Authors: David Grossman
Be My Knife (25 page)
And that feeling as well, that everything you tell me about yourself—even what might seem to me, in the first look, like a complete contradiction in your personality; even what strikes me with a cruelty that doesn’t become you—I already know that when I look back on it, I will see how true and loyal it is to who you are, and how, in your depths, it ties together and becomes a law.
Is this how I seem to you?
(I think not.)
(I think not.)
Don’t go away.
I need you with me now.
There is so much more to talk about.
We’ve only just started, each letter makes me realize how much we’ve only just started; I think even if we spoke for thirty years, I
would always feel we had only just started.
By the way, I was surprised when you invited me to come to the Ta’mon Café on Thursday nights to watch Amos play chess.
I will not go, of course.
I will be satisfied with your description.
Sometimes I see someone who looks like him on the street, not young and not old, not tall and not short, with a little potbelly and a neat little beard, with gray hair, messy and wild under a beret.
I need you with me now.
There is so much more to talk about.
We’ve only just started, each letter makes me realize how much we’ve only just started; I think even if we spoke for thirty years, I
would always feel we had only just started.
By the way, I was surprised when you invited me to come to the Ta’mon Café on Thursday nights to watch Amos play chess.
I will not go, of course.
I will be satisfied with your description.
Sometimes I see someone who looks like him on the street, not young and not old, not tall and not short, with a little potbelly and a neat little beard, with gray hair, messy and wild under a beret.
But I can never be sure: either he is not wearing the gray jacket with the elbow patches (in the summer, too?) or he doesn’t have the cap or he doesn’t have those unmistakable eyes—the bluest, clearest eyes you have ever seen in an adult.
You write about him so beautifully, with warmth and softness, and with love; but I also feel a thin sadness spreading over your words.
How can it be so easy for you to tell me that I would undoubtedly find you two quite an odd couple, that even the people closest to you don’t always understand what you are doing together?
And it actually makes you happy that only the two of you know.
How can it be so easy for you to tell me that I would undoubtedly find you two quite an odd couple, that even the people closest to you don’t always understand what you are doing together?
And it actually makes you happy that only the two of you know.
But my heart felt the most pinched when you wrote me that when he made his living singing folk songs in Scotland thirty years ago—those must have been his happiest days.
If Maya’s happiest years weren’t with me, I would feel a terrible loss.
Truly defeated.
If Maya’s happiest years weren’t with me, I would feel a terrible loss.
Truly defeated.
But actually, Maya is not really very happy right now.
She has been this way for a few months.
She says it might be her work—because how sunny can your mood be when you’re researching the human immune system—but we both know it isn’t just that.
She’s sad—she can’t concentrate—she’s floating in a bubble of depression.
And I can’t help her right now, because I don’t understand myself.
Wait for me a little longer, Maya.
She has been this way for a few months.
She says it might be her work—because how sunny can your mood be when you’re researching the human immune system—but we both know it isn’t just that.
She’s sad—she can’t concentrate—she’s floating in a bubble of depression.
And I can’t help her right now, because I don’t understand myself.
Wait for me a little longer, Maya.
I just had a flash while I was—
I’m eight years old, taking the morning bus to school.
They are interviewing Arthur Rubinstein on the radio (it was the first time I heard his name).
It was his birthday, and the interviewer was asking him how he saw his life.
And he answered, “I am the happiest man I have ever known.”
I remember looking around me in amazement, almost panicked: I’m sure you know what people on the 7 a.m.
bus look like—and he dared use that word, in that way, so freely …
They are interviewing Arthur Rubinstein on the radio (it was the first time I heard his name).
It was his birthday, and the interviewer was asking him how he saw his life.
And he answered, “I am the happiest man I have ever known.”
I remember looking around me in amazement, almost panicked: I’m sure you know what people on the 7 a.m.
bus look like—and he dared use that word, in that way, so freely …
It was sometime around New Year’s—every New Year’s they would announce how many people were now in Israel—and I remember thinking so passionately that out of three million, there must be at least one
happy person—and I want to be that person!
(And a week later, I was lying in my parents’ garage with a belt around my heart …)
happy person—and I want to be that person!
(And a week later, I was lying in my parents’ garage with a belt around my heart …)
I just reread
To the Lighthouse
again on a confused impulse, so I could mix the sadnesses together.
Perhaps to be comforted a little.
It’s not comforting.
It’s the opposite of comforting.
