Authors: David Grossman
Be My Knife (22 page)
I hope you are not upset at my little invasion into your territory.
You have “taken me” here so many times to read my letters aloud, having soul-deep conversations with the dam and the empty dell—and after you decided to “officially” introduce me to your kin here, I figured it was about time to come and stand before them, pay my respects like a
gever,
like an
ish.
You have “taken me” here so many times to read my letters aloud, having soul-deep conversations with the dam and the empty dell—and after you decided to “officially” introduce me to your kin here, I figured it was about time to come and stand before them, pay my respects like a
gever,
like an
ish.
This place is beautiful in the winter—like a Norwegian fjord in the middle of the Jerusalem mountains?
Really?
It’s a little hard to try and picture that now; the huge dam cuts the valley in two, like a scar of surgery across a belly.
The dam and the valley look pretty fake right now, in this dryness (but perhaps, as you said, they come true in the winter).
Really?
It’s a little hard to try and picture that now; the huge dam cuts the valley in two, like a scar of surgery across a belly.
The dam and the valley look pretty fake right now, in this dryness (but perhaps, as you said, they come true in the winter).
Listen, I read the whole story, I even read it aloud.
No wonder you
haven’t gone back to read it in years—the only comfort I can offer you is that it hurt me, too, but today it hurt in an entirely new way.
No wonder you
haven’t gone back to read it in years—the only comfort I can offer you is that it hurt me, too, but today it hurt in an entirely new way.
You asked me to write it exactly, to report it without mercy.
So.
So.
Do you remember the moment when Gregor’s mother sees him for the first time (after he has become an insect)?
She looks at him, and he at her; she yells, “Help, for God’s sake, help!”
and backs away, until she bumps into a table and sits on it (confused, half conscious).
She looks at him, and he at her; she yells, “Help, for God’s sake, help!”
and backs away, until she bumps into a table and sits on it (confused, half conscious).
Before, when I read this story—the hardest part, in my opinion, was Gregor’s drawn-out, long, tortured death.
But this morning, when I got to her repulsion, and “‘Mother, Mother,’ said Gregor in a low voice, and he looked up at her …”
But this morning, when I got to her repulsion, and “‘Mother, Mother,’ said Gregor in a low voice, and he looked up at her …”
Because there is always that small chance that if she hadn’t been so repulsed, she might have been able to save him from his tragedy.
Yes, I know, if she had “recognized” him (or in your words, “approved”), it wouldn’t have been Kafka’s story anymore but a children’s story, like, say, that Moomintroll story.
A hug.
I left you a note somewhere in the area of the dam—let’s see if you can find it.
I left you a note somewhere in the area of the dam—let’s see if you can find it.
August 17 (12:15 p.m.
by the dam)
by the dam)
M.
In your last letter, you didn’t smile, not once.
I could see you holding something against me (?).
That maybe, because of me, the old, open insult of your childhood has been resurrected in you with a painful sharpness.
I could see you holding something against me (?).
That maybe, because of me, the old, open insult of your childhood has been resurrected in you with a painful sharpness.
Maybe it is because of me.
I don’t know.
Maybe it was that thing you said, right at the beginning of all this, about there being something in me you had been forced to hide all your life.
I don’t know.
Maybe it was that thing you said, right at the beginning of all this, about there being something in me you had been forced to hide all your life.
(But what was that thing you didn’t say?)
August 20
You still insist?
You want to meet me, “the whole me”?
A complete meeting?
Or at the very least—without deciding ahead of time what will transpire at such a meeting?
Without canceling out any possibilities in advance?
“In the whole me,” meaning, my soul
and
my body?
Oh well!
A Turkish pimp with moist eyes and a drooping mustache slips in like a mongoose and flashes a pack of oily, naked photos of me in stimulating positions in front of your eyes.
But don’t believe it!
It’s only a photomontage, you better check that merchandise very well.
And I believe that now comes the time when I lay my cards (the shuffled half deck, of course) on the table, so you can reconsider your proposal, weigh it carefully in this matter—because I have a body and a face that are not
mine.
Some ridiculous, terrible mistake must have been made in the mischievous lottery of life—they planted me in a body and face that my soul has been rejecting for years—
You want to meet me, “the whole me”?
A complete meeting?
Or at the very least—without deciding ahead of time what will transpire at such a meeting?
Without canceling out any possibilities in advance?
“In the whole me,” meaning, my soul
and
my body?
Oh well!
