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Authors: David Grossman

Be My Knife (42 page)

BOOK: Be My Knife
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I didn’t even tell you—I meant to tell you when we met, and not until then, when I would give you this notebook (I’m writing in it now, as if I have already given up on the possibility that we will ever meet)—
Well, what?
That I knew your name before you revealed it to me.
Sarah, our secretary, was handing out the mail as usual and, when she came up to me, spat out nastily, “I don’t think he’s sent you anything today.”
I was confused for a moment and asked, “Who?”
And she said your name, your full name, the real one, adding that, by the way, she didn’t know we were so close and told me that you and she have kids in the same kindergarten class (yes, it is she, the vital lady).
You must understand, Sarah is always terribly alert to any kind of “dramas” that might be brewing in the teachers’ lounge, and I think she is particularly sensitive to me, trying to understand what exactly is going on there in my private life that apparently refuses to allow her to squeeze it into any kind of category.
In short: she must have seen you, more than once, when you dropped off your letters, you perfect spy.
When I blushed (all over my body, in a perfectly reasonable fashion for a sixteen-year-old girl), she started flowing over like a spring with gossip about you.
I was probably too overwhelmed to silence her immediately, as she deserved; and it so happened that, against my will, and perhaps—a little—because I couldn’t withstand the temptation, I heard, in one moment, quite a few “stories.”
Sarah, as you well know, has a big mouth.
(Srsrsrsrsr …) And I eventually had to practically stand up and walk away for her to be quiet.
I don’t want to hear about you from strangers!
Talk, Yair.
 
 
Come to me, be here with me.
Let’s make up, we had such a fight this afternoon, and it is so hard for me to fight with you, it’s unbearable, especially with you gone.
And it’s even worse to be alone with my anger at you, with Sarah’s whispers.
I don’t want to write the details down in this notebook, what came over me, what I became in a blink—I don’t want to go there again.
Not without you.
I cleaned myself up and calmed down a little.
I’m in the bath.
I mean, Yokhai is in the bathtub and I am watching him, sitting on the toilet seat and writing to you.
I hope you don’t mind.
Isn’t it a bit late for him?
you ask.
Your voice always softens when you speak of him.
Yes, it’s late.
It’s late for me too, I can barely keep my eyes open.
But he wet the bed again, and after I finished wiping him off, I thought, He can’t stay like that the whole night.
You wouldn’t leave Ido that way.
So even though I had given him his bath an hour ago, I brought him back here.
To tell you the truth, I thought we’d only have a short shower and then back to bed.
But he had other plans, and the moment I finished giving him his shower, he decisively sat in the bathtub and made happy splashing motions in the air, and looked so sweet and flashed me such a sassy smile that I couldn’t refuse him.
So come, sit, join us.
I don’t know how long we’ll stay here, because lingering in the bathtub is an adventure demanding absolute precision and courtesy to all of the tiniest details—where to sit, making the water fall exactly on the middle of his back—where to place the two soaps, and the comb, the boat, and a few other toys—but in the meantime, it seems
everything is well, because he is smiling his most melting smile, slowly running water through his fingers, his eyes almost closed.
If you were here right now, you would see what solid pleasure is.
Nilly also comes in, with her tail straight up in the air, to watch.
This cat is utterly human—and also utterly pregnant, as I am only now noticing.
So is this the reason for your recent aggressiveness toward the dogs?
And who’s the father this time, the tiger-striped or the yellow?
Probably both of them.
Will you refuse to nurse again, your little protest against nature’s enslavement of females?
Oh, Nilly, Nilly, you free soul, tell me, can you be free without being cruel?
It’s eleven at night.
Total silence.
The room is filled with the peach scent of the bath foam, Yokhai is sending his hands to roam the hills, above the two rings his fat brown knees make sticking out of the water.
Nilly has curled up on the little bathmat and fallen asleep.
And outside, the wind is blowing, and the poplar behind the house bends and rustles.
You thought of me just now.
Yair, I am not ignoring your last letter—your farewell words were clear and sharp.
Nor does your long silence leave any room for doubt.
But what can I do?
I feel it, I feel every time you address me with a word or thought.
Like right now, at this minute.
You sometimes wake me in the middle of the night.
That’s when I know you dreamed of me.
I cannot explain it, it is only that my mind and my heart suddenly leap to the peak of the mountain; if I am to believe in these leaps, then you haven’t stopped speaking to me in the past few weeks, in the daytime and at night, in the city and the country, in the kitchen and in the bathtub—wait one minute.
That’s it, that’s done.
There is always one moment when his head starts to droop and his eyes flutter and my heart stops in my chest—but he was only brought down by fatigue today, thank God.
Should I tell you everything?
Should I?
Would you go through each of my daily routines with me?
It’s strange, we never spoke of such things.
First of all, you have to take him out of the tub.
Easy enough to say.
But it’s as if his body has absorbed all the water and my tiredness as well.
I lift him out and dry him off, and he keeps slumping over onto me, he’s already completely asleep, Yokhai with his peachy smell.
I carry him to his room.
He’s very heavy; he’s thin, but has a special heaviness to him,
the density of his insides, I think.
I diaper him, because I don’t have the energy to give him another bath tonight.
Wait—
 
