The Book of Intimate Grammar

  In silent gratitude she bowed to Mama, who only turned away. Then she glanced imploringly at Aron, whose eyes widened at her, and her heart soared for a moment, till Mama glared at him, and like a chick warned by the mother bird of approaching danger, he sealed his face to hide the living glow in his eyes, but he blushed for shame. What we have here is a tiny tribe with strict, even pitiless laws—she melted—a violent and repressed civilization. She had not felt such a trembling inside since the day she arranged her National Geographicsaccording to subject and country.

  At a quarter to eight that evening Papa flourished his hammer one last time. A snag of plaster, hanging from the ceiling, crumbled down. The wall disappeared and there on the opposite wall was Guernica.Papa stood still, his hammer on his shoulder, studying the picture as though he had just noticed it the first time. Mama took a deep breath. Carefully she folded her knitting. Edna Bloom, worn out and bleary-eyed, could barely sit up in her dusty chair.

  “Schoin,” said Mama. “Pay what you owe and we’ll be leaving.”

  Papa laid his hammer down and slumped as he hesitated before turning to look at the women.

  “I have an idea,” said Edna nervously.

  Mama froze.

  “I will pay Mr. Kleinfeld another fifty pounds to tear down the other wall as well.” She pointed limply to the second bedroom wall. Withoutso much as a glance at Mama she revealed the wad of moist bills she had been clutching for the past four hours and set them on the table.

  Mama looked down at the five-pound notes, with the picture of a muscular farmer holding a hoe, young and virile, staring out at her. “Miss Bloom,” she said, her bosom rising, “I spit on your money.” Never had Aron seen her so red. “There’s something wrong with you, you’re not normal. You let everyone see what’s going on in your head. My husband is a respectable man, Miss Bloom, and what I think is that you should go live in an insane asylum, where you’ll be taken care of.” Aron’s knees began to shake. It wasn’t like Mama to tell strangers to their faces what she usually said behind their backs.

  “Sixty pounds, then,” said Edna Bloom, turning to Papa.

  “Over my dead body,” said Mama, not budging.

  “Seventy.”

  Mama gasped. Before her eyes danced fur-lined boots, a new set of dinner dishes to replace the old ones from their wedding that looked as if they came from the flea market, a new steam iron, a modern foam-rubber mattress to replace the straw one, a new marble counter for the kitchen to replace the cracked …

  “Your money is dirty,” croaked Mama, never taking her eyes off the moistened wad, which seemed to come to life and reach out to her. “I spit on it,” she muttered weakly, but didn’t spit.

  “A hundred,” ordained Edna with astonishing composure.

  “If Moshe’s willing. I’m not.” She tottered out the door as scalding tears of humiliation ran down her cheeks, and this was Mama, Mama who would rather die than give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

  Papa gathered up his tools, glanced at Edna with gratitude and stifled excitement, and went out the door, followed by Yochi. Aron remained behind a moment more, obscured between the piano and the wall. Here, this was his big chance to speak to her alone. To confess: I feel so happy in your house, so at home, and you’re nice, pay no attention to what they said to you. It’s only words. But she didn’t even know he was there, she stood with her back to him and began to gasp with laughter. Aron crouched down. She raised her voice again, wreathing herself round with sobs of pleasure, ticklish spasms, as though this laughter could release her very soul. Her wispy yellow hair floated around herface. Aron dared not move. For a moment he didn’t even recognize her. It was as if a stranger in her skin were shaking her. Slowly she calmed herself, raised a slender forefinger, and pointed thoughtfully at the bedroom wall. Then another wall. And another, and another, while endless tears of mirth rained down over her dust-powdered cheeks.

  19

  Mama declared she would not set foot in Edna Bloom’s or speak to Papa until he finished the work there. At night Papa took out the scrimpy Gandhi mattress he brought back from reserve duty once and slept in the salon. Mama ordered Yochi to fill in for her at Edna’s, but Yochi had exams coming up, so was excused. I’ll go, ventured Aron cautiously; and Mama gave him a dirty look; she didn’t trust him, maybe she thought he was too young, or then again, maybe she thought he was getting to be too much like Papa. If only he could bring himself to ask her why now, he wouldn’t have to agonize endlessly over that look on her face, but at least she didn’t say he wasn’t allowed to go, and if he went, he would be representing the family.

