Authors: David Grossman
Be My Knife (21 page)
I don’t know why it makes me so blue—I feel some kind of muddy sorrow for myself, for my shortsightedness.
I mean, I was there, wasn’t I?
I was there, and you weren’t.
And again, my recurring realization that I always miss the point.
Right now, as I am writing this, your question—the one you asked after the master’s black monkey—returns to me: Why is it that I allow myself to be satisfied with crumbs from under the table of a great feast (“saving for yourself only the role of the handyman to a great love.
That’s all you allow yourself”)—so, there it is.
This too is now wrapped around my soul.
I mean, I was there, wasn’t I?
I was there, and you weren’t.
And again, my recurring realization that I always miss the point.
Right now, as I am writing this, your question—the one you asked after the master’s black monkey—returns to me: Why is it that I allow myself to be satisfied with crumbs from under the table of a great feast (“saving for yourself only the role of the handyman to a great love.
That’s all you allow yourself”)—so, there it is.
This too is now wrapped around my soul.
And it was a glance—you just looked, the way you look at everything.
You looked and saw it at once.
You didn’t tell me whether you had already noticed it in the original photograph, or only after enlarging it—meaning, I wonder if that was why you decided to get the photograph enlarged.
Sometimes, after a letter of yours, I tell myself that from this moment on, I will begin to live differently.
I will slow down, read more slowly, listen more carefully to people’s words, so I will be able to remember
them a year later.
To linger.
I don’t have to tell you how long I hold on to that resolve.
You looked and saw it at once.
You didn’t tell me whether you had already noticed it in the original photograph, or only after enlarging it—meaning, I wonder if that was why you decided to get the photograph enlarged.
Sometimes, after a letter of yours, I tell myself that from this moment on, I will begin to live differently.
I will slow down, read more slowly, listen more carefully to people’s words, so I will be able to remember
them a year later.
To linger.
I don’t have to tell you how long I hold on to that resolve.
Now I have to tell myself the story all over again, don’t I?
To write about how I collapsed there, by the wall, and I couldn’t move—the man of the world, boom boom was turned to stone—not only because of the crow, but because of that chalk line that today, only today, goddamnit, five years late, I deciphered as a police sketch of a small, human figure.
A child, probably.
(It is a child, isn’t it?
Don’t answer—it frightens me too much to know.) One hand lifted up, twisted in resistance—and the other rests by his side, already peaceful.
To write about how I collapsed there, by the wall, and I couldn’t move—the man of the world, boom boom was turned to stone—not only because of the crow, but because of that chalk line that today, only today, goddamnit, five years late, I deciphered as a police sketch of a small, human figure.
A child, probably.
(It is a child, isn’t it?
Don’t answer—it frightens me too much to know.) One hand lifted up, twisted in resistance—and the other rests by his side, already peaceful.
Oh well.
My internal struggle over my criminal neglect will be performed separately, and alone.
It certainly justifies a committee investigation.
But now I wish I could give you something—a gift equal in value, in return for this discovery.
You complain that I am a cheap suitor who doesn’t give gifts.
I will not give you little gifts.
I’m sorry, you know that if I could, I would give you plenty.
At least once a day I have to resist the urge to buy you something.
And still, ask me for something.
What can I do for you?
What can I give you?
My internal struggle over my criminal neglect will be performed separately, and alone.
It certainly justifies a committee investigation.
But now I wish I could give you something—a gift equal in value, in return for this discovery.
You complain that I am a cheap suitor who doesn’t give gifts.
I will not give you little gifts.
I’m sorry, you know that if I could, I would give you plenty.
At least once a day I have to resist the urge to buy you something.
And still, ask me for something.
What can I do for you?
What can I give you?
August 16
May I interrupt?
I want to talk.
I went out earlier (it’s almost three in the morning and soon I will begin to glide silently over the night skies and hunt little rodents).
I stood and smoked.
He wasn’t there anymore.
Perhaps he despaired of me.
I did try to produce him, but the only thing running through me were words.
He crumbled into the words I used to write about him; how did you put it—the cruel choice between keeping muteness alive and vital and verbalizing it?
I stood and smoked.
He wasn’t there anymore.
Perhaps he despaired of me.
I did try to produce him, but the only thing running through me were words.
He crumbled into the words I used to write about him; how did you put it—the cruel choice between keeping muteness alive and vital and verbalizing it?
I’m afraid it is no longer my choice.
I thought about what would have happened if, in some fantastical way, he could have known Ido.
And I also wondered whether Ido would have liked to be friends with the child I was.