A Turkish pimp with moist eyes and a drooping mustache slips in like a mongoose and flashes a pack of oily, naked photos of me in stimulating positions in front of your eyes.
But don’t believe it!
It’s only a photomontage, you better check that merchandise very well.
And I believe that now comes the time when I lay my cards (the shuffled half deck, of course) on the table, so you can reconsider your proposal, weigh it carefully in this matter—because I have a body and a face that are not
mine.
Some ridiculous, terrible mistake must have been made in the mischievous lottery of life—they planted me in a body and face that my soul has been rejecting for years—
Come, Miriam, please, you will have to move back a few feet and put your fingers in your ears, because, God, for once I have to let this pass through those glands of venom in my throat.
I had the soul of a volcano as a child—fire and lava and flying scalding stones, and Picasso and King David and Meir Harziyon, and Maciste and Zorba all together.
But my face and body—well, you already know what I think about them.
And all nine of my souls were going wild, like tongues of fire in me—and the most important thing is that I was full of joy—because I still didn’t know what I looked like.
Do you understand?
I hadn’t yet been phrased and identified and defined from every possible angle (why don’t they make people get a license to use certain words, the way you have to get licensed for a handgun?).
Nothing could stand in my way then—the only question was what to choose—espionage, art, commando missions, travel, crime, love—of course, love, from the moment I was born, don’t even ask me what kind of shame I caused my parents—by the time I reached kindergarten!
I was a four-year-old peanut, but since that point I have never stopped trying to bestow my affections on whoever didn’t run away fast enough.
Don’t be too impressed, now: most of my beloveds didn’t even know I existed.
Why, to this very day I have to forcibly invade a woman’s field of vision if I am interested in getting her attention.
As you know very well.
But in my thoughts, in my imagination—no limit, no limit!
I knew with an insane confidence throughout my childhood that what was happening to me in the meanwhile was only a preface.
It was only a hard test, only a tough preparatory exam for the moment life would finally begin—and suddenly I would hatch out of this worm, Jacob out of the pale Yid from the shtetl, and be Tarzan and the lion all at once.
I would glow with the full spectrum of the colored fires burning
within me … Oh, the fantasies I had—I could scream from my yearning for them.
Huge red and yellow tongues, dancing and teasing one another—
I had the soul of a volcano as a child—fire and lava and flying scalding stones, and Picasso and King David and Meir Harziyon, and Maciste and Zorba all together.
But my face and body—well, you already know what I think about them.
And all nine of my souls were going wild, like tongues of fire in me—and the most important thing is that I was full of joy—because I still didn’t know what I looked like.
Do you understand?
I hadn’t yet been phrased and identified and defined from every possible angle (why don’t they make people get a license to use certain words, the way you have to get licensed for a handgun?).
Nothing could stand in my way then—the only question was what to choose—espionage, art, commando missions, travel, crime, love—of course, love, from the moment I was born, don’t even ask me what kind of shame I caused my parents—by the time I reached kindergarten!
I was a four-year-old peanut, but since that point I have never stopped trying to bestow my affections on whoever didn’t run away fast enough.
Don’t be too impressed, now: most of my beloveds didn’t even know I existed.
Why, to this very day I have to forcibly invade a woman’s field of vision if I am interested in getting her attention.
As you know very well.
But in my thoughts, in my imagination—no limit, no limit!
I knew with an insane confidence throughout my childhood that what was happening to me in the meanwhile was only a preface.
It was only a hard test, only a tough preparatory exam for the moment life would finally begin—and suddenly I would hatch out of this worm, Jacob out of the pale Yid from the shtetl, and be Tarzan and the lion all at once.
I would glow with the full spectrum of the colored fires burning
within me … Oh, the fantasies I had—I could scream from my yearning for them.
Huge red and yellow tongues, dancing and teasing one another—
But in the meantime, you have to lower your head and suffer quietly.
For instance, my father would speak to me, for months at a time, in the female gender: Yaira come and Yaira go.
Why?
Because he saw me fighting with a kid from our neighborhood on the sidewalk in front of the house.
I actually knocked this kid down right away—a miracle occurred, they were pulling for me in heaven and sent me one who was actually weaker.
Unfortunately, after knocking him down, I immediately stood up and walked away, leaving him lying there, whining on the sidewalk—and I didn’t break his bones like a
gever,
and didn’t tear his balls off, and didn’t do any of the things my father, watching through a closed window, wanted me to do, terribly.
