Someone to Run With

by David Grossman

  Moshe Honigman, formerly a court shorthand stenographer; today, retired, childless, and widowed for forty years. Aside from his somewhat routine career, he had developed a few modest hobbies: he was a collector of antique maps, travel guides to the Holy Land, and records by brass bands. He played chess by correspondence with amateurs from all over the world and had adopted the routine of learning a different language every year, to the level of simple street conversation. He was a lonely, passionate, and easily excitable man who had been overtaken by old age, apparently, in the middle of his childhood. On top of all his activities, he was also a devoted fan of detective novels, the kind you can find for five shekels in little secondhand stores, and in them, for two hours a day, he forgot his impossible yearnings.

  Now he was pacing hurriedly through one of the streets that branch off from the pedestrian mall; his old heart was still beating wildly, but he did not allow himself to pause for a moment and relax. He could still see the girl’s eyes, pleading, in front of him, and understood that she was in big trouble. The farther he walked, the more his thoughts expanded in front of him, becoming organized and methodical: he understood that someone was following her and that, probably, because of him, she had to hide her strange message to him. When he got excited, Honigman always went a little bit weak in the knees; he made himself slow down. Step by step, his mind grew clearer; fifty years of constantly rubbing shoulders with the criminal element – in addition to the books he swallowed, there were his years of shorthand in the courts – now informed his actions with supreme ease. Every once in a while, he stopped in front of a store window, batted at the sparse hair still sticking to his skull, and checked the reflection to make sure no suspicious characters were trailing him.

  Excited and on alert thanks to the affair in which he was embroiled, Honigman walked through the streets, his thoughts in a whirl, weaving horrific plots that reached their climax the moment the girl turned to him. In between the story and his thoughts, he blessed the good fortune that made him look so normal, so average, so trustworthy. Consequently, he tried to look even more normal, mediocre, even, and in his effort to resemble a kindly, nearsighted grandfather, arranged his features into a horrible grimace.

  After walking around like this for a whole hour, arousing the suspicion of most of the passers-by in the street, he entered Café Rimon, ordered himself a grilled cheese sandwich, and switched to his reading glasses. He removed a Ma’Ariv newspaper from his attaché case and opened it with a businesslike flourish. He hid his head (and most of himself) and then, and only then, finally opened the note.

  ‘Dear Sir or Madam,’ she had written,

  My name is Tamar and I need your help very badly. I know this must sound strange, but you must believe me, it’s a matter of life and death. Please help me. Don’t wait for a moment. Don’t put it off for tomorrow. Now, right now, please call this number: 625-5978. If there is no answer, try again later. Please don’t lose this note!!! Ask to speak with a woman named Leah. Please, for me: tell her how this note came to you, and most important, please, please, tell her the following: Tamar asked me to let you know: on the agreed hour, the agreed day, on Shamai Street across from the taxi station. After you do this, please, I beg you, destroy the note.

  His round, stunned face slowly rose from behind the Ma’Ariv. So he was right, damnit! The little one really was involved in some nasty business! He reread the note several times, trying to guess from where she had torn the sheet on which it was written. He held it up to the light to see whether there wasn’t another clue still to be found.

  ‘Your sandwich, sir,’ said the waiter. Honigman looked at him, shocked. A sandwich? Now? At this time? He snatched up his attaché case, threw a bill onto the table, and made a hasty exit. On the street corner he found a public phone and dialed the number.

  ‘Yes!’ proclaimed a woman’s strong, dry voice. Behind the voice he heard the noise of pots, water pouring, the sounds of working people.

  ‘Mrs Leah?’ said Honigman, trembling.

  ‘Yes. Who is this?’

  He breathed heavily, spoke quickly and quietly. ‘Honigman speaking, Moshe Honigman. At the moment I’m afraid I do not have the chance to introduce myself properly. But I have a very special story to tell you, a story about’ – he looked at the note again – ‘about Tamar. Would you have a moment of time for me?’

  Five minutes later, dizzy from the events of the recent moments, Honigman flew back into the café, forced the waiter to bring back his sandwich, which was still warm, and sank back into his chair with an expression of amazement and exhilaration. After no more than a minute, he started to become annoyed that Leah had not yet arrived. He stood up, looked out the door, returned to his seat, sighed loudly, and looked, again and again, at his watch (he had a watch that had been manufactured in the land of Israel during the British Mandate. Instead of numbers, the hours were marked by the names of the twelve tribes. It was twenty past Zebulun, and Honigman didn’t know how he would manage to pass the time until ten to Naphtali). He constantly came back to the note, rereading it, his eyes stroking it as if it were a winning lottery ticket, and read the final words again and again:

  I thank you in advance for your great help. I wish I could return the favor, or at least pay for the phone call. I hope that, very soon, something good happens to reward your kindness.

  With gratitude, and respectfully yours, Tamar.

  Only six days were left until the escape, and she had no clue how to make Shai meet her halfway between where the two of them would be performing. She was too frightened to think; not during the long drives, not in her bed. It was unreasonable, and irresponsible – but she simply couldn’t break through the mask of fog that dropped over her the moment her thoughts reached the danger zone.

