The Book of Intimate Grammar

25

The bathroom door flew open, and everyone listened. A moment’s silence, and then the hoarse and languorous voice said, “Achh, a mechayeh, that was good.”

Ruddy and shining and fragrant with soap, Papa shuffled into the salon and lay facedown on the Bordeaux, bare-chested, with a towel around his waist. Mama waited in the bedroom, clasping her hands in front of the mirror. She took a deep breath to brace herself and muttered good riddance. Then she sent Yochi to bring Mamchu in to help, and went to get the massage lotion in the bathroom.

Aron finds it difficult to concentrate on peeling the potatoes. One by one he picks them up and weighs them in his hand. They all have different faces, weird human-looking faces, but distorted and miserable, and sometimes when the knife cuts into them, he can actually feel them wince. Slowly he starts Aroning. But Papa’s groans from the salon penetrate even there. And it isn’t easy to practice these days. Oh please, let him never lose the gift. The trouble is, there’s no room left inside him. He’s utterly stuffed. His eyes are bulging, his lungs are drowning in mush. His breath stinks of it. His thoughts are smeared with it. It’s heavy as lead, it burns, it’s nauseating. And him in there with his moaning and groaning, achhhh, achhhh. It’s been a long time since we heard the like of those. Aron tries with all his might to seal himself off from the noise. Seated in the kitchen he can see Papa’s hand dangling from the sofa, with the thick, hairy fingers, tsss tsss tsssgoes the chirringin his head, addressing him in the pinchy voice, through the mouthpiece of the gland: Watch it, your fingers are limp, soon they’ll spread and you’ll drop the knife. Aron pouts with concentration and quickly cuts. The little red peeler, runt of her kitchen knives, comes menacingly close to his fingers now, and he loses half the potato for a change. They’re all turning out like pygmies today. Tsss tsss tsss,why must you be so stubborn. Why are you fighting me. You don’t stand a chance. Because everything in the world is me. There’s nothing in the world that isn’t me. I’m the things of the world and the people who use them. I’m steel and rubber and wood and flesh. I’m cranks and valves and gears and pistons. I’m the blade that cuts. I’m the screws you have to remember which way to screw in on the first try. I’m the knots in your shoelaces and the cord for the blinds. Yes, I’m everything, a coded message, a secret experiment. Aron veers angrily away from the little red knife, which has suddenly started bobbing around with a life of its own. He focuses his gaze far away from here, on the fingers in the salon, for instance, and it’s a good thing Papa’s nostrils are big enough. Mama opens her mouth to alert Yochi and Grandma about a big one hiding slyly in a tangle of hair on Papa’s shoulder. And I am the scourge of the broken plate and the light bulb exploding in your hand and the glass that shatters when you clink l’chaim. And the sweater you put on inside out. And the buttons you button wrong. And the door you slam on your finger. This runt keeps trying to cut him, without even bothering to hide it. He pauses a minute and looks down at his hands, the pink little hands that always reminded him somehow of an inner organ exposed to view. He used to play the guitar once. But it broke, oh sure, uh-huh, and Yochi bought him a new one, but he can’t bring himself to take it out of the case. Just give it a try, why don’t you, see what’s left in your hands and your feelings. Once they promised him that when he was older he could take guitar lessons with a real teacher. Then they said he didn’t have talent. A Mozart you’re not, said Mama, and she smiled for some reason. So what was he? What was he? The wunderkind has lost his wunder. Because he used to have such a knack for things. Once he even fixed the toaster Mama wanted to throw out. And Papa used to let him pour the kiddush wine on Friday nights, but now his hand trembles and everything spills. He reflects about this with an eighth of a thought, as though skating on very thin ice. He knows his mind plays tricks on him and uses him against himself. It locks him in. Lockby lock. If only he could remember how he used to do things, without even thinking.

In the salon the women are going over Papa. They have matching skin, he thinks, as though they were cut from the same cloth. Even Grandma resembles them now. Not in looks so much as the expression on her face while she works on Papa: at least she won’t be singing those songs to his back anymore; Papa’s face turned purple that time when they had the fight and Mama screamed at him, You promised, you promised, and his Adam’s apple bounced up all red, and a long, frightening moment later it began to slide back, and Aron stared, mesmerized, at the way it pushed down on his Polish, his language with Grandma Lilly; even when Mama wasn’t home they didn’t dare speak it anymore, they would sit in silence. Why did you let Mama have her way? Aron is seething. Why did you give in?