And the hardest part is having no one to share the feeling with.
I bought Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto and listened to it over and over.
Music does me good right now; “if they shouted loud enough, Mrs.
Ramsay would return.
‘Mrs.
Ramsay!’
she said aloud, ‘Mrs.
Ramsay!’
The tears ran down her face.”
To the Lighthouse
again on a confused impulse, so I could mix the sadnesses together.
Perhaps to be comforted a little.
It’s not comforting.
It’s the opposite of comforting.
And the hardest part is having no one to share the feeling with.
I bought Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto and listened to it over and over.
Music does me good right now; “if they shouted loud enough, Mrs.
Ramsay would return.
‘Mrs.
Ramsay!’
she said aloud, ‘Mrs.
Ramsay!’
The tears ran down her face.”
Y.
Just one more thing, all right?
Years ago I devised a special sight test for every woman I liked.
To determine which one would be the “One Woman of My Life.”
I thought we would look into each other’s eyes, and slowly bring our eyes closer, closer and closer, and even closer, until my eye touched hers—not the lashes, really touched—the eyelids, the eye itself, the pupils and moistures would touch.
Tears will immediately come, of course, that’s how the body works.
But we will not give up or surrender to the rules of reflex, to the body’s bureaucracy; until we rise, out of the tears and pain into the fragments of the vaguest, most ancient pictures of our two souls and float into our bodies.
We will see the broken forms in each other.
This is what I want, right now.
That we will see the darkness in each other.
Why not?
Why compromise, Miriam?
Why not, for once in our lives, ask to cry with another’s tears?
To determine which one would be the “One Woman of My Life.”
I thought we would look into each other’s eyes, and slowly bring our eyes closer, closer and closer, and even closer, until my eye touched hers—not the lashes, really touched—the eyelids, the eye itself, the pupils and moistures would touch.
Tears will immediately come, of course, that’s how the body works.
But we will not give up or surrender to the rules of reflex, to the body’s bureaucracy; until we rise, out of the tears and pain into the fragments of the vaguest, most ancient pictures of our two souls and float into our bodies.
We will see the broken forms in each other.
This is what I want, right now.
That we will see the darkness in each other.
Why not?
Why compromise, Miriam?
Why not, for once in our lives, ask to cry with another’s tears?
September 14
Hello,
That’s all.
Hello.
Hello.
It’s no good, only being able to write you when I’m dead tired (this life—who the hell wrote these rules?).
I’m pretty much starting to get sick of running around.
It isn’t just me—Maya, too.
Almost everyone I meet.
Especially people our age—work, the kids, there’s no time for anything.
Even you, yes you, yes, the Great Lingerer … a while ago I wrote out your schedule for each day of the week for myself, including work and afternoon meetings, Yokhai’s treatments and visits to your mother,
and Alexander Technique lessons, and dinner and dishwashing, and everything else I know.
And I was amazed by how little spare time you have for yourself—just a few moments in a day.
At least your nights are free.
I’m pretty much starting to get sick of running around.
It isn’t just me—Maya, too.
Almost everyone I meet.
Especially people our age—work, the kids, there’s no time for anything.
Even you, yes you, yes, the Great Lingerer … a while ago I wrote out your schedule for each day of the week for myself, including work and afternoon meetings, Yokhai’s treatments and visits to your mother,
and Alexander Technique lessons, and dinner and dishwashing, and everything else I know.
And I was amazed by how little spare time you have for yourself—just a few moments in a day.
At least your nights are free.
And I was thinking that this activity doesn’t suit you—it’s as if some foreign body were drowned into your softness (if I am allowed to quote back to you what you said about my sense of humor).
So what is he really thinking about us, your man from Mars who’s watching?
What you asked me to tell you—it’s a bit late tonight to start such a tale (have you heard about the wise Chinese man who said, “I don’t have the time to write a short letter, so I will write a long one”?); perhaps, on the other hand, it is good that I tell a story like this when I’m tired.
The truth is, I don’t like to remember my friendship with him.
The more I miss him, the more appalled I am by the friendship we had then, how distant and unapproachable it seems.
We were both smart, weak little kids, unpopular (as the verdict is pronounced among Ido’s generation).
We were mocked and ostracized by the other kids—and we ostracized ourselves a little as well.
I think we enjoyed being special and cursed.
We invented, for instance, a private language of hand gestures—we were very adept and could chat with it during class.
