The Tel Aviv kids took him out to a secluded beach with nothing but moon rocks everywhere, and they taught him how to swim for real, not doggy-paddle Jerusalem-style, and how to dive underwater with his eyes open, and in the sea he felt his soul grow boundless. At night in his sleep on the narrow porch at Gucha and Efraim’s, he could hear the swishing water beyond the mosquito nets, and he floundered and kicked in deep oblivion, drifting in and out of sleep with the rockabye flow of the tides. And he also dreamed awake: about building an underwater train, or organizing a marine corrida, with sharks in the ring instead of bulls; and he conducted experiments with burning sand, trying to turn it into glass like the ancient Phoenicians, and he sent letters over the waves to survivors on desert islands in sealed bottles of Tempo soda, and he tried to lure the mermaids out of the sea. Every summer the kids fell in love with the sea again, thanks to him. And hisskin grew tan, his hair golden. Giora was a few months younger than he was, shy in public and moody at home, and Aunt Gucha hinted in her weekly letters to Jerusalem that maybe Giora was eppes a little bit jealous of Aronchik, who had won over all his friends. Well, never mind, she wrote her sister Hinda, he’ll simply have to learn to live with it, this only child of ours who’s used to being treated like a king.
Last year, as the summer vacation was drawing to a close, Aron and the kids built a raft. For three whole weeks they worked on it from morning to night, making models according to Aron’s specifications, trying out different pieces of wood for the masts, stealing sheets from laundry lines for sails. The day before the official launching they finished early and went for a swim. All of a sudden a boat raced past them, slicing the waves like a sharp gray knife and barely missing them. The children huddled together in amazement: no boat had ever come this way before. There were two people aboard: a pretty woman and a much older man with a bony face and sallow skin. The man pointed at them and said something to the woman in a gravelly voice with a foreign accent. The woman held the hem of her green dress out to keep it from getting wet and smiled at the sunburned children gathered in the water like a school of fish, though maybe she was smiling at something else, maybe she didn’t really see them, maybe she was the old man’s prisoner, Aron worried, and he was holding her there against her will. Suddenly the man took a coin out of his wallet and tossed it over the side of the boat. The children stared in bewilderment. One of them quietly cursed the man. The man laughed hoarsely and bared his rotten teeth, and the woman laughed with him, disappointing Aron, who realized now that she was a willing accomplice. Then the man took out another coin and said, “Dis aprecious! Worth amuch!” and slyly flicked it into the water. It twirled in the air as it fell and they all dived after it under the shadow of the boat. Aron found it spinning slowly to the bottom. He caught it between his lips and pressed it under his tongue. By the time he rose to the surface the boat was gone. “Whenever you find something, hide it in your pocket and keep your mouth shut,” Mama always said, and once he’d found a tennis ball in the valley with Gideon and he disobeyed and told Gideon the ball belonged to both of them, and felt triumphant. But now for some reason he kept quiet and slipped the coin down his swimsuit at the first opportunity, where it sent an eerie shiver to his private parts.
Then the wind blew up and swelled the waves. The sea looked murky. Aron jumped to his feet and suggested that they launch the raft right away. The children hesitated, afraid the current would carry them out too far. Aron knew they were right but coaxed them anyway, to snap them out of their present gloom. He cajoled them with descriptions of the maiden voyage, how the raft would carry them across the waves, till even the skeptics were reduced to silence, and when dark clouds gathered on the horizon and he saw it was dangerous to venture out, the important thing was still to lift their spirits, to banish the dread they felt in their hearts. But they were not swayed by his eloquence. They kicked the sand and shifted their weight and rubbed their necks and looked away. He had suddenly become a stranger again, the long speech had misfired, he was too articulate for them, and their coldness cut around him like a pair of scissors and tore him out of the sunny picture. And then he gulped and asked them to wait and ran up the hill to the kiosk. With his own money, not the coin, he bought a bottle of real cognac and returned to them proudly, carrying the trophy. Let’s go, let’s launch her, he exulted, with an anxious undertone in his voice, but his radiant smile convinced them just the same.
The Captain Hookwas launched with a small bottle of cognac at exactly four-thirty that afternoon. And went down in a whirlpool five minutes later. The children bailed out and scrambled ashore, looking stunned and devastated. There was one scary moment, when Aron and Giora were sucked into an eddy together, and Aron was almost sure Giora had pushed him down to save himself. The wind blew cold, and the children shivered. No one actually blamed him outright, but Aron felt as though a big hand had just snuffed out the candle in his darkened cell.