He goes to the sink and washes the cut on his finger. The faucet doesn’t shut all the way. There’s a leak. He sucks the blood from the cut. It’ll heal in time for your wedding. Heal, nothing. Wedding, nothing. Why did he have to inspect each stupid word, measuring it against his problem. But he’d barely thought about himself in the past few weeks. Where have you been and what have you been doing? Nothing. Just disappeared, that’s all. Went into hibernation. He saw a whole show in his dreams at night, for adults only. But how come they let him see it, why did they allow him. Hard and fast he peels the potato. What if, could it be, they wanted him to see. Go on. It’s the truth. They did it in front of him. They concealed nothing. Right from the first, after Papa’s return. Quartered potatoes squirt out from under his knife. A vertical furrow of outrage cuts the space between his eyebrows. They wanted him to see. They forced him to watch. Like the wrestling matches on Lebanon TV, the titans tangling and grappling together. Watch them and learn how to fight. He stares at his hand, which is empty. Pieces of potato lie scattered at his feet. Nonsense. All they did was tear down some walls, the rest is only in your mind. But what will happen to Edna now? Maybe he ought to inform someone. Like her parents. But I don’t know Hungarian. And a wave of indignity surged through him, as if they’d left him stranded among the islands of debris, and he nearly ran out to the salon, gasping with distress, needing to be hugged. But he did not run out. He did not move. He merely shuddered at the thought that he wasn’t running out to them. That there was no longer a boywho went running out to the salon whenever something troubled him, that he might never insinuate himself into their hearts again, how could he bear to touch their flesh, and now the chirring returns: I am one, it says to him, I am one and everything is one, and there is no law except for mine: there are no two ways of connecting electric wires. For every button there is but one hole. There is but one direction to turn the faucet. That is how it is and that is how it will always be. Nevermore will you fall into error and confusion. I’ve had my eye on you for quite a while.

Mama takes the cap off the lotion and begins the massage. Papa’s back is so enormous there are places left for Grandma and Yochi. Grandma lays her hands on him, and Mama watches tremulously. It’s a miracle. A miracle. And Aron has to make. Now of all times he feels it coming. He checks, astonished, vaguely hopeful, he’s had false alarms before. In his sleep a couple of times, but as soon as he noticed, it went away. His mind must have forced it back. So maybe this too is a false alarm. He sits up. Listening inward. Yes: a fluttering. A stirring, deep and winding, with a sticky blob of goo at the end, and a drop of moisture condenses there; oh help, Aron is aghast, why now, when he’s trapped in the kitchen, it’s getting stronger and stronger in there, whirling around, overpowering him, then receding, like an oval whisper, but it’s there all the same, strange, it came on just after the pounding stopped. Why didn’t you plan ahead, idiot, why now, when it’s a thousand times harder to run out of the house squeezing your legs together, and it’s scary in the valley and in the hiding place at the Wizo Nursery School, and where will you find an alternative to Edna’s?

