Someone to Run With

by David Grossman

  He didn’t look at her once the entire time. He just sat, his head resting on one hand, his eyes closed, his face twitching with a pain that looked impossible to bear.

  Silence gripped the room when she finished. Her voice hung in the air for another moment, fluttering like a creature. Pesach looked around – he wanted to scold the gang for not applauding, but even he understood that something had happened and held his peace.

  ‘Wow. Sing another song,’ Sheli urged softly.

  Voices murmured agreement.

  Shai stood up. She was scared and disappointed. He was leaving – why was he leaving? Pesach flashed him a look and raised an eyebrow at Miko. Miko hurried to his feet behind Shai, who shuffled out, dragging his legs. He passed by her without a single glance.

  She didn’t feel like singing anymore, but if she stopped now, Pesach might make the connection between her refusal and Shai’s exit. She thought he was watching her reaction with an especially piercing look. She stretched her tiny frame a little. What had he said before? Even if a man is destroyed on the inside, the show must go on.

  So she sang, ‘Somewhere in my heart, a flower blooms.’ No one was giggling anymore. The boys and girls were sitting, more erect, watching her. Pesach was chewing the toothpick in the corner of his mouth, deep in thought; he, too, didn’t take his eyes off her. ‘Friends keep it safe,’ she sang, ‘its stem, its leaves’; her pain flew out, spreading into each word, because of the friends who didn’t keep the flower safe enough, didn’t even lend it a hand, just gave a guarded, friendly wave and flew off to Italy. ‘Friends give it light,’ she sang, ‘and shade if it needs shade / so it doesn’t wilt . . .’ She mourned herself, her lost joy in life, and she focused so deeply on herself that she didn’t notice when the room became hers: for a moment, the soil of everyday life fell away from everyone, and all of them shed the rudeness of the streets in which they stood, day after day, shed the indifference and misunderstanding, the humiliation involved in the mechanical routine of three songs, and off-you-go – of three-fire-torches-and-into-the-Subaru. Something in her concentration, her inward attention, reminded them of what they had almost forgotten: that beyond the temporal, miserable circumstances of their present lives, they were still artists. This knowledge returned, streaming into them now from the completeness of Tamar’s being, giving them a new, comforting explanation for the harshness of their lives, assuaging the fear that nested in each one of them, that his life might have been a terrible mistake and could no longer be mended. Their running away from home became newly illuminated, along with their loneliness, their constant, present solitude; the inherent volatility and extremity of their natures, which had shaken each and every one of them all the way here. It was as if all those things came together at once when Tamar sang.

  When she finished, she opened her eyes and saw that Shai had come back. He was leaning on the door frame, looking at her, and he had brought his guitar.

  What would she do now? Sit back down, or keep singing and let him play? She felt a new excitement burning in the boys and girls around her. Sheli whispered to someone that Shai never played in those parties. ‘He never wastes himself on us.’ And Pesach said what she hoped, and feared, he would: ‘Why don’t you two do a song together?’

  This was an opportunity she couldn’t miss; it was also a moment in which everything could be exposed. She turned to Shai and prayed her voice wouldn’t give her away. ‘What . . . what do you want to sing?’

  Here, she had spoken to him, in front of everybody.

  He sat down, raised a tired head above his guitar. ‘Whatever you like; I’ll just join in.’

  Will you join in on any song I sing? Will you join in on anything I do? Do you have the strength?

  ‘Do you know John Lennon’s “Imagine”?’ she said, and saw how, deep down, his eyes smiled to her, a slight ripple in gray, forgotten lakes.

  He strummed, tuned his strings, tilting his head with that light, sleepy smile at one corner of his mouth, as if he was hearing sounds in a way no one else could.