No, Mama, it’ll be too small on me, he whined, staring helplessly at the shirt she thrust at his chest, at his face. Why’s she so grumpy, he wondered, hoping to be back in time for the last few minutes of the game, you could always rely on him to score, and just then Papa walked in, and then Yochi, she wanted to ask Mama where the depilatory wax was, and suddenly Aron remembered that time last summer when he was trying on the boot. Perspiration trickled down his collar. Quickly, he thought, before my fingers start shaking, and he pulled off his sweaty shirt and changed into the other one, and suddenly, with his arms caughtin the striped sleeves as he desperately searched for the neckhole, he started gasping and wheezing as though someone were pressing down on his chest, trying to strangle him, and a strangely familiar-looking boy appeared out of a haze, looking pale and pure, and a fine cool ripple filled his soul, and the little white boy, so white he was almost blue, sailed out into a craggy moonscape.
Frantically Aron tried to push through the neck hole, stop flapping around or Mama and Papa will see how smooth and skinny your arms are, and the fetus from science lab floated in formaldehyde, slowly decomposing and blinking its tadpole eyes, and suddenly it opened its mouth and grinned at him. And Aron groaned and finally poked his head through the hole. Papa and Yochi disappeared. Giora’s shirttails hung all the way down his shorts, where his legs stuck out like matchsticks.
Aunt Gucha had enclosed a note saying that her Giora, kineahora, was outgrowing his clothes faster than dough rises; why, next to him, even Efraim is beginning to look like a raisin. These, I’m sure you’ll find, Hindaleh, are just like new, he hardly wore them, and it’s a shame to throw them out, he is the youngest cousin, may all five live to be strong and healthy, so why not take the clothes to Rabbi Carasso’s wife, to give to the poor, even today my heart bleeds for them, wrote Gucha, who grew up in dire poverty with Mama, the family nearly starved to death in the days of the siege and the food rations in Jerusalem, and she closed with regards to everyone, hoping to have Aronchik back with them next summer.
Mama stood before him, looking grim. All of a sudden he needed a hug. Right this minute. Desperately. He needed her to hug him the way she used to. But she recoiled from him and knocked something over. Maybe the shirt had a curse on it. He racked his brains. What broke, was it the vase with the yellow apples Rivche and Dov brought to the housewarming, but no, he had seen the vase later on, right where it belonged. Was it the blue bowl with the stag and the doe chasing each other’s tails that Shimmik and Itka brought from the trip to Holland? No, that too was in place, with no signs of gluing. For an instant he saw the image of his yearning face in her pupils, while her puffy cheeks stretched back to reveal the cusps of her molars. So now can I go out to play? he asked, retreating gingerly, careful not to look at the broken pieces, like a mountain climber afraid of looking down. So now can Igo out again to play? he repeated weakly. Mama stood rigid, her lips turning pale. He could hear them singing in the valley, his team; they’d finished the game without him and struck up a song with the rival team. Whoever heard of singing after a ga
me, with the rival team yet, I don’t get it, they sound like a choir, what, did they rehearse or something, and he gazed imploringly at Mama, who split down the middle before his eyes till he could see the kernel of white hatred inside her. You know, she said, I’m beginning to think you’re doing this to us deliberately.
7
And some weeks later, just before dusk, Aron, Gideon, and Zacky were together in the valley, sprawling on the big brown rock. It was blistered and rusty, tufted with shrubs, and Aron pressed his cheek against it to welcome the warmth of spring.
Languidly the three boys floated through the twilight hour, prattling about Mordechai Luk, the spy found in a suitcase last year at Rome airport wearing a gold ring with a lion seal and a secret slot for poison or microfilm, and Aron leaned forward on his elbows and said, Hey, wouldn’t it be a blast to do the Houdini number out of a suitcase for this year’s class party? He could picture it now: Zacky and Gideon would lock him in Uncle Shimmik’s old black suitcase, tie a rope around it, hold up a Bukharan bedspread to conceal it from the audience, making drumrolls with their tongues, and then, as the audience waited breathlessly, Aron would dig two fingers into the heel of his shoe and pull out Papa’s razor blade and reach into the lining of his sleeve for Mama’s missing nail file and, as the seconds ticked away, because his fingers were slippery and what if he dropped the saw, how would he find it in the dark, the girls would shriek, Quick, somebody, get him out! and the boys would jump up, and presto, Aron would stand before them shouting, Hey, I’m free! Zacky snickered quietly. He had this new way of laughing, and Aron felt the ember in his bowels glow red. So what do you say, Aron asked Gideon, lying facedown so as not to blur the imprint on the rock, do we start rehearsing for the party? We’ll callthis number “The Man in the Suitcase.” How about it? Gideon said he wasn’t sure he had time this year. What do you mean? Aron was dismayed. I have to plan my campers’ activities for the Carmel mountains trip this summer, said Gideon. But that’s still a month and a half away, gasped Aron; we always do something special together for the class party. Gideon didn’t reply and Zacky said, Who cares about a dumb show, I want to win the soccer championship next year. What does that have to do with anything, screamed Aron; you know we’ll cinch it, our team’s the best, now let’s get back to the Houdini number, and Gideon said, Okay, we’ll see, calm down, what’s with you anyway?
