Slowly Gideon slid off the rock and stood beside him with a sidelong glance.
He considered for a minute, straightened up, turned away unhurriedly, and went behind the rock.
Please, please, begged Aron inwardly.
Never mind the shame and humiliation.
The important thing is to see whether it’s yes or no … After that they can all drop dead as far as I’m concerned, they can all drop dead.
Gideon emerged from behind the rock.
He looked at Aron with an unfamiliar expression: goading, disdainful.
Then, quite simply, he turned to leave.
He was dressed.
He hadn’t taken his pants off.
He’d been mocking him all along.
Aron froze, then flew at him.
Gideon started running, running lightly, effortlessly.
The distance between them remained the same, no matter how hard Aron ran.
He pursued him through the valley, amazed to see Gideon so far in the lead, seeming to enjoy the chase, to be merely trying to wear him out and show him how quickly his little legs would tire.
They ran in silence for a moment or two, the distance between them never diminishing, around the soccer field, and past the cave, and across the junkyard, circling widely back to the rock, where suddenly Gideon stopped running and veered around, and Aron too came to a standstill, panting and red and goggle-eyed.
Gideon’s face wore a puzzling expression: neither masculine nor quite feminine either.
As though taking his time about deciding, savoring his right to choose, leisurely and calm even as it crystallized.
Then, with a strange lingering movement, he began to pull his pants down, offering Aron a glimpse of that heartrending weft of gloom.
Twice, in broad daylight, thought Aron.
Gideon’s eyes glinted with the vicious relief of the survivor, it was almost as if he had been eagerly anticipating this performance all along, that he had an impure urge to mingle with the secretion of Aron’s brain.
Again he turned to leave, only this time he didn’t bother running, and Aron pounced on him with a bitter scream.
They grappled on the ground, panting and snorting and groaning, unable to stop.
Gideon was tougher than he was, but Aron’s screaming and spitting like a cat were enough to render him powerless.
He barely recognized the little animal with the teeth and nails and foaming mouth, tearing into him and puffing his corpse-like breath in his face, as though trying to break his skin so he could merge with what was inside it.
Gideon held on to his pants for dear life as Aron struggled to grab them.
His strength was giving out, and a sense of resignation, stuporlike, slowly pervaded him.
Helplessly Gideon watched as the rabid creature dug his claws into him, pawed his face, mauled his body, and seemed to be fighting for his life, till suddenly he let out a squeal of fear,
appealing to him with a forgotten nickname, not Kleinfeld, not Ari, but as their kindergarten teacher used to call him, Neshumeh, little soul; only Aron didn’t answer, maybe he couldn’t hear anymore; he stripped the pants off the sobbing youth, pulled them down to his knees.
Looked, examined.
Then nodded as his eyes began to dim.
Gideon sprawled on the ground, wounded and violated under his gaze.
Aron got up and turned away with downcast eyes as Gideon dressed himself, bawling and shrieking, glancing fearfully in Aron’s direction.
Then he took a few steps forward, broke into a run, and fled toward the building project.
Aron stood cringing a moment or so longer.
Then, with cautious tread, he set off through the darkened valley, fixing his gaze on a patch of white, a leprous glow in the shadows of dusk.
Farther and farther he wandered, away from the building project, from the street noise, the clanking of pots, the crying of children, till at last he arrived and collapsed on the ground, leaning against the refrigerator door.
Slowly, as though trying to remember something, he ran a finger up his body, from his feet to his neck and shoulders.
Detached from all emotion, he investigated his flesh, tracing the geography of the unfamiliar zone of hell.
Then he stood up, pulled the cold door handle, opened the refrigerator, and breathed in the stench.
He folded himself into the lower shelf with his legs dangling out and looked up at the spangled sky.
Perfect stillness all around, silence as far as the building project.
There in the darkness, beyond the ring of light, he felt the whole nation waiting for the first shot, the great jump-off.
Who would win and who would lose?
How many would die?
Which of those he knew would be wounded?
Like Papa, for instance, and Yochi, who was stationed someplace, and he ran through the list of relations, near and far, and acquaintances and teachers and neighbors, and older brothers of his friends, and the soccer players who had been mobilized.
He was worried about Manny, the pilot, sorry the scheme for fossilizing faces in the rock had fallen through.
Because if anything happened to one of them, God forbid, at least that way there would be something to remember them by.
Slowly he began to drain the morass that filled his soul.
His clarity of mind returned like blood to a tingling limb.
Then he set his cardboard toolbox down beside him: through the crack in the sole of his shoe he pulled out the nail file and the rusty razor blade, from under his belt he fished the nail.
Then he found the
piece of saw in his trouser cuff, and the matchbook Uncle Shimmik got on the airplane, but decided to throw it out.
To leave a trail for them.
He felt along the curve of his spine, tore off the fake plaster, and caught the shiny lead nail between his fingers.
Then he closed his eyes and gently ran his hand over his things so he’d know where they were in the dark.
And all the while a child’s voice inside him asked, Is this it, is this it?
He didn’t believe he would do it.
When he was ready he raised his legs, and slowly, like a pro, he crossed them carefully under him, first the left, then the right, with his right hand on his thigh.
It occurred to him that if he did succeed, and of course he would, this would be his greatest Houdini performance, now of all times without an audience, but he didn’t need an audience: he was performing for himself alone.
And if he did succeed, and of course he would, if he did get out of here, and of course he would, no one would know.
Not even Yochi.
Maybe in twenty years it would be all right to tell.
But not for twenty years.
Even those nearest and dearest to him wouldn’t know: not for twenty years.
And when these words ran through his mind—not for twenty years—he felt a shock of pain, as though the electricity had gone haywire in his head, and he pressed down on his eyes till the pain faded, till sparks flew out of them, growing into a blaze of light, and his head was filled with a dazzling dawn, and he hunched down in wonder, pressing harder with his knuckles, till he saw the sparks he knew, and then the little angels of light, and then he went even further, was even crueler to himself, because soon, he understood, he would arrive, and his eyes really did fill with something from inside him, a great shining essence, glowing brighter and brighter, like a distant explosion, but gentle, beaming, bursting like the sunrise, and under his clenched fist curled a smile of amazement, a movie show in his eyes in spite of the pain, in spite of the tears that dimmed his vision and trickled down his arms, but he didn’t stop; he wondered why in all his past experimenting he had never tried to reach such a moment, a moment like this, a gift from his body.
And then, when he couldn’t stand it anymore, he stopped pressing and quietly endured the pain of opening his eyes, of wiping away his tears, watching the slow return of the familiar world.
And someone called his name.
Mama was out on the balcony, calling him.
Papa came out and called him too.
Why were they both calling him?
Maybe they
had noticed something after all.
Maybe Gideon had run home to warn them.
His somber name hovering over the valley seemed barely able to reach him here.
He could sense its presence like a heavy cloud floating slowly toward him, beating the air with the vowels of his unbeloved name.
Haggard with grief they called to him, his mama and papa.
Caught in the soft mists, their voices sprinkled over him.
A wail of pure anguish.
A lamentation.
He arranged his feet on the shelf.
Bowed his head on his chest under the freezer compartment.
Placed the fingers of his left hand firmly on the Houdini tools.