She shook her head self-righteously, and again he saw the bewildering contrast between the pious expression she wore and her actual face, which was handsome and animated, almost provocative.
For a moment he felt trapped in a maze of illusion.
Then he shrugged his shoulders and tried to wriggle out.
“And just where do you think you’re going, stand up straight.”
She lowered her voice.
“Over to her house?”
“Leave me alone.
I was about to go to Grandma’s room.
To read the newspaper to her.”
“What, are you nuts?
Going to read to Grandma?
A fourteen-and-a-half-year-old shmo spending time with his grandma?
You think she understands anything you read to her?
Why don’t you go out with your doll instead?”
“’Cause … ’cause Gideon isn’t home now.”
She hooted at him: “You poor little sap!
And what if he’s there, by some strange chance?
What if he’s with her in her house, in her room now, sitting on her bed with her and laughing at the fool?”
“He isn’t.”
“Oh no?
And you think he’d come running back to tell you if he was?
Go on, fly off to her, grab her and run!
You have money?”
“What about Grandma—”
“Forget Grandma!
Why bother with Grandma?
Grandma’s finished, believe me, she wouldn’t bother with you for half a minute!”
And she pressed a pound note into his reluctant hand.
“Go, go, suck up all the life you can out there, because if you don’t, somebody else will.”
His nostrils constricted like a camel’s in a sandstorm.
And still she tried to push him out, then finally gave up.
He could do whatever he wanted.
She, thank God, was no longer responsible for him.
She could get along just fine, thank you.
Her fingers squeezed the dishtowel.
She walked out and left him alone.
He wouldn’t go.
He wouldn’t go.
He walked out to the balcony and looked around.
There were no kids outside.
Yesterday’s newspaper was lying on the floor.
Aron leafed through it to the obituaries.
Abraham Kadishman R.I.P.
was his choice for the day.
He played around with the letters awhile, dish, ram, main, radish; then he proceeded to Pessia Sternberg, but soon got bored, he’d
finish later in the evening.
He went back to his room and sat on the windowsill, one foot propped on the kerosene heater.
He opened his box of negatives and looked through them.
It had been months since he added anything to his collection.
He searched the film for the hazy aura.
Some primitive people won’t let themselves be photographed because they’re afraid of losing their souls.
Maybe he would ask Uncle Shimmik for a negative of himself.
That would be interesting to see.
He already knew what his aura looked like.
Round with a soft orange glow.
What nonsense Mama talked.
Gideon and Yaeli, really now.
For the past few days they’d been arguing a lot less, thank God.
You could actually walk between them without going deaf.
And if Aron hadn’t opened his mouth, they might never have talked at all.
What did Mama know, anyway.
He jumped up, grabbed his soccer ball, and ran downstairs.
The street out front was deserted.
He played here, played there.
By the fig tree stump he noticed something and stopped.
He hugged the ball to his chest and drew closer: a leaf.
A small green leaf was sprouting out of the stump.
His eyes darted up to the blinds on the fourth-floor window.
Where was she now?
He walked around the stump.
Leaned over and gently touched it.
What a winter.
Someone, possibly even Mama, had telephoned Edna’s parents and told them to pick her up.
The whole building peeked out and watched her walk rigidly away between her two small parents.
Edna disappeared into a waiting taxi.
He half expected her father to turn around and shake a fist at the neighbors’ blinds, hurling curses that would all come true, but he didn’t turn around or curse; the three of them quietly drove away forever, they probably took her home, or found a more suitable environment for her.
Another person I’ve betrayed, he thought, and then jumped back and charged up the street as the crowd roared, but all of sudden he stopped in his tracks.
Enough, he didn’t need that make-believe stuff anymore.
Thanks to Yaeli he was in real life now.
Again he glanced up cautiously at the fourth-floor window.
And thanks to Yaeli he no longer felt the emptiness of Edna Bloom’s, or the fluttering thing that was trapped inside it forever, beating its wings against the walls.
He tore his eyes away and fled, hopping on one foot, mildly bitter, and thanks to Yaeli he had been spared a whole variety of future ills.
But where were all the children?
How strange.
Softly he called Gideon’s name.
Silence.
Maybe he would stroll to the shopping center.
Maybe Mama
needed something.
A bottle of oil maybe.
She was surprised to find the bottle almost empty yesterday.
He was eating everything fried lately.
Suddenly he was running up the stairway of Entrance C.
He tiptoed past Zacky’s.
Went up to the third floor.
Pressed his ear to Gideon’s door.
Silently called his name.
From inside came angry sounds of shouting and Aron drew back.
Mira, Gideon’s mother, yelled: “What are you doing to us?
You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
And Gideon’s father answered her in his viciously noble tone: “It’s your happiness I’m thinking of, my dear.
What could be more important to me than that?”
There was a moment’s silence and then Gideon’s mother sobbed: “Don’t go, I beg you.
Don’t leave me here alone with him.
