The Book of Intimate Grammar

  She gazed into his imploring eyes and tousled his hair again. “I didn’t mean anything. Just that—how can I explain it”—she ran her fingers through his curls and noticed they were a darker shade of blond than before—“say you were in the desert, okay?” “Okay.” “Without any shade, and the sun beating down on you.” Silently she envisioned the fingerlike rays, prying into every recess of her life, opening letters, leafing through her secret diary, peeking behind the door when she was deep in conversation with her girl friend Zehava, the only friend she’d ever had, and then Zehava moved to America. And Yochi didn’t try to make new friends. Because the heat was so debilitating. “In the desert, li’l brother,” she hums, winding a ringlet of his hair around her finger, maybe he was too young to speak to this way, though maybe you could still save him, give him a clue, you owe him that much, you’ve been using him as a decoy. “Ouch, Yochi!” “Sorry.” She loosened the ringlet. It’s a lie, it isn’t true, I’ve always loved him, I’ve never been jealous. Okay, you weren’t jealous, but you did use him as your decoy. Nonsense, he’s always been better than me at everything. When they said he was intelligent, you called him a genius. Exactly, I never envied him. Yochi’s lips are moving: I was mature about it; when the art teacher told Mama how well he drew, I said he would be another Picasso. A decoy, to divert attention. Not true. I’ve always been proud of him; and when he played the guitar, I said he has a light … a special light in his eyes … right in front of Mama I said that … Admit it, admit it, you feel guilty about him. She looked at him lying on his bed in that ridiculous outfit, mummified in Mama’s shame. “Because plants that grow in the desert,” she said softly, “have to be wary of the sun, and send out tiny pleated leaves to keep from being burned right away. It’sa hard life in the desert.” She falls silent. She can see in his eyes that he doesn’t understand. Maybe he really is too young.

  “Yochi.”

  “Yes, Aronaleh.”

  “Look into my eyes.”

  “Why?”

  “Is there a different look in them now? Have they changed? Tell me the truth.”

  She doesn’t even ask what he’s talking about. She peers deep into his eyes and says nothing.

  “I think I used to have a puppylike look in my eyes. An innocent look.”

  “People mature.”

  “No, it isn’t that.”

  She stood up so he wouldn’t see her faking a smile. “I think I’ll write that down for you.” She rummaged in her drawer for the notebook where she used to record his adorable sayings.

  “Come on, what am I, a baby?”

  “It’s just so we’ll remember. Someday you’ll get a kick out of it.”

  He leaned over her shoulder and read the last entry: “21st of Shevat. Aronaleh is ten and one month. He made up a story about why bambis are brown. Once upon a time, bambis were as colorful as peacocks. And one bambi went out with his parents and the herd but they came to a swamp, and the other deer lay down and cried, because they couldn’t cross it, so the bambi went in first, shouting that he would teach them how to skip across the swamp without drowning, and his parents begged him not to, because God would punish him …”

  “Stop it, that’s enough!” Aron shut the notebook in her face. He was pale and earnest. “I don’t want you to write about me anymore. That’s for little kids. That’s over.” But inside he was appalled. Had three whole years gone by without a single noteworthy utterance? Had he been like this for three years already?

  Yochi put the notebook back in the drawer. She stood before him limply. There was growing commotion in the salon and cries of Let’s see the bar mitzvah groom.

  “I’ll go out and say you’re coming, okay?”

  A moment more and he would go out. He peeked at his watch. In New York we’re still asleep. It’s five o’clock in the morning, so it mightstill be possible, theoretically, to call expensive Photo Gwirtz and hire them for the occasion at the last minute. Why not? Outside, there was shouting and laughter. Most of the guests were from out of town, Netanya, Holon, Tel Aviv, and some of them hadn’t seen Aron in two years, since the bar mitzvah of Chomek and Hassia’s son Gidi, when Aron was eleven. What had he been doing for the past two years? Wasting time, that’s what. He stared at the squares on the salon carpet they’d moved into his bedroom for the party. Vichtig, they called the carpet, because the man who sold it to them never stopped talking about himself. Two years. God in heaven. If you add up all the centimeters and kilograms the kids at school have put on in that time you’d have enough to make a whale. He chuckled. Or imagine that they didn’t grow at all, and instead, between rows 2 and 3, there’d be an enormous slippery whale swelling up more and more every minute. Again he hid himself in bed, practicing that sumo technique. Out there, Rivche’s Dov asked hoarsely, What’s happened to the bar mitzvah groom, why are they hiding him? and Mama shouted from the kitchen that he should eat a little tongue meanwhile, she knows how much he loves her tongue. Just thinking about it makes his mouth water, he jested, and Aron remembered Lealeh, his daughter, no one had ever seen her, she’d been in an institution all her life, and you weren’t even allowed to ask how she was.

  Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Uncle Shimmik’s bald head peeked in, with those dangerous brown spots. Aron quickly reached into his pocket and touched the onion, a fresh, new strip he prepared especially for today. Shimmik saw him. He stood up close. He was thinking. Aron squeezed the onion and looked down. Shimmik was silent. He was secretly thinking, according to the onion, It’s been two years since I’ve seen you, Aronchik, and in my imagination you’d grown tall as the ceiling. Yes yes, answered Aron; he knew they were waiting for him, he just had something to finish here first and then he’d come out to celebrate with everyone. “Can I bring you a little something to eat in here? Your mama, God bless her, has made such a feast—a mechayeh!” And Shimmik touched three fingers to his big thick lips. Aron said it wasn’t necessary really, but now Ruja pushed in behind him, small and fast as a rat. “I will not give up!” she said to Shimmik with her crooked palsy smile. “We came here all the way from Haifa!” Shimmik managed to shut the door before she got in and Aron couldhear the two of them whispering outside. Through the onion Ruja told Shimmik that she planned to saunter in casual-like, and see if it’s true what they said about him. And Shimmik answered: It’s much worse than I thought. Juice from the onion strip dripped over his fingers. Now Ruja was saying that she’d only go in for a minute, to see if he’s mentally retarded as well, and Shimmik answered, deliberately loud, “It won’t do any good, Rujinka, I’ve been trying to persuade him.” But Ruja was determined. “You leave it to me.” And she barged into Aron’s room with her crooked smile. You can count on Ruja not to miss a chance to gall me, said Mama to Papa later that night when they were writing the gift list, she’d worm her way into my kishkes if she could.

  Ruja spoke gaily, nonchalantly, and Aron felt compelled to answer with the highest-sounding words he knew. Seeing her eyes fixed on his thin, smooth leg, he was forced to utter, “I regret to say,” his “regret to say” wriggling between them like the tail a lizard sheds to distract a predator. Even when her eyes grew wide at his intelligence and she was convinced that at least his brains were all right, Aron knew what she was thinking. Only her lipstick smiled at him. She sniffed the air and went to open the window. It’s stifling in here, Aronaleh, aren’t you hot, and she also said that there was an onion smell, and smiled at him again. Come, Aronaleh, everyone’s waiting, they’ll think you’re angry or something, and my Omri is here, it’s been two years since you’ve seen each other, and you used to be such good friends, we still have the pictures of you from that Purim party. Aron stole a glance at his watch. Maybe a doctor in New York had just discovered the cure, maybe a plane was even now approaching our shores, carrying the medicine.

  Ruja dragged him out by the hand, making a fuss. Nu sure, Mama rasped through the onion, so that everyone can share my happiness. As he stood in the hallway
he could hear Shimmik organizing the cousins for a family portrait and asking about the bar mitzvah groom. Aron said excuse me to Ruja and went into the bathroom to piss. Nothing new there. Shimmik ordered the cousins to stand up straight, not to move, not to breathe. Aron tried to imagine how they looked together, tall and strong as evergreens, or like the wall of players blocking a penalty kick, their hands protecting them below. He threw a piece of paper into the water so he wouldn’t have to pull the chain and cause a flood. Someone knocked on the door impatiently. He stepped out,turning the bathroom over to Mama, who pushed her way in quickly with Grandma Lilly. “Don’t ask what she did to me,” Mama seethed, her face pinched and her eyes evasive. “Such humiliation, in front of company! Nu, get in already, Mamchu!” And she closed the door behind them.

