And in the midst of this, in the split-second interval between the blow and the pain, with the instinct of an elderly fourteen-and-a-half-year-old, he knew that the dancers were just as miserable as he was.
That having a body is itself a defect.
That even this gaiety they yielded to, this frenzied urge, was inwardly childish and playful, not deep, not really theirs, he sensed without words for it, in the darkened cell of his nascent mind: and all they have is a consolation prize, wonderful but strange and callow, the kind you use up quickly, in the shadows, with humiliating greed, with dark forebodings; this, like a letter, they would pass on to others …
Sometime later, around midnight, he headed home from the center of town.
Slowly plodding through the streets, he continued his little experiment, forced to add the new blister on his foot to the repertory, to time the yelps of pain; how long did it take them to reach his brain, did they mingle there like echoes, and sometimes he would count how
many times he could hop on one foot before his thigh muscle started shaking, or he would stare directly into the blinding streetlamps, observing the influence of light on his pupils; what does that have to do with anything, though maybe it did have something to do with it, maybe he would draw sudden insight from it, a flash of brilliance from the pupil of his eye.
He repeated the facts again, he would have to juggle them in order to solve the riddle, to break them down and build something new, healthy, lively; it would be interesting to know what was going on there now, maybe at midnight everybody kissed, maybe they’ve gone even further, maybe they kiss with their tongues by this time.
He tore a hair out of his cowlick.
Three seconds of pain.
That’s interesting: this morning it was five.
When he finally approached the house, he heard raucous voices and music inside.
There were Menachem and Aliza Bergman on the balcony with Yosaleh and Hanna Stock, snorting with laughter at something or maybe someone, not him, of course, though he did hear them say “rarin’” to go, which sounded for a minute like “Aron”; but their voices had that tone he knew, and he retreated deftly into the shadows, where he saw them suddenly switch to the code; Yosaleh Stock lit a cigarette and there was suddenly red lipstick on Aliza Bergman’s lips.
Maybe they did notice something after all.
How long was the party going to last?
He wandered around the neighborhood.
What if he went upstairs and rang the bell and said hello to everyone and walked through the hall to his bedroom: We all went home so we’ll be able to wake up fresh at 4 a.m.
to watch the sunrise, and he turned away in shame.
Maybe he’d wander around for a while.
Maybe he’d go do a mitzvah at the hospital where Grandma used to be.
The night shift was on now.
He could volunteer to change sheets, for instance.
This party might last till morning, and when he said goodbye nobody even asked where he was going.
What an idiot he was not to take his passkey.
Then he could have taken a little nap in the shelter.
Or sneaked into Edna Bloom’s, he thought with surprise, shivering as he fled from the empty space of her apartment, with a backward glance at the imaginary thing that might jump out and grab him and lock him up inside, and so he ran to the end of the street, and only then slowed down, out of breath, with a stitch in his side, and shambled aimlessly, hugging himself with cold, and again and again he thought about Yaeli, but he was so tired, so tired, his jealousy and pain were muffled.
Maybe this was the moment
to start the separation.
Be realistic, she’s not for you.
He even evoked an unpretty picture of her as she emerged from the oven, bloated and puffy, and for a moment he could imagine how she would look one day.
She’s not for you.
You need someone different.
Someone more … More what?
More sad, he thought.
Tentatively he spoke her name: Yaeli, Yaeli.
Nothing.
Only a dull and distant pain passing through him, and so he continued, careful to stay half-asleep throughout the operation, and he tried to decide rationally who his next love would be; he felt so logical, he began by crossing off all the ineligible women of the world, like Mama, for instance, and Yochi and Grandma Lilly and Gucha and Rivche and Itka, and women who were out because they were too old, like Golda Meir and Bebe Idelson and Henrietta Szold, yes, go on, and how about the ones in hospitals and mental institutions, like Rivche’s Lealeh; there, you see, so many women who can never be yours, one Yaeli more or less won’t make any difference, and how about the millions of women in China and Japan whom he would never even set eyes on, or the Arab women he had to disqualify because they were enemies and stank, and he came to the conclusion that his love would have to be Jewish and live in Israel, because how else could they meet, and as he sleepwalked through the darkness under the bowing cypress trees, he eliminated all Jewish women of Moroccan, Kurdish, and Turkish descent, he knew Mama would never let him bring one home and he didn’t have the strength to fight her now, and after brief consideration he eliminated Bulgarians too, and hesitated over Romanians, she always warned him that Romanians are almost one of ours but not quite, that they try to marry up, she had this complicated hierarchy of Ashkenazim and Franks, and finally he went through the list of suitable girls he knew, checking them off one by one, like Rina Fichman, she could definitely be right but it seemed she was taken already; Naomi Feingold might be the best one in fact, except what about that brother of hers; and then, as he traipsed back along the narrow road that led to the building project, surely they were gone by now, he realized after all that the only girl who was eligible to be the love of his life was Yaeli, and the thought of it woke him up with the pain of an open wound when the bandage is torn off, and he heard the chirring in his ears again: No answer, no answer, no answer, and now he stood in front of the building where the noisy party was still in full swing.
