At Memorial Park Gideon was joined by Meirky Blutreich and Hanan Schweiky and Avi Sasson, who marched alongside him, listening intently as he talked and waved his hands around, and Aron scratched his forehead on a branch; even from this distance he could see Gideon was lecturing about the war, that’s all anyone cares about these days, why doesn’t it just start already so they can get it over with, and it wasn’t hard to guess what he was saying, that we have to smear those Arabs once and for all, he knew Gideon, he knew he would go out andvolunteer today to join the Red Magen David Society, or to fill sandbags, but more important, Gideon hadn’t actually changed that much in all the time he was away, except for the shadow of a mustache over his lip which did appear a little darker and thicker from here, and his eyebrows had just about connected, though not completely yet; maybe he was still taking the pills every day. Aron winced with guilt.
He followed him up to the school gate, unsure whether to go over and show his face and talk to him as if nothing had happened, so what had, and if God forbid it had, Aron wasn’t the one who ought to feel guilty, and there would be one definite answer to a million questions, and there would no longer be any need to ask or to hope, but he didn’t go over to him or show his face, he slinked behind from tree to tree, from post to post, discerning a change in Gideon, after all; he did look sturdier or something, more sure of himself, conceited even, it was hard to say what. At the school gate Gideon turned around, and for a moment there was a troubled look in his eyes, as though he was searching for something, yes, as though he was missing someone, and Aron gasped as a quivering heartstring snapped with pain, he nearly burst out of his hiding place to show Gideon that if he did wait for him, Aron would be there, only at the very last second a viperlike message hissed through his mind, maybe it wasn’t Aron he was waiting for, and he froze and waited for Gideon to disappear into the school, and then, shrinking off, he grabbed a handful of friendship-sugar cubes from his back pocket, popping one after another into his mouth, to hell with his teeth. On his way home he stopped to pick the three leaves on the right from the bottom of the big ficus tree by the path to Gideon’s entrance; I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, poor things, here they thought it was an ordinary day, they were happy and green in the sunshine, and without any explanation someone came and plucked them. Why? Because, that’s why. And then he went home, to bed, and worked on his laugh glands for a while, just for the record, so they would say he always tried to be cheerful, and then he put a little nylon bag over each of his middle fingers to compare the sweat, for no particular reason, what was the point, he was only running around in circles, breaking himself down, because he needed something new, fresh fuel to burn inside, but he didn’t have strength anymore, he couldn’t go on, and he wondered if Gideon had come home yet and seen it. And at four in the afternoon, not one second earlier, he went down to their rock in the valley andwalked around and around it until seven o’clock, but Gideon never showed up, maybe he took the back way home and didn’t see the leaves missing on the ficus tree; well, that was the first try.
And the morning after Aron used two stones to twist open the tap on the little pipe behind the building, and made it drip with the hollow whistling sound you could hear from far away, and at four o’clock he went down to the rock again, and again he traipsed around, all the way to the junkyard this time, but no one came, maybe a neighbor had heard the dripping and closed the tap before Gideon came home from school; second try.
And on the third day Aron took sand from the Wizo Nursery School and blocked up the holes in all three sewer covers behind the building and poured in water to make it goopy and wiped his hands and was satisfied. But he kept smelling something, he checked his shoes, no, he hadn’t stepped in anything, and still he smelled it, maybe it was coming from the sewer. He stepped on the round cement cover and laughed for real; oh, the hours they had spent here playing aju, the thousands of apricot pits they had traded, he and Gideon and Zacky; I wonder if Gideon noticed this time, maybe I should have thought of bigger, more obvious signs back then; when you’re a kid you notice these things right away, and when you grow up you have other things on your mind and you don’t walk around with your head down, searching; so in fact, if Gideon hadn’t noticed the signs, that in itself was the answer, there was nothing more to say. And at four sharp Aron went down to the valley and dozed on the rock shelf, as the warm sunshine quickened the Yaeli and Gideon inside him, faceless but both there, setting off a kind of vibration like two strings which he tried to play on so they would blend inside him, and he felt the strings twang so that when he opened his mouth he made their sound. By the time he woke up it was five-thirty, he’d certainly developed a flair for naps, at least that, and he walked down to the junkyard and checked around and did his calculations, and opened and closed the door at least ten times, and decided the problem was that the tongue of the lock stuck too far into the socket, which made it pretty hard to pull the pin away from the inside, not to mention the problem of lighting, because what if he dropped a nail or hinge with his perspiring fingers, how would he find them on the floor in the dark, he wouldn’t even be able to light a match in there because there wouldn’t be enough oxygen, maybe he could tape a little flashlightunder the freezer compartment, and by now it was seven o’clock, so Aron went home; he wasn’t totally discouraged yet, not at all, though there was a kind of sadness gnawing at him, the sadness of parting, but what if Gideon never went out behind the building and didn’t notice the wet sand in the holes.