To my surprise, I answered that yes, they’d get along quite well together, that perhaps there aren’t another two as well suited as Ido and the self I used to be (so why are he and I now so poorly matched?).
And I also wondered whether Ido would have liked to be friends with the child I was.
To my surprise, I answered that yes, they’d get along quite well together, that perhaps there aren’t another two as well suited as Ido and the self I used to be (so why are he and I now so poorly matched?).
Hey, can we talk about the kids?
Shall we start a special advice section for matters of parenting and education, Don Juan’s Column on Children?
Shall we start a special advice section for matters of parenting and education, Don Juan’s Column on Children?
Before we do, please know that I am the best father in the world.
Really.
Everyone who knows me thinks so.
And until this past year, when my business started flourishing, I would spend a lot of time with Ido, every free moment I had.
And I still take care of him with motherly dedication today.
I feed him and dress him, breast-feed, and even at this very moment I feel my eyes tear up when I think about his glowing beauty.
And I am endlessly destroying him.
Oh, Miriam, what are we going to do?
The delicate, exposed line of his chin, the way he remains lonely in every group of children, his fragile, loose smile?
I molded him with my own bare cruelties—oh, really, what are we going to do?
I used to know his every thought.
My private language began with him; of course, we were using
their
words, but they were ours because I pulled them out of the core of my soul.
I think almost every new word he learned until he was three was from me.
I used to say, “There’s a bird, say it after me, ‘Bird,’” and he would look up at me, charmed, and say “Bird.”
And only after he had repeated that word, spoken it aloud, was it truly his.
As if I had chewed up the word and put it in his mouth.
That was our ritual for every new word.
There were even a few sounds I wanted him to pronounce in a certain way: a full
sh,
not a little whistly, like mine.
Or a manly, throaty r (like Moshe Dayan’s—do you remember it?) … Don’t laugh at my nonsense—it was because of it that I felt as if I was serving him the first Lego bricks with which to build his world; that I was leaking myself into him, branding more of him with my identity, existing in him as I probably don’t exist anywhere else in the world.
Do you understand?
I suddenly sent out roots.
Really.
Everyone who knows me thinks so.
And until this past year, when my business started flourishing, I would spend a lot of time with Ido, every free moment I had.
And I still take care of him with motherly dedication today.
I feed him and dress him, breast-feed, and even at this very moment I feel my eyes tear up when I think about his glowing beauty.
And I am endlessly destroying him.
Oh, Miriam, what are we going to do?
The delicate, exposed line of his chin, the way he remains lonely in every group of children, his fragile, loose smile?
I molded him with my own bare cruelties—oh, really, what are we going to do?
I used to know his every thought.
My private language began with him; of course, we were using
their
words, but they were ours because I pulled them out of the core of my soul.
I think almost every new word he learned until he was three was from me.
I used to say, “There’s a bird, say it after me, ‘Bird,’” and he would look up at me, charmed, and say “Bird.”
And only after he had repeated that word, spoken it aloud, was it truly his.
As if I had chewed up the word and put it in his mouth.
That was our ritual for every new word.
There were even a few sounds I wanted him to pronounce in a certain way: a full
sh,
not a little whistly, like mine.
Or a manly, throaty r (like Moshe Dayan’s—do you remember it?) … Don’t laugh at my nonsense—it was because of it that I felt as if I was serving him the first Lego bricks with which to build his world; that I was leaking myself into him, branding more of him with my identity, existing in him as I probably don’t exist anywhere else in the world.
Do you understand?
I suddenly sent out roots.
What haven’t I done to exist in him?
I used to stand by his bed while he slept, passing my hands over his face, finger-painting his dreams.
I would whisper happy words into his ears, so they would penetrate into his dream-laboratory and, if needed, help to change his dream for the better.
There was nothing I would not have done to make him laugh.
And how we would laugh together …
I used to stand by his bed while he slept, passing my hands over his face, finger-painting his dreams.
I would whisper happy words into his ears, so they would penetrate into his dream-laboratory and, if needed, help to change his dream for the better.
There was nothing I would not have done to make him laugh.
And how we would laugh together …
But that’s over.
Finished.
Go complain to the rank forces of life.
I’m not complaining: it’s the way of nature, yes sir!
But lately, he has been clotting over, closing off to me; and if I ever sent roots into him, they were torn out of me like the stinger of a male wasp.
Now the whole
world comes and pours words and names into him, and he has thoughts that I do not know about—and it is 100 percent fine by me, that’s the way of the world—and I should be happy that everything is normal, as it should be—but I no longer have ants in the palm of my hand, dancing out pictures over his face at night.
I am, again, left with only myself.
Do you mind my telling you about this?
You wanted reality, didn’t you?