  On Friday night, after supper, the boys and girls arranged their chairs along the walls of the dining room. Pesach and two of his helpers joined the group and sat down. Even Pesach’s wife came, a small silent woman who gazed at Pesach adoringly and wore a tight-lipped smile. Shai came, too, dragging after Pesach, and sat where Pesach gestured him into a chair. A big comfortable circle was created; the conversation flowed easily. One girl, Ortal, a magician, said these wooden chairs were exactly like school chairs, the kind that break your back. Suddenly the conversation started to revolve around teachers, studies, field trips. For a few moments you could imagine this was some kind of summer camp or, as Sheli once called it, retreat for young artists.

  Shai sat, retreating into himself, stubbornly avoiding her gaze. An eighteen-year-old old man. She sat facing him, and out of habit that seemed second nature she started absorbing his misery into herself. In a few moments, she wilted there in front of him, and her body bent into the same defeated position that he was sitting in. They were so alike at that moment, like two similar cards in a memory game, that if anyone had noticed, it would have aroused suspicions. Tamar thought about Friday nights at home, before they were struck by Shai’s disaster. She remembered her mother’s repeated efforts to manage a calm dinner, with no arguments or fights, at least once a week; to, once a week, be a family. Her mother even tried to light candles for a few weeks, to bless, and to establish some kind of family ‘ritual,’ during which each member of the family would talk about some ‘exciting experience’ from that week All at once, and for the first time since she had left home, Tamar missed her mother, the game goodwill that everyone else in the family constantly scorned, even with cruelty – Tamar thought of all her own cheap, sour jibes at poor Mother, who was so unfit for her abrasive family. Life with us has made her bitter, she complains about everything all the time, and perhaps this isn’t at all in her character – truly, Tamar thought, newly enlightened – poor Mom, she lived her entire life in hostile territory, afraid of being laughed at for the things she expresses so profoundly, so seriously, fighting her father’s armor of sarcasm without a chance of cracking it – and fighting Shai’s brilliance – and my own refusal to be her friend and sister and pe
t . . . For a moment she forgot herself, forgot where she was. She was swept up in a wave of compassion, of sorrow, the sorrow of the irreparable, profound mistake that was her family: four lonely people, four people in the world, each saving his own soul. She felt a sudden need to talk to someone about these things without inhibition, someone from the outside, not from her family, with whom she could share some of the burden now tearing her heart apart.

  Shai sighed. She heard it over the other noise in the room, and a sigh escaped her mouth, too. They sat, looking at each other. Who knew what their parents were doing right now, she thought, alone at home, facing each other from the two ends of the huge dining-room table. They would have returned from their vacation a few days before. ‘We won’t give it up, this year especially!’ her father had announced decisively, with his cruel, tortured purposefulness. ‘Life goes on. Period’ – his voice cutting, that right eyebrow of his twitching like a lizard’s tail, belying the guarded expression he wore on his face. The letters she had left with Leah had probably begun to arrive already. ‘Don’t look for me,’ each one said, after a litany of the most normal and comforting stories she could make up. They always ended with: ‘Everything is fine, I’m fine, really. Don’t worry. Give me a month, no more than that. Thirty days. I’ll explain everything to you when I get back. It will be all right, you’ll see. Trust me, please. I promise.’

  ‘Prepare yourself,’ Sheli whispered to her, snapping her out of her thoughts. ‘Whenever Adinush comes, he makes a commemorative speech – get your hanky ready.’

  ‘My dear boys and girls,’ Pesach opened, raising a glass of kiddush wine. ‘Another week has passed, and we are all happy to be here, together, like one big happy family, and to welcome the holiness of the Shabbos.’

  ‘A-men,’ Sheli whispered, and Tamar nudged her, thigh to thigh, to get her to stop making her laugh.

  ‘This week, each and every one of us made the effort, tried his hardest, did his work, and earned his Shabbos rest.’ Tamar stared at Pesach; he seemed different again to her, full of Prize Day pomp, almost officially patriotic. ‘The seniors here know the motto I always follow: Art is, at most, 20 percent talent, and 80 percent hard work.’

  ‘And another 50 percent profit,’ Sheli whispered, and someone on her right burst into laughter. Pesach flashed a black, scolding look in their direction.

  ‘And I want to tell you again how proud and happy I am to be the one nurturing you. I know there are friends among us who go through some hard times here and there; it’s well known that there is no prying into anyone’s business. We respect privacy. In spite of this, let me say, as your guide and your collaborator, that each person here is a super-duper professional and is doing a great job, and never let us forget the noble principle that the show must go on. Even if a man gets up on the wrong side of the bed or is destroyed on the inside. The most important thing is that the audience never knows.’

  ‘Here comes Rubinstein, and then we’re done,’ Sheli murmured out of the corner of her mouth.

  ‘And as a great artist, Artur Rubinstein –’

  ‘May his name be blessed,’ Sheli continued, and a few voices whispered in response, ‘A-men.’

