The Book of Intimate Grammar

13

One pleasant winter morning, the Sabbath of his bar mitzvah, Aron was called up to read from the Torah. As soon as he saw the scroll spread open with the tufted symbols, his nerves were calmed and he chanted jubilantly: Then flew unto me one of the seraphim, with a glowing stone in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from off the altar; Papa was standing beside him, looking clumsy in his prayer shawl, his red face bobbing after the rabbi’s finger as Aron quavered: And He touched my mouth with it and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is expiated. The diminutive rabbi kept a vigilant eye on him, every pore on his face squeezed shut with concentration. Maybe he remembered that impertinent question Aron asked about Divine justice; narrowly suspicious, he watched the radiant son dance before his father with outstretched arms in the shower of sweets pelting down from the women’s gallery, and Aron, at the height of his rejoicing, felt the sudden sting of the rabbi’s eyes upon him.

Afterward the family went home and found two Orthodox Jews waiting at the door. They’d wheeled an old baby carriage all the way from Mea Shearim with a huge pot of noodle kugel swathed in towels to keep it warm. Mama hurried to the kitchen with Yochi, to cut the kugel and make last-minute changes in the refreshments, and Aron went to his room and sat in the window, one foot on the heater, looking out at the street, stabbing himself over and over with the daggerlike memoryof his rabbi’s side glance. When Shimmik and Itka’s Volkswagen pulled up, Aron jumped off the windowsill and lay supinely on his bed.

Two weeks before the bar mitzvah Mama took one of his shoes to the Persian cobbler in the market and gave him precise instructions, but the idiot made the shoes too big and Aron had to wear insoles. Mama bought him a pair of thick new socks, too, and when she rolled them around his fist to check the size she saw they were too big, but just this once, she asked, he could wear them, couldn’t he? Aron looked at the sock around his fist and said he’d heard that a person’s heart is the same size as his fist. Mama took one look at his fist and grabbed the sock, tfu, don’t believe everything you hear. When Aron put on the shoes he felt suddenly taller. Bending down he discovered they were elevator shoes. Mama was preoccupied with a speck of schmutz she’d found on her blouse, which she tried to rub out with a little spit. Aron was quiet. So, already he was starting to betray himself; how he despised himself for keeping silent.

Two by two, some trailing children, the relatives assembled in the salon. From time to time, Yochi peeked in to smile at him encouragingly and bring him the presents that had been left for him at the desk, as she put it. He received A Thousand Historical Characters and An Answer for Every Question; the Kapa’i Kipnis Hebrew-English dictionary; two army mess kits with plates and cup; the six volumes of the collected works of Winston Churchill; and from Itka and Shimmik the Guinness Book of World Recordsthey’d promised him long ago, when he was interested in that stuff. What would he do with it now, though? From the salon he heard a great commotion, but he made up his mind to stay in his room a little while longer. To pull himself together. He felt hot in his choking bow tie, in the heavy sweater Mama had knitted especially for him, in the outlandish jacket they’d bought him with the shoulder pads; Mama would skin him alive if he dared take anything off before the last of the guests left. He lay on his bed, joylessly leafing through the Guinness Book of World Records, exactly like the one at Gideon’s, which he already knew by heart, and thanks to which, you might say, he was top of his class in English; now he read about a farmer who stuffed a goose till it weighed fifty-eight kilos, and about bonsai trees in Japan, and about Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in the world, who died at the age of twenty-three because people of that type have a short lifespan, and he yawned as hard as he could for emphasis. The doorbellrang and Aron heard Mama and Papa merrily welcoming Ruja and Loniu, the parents of his cousin Omri, and after them, Efraim and Gucha, who had arrived from Tel Aviv. He waited a moment, yes, no, yes, no, but it was yes. “Efraim!” said Mama in a tight, sweet voice, “I see that Giora’s left you flatfooted!”