Now where?
Down to the valley, maybe, dare he go there
in the dark, to hide in the cave till the party was over.
He shuffled along, turning down the side street that led to the valley, skulking near fences every time the headlights of a passing car rushed by, but at the end of the street, on the edge of the valley, the utter darkness filled him with terror and he couldn’t go through with it.
He sat on a rock, laid his head on his arms, and dozed off, awaking in a panic every minute, where am I, cruelly banging his kneecap, tearing out hairs, muttering, This is war, this is life or death, and dozed off again, tired out, and life, if he ever lived it, if his disaster didn’t portend an untimely death, would in all likelihood force him to be constantly alert, constantly juggling, without pride, without distinction, what would such a life be worth.
But what choice is there?
He heaved a bitter sigh: Calm down, you’re becoming hysterical, you’re exaggerating, there are plenty of kids your age who haven’t started growing yet, you might start growing any minute.
Right away, in fact.
But what about his measurements, he argued with himself; every morning he measured himself, in the morning the cartilage between the vertebrae is still unabraded, which makes a difference of about three millimeters in his favor, and thanks to the marks Papa drew for him once on the door, Aron knew for a fact, every time he left or entered his bedroom, that he was no taller now than he had been at ten and a half, he was exactly the same height and weight; so what, stupid, he didn’t need measurements, he knew from the pangs in his heart and the coded communications, the idiom of his most intimate grammar, that this was no temporary delay, it was becoming, God forbid, the thing itself, and just as he had felt chosen somehow before his problem started, now he felt chosen, too, same difference, which gave his disaster a certain dark and twisted logic: it was his disaster, out of which he had been fashioned.
A car slowed to a halt very near him, with its lights dimmed, and the couple in it started writhing and moaning, but Aron didn’t wake up, he slept like a stone, counting their breaths; by ninety-one it’s usually over, sometimes ninety-five at most; he knows these things, it’s always the same, with minimal variations.
A long bare foot jutted out through the open window, and in important matters they have no choice; when it comes it comes, it grabs them by the claws and won’t let go, and it’s seventy-five already, and the clumsy back goes up and down, why do they always groan like that, and maybe it has to go in and out a few times before it connects, and soon we’ll hear the krechtzes; ninety-one,
ninety-two, what’s this, a hitch, some technical difficulty, ninety-nine wow, a hundred already, and he continued to count in sheer amazement, awakened by the sight of the bare brown foot with the painted toenails which began to squirm, one hundred and thirty-seven already, here come the krechtzes, thank God, maybe he miscounted, maybe he was so tired that he counted faster than he usually did at home, one two three and four groans jumbled up; now she’ll whisper to him, Pull out, and five and six; what’s the matter with her, she’s supposed to scream, Pull out, arois, it’s been like that for nights already, and then he’ll cling to her with all his might, he won’t want to pull out, and she’ll push him and scream in a whisper the whole house can hear, Arois arois, be careful, pull out, arois charois marois parois, but the lady in the car doesn’t push him away, she doesn’t scream, Pull out, they just keep panting and groaning, going up and down like a giant piston, with the bare foot wriggling and squirming out the window, and the long toes stretching out farther and farther, soon they’ll stretch all the way to Aron, maybe she can’t hear him, but the whole world can hear him now.
Aron counts the groans in astonishment, seven, eight, nine, maybe he’ll find a use for these details someday, maybe someday the question that has been plaguing him for so long—ever since he saw that curious amber glob in the handkerchief—would be answered once and for all: when exactly do they decide to piss the sperm, and he sat up, suddenly excited, that is, if they do decide!
As if it were something they could decide!
You stupid idiot!
