too had been using the shelter for storage all these years. Malka Smitanka began to cry, she kept a folding cot in there. Peretz Atias discovered that his son’s bike was gone, and Mrs. Pinkus, the divorcee, screamed, Where’s the box with my feather quilt, it was an heirloom from my mother.Papa turned red and said it had to be someone from the building project, someone who had a key, and he started looking at everyone’s face. If I ever catch the traitor, I’ll chop his arms and legs off. Sha, sha, said Mama when she came down to see what all the commotion was about, she’d changed out of the dress with the spilled milk, and Aron saw that her eyes had sunk in their sockets and her face was ashen white. Silently he hid behind Felix Botenero. Botenero was standing there with a transistor at his ear; what could they be saying on the radio now? It’s no use screaming and getting all worked up, she said in a numb and weary voice. The dirty thief, said Papa, he’s left us bald as a baby’s tuchis. Mama noticed Aron and pretended not to. Mira Strashnov, Gideon’s mother, rushed over to find out what the shouting was about with Eddy, the lodger, watching her like a puppy. Where’s Gideon, why doesn’t he come back? Maybe she received a letter from him, everything would be different if Gideon were here. Mira looked around at the frenzied neighbors, but she was obviously preoccupied, and a moment later she walked away with Eddy at her heels. Mama and Zlateh Botenero exchanged looks. Malka Smitanka called after her softly: Mira! and hut ried to catch up.
None of the men noticed. Only Aron saw it, as though watching from the wings. The women. The men. Papa cooled off and started a conversation with Atias. You’ll see, just wait, we’re going to clobber them till they learn how fishes piss. Maybe so, answered Atias, I sure wish I could believe you. What do you mean, you don’t believe me? Papa steamed up again. You listen to Moshe Kleinfeld, Atias, you listen good, I hope that midget of a King Hussein joins in the war so we can let him have it, and show him who’s a man. Sure, right, mumbled Atias under his mustache, which suddenly looked shriveled and gray. But you know, Mr. Moshe, once these things get started, you never know where they’ll end. And now they’ve closed the straits, said Botenero quietly, and Atias and Mrs. Pinkus nodded in silence, and Aron could see how scared they were, and felt a catch in his throat as though someone were trying to choke him; only Sophie Atias, her little one in her arms, seemed full of fighting spirit, and the whole time Papa spoke she kept nodding and looking at him with shiny eyes. Don’t worry—Papa patted Atias on his shoulder—this is why we have an army and Moshe Dayan, you’ll see, we’ll clobber them like in that song they play on the radio. “Aiaiai, aiaiai, Nasser’s waiting for a war,” Papa sang hoarsely. “Rabin’s goingto beat him sore,” Atias chimed in with drooping lips, and Aron saw that Atias junior, who had been crying over his stolen bike, and his feet didn’t even reach the pedals yet, was mouthing the words along with them; how does everyone know this song, Nasser’s waiting for the war, Rabin’s going to deat him gore, meat him bore. He went back home and lay down on his bed, troubled, clearing his throat in anguish, it’s hard to breathe in this country, looking at Yochi’s empty bed, she’s been away for five days already. Aron to Aron, what do you see, over; Aron to Aron, I’ve picked up the first days with Yaeli, but maybe you aren’t up to it now, over; Aron to Aron, let me have it. Let me have everything. The bad with the good. Her eyes and her lips, and her smile, and the way she danced for me that first ballet class and the way she smelled when we were running through the valley and she waved her arms, and the space between her toes, and the way when the weather turned summery she wore a miniskirt, I thought it was too short, you could see everything, but it was nice that she was dressing in the latest style like the other girls, her time has come, and Aron doubles over, practicing sumo, to stop the pain washing through his body like a river. Retrieve everything, smuggle it out of there, the bad with the good, like a breath of fresh air, anything you can save, we’ll establish a new place, you’ll see, fresh and pure and natural and friendly, where we’ll know what has to be done and how to do it, there, it’s over, the wave.