Aron pulled back the sleeves of his jacket and sweater and shirt, and glanced at the wristwatch from Grandma Lilly, a big heavy Duxa, with two movable metal rings. The idiot cobbler had pierced another three holes in the leather band, so the watch would fit snugly. Grandma Lilly didn’t even know she’d bought him such an expensive gift out of the savings Mama put aside for her. In honor of his bar mitzvah Mama had reupholstered her Pouritz, and tied her down with a colorful Bukharan shawl, to keep her from falling, she explained to everyone. Most of the guests were seeing Grandma in this state of rapid deterioration for the first time, and Mama finally opened her heart to Ruja and Rivche and told them what a gehinneh-geheinam she and Papa were living in, it was impossible, and for the first time she admitted to an outsider that one day they might be forced to put her in a home or the geriatric ward, not at Hadassah Hospital, where they don’t know the meaning of responsibility, but in Bikkur Holim Hospital, where the family had a little protectzia; there they would take good care of her, and watch her during the day and especially at night. Aron, in his room, sat up on his elbows and listened, but none of the guests seemed to object to their packing Grandma off. Even Yochi, who was standing in the kitchen so Mama knew she heard — that Yochi, she never misses a thing — even she resigned herself in silence to Grandma Lilly’s banishment, and none of them standing in a circle around the Pouritz asked whether a specialist had been consulted, whether she had had all the necessary tests, not that Aron asked either, he knew doctors only want to chop the patients up for diploma practice, and yet, in the hush around Grandma, who sat among them with bowed head, he longed to hear a voice ring out, the innocent voice of a child asking why they didn’t try to find proper treatment for her, maybe there were new medicines available, she wasn’t that old, sixty at most, and at her age a person could still be saved, but the silence around her grew heavier, and even without touching the onion strip he could hear them sigh and say, When it comes, it comes, it’s the will of God, man is a fly-by-night, here today, gone tomorrow.

And the doorbell rang and in walked Rochaleh and Gamliel. Mamahadn’t spoken to Gamliel for the twenty years or so since she married Papa, and now everyone was happy again, there were kisses and cheers and compliments all around, and Grandma’s doom was sealed. Aron in his bedroom let out a startled laugh: That’s it! It’s over. Finita la commedia.He rolled over on his side and pressed his knees to his stomach and made a stomach muscle with all his might. Gradually he relaxed. Straightened out. In the watch that Grandma gave him there were two more tiny watches: when you press the left button a blue space opens up and the watch tells the depth of the sea — to hell with the sea, he wasn’t going to Tel Aviv again this year even if they killed him — and when you press the right button you see what time it is in Alaska and New York and Moscow and Tokyo. He’d worn the watch for a week already and was living according to New York time, which is seven hours later than here, and seven hours is an eternity.

Soon he’ll go out. He can hear them all crowding around, having a good time. Yochi enters with another gift. Gamliel and Rochaleh brought him Fisher’s The History of Europein three volumes, which they bought at a discount from their union, a present to match their faces, said Mama later that evening, as they were making a list of what everyone gave; they already had one set from Yochi’s bat mitzvah, and in any case, books go straight to the storage loft so they won’t bring dust into the salon. Yochi kneels beside him and gently strokes his sweat-moistened hair, careful not to intrude on his privacy. But next year she’ll be in the army, and he’ll be alone. She’s breaking out again with red and yellow pimples and Mama made a crack about it, why didn’t Yochi mention that the bar mitzvah date fell on her curse, now she’ll stay that way forever in the family photographs, she should have known, it comes like clockwork, you have to plan ahead. Yochi blows on his cowlick, trying to make him laugh. She gave him the most wonderful present of all, a Yamaha guitar; three years after the crummy one cracked and all the strings broke, and his parents refused to have it fixed, she took out her savings and bought him a brand-new professional guitar. It was incredible: he, who spent a lifetime entering contests so he could get a Yamaha, had just received one for his bar mitzvah! Yochi follows his gaze back to the black case. “Will you play something for me?” “Later. When they’ve gone.” They giggle. He looks into her eyes. Her face has changed. Once, she was a pretty little girl. She had a great sense of humor. Nowadays you rarely hear a peep out of her.She eats and she sleeps and gets fatter and fatter: she has Papa’s appetite and Mama’s constipation.