You’re pushing me into it.
Why?
Why?”
And Gideon’s father answered with cold amusement: “A new love will do wonders for your complexion, darling.”
Aron fled, devastated, disgusted.
Everything they touched, these grownups, became contaminated.
He sat down on the steps behind the building and hid his head between his knees.
He would never be like them.
Never.
His love would be pure eternally.
Thus he loved Yaeli now, and thus he would love her till his dying day.
He only hoped he would die before she did, so he would not have to live a single day of his life without her.
He tried to visualize a world she did not inspirit.
The fingers of his left hand tightened around his right wrist, but he noticed what he was doing in time and scolded himself.
We don’t do that anymore.
That, thank heavens, is behind us.
Now we have Yaeli.
Because life means nothing without Yaeli.
Yes, it was dangerous to be dependent but maybe that’s how he’d learned to love the way he did.
An all-or-nothing love.
But his fingers kept sliding up to choke his wrist.
What was Mama doing to him?
Why was she like that?
What did she know about him or Gideon or friendship?
How could you explain to her, for instance, that Aron had written a poem to Yaeli, the most beautiful and love-filled poem ever written, a poem written with his heart’s blood, which he would never under any circumstances give to Yaeli or even allude to, because Gideon doesn’t know how to write poems.
But what if she’s right.
Maybe he really is naive.
Maybe in momentous biological matters like this there is a powerful instinct at work which he hasn’t developed yet, which is why he remained virtuous.
Or naive.
Deeply disgusted, he found the pound note she’d given him in his pocket.
He ordered himself to bury it in the yard.
Her voice inside him tried to bargain, sawing and hissing in his brain.
Aron tightened
his stomach muscles against her.
Yaeli, he thought, Yaeli, and he dug into the earth with rigid fingers and buried the money there.
Good.
It was like a sacrifice, only he didn’t feel purified.
On the contrary.
How come she always made him feel so disgusted with himself.
Where could Gideon be?
A cobweb glistened on the rosemary bush.
How many dead insects were hiding there?
He tossed a twig at the cobweb.
At the invisible spider.
Maybe there was no spider.
He couldn’t go to her alone.
He’d rather die.
He loved his Yaeli and he trusted her.
There was something else too, something important: thanks to his love for her he knew he liked girls.
Females, that is.
Because sometimes the terrible thought occurred to him that perhaps, among other ideas and inventions of the disaster in his body, he would start liking boys.
Males, that is.
Such things were known to happen.
A kid reached this age and suddenly there was a kind of order from his glands, so what could he do, argue, plead?
Because what’s inside is also outside, like potatoes strewn over a distant field, cucumbers and lettuce and onions, a stranger who didn’t belong.
What time was it, where did everyone go?
Gideon, Gideon.
A pale butterfly, a brownish-gray moth really, came to rest on a nearby leaf.
Aron reached out and caught it and, without pausing to think, stuck it on the web.
Its wings fluttered.
A barely perceptible stirring.
In an instant the spider was there.
Huge, with long legs.
Aron gasped.
But surely it won’t crawl out on the dry leaves!
he screamed in his heart.
What fault of mine is it that the moving moth attracted it?
Before his eyes the spider besieged the moth.
Swiftly, methodically, it spun a web around the frail, stunned body and Aron didn’t lift a twig to stop it.
He didn’t want to disturb the spider.
He sat and stared at this little murder, guilty and agitated.
Why aren’t you stopping it?
But if the moth hadn’t done that the spider wouldn’t have noticed it.
Done what?
Showed it was alive.
You’re crazy, you’re cruel, you’re not yourself anymore; now hit the spider with a twig so it will run away and leave the moth alone.
The spider isn’t even touching it, just spinning a web around it from afar.
What have you done?
Don’t you see, you’re enjoying this.
Enjoying what?
Helping, cooperating with death.
It was over in a flash.
The moth drained out of itself.
It twitched its antennae one last time, like a last request or warning to Aron, and then expired.
The spider stood over it, somber and still.
Only the web breathed.
Aron trembled.
He hugged himself and tried to calm down.
How did it happen?
Yes, but what if they were cheating on him in
there.
What if they were laughing at the fool.
Sudden footsteps approached.
A hand touched his shoulder.
Gideon stood over him, looking stern, drawn, hopeless.
“What’s up, Kleinfeld?”
“Nothing.
Just sitting here.”
“I went out looking for you.
Come on, let’s go to her house.”
Aron stood up.
Stood up in front of Gideon.
Stood up to him.
“Listen, listen …”
“What’s wrong, Aron, tell me.”
“Come here … first let’s do something.”
He didn’t know what he was talking about.
“What, what do you want to do?”
“I need your help with something.”
Oh please, let him say it right.
“See, I’ve got this tooth—”
“What tooth?”
He giggled apologetically.
“I have a milk tooth left.”
“No kidding.
You mean it’s still in there?”
Gideon was so amazed he let a question mark into his voice.