And he started banging his kneecap with one hand, sticking the other between his teeth and biting it hard, to keep from sobbing, and the darkness whirled before his eyes as the animals ran around and around and grabbed each other’s tails in their mouths, chasing faster and faster; what timing and precision were needed here, to prevent them from crashing, because just as they’re about to, a long hand, a reliable hand, will reach out and grab them in midair, but what if it misses them, what if someday they explode into a thousand pieces, or maybe it happened already.
He jumped up, forgetting they might see him, and ran with a pounding heart all the way to Memorial Park, but here too there were groans and whispers and sucking sounds; where could he run now, where could he rest awhile and understand his mounting fear, how long would they go on dancing up there; again he stumbled back toward the building project, beating his temples with his fists to silence them, it’s nothing,
it couldn’t be, it’s all in your mind; he could hear the music from afar, Mama was dancing too.
Who with?
Whose arm was holding her, whose masterful hand was guiding her to the beat like a fish through water.
Hello, hello, he whispered from his hiding place, what are you doing, what have you done, you already have a girl and boy, right?
But there’s no answer, no answer, muttered Aron to himself, retreating half asleep, hungrily drifting through the drowsy streets; no matter how he tried, there was still no answer; why this anger, why this hatred, hadn’t he been trying his level best for the past three years, sitting for hours in front of a faucet that dripped once every second, he thought that would have an effect, collecting cigarette butts in the street and smoking them secretly in the bomb shelter, breathing in and out through his nose so the smoke would get in and make him sneeze so hard it would jolt it; and he would go to building sites and open his mouth and inner self when they dynamited the rocks, and once he swiped a huge magnet from the science lab at school and slept with it under his pillow all night, though he knew it could cause terrible damage, what if the good came out with the bad in one big hodgepodge, did he have a choice, and nothing happened; it was enough to drive you crazy, so near and yet so far, a fat little mound with a drooping eye in the middle and pouting lips, and little warts all over, the memory center and the laughter center and the speech center and the sports center, and maybe there’s a love center and a happiness center too, glued to it, dependent on it alone; now we will hurt this mound, we will injure this gland, this Hitler, we will stick pins in the veins of our hands and feet, ice on the jugular, you won’t get any blood or any air, a total blockade; he put his hands around his neck and choked himself for thirty seconds, forty seconds, forty-five seconds, black circles whirled around in his head, dark birds, wake up, bitch, wandering around the house with an upturned lid; granules penetrate it.
Infection.
Pus.
He smeared a drop of nail-polish remover inside his nose and screamed when the burning started.
But he didn’t give up, how could he, this was life or death.
A week has gone by since Independence Day and they’re still not home from camp, where are they; he poked little things into his wounded nose: a tiny piece of dough with a Trojan horse of yeast inside it and a note with the ineffable Name, like the Golem of Prague, and nothing.
Please, wake up, give a sign of life, say that someday everything
will work out.
Even if it’s ten years from now, I don’t care, just let it work out okay in the end.
He wrote with his finger in the sand, in the air, he didn’t care that people were staring, he wrote begging letters, appealing to its common sense, and what did it answer, nothing, it ignored him.
So he had no choice, he sat down and wrote out a vicious threat, cutting out the black letters from the obituary notices,
It shall be neither mine nor thine.
His hand trembled as he folded the paper into a tiny ball and pushed it up his nostril with a matchstick, ten times at least the gland tossed it back to him with a sneeze, till he managed to push it in beyond the sneeze line, and for three days now the letter had been carried upward by a courier or the shadow of a courier, or a child, white and pure and tiny, running with the letter in his hand, winding in and out of the nasal cavities, onward, onward.
Aron to Aron, where are you now, over; Aron to Aron, still far away, over; and so day in day out, whether he was walking in the street or sleeping or eating supper or Aroning, inside him burned an ember with a little dancer and a green-eyed boy whose ears were pointed with seriousness and responsibility, and Aron was with them too, three friends, three in one, quietly planning how to salvage the one, and meanwhile, the misty courier crosses the white plain, the ossified reticulation in the forehead, and works his way upward, over a scaffolding of bones and pipes and cords, and suddenly stops in fear: before him, all alone in a red-black sea of cool clotting blood, floated a large marble egg, or was it a pale-yellow coral, forsaken, full of fissures, covered in a frosty film.
Aron to Aron, how will I cross the sea, over; Aron to Aron, an anonymous paper boat is waiting at the dock to take you, over.
