Authors: David Grossman
“Are these your new friends?” she asked, regaining her composure and scrutinizing Micah and me as though she were trying to see under our skin in order to determine whether we were good enough for her son. So I promptly put on my angel face and cooed, “How do you do, Mrs. Stauber,” extending my hand, which she pressed with a little smile of surprise. And what a hand she had â¦! Warm, soft, silky, with slender fingers and manicured nails, and though I didn't want to let go, I quickly pulled back my own filthy mitt, sullied by filchings and fist-fights and crawling on the floor. Luckily I had enough sense to hide my left hand behind my back, as well, the hand with the long pinky nail, probably the longest pinky nail in my class, in the whole school, even.
That was our first encounter; she was so pretty she took my breath away; and I didn't dare open my mouth for fear of blurting out that Chaim had played soccer, though I didn't really see what there was to hide.
“It's because of the piano,” Chaim explained the following day. And when we didn't quite understand the connection, he explained that he had to be careful, his mother was anxious about his fingers. Micah laughed his slow, stupid laugh, while IâGod knows what came over meâreplied at once that his mother was right, that maybe he shouldn't play soccer, after all. Chaim Stauber said that his mother would have liked to keep his fingers safely in her own hands forever and only let them out to play études and concertos. Then suddenly he gave a whoop, jumped high in the air, and clapped his hands, and I peered around to make sure no harm had come to the fingers his mother wanted to keep in her hands.
And then I heard myself telling him again that his mother was a hundred percent right, and that now that I understood all the facts, I
intended to keep him out of trouble, because his future, and maybe that of the entire country, depended on his piano playing; decent soccer players aren't hard to find, but a concert pianist is one in a million.
Micah was startled by what I had said, and so was I. I mean, who appointed me guardian of Chaim's fingers, and what did I care about his fingers anyway; as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew I had said the right thing, the noble and virtuous thing, and it was one of the few times in my life when I felt I had principles, something important I was willing to fight for, even though there was nothing in it for me. To demonstrate my seriousness, I quickly removed my roller skates and carried them as I walked at Chaim's side like a bodyguard. Chaim, who seemed fairly amazed that I was taking him under my protection, asked hesitantly whether I, too, played an instrument, and I laughed and said, What, me play an instrument? and Micah said, Yeah, sure he does, he plays on people's nerves. I must admit that from the moment Chaim Stauber joined us, everything Micah said or did seemed dumb, crude, and annoying to me, and I only hoped that Chaim wouldn't hold him against me.
Nevertheless, the following day at school Chaim insisted that we play soccer. I walked over nice and friendly, took him aside, and tried to explain that it was too dangerous, but he said he didn't care. I tried to talk him out of it, I even tried to bribe him, but he wouldn't listen. The others started clamoring that recess was almost over, and I had no choice but to give in. I also had to relinquish my position as center forward that day so I could concentrate on defending his goal. I didn't budge from the penalty area the whole game. All I did was stop the other team's attempts to break through. I was such a great defense, Chaim Stauber could dawdle around safe if empty-handed. I can't remember a more exhausting game.
And so it went. He would insist on playing goalie, and I would protect him like a precious
etrog
packed in wadding. I would kick the shins of any player who came near those invaluable fingers. I was getting to be more like a professional bodyguard than a soccer player. As soon as I got rid of a player trying to kick the ball into our goal, I would turn to Chaim and smile, flushed with devotion. Sometimes even my best
defense was not enough to stop a rival player, so I would be forced to watch breathlessly as Chaim risked his whole future with a furious lunge at the opponent's feet, and I would shut my eyes and tremble, feeling his mother's warm, slender fingers closing tenderly around my heart.
Apart from these nerve-racking soccer games, there were good times, too. I don't know what it was like in his old neighborhood, since he never talked about it, but with me and the gang Chaim really started to enjoy himself. Once a month we'd go through this ordeal of courage in the valley behind the building to prove our friendship. The ordeal consisted of crawling through a thirty-meter sewage pipe, no longer in use, until you reached a deep underground cesspool, where you then had to turn around and crawl back. It was pretty scary crawling there in the dark. There was no guarantee that sewage wouldn't start gushing through the pipe again and flood the cavern. Simon Margolies swore to us once that a big black snake had slithered by him inside (the week after, naturally, I spotted a viper, over one meter long). And finally when you crawled past the big hole, you could hear the water flowing below, all black and putrid. But for me the scariest moments were when Chaim crawled in there alone.