“Brace yourself and go out, Aronaleh.” “I can’t handle those people.” “Hey, you want a massage?” “A massage? What, now?” “A fast one. To relax you.” “No.” He recoiled at the thought of anyone touching his body just then. “Aron.” “What?” “Sooner or later you’ll have to go out.” “One more minute. Don’t go.” “Everyone loves you out there.” “Yeah.” They were silent again. “Yochi?” “Yes, sweetie.” “What did you mean that time, about knowing how to survive around here?” “It’s not important.” “It is important.” “Not now. They’re waiting for you.” “Yochi.”

She gazed into his imploring eyes and tousled his hair again. “I didn’t mean anything. Just that — how can I explain it”—she ran her fingers through his curls and noticed they were a darker shade of blond than before—“say you were in the desert, okay?” “Okay.” “Without any shade, and the sun beating down on you.” Silently she envisioned the fingerlike rays, prying into every recess of her life, opening letters, leafing through her secret diary, peeking behind the door when she was deep in conversation with her girl friend Zehava, the only friend she’d ever had, and then Zehava moved to America. And Yochi didn’t try to make new friends. Because the heat was so debilitating. “In the desert, li’l brother,” she hums, winding a ringlet of his hair around her finger, maybe he was too young to speak to this way, though maybe you could still save him, give him a clue, you owe him that much, you’ve been using him as a decoy. “Ouch, Yochi!” “Sorry.” She loosened the ringlet. It’s a lie, it isn’t true, I’ve always loved him, I’ve never been jealous. Okay, you weren’t jealous, but you did use him as your decoy. Nonsense, he’s always been better than me at everything. When they said he was intelligent, you called him a genius. Exactly, I never envied him. Yochi’s lips are moving: I was mature about it; when the art teacher told Mama how well he drew, I said he would be another Picasso. A decoy, to divert attention. Not true. I’ve always been proud of him; and when he played the guitar, I said he has a light … a special light in his eyes … right in front of Mama I said that … Admit it, admit it, you feel guilty about him. She looked at him lying on his bed in that ridiculous outfit, mummified in Mama’s shame. “Because plants that grow in the desert,” she said softly, “have to be wary of the sun, and send out tiny pleated leaves to keep from being burned right away. It’sa hard life in the desert.” She falls silent. She can see in his eyes that he doesn’t understand. Maybe he really is too young.

“Yochi.”

“Yes, Aronaleh.”

“Look into my eyes.”

“Why?”

“Is there a different look in them now? Have they changed? Tell me the truth.”

She doesn’t even ask what he’s talking about. She peers deep into his eyes and says nothing.

“I think I used to have a puppylike look in my eyes. An innocent look.”

“People mature.”

“No, it isn’t that.”

She stood up so he wouldn’t see her faking a smile. “I think I’ll write that down for you.” She rummaged in her drawer for the notebook where she used to record his adorable sayings.

“Come on, what am I, a baby?”

“It’s just so we’ll remember. Someday you’ll get a kick out of it.”

He leaned over her shoulder and read the last entry: “21st of Shevat. Aronaleh is ten and one month. He made up a story about why bambis are brown. Once upon a time, bambis were as colorful as peacocks. And one bambi went out with his parents and the herd but they came to a swamp, and the other deer lay down and cried, because they couldn’t cross it, so the bambi went in first, shouting that he would teach them how to skip across the swamp without drowning, and his parents begged him not to, because God would punish him …”

“Stop it, that’s enough!” Aron shut the notebook in her face. He was pale and earnest. “I don’t want you to write about me anymore. That’s for little kids. That’s over.” But inside he was appalled. Had three whole years gone by without a single noteworthy utterance? Had he been like this for three years already?

Yochi put the notebook back in the drawer. She stood before him limply. There was growing commotion in the salon and cries of Let’s see the bar mitzvah groom.

“I’ll go out and say you’re coming, okay?”