Aron seethed in silence. It really irked him the way Zacky was gloating over the sudden flare-up between him and Gideon. All right, let’s think. Don’t provoke them. Don’t tell them anything, but he did; he swallowed his spit and announced with a nervous squeak that this summer they were definitely going to catch a spy, he was sure of it. Zacky snickered again. Aron did his best to ignore him and said, This country is crawling with foreign agents, every week somebody else is caught photographing military bases, while we sit here twiddling our thumbs, and I’ll tell you who the next spy will turn out to be, that student guy at Gideon’s, he has a whole network of enemy contacts, remember the time we found an Arabic newspaper in his wastebasket, with certain words underlined in red, and what did we do about it? Nothing. Come off it, said Gideon impatiently, he’s no spy, he’s just studying Arabic. Gideon hated their stupid lodger, who acted like he owned the place, with his booming laughter, and his singing in the shower, and the way he was always sucking up to Gideon’s mother, doing chores for her and bringing her flowers every Friday. Well, what about the empty apartment on the third floor, then? ventured Aron, forcing himself to continue. The owner might come back this summer and we’ll find out he’s a Soviet agent. Aron waited. Surprisingly enough, Zacky said nothing, but his silence was worse than his sneer. Aron ignored him and announced, as though everything had been settled, Okay, we’ll take turns watching the apartment. I know he’s coming this year. I can feel it in my bones. Zacky sat up. There’s no spy in that apartment, he drawled. Nobody’s set foot in there for years. The blinds are always down, and we’ve never once seen a letter in the mailbox. Why waste half the vacation on a pointless stakeout? Aron pouted and said he had a hunch, this was going to be their lucky year. Yeah, sure, said Zacky, you and your hunches.
And then because Gideon said, Quit it, you two, Aron cherished a fleeting hope that Gideon would come around to his idea, as a token of their friendship, as a sign of his loyalty. Don’t kid yourself. Still, a chance in a thousand? He leaned on his elbows and glanced at Gideon, who only went on sucking a fennel stalk.
And only last year Gideon had lain there earnestly pressing his face to the rock. With his chin thrust forward he was the image of Israeli youth: courageous, determined, like his brother Manny. The idea had been Aron’s, naturally, and he kept at it long after he realized how ridiculous it was; all right, maybe he was pretending, but he couldn’t afford to lose now, not even with this. Something was happening; he couldn’t quite put it into words but he knew, it was challenging him to hold his ground, which is why, as he sprawled on the rock in the usual position, one cheek round, the other flat, he remembered to stick his chin out, until the sound of chatter, or his anger at Zacky, or the pang he felt at Gideon’s betrayal, made him forget his obligations, and Mama’s chin disappeared.
Gideon raised a lazy wrist and checked his watch: time to run to his bar mitzvah lesson with the rabbi. Zacky, who was already past his bar mitzvah, said with a smirk that every morning now he prayed with his phylacteries—in the closet, haw haw haw; lately, no matter what came out of Zacky’s mouth, it sounded like a personal dig at Aron. Zacky sat up and grunted. Now he’ll start cracking his knuckles, thought Aron, humming a little tune in his head to drown out the obnoxious noise, he had a special voice for such occasions, and suddenly Gideon yawned and stretched luxuriously. Aron watched him. Who’s he trying to impress when he stretches that way? For a few weeks now, he’d noticed a kind of dark severity clouding the candor of Gideon’s face. Why that should hurt him, Aron didn’t know. He peeked again: no fuzz yet, though there was definitely a toughening under the surface, a hardening of the bones that hid the light within; and yes, his jawline was thicker now, it jutted out defiantly, almost like Manny’s, and you could see his cheekbones moving beneath the skin, but when did it happen, we’re always together.