Please accept reality then, tossed with chunks of specifics: he now fights with me—over everything.
You would think that fighting me is his raison d’être these days—and what he fights about!
What to wear in the morning, and what to eat at noon, and when to go to bed, and what TV show to watch—anything I offer him he rejects, and then insists on the opposite.
And you have no idea how stubborn he is (considering that, until about six years ago, he was being stored in two separate locations)!
Finished.
Go complain to the rank forces of life.
I’m not complaining: it’s the way of nature, yes sir!
But lately, he has been clotting over, closing off to me; and if I ever sent roots into him, they were torn out of me like the stinger of a male wasp.
Now the whole
world comes and pours words and names into him, and he has thoughts that I do not know about—and it is 100 percent fine by me, that’s the way of the world—and I should be happy that everything is normal, as it should be—but I no longer have ants in the palm of my hand, dancing out pictures over his face at night.
I am, again, left with only myself.
Do you mind my telling you about this?
You wanted reality, didn’t you?
Please accept reality then, tossed with chunks of specifics: he now fights with me—over everything.
You would think that fighting me is his raison d’être these days—and what he fights about!
What to wear in the morning, and what to eat at noon, and when to go to bed, and what TV show to watch—anything I offer him he rejects, and then insists on the opposite.
And you have no idea how stubborn he is (considering that, until about six years ago, he was being stored in two separate locations)!
And the more stubborn he is, the more decisive I get—it drives me absolutely crazy that such a little boy suddenly decided he knows better than his parents.
So I barrage him with all my strength, with yells and insults.
I’m like an insane rhinoceros; I attack this tiny child to force his surrender, run him over, squash him, humiliate him—it’s terrible, no?
So I explain to myself, with iron-clad logic, that during the exercises of humiliating him and squashing his spirit, I am actually educating him to become more familiar with the most basic concepts of leading a proper life, blah blah blah.
So the essence of the education is that I pass on to him the knowledge that you eventually must surrender to strength and stupidity, power and narrow-mindedness.
Because this is the way of the world, and there is no other.
And it is terribly important for him to learn this at a young age, so the world won’t break him when the stakes are much more painful.
So I barrage him with all my strength, with yells and insults.
I’m like an insane rhinoceros; I attack this tiny child to force his surrender, run him over, squash him, humiliate him—it’s terrible, no?
So I explain to myself, with iron-clad logic, that during the exercises of humiliating him and squashing his spirit, I am actually educating him to become more familiar with the most basic concepts of leading a proper life, blah blah blah.
So the essence of the education is that I pass on to him the knowledge that you eventually must surrender to strength and stupidity, power and narrow-mindedness.
Because this is the way of the world, and there is no other.
And it is terribly important for him to learn this at a young age, so the world won’t break him when the stakes are much more painful.
(How did you put it?—“Those are just your venom glands talking.”)
Because what I want to teach him is exactly the opposite—I want him to fly high, spread his wings above me, and piss on the fears and the shame—and be himself and do exactly what his heart tells him to do.
But this fucked-up hand has got me by the throat—my mother’s hand, my father’s fist, the long military arm of my family.
I cannot believe what comes out of my own mouth during our fights.
Things that, as a child, I
swore I would never repeat—and I still can’t hold them back, citing the passages of heritage with a frozen tongue—I could smash my own face in—why am I fighting my own child?
Tell me, why can’t I let one child in this crappy dynasty grow up as he is, as I was, as I almost succeeded in being—fragile and delicate and daydreaming and without skin?
Full of such a spectrum of ways of being?
Why did I yell at him the time he was sobbing because we threw the old armchair out?
Why do I make him eat meat when meat disgusts him?
Why does it make me explode when he refuses to assume his proper place in the food chain, to accept the law of convention that “chicken” is not “dead bird”?!
And I shove it into his tiny mouth with my fingers, the way my father did to me, every day!
But this fucked-up hand has got me by the throat—my mother’s hand, my father’s fist, the long military arm of my family.
I cannot believe what comes out of my own mouth during our fights.
Things that, as a child, I
swore I would never repeat—and I still can’t hold them back, citing the passages of heritage with a frozen tongue—I could smash my own face in—why am I fighting my own child?
Tell me, why can’t I let one child in this crappy dynasty grow up as he is, as I was, as I almost succeeded in being—fragile and delicate and daydreaming and without skin?
Full of such a spectrum of ways of being?
Why did I yell at him the time he was sobbing because we threw the old armchair out?
Why do I make him eat meat when meat disgusts him?
Why does it make me explode when he refuses to assume his proper place in the food chain, to accept the law of convention that “chicken” is not “dead bird”?!