A moment more and he would go out. He peeked at his watch. In New York we’re still asleep. It’s five o’clock in the morning, so it mightstill be possible, theoretically, to call expensive Photo Gwirtz and hire them for the occasion at the last minute. Why not? Outside, there was shouting and laughter. Most of the guests were from out of town, Netanya, Holon, Tel Aviv, and some of them hadn’t seen Aron in two years, since the bar mitzvah of Chomek and Hassia’s son Gidi, when Aron was eleven. What had he been doing for the past two years? Wasting time, that’s what. He stared at the squares on the salon carpet they’d moved into his bedroom for the party. Vichtig, they called the carpet, because the man who sold it to them never stopped talking about himself. Two years. God in heaven. If you add up all the centimeters and kilograms the kids at school have put on in that time you’d have enough to make a whale. He chuckled. Or imagine that they didn’t grow at all, and instead, between rows 2 and 3, there’d be an enormous slippery whale swelling up more and more every minute. Again he hid himself in bed, practicing that sumo technique. Out there, Rivche’s Dov asked hoarsely, What’s happened to the bar mitzvah groom, why are they hiding him? and Mama shouted from the kitchen that he should eat a little tongue meanwhile, she knows how much he loves her tongue. Just thinking about it makes his mouth water, he jested, and Aron remembered Lealeh, his daughter, no one had ever seen her, she’d been in an institution all her life, and you weren’t even allowed to ask how she was.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Uncle Shimmik’s bald head peeked in, with those dangerous brown spots. Aron quickly reached into his pocket and touched the onion, a fresh, new strip he prepared especially for today. Shimmik saw him. He stood up close. He was thinking. Aron squeezed the onion and looked down. Shimmik was silent. He was secretly thinking, according to the onion, It’s been two years since I’ve seen you, Aronchik, and in my imagination you’d grown tall as the ceiling. Yes yes, answered Aron; he knew they were waiting for him, he just had something to finish here first and then he’d come out to celebrate with everyone. “Can I bring you a little something to eat in here? Your mama, God bless her, has made such a feast — a mechayeh!” And Shimmik touched three fingers to his big thick lips. Aron said it wasn’t necessary really, but now Ruja pushed in behind him, small and fast as a rat. “I will not give up!” she said to Shimmik with her crooked palsy smile. “We came here all the way from Haifa!” Shimmik managed to shut the door before she got in and Aron couldhear the two of them whispering outside. Through the onion Ruja told Shimmik that she planned to saunter in casual-like, and see if it’s true what they said about him. And Shimmik answered: It’s much worse than I thought. Juice from the onion strip dripped over his fingers. Now Ruja was saying that she’d only go in for a minute, to see if he’s mentally retarded as well, and Shimmik answered, deliberately loud, “It won’t do any good, Rujinka, I’ve been trying to persuade him.” But Ruja was determined. “You leave it to me.” And she barged into Aron’s room with her crooked smile. You can count on Ruja not to miss a chance to gall me, said Mama to Papa later that night when they were writing the gift list, she’d worm her way into my kishkes if she could.

Ruja spoke gaily, nonchalantly, and Aron felt compelled to answer with the highest-sounding words he knew. Seeing her eyes fixed on his thin, smooth leg, he was forced to utter, “I regret to say,” his “regret to say” wriggling between them like the tail a lizard sheds to distract a predator. Even when her eyes grew wide at his intelligence and she was convinced that at least his brains were all right, Aron knew what she was thinking. Only her lipstick smiled at him. She sniffed the air and went to open the window. It’s stifling in here, Aronaleh, aren’t you hot, and she also said that there was an onion smell, and smiled at him again. Come, Aronaleh, everyone’s waiting, they’ll think you’re angry or something, and my Omri is here, it’s been two years since you’ve seen each other, and you used to be such good friends, we still have the pictures of you from that Purim party. Aron stole a glance at his watch. Maybe a doctor in New York had just discovered the cure, maybe a plane was even now approaching our shores, carrying the medicine.