We were laughed at for this as well, of course—can you imagine what it must have looked like, he and I and our finger signs?
The more I miss him, the more appalled I am by the friendship we had then, how distant and unapproachable it seems.
We were both smart, weak little kids, unpopular (as the verdict is pronounced among Ido’s generation).
We were mocked and ostracized by the other kids—and we ostracized ourselves a little as well.
I think we enjoyed being special and cursed.
We invented, for instance, a private language of hand gestures—we were very adept and could chat with it during class.
We were laughed at for this as well, of course—can you imagine what it must have looked like, he and I and our finger signs?
We had secret nicknames for our classmates, and would compose mocking songs about them, about the teachers.
You can already guess, I’m sure, that we both (yes, he as well) were familiar, from personal experience, and thanks to the superb education we received at home, with the basic article of the constitution stating that each person possesses one quality deserving mockery.
And we passed that knowledge on …
You can already guess, I’m sure, that we both (yes, he as well) were familiar, from personal experience, and thanks to the superb education we received at home, with the basic article of the constitution stating that each person possesses one quality deserving mockery.
And we passed that knowledge on …
So we advanced our image as a double-headed creature with a multi-hemisphered brain—we developed the arrogant, bold speaking patterns of a couple—we used very manly language, that is, and used to hold public contests in writing “simultaneous poetry” in the style of the Dada poets.
We swallowed Hegel and Marx without understanding a thing (we only
learned about the golden era of radical sixties Matzpen socialism from the adults, and heard about it with terrible envy—I can’t recall whether your name was ever mentioned).
We also had a sense of something like a style—and, of course, we truly felt (without ever saying it aloud) a bit like two English boys who were meant to be sent to a boarding school and got stuck instead in the public school of a working-class neighborhood.
We swallowed Hegel and Marx without understanding a thing (we only
learned about the golden era of radical sixties Matzpen socialism from the adults, and heard about it with terrible envy—I can’t recall whether your name was ever mentioned).
We also had a sense of something like a style—and, of course, we truly felt (without ever saying it aloud) a bit like two English boys who were meant to be sent to a boarding school and got stuck instead in the public school of a working-class neighborhood.
At the age of fifteen, we wrote our own “Modest Proposal” about producing electricity from inferior human beings; this is how we defined it, crippled, stupids, retarded, and so on (I’m sorry, I know, and still: me, everything).
“The Family Cookbook” came a year later, and established and dishonored our names at school for all eternity: it was a collection of Jewish recipes, easy to prepare (and cheap, too, because the ingredients were always at home).
From the menu I recommend to my gourmet friends Mother’s Stomach-Lining Soup, and Cheek Dumplings à la Papa, stuffed with bitter bile …
“The Family Cookbook” came a year later, and established and dishonored our names at school for all eternity: it was a collection of Jewish recipes, easy to prepare (and cheap, too, because the ingredients were always at home).
From the menu I recommend to my gourmet friends Mother’s Stomach-Lining Soup, and Cheek Dumplings à la Papa, stuffed with bitter bile …
It is important that I stress in this disgraceful yet inconsequential report that the more power we accumulated the more popular we became with the girls.
This was a refreshing development for us: by the time we reached sixteen, we were already surrounded by a small but excited circle of groupies.
We would make them read moldy books we’d borrowed from the YMCA library, and then test them, and give them hell, until they earned our good graces.
There was a time we would woo girls with a plan predetermined by a secret code—one by one, we would go after girls, so that the first letters of their first names, put together, would actually spell out the name of the girl we really loved, one Khamutal, over whom we didn’t even dare masturbate out of sheer love.
This was a refreshing development for us: by the time we reached sixteen, we were already surrounded by a small but excited circle of groupies.
We would make them read moldy books we’d borrowed from the YMCA library, and then test them, and give them hell, until they earned our good graces.
There was a time we would woo girls with a plan predetermined by a secret code—one by one, we would go after girls, so that the first letters of their first names, put together, would actually spell out the name of the girl we really loved, one Khamutal, over whom we didn’t even dare masturbate out of sheer love.
It continued in this way until we went into the service.
Six years.
Six witty years, Shai would say.
Six gritty, shitty years, I would immediately respond.
We were obsessed with word games.
We could destroy a person’s very foundations within five minutes, through a simple Ping-Pong game with his name.
(I’m writing to you and thinking, If everything had ended differently, if we had succeeded in remaining together into our adult lives—after the wild irresponsibility of youth and cowardly cruelty—what a good friend I could have had.)
