Authors: David Grossman
Be My Knife (41 page)
Every day, when my bus passes where you work, I pity you for having to work in such an ugly, smoky part of town.
But if your window faces the street and you look out of it right now, you will see me writing through the bus window, and you will be happy.
I didn’t tell you that I pass by your funny sign in that industrial area at least five times a week.
How did it never occur to me?
At no moment did I sense that this was the location from which your webs were being spun.
But if your window faces the street and you look out of it right now, you will see me writing through the bus window, and you will be happy.
I didn’t tell you that I pass by your funny sign in that industrial area at least five times a week.
How did it never occur to me?
At no moment did I sense that this was the location from which your webs were being spun.
And what would happen if I came to visit you?
(Don’t worry, I would never come to you without an invitation.) To ask you to find one particular story for me?
I will tell you that I can remember only one sentence from it, maybe “It is heartbreaking, the thought that you can see into a grown-up person that way” or “Who can resist the temptation to peek into another’s hell?”
and immediately, your seven cavalrymen will leap onto their steeds, storming to the ends of the land, and begin to circle us in smaller and smaller arcs, until they finally stand with the their headlights facing us, point their fingers at us, and say, “You’re the story.”
(Don’t worry, I would never come to you without an invitation.) To ask you to find one particular story for me?
I will tell you that I can remember only one sentence from it, maybe “It is heartbreaking, the thought that you can see into a grown-up person that way” or “Who can resist the temptation to peek into another’s hell?”
and immediately, your seven cavalrymen will leap onto their steeds, storming to the ends of the land, and begin to circle us in smaller and smaller arcs, until they finally stand with the their headlights facing us, point their fingers at us, and say, “You’re the story.”
I immediately cradle myself with thoughts of us in those few, quiet, in-between moments.
Could it be that you went abroad again?
What will you bring back this time?
Could it be that you went abroad again?
What will you bring back this time?
I do envy you this—your freedom of movement through the world (it’s impossible for Amos and me to travel together, and I can’t go alone because of the very thought of a hotel room at night).
On your next business trip to Paris, please go to the Rodin Museum; there is a sculpture there:
The Poet and the Muse
.
Look at it.
Twice.
Then go to the museum shop and check to see if they are still selling the postcard of that sculpture.
They once added a quotation under the photo of the sculpture (you know you are absolutely forbidden to count on me for exact quotations and who said what, but I think it’s Baudelaire): “Put down your lute, poet, and give me a kiss.”
The Poet and the Muse
.
Look at it.
Twice.
Then go to the museum shop and check to see if they are still selling the postcard of that sculpture.
They once added a quotation under the photo of the sculpture (you know you are absolutely forbidden to count on me for exact quotations and who said what, but I think it’s Baudelaire): “Put down your lute, poet, and give me a kiss.”
Buy it for yourself, from me.
When I think about what gifts I would like to buy for you, I sometimes hear you scolding me: “And how, in your opinion, will I be able to bring this home?
How will I explain it?
What will I say?”
Then I shrink and give up.
How will I explain it?
What will I say?”
Then I shrink and give up.
But really, what do I care about how you will explain it?
I’ll buy it, and you can do whatever you like with it.
I’ll buy it, and you can do whatever you like with it.
I told you before: I will take no part in these “bureaucracies” and in the endless secretive trafficking.
If you decide to come to me, then it can only be in the open, without hiding and without lies, because I don’t know how to live in cracks.
If you decide to come to me, then it can only be in the open, without hiding and without lies, because I don’t know how to live in cracks.
(But I just had an idea of what I could buy for you that you could bring home without fear: bread, butter, cheese, milk …)
Maybe it’s because you tried in Tel Aviv, and without much success in my opinion, to write my “diary.”
I’m having difficulties writing down my own thoughts, those that pass between me and myself; it is as if an echo has been added to each word, and I can’t decide: Does it feel good?
Does it not feel good?
(Ood ood ood … ?) You are the food that is good.
I’m having difficulties writing down my own thoughts, those that pass between me and myself; it is as if an echo has been added to each word, and I can’t decide: Does it feel good?
Does it not feel good?
(Ood ood ood … ?) You are the food that is good.
Bambi, William, and Kedem lie around me.
They’ve grown lately, swallowed up the space—there’s hardly any room for the humans in the house.
Want a dog?
You’ll see how happy it makes Ido.
They’ve grown lately, swallowed up the space—there’s hardly any room for the humans in the house.
Want a dog?
You’ll see how happy it makes Ido.
I told you why Amos bought them for me.