  Aron took a deep breath and went out to the salon, where, of all people, he bumped into Giora, and suddenly felt himself diminishing, and the burny place in his stomach flashed red. He stood as straight as he could, conscious that everyone was looking at him and that they knew, and then he slumped again. But he had no choice because there he was. He put his hands on his hips, and let them down; he put one foot out, then pulled it back; he folded his arms over his chest; it was only four months since he’d been with Giora, yet he barely recognized him anymore. With downcast eyes he stood before him, trying to hold a conversation with his gergeleh. A perfect gergeleh it was, too, moving up and down like a pump to give Giora just the right voice. He tried his best to ignore the aunts and uncles, and the children beside their parents, staring at him, and the sudden hush that fell over the house. At last it dawned on him why Mama had been in such a hurry to lock herself in the bathroom with Grandma. Giora asked him if he would be coming again next summer, and Aron stared at him in amazement, remembering how he had tormented him, and answered that this summer, he regretted to say, he would be too busy getting ready for eighth grade, but as he spoke, he realized that if he did go to Tel Aviv next summer, Giora would no longer be cruel to him, that his cruelty the previous summer had erupted at a transitional moment which he was now well beyond.

  Pretending to ignore what was happening around him, Aron continued to chat with Giora and tug at his stiff little bow tie. He asked with feigned smugness about one or another of the boys in Giora’s crowd, and casually mentioned the sunken raft, to gauge whether Giora felt guilty or embarrassed about it, because he had a dim impression—no, that was a lie, pretty words—he’d thought about it thousands of times, trying to bring back the moment; sometimes he would dwell on it for an entire lesson, it was not impossible that his difficulty had started at that moment when scarcely any oxygen reached his brain; yes, how often he had pictured that scene to himself, the murderous expression on Giora’s face in the gray-green water, how he ruthlessly climbed overAron to save himself, turning Aron into an enemy, and maybe that was the turning point for Giora too, when he began to change into what he was today, as though they had both been through a kind of secret ordeal, which only Giora had passed, though he barely remembered it, or at least pretended not to, and Aron, amazed at how well he dissembled his feelings, had to ask him, nonchalantly, whether he remembered their walks through the streets of Tel Aviv, in the khamsin. Giora shrugged and said, Yeah, those were the days. And to seal their prolonged conversation, Aron shook his hand, startling Giora with that new air of gravity, which seemed to suggest he had arrived at some final realm of maturity, notwithstanding his physical appearance.

  Giora had to leave with his father in the middle of the party to get back to Tel Aviv in time for a Scouting event. Aunt Gucha stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. No sooner was he out the door than she hurried to tell everyone he had a girlfriend, for thirty minutes he stands in front of the mirror before he leaves the house. Aunt Ruja said, “What do you know,” and then she told them in a half whisper everyone could hear about her Omri and his blond doll. All these fat, floury women, Aron saw, began to titter around her like young girls, secretly hankering to be Omri’s blond doll, and through the hissing of the ember inside him, Aron knew this was somehow connected with those pictures that still turned up occasionally in different hiding places around the house (when he bothered to look for them), and also with that embrace, and the slimy smile, and the way Mama elbows Papa when they walk down the street, husti gezein? Did you see her? Aron turned sharply to the window and ordered himself to prepare to dive inward and start Aroning; it used to be like going into a colorful market, the thoughts and ideas would leap and swirl before him, but now the pleasure of it was the quiet in there, the empty stillness where you could rest, unwind. He pressed his forehead to the windowpane and looked across the valley, at the hawthorn trees and the little junkyard. If he moved, he could also see the cave where he and Gideon hid the basalt stone; he never did explain to Gideon why that was necessary, he merely insisted, because for all their covenants, the notes they swallowed and the wine they drank, the words they carved on the tree and the blood they mingled from cuts in their arms, Aron still needed something more, something undefinable that flickered enigmatically in the depths of their friendship. Was it still there, he wondered. He lingered in the memory awhile, butperceived himself floating fast to the surface, against his will, because it was obvious now what an idiot he’d been, it was Papa who hid the pictures, not merely from him, but also, how could he have missed it, from Mama, yes definitely, that explained the secrecy and the mystery, and when their friends came over to play rummy on Friday nights, Mama and Papa used different cards, as Aron knew because on Friday nights he always stayed home. He and Yochi. Like two inseparable fogies, Mama exploded, Munish mit Zalman, and she implored Yochi to stay in her room with him while their friends were there. Maybe she even tried to bribe her with money, sure, every ruse ties in with another, and a few months ago something happened while he and Yochi were lying on their beds pretending to read, and the guests in the salon were playing rummy for shillings, and talking about their children, and Mama started bragging about how popular Aron and Yochi were at school, and about all the fun they had at parties: I tell you, since we had our phone installed, Yochi’s boyfriends never stop calling. He and Yochi were lying rigidly on their beds, staring blindly at their books, when Yochi sprang up suddenly. Stand straight, Aron, let me see you, she said, looking him over with an expert eye, aggressively buttoning his pajama top and combing his hair with a part on the side. Then she put on the Golda dress that gave her a big tuchis and the old glasses she hadn’t worn in years, and as if this wasn’t enough, she found the retainer from her braces in the cupboard, and stuck it in her mouth, and she emerged from the bedroom, with Aron in tow, and walked straight up to Mama in the salon; and then—how could he have been so stupid—he saw their playing cards were from an ordinary deck with no pictures on the back. He stared at the windowpane: yes, he kept the pictures hidden from Mama too! What else was he hiding? Who was he anyway?! Over his shoulder he could hear Ruja whisper something to the women, which was answered by snorts of laughter. Schrechlich, said Gucha, it seems like only yesterday they were young enough to take to the ladies’ room and today they’re men, I don’t remember that happening so early in our day. Hardly! cried Ruja, at their age we were innocents, we didn’t know from nothing. I certainly didn’t, added Itka in a naughty whisper, not until my wedding night, when Hindaleh, bless her, came in and explained the whole megillah, and scared me half to death, I still thought children came from—She lowered her voice still more, and Aron sealed himself off inside to keep out the whispers, so all he heard was theircachinnations; Rivche, laughing convulsively, nearly knocked over the blue bowl with the doe and the stag chasing each other, and stained her dress with a drip of mayonnaise from her triangular sandwich; Aron got ready to pick up the pieces, but Mama caught it without even looking, she just reached out and snapped it up in mid-air. Go wash the stain off with water and a little soap, Rivche, and when she finally stopped laughing she said, It’s all right for you, you have boys, but think about me, with a teenage daug
hter, oi, don’t ask. You did right, dear Hindaleh, slobbered Zipporah, a distant cousin who had three sons. You had a girl and a boy, the way it says you should in the Bible. And your three boys, Mama reciprocated, will bring you ready-made daughters. Here’s wishing the same for you, Hindaleh, said Zipporah. Nu nu, said Mama, lowering her voice, trust my Yochi not to waste any time. And she winked a huge ugly wink at her that pulled down half her face. Lucky thing Yochi was in the kitchen just then.