Papa is groaning hoarsely. You can hear his body relaxing, flowing, and Aron winces and fidgets on the edge of the tabouret, and the pain draws in like a wave, you can feel it starting, here it comes, bend over, crouch, oowwwww, his back and shoulders are so tense they hurt, okay, we made it through that wave, but he feels another one already, far away, maybe he should try making at home this time. Well now, that helped, thinking that, but just stop thinking about it, plan ahead! He looks up, pale-faced, with tiny beads of sweat on his forehead. Cautiously he peeks: Mama’s smearing a ton of lotion on Papa’s back. The cap on the bottle twists open in the same direction as the faucet. And if you twirl a spoon of honey around very fast it’ll stop dripping. Would you believe that inanimate objects are capable of laughing? Well, wouldyou? It’s a whistle-like laugh, like Michael Carny giggling with Rina Fichman, tsssssss, what a clown. And you turn the key in the lock to the right, not the left. The way you twist the cap on the toothpaste. Tsssssss. Or the cap of the massage lotion. Just as spring follows winter, just as a donkey can only give birth to a baby donkey. They look so busy out there, poking and squeezing and sighing. Their faces are inscrutable. Not that they really resemble each other; well, they do, actually but they’re different too; not in what’s in them: in what isn’t in them. Each has her own particular area to rub and knead which singles her out from the other two. Almost cruelly they press down on him. And they know it hurts, though he doesn’t complain. Look: they twiddle his flesh between their fingers like dough, tearing him to pieces. Melting him down. And the only thing he dares to do is groan. In submission. In repentance. Just don’t let their fingers become tangled in the forest of hair on his back or they’ll pull it out, skin and all. And suddenly Aron feels a whirlpool of pain sucking him irresistibly down. It takes every last bit of strength to escape it, and he sits leaning hard against the wall, perspiring, his eyes opened wide. What’s happening to him? Having to crap at a time like this. How long will he be able to hold it in? He jumps to his feet and turns off the leaky faucet. But there’s another drop swelling there, he stares at it with horror. Don’t look. Sit down. Bend over. No! Just the opposite! Get up. Stand straight. Hands in the air. Breathe deep. Press your cheek against the refrigerator. Hush now. Calm down. What were we thinking about? When? Never mind when, what were we thinking about, oh yes, about that kid in Ripley’s Believe It or Not:300 incredible cases, who also suffered from a terrible stomachache, almost died of it, and when the doctors operated they found the undeveloped fetus of his twin inside. What inventiveness. And he makes a mental note that Hanan Schweiky has a visible mustache already. Today we had our third proof, in broad daylight, and what did we find on Gil Kaplan, pimples on his forehead and his chin; wait, no, that was Asa Kolodny, you’re getting confused, where’s your head, you used to have a good head; well, at least Gideon is still pure. Okay, he has an Adam’s apple and his voice is pretty much a lost cause, but we’ve managed to stop the rest of it for the time being. Aron sneaks back and sits down on the tabouret, holding the knife, tsssssss. Like babies start walking when they’re one, lose their milk teeth when they’re five. Like children always grow taller than their parents. Everyone progressespoint by point. Stage by stage. So this victory with Gideon is worthless anyway, maybe he still has some purity left, but the way he acts, he’s so competitive, and he gets embarrassed whenever Aron opens his mouth in front of other kids. You talk like a professor, he says, you talk the way they talk on the radio, he says, and this coming from Gideon, whose whole life — only when they’re alone together is he nice to Aron, like a mensch, and the minute other kids join in, he starts lecturing them, and Aron has never, but never, criticized him for it, so what’s left of that friendship, Aron muses sadly, it’s like all I ever worry about is his body, the rest I’ve lost. And we’re very fast at catching spies, says the pinchy chirring voice, we test them: can they slide a straw in the bottle on the first try, for instance. Tsssssss. Soon, the week after Passover, Gideon would go for tests at the clinic, they wanted to find out why he’s always so tired. A couple of times he almost fell asleep in class. All Aron needed now was for them to find something in his blood, traces or residues of something. Suddenly he’s up, choking, wanting out. Where to? You’re under house arrest. The foursome in the salon notice his impulsive movement and look up, taking him in at a single glance, and he slinks back to the kitchen. Sit down, you have more than half the potatoes left to peel. He used to be such a pro at this, yeah, yeah, who cares; what did he want from Gideon anyway, to keep him safe a little while longer, safe in a bubble of the present continuous, and once more he rises and nearly runs out. Here it comes again, what made it start, I ought to be grateful, and he sits back down, intent and molten, what’s going on, it feels like a little earthquake inside, shaking him up from head to toe, everything is erupting, everything is changing shape, a great sharp pyramid is slowly revolving in his guts, and say he was willing to compromise about one of his problems. Not that he would give in so easily, but let’s just say he — limped a little, okay? Limping is simple. Plenty of people limp. They have an accident, or maybe they were even born like that, with one leg shorter. And they limp. They can move the foot a little, like a broken screw. But limping is pretty clear-cut. It’s like an appliance breaking. It isn’t a curse. It’s not as if everything died inside. Come to think of it, Binyumin the gimp has pimples on his face. And he tries to imagine himself limping, and instantly it’s as if someone handed him a long list, and he can see himself tripping on the stairway or on the soccer field, or roller skating, or riding his bike, or folk dancing, right, we get the picture, or having todecide which foot to set forward as you step off the bus first so no one will notice, or going to the water fountain when they start playing chicken, and dropping out of the honor guard when they stand at attention beside the memorial plaque for fallen alumni on Independence Day. Enough already, he submits, angrily, wearily shaking his head. Or what if you were blind or deaf, or fat, or you stuttered or had a birthmark on your face, oh please, but what’s going on in his stomach, what were we thinking about, nothing, oh yes, how once, on the school trip to the Sea of Galilee, the best school trip they ever had, they visited a studio in an old Arab house and watched a potter at work throwing slabs of clay into slender urns or pudgy crocks. The clay decides, said the potter, and he let them feel it with their fingers, and the clay decided: a clumsy blob turned into a smooth and graceful pitcher with parted lips, don’t peek!