But it’s becoming more and more apparent that they’ve remained poor orphans as they’ve grown up, and I always pity them a little for having gotten me as a moth—
But it’s becoming more and more apparent that they’ve remained poor orphans as they’ve grown up, and I always pity them a little for having gotten me as a moth—
You have to hear what just happened: We had a blackout.
Pitch-black—listening to the commotion outside, I think there must be a blackout through the whole village.
But this morning I lit a candle in my
father’s memory (it’s strange: this is the first time the anniversary of his death hasn’t been marked by rain); the remains of his candle now light up the house for me … Jessye Norman stopped in the middle of
Dido and Aeneas
.
The refrigerator stopped.
The clock.
The heater.
All the little comforts—and only my father’s candle lingers.
Pitch-black—listening to the commotion outside, I think there must be a blackout through the whole village.
But this morning I lit a candle in my
father’s memory (it’s strange: this is the first time the anniversary of his death hasn’t been marked by rain); the remains of his candle now light up the house for me … Jessye Norman stopped in the middle of
Dido and Aeneas
.
The refrigerator stopped.
The clock.
The heater.
All the little comforts—and only my father’s candle lingers.
I haven’t told you that he was the electrician of the house—he had golden hands (he used to tell me: “You don’t need brains to be an electrician—you need luck”).
When I was at the university in Jerusalem, he used to make special trips from Tel Aviv to fix things in my apartment, he wouldn’t even let me change a lightbulb by myself.
I guess he didn’t have much faith in my luck.
When I was at the university in Jerusalem, he used to make special trips from Tel Aviv to fix things in my apartment, he wouldn’t even let me change a lightbulb by myself.
I guess he didn’t have much faith in my luck.
I can’t remember the last time I wrote by candlelight—it instantly changes everything, makes you feel like writing in other words, using a quill and ink.
My precious Yair,
Do you remember when, in Tel Aviv, you wrote the letter in which I asked you to dive with me all the way to the place where you could have been an initial possibility of me?
Do you know what I really want?
Not for you to be me, not at all; but rather, for you to linger in that place of potential, not for too long, just one moment, before “deciding” who you really are, who, of the the two of us, you are going to be.
So then, when you decide to be you, as of course you will, what will the point be if you aren’t exactly who you are (I am enough of myself already)?
Just that you hesitate one moment before you become distinguished from me, at those imaginary crossroads between us.
That hesitation—do you understand?
It’s a whole world.
It’s a whole world.
And I have another wish (you’re allowed three): I hope, I pray, that we will always mourn the fact that each one of us chose to be exactly he himself, mourn it together in a tiny corner of our souls.
(There, my father’s candle flickered a bit.
Even he is confirming it.)
Even he is confirming it.)
… later, when the lights came back on, in the middle of doing the dishes, I felt some kind of “transmission” approaching.
I started to walk, confused, around the house; I looked out every window and didn’t see anyone.
I turned on the radio and heard an educational program about
astronomy; some expert said, “The probability of an event occurring diminishes the more information it contains.”
I started to walk, confused, around the house; I looked out every window and didn’t see anyone.
I turned on the radio and heard an educational program about
astronomy; some expert said, “The probability of an event occurring diminishes the more information it contains.”
I immediately wrote it down, wet hands and all.
Not that I understood it—but I could tell that something important is coded in it!
Not that I understood it—but I could tell that something important is coded in it!
It will be fine.
I am certain of it.
I am certain of it.
I don’t know why, I’m not searching for a reason.
It will be fine.
It will all work out for the best; maybe because of the smell of rain in the air that just passed by; the three dogs raised their heads and I felt the garden whistling and murmuring … A few weeks ago you said that you feel me in “three different places in the body.”
I now feel you in a few more places (let’s say five, by my last count).
It will be fine.
It will all work out for the best; maybe because of the smell of rain in the air that just passed by; the three dogs raised their heads and I felt the garden whistling and murmuring … A few weeks ago you said that you feel me in “three different places in the body.”
I now feel you in a few more places (let’s say five, by my last count).
The wonder is how I feel you in a place I thought was already completely dead in me, closed off by a scar.
(To “sober” myself up a little, I immediately went back and reread a few choice passages from Tel Aviv.)
So then?
We had only three days together, on the “one and only walk we’ve managed to take on our three days together”?
Cheap.
Terribly cheap.
We had only three days together, on the “one and only walk we’ve managed to take on our three days together”?
Cheap.
Terribly cheap.
Why can we not be spoiled with wide, relaxed time, spreading out over forever?