The next morning he picked up a piece of chalk and followed the arrows on the sidewalk, at first he thought he would have to draw the arrows himself, he’d forgotten that every generation draws arrows and all he had to do was add two slanty lines to each of the existing arrows; he was enjoying this as though he were part of the game, and for a moment he even thought of following the arrows past the building project, but he ran out of curiosity, what did he care where their treasure was. In the afternoon he went down to the junkyard and climbed inside the little refrigerator, and discovered that the freezer compartment forced him to work with his chin on his chest, this was an unexpected problem. He crawled out and closed the door, and tried to stick his hand in through the rubber insulation strips, but they didn’t stretch enough and snapped behind his fingers with a moist, wormy swish, and Aron thought maybe he’d have to grease it with something, but suddenly he had a better idea, he would bring a big can opener from home, the kind with ball bearings, and he’d wind it up the rubber insulation strips of the refrigerator, the way you open a can, only from the inside out. And he patted himself on the shoulder and said, Dynamite idea, Kleinfeld, but there remained the problem of the tongue in the socket: he tried to poke in the skinny little Yemenite, the runt of Papa’s screwdrivers, but couldn’t even fit that in. What to do? He sat and thought a minute, his feet dangling out, not touching the ground; on the bus he liked to practice finding the seats over the wheels at a single glance, they were higher, and suddenly a loud siren pierced the air, maybe the war had started already, and it stopped right away, they must be testing them, but the shrill wailing sound had annoyed him, he jumped out and slammed the door; the squatty refrigerator wobbled as though absorbing the shock.
At supper that evening everyone ate in silence, concentrating on their plates. Papa’s army knapsack was packed and ready by the door, and Aron wondered what would become of him if Papa left too and he stayed home alone with Mama. Grandma coughed and spat a little mashed chicken on the table, and Mama slapped her shoulder, hard,too hard. For a moment they all stopped chewing, Grandma gasped, and Aron thought it was all over. But she recovered. It wasn’t her time yet. Who wants some more mashed potatoes? asked Mama wearily. Papa did; she got up to serve him and Aron saw she was walking peculiarly, sort of dragging herself a little bowleggedly. Oh please, give me a break, she’s walking the way she always does, and Aron quickly asked for seconds too: More mashed potatoes, thanks, lots of mashed potatoes, he said too loudly. She made a face,
who cares, and she wouldn’t look at him directly; that is, she looked at him, but from the side. He devoured the starch of perseverance and asked for thirds. Yochi’s chair stood empty, and everyone kept glancing at it, even Grandma. A couple of days ago, at such a time as this, right in the middle of supper, Yochi opened her mouth and announced that her continued efforts over the past few months had finally paid off, the town major had agreed to give her an early call-up date, and with a smile of triumph, of sweet revenge, she described how she had sat outside his office every day, morning till night, for three solid weeks, till he finally gave in and signed her up six months ahead of schedule, and Aron, the food in his mouth a tasteless mush, retorted inwardly what Mama said aloud: What, you’re so miserable here you have to run away to the army, and Yochi said nothing in reply, she was silent, and everyone kept silent with her, they ate their soup and swallowed, ate and swallowed, and Mama sighed, she was on the verge of tears sitting next to Yochi, but she controlled herself, maybe she regretted the deferral she’d wanted so badly for her, and he peeked up and saw Yochi surveying the scene, as though pressing down on a seal to engrave it in her memory: the little kitchen with the narrow Formica table and the tiles with the flower decals where Mama stuck the wax paper and the nylon bags to dry, and Mama herself, and Papa and Grandma and him; everything was converted to the past tense by the sheer force of her gaze, and the next few days were so insufferably oppressive Aron couldn’t wait for Yochi to leave, and on the morning of the third day Papa took her down to the recruiting center and she disappeared as if she’d cut herself out of the house with a knife, and then late last night she finally called; they woke him up and sent him running to the phone in his pajamas to talk to her, he was sleepy, he heard the exultant voice on the other end of the line and didn’t know who it was. She said that due to the situation she’d been transferred to a field unit. She spokefast, didn’t call him by name, didn’t say li’l brother, and when she asked how he was, it sounded as though she didn’t want to know.