He lay in bed till nightfall. He didn’t even go in for supper. He had what he needed hidden in his room. A small jar of royal jelly, a bar of chocolate, chunks of Sabbath challah, a bottle of kiddush wine, a perfect, unblemished peach. Tomorrow he would steal a couple of potatoes from the pantry and make starch. He relaxed. He could hear Mama putting Grandma to bed in the alcove, covering her up with the Scottish plaid. Then there was silence. Where was Yochi now? Go know. The evening before she left she kissed him goodbye and whispered in his ear that his hair was almost brown now. What do you mean, brown, I’m blond, aren’t I? he asked weakly, and she brought the mirror over so he could see. He didn’t know whether to be happy or sad about it: brown. Maybe that was a good sign, though. Maybe he would stop being so special. Cigarette smoke drifted in from the balcony. Papa’s smoking like a chimney again. Mama screams at him not to stink up the house. She can’t stand him smoking around her these days. She’s being careful suddenly. What’s there to be careful about? It’s all in yourmind. Control yourself. And after the cigarette he’ll take a shower and then she’ll tell him what happened in the kitchen today with the milk. No, she won’t. She’ll be afraid to say those things out loud. He lies down and chokes his wrists and ankles one after the other, counting inwardly, reciting the results. Then he puts the pil
low on his face and tries to choke the jugular vein with his hands. At the last minute he’s saved. He takes a gulp of air. Checks the clock. Here too the results are in accord with what he already knows. So constant and predictable. You’d think by now he’d be able to control the thing from outside. The whole idiotic machine. But in the end it’s still baffling. The fact is, he never succeeds. And what if the answer isn’t in the body. What if it’s in something else. Like, well, the soul. But what is the soul? Maybe it’s what the Torah says: God blew the breath of life into the dust He fashioned; all right, but what if God ran out of air at a certain moment? Aron lets out a real laugh: oh, he can think of several people who must have been created just then. Again he laughs. A bad laugh. He orders his fingers to squeeze the laugh glands under his armpit. Laugh, you rats. Yes, but suppose God had accidents of the opposite type as well, maybe sometimes He blew too hard and the flesh and bones and everything flew up in the air and could never be glued back together again, except for some of it, leaving a big naked soul to flutter around in desperation like a pink turtle without its shell. Then he remembers the big picture on the wall in Edna’s bedroom: all the broken, misshapen bodies, and out of them, a big mysterious soul bursting forth. Aron rolls over and sighs. But the soul is him. It is him. It’s that place inside him, it’s his essence. Now he can feel it distinctly: through the pangs inside you feel a small flame burning, spreading light and warmth, and his stomach and feet fill with heat and life, and there, down deep, is his Yaeli, and his little Gideon, and Aron, yes, his soul is what he used to be, in his childhood, and in the early dawn when he woke up frozen and torn with everything leaking out of him, he would simply take out a couple of friendship-sugar cubes and courage proteins from the hiding place under his mattress, and at the last minute he would be saved. But does anyone really understand this body-and-soul thing? he asks himself in anguish, rhythmically pricking his naked tummy with a pin, watching the little red dots spreading over his skin till they slowly tear open and begin to bleed; but it isn’t fair, the sides are unevenly matched, in his case the soul is thoroughly subservient to the body, it has to throw itselfat it all the time and beg for attention, and the body just ignores it. But maybe the body is right. Maybe there is no soul, thinks Aron, and something inside him suddenly dims: what if he’s been wrong all along? Has anyone ever actually seen a soul? Maybe people like Winston Churchill and Albert Schweitzer and Ben-Gurion have souls. Okay, they’re spiritual giants, but what about the others? Does Papa have one? Does Mama? And what about Grandma, who’s more dead than alive? If they opened up their bodies and searched through their hearts and brains and everywhere, what would they find? Anything? Maybe nothing? Not even a few desperate scratches on the inside? But it must exist. There’s got to be a soul. Oh yeah? Says who? Says no one, I just hope so, I have to. Then please explain, great genius of our century, how the soul is connected to the body. How is it separated from it when you die? And how does it enter life eternal, and how is it redeemed from human suffering? Huh? Whuh? Y’alla, Kleinfeld, you and your philosophy, go to sleep now, go to sleep.
Grownups’ mouths are ugly, thinks Aron, stealthily approaching to watch: they’re asleep. A warty, humpbacked sleep, a grumpy grownup sleep, a sleep as rough as labor. They lie far apart, and Mama’s swollen foot is tangled in the blanket. Her lips move sometimes as though she’s talking to someone. Arguing. What is she dreaming about? Maybe she has different children in her dreams. Maybe she has someone else in there already. There’s quite a space between her and Papa. Aron draws closer, stands directly before her face. With all his might and fear he plants himself in front of her. So she’ll see him in her sleep. So he’ll infiltrate her dreams. Her blood. Like a curse.