  When will it end? He was utterly exhausted from the squirming and the phony smiles and the whispering onion; and also from this new effort he had to make, because for the first time he understood with his brain how intricately conversations are woven and how many invisible threads there are in the corners of a smile. Yochi came in from the kitchen with another tray of chicken, how many poor hens had given their lives for his bar mitzvah, and Mama tried to grab it from her, but Yochi held fast, and the two of them took a few steps that way, with the tray held high in the air, smiling at the guests, and because they couldn’t quite decide which way to turn, they headed straight to him, the bar mitzvah groom. Have some pupiklach, said Mama, they’re simply delicious. No no, said Yochi sweetly, have a wing. But my gizzards came out like butter today, Mama cajoled him with a cheery face. Hmm, but the wings are really yummy too. Yochi curtsied to him, almost shoving the chicken into his mouth, till he pulled away in alarm. The pupiklach melt in your mouth, urged Mama, fending Yochi off with her shoulder. Try the wings, whispered Yochi conspiratorially, and the aromas swirled around like fog, condensing into heavy drops of gravy. I’ve had enough, I don’t want any more! he protested, why were they jumping on him like that, in front of everyone. With his back to the wall, confused and flushed, he forced himself into his thoughts again: It’s fun to think, it’s relaxing, it fills you with love, where were we, ah yes, he’d always thought it was a family sham, but today a thin membraneseemed to peel from his eyes and he could see something new here, a delicate beauty, even compassion, because everyone knew everyone else’s secrets, everyone was a hostage in someone else’s hands, at their mercy or their cruelty. Why are you thinking these thoughts? Think like a boy your age. It all goes back to your problem. This is just another symptom. You think you’re winning, but you keep losing. And you have to be so careful and conscientious in order to make a single statement without hurting or shaming someone: for instance, Mama was just telling the women they were lucky to have daughters, but she only said it when Rivche, poor Lealeh’s mother, went out to the kitchen. That was a minor mercy, but the air was full of tiny darts, phrases waiting to burst with poison, compliments with false bottoms, the caress of secrets shared, and carefully circumvented topics. These he discerned, as he opened his eyes to them in benevolent wonder. And he too, it seemed, would be spared today.