Ruja dragged him out by the hand, making a fuss. Nu sure, Mama rasped through the onion, so that everyone can share my happiness. As he stood in the hallway he could hear Shimmik organizing the cousins for a family portrait and asking about the bar mitzvah groom. Aron said excuse me to Ruja and went into the bathroom to piss. Nothing new there. Shimmik ordered the cousins to stand up straight, not to move, not to breathe. Aron tried to imagine how they looked together, tall and strong as evergreens, or like the wall of players blocking a penalty kick, their hands protecting them below. He threw a piece of paper into the water so he wouldn’t have to pull the chain and cause a flood. Someone knocked on the door impatiently. He stepped out,turning the bathroom over to Mama, who pushed her way in quickly with Grandma Lilly. “Don’t ask what she did to me,” Mama seethed, her face pinched and her eyes evasive. “Such humiliation, in front of company! Nu, get in already, Mamchu!” And she closed the door behind them.

Aron took a deep breath and went out to the salon, where, of all people, he bumped into Giora, and suddenly felt himself diminishing, and the burny place in his stomach flashed red. He stood as straight as he could, conscious that everyone was looking at him and that they knew, and then he slumped again. But he had no choice because there he was. He put his hands on his hips, and let them down; he put one foot out, then pulled it back; he folded his arms over his chest; it was only four months since he’d been with Giora, yet he barely recognized him anymore. With downcast eyes he stood before him, trying to hold a conversation with his gergeleh. A perfect gergeleh it was, too, moving up and down like a pump to give Giora just the right voice. He tried his best to ignore the aunts and uncles, and the children beside their parents, staring at him, and the sudden hush that fell over the house. At last it dawned on him why Mama had been in such a hurry to lock herself in the bathroom with Grandma. Giora asked him if he would be coming again next summer, and Aron stared at him in amazement, remembering how he had tormented him, and answered that this summer, he regretted to say, he would be too busy getting ready for eighth grade, but as he spoke, he realized that if he did go to Tel Aviv next summer, Giora would no longer be cruel to him, that his cruelty the previous summer had erupted at a transitional moment which he was now well beyond.

Pretending to ignore what was happening around him, Aron continued to chat with Giora and tug at his stiff little bow tie. He asked with feigned smugness about one or another of the boys in Giora’s crowd, and casually mentioned the sunken raft, to gauge whether Giora felt guilty or embarrassed about it, because he had a dim impression — no, that was a lie, pretty words — he’d thought about it thousands of times, trying to bring back the moment; sometimes he would dwell on it for an entire lesson, it was not impossible that his difficulty had started at that moment when scarcely any oxygen reached his brain; yes, how often he had pictured that scene to himself, the murderous expression on Giora’s face in the gray-green water, how he ruthlessly climbed overAron to save himself, turning Aron into an enemy, and maybe that was the turning point for Giora too, when he began to change into what he was today, as though they had both been through a kind of secret ordeal, which only Giora had passed, though he barely remembered it, or at least pretended not to, and Aron, amazed at how well he dissembled his feelings, had to ask him, nonchalantly, whether he remembered their walks through the streets of Tel Aviv, in the khamsin. Giora shrugged and said, Yeah, those were the days. And to seal their prolonged conversation, Aron shook his hand, startling Giora with that new air of gravity, which seemed to suggest he had arrived at some final realm of maturity, notwithstanding his physical appearance.