  How long does it take to tear down a simple wall? About four hours. But how long did it take Papa to tear down the second wall at Edna Bloom’s? Five days. God Almighty, Mama screamed in silence from the Bordeaux sofa, where she lay with an ice pack on her head, that’s enough time to create the earth and the moon with the stars thrown in, and to the neighbors listening outside, Papa seemed to be prolonging every blow, searching for the vulnerable point in the wall, the tender nerve center of wires and pipes and rods, so it would collapse at his feet in perfect resignation. As soon as he arrived each day Edna would serve him a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, a large glass for him and a small one for Aron. But she isn’t smart like Mama yet, thought Aron, she doesn’t know you’re supposed to cover the glass with a little saucerso the vitamins stay in till Papa gets there, though the juice was no less delicious for that. Papa slurped and gulped while Aron sipped politely to correct the bad impression. “L’chaim,” whispered Edna, beaming a smile, and took the glass from Papa’s hand; a blush spread over their faces, and Papa stammered, Nu, where’s the hammer, and Edna giggled, Here it is, it’s waiting just for you; and before he’d even taken off his shirt, Papa struck a few blows at the wall to hide his embarrassment, or maybe he wanted to show the wall who’s boss, but eventually he relaxed and got into his stride, and Edna swooned in her armchair.

  Five whole days. Rapture. Too bad his wife stopped coming, though, reflected Edna, really and truly this is what she thought; despite the woman’s coarseness and her perplexing insults, Edna regretted that she and the girl had disappeared: because they too were needed here, to complete the picture and the pleasure too; she was fond of the quiet, sad-looking boy, but didn’t they once have a bigger child, no, she was probably mistaken; sometimes he would look up at her in a way that made her want to hug him, to comfort him. There was something wrong with the boy. Worms perhaps: he headed for the bathroom almost as soon as they stepped through the door, and sometimes he stayed in there for hours, whatever did he … a naughty smile played on her lips. Ooo, such dirty thoughts! she scolded herself, but who knows, maybe it’s true about little boys that age. She stretched her limbs with mild sensual surprise, no, it couldn’t be, here, in my house? And again she giggled, coyly, magnanimously: Oh, let him have a little pleasure, there’s plenty to go around, and she bit her lip, surprised and blushing with the sudden realization of what the woman meant by those insults which only last night had seemed so preposterous, the charge that Edna and her husband were—She tittered at the notion, what an insane idea, to suspect her of THAT?! With HIM?! Or maybe it was the child the woman wanted to protect with her animal instincts? Edna threw her head back the way she had been doing these past few days, with a thrill of release and lightheartedness that ran all the way down her spine, and then to perpetuate this new private joke of hers, she left Aron a treat in the bathroom, a kind of friendly wink, nothing cheap or vulgar, heaven forbid, just a book of erotic Indian art, conspicuously placed on top of the magazine basket after she had leafed through it, it had been years since she looked at it, she remembered that picture of the prince andhis inamorata, the prince inside his inamorata, drinking tea to prolong their ecstasy.

  Aron would emerge from her bathroom looking weary and a little dejected; Edna watched him out of the corner of her eye, absorbed in the pounding of the heavy sledgehammer, as he sta
ggered giddily back to his place like a sailor crossing the deck in a howling gale, and sat down with a sigh on one of her carpets; she noticed his favorite was the Armenian one, so she left a cushion there for him with a Bukharan coverlet, and he would stumble over—it was alarming to see a boy so tired—and curl up on it with drooping lids. From time to time she would glance over. Ah, the capacity of the young to sleep: in this horrible noise, with all the hammering and the storms outside, the boy would doze like a kitten. Inside her linen closet she found him a blanket imbued with memories, the one they had wrapped around three-year-old Nona on the long journey from Hungary to Palestine, with which, ai-lee-lu-lee, she covered him now. When the work was done, Papa would wake him. Son-of-a-gun, you fell asleep again. I did not. Go on, look how red your eyes are. I was awake, Papa, really. Were not, were not, you were sound asleep; and sometimes he could hardly wake him up, he had to shake him gently, or roughly, the boy was out like a light. Then Papa would raise him slowly to his feet, surprised at the way his drowsy limbs kept slumping back to the floor, and he would kneel before him, his big Gepetto face waxing serious, and lift him effortlessly in his arms, and Edna would pull his cap on over Papa’s shoulder: Wait, it’s covering his eyes, and he would whisper goodbye to her, and she would whisper goodbye to him, so as not to wake Aron, and on the way out Aron would cock an eye and nestle close to Papa, shivering with the cold, with the screaming black wind, and together now, they were together, they fled through the forest at midnight, in a wagon, in the storm, but yesterday something happened, shame on you, Edna, she and Papa forgot he was there, they simply forgot him, he was huddled in the corner, Edna didn’t find him till later that evening when she heard Hinda calling his name from the balcony; she was alarmed and quickly went to search for him, and sure enough, there he was, sleeping fitfully on her carpet, gripping the fringe as though he were afraid to fall back to earth, his head tucked underneath the blanket, and for a moment, oh, let him stay, hide him here like one of the souvenir dolls, like the Greeklegionnaire with the red hat and the long black tassel who so resembled the mustachioed gendarme she had tried to outface as he stood on guard at the palace in Athens, staring into his eyes for three sultry days, five hours at a time, until his duty was almost over, and then she would run off, only to reappear the following day; yes, she would keep the boy as a souvenir of the renovations, to remind her what happened here and how the wall trembled, and softly she woke him, and dressed him in his uniform, the thick green sweater and the oversized coat and woolen cap, and she led him, sleepwalking, leaning unsteadily against her shoulder, smiling out of a dream, down the stairs and along the path into his building, where she left him in a heap on the mat outside the apartment, knocked on the door for him, and fled.