A misty boy floats in a paper boat, rows quietly across, careful not to wake the Cyclopean eye in the middle of the fatty mound on top of the coral, and the sea is thick, its tides slow and lazy, and before the boat lies the sleeping coral, and coming closer he can see it was swollen, yellow, you could scarcely feel it breathing, and the three-in-one awaited the news, silently cheered him on with the loveliest, purest words in the world, putting their heads together, fusing into each other, never to part; they have a single language, rings of warmth spread out from them to his stomach, to his legs, and in birds’ nests lined with colorful fluff lie the invalids, squeaking through their gaping mouths at Aron the savior; today’s atrivals are “longing” and “wandering” and “heron” and “diamond” and “autumn” and “lonely” and “a purple scarf” and “beauty unadorned”
and “Jerusalem of gold,” all culled from the Hit Parade on the radio, an excellent source of words; in the middle there was news, Nasser Kasser Basser Yasser, and later that afternoon he would be releasing “lamb” and “twilight” and “train” and “midnight” and “kiss me by the sea” from that pretty new song, so he must send them off with supplies for the journey, three squares of friendship sugar and a spoonful of royal jelly, and he opens the jar of sour cream and licks off the buttery coating; Mama was standing behind him but she didn’t say a word, she saw he opened her refrigerator without permission, but she watched in silence, she wouldn’t dare say anything now.
He crosses to the sink.
Turns the tap.
Turns it some more.
Her eyes bore into the back of his neck.
He doesn’t turn it off.
Stomps away; the water gushes, splashing him as far as the pantry.
There’s a tap in the bathroom too.
And a flushing toilet.
The water comes from far away, from deep wells and vast cisterns, and electricity reaches us from distant cataracts, and whirlpools and rushing rivers, and gas to cook the chicken soup with noodles gushes out of the earth, in the beginning there was tohubohu, he runs his finger over the gas switch, he can feel a giant rig boring into the sea, into the ground, he hears a high-pitched whistle, and sniffs a pungent smell, and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters; slowly he walked out of the kitchen, directly in front of her staring eyes, and a mighty stream of water flows, and the courier in the paper boat has secretly reached the shores of the coral island, tied his boat to a blighted bush.
Aron to Aron, have reached shore, am on my way, over; Aron to Aron, what do you see there, over; silence.
The only sound coming through is the sound of his astonished breathing.
Aron to Aron, I repeat, what do you see, what is it like, tell me, tell me, over; silence; and the tender boy, misty and white, fades out as he slithers over the chilly ash-or-frost-dabbled earth, creeping cautiously over the crimpled terrain and the pearly-gray craters.
Aron to Aron, you wouldn’t believe how horrible it is here, over; Aron to Aron, I hear you, over.
And a little boy crawls through crevices and crannies with a black letter in his hand, and withered bushes scratch his face and crumble at his touch; once everything was full of life here, the bushes flowered and thrived, there were four flowing rivers, blue and clear, he had original ideas, innovations, children enjoyed them.
Where am I today and where are they, thinks Aron, lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, there are no children here, they all stayed to fill in the dwindling ranks for the
harvesting or reaping or gathering or gleaning or whatever, and at night they sit around the campfire, singing to the strains of the accordion, and there was only one important question left, namely, was Gideon still loyal, was he still waiting for Aron, and the courier presses on in silence, his eyes open wide, and he ran his grief-stunned hand over memories and sights and reflections and laughter now gray and musty as withered fruit, the Aron it had cursed and turned to stone by growing over his life and stifling it; and suddenly the ember in his stomach glowed with a soft red light that spread through his limbs, warming him inside, trickling down to his feet.
An idea, an idea, he had an idea, eureka, we’re saved, ideas were coming out of his new place now.
Aron to Aron, an urgent message: pick up everything you can, do you read me, over?
Aron to Aron, message unclear, repeat, over; Aron to Aron, collect whatever you can and smuggle it back here on the double, everything must go, remove it and evacuate, over and out; and Aron jumped from his bed, bewildered, why hadn’t he thought of it sooner; and now we have to help him, muster our forces, call up the reserves, the volunteers and the civil guard, and declare emergency measures; the windows were crisscrossed with black masking tape already, Mama and Papa did that yesterday while he lay abed watching them divide the sky into squares; that’s how life prisoners see the world, but he would escape, he would slip out of his cell and break through the siege, through the naval blockade, the fire brigade, the bire frigade, he ran back to the kitchen, the taps were closed and Mama was staring into the open refrigerator, holding two bottles of milk, weighing them in her hands, and suddenly she sensed him there, she veered around and let out a scream, an unidentified expression appearing on her face; Aron stares at her, perceives a primitive stratum, and freezes, shocked; who is she, who is she, reaches into his pocket, and Mama recoils as if he were about to pull out a knife; he gropes in his pocket and doesn’t find it, though he understands well enough without the onion, it’s flickering at him, out of the depths of her Cain-like guilt, a needle of rage and retribution.