Giora had to leave with his father in the middle of the party to get back to Tel Aviv in time for a Scouting event. Aunt Gucha stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. No sooner was he out the door than she hurried to tell everyone he had a girlfriend, for thirty minutes he stands in front of the mirror before he leaves the house. Aunt Ruja said, “What do you know,” and then she told them in a half whisper everyone could hear about her Omri and his blond doll. All these fat, floury women, Aron saw, began to titter around her like young girls, secretly hankering to be Omri’s blond doll, and through the hissing of the ember inside him, Aron knew this was somehow connected with those pictures that still turned up occasionally in different hiding places around the house (when he bothered to look for them), and also with that embrace, and the slimy smile, and the way Mama elbows Papa when they walk down the street, husti gezein? Did you see her? Aron turned sharply to the window and ordered himself to prepare to dive inward and start Aroning; it used to be like going into a colorful market, the thoughts and ideas would leap and swirl before him, but now the pleasure of it was the quiet in there, the empty stillness where you could rest, unwind. He pressed his forehead to the windowpane and looked across the valley, at the hawthorn trees and the little junkyard. If he moved, he could also see the cave where he and Gideon hid the basalt stone; he never did explain to Gideon why that was necessary, he merely insisted, because for all their covenants, the notes they swallowed and the wine they drank, the words they carved on the tree and the blood they mingled from cuts in their arms, Aron still needed something more, something undefinable that flickered enigmatically in the depths of their friendship. Was it still there, he wondered. He lingered in the memory awhile, butperceived himself floating fast to the surface, against his will, because it was obvious now what an idiot he’d been, it was Papa who hid the pictures, not merely from him, but also, how could he have missed it, from Mama, yes definitely, that explained the secrecy and the mystery, and when their friends came over to play rummy on Friday nights, Mama and Papa used different cards, as Aron knew because on Friday nights he always stayed home. He and Yochi. Like two inseparable fogies, Mama exploded, Munish mit Zalman, and she implored Yochi to stay in her room with him while their friends were there. Maybe she even tried to bribe her with money, sure, every ruse ties in with another, and a few months ago something happened while he and Yochi were lying on their beds pretending to read, and the guests in the salon were playing rummy for shillings, and talking about their children, and Mama started bragging about how popular Aron and Yochi were at school, and about all the fun they had at parties: I tell you, since we had our phone installed, Yochi’s boyfriends never stop calling. He and Yochi were lying rigidly on their beds, staring blindly at their books, when Yochi sprang up suddenly. Stand straight, Aron, let me see you, she said, looking him over with an expert eye, aggressively buttoning his pajama top and combing his hair with a part on the side. Then she put on the Golda dress that gave her a big tuchis and the old glasses she hadn’t worn in years, and as if this wasn’t enough, she found the retainer from her braces in the cupboard, and stuck it in her mouth, and she emerged from the bedroom, with Aron in tow, and walked straight up to Mama in the salon; and then — how could he have been so stupid — he saw their playing cards were from an ordinary deck with no pictures on the back. He stared at the windowpane: yes, he kept the pictures hidden from Mama too! What else was he hiding? Who was he anyway?! Over his shoulder he could hear Ruja whisper something to the women, which was answered by snorts of laughter. Schrechlich, said Gucha, it seems like only yesterday they were young enough to take to the ladies’ room and today they’re men, I don’t remember that happening so early in our day. Hardly! cried Ruja, at their age we were innocents, we didn’t know from nothing. I certainly didn’t, added Itka in a naughty whisper, not until my wedding night, when Hindaleh, bless her, came in and explained the whole megillah, and scared me half to death, I still thought children came from — She lowered her voice still more, and Aron sealed himself off inside to keep out the whispers, so all he heard was theircachinnations; Rivche, laughing convulsively, nearly knocked over the blue bowl with the doe and the stag chasing each other, and stained her dress with a drip of mayonnaise from her triangular sandwich; Aron got ready to pick up the pieces, but Mama caught it without even looking, she just reached out and snapped it up in mid-air. Go wash the stain off with water and a little soap, Rivche, and when she finally stopped laughing she said, It’s all right for you, you have boys, but think about me, with a teenage daughter, oi, don’t ask. You did right, dear Hindaleh, slobbered Zipporah, a distant cousin who had three sons. You had a girl and a boy, the way it says you should in the Bible. And your three boys, Mama reciprocated, will bring you ready-made daughters. Here’s wishing the same for you, Hindaleh, said Zipporah. Nu nu, said Mama, lowering her voice, trust my Yochi not to waste any time. And she winked a huge ugly wink at her that pulled down half her face. Lucky thing Yochi was in the kitchen just then.