  In the morning as usual Papa went to the office. He would peek at his watch every other minute and push away the piles of tedious paperwork, musing, for the first time, that perhaps he had been wrong to listen to Hinda after the accident at the bakery seven years ago: for while he lay groaning with pain in the hospital, Hinda had been pulling strings, pleading, threatening, and when he finally regained consciousness, he learned that he had lost his cherished job at the bakery, and that Mama, with her own ten fingers, had converted him into an office clerk with pension rights. So his good friends at the bakery gave him a gold wristwatch, which he never wore, and the life of the night shift was suddenly over, the rugged labor he liked so well, the companionship on the dogwatch, the smell of baking dough, the soft plump rolls, a friendly grin under a floury mustache, a glowing cigarette outside the main door, the right to sleep through most of the day, hiding under his blanket from the burning rays of at least one fiery orb … Boy, those were the days, and look at him now, a paper pusher bickering with former friends about overtime and seniority.

  Impatiently he reckoned the minutes, aching to get his hands on the sledgehammer, snatching pencils and snapping them in two like toothpicks. He couldn’t wait to begin again: the constant hammering never weighed on his spirits; on the contrary, with every blow he felt that slowly, stealthily, something was being chiseled inside him: the delicate contours of his soul.

  At six-thirty every day he would lay down his hammer and ask Edna with a wink to turn her radio on so he could listen to Reuma Eldar discuss recent flash floods in the northern Negev; Aron, sequestered onthe carpet, opened a bleary eye to watch him, wondering why he had stopped hammering, and Edna too watched him nodding his heavy head. He seemed to be trying to decipher a secret message behind the simple words, intended for his ears alone. Never fear, Moshe’s here, thought Aron, but why doesn’t he keep working; the radio announcer spoke about vehicles trapped in riverbeds, and about crop damage at Kibbutz Or Haner. Papa pursed his lips and struck the wall, and Aron’s head drooped down on his shoulder …

  And one day Edna worked up the courage to fix Papa a whopping sandwich of spicy Hungarian salami, which she set down silently beside his glass of juice. For Aron too she prepared a roll with salami. Papa said nothing. Only his eyebrows twitched and his forehead turned red. Aron stared down at this sandwich. Oh no, he thought, oh no. “Aren’t you hungry, then?” she asked distractedly, glancing at Papa. Oh no. Aron’s head swerved right and left, this whopping sandwich with the fat salami slices. But she’s a vegetarian, he screamed inside, unnerved, as Papa devoured the sandwich with gusto, emitting deep guttural noises; where are his manners, where’s his breeding, lucky for him Mama isn’t around to see, and he felt himself turn pale in the presence of those teeth, because she seemed to be mouthing the chewing sounds with Papa, and Aron stumbled off to the bathroom, perturbed and whimpering to himself, I should never have come here, with his left hand unconsciously clutching the right, choking the blood off at the wrist, but no, enough, you promised, you swore not to do that anymore, he loosened his fingers and stared at the white mark on his flesh. I should never have come, what’s so great about watching him tear down a wall, but Papa’s blows resounded in his heart, swiftly entering his bloodstream, forcing him to surrender; harder, harder he blinked, till tears came; maybe this way he could get rid of the bulge that was like a fist clenched inside, maybe a great gear would grind down, splitting it open, breaking through, and Papa seemed to overhear him: how strong he is today, the salami must have given him energy. It’s for your own good, listen to the hammering, soon he’ll burst through the blockage; this has been going on for almost two weeks, more problems, he’s never had it so long before. Harder, harder, groans Aron, his lips compressed with pain, and out there, beyond the wall, Edna was feeding Papa more of that succulent salami to nourish the mighty machine of his body; he nibbles from her hand and goes on working, blasting and chewing. Becareful, Edna, be careful, but when she wasn’t careful, the greedy jaws snapped shut on her slender pink finger, on her delicate palm, her dainty wrist, and still she didn’t run; then her shoulder, her neck, he was gobbling and slurping and gnawing the fragile body …

