The Book of Intimate Grammar, Page 4

  He had to tell somebody. Zacky and Gideon were his two best friends, of course, but he couldn’t possibly tell Gideon. That would breach their noble silence, that would be a sacrilege. And Zacky, well, Zacky was worse than ever, sadly enough, though it wasn’t really his fault, it was just the change. Anyway, Zacky knew more than was good for him; what if he used dirty language and turned the mystery into something more disgusting than it already was.

  At school, in class, Aron stares down at his desk. His teacher, Rivka Bar-Ilan, is talking about a rabbi who fled from Jerusalem during the Roman siege; her voice drones on, she barely moves her lips. “Now, did Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakai advise his followers to surrender because he was a traitor?” She hunts for names in her attendance notebook: “Michael Carny, answer the question.” Aron retreats into his thoughts again. Michael Carny sits across the room. He’s tall but limp, like a jellyfish. Giggly Rina Fichman at his side tries to whisper the answer out of the corner of her mouth. “No teamwork, please,” says the teacher wearily, scouring the rows with heavy-lidded eyes. “Well, Michael Carny?”

  Michael giggles in distress. “Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakai,” he repeatsslowly, as though the name itself should be enough to acquit him, but Rivka Bar-Ilan screws up her mouth and makes a mark in her notebook. “Hanan Schweiky.” “Yes, Teach?” Poor Hanan, half reclining on the desk, is diligently drawing a picture, his head resting in the crook of his left arm with his hand perched over it, parrotlike. Aron tries to collect himself and remember the question. They were talking about some traitor. But who? The noose tightens. You never see her lose her temper, though, not Rivka Bar-Ilan. She just keeps talking in that cool, indifferent voice, making those little marks in her notebook, and if you get three X’s beside your name, she sends you to the principal’s office.

  This is their fifth and next-to-last class today, after this there’s math and then home. Meirky Blutreich in the row by the window is trying to focus sun rays on his lenses. There’s a long black line of fuzz from his sideburns to his cheeks, and a couple of times when he raised his arm, Aron thought he saw a shadow there. He tried to sneak a closer glimpse in the locker room before gym class, but no luck, and according to the new rule, you have to see it three times in broad daylight for it to count as incontrovertible evidence. Aron slips his hand in and cautiously touches himself. He’s as warm and smooth as a baby there. Now the teacher’s asking Zacky Smitanka, who naturally doesn’t know the answer either, and when she writes the X in her notebook, he spins around with a goofy smile on his face, as if to say, Fooled her, didn’t I? Twenty-four minutes to go, Gil Kaplan signals the class, two fingers and four fingers over his head. He has wavy hair like a movie star, and the girls say he sleeps with a net at night. Aron looks down at the grooves on his desk: fifteen days till summer vacation. Fifteen days times five hours a day equals seventy-five hours. Oh well.

  Hanan Schweiky, the class comedian, bends down, sticks a piece of balloon in his mouth, and sucks it in. Then he sits up again looking innocent and starts rolling the balloon around under his desk. Something’s happening. Aliza Lieber, the redhead, takes her glasses off and sticks the sidepieces into the corners of her mouth. Aron watches her, she always does that, and suddenly it dawns on him that she’s trying to stretch her lips. He sits up straight; it’s a good thing the teacher is busy with Gil Kaplan now, otherwise she would have noticed the spark of interest, the gleam of light in the tedium spreading toward her. He glances furtively at Aliza Lieber. It’s true! She thinks she can stretchher lips that way! She thinks her mouth is too small! He sure has been making a lot of discoveries lately.

  A sudden pop: the balloon. Raucous laughter, groans of protest. Meirky Blutreich, the troublemaker, ducks down the row to deliver a painful swat on the neck to Michael Carny, now cross-eyed with tears, whose fellow gigglepuss, Rina Fichman, jumps up and shouts at Meirky. Rivka Bar-Ilan raps the desk with her notebook. Not angrily, but leadenly: one, two, three. Her eyes show only weary contempt for this display. To no avail: the children crackle with indignation, zigzag curses across the aisle, explode with hilarity, and flash their eyes in a great electric storm that discharges the boredom of the classroom.