 
When I went outside to hang the basket of fresh laundry, the air was full of fog again; my garden transformed into a silent ghost’s ball, and I couldn’t leave, in spite of the cold.
I drank in the air and danced around the cypress tree with a moist pillowcase and one manly pajama.
Tell me (have you noticed what a wonderful couple we are?
I always say “Tell me” and you always say “Listen”), how is this strange weather affecting you?
This long drought—do you feel it, too, this cosmic, private restlessness?
Every day I walk with this constricting, ever-present feeling of coming chaos—a gigantic mistake growing … and how long can this last before—?
But, as I read in the papers this morning, the rabbis have already charged us to fast for rain—so it might still be so good as to grace us with its presence (even though I just hung the laundry).
Can you hear that?
It’s the neighbor’s new baby, I told you about her.
She is still crying day and night.
Huge eyes and lips like cherries—and what crying!
She’s already a month and a half old, and the saga of her name continues.
I sometimes think that’s why she cries so much.
Every day or two they stop by to consult with me—as what, a baby expert or an expert on names?—bringing a new list.
I listen, and give them my opinion, and they get excited—and then some grandmother or aunt is always unsatisfied.
It is truly beginning to upset me.
Not their requests for advice, but the fact that there is a little girl in the world living nameless for so long.
It’s not right (perhaps this is why the rain hasn’t come yet?).
… All this chatter—it’s only fatigue.
I’m already sitting with the last cup of tea of the day.
I almost poured you a cup by mistake.
I’m wrapping myself around the steaming cup.
For some reason, over the past few days I can’t stand the taste of coffee.
You are probably enough caffeine for me right now.
I had so many little and big things to tell you today.
Even now, my hand is drawn to my pad of paper and my envelopes, but I can’t write you a letter.
I made a decision, Yair, I will not write you until you reply to my last letter.
You are requested to help me maintain my pride in this respect.
Some decisive, impatient soul immediately asks me, Why should I not write these things to myself, between me and myself?
Why does it seem
so false to me?
(And egocentric?
And like some lady in a Victorian salon?) Why shouldn’t I start writing some kind of “diary” like this, kept between myself and me, so I can at least ease the burden of your silence, the burden of my own expectations?
What, don’t I deserve that?
Am I not, myself, an address?
My heart shrinks even considering it; the pain of giving up my old hopes, the promise I made you of wanting to give what you have awakened within me to you and only you.
This is how it tastes.
Here, finally, Amos’s car.
 
 
On certain days, even swimming is not enough to cleanse me.
I had to stop and get out after five laps, I felt as if someone had tied weights to my ankles and wrists.
I walked home from the pool, through the strange season occurring here, between big wheels of dry tumbleweed and trees that seem more and more hollow, desperate.
The smell, as usual, affects me more than anything, a dry bitterness rising from the ground.
The big snails should already be out at this time of day.
Where are they now?
My heart is aching for the narcissus that has only just bloomed and is dimming and fading away.
The daisies are at the peak of their bloom this week, in places that were completely naked at this time last year; their carpets of blooms are now almost wild, almost embarrassing, promiscuous … I actually have to stop for a moment to decide whether I will walk around them or splash about through them.
I had to stop and sit in the middle of the road, it so depressed me, the thought that perhaps I didn’t dare want you with all the strength of my being.
No (No, NO)!
I wanted it very, very much.
Very few times in my life have I dared to want this way.
It’s already November.
Another special milestone I have marked in my calendar has passed.
Where are you?
What are you doing with this heartache?
I know you don’t suffer any less than I do, perhaps even more; because now we are both allied against you.
So, of course, my first impulse is to come and help you, write you a letter of comfort, be a mother and a sister to you …
But I have already played this part too many times in my life, and I dared to want something different with you, you know.
Do you know?
Did you even understand?
My heart sinks—did you
understand my will, my hunger?
The passion of my yearning for someone, a man above all, who would not only dare to strip me of my clothes, but would look at what is there within me, so we could see, together, what I am made of.
There, I am not just naked.
I am completely bare in my nakedness.
Strange.
The hardest thing for me to give up now is this will.
It screams out of every mouth of my body.
 
 
… They changed the area codes in Jerusalem, too, and alongside the usual mess is my own private sorrow that the “bureaucracy” tipped some aesthetic balance in my previous number.
I am comforted by the fact that they added a round six to you.
 
 
Half past three in the morning.
What happened?
Why did you wake me up?
What is the reason behind this sudden emotion?
It’s lasting until now, a clear internal signal that doesn’t stop even as I write; on the contrary—it is like an alarm in my body, ticking and alert.
BOOK: Be My Knife
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