He insisted on going through the ordeal with us, and even yelled at me when I tried to talk some sense into him. The others started teasing me, saying I treated him like a grandmother, and even Micah giggled about it.
So what could I do? I stood aside, chewed grass, and pleaded silently with God to extend His influence over the cesspool, though mostly I prayed to Chaim Stauber's mother, joining my hands with hers to warm Chaim's fingers now that he'd decided to be a roughneck.
He emerged from the pipe with dirt all over his face and his hands covered with scratches, but you could see he was one happy kid. Simon Margolies asked how he felt in there, and he said that it was a little scary, especially while he was over the cesspool, but otherwise it was fun. That was all. He didn't brag or tell us that his heart was in his underpants or that he'd seen a ghost like I did one time; he merely observed that it was fun, and that he wanted to go in again next week.
He was driving me crazy, this Chaim. Anything I told him not to do, he couldn't wait to try, just to provoke me. Sometimes I felt like the babysitter of a severely disturbed child. In class I would stare at his back, groaning under my latest worries. I mean, it had gotten to the point where Chaim Stauber offered me money for a turn on my roller skates and I declined. Even Micah. Micah, who was made of steel, told me bluntly that I was overdoing it with Chaim, but I think he was only jealous.
And he had good reason to be. Chaim Stauber, in spite of his plans to drive me nuts, was truly a smart and interesting kid. He had an encyclopedic mind. For hours I would sit around listening to his stories about the Aborigines and Eskimos and Indians. He'd even been to Japan once with his parents, and said that the houses there are made of wood and that they grow miniature trees. He would say the most amazing things in his modest way, quietly and simply, without being a showoff. He wasn't trying to impress me, he was just telling me the facts. But his facts were more amazing than anything I could have imagined. And lying in my bed at night I would try to mimic the matter-of-fact way he told me, for instance, that “in Japan we went to a place where they serve chocolate-covered ants. I didn't eat mine because Mommy wouldn't let me.”
That was the main reason I admired him: he had the guts to say his mommy wouldn't let him. I mean, if it were me telling a story about chocolate-covered ants in Japan, I'd make a big megillah out of it; I'd say I devoured a kilo of ants, that they tickled all the way down, and that the ant-chef swore he'd never met a kid like me.
And Chaim's mother. I've already described her hands, but everything else about her seemed wonderful, too. She was very tall, taller than Chaim's father, with a porcelain complexion and honey-colored hair that fell in heavy curls down to her shoulders. She would blink her blue eyes at you like a doll, as if any minute she might open them again and say “Mama,” but instead she would say, “Chaim.” Like this: “Chaim?” softly, liltingly, as if she had to make certain each time that he was alive and breathing and hers. Whenever I was there, she would keep coming into the room with a different excuse each time: to turn on the light so
he wouldn't strain his eyes, or to bring him a special vitamin to strengthen his bones. I rarely spoke when she was around, and if the buzzing started between my eyes I would just hang my head and bite my cheeks till they bled. I used my very best language with her and, of course, never alluded to my rich experience with law and crime, because I sensed it might put her off.
Had it been possible, I would have stayed at his house from morning till night. But Chaim always wanted to go out. He said it was stifling at home, that his mother drove him crazy. I couldn't understand what drove him crazy. She was just concerned about him, like a mother should be, and it didn't bother me a bit that she came into the room every other minute, slowly blinking her blue eyes like a doll, saying “Chaim?” or sometimes “Chaimke?” I even looked forward to her intrusions and to the way she would ask us in her soft, deep voice if everything was all right, if we wanted a glass of freshly squeezed fruit juice or a plate of cookies. And I was so attuned to her maternal devotions that I could predict to the second the next time she would walk into the room.