It’s all your fault, said the onion, you brought it on us, you have only yourself to blame for what happened between me and Papa, and he drew back from the animal look in her eyes, farther and farther back, his hands flying out behind him to keep from bumping into anything, he could knock something over, now let’s see how fast you catch.
He bumped into the wall and stopped.
Get out, he shouted,
moving toward her, get out of here right now, and she retreated, not looking at him, yes, suddenly he saw: she couldn’t look at him.
Or maybe she could, and now she did, so what did it mean, groping her way backward.
Aron, Aron, come back and be yourself again, she murmured; her voice, she was afraid of him now, let her say more: Aron, I’m asking you, I’m afraid but I’m also worried, what’s become of you lately; if only she would go on looking at him, but she looked away, she did, what could he do to make her look at him again, how would he make her give him that long, deep gaze she used for calming him and winning his forgiveness, now he would really shock her;
Eef you vant to be a bradher,
he nearly screamed at her, though he didn’t dare, how could she help but guess what was frightening him, when once, before the problems started and her heart was open and quivering to him, he had a horrible dream about her and the whole next morning he could barely look at her, he was so frightened and remorseful, and she guessed, naturally, and sat him down on the edge of the bathtub and said, You dreamed something, didn’t you, and he nodded.
Something bad?
Yes.
And she tilted his chin back and peered into him, through his eyes, and rolled herself inside like a little ball, and washed through him like a storm, through the caves and crevices in him, and came out again and sat facing him like before, only now she was panting; You dreamed I was dead, tfu tfu tfu, and now everything is all right again and I forgive you, and he snuggled up and cried and cried till all the knots came out of him; she knew how to save him, it was easy for her; but don’t you see, she’s trying now too, her eyes transfixed him, her lips suddenly trembled, searching for the words in her mouth to save him.
They’ll put you in the crazy house if you don’t start being yourself again, Aron, she implored in a whisper, and in her throat, or was it his, he felt the stab, the spears of all the tears she had swallowed.
Ice baths they’ll give you there; he knew: it was her love talking; he listened for the tumult in her voice riding the crest of a tidal wave of tears.
Electric shocks they’ll give you there, Aron, and only he and she understand this language, and if not for the pillar of tears Aron and she would be drowning all the time, in a never-ending, a primal scream.
And I suggest you get hold of yourself while it’s still possible; but why doesn’t she look at him, who is she protecting, it can drive you crazy, but she has been looking into him, clasping the two milk bottles.
Maybe I’ve made some mistakes too, she whispered, we’re all a little tense these
days, with Yochi going into the army and the military situation, and you’re not so easy to get along with either, you know, maybe you are a special child like everyone says, with your brains and your talent, kineahora, and maybe we’re not smart or educated enough to understand what’s happening to you, Aron, and we haven’t read books or studied in the university, but what, you think I don’t worry about it all the time, and even though your papa never had a father himself and doesn’t know how to be a father and makes mistakes sometimes, and I grew up without parents for most of my life too, we try; so why wasn’t she looking at him again, she remembered suddenly and looked away.
And you know we’re only thinking of your good, don’t you, even when we get angry at you, what do we have in this world but you and Yochi.
Oh please, let her say it again, let her swear it on the Bible, and now both eyes are definitely on him, big and open wide, swallowing him in; so what’s real, what’s true, let her say it already, let her say definitively, is she or isn’t she, and everything will stop and he’ll relax, and she continued looking at him, taking him in, her arms going out to him, and he too went toward her, everything collapsed inside, but at the last second before he fell into the whirlpool his hands fluttered at his sides and flew out at her and struck the bottles hard; he knew she’d catch them, though, he simply had to do it before the reconciliation, her eyes already promised she would catch them easily, so what did he need this for, and he continued to bellow and lash out at her, blind with rage and humiliation, at her, at himself, and the milk flowed out, all over her body, milk and broken glass, and he pushed her and pushed her: Get out, get out of here, whore, spitting and screaming, and he returned to the refrigerator and stuffed his mouth full of sour cream, and halvah by the handful, to fortify his new place, to defend it and expand it, there was a lot of work to do.
Aron to Aron, what have you found, over.