I raised my head for a moment when we were fighting and saw his face: my father’s face, behind the glass, twisting, turning purple, and crumpling and warped as if it were melting in a fire.
Without even knowing what he was doing, he stuck his two fists deep against his mouth, and I saw how his teeth sank into the knuckles, a blend of bloodthirstiness and the terror of an abandoned puppy.
My poor father.
For instance, my father would speak to me, for months at a time, in the female gender: Yaira come and Yaira go.
Why?
Because he saw me fighting with a kid from our neighborhood on the sidewalk in front of the house.
I actually knocked this kid down right away—a miracle occurred, they were pulling for me in heaven and sent me one who was actually weaker.
Unfortunately, after knocking him down, I immediately stood up and walked away, leaving him lying there, whining on the sidewalk—and I didn’t break his bones like a
gever,
and didn’t tear his balls off, and didn’t do any of the things my father, watching through a closed window, wanted me to do, terribly.
I raised my head for a moment when we were fighting and saw his face: my father’s face, behind the glass, twisting, turning purple, and crumpling and warped as if it were melting in a fire.
Without even knowing what he was doing, he stuck his two fists deep against his mouth, and I saw how his teeth sank into the knuckles, a blend of bloodthirstiness and the terror of an abandoned puppy.
My poor father.
When I returned home, he was already waiting for me, the thin brown one in hand, which he could, in one whistling pull, whip out from his belt loops.
He beat me instinctively, mechanically.
The thin brown one worked overtime.
To this day, this is how we joke about such moments in my family.
How Yeery made Father mad, and the thin brown one worked overtime, and we all laugh until we’re in tears.
It doesn’t matter.
He was whipping me, and when that didn’t provide him the necessary satisfaction, he attacked me with his fists, beating me with his fists, which he had bitten until they bled, and his little soft body fluttered and shook.
He raged with blood-red eyes—this man, whom I had never seen fight, not in his life.
He always became gentle and considerate and flattering if someone pushed in front of us in line at the movies.
When his car was blocked in the parking lot by the general-depury, his boss, you should have seen him bowing and scraping.
And in front of the general-deputy’s child, for that matter.
And once, when that stinking corpse of a neighbor, that Surkis the murderer, slapped me on the street for shouting between two and four in the afternoon, my father immediately withdrew from the balcony into the apartment,
so he wouldn’t see it.
But I saw
him.
He hit me—and I shrank, reminding myself the entire time, It’s fine, it has to happen this way, fathers hit children, what do you expect, that it works the other way around?
His beatings were just part of the great test—this is what I thought.
He beat me instinctively, mechanically.
The thin brown one worked overtime.
To this day, this is how we joke about such moments in my family.
How Yeery made Father mad, and the thin brown one worked overtime, and we all laugh until we’re in tears.
It doesn’t matter.
He was whipping me, and when that didn’t provide him the necessary satisfaction, he attacked me with his fists, beating me with his fists, which he had bitten until they bled, and his little soft body fluttered and shook.
He raged with blood-red eyes—this man, whom I had never seen fight, not in his life.
He always became gentle and considerate and flattering if someone pushed in front of us in line at the movies.
When his car was blocked in the parking lot by the general-depury, his boss, you should have seen him bowing and scraping.
And in front of the general-deputy’s child, for that matter.
And once, when that stinking corpse of a neighbor, that Surkis the murderer, slapped me on the street for shouting between two and four in the afternoon, my father immediately withdrew from the balcony into the apartment,
so he wouldn’t see it.
But I saw
him.
He hit me—and I shrank, reminding myself the entire time, It’s fine, it has to happen this way, fathers hit children, what do you expect, that it works the other way around?
His beatings were just part of the great test—this is what I thought.
But what was I saying?
You, wanting to meet me, “the whole me,” asking to meet the child I was as well and reconcile the two of us, so I’ll look at him differently, differently than how he was looked at in my parents’ house.
I remember every word you wrote.
In the margin, you wrote in pencil that “under no circumstances will we meet like two pedophiles, that’s
their
language, Yair.
We’ll meet like two children.”
You see, I remember it exactly—you wouldn’t believe how many phrases and sentences I remember by heart, your words and tune together: “I can’t go on like this anymore; this distance from you with this vagueness, because what is happening between us is too vast for me to contain.
I need your touch terribly, your touch, please, enough of this, come to me, in your body, in the whole of you, in the materials with which you were made, the unbroken and the defective, the torn or the double, but come, with open arms, as if you were giving a gift.