  Aron sits quietly at his desk. At times like this he has learned to stay calm. Regarding the class with open eyes. Maybe it’s a sign that he’s changing. Maturing. Gideon sits there, serious and quiet like him. But he has a disapproving, even haughty look in his eyes. Aron doesn’t like that look. Next year Gideon will be a youth group leader. He quit Scouts because there wasn’t enough Zionist content for him, but he has no intention of joining a kibbutz. Gideon has principles, he plans his life to the last detail: in six and a half years he will join the air force like his brother Manny. Then he’ll work as a commercial pilot for El Al. Gideon gets a little puffed up at times, but the kids respect him, and even though he never goofs off in class, they know he isn’t a coward or anything, he just has principles. Still, Aron can’t help wondering when Gideon managed to develop such a responsible attitude—the two of them have been together practically all their lives; since they were born, in fact.

  The class simmers down. Gil Kaplan flashes eighteen minutes to go. At least something worthwhile came out of that hullabaloo. “So we see that Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakai was neither a coward nor a traitor,” says the teacher. “He was a seeker of peace, and when he realized that the inhabitants of the besieged city were not going to survive without food, he left secretly to speak to the Roman governor, Titus Vespasian. And now, who can tell me how Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakai managed to escape—yes, I see you, Zachary—from the besieged city? Yes, Zachary, what is it?”

  Zacky is suddenly speechless. His vigorously waving hand begins to wilt. Furious with himself for being such a numskull, he slouches dumblyin his seat. Rivka Bar-Ilan throws him a sidelong glance and sighs. Then she asks another boy, and Zacky spins around with his goofy grin as if to say, Fooled you again, didn’t I? Aron studies the grooves in the desk: with seventeen minutes to go, he has now entered the horse phase. Then, in descending order, come the donkey, fox, dog (these minutes run very close together), cat, rabbit, mouse, fly (the final minutes, and then the final half minutes): mosquito, amoeba, germ, atom. And next to the atom, which has to be imagined, comes the great picture of a bell and the words “Born Free.”

  But it isn’t time yet. Don’t get excited. Imagine the horse phase lasting forever, and then suddenly Gil Kaplan locks hands over his head and flashes: Surprise! Thirteen minutes! Over a minute in the fox and we didn’t even notice.

  In the back of the room, alone by the wall, sits David Lipschitz. His head keeps jerking to the left: click! click! Like a water sprinkler. It’s huge, his head. His hair is almost white. Aron has found a sly way of watching him. He takes a good long look in his direction, and absorbs his features: the scowling pink cheeks; the eyes blinking bitterly, darting madly around in the caves under his albino eyebrows. But why is he angry? Lately Aron has been trying to guess certain things: for instance, does he have his own room at home? And when did the change take place, or maybe he was born that way because his mother happened to look at an albino while she was pregnant with him. And did his parents really love him? Did his mother scream when she saw her baby was a freak? And did he have a younger brother or sister who was a comfort to his parents? And how would it feel to have a younger brother who was smarter and more normal than you were? Aron swerves around. David Lipschitz noticed. How could he have noticed? Aron sits up and concentrates on the teacher’s lips. In his film collection at home he has one negative that’s exactly like David: a boy with a big white head, slumping over a desk. Sometimes Aron holds the film up to the light and searches for the aura most of them have; and he tries to imagine Mr. Lipschitz walking into David’s room at night and laying his hand on David’s head, the way Papa does sometimes, but for different reasons. At home in front of the mirror once, Aron put his hand on his own head and started to jerk it. Strangely enough, the touch of his hand relaxed him, and r
ight away the jerking stopped. Okay, so David’s father, the big shot from the Ministry of the Interior, comes home fromwork, finds David sitting in his room, staring morosely out the window at the children in the street, longing for Anat Fish. Gently he lays his hand on David’s bony head, and it jerks, once, twice, but then as he spreads his palm over it like a warm cap, it slowly yields to him and stops jerking, and for a moment when Aron stood before the mirror he imagined David’s scowling face becoming human, longing for comfort. He gazed in wonder at the sharp, expectant face, thinking: This is you. This is the boy you are. This is the face you have. He shut his eyes tightly and, when he opened them again, he saw only himself, okay, but that’s cheating, you deliberately put on the American expression, still, you can’t deny that your face shows life and hope for the future. And then he grimaced and watched himself in the mirror. Isn’t it strange how one little scowl can reveal the pattern of distortion? And he arranged his features and smoothed out the kinks.