Why couldn’t you dare to imagine a completely fantastical situation in which we are, for example, living together, even for a short time, in the same house?
One ordinary and banal supper in our kitchen?
Why couldn’t you dare to imagine a completely fantastical situation in which we are, for example, living together, even for a short time, in the same house?
One ordinary and banal supper in our kitchen?
The fiery heat of the revolving sword—I already told you: it’s you.
You.
The heat, and the sword, and the constant revolving.
And you positioned yourself in front of every possible entrance to the Garden, so you would never be able to go back.
I really wish I knew what it was, the horrible, shameful sin for which you were expelled.
Was it something you did?
Something you were?
Were you too little, or too much?
You.
The heat, and the sword, and the constant revolving.
And you positioned yourself in front of every possible entrance to the Garden, so you would never be able to go back.
I really wish I knew what it was, the horrible, shameful sin for which you were expelled.
Was it something you did?
Something you were?
Were you too little, or too much?
Too little and too much at the same time, but never exactly at the same time?
That is probably your huge “betrayal” of them: you couldn’t match their “exactly.”
That is probably your huge “betrayal” of them: you couldn’t match their “exactly.”
I believe, with all my heart, that there is a place, perhaps not Eden, but a place we can be together.
A place which is no larger than a pinhead, in reality, because of all the inevitable limitations—but which will be
wide and open between us, and in it you can be you and everything you are.
A place which is no larger than a pinhead, in reality, because of all the inevitable limitations—but which will be
wide and open between us, and in it you can be you and everything you are.
There is only one thing about which I am not yet sure, and this is what loosens up my hands … that, perhaps, you are not at all capable of believing that somewhere in this world exists a place where you can be yourself, and where you will be loved.
(If this is so, you will never, ever, believe that someone is capable of truly loving you.)
I’m not such a hero either.
It only takes writing “our kitchen” to scare me, to make me have to walk around with a nervous stomach, as I have for a few hours now, as if I had signed my name to some blasphemy.
It only takes writing “our kitchen” to scare me, to make me have to walk around with a nervous stomach, as I have for a few hours now, as if I had signed my name to some blasphemy.
I am, however, also incapable of going along with you, with how you are now castrating your imagination when you think of me (or write about me, or have fantasies about me).
Because our imaginations created us for each other, so how is it that you (you!) fail to understand the extent to which it is our earth, our Luz …
Because our imaginations created us for each other, so how is it that you (you!) fail to understand the extent to which it is our earth, our Luz …
Perhaps during those three days we went to the Galilee?
And slept in a little cabin in Metula?
We made love the whole night and didn’t speak at all.
Only silly talk.
I told you that you give me shivers all down my spine, and you said, shreckles, like shivering in a forest of freckles.
Then you kissed me between my eyebrows, and I massaged your entire body with only my eyelashes, and wrote words to you on your forehead with my fingers (but I wrote them backward so that you would be able to read them from the inside).
Then you kissed me between my eyebrows, and I massaged your entire body with only my eyelashes, and wrote words to you on your forehead with my fingers (but I wrote them backward so that you would be able to read them from the inside).
In the beginning, we touched each other only as total strangers.
Then we touched each other as others had taught us.
Only afterward did we dare touch like you and me.
I thought that when you are with me in this way, you are part of my home, as the word would be pronounced in my most internal language.
I thought, the root of my soul, the root of your soul.
It gave us so much pleasure …
At midnight, in the middle of our sleep, you fluffed up the pillow under my head, and I mumbled that it didn’t matter, and you said, “But it
does matter.
Pillows are important, Miriam.
The most important thing is for the pillow to be in the exact right place …”
does matter.
Pillows are important, Miriam.
The most important thing is for the pillow to be in the exact right place …”
(And every time I write my name with your mouth, I understand something new.)
And inside my confusion and my fear (of your silence not being just temporary or due to a sudden long journey, or just a horrible postal malfunction; that, perhaps, something is developing here that I never imagined possible between us)—
I am still comforted, inside all this, by the thought that I received the “gospel” from Amos, because no one, no one knows better than he how to give the gift of love and how to accept it, as well.
I am convinced that I can finally feel the emotion Amos named for me only because you stepped forward and gave yourself to me, with your full name (the most beautiful gift I received for my fortieth birthday).
You understand, don’t you?
If you hadn’t given me your name, I could never have felt that emotion, even if I heard its precise name one hundred times.
You understand, don’t you?
If you hadn’t given me your name, I could never have felt that emotion, even if I heard its precise name one hundred times.
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