Now he lay in bed planning tomorrow, trying to guess what Gideon was thinking; suppose he hadn’t seen the signs, could be, maybe he was busy concentrating on the preparations, but why hadn’t he come over to see Aron after camp, what was he afraid of, what did he have to hide, all he had to do for God’s sake was to say one word; was he loyal, yes or no, and it wasn’t as if Aron would do anything to him, all he needed was his answer, and after that, Gideon would be free of him forever, because if the answer was yes, if Gideon had remained loyal and waited, then Aron would be instantly redeemed. He was absolutely sure of it. Like Sleeping Beauty waiting for a kiss; like the Independence Day parade that doesn’t begin until the Prime Minister gives the signal. Aron was ready. One word and everything would zoom ahead.
The smell of Papa’s cigarette drifted in from the balcony. He was bursting with impatience. At least ten times a day he called his unit, the military police, and they kept saying they didn’t need him yet. From the salon came the sound of mumbling: Mama. There was something in her tone of voice, a wrinkle of secrecy and subterfuge. Aron jumped up, always prepared, and tiptoed to the hall for a peek. But he was wrong this time: there was nothing out of the ordinary going on. Mama had sat Grandma on the Pouritz with her right hand on the armrest. She rotated it to the desired angle and then placed Grandma’s paralyzed left hand on the support she’d made with two volumes of Winston Churchill. Aron watched, trying to remember what had excited his attention. On the balcony he saw the broad shadow of Papa’s back with a slender column of smoke rising above it. Mama wound the yarn on Grandma Lilly’s outstretched hands. Now try to remember, Mamchu, she whispered so low he could scarcely hear, Leibaleh’s brother, What’s-his-name, the one you told us about who was killed by the Germans, remember? Nod yes or no, the one you said there was something wrong with, do you remember what it was? What? Show me by nodding. Was he, eppes, deaf? Was he epileptic? If yes, nod; was he crippled from polio? Was he a midget? And she began to wind the yarn from the double pack on Grandma’s hands into a ball, sputtering questions Aron strained to hear: Was he missing any fingers or toes, Was he an albino? Was he feeble-minded? Aron stared at the growing ballof yarn, and Mama’s nimble fingers, and her lips moving in the monotonous interrogation, till at last she fell strangely silent, though she seemed still to question Grandma wordlessly as her hands flitted right and left, stretching and winding, her little face receding to the monotonous winding rhythm, and Aron watched the green wool stretch and wind, stretch and wind; he knew that color, it was his sweater! The green sweater with the triangles she knitted him last winter, that still fit, what was she doing, her eyes were turning glassy, shining coldly. Aron took one step forward, even if he went in and stood in front of her now she wouldn’t notice, she was completely out of herself, her hands worked on mechanically. Now, now, go in and scream at her: Why, how dare you, it was a perfectly good sweater, but he said nothing and only stared at her glassy eyes over the green ball of yarn, her tongue sticking out between her teeth, small, pointy, very pink; she took short whistling breaths, her hands never stopping, like a human spinning wheel. Unless someone stopped her, she could go on like this forever. Grandma stared blindly ahead, maybe she would stay in her condition for years, maybe death had forgotten her, maybe she was already dead, maybe this was death, and when the yarn was all gone, then Grandma herself would start to unravel, and then the Pouritz, and then the Vichtig carpet and the Methuselah fauteuiland the Bordeaux and the buffet and the wallpaper and the walls, everything would start to unravel, it wouldn’t die, it would unravel into one long thread, and just then the tail end of the green yarn passed through Mama’s fingers and she twiddled the empty air. Her shoulders dropped. Her face fell. She sighed.