Aron sat up with a little cry, it just came out of him, and he stifled it and pulled his socks up to hide the baldness of his skinny shins. Once again, he saw unblinkingly, the stubborn rock had declined to immortalize Mama’s features. Go on, you can’t make a fossil that way, saidZacky, just as Aron was reflecting that maybe all he had to do was try harder; or maybe it was too difficult to fossilize Mama as she looked today; he preferred to remember her two or three years ago, when she was warmer, friendlier to him. Frantically he groped in his pockets through the crumpled notes and the rotten onion strips for writing invisible messages and the candle stubs to decipher them by, and the cigarette butts he had started collecting for that other business, till finally he found a book of airline matches and plucked one out and struck it sharply against the rock, as only he could, but why did he have to light it now, to cap the argument? He gazed at the flame for reassurance.
Zacky had launched the fossil project with the face of his absent father. Right, because that will help you remember him, Aron chimed in, overjoyed to share his excitement, which only made Zacky scowl and say, Then I won’t do my father, I’ll do Hezkel instead, and he put on the face of his brother Hezkel, who drove a delivery truck; and when he got tired of sticking his jaw out like Hezkel, he switched to his broad-cheeked mother, a Bulgarian who married up, but his impression of her faded fast, and he went on to some uncle of his, and in the weeks that followed he ran through a whole slew of relatives, most of the players on the Betar-Jerusalem soccer team, various comedians, Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, Sean Connery, and Cassius Clay. And then he decided he would quit knocking himself out for others, and from now on the only face he’d try to immortalize would be his own, for better or for worse. For worse, quipped Aron, in the good old days when Gid
eon used to laugh at his jokes. At that point Zacky started scoffing at the idea and inciting Gideon; and the next day Aron found himself alone.
Gideon glanced at his watch again. A quarter to, he pouted. Why did I have to get stuck with the longest Haftorah portion in the book. And Aron murmured: Then flew unto me one of the seraphim, with a glowing stone in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from off the altar; and He touched my mouth with it and said… He hadn’t started his bar mitzvah lessons with the rabbi yet, but he’d read the Haftorah portion a few times and was pleased with it. Summer’s coming, he thought, soon they’ll send me to Giora’s in Tel Aviv. Forget it, I’m not going this year. I don’t care if they kill me, I’m not going. He stood beside his friends now, twiddling sage leaves, rocking on his heels, bidding goodbye to something; okay, this was the moment to ask casual-like if there was any news of David Lipschitz, who’d been absent sincePassover, his seat was still empty. Nitza Knoller, their homeroom teacher, said David has been transferred to a more suitable environment, and that was the last mention of him, almost as if everyone had made a secret pact, but how did they know to keep their mouths shut; once there was a little boy, then he was gone, and Aron, like a character out of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” was afraid to be the first to ask because then they’d know he wasn’t one of them. Zacky picked a fistful of hawthorn apples from a nearby tree and began to munch and spit. Aron turned away and stared into the distance. The valley looked strange and hazy all of a sudden. He hiked his trousers, Giora’s trousers, still a little large for him. I’ll need to find a big enough suitcase, he blurted. I can use my Uncle Shimmik’s black one, and we’ll tie a rope around it, and you guys’ll cover me, and three minutes later I’ll be out of there. Right, that’s how we’ll do it. Forty-two verses, groaned Gideon, I get hoarse just reading it silently. And then Aron remembered, he reached into his pocket and held out the piece of honey candy he’d brought especially for him; Gideon and Zacky exchanged glances. Gideon looked away and said, Don’t want any, Kleinfeld. Aron put his hand back in his pocket, careful not to feel rebuffed. All he did was offer Gideon a piece of candy. Just wait, this’ll be the biggest Houdini number yet; he spurred himself on like a mountain climber. Bigger than the one I did in the UNWRA crate, bigger than the one in the furnace, no kidding! I’m going to see Goldfingertomorrow, said Zacky nonchalantly, rippling his arm muscles and examining them with interest. Hey, that’s restricted, you have to be over sixteen, said Aron, a little shocked. You coming, Gideon? asked Zacky. But they won’t let you in, protested Aron, they’ll check your ID’s at the door. How about it, want to go see Goldfingertomorrow? Zacky reiterated. We’ll think about it, said Gideon, prudently evasive. Now he’s being tactful, sensed Aron. Phoo, I must’ve eaten a hundred of these, said Zacky, spitting out a mouthful of peels. Want some? He offered the remaining hawthorn apples in his hand. Gideon grabbed a few and chewed thoughtfully. Aron declined and shook his head. Oh, I thought you liked hawthorn apples, sneered Zacky. I did but I don’t, answered Aron. Go on, have some, they’re good for you, said Zacky, a new levity in his voice, pushing his hand into Aron’s mouth as Aron backed away. Hey, you two, cautioned Gideon, and Zacky flung the apples gleefully to the winds. Aron stood up in dismay.