When will it end? He was utterly exhausted from the squirming and the phony smiles and the whispering onion; and also from this new effort he had to make, because for the first time he understood with his brain how intricately conversations are woven and how many invisible threads there are in the corners of a smile. Yochi came in from the kitchen with another tray of chicken, how many poor hens had given their lives for his bar mitzvah, and Mama tried to grab it from her, but Yochi held fast, and the two of them took a few steps that way, with the tray held high in the air, smiling at the guests, and because they couldn’t quite decide which way to turn, they headed straight to him, the bar mitzvah groom. Have some pupiklach, said Mama, they’re simply delicious. No no, said Yochi sweetly, have a wing. But my gizzards came out like butter today, Mama cajoled him with a cheery face. Hmm, but the wings are really yummy too. Yochi curtsied to him, almost shoving the chicken into his mouth, till he pulled away in alarm. The pupiklach melt in your mouth, urged Mama, fending Yochi off with her shoulder. Try the wings, whispered Yochi conspiratorially, and the aromas swirled around like fog, condensing into heavy drops of gravy. I’ve had enough, I don’t want any more! he protested, why were they jumping on him like that, in front of everyone. With his back to the wall, confused and flushed, he forced himself into his thoughts again: It’s fun to think, it’s relaxing, it fills you with love, where were we, ah yes, he’d always thought it was a family sham, but today a thin membraneseemed to peel from his eyes and he could see something new here, a delicate beauty, even compassion, because everyone knew everyone else’s secrets, everyone was a hostage in someone else’s hands, at their mercy or their cruelty. Why are you thinking these thoughts? Think like a boy your age. It all goes back to your problem. This is just another symptom. You think you’re winning, but you keep losing. And you have to be so careful and conscientious in order to make a single statement without hurting or shaming someone: for instance, Mama was just telling the women they were lucky to have daughters, but she only said it when Rivche, poor Lealeh’s mother, went out to the kitchen. That was a minor mercy, but the air was full of tiny darts, phrases waiting to burst with poison, compliments with false bottoms, the caress of secrets shared, and carefully circumvented topics. These he discerned, as he opened his eyes to them in benevolent wonder. And he too, it seemed, would be spared today.

Three of his cousins came in from the balcony, glanced at him, and stopped their conversation. Go on, join them; no, they’re too young, they don’t know the rules yet the way he does. Go ahead, join the conversation, or was it an argument: which is better, hand brakes or pedal brakes, and how far can a tutu ball fly? But Shimmik wants to take his picture with them, to immortalize them standing together. He turned to the window, pretending to be engrossed in the view. Straighten your shoulders. Try to have a good time. Always be watchful, always be cunning, with grownups, with children, with grownups and children together, like all he needed now was for one of the boys to hear him talking to a grownup, he knew exactly how he sounded. On the other hand, when he was obliged to talk to one of them, to one of the guys, he was careful to use the old language, though it made him feel phony, like a tourist trying to be friendly with the natives, or like a spy in enemy territory, fighting for his life. He smiled a crooked smile as he stood by the window. Who knows, said his smile, what sort of life you’ll have. And he turned away, nervously touching his chest, his waist. Who could say how much life there was in a body like this.

Little Uncle Loniu, Ruja’s husband, found one of Leo Pold’s recordings on top of the phonograph and put it on, balancing a full bottle of wine on his forehead as he danced to the rhythm. The women gathered around him and clapped their hands. Rivche’s Dov stood at the center of the men’s group waving a fat drumstick and telling dirty jokes. Rivchewarned him to lower his voice, little pitchers have big ears, and she glanced at Aron with embarrassment. Aron watched the men out of the corner of his eye. They were heavy, tired-looking, all of them, like patient beasts of burden. Their features seemed to have been engraved as monuments to grief, yet they exuded a lukewarm air of failure and monotony. And once they had been his age. Perhaps they even looked like him. He would never look like them, though. Mama called Papa with her pinchy smile to help her put Mamchu on Yochi’s bed and cover her with the Scottish plaid — She’s so tired, she doesn’t realize how tired she is — but Papa was raptly listening to Dov’s joke about the rabbit who came back to the jungle and told the other animals that he’d shown the lion how to do it right. A smile of lewd anticipation spread over Papa’s face. His lower lip, cracked in the middle, moved in unison with Dov’s. Aron put down the glass of juice he had been holding since the beginning of the party and went to help Mama drag Grandma to his and Yochi’s room. When the door closed behind them and they had tucked in the blanket, Mama said tomorrow, so help her, she was going to throw Grandma out of the house, like a curse she needed her here, he should see what she just did in the bathroom, she ruined everything.

