Someone to Run With

by David Grossman

  They had to go back into the cave, because two hikers were descending from the far side of the valley, along one of the trails. They should have watched those two men, who didn’t seem dressed for a hike through the fields, but the three of them were so relaxed and content, they didn’t pay attention. They had lost their instinct for suspicion by the time they gathered up their things, covered the mouth of the cave with bushes, and disappeared inside.

  Just then the pains returned, as if a short vacation had just ended, and Assaf and Tamar went back to taking care of Shai. The muscle pains again, weaker already, still racked his body; the cave was filled with the stink of the lotion that Tamar used for them. At first Shai whined that the lotion was giving him hot and cold waves of pain – then he was in agony again, and he lost control. He attacked Tamar: she was torturing him, she was cruel, and who needed all this? How bad had it been for him before, anyway? And now he would never be able to play again the way he did when he was using, only God and Jim Morrison felt that way, and he’d had it, and now it was gone. After a moment, he thought he was going to get his fix after all, a miracle had happened, and he was now in a taxi, on the way to Lod. He was lying down, describing the entire journey to them with amazing vividness, even mentioning the dusty Judas tree at the entrance of that fucked-up neighborhood over there. They didn’t know what he was talking about, but they listened, hypnotized. Here, he was telling the taxi driver to stop and wait at the curb; here, he was approaching the house with the tall wall, knocking on the gate – the landlord wouldn’t open the door, but removed one brick from the wall . . . I can’t see him but I hear him, and I know what he has in his hand, and I put money through the hole in the wall, and he, oh God, passes me the bundle, I have it, and I’m already in the taxi, go on, go, go. I cut the edge of it with a razor blade, God, where are the wicks, Tamar, where are my wicks?!

  This is what he shouted out, rubbing his hand on his thigh, as if he were rolling paper on it. Suddenly he trembled and cried, ‘These trips – I can’t take them anymore!’ He fell asleep for a moment, woke up wildly, stood up, perched himself on top of his mattress, full of energy, and started preaching at them. What are people? he asked. People are nothing, secondhand merchandise, all of them. They are scared to death by ingenuity – why, every human society has only one purpose: to castrate its people, to domesticate them. It is true for countries and nations and families, especially for families! He would never have a family, never! What did he need this bulk of hypocrisy for! To create more children, and make another generation miserable? Why, people will devour their own offspring sooner than destroy their polished public image or lose face in front of their friends. He hardly breathed – his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets; his entire face looked as if it were covered by a layer of dust. Tamar knew it was no longer the withdrawal but his rage and terror erupting now, without the protection of the drugs. When she tried to sit him down, he shoved her with all his strength – she fell on her back and cried out in pain. Assaf jumped up to stop Shai, but Shai had already laid off, with his hands at least: he yelled that she was like them, too, trying to strangle his genius, tame and domesticate him; as his rage grew, his words grew crueler and rougher. Assaf thought he had to end this torture, but when he looked at Tamar, he saw, or felt, that she would forbid him to interrupt; it was between her and Shai. He wondered whether she wasn’t torturing herself, punishing herself, using Shai’s words, the way she used to lacerate herself in her diary.

  Then Shai relaxed for no evident reason, folded up, lay on the mattress, clung to Tamar’s hand and kissed it, begged her to forgive him for hitting her before, and for everything else. He cried from the depths of his heart: she was so good to him, she was like a mother to him, she’d always been like this, even though she was two years younger, he would never let her go; only she, in the entire world, understood him, and hadn’t it always been like this? Wasn’t it like this at home? It was worth living, if only for her. Suddenly he sat up and, as if in a nightmare, stood up again and roared out that she actually wanted to kill him, that she always envied him for being more talented, more of an artist, more complete and absolute, and she knew that he’d be nothing without the drug, he would be castrated like her, because it was quite clear that she would compromise her art eventually, sell it for nothing, go and study law or medicine and marry some geek who worked in a law office like Father, or worse, in computers, someone like this lump of meat here.

  When he finally fell asleep, they both left the cave and dropped, exhausted, by the trunk of the terebinth tree. Dinka sat in front of them; she looked as depressed as they were. Tamar thought she would have exploded in a moment: if he had continued to lay it on for one more second, the dam would have burst and everything that had been mounting in her would have poured all over him. It was on the tip of her tongue: that the only reason she was here was because of him, because of him she missed the trip to Italy, and the chorus, and maybe her entire career. Her guts twisted inside her with hate for him, for those ideas of his she knew so well, because every time he was in one of his ‘moods’ or fighting with their parents, he would burst into her room, without asking if she had the time or energy for him, or if she even felt like listening. He would lock the door and start to lecture her in some kind of cold rage, a strange fire that could burn as long as an hour. He would speak and swing his arms and bubble over, quoting all kinds of philosophers she didn’t know, talk about ‘noble egoism’ and describe how, ultimately, every person acts only according to his absolute selfishness. It was like that, even in relationships between parents and children, even in love, and he wouldn’t leave until he forced her to admit he was right, that she was afraid to accept his ideas of justice, because if she did, her entire petit bourgeois point of view would collapse. Sometimes, especially over the past year, she had had the feeling that these thoughts had succeeded in leaking into her like poison.

  Now she told Assaf about those things, things she kept in her stomach and didn’t even tell Leah about, so as to not shame Shai.

  ‘I also think about humanity and egoism like that sometimes,’ Assaf said, to her surprise. ‘It’s pretty depressing to think that, in some ways, he might be right.’

  ‘Depressing, yes,’ Tamar said bitterly. ‘It’s also pretty hard to say he’s completely, totally wrong, because how can you respond to him?’

  A Note on the Author

  DAVID GROSSMAN IS THE author of six novels and three works of journalism. His most recent novel was Be My Knife. He lives in Jerusalem.

  A Note on the Type

  The text of this book is set in Linotype Stempel Garamond, a version of Garamond adapted and first used by the Stempel foundry in 1924. It’s one of several versions of Garamond based on the designs of Claude Garamond. It is thought that Garamond based his font on Bembo, cut in 1495 by Francesco Griffo in collaboration with the Italian printer Aldus Manutius. Garamond types were first used in books printed in Paris around 1532. Many of the present-day versions of this type are based on the Typi Academiae of Jean Jannon cut in Sedan in 1615.

  Claude Garamond was born in Paris in 1480. He learned how to cut type from his father and by the age of fifteen he was able to fashion steel punches the size of a pica with great precision. At the age of sixty he was commissioned by King Francis I to design a Greek alphabet, for this he was given the honourable title of royal type founder. He died in 1561.