And if you find it hard, tell yourself that Miriam wants to meet the child that you were; give me that pleasure, because in spite of all of your slurs, I am sure he was a beautiful child …”
I remember every word you wrote.
In the margin, you wrote in pencil that “under no circumstances will we meet like two pedophiles, that’s
their
language, Yair.
We’ll meet like two children.”
You see, I remember it exactly—you wouldn’t believe how many phrases and sentences I remember by heart, your words and tune together: “I can’t go on like this anymore; this distance from you with this vagueness, because what is happening between us is too vast for me to contain.
I need your touch terribly, your touch, please, enough of this, come to me, in your body, in the whole of you, in the materials with which you were made, the unbroken and the defective, the torn or the double, but come, with open arms, as if you were giving a gift.
And if you find it hard, tell yourself that Miriam wants to meet the child that you were; give me that pleasure, because in spite of all of your slurs, I am sure he was a beautiful child …”
And again, Miriam, time after time, you approach me and unlock my most secret doors with sacred keys that only you have—how do you have such a sixth sense about me?
Just hear this story.
Just hear this story.
(No.
It has to be a separate letter, in a separate envelope, as it was.)
It has to be a separate letter, in a separate envelope, as it was.)
August 20
Once upon a time, at the age of twelve, more or less, it was evening, and he returned home from a movie he saw with Shai, who was his best friend until they entered the service.
They said their goodbyes in front of Shai’s building, and the boy continued on his way home, alone; you-already-know-who was expecting him there.
So do you wonder that he walked so slowly?
They said their goodbyes in front of Shai’s building, and the boy continued on his way home, alone; you-already-know-who was expecting him there.
So do you wonder that he walked so slowly?
Look at him, walking alone on a side street, trying to preserve the sweetness of the movie that had been lost to him while riding the bus, because
of the scorn and laughter, focused solely on him, from three little thugs (who, at that time, were called hoodlums).
Shai, his white legs shaking in his pants, was sitting next to him.
Now the notorious wits of these two, which struck such terror into the hearts of students and even teachers, exploded and splattered all over their faces like an overambitious gum bubble.
of the scorn and laughter, focused solely on him, from three little thugs (who, at that time, were called hoodlums).
Shai, his white legs shaking in his pants, was sitting next to him.
Now the notorious wits of these two, which struck such terror into the hearts of students and even teachers, exploded and splattered all over their faces like an overambitious gum bubble.
He walked through the silent, empty streets, trying with all his might to forget what he felt when Shai looked the other way, and sat blind and deaf, making himself absent from the situation.
He knew he would have behaved in the exact same way if the situations were reversed, and he almost wept, cursing his weakness and vowing that, by God, from this day forward he would stop stealing money from the Holy Wallet to buy books.
From now on, he would steal money only so he could buy dumbbells and practice pumping his muscles all day and night, like an animal.
He knew it wouldn’t help him either, because he didn’t have
that thing
within him that immediately connects dreams to muscles in one decisive motion.
That can transform the internal Tarzan roaring in your heart into a fist cracking a hooligan’s jaw on the bus.
That mysterious thing that probably makes an
ish
into a
gever.
He also knew that even if he was able to hit someone, sometime, everyone would be able to tell that it didn’t really come naturally to him; and while he was walking, deep in thought, two women approached him in the street, one young and one old—well, not really old.
A grown-up.
And they were strolling along peacefully, talking between themselves with silent voices, their arms linked together, glowing with some kind of warmth that he immediately woke to and was alive to.
He knew he would have behaved in the exact same way if the situations were reversed, and he almost wept, cursing his weakness and vowing that, by God, from this day forward he would stop stealing money from the Holy Wallet to buy books.
From now on, he would steal money only so he could buy dumbbells and practice pumping his muscles all day and night, like an animal.
He knew it wouldn’t help him either, because he didn’t have
that thing
within him that immediately connects dreams to muscles in one decisive motion.
That can transform the internal Tarzan roaring in your heart into a fist cracking a hooligan’s jaw on the bus.
That mysterious thing that probably makes an
ish
into a
gever.
He also knew that even if he was able to hit someone, sometime, everyone would be able to tell that it didn’t really come naturally to him; and while he was walking, deep in thought, two women approached him in the street, one young and one old—well, not really old.
A grown-up.
And they were strolling along peacefully, talking between themselves with silent voices, their arms linked together, glowing with some kind of warmth that he immediately woke to and was alive to.
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