  ‘– once said: When you get right down to it, art is, indeed, the number one source of happiness for mankind!’ Pesach quoted. ‘And you all know, my dear boys and girls, that, in my opinion, each of you has the potential to be another Rubinstein. Adina, my wife, can testify if I don’t tell her every evening, and every morning’ – his wife, with her vacant face, nodded vigorously before she even heard another word – ‘that perhaps, one bright day, it might turn out that one of those sitting here in our home right now will be the Rubinstein of the twenty-first century!’ A few boys and girls applauded and cheered. Pesach silenced them with a wave of his hand. ‘And I am also sure that even then, he or she will continue to remember the healthy, important lessons of how to give a performance, how to keep an audience, and how to maintain professionalism – at all costs, all costs! He or she will have covered all of those bases, here, with us, in our modest group, our family of artists. Good Shabbos, and l’chaim!’

  ‘And for the glory of the state of Israel!’ Sheli concluded, and took a deep breath of relief.

  Pesach drank his cheap Conditon wine in one gulp, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. A few boys burst into exaggerated applause and yelled, ‘L’chaim!’

  ‘He’s so pathetic,’ Sheli whispered to Tamar. ‘I can’t even look at him. Last week I went to his house to bring over the Friday-night challahs – and he takes me, all swelled up with pride, and shows me his personal room. What can I tell you, Tami? It’s the room of an adolescent from the 1970s: huge posters of Jimi Hendrix over half the walls. And then there’s this skull, probably plastic, with, like, red lightbulbs in the eye sockets, and this long, dried, prickly plant in some bombshell, all, like, artistic and shit. And all his pictures, and his wrestling trophies, and this guitar from, I don’t know, the days of yore, he probably stole it from the platoon band . . .’

  ‘Now,’ said Pesach, after wiping his sweaty face with an ironed handkerchief, ‘let’s have some fun! You, Tamar, the new one –’

  She froze like a rabbit caught in the headlights. What did he want from her? Ever since he had surprised her in his office a few days ago, he seemed never to take his eyes off her.

  ‘Sing something. These guys here haven’t heard you yet.’

  She shrunk, blushed, shrugged. It was clear to her that this was some kind of trap, some strategy to expose her hidden purpose here. A few boys started to cheer, ‘Ta-mar! Ta-mar!’ clapping in time. One girl, the contortionist with the mean face, whispered resentfully, ‘Leave her alone, she thinks it’s beneath her to sing for us.’ Tamar turned to stone. She couldn’t answer that. She already knew people didn’t like her all that much here – they thought she was arrogant, keeping herself separate from them; she was still shocked to see the hatred on the girl’s face. Sheli immediately jumped in to defend her. ‘Oh really? What do you want from her, rubber girl?’ she yelled back, her voice thick and rough. ‘What is it? Have you already forgotten what you were like when you first got here? Yeah, like you didn’t sit here like an asshole for two months, afraid to open your stinking face!’

  The rubber girl shut her mouth, frightened, and sat there blinking. Tamar gave Sheli a grateful look, but somehow, Sheli’s rudeness depressed her even more.

  Pesach raised a big hand and calmed everyone down with a smile. He spread his legs, hugged his wife to him, almost crushing her under the weight of his arms, and said, ‘What’s the matter? We’re all family here! Sing us something so we’ll get to know you a little better,’ and his beady eyes scanned her patiently, cleverly, as if they already knew something about her.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, and stood up, careful not to look in his eyes.

  ‘How about “The Flower in My Garden”!’ yelled one voice, and everyone laughed. ‘Sing something by Eyal Golan,’ yelled another.

  ‘I want to sing “Starry, Starry Night,” Tamar said quietly. ‘It’s a song about Vincent van Gogh.’

  ‘Why make us suffer?’ whispered a lapsed yeshiva boy, and a few boys giggled.

  ‘Shhhh!’ said Pesach, overflowing with kindness. ‘Let the girl sing.’

  It was hard, almost unbearable. She didn’t have her tape player, with the recorded accompaniment (Shai’s). She felt completely naked in front of Pesach’s gaze, and people were snorting and giggling all around her; Tamar saw a few people hiding their faces in their hands, shoulders shaking from laughter. (It had always happened that way, once she started singing, when she moved into her singing voice, which was very different from her speaking voice.) But as always, after a moment or two, she got over it: grew calm and became pure.

  She sang to one single person there, who hadn’t heard her sing for a long time, who remembered her singing like an amateur, hesitating, with a voice that still hadn’t yet decided what it was.

  She didn�
�t look in his direction even once during the song, but she didn’t need to see him to know he was there, listening to her with every cell of his tormented body. She sang about Van Gogh, how this world wasn’t meant for someone like him. But at the same time, she was telling Shai, with the rich colors of her voice, with its gentle touch, all she had gone through during that time, during her coming of age, when he hadn’t been paying attention; and everything she had learned since he had disappeared, about others and herself. Layer by layer, she peeled off the rough skin of her disappointments, the sobering realizations, until she reached the place where there was nothing left covering her, the bare kernel of herself. And from that place, she sang to him the final notes of the song.