Papa groans with pleasure and asks them to scratch a little higher, nu, by the whatzit. The spine, the spine, Aron corrects him in a whisper. You’d think he’d know a simple word like that. Mama and Yochi start from opposite sides and work toward the middle, till he’s positively bursting with bliss. Imagine Papa trying to pronounce something long and complicated, like hippopotamus, or that word in the health book — hypothalamus, or even an easy word, like firefly: could a big fat tongue like his pronounce it without flubbing, and wouldn’t it be awful if it tied itself in a knot forever trying to say flierflifflfflff! Aron wants to jump out the kitchen window right now, run to the Wizo Nursery School, and squat in the dark, but the windowsill is full of jars, jars of pickled cucumbers and pickled peppers and sauerkraut and pimientos and olives and pearl onions, even carrots; there’s nothing she doesn’t pickle, no vegetable is safe with Mama around.

Nimbly snipping, he tries to be careful. Only his fingertips move. And the women are busy massaging Papa from top to bottom. You could melt just thinking about it. They’ve never given him such a long one before. It’s impossible to see the whole of him from here; maybe they dismantled him and later they’ll put him back together again, only this time they’ll decide how. And if you throw back your head a little you see a section of shoulder and Mama’s fingers lingering on the muscles, examining something, scratching with her fingernail, trying to find out if it’s real, and then she gives another little scratch. Hey, what kind of massage is this. And her fingers start tickling, coochie-coochie-coo! AndPapa squirms and squeals with laughter, and she tickles him all the way up his arm, accidentally shoving Yochi and Grandma out of the way, allowing herself the liberty of a little smile, she hasn’t smiled like that in weeks, and Papa’s mouth is squashed against the Bordeaux sofa in a saggy grin, you could easily mistake it for a frown, and the question is whether that mouth could manage a word like “thread,” and Aron pictures a golden thread shining in the sunlight, dripping honey, like a guitar string still aquiver with the melody a moment after it was strummed. Threa-d, murmurs Aron with fine-drawn lips, with deep devotion, threa-d, like a string plucked out of his depths, lyrical and sweet, but airy too, and hazy like the halos around those people in his negatives, and he can easily slip through any crack, through a needle’s eye. He tilts his head, eyes shut, lips parted like the mouth of an urn, uttering “Threa-d,” like the whistle of the wind, gentle but cutting, and he smiles to himself: Papa can’t get in, like a thread with a knot at the end. Ha ha: Aron the passing thread, thready-Aron passes, while Papa, the knot-man, with his face and his body and his blackheads — wham! Aron is all the way in now, alone inside where everything is soft, translucent, simple as a diagram, pure and simple, all aglow with a firefly light; there is a little light in everything, even the steel wool for scrubbing panels has a mysterious spark, even dark purple grapes have a dusky gleam, or a thick drop of blood on the tip of your finger, that too, if you say it right with deep devotion, “a drop of blood,” you see a beacon flashing forth as from a distant lighthouse, and certain words, if you know how to pronounce them in a special way, not from the outside but as though you were calling their names, right away they turn to you, they show you their pink penetralia, they purr to you and they’re yours, they’ll do anything you want; take “bell,” for instance, he rolls it over his tongue as though tasting it for the first time ever, “bellll,” or “honeysuckle,” or “lion” or “legend” or “coal” or “melody” or “gleam” or “velvet,” melting on his tongue, sloughing off their earthly guises, till suddenly there is red heat, a cinder of memory spreading its glow as it slowly disappears into his mouth, for Lo, this bath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is expiated.

He pushes himself on the tabouret which Mama likened to King Farouk wearing a fez, and leans forward to watch, carefully so as not to let anything leak out. He observes the salon: the three women working on Papa’s back like cranes on a water buffalo. Grandma seems tobe getting tired. Even now that she’s had an operation, the power controlling her mind is pretty weak. Mama settles her on the Franzousky, so she’ll rest. She sniffs her from behind in case she made. Grandma’s eyes are covered with a membrane. Just don’t let her die in the house. And Mama mutters under her breath, How long can we go on keeping her at home like this? And if Grandma makes in the middle of the salon, he thinks, they’ll kill her for certain. And after the “thorough” yet, when everything’s shiny and clean. And on such a special day, the day Papa came home. Mama will murder her on the spot. He cringes and freezes all over. Only his lips are still Aron, and he slowly puckers them till they let out a whistle, the secret ultrasonic whistle only females can hear, and then they follow you blindly and do whatever you want. But he didn’t believe Giora, not even at the time. He puckers his lips. Concentrates. Forgets the rest. Forgets what’s building up inside him, dense and ugly. His lips weave a web.