  For a moment she forgot herself. He glanced at her quickly and started to play. Tamar cleared her throat – sorry, she wasn’t ready yet, it was too overwhelming to be here with him, together. She simply stood and gazed at him: he was there in all his familiarity, the naked defenseless child, with a sweetness and brilliance and sense of humor that could drive you crazy – and with his feelings of being suffocated, everywhere, by every possible institution. Sometimes he felt the constraints overtaking his body, and he had to lash out, swinging away from the melting gentleness he showed her into a sudden, brutal attack on everyone, including her. This was the unbearable arrogance he had developed in recent years, like chain mail over his exposed body; he was always anxious, agitated, with such a trembling in the strings of his soul that she could sometimes feel the buzzing that emanated from him.

  He raised questioning eyes to her. Where are you? What’s going on? She was still dreaming: in full view of Pesach, with his suspicious eyes, she was dreaming. Shai escaped his weakness for a moment and hurried to save her, his little sister. He called to her over their secret frequency, his eyes flickered her nickname, which only they knew, and her heart leaped out to him through her overalls.

  He played the opening bars again, opening a door for her, inviting her to join. She started quietly, almost voiceless, only a thin string of sound weaving herself into his tune, as if her voice were just another string on the guitar between his fingers. She had to be careful, so no one saw the changes on her face. But she didn’t want to be careful; she couldn’t be careful. He played and she sang to him, and inside her more and more blocks of ice began to melt, cracking and falling into the frozen sea between them. She sang of all the things that were happening to her and him, the world that collapsed over both of them, the things that might be in store, if only they dared to believe it was possible.

  When the last notes evaporated, it was silent; no one in the room was breathing. Then everyone burst into loud applause. She closed her eyes for a moment. Shai raised his head, looked around wonderingly, as if he had forgotten there were other people there besides them. He smiled a brief, shy smile. A dimple deepened in his cheek. He and Tamar took care not to look at each other.

  Pesach, a bit confused, with the wary feeling that he had missed something, yet still bewitched by what he had just seen, laughed: ‘Now tell me the truth – how many years have you two been practicing this?’

  And everybody laughed.

  Sheli said, ‘You two are in a different league – you’re really pros. You should have played concerts together.’

  In the awkward silence that spread from that comment, Pesach said, too loudly, as if ridding himself of the guilt of sending boys and girls to perform out on the streets, ‘Go on, do another one!’

  Tamar thought, Just not ‘The Flute.’

  Shai didn’t look at her. He plucked one string and shook his head in that old motion to move a lock of hair off his right eye; his hair wasn’t what it used to be, only the motion, full of charm and grace, remained. Then he asked into space, ‘Do you know “The Flute”?’

  Yes.

  He lowered his head over the guitar and strummed, with his long fingers. Tamar always believed he had an extra knuckle in every finger. She took a deep breath. How do you sing it without crying?

  The flute,

  It’s simple and delicate;

  Its voice is the voice of the heart,

  The flute

  Like the gurgle of streams . . .

  Like a children’s song . . .

  Like the breeze blowing through a blooming orchard,

  The flute.

  The boys and girls sat, quietly, serious, each one absorbed in himself and his thoughts. When she finished singing, one girl whispered, ‘That was the best performance of that song that I ever heard.’

  Sheli got up and hugged Tamar, and Tamar clung to her for a moment. It had been almost a month since someone had touched her l
ike that – since Leah’s hug in the alley. She cradled herself into Sheli with all her heart, hugging her the way she couldn’t hug her brother, so close, and so unattainable.

  Sheli wiped her eyes and said, ‘I’m embarrassed, I’m actually crying!’ and the girl with the red hat and pimples, the silent cellist, said, ‘They should perform together like that – even in the street, Pesach.’

  Tamar and Shai didn’t look at each other.

  ‘That might not be such a bad idea,’ Pesach said. ‘What do you think, Adina?’ He turned to his wife, and the kids who had been there a while already knew, whenever he asked her a question, that she would shrug emptily, smile a frightened smile, and that Pesach had already made up his mind.

  And he actually took the red book out of his pocket and started flipping through it. Oh, please, Tamar begged in her heart, oh, please, please, please!

  ‘Next Thursday,’ Pesach said, making some corrections in his book, ‘you both happen to be in Jerusalem . . . let’s give it a shot. Why not? You two will perform a duet in Tziyyon Square.’