The best days were the days when Chaim was sick. I would go over to visit him and watch as he lay in bed, with his high forehead and black hair on a big white pillow, and his face so pale, it was almost transparent, looking handsome and weak, but also safe from all the dangers out there. On such days I would sit in class with super-Nonny concentration, writing down every word the teacher said and copying the homework assignment from the blackboard so that I would be able to report in full to Chaim after school, particularly when his mother was in the room with us. She would come in every few minutes to smooth the sheets or plump his pillow, and being so weak, he had to submit. And she had a special way of covering him and tucking the blanket around him, till he was swaddled like a baby up to his chin. Sometimes she would take his temperature, not with a thermometer, but with her lips on his forehead, closing her eyes as Chaim's closed, and they would stay like this awhile, until eventually she would open her eyes and say, “You're still running a little fever. I think you'd better sleep now. Amnon can come back again tomorrow.”
She was forever testing me. Chaim said she always did that to his friends. Anyone deemed unworthy was banished forever. That's how it had been wherever they lived, both in Israel and abroad. On the other hand, if his mother approved of you, you had a chance of being invited for Friday-night dinner, which was apparently a very big deal.
I was intrigued by this Friday-night business. Chaim told me that they set the table with special china from Switzerland. They always had interesting guests for dinner, mostly colleagues of his father; each member of the family would choose a meaningful passage to read aloud, and after dessert, Chaim would play the piano.
The words “a meaningful passage” made me laugh, but on Sundays (Chaim wasn't allowed to play outside on the Sabbath because that was a family day) I would rush over to ask him about the Friday-night dinner, about who came and what they'd talked about and which “meaningful passages” everyone read. Sometimes I would go out on Friday nightsâbecause, in any case, that's when Dad and Gabi took care of all the stuff they'd put off during the weekâand I would roller-skate past Chaim's house or climb up into my tree house and try to peek through the heavy curtains and see or hear a “meaningful passage.”
On other days, between four and five-thirty, I would listen to Chaim practice the piano. It amazed me that nobody had to force him to play. He wanted to, of his own free will. When I don't practice, life feels empty, he would say. But how could a boy who knew so much and who had traveled all over the world say life felt empty unless he plunked on the piano for an hour and a half each day. I asked him to explain to me in simple human terms how playing the piano fulfilled him. I just wanted to understand what he meant, so maybe I could find fulfillment playing piano, too.
But he couldn't explain it. He said there were no words to describe a thing like that. And I got mad and said, At least try to explain. You know how to talk, don't you? Make an effort to explain in simple Hebrew how musical sounds can fill a person's life. I mean, are they made of cement? Earth? Water?
And Chaim nodded pensively, and wrinkled his high forehead, and
said he was sorry but he just couldn't explain, it was something that happened deep inside so it was impossible to describe it to someone outside. At which point I stopped asking. Because if to him I was someone outside, then I wasn't interested anymore. Besides, I'd learned from Dad to be suspicious of such things. Dad used to say, “I can only believe in what I see and touch! Have you ever seen love? Have you ever seen emotion? Have you ever held an ideal in your hand? Me, I come from a line of simple peddlers, and all I know is: you have to touch the merchandise!”
And yet, deep in my heart, I knew that Chaim wasn't lying to me, that he wasn't trying to convince me of anything. That's what drew me to Chaim, but it depressed me, too, because I was always trying to convince people I was telling the truth, even when I was lying (especially when I was lying), while Chaim was exactly the opposite. For him it was enough that he believed himself, he didn't require others to think as he did. Others who were outsiders, that is.
I made a habit of climbing up to my tree house every afternoon to lie down between four and five-thirty. And there I would listen to Chaim practice the piano, and think, or fall asleep, or reflect on the meaning of an empty lifeâwas it like a vast hall you wandered through with nowhere to rest, or like a huge unfurnished room where every word you said echoed back to you. And aren't I lucky, I thought, that my life is so full, with such a lot to do: my hobbies, and police investigations, and calisthenics. I didn't waste my time on useless thoughts, did I? And supposing there were dull, empty days from time to time; now, thanks to Chaim and our friendship, each day was full and exciting.