Six years.
Six witty years, Shai would say.
Six gritty, shitty years, I would immediately respond.
We were obsessed with word games.
We could destroy a person’s very foundations within five minutes, through a simple Ping-Pong game with his name.
(I’m writing to you and thinking, If everything had ended differently, if we had succeeded in remaining together into our adult lives—after the wild irresponsibility of youth and cowardly cruelty—what a good friend I could have had.)
All right, boys, enough sentiment.
We were recruited on the same day, and although we believed in pacifism and demonstrated against the occupation and all that, we were overjoyed when the draft cards arrived.
I think both of us could sense the poison in our friendship.
The fact that
the rough army decided we were fit material was a sign that, in spite of everything, and underneath all the affected rot, we were actually just like everybody else.
We were recruited on the same day, and although we believed in pacifism and demonstrated against the occupation and all that, we were overjoyed when the draft cards arrived.
I think both of us could sense the poison in our friendship.
The fact that
the rough army decided we were fit material was a sign that, in spite of everything, and underneath all the affected rot, we were actually just like everybody else.
In short, the long arm of the IDF separated us.
Shai served in the Golani infantry brigade and I—underweight—was assigned to be a clerk.
Each of us, for the first time in years, stood alone in front of our peers; we sobered up very quickly, or more accurately, we were forced into sobriety.
We buried all our cleverness deep in our kit bags.
And we learned to speak in those other languages—but mainly we learned to shut up.
And then, in one of the glorious campaigns of our forces in Lebanon, Shai was severely wounded.
His mother called me from the hospital, before she even called his grandparents.
And I told her that, of course, on my first weekend off, I would go see him.
Shai served in the Golani infantry brigade and I—underweight—was assigned to be a clerk.
Each of us, for the first time in years, stood alone in front of our peers; we sobered up very quickly, or more accurately, we were forced into sobriety.
We buried all our cleverness deep in our kit bags.
And we learned to speak in those other languages—but mainly we learned to shut up.
And then, in one of the glorious campaigns of our forces in Lebanon, Shai was severely wounded.
His mother called me from the hospital, before she even called his grandparents.
And I told her that, of course, on my first weekend off, I would go see him.
After a few, horrible, soul-filthy weeks—I have no other words to describe what happened inside me each and every day I did not go to see him.
I didn’t even go home on my days off, just so I wouldn’t have to see him.
It was impossible to keep it up, so I forced myself go to Tel Hashomer.
I didn’t even go home on my days off, just so I wouldn’t have to see him.
It was impossible to keep it up, so I forced myself go to Tel Hashomer.
What do I remember?
I remember the long corridor, and the geranium plants hanging from the ceilings.
And the crippled guys flying by me on their wheelchairs with special skill—you can imagine how I felt walking in that hallway, so permit me to be brief.
Someone was getting up for me at the end of the corridor.
A thin body, with a shaved head, only one good eye wide open in his face, with no eyebrow above it.
And there was also a horrible mouth, slightly pulled to the side in some kind of permanent skeleton’s giggle.
He was leaning on crutches; one of his legs had been amputated above the knee.
I remember the long corridor, and the geranium plants hanging from the ceilings.
And the crippled guys flying by me on their wheelchairs with special skill—you can imagine how I felt walking in that hallway, so permit me to be brief.
Someone was getting up for me at the end of the corridor.
A thin body, with a shaved head, only one good eye wide open in his face, with no eyebrow above it.
And there was also a horrible mouth, slightly pulled to the side in some kind of permanent skeleton’s giggle.
He was leaning on crutches; one of his legs had been amputated above the knee.
I approached him cautiously.
We stood and looked each other in the eyes.
In the eye.
We thought, An eye for an eye; we thought, Seeing eye to eye; we thought, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we thought, The eyes have it—all our poisoned brilliances were running between us, and died on the edge of his naked eyelid.
He started to laugh—or cry; to this very day, I don’t know, with that mouth—and I was possessed by hysterical laughter and pretended to be crying.
We stood and looked each other in the eyes.
In the eye.
We thought, An eye for an eye; we thought, Seeing eye to eye; we thought, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we thought, The eyes have it—all our poisoned brilliances were running between us, and died on the edge of his naked eyelid.
He started to laugh—or cry; to this very day, I don’t know, with that mouth—and I was possessed by hysterical laughter and pretended to be crying.
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