The three women sat up with a start, as though someone had tickled them inside. As though someone had whispered their names. Even Grandma quivered. Only Papa lay inert and didn’t notice anything. Deaf and heavy, he sprawled on the sofa. Aron stopped in alarm, and the women went back to their task. Again Aron set his lips, forming his snare of a whistle, and with faithful precision wove his mighty web. Again the women turned around as in a trance, moonily picking up their colorful dusters, and while Papa rose on his elbows with a “Huh?” and a “Whuh?” they surrounded Aron with mincing softness, fluttering by him like feather clouds, titillating the creatures of his writhing back, rippling with the pleasures of the intimate tickle, with helpless, jellylike giggles of laughter, and Aron whispers “lion,” “honeysuckle,” “melody,” “legend,” and one by one the words present their sleek underbellies, giving out a reddish glow, revealing a tiny vibrant tongue inside that tintinnabulates with longing for his own supple tongue, his tongue unbound, his lump of flesh, and Aron grew sublimely giddy with self-transcendence, and one twilit moment later, swathed in darkening shame and the stench of primal disgrace, he slid off the tabouret onto the floor, where, strangely cool, he passed the runty knife over the cut on his middle finger again, watching the timorous spurt, and in his bowels, an amazing void, an emptiness like nothing he can remember, the emptiness of somebody else. And oh, the unbearable sting of bliss at that moment, long as eternity, when he flowed and flowed; givingbirth to himself, a small, beloved, stinking self; rid at last of the horrible anguish, the harsh dark secret, not his own, he had been forced to keep inside. Circumspectly he lay down with his cheek to the floor. The stench filled the kitchen. A fire in his pants. The blood trickled out near his open eye and he observed it. Like somebody else’s blood dripping into the cracks. In fact, everything was somebody else’s. He felt so light. Light enough to float. With naught to encumber his immortal soul. Aury. Aery. Ari. There was no doubt: from now on everything would change. To tell the truth, the ordeal has weakened him. Not just the events of the last few weeks. Forget that. But everything he’s been through in these three years of waste. His brains have weakened too. He forgets things. He’s not on the ball anymore the way he used to be. He finds it hard to concentrate. He scribbles nonsense on exam papers. It’s as if the whatzit in there were bloating up and crowding out everything else, pressing down and squashing it flat. He used to be known as a comedian. He could really make them laugh. Do impersonations of just about anyone. Now even the laughter center had pooped out on him, and he was gray and boring. Other kids were growing up while he — yeah right, he made lists of Adam’s apples and hairy legs and armpits and pimples and body odor. But Mama’s noticed something. She sits up suddenly. Her forehead wrinkles. And he will be redeemed. Oh yes, no two ways about it. He will remember all he has lost. And she blurts out a question to Yochi in Yiddish: Do you smell anything, Yochileh, and Yochi sniffs and says no. Because so help me, if she just made on the Franzousky, I’m taking her to Emergency first thing in the morning and leaving her there, a thousand doctors won’t persuade me to take her back, and Aron doesn’t even have to reach into his pocket and touch the onion strip to hear her thinking: No more happy times with Mamchu here. But Aron will be a good boy. He’ll change. He’ll learn how to play the guitar again, he’ll play his new guitar for them, he will play a golden flute and lead the other children in a song, he will be crowned a prince, tell stories, interpret dreams, fend off famines, trap the lustrous auras of this world in glassy marbles. Mama rushes over to Grandma and forces her to her feet, sniffs her from behind, and stays fixed for a moment. And to each and every aura Aron will give a name, a secret name, and he will string the names together on a fine golden thread, he himself will be that thread, and he will draw forth the soul of things and hide it between his lips … Again Mama sits up.Disconcertedly she pushes Grandma down on the Franzousky, and her nostrils quiver, scanning, tuning in, homing in on the kitchen, bouncing back to Grandma, then stubbornly returning to the kitchen, advancing, shrinking, and flaring slowly in double perplexity, in disbelief, in revulsion, until a lightning bolt of pagan horror flashes on her face.