But suddenly she sighs and he scurries away. He stands in the hall for a minute. Peeps in again. The orange boiler light throws eerie shadows. Papa’s mouth droops open. Snoring like a saw. The driveling red mouth, how it twists when there’s shaving cream around it, like a little animal bleeding in the snow, bait in the trap for other animals. Look at his fillings. Aron doesn’t have a single filling. Aron is pure. He draws nearer. A vague terror of death seizes him as he watches their sleeping bodies. Maybe he’d better scream. To wake them up. But Papa would break his bones for that. Look at his mouth. It never stops moving. Curiously supple. Squirming as though he were talking to Aron. Come here, son, come to Papa, get in quick and let’s be done with it, it’ll only hurt for a minute and then … Aron shudders: if not for the smell inthere he really might have let himself be swallowed up. He steps back. From the foot of the bed their faces are even stranger-looking. Their wrinkles, the mole under Mama’s chin, Papa’s cheek squashed flat on the pillow, his cheekbones standing out from the flesh. Aron leans cautiously over him and sniffs: after his bath Papa’s feet always have that special smell. That sweet, clean smell. Aron to Aron: Now! Hurry! Over. He brings his nose closer and inhales. A good warm smell. Exactly what he was looking for without knowing it! This must be why he woke up and came in here. And now Papa is shifting his position just for him. He lies on his back with his feet spread apart, and they’re long and rounded at the toes like loaves of bread. Aron smells them timidly. Breathes in. The toes are fresh like little rolls. He remembers this smell from when he was little. That is—young. But the Cyclopean eye is slumbering. He sniffs them hungrily. Falls to his knees at the foot of their bed. And a cold wind, black and cutting, blows over the forsaken steppes. And a spent, despondent child creeps over the steppes, and the evil eye, the spiteful eye, rolls slowly under its fatty lid, beware! Papa groans in his sleep. The blanket drops away. The scar is revealed, like a pale hiatus, a silky gap in Papa’s brawn, but maybe at night it opens up, unravels: Come here, child, and a tiny child kneels fearfully, delving into the dust to pull out the bloodlike threads of embroidery, the tatters of slumbering flesh, and he runs along the cracks of the canals, over the palpitating mounds. And a diamond light beacons slowly in his hands, and the Cyclopean eye stirs. An extinguished volcano cracks open. A sardonic smile perhaps. And the child jumps into the anonymous paper boat, quickly, through the veins and the arteries, Aron to Aron, causing the heart to beat faster for you, over; and the heart pounds and the boat with the child inside it and the memories, like the smell of Papa’s feet, sails from room to room, and the heart is pumping, and beating and throbbing, he could have a heart attack like this, and his quick, soft breathing caresses Papa’s feet; now his feet smell a little sharper, a little clearer. A childhood smell. And maybe the true invisible Papa begins at the legs and grows downward from there. Maybe the person growing upward is a different man who is only a friend sometimes, but most of the time an enemy; a man who never looks at Aron anymore. Who has given up on him. Breathlessly he reaches the secret place, the new brain he has endowed himself with below, and he falls over its threshold, stretches out his hand, and delivers this smell. Nowgo back up and bring the rest. Hurry. Time is running out, the straits are closing, they’re strangling us; run, run, bring more and more in and let us breathe, it’s life or death in here. Wait. Have to rest.
And with all his might Aron clings to the smell. If only he could recreate everything out of this good-old-smell. Papa sighs and rolls over voluptuously, like a giant cat, and Aron sniffs and sniffs the naked feet, and in the middle of the blanket a strange little mound begins to grow, and Aron draws into himself and savors the smell of Papa, the smell of Papa’s roots. But suddenly it’s over, run for your life. Like a raging red moon, Papa’s head rose over his feet.
33
And at the end of the month, after nearly two weeks away at work camp, Gideon returned; Aron knew he was coming home; the night before as he was getting ready for bed, he had this feeling, this hunch, and he took a long bath and washed his hair and tried to comb his eyebrows so they’d connect over the bridge of his nose, and he looked into his eyes in the mirror and silently asked himself the one important question: was Gideon still loyal to him, because the outer Yaeli was fading fast, and A
ron acknowledged without too much pain that he no longer cared whether she was loyal or not, it was Gideon who counted; if Gideon had waited for him, that was all that mattered.
He slept deeply and peacefully for the first time in weeks, and when he woke up the next morning he put on clean clothes and left for school, but he took the back path, and between the buildings he caught sight of Gideon, looking very tan, his walk more vigorous, more arrogant than ever, but what did that mean; in itself, nothing.
The Book of Intimate Grammar Page 38