  Tamar’s hands clutched her sides. She tried to penetrate Pesach’s broad, teddy-bear smile. She was afraid he was laying a trap for her: that somewhere in her performance with Shai, Pesach hoped to somehow discern the truth about her. Shai didn’t respond, it was as if he hadn’t heard. Tamar could see how the playing had sucked the last drops of vitality from him.

  ‘But I want you to give your souls out there!’ Pesach’s voice declared. ‘Exactly like you just did, all right?’

  A few boys and girls cheered. Shai got up, so thin he looked as if he were about to fall; he could barely pick up his guitar. Tamar didn’t move. The others looked at her, waiting for her to follow; they actually expected her to leave with him. She stood, erect, tense. Shai walked out, and Miko hurried after him, with his silent tiger-steps. Someone turned the radio on, filling the room with jungle music. A boy with a red pirate’s kerchief on his head started flicking the lights on and off. Pesach stood, held a hand out to his wife. ‘Come on, honey – it’s time for the young people now.’ He gave instructions to two of the older boys, whispered something to Shisko, and left.

  A few couples started dancing together. The girl with the red hat suddenly got up and danced, alone, hugging herself; she had never looked so free. Tamar watched her and thought that she would like to get to know her; she looked smart and gentle, and she certainly didn’t belong on the streets, any more than Tamar did. Sheli was already dancing with one of her regular suitors, the long-limbed saw player with vaguely simian features. She extended a tanned hand to Tamar, calling her to come join them, so the three of them could dance together. Tamar looked at them, and for a moment got caught in a vision of her threesome. It was odd that she hadn’t thought much about them for almost two weeks; she had taken a vacation from them until this evening. She shook her head to tell Sheli no, faking a bright smile. The three of them had never danced together, because Idan made fun of dancing – he probably couldn’t dance. They never really touched each other at all, when they were still a threesome, or at least that’s what she thought – they never even hugged, even in times of joy. Some silent agreement that neither of them would get more of Idan. But who knows – perhaps, for two weeks now, they’d been sleeping in the same rooms, watching marvelous landscapes. Again, here it came, rising up in her, alive, burning. She poured and drank down a whole glass of Sprite, trying to cool the burning that had suddenly erupted in her. It didn’t help. She recalled all the recent weeks with the two of them: when it became clear that she would stay because of Shai, they were deep in preparations for the tour. That was when she started moving toward the strange new world, slowly getting swept up into it, walking around in places where there was some chance of finding him, making conversation with strange men in public parks, with backgammon and pool players and club bouncers; and they weren’t with her, Idan and Adi. It was confusing: she continued to attend chorus rehearsals every afternoon, five times a week. The whole chorus was already feverish with the anticipation of traveling, and the threats of the conductor Sharona grew more and more hysterical, and everyone was repeating Italian phrases from the tourist conversation guides they were given – because the fact that they could sing Cherubino and Barbarina’s arias wouldn’t help them in restaurants and street markets over there. She herself worked incessantly on her beloved solo, got her passport, read tour books, and repeated, dedicatedly, ‘Dove posso comprare un biglietto?’ But in reality, she had already moved way beyond all that. Sharona was the first to notice Tamar’s lack of presence. ‘Where is your head, and where the hell is your diaphragm? You’re forgetting to support from below again! How do you expect them to hear you from the sixth balcony?’ And after the rehearsals, when they passed through the pedestrian mall, she would try to tell them where she had been the night before, whom she had talked to – you wouldn’t believe what kind of people there are, a hundred meters away from here, what miserable lowlifes, she would say, still using the voice and language of the threesome, meaning Idan’s – but Tamar started to grasp how the waves of mockery previously reserved for anyone who was not them began slowly to change direction and were now directed toward her as well, as if she were now also infected with something, as if she brought some unpleasant smell into their shared space. Then the day came, the day after she saw those Russian boys in Lifta, and met Sergei, with his baby face and fragile body; she needed so badly to talk to someone close, to mourn with someone over what she saw – and Idan interrupted her in the middle of her story and said that it was a bit difficult for him to learn Italian and Wastoid at the same time. Adi giggled and said that it was quite true, ‘you’ve been using a lot of new words lately, it’s kind of hard to follow,’ and lightly shook out her golden tresses. At that moment Tamar knew she was no longer one of them – that she was asking something of them that they could not, or perhaps would not, give her. She was silent, and walked by their side, quiet and beaten – and their conversation immediately renewed itself without her, as if a passing wind had blown by, a momentary disturbance. She continued to march along bravely, continued to smile at their jokes – and sharp, cold scissors snapped neatly around the contours of her body, cutting her out of their picture.