And I shove it into his tiny mouth with my fingers, the way my father did to me, every day!
Say “Bird”: “Bird”!
Maybe I’ll continue this tomorrow.
No.
Tomorrow the rain will come upon us and erase everything, and it’s flowing out of me in a flood now.
I spare you most of the things that happen to me in my everyday life.
My shell somehow functions—that’s the exact word for it—but the child watching me in my recent, sleepless nights had an aura of warmth—it shivered in a haze around his thin skin.
It horrifies me to now understand what he was really like—how he never had a chance (like you said—a little china cup in an elephant’s cage).
How vapors still steam off him from the terrible need to nestle close with another person, to really combine souls without hiding anything.
He wants to give of himself—pour everything flickering there in the darkness of his imagination—not to let any parpurian emotion finish off his life over there, in the mass grave of the unknown idea.
And you have no idea how many misunderstandings, how much rage and destruction of the good order these tendencies cause—such perversions the constitution of the tribe—
Tomorrow the rain will come upon us and erase everything, and it’s flowing out of me in a flood now.
I spare you most of the things that happen to me in my everyday life.
My shell somehow functions—that’s the exact word for it—but the child watching me in my recent, sleepless nights had an aura of warmth—it shivered in a haze around his thin skin.
It horrifies me to now understand what he was really like—how he never had a chance (like you said—a little china cup in an elephant’s cage).
How vapors still steam off him from the terrible need to nestle close with another person, to really combine souls without hiding anything.
He wants to give of himself—pour everything flickering there in the darkness of his imagination—not to let any parpurian emotion finish off his life over there, in the mass grave of the unknown idea.
And you have no idea how many misunderstandings, how much rage and destruction of the good order these tendencies cause—such perversions the constitution of the tribe—
His first years—how wonderful they were (I’m talking about Ido now).
I gave him all of myself—and the more I gave, the more and more filled I was, a river of inventions and stories and the joy of living.
I used to wake up at night and feel my heart well up with the warmth of loving him, and think, I had forgotten how much love existed under our skins.
I had forgotten that specific feeling of a soul rising to the banks of the body, licking the landscape from the inside.
Because I was a child full of
love—but see how that thought never crossed my mind with such simplicity.
I never knew how to say that to myself, in that way, round, like a gift.
I always thought of myself as a very hard child, a complicated, bad child, and—as they often explained to me, with a deep sigh, determining that sorrowful fact you have to somehow live through: I was a child who wasn’t quite—normal.
Certainly not the one they had been praying for.
A child forced to pity his parents every day, for their being obligated to raise such a strange creature who so shamed them—
I gave him all of myself—and the more I gave, the more and more filled I was, a river of inventions and stories and the joy of living.
I used to wake up at night and feel my heart well up with the warmth of loving him, and think, I had forgotten how much love existed under our skins.
I had forgotten that specific feeling of a soul rising to the banks of the body, licking the landscape from the inside.
Because I was a child full of
love—but see how that thought never crossed my mind with such simplicity.
I never knew how to say that to myself, in that way, round, like a gift.
I always thought of myself as a very hard child, a complicated, bad child, and—as they often explained to me, with a deep sigh, determining that sorrowful fact you have to somehow live through: I was a child who wasn’t quite—normal.
Certainly not the one they had been praying for.
A child forced to pity his parents every day, for their being obligated to raise such a strange creature who so shamed them—
Enough.
Listen, this letter brings me to—I mean, I really didn’t think this is where it would end up.
I wanted to write to you about you, to guess you as you guessed me.
To guess you as nothing less than a woman—not as a little girl (this is starting to look like a date between two pedophiles).
And I, apparently, can’t do it yet.
I can’t!
I wanted to write to you about you, to guess you as you guessed me.
To guess you as nothing less than a woman—not as a little girl (this is starting to look like a date between two pedophiles).
And I, apparently, can’t do it yet.
I can’t!
August 17
Just reporting that I fulfilled my end of the bargain this morning (regarding the return of the chalk line around the crow I promised you).
And I read the story you asked me to read, and in a beautiful place, just as you wanted me to.
And I read the story you asked me to read, and in a beautiful place, just as you wanted me to.
I took the story to the dam.
I found the old car seat, your usual chair—I identified a crab-apple tree (or is it a cane apple?).
I called it by its name and we embraced emotionally.
I crushed some sage, and a
rotem
or a
lotem
or a totem.
I found the old car seat, your usual chair—I identified a crab-apple tree (or is it a cane apple?).
I called it by its name and we embraced emotionally.
I crushed some sage, and a
rotem
or a
lotem
or a totem.
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