The next day Aron went off with his school bag and a sandwich and an apple, but he hid at the Wizo Nursery School till he saw Mama leave to do the shopping, and then he hurried home. First he made sure Grandma was still breathing under the tightly tucked Scottish plaid, then he went to piss and smelled vomit in the toilet; somebody barfed in there, well, they probably had an upset stomach, that’s all, maybe the herring yesterday was spoiled, why twist everything around, they’re old, at their age it’s impossible, yes, but what about that woman in Egypt, the one Yochi mentioned. Quickly he climbed up on a chair and started rummaging through the top shelves in his closet. But he forgot, why had he climbed up here and what was he looking for, and then he started groping around, unfolding his old clothes, all the shorts and long trousers, the checkered flannel shirts and the pullovers and pajamas,from last year and ten years ago, even his baby clothes; we never throw anything out around here. With this pair of pants he won the fifth-grade jumping championship, on these pants there was a permanent bloodstain, he had worn them the time he tried to find out how a blind person feels riding a bicycle, and here was the Trumpeldor shirt with the cut-off sleeve for the plaster cast, and here were the pajamas he wore as a five-year-old when he slept over at Gideon’s for the first time, and here it was, this was what he had been looking for, the red T-shirt from day camp, the time he and Gideon had their big feud, when Aron was the captain of the volley ball team and had to choose his players and he picked Gideon last, not because Gideon wasn’t a good player, he just wanted the suspense to build up before he rescued Gideon in the end, like when he pretended the Arabs conquered Jerusalem and the Egyptian Colonel Shams, out of esteem for Aron, let him save his five best friends from the firing squad, and Aron went down the lines of beseeching faces; he only did it to increase the excitement and Gideon’s relief and happiness, like Joseph confessing to Benjamin and his brothers at the last minute, but that started their big feud, for a whole month, the worst month of their lives, which was when Aron devised the secret sign system, to guarantee that no future fight of theirs would endure for more than a week, and now he tried to fold the clothes and straighten up the mess he’d made. Hmm, how long would it take her to notice, he wondered, and then he washed the red shirt with water and ran
downstairs to hang it as conspicuously as possible on the line behind the building, only a blind man would miss it there, and then he went back home.
He sat down at his desk and started writing to Yochi: he hoped she was well, taking good care of herself, things here were fine, nothing new at home, her bed was waiting for her; and he started wondering about her pen pals, they must all have been called up by now, and blithely, as though someone else were doing it, he opened her drawer and weighed her padlocked letter box in his hand, she’d taken the key with her to the army, and as he was closing the drawer he found a page sticking halfway out of the box, and he couldn’t resist, he pulled it gently and read the strange list of names there, the names of all her pen pals, with unintelligible directions next to each in a tiny scrawl: lover killed in action, poet, daddy longlegs, dreamer, athlete, adopted, twenty-five years old, attempted suicide, romantic invalid; and beside the nameof the cripple from Australia, printed clearly: the truth. Aron read up and down the page, but it made no sense to him and he didn’t have the energy to fathom it. Quickly he scribbled out a few more lines to Yochi: Keep up your morale, the nation is behind you.
He arrived at the rock at four o’clock and sat there waiting patiently, but no one came down the path to the valley; maybe Gideon was at home getting ready, getting ready for what, all he had to do was say whether he was or wasn’t, even if he didn’t say the words out loud, if he just nodded, it would be understood. And Aron reviewed the signs he’d left so far, maybe he’d skipped one and Gideon was confused, but no, he’d left them in the proper order. From the bottom leaves of the ficus tree to the red camp T-shirt. Hmm, interesting, even then he’d had the brains to think of all those signs, and at a time when there was nothing to worry about yet; on the contrary.
The Book of Intimate Grammar Page 39