  The dining room emptied, as the terrace outside in the yard filled with dancers. Music flowed through everyone. Clouds of marijuana smoke hovered gently. A boy whose long braid was woven with colorful stripes of cloth started playing the guitar, and the others joined in, singing from all the corners of the yard. ‘A Star of David broke in two,’ he sang in a deep, hoarse voice, and they responded in a quiet murmur: ‘Herzl’s opinions died with the man,’ and him: ‘Rotten in the grave, with spikes of sabra fruit’; they lifted their hands, moved them, and sang: ‘But everything goes according to plan.’ Tamar stood at the window, in the half-empty dining room, and looked outside. They seemed like fragile stems to her, when they waved like that – children-stems.

  My soul only wanted rest,

  No war games, no;

  But the army is my duty,

  I love the army so . . .

  (And here someone yelled with a terrible voice: ‘I love it so much, so much!’)

  Like a man to hold a gun in my hand,

  Blow off heads, like a man,

  Like a man, march to my death, all alone,

  And everything goes according to plan –

  All of a sudden, from all corners of the yard, even from the dance floor, rose the roar:

  ‘Fuck the Plan . . .’

  Once and again, dozens of times, for long minutes – it went like that for perhaps half an hour, like a prayer, a desperate, inside-out prayer. Even Tamar started humming along to it. She stood and hummed with everyone, Fuck the Plan, and while she did, the picture flipped around, and Tamar felt, with sudden conviction, that it was actually they who were right. They were being honest with themselves, they were daring to rebel, to kick and cry out, shout it with all their strength.

&nb
sp; Because compared to them, Tamar thought, what am I? A good girl. Domesticated. Straddling the fence – while they – with what courage they refuse to participate in the cynical, hypocritical games of the world, of power-mad ambitions . . . For a moment, she actually envied them – their freedom, their nerve in breaking all the rules, their courage to despair, even to the edge of doom, to give up the security of a home and parents and family – who turned out to be another big illusion anyway, a different kind of tranquillizer, hallucinogen, fear killer . . .

  When she turned to leave the dining room and go back to her room, a few boys and girls blocked her way – they danced in front of her, laughing, encircling her, bowing, asking her to stay. One of them, small and curly-headed, one of the three jugglers, begged: ‘I swear on my mother’s life, I never saw you until tonight – I didn’t even know you existed!’ He had a sweet face, and a high-pitched, adenoidal voice. ‘But after the way you sang, you blew me away. Stay a while, waste a little of yourself on us, tell us who you are, come on – why not?’

  Tamar laughed: No.

  V

  FOUR DAYS AFTER TAMAR escaped with Shai and lost Dinka, Assaf marched quickly through Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall. He was almost running, trying, without much hope, to find that guitar player. Her backpack, on his back, was suddenly very heavy, full of life, whispering words and thoughts and crying for help; he passed through a circle of people watching a girl perform magic tricks; then stopped for a minute to listen to a very young violinist, almost a child, play. He saw another boy leaning against the wall of the bank, producing a nondescript sound from a sitarlike instrument with a bow that he held between his toes. Never before had he noticed the number of street performers there – he was even more surprised by how young they were, the artists – most of them were around his age, and he looked at them, trying to guess if they had any connection to that mafia Sergei had mentioned.