  Varda Koppler turns around in her seat, searching for eyes to avoid. She’s short and skinny and has tiny breasts, and she keeps stretching her blouse all the time. Varda Koppler has a grown-up face, with a big, strong nose and smoldering eyes, but she has the body of a little chick. It’s strange. Like a campfire on a matchstick. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know how girls feel about their breasts, or maybe it’s no big deal for them, like a shoulder or a knee would be for him. Varda wears a ring on every finger. She can’t wait to grow up. She has a pen pal, a soldier from the Golani unit, and she knows army secrets. Koby Kimchi in the next seat looks up at her and sighs, and Aron reflects: Here we’ve been together since kindergarten, yet it feels as if we’re separating.

  But why is he so heavy-hearted. Last year on the school trip to Tiberias they sat around the lake at night, after the teachers went back to the hostel, and built a campfire and laughed and talked till dawn, and dozed off in a heap, like some huge, weird animal that breathed with one enormous lung. Aron was the first to open his eyes in the morning. The Sea of Galilee was smooth and pure, and the morning twilight quivered upon it like a harp string.

  Twelve minutes left.

  Will this class never be over. And there’s still math. Fifty minutes. Another countdown, then it starts all over again. And during recess he’ll have to copy the answers to two math problems he didn’t finish yesterday. So he won’t even have ten minutes for soccer. If it takes a workman three days to tear down a wall, how many days will it takehim to tear down a house … He turns around in his seat, wriggling in a way that lets him see Adina Ringle’s watch. Still twelve minutes! I’m telling you, this lesson will go on forever. They’ll be stuck in this room for the rest of their lives: while other kids go out to recess, run home, grow up, join the army, get married, their class will be forgotten, until at last, one fine day the saving bell will ring and they’ll hobble out to the sun-filled schoolyard, trembling and bewildered, blinking in amazement, thronged by the children of the next generation. He smiles inside, so no one will notice he’s awake. Dorit Alush, the cow in the next seat, looks up at him with her muddy eyes. Moo.

  I don’t believe it, still twelve minutes! Is there something wrong with all the clocks? Has some mad magician frozen time? How will I get through twelve whole minutes? Okay, here’s how we do it: yes. Far, far away in Tel Mond prison lives a convicted murderer, sentenced to life. Or better yet, Papa, a Russian soldier guarding the armory for three years in the freezing cold, hopping from foot to foot in the snow, another month and he will be released, then another week, another day, another twelve minutes, oh joy, and suddenly, wait, what’s this, two men approach and ask him to accompany them for five minutes, but instead they board a train, and for eight long days he wriggles in his seat, they never say a word to him, and in Moscow, the prison, Taganka, Lu-byanka, Aron faints and an interrogator who looks like the Angel of Death beats his face to a steak, and what did Aron think of, what kept him going, I’ll tell you what, his memories of schooldays, of the children in his class, this is what he clings to with what’s left of his mind when they send him to Komi, to the frozen taiga, to chop trees for the railroad, oi Zioma, you momzer, damn you, Zioma, and all around him people are dropping like flies, from hunger, from disease, they go out of their mind like you go out of a room, and he heaves his ax, wistfully remembering the happy faces of his classmates long ago; there was that girl, yes, what was her name, Varda Koppler, a little thing with smoldering eyes, and there was Gil Kaplan, and Eli Ben-Zikri, the hood; together we passed our childhood days in a sunny classroom with pictures on the walls, and a map of Israel, and plenty of fresh air, and there was recess. Aron feels himself reviving: Hey, this is great, where were we, and all around him people are dropping like flies, but you can’t bury the dead here in winter, the earth is frozen solid, hard as marble, and if you make trouble they throw you in the cellar with thecorpses, you spend one night down there and you come out raving, eight long hours; and he doesn’t give in, he fights, he seals himself off hermetically—hurry now, use your brains—in the cellar, in all this horror; think about the war you waged as a child, don’t ask, someone smuggled pictures into the house, and there was nobody to turn to, he had to face the enemy alone, oh if only he could have talked to Yochi about it. Yochi, who are you kidding, he giggles. In our house you learn to hold your tongue. In our house you never hear a dirty word. Mama and Papa leave their bedroom door ajar. Aron and Yochi never talk about such things, not even when they’re alone together. Even the time they fished her curse out of the toilet, and Aron was scared and wanted to ask her things, he felt too much like a traitor because he’d scowled at her with the rest of them, and now it was every man for himself, he would have to fight this war alone: but who was the enemy? Okay, let’s go, we’re freezing, it’s pitch dark, there’s a crackling sound, the dead are stirring, their bones contract in the icy cold, you could go crazy with that noise, but you know what scared him the most, what worried him more than anything, a pack of dirty pictures, that’s right, and once in desperation he set a trap, he wound a yellow thread around the envelope before replacing it in the drawer. And then he stayed in the house all day, on the lookout for the enemy agent, listening for the sound of drawers opening. And the next morning when he ran to the drawer, lo and behold, the thread was gone. He could have sworn there hadn’t been any strangers in the house. Nervously Aron stretches in his seat. Remember, Aron. Remember this. The way it used to be. A time will come when you’ll miss all this, when you’ll melt at the very thought of it! And one day, long ago, when he was seven or eight, he ran home and found Papa holding Mama against the salon wall, hugging her and squeezing her into the corner, funny he should remember that just now, and when Mama caught sight of Aron over Papa’s shoulder, she tried to push Papa away—“The boy!”—but he didn’t want to let her go, or maybe he couldn’t, Aron had learned since then that it can happen to dogs too, Papa must have gotten stuck; he pulled his face away, but the rest of him clung to her with a will of its own, it wasn’t Papa’s fault, some higher force was making him do it. “Stop already! The boy!” she rasped, and finally he unstuck himself and stood in the corner, panting shamefacedly, but a little smile slithered over his lips, oozing with the slime inside him, and his arms, which a moment ago hadlooked too long, dangling ape-like at his sides, began to shrink to their natural proportions, and that was the last time, thank God: only Aron couldn’t afford to take chances, he always coughed outside the door, he was so used to doing it, he barely remembered why anymore, though there wasn’t really much point, since it had never happened again.