Aron stayed in the room a little longer to look at Grandma. Compassionately he stroked her porcelain face, which was hardly wrinkled because fools never grow old, and for a moment she opened her foggy eyes, trying to recognize him or tell him something, maybe she didn’t remember where words came from anymore. Maybe she was scurrying around inside, crying and searching for the way out. That was exactly how she looked when she came to give him that heirloom. The golden thread. Too bad he hadn’t kept it. He could have shown it to her now and brought her a little happiness. On a sudden impulse, stupidly, he touched her mouth, offering a hint that this was where words come out, and her soft, surprisingly supple lips wound around his finger. For a moment she sucked with the fierceness of a baby, and he drew his hand back in alarm.

Her lips groped blindly for his finger, which was wet with the embarrassing moisture of life, but he managed to hide it just in time. In walked Mama and stood by the door, sensing something, not comprehending. “You leave Grandma alone, you hear? You hear?” she whisperedfuriously. “You let us take care of her. Go do what a kid your age should do, you hear?!” Again he was dispatched to the salon, where he stood alone, confused and agitated. Someone tapped him roughly on the shoulder, frightening him before he had a chance to tense the muscle and disguise his scrawniness. “What’s with you, nebbich?” called Uncle Loniu, who was small and round as a button. “What’s with him, Hindaleh,” he cackled, and everyone heard. “Don’t you feed your bar mitzvah boy?” And a few months later, these words of Uncle Loniu’s spelled the beginning of the end of Aron’s leaps on the rock, as rough-hewn sobs erupted from deep inside, more like the crude ore of the soul than an outburst of tears. He leaped and fell, lacerated by the thorn-bushes and bruised by the stones, his eyes clogged with tears, but he couldn’t do it, so he tried to envision everything that had happened to him over the past two years, all the facets and figments of his problem, and still he crooked his arm at the last moment, till finally, when his strength failed, and all he remembered was that he had to get up and fall, get up and fall on his arm, though sometimes he only imagined he was up, then he suddenly remembered the time at his bar mitzvah when smart little Aunt Rivche caught Loniu by the arm and whispered, What do you want from the boy, give him a rest today, and Loniu shook off her hand and said, “Is this why we came to Israel with the sun and the vitamins and the oranges?” And Rivche caught his arm again and said quietly, tensely, Leave him alone, Loniu. Luz im nuch, what do you think, somebody’s doing something on purpose here? And Loniu crooked his arm and said, “At his age he should be starting to packa packa!” And he looked around, with a grin, and Rivche pressed her face up close and crackled as only the women in the family could: People in glass houses, Loniu. It seems to me the coat rack at our house hangs pretty low too, but again he evaded her and came back to Aron, who was by now completely paralyzed, living, say, in New York, where he read about this sad case in Woman’smagazine; Aron, who survived a night among the corpses in the cellar at Komi by remembering his magnificent bar mitzvah. And Loniu stood screaming at the top of his lungs, “Take a tip from Omri! Look at him! Body-building! Body-building!” And poor tormented Aron peered into his eyes and beheld the vengeance his butterball uncle had wreaked upon nature by means of his son, and for a moment he almost felt compassion for the stupidman, who had burst the bounds of family etiquette and screamed through the lump of anguish that was stuck in everyone’s throat, and then came the blessed moment, two months later, when grief and loneliness overwhelmed his ofzeluchi brain and Aron leaped up and plummeted from the rock and heard, with a mixture of shock and relief, the bone in his arm go crack.