  The next day Edna asked Mr. Lombroso’s permission to leave work for an hour. She walked into a grocery store in the old Nachlaot quarter, searched through the crowded shelves, and bought a jar of peppery Yemenite skhug.Later that evening Papa devoured the salami with skhug on both sides, and smiled at Edna with an appreciation that gave her butterflies. A few days later, instead of munching a sandwich during her ten o’clock break, she went out to the Machaneh Yehuda market, tremulously treading a sunbeam that illumined her path from behind the gloomy clouds, and arrived at the shish kebab grill. How beautifully unspoiled the market is, she mused, till a voice within her observed derisively, Really, Edna, have you forgotten that course on naive art at the civic center? And she joined the voice in ridiculing herself. She stammered her order to the waiter, one Jerusalem mixed grill, and watched with trepidation as the swarthy young cook spread chunks of raw meat on the sizzling griddle, chopped an onion very small, and sprinkled out a handful of seasonings. Then she laced her fingers, shut her eyes, and waited.

  A heaping plate of savory meat
appeared under her nose. She took a breath, raised her shoulders, and set to. Zealously she ate up the spicy meat, drawing the attention of passersby with her big straw hat and the conspicuous gesturing of a benevolent tourist—oh yes, she noticed; suddenly she could see herself from the outside, devoid of self-hatred. Take your hat off, Edna, there, that’s better, now ruffle your hair and smile at the boy who’s watching you. Her shoulders dropped. Her buttocks relaxed into a pear shape on the seat of her chair. The waiter came over and asked if Madame wished for anything more. There was a suspicion of irony in his voice, but she managed to overcome a haughty twinge and see that he was young and smiling and awake, reminding her, to her surprise, of someone she might have met on her trips to Spain and Italy and Greece, or even the man in Portugal; why had it never occurred to her before that there were exciting men so close to home. She began to joke with the waiter, and flushed with pride at his approval of her homely wit and fluency in market slang, why, he might have thought she’d roamed the Machaneh Yehuda alleys all her life.She asked for a side order of fries and hummus, and the waiter, grasping her by the wrist, gave a demonstration of the proper way to roll the pita while you wipe your plate, like a fisherman, she noted, casting a net around her flanks. A squeal of triumph filled her throat: It’s me, Edna! Perkily she dressed him up in her mind’s eye, her waiter, shall we say, in baggy pantaloons with a golden sash, and perhaps a fez with a long black tassel and bandoliers crisscrossing his chest; sometimes a demon would possess her on her travels; she always made sure to visit a city that had a palace with a sentinel standing at the entrance, tall and proud, his eyes smoldering or furious, in a frenzy to prove to her he was a man of flesh, forced to stand immobile five or six hours a day—in Stockholm it was four—and the thought of this dark curly-haired young waiter guarding the gates of the palace, her palace, yes, she would be queen, was so thrilling that she threw back her head and let the pleasure slide down her spine. The waiter smiled at her, but quizzically. She called him over, joined heads with him, and sweetly entreated: Would he be willing to sell her, ya habibi, the meat for that dish, and would he tell her the secret, ya habibi,of the right way to season it? She winked at him mischievously and felt her cheek muscles contract; the waiter returned a tentative wink and hurried back to the grill, with a comment to his helper. Edna felt happy. Outside, the rain was pouring down, and she thought of the half-demolished wall awaiting her at home. Waves of cold befogged the restaurant window, and Edna unbuttoned her sweater, exposing her slender pink throat as she brushed back her yellow hair and saw herself briefly reflected in a mirror strapped to the roof of a passing car; oh, the wonderful surprises life can bring, perhaps she needed a new hairdo, something youthful, she would dye her hair red; she dipped her pita in the saucer of skhug,and her tongue caught fire. She fanned it with her hand like a Parisian saying Oo-la-la.