  Eleven minutes. What is this? He’s been halfway around the world and only one minute has gone by? He leans back against the uncomfortable chair. Dorit Alush is the girl Zacky likes, but Aron feels indifferent toward her. They have nothing in common. They’ve been deskmates for two months now. Nitza Knoller, their homeroom teacher, moved him up to Dorit’s desk because she couldn’t see him behind Hanan Schweiky anymore. Dorit and Aron rare
ly speak. All day she chews the same stick of gum, and every class she draws a picture of a boy with long, straight bangs. That’s the only face she knows how to draw. She’s probably drawn a thousand of them by now. At least she could add a mustache for variety. What does he know about her, though, not much. That her father has a stall at the Machaneh Yehuda market where he displays his homemade mechanical diver toys in a tank of water. Maybe their house is full of diver toys. Aron feels like scribbling on her picture. He has an urge to rip it up. What would happen if he lit a match and burned it? She’d only draw another one. And someday she’ll forget Aron Kleinfeld and the millions of hours they sat together. Oops, his foot slips, he kicks the desk. At least her hand moves and she frowns at him. Maybe she will remember him after all.

  Ten minutes.

  Last year in English class they learned the present continuous. Aron was thrilled: I em go—eeng, I em sleep—eeng. You don’t have that eengtense in Hebrew. Gideon didn’t understand why he was so excited. Well, Gideon was like that, dead set against anything non-Israeli, non-Zionist, especially anything English, because the British loused up our country under the Mandate, and if we had one drop of pride we wouldn’t be learning their stupid language. Aron wanted to point out that the Hebrew language has just as many exceptions to the rule, but he held his tongue and reveled in “I em jum—peeng …” Jumping far, far out in space, halfway to infinity, and soon he was utterly absorbed and utterly alone; jum—peeng; it was like being in a glass bubble, and someone watching from the outside might think Aron ees only jum—peeng, but inside the bubble, there was so much happening, every secondlasted an hour, and the secrets of time were revealed to him and the others who experienced time the way he did, under a magnifying glass, and inside you feel private, intimate, and the people watching you, pressing their faces against the bubble, wonder what’s going on; they stand on the outside looking in, puzzled and sweaty and filthy, and again he asks himself what it will be like when his bar mitzvah comes around in a year and a half, will he start growing those stiff black hairs all over, his might be blond, though; what happens, does some mysterious force squeeze the hairs out through the epidermis, and does it hurt, and he vows that even when he’s big and hairy someday, with coarse skin like Papa and other men have, he will always remember the boy he used to be, and engrave him deep in his memory, because otherwise certain things might vanish in the course of growing up, it’s hard to say what, there’s a quality that makes all adults seem similar, not in looks so much, or even in personality, it’s this thing they have in common that makes them belong, that makes them law-abiding citizens, and when Aron grows up to be like them, he will still whisper, at least once a day, I em go—eeng; I em play—eeng; I em Aron—eeng; and that way he will always remember the individual Aron beneath the generalities. Eight minutes to go. Whew! He got so wrapped up he skipped two minutes.