The Book of Intimate Grammar

3

For seven days Papa ministered to the fig tree: poking the sores, wiping them clean, daubing them with ointment. Again and again Mama stepped out on the balcony and shouted at him, what did she care who heard her, he was an idiot not to charge good money for all this work, let the Residents Association pay, they were responsible for the gardening, weren’t they? But Papa knew how to sweet-talk Mama, and he stayed at his station in the tree. One day Zacky, arriving late, found Aron’s little bicycle propped against the trunk and went pedaling off in circles like a jilted lover. Slowly, painstakingly, Papa and Aron worked their way up the branches. They put their heads together and examined the sores. Whenever Papa’s undershirt hiked up Aron glimpsed the pale scar under his hairy red potbelly, like a silky gap in Papa’s brawn that never ceased to fascinate him. You didn’t get that at the camp in Komi, did you? he asked, knowing better, in an attempt to pump Papa for a trickle of forbidden memories, and Papa laughed: Not likely, not at Komi, there they left you to die like a dog. No, this is from the appendix operation in Poland, when I was about your age or a little older maybe; and then, forgetting his promise to Mama, he spoke about the terrible winter in the taiga when the earth froze so hard they couldn’t bury the dead, and anyone fool enough to try to escape was found next day half-gnawed by the wolves, and some of the prisoners went crazy from hunger and fear, they went out of their minds like you go out of a room, and the worst were the inallectuals Stalinsent there, they went crazy not because they suffered more, a body is a body, same for everyone, but because … because … He shrugged his shoulders. I don’t know … maybe they couldn’t believe it was happening, they thought the world was inallectual like them, not like Stalin … Papa laughed and Aron laughed with him, intently watching his face.

Sometimes Edna Bloom came out for a walk and approached the tree with her dainty parasol. Papa would watch her and part the leaves, startling her every time, though she knew by now that he was a kindly giant. Oh, Mr. Kleinfeld, you gave me a fright, she gasped wide-eyed, hand on her heart, and in the silence that followed, the empty lull, she seemed suddenly transported, awaiting her own return, but then, smiling meekly, gulping solicitously, she inquired about the welfare of her fig tree. Aron thought her very beautiful, in spite of her peculiar pink coloring, which made her look almost transparent, like a newborn chick with a throbbing heart. If not for this fig tree, she confided one evening, I would have moved out of the neighborhood long ago. Uh-oh, thought Aron, she made a mistake, though what it was, he didn’t know. And the next day she said she felt close to the tree, those were her words, she said that sometimes she almost felt like pouring her heart out to it, which made Aron wince again, how could she say things like that to strangers. But Edna wasn’t accustomed to talking to her neighbors, even after thirteen years among them, she kept her distance. I’ll show her, said Mama, I’ll grab her by the roots and teach her to be civil, or at least to say hello to me. Now Aron hung his head and Papa muttered something, and he blushed even more. Edna seemed to sense she’d made a mistake, but she was in great high spirits so she quickly forgave herself, waving a jolly goodbye, and promising to return next day, same time, same place. Aron smiled at Papa. He tried to catch his eye as she walked away, but Papa avoided looking at him and said, Quick, start blowing on the sores.

Edna hurried upstairs and ran breathlessly to the curtain. A breeze was blowing, rustling the leaves, making shadows flicker on Papa’s back. She could see the thick of his neck, the fleshly nape. She could put him together like a jigsaw puzzle, here a biceps, there a shin; and when he twisted his arm around she glimpsed the scar on it winding through the leaves like a tropical snake. His hefty legs swung down beside the scrawny boy’s, and she wondered how the son would ever grow up tobe a man. Suddenly her eyes twinkled with a rare gleam of mischief, and she dashed to the kitchen to make a pitcher of lemonade. With a giggle and a blush and an Edna-what’s-come-over-you, she poured the lemon concentrate and sugar in the water and gave it a vigorous stir. But as she approached the window her hands went limp. What, would she lean out the window, call him by name, and hand him the drinks … maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. Still carrying the pitcher, she paced through the rooms, vexed and disappointed with herself.

A curious silence descended over the block. In steamy kitchens, red-faced housewives looked up from their tasks. Husbands dozing under the newspaper on their balcony lounge chairs sat up and listened. The distant strains of a Chopin mazurka trickled through the dreary building project, over the rusty banisters, the spatterdash entrance walls and crooked mailboxes, and out to the sickly yellow lawn. For years she hadn’t touched the piano, now she was playing again.

Up in the fig tree, Papa and Aron peered shyly into each other’s eyes and quickly looked away. Papa was busy wiping a sore, patiently probing it with his fingers. Aron considered asking for a new guitar as a bar mitzvah present. He remembered the time he caught Mama watching him play the old one; that was a mistake, she had walked in and seen the look in his eyes. You’re giving me a hole in the head, she shouted. Go outside and play with your friends, we didn’t spend half Papa’s salary to buy you a bicycle so you’d stay in here hunched over your guitar all day, and really, the bike was great, he loved it, only he wanted something more. What it was, though, he couldn’t say. More, that’s all. But they had already decided what to give him for his bar mitzvah, a savings account, that’s what, so that twenty years from now he would be able to buy an apartment for his wife. His wife? Who cared about his wife. Maybe he could still talk them into buying him a guitar. Tenderly he strummed the tree, accompanying Edna, and then he rubbed the chicken-pox scar on his chin; and Papa had another bar mitzvah present to give him, a very special one: the army shaving kit with the razor and the shaving soap and the little tray he used in the Sinai campaign. But all Aron wanted was a guitar; and again he strummed the tree and rubbed his chin and strummed again, with the dreamy look of a medieval scribe dipping his quill into the inkpot.

Even though the big event was still a year and a half away, Mama and Papa were up to their ears in arrangements. They were planning agrandiose affair, said Mama, they would rent the Empyrean Hall and hire an expensive photographer from Photo Gwirtz this time instead of using old Uncle Shimmik, whose hands trembled so badly at the last family affair that Mama came out looking hideous. Yochi’s bat mitzvah party had been celebrated modestly at home, and now she flew into a jealous rage. On me you scrimp, she exploded, and Mama replied, with a hint of malice, that a bar mitzvah is different, like it or not. Don’t worry, we’ll make it up to you with your wedding, only first let’s see the suitors, ha ha ha.

At night when Aron got up for a drink, he would find his parents huddled together over the big bar mitzvah ledger on the kitchen table. Cast aside were the Sick Fund stampbooks — who had time for them nowadays — the reddish-yellow stamps were glued on any which way, while the ledger was carefully bound in green shelf paper with a label on the cover: ARON’S BAR MITZVAH. Here his parents entered the menu of every bar mitzvah they attended, reckoned the costs, counted courses, criticized and compared the cuisine. In a year and a half the mortgage would be paid up, and they would take out a little loan, which, together with what they’d managed to put by already, would be enough to throw him such a bar mitzvah party, Mama clasped him to her bosom, “Their eyes will pop!”

Now she appeared on the balcony, searching high and low, her nostrils flaring. Papa yanked Aron back into the tree as stealthily as a guerrilla fighter, till both of them were safely hidden from her scrutiny. All Aron could see now through the leaves were her fingers turning white on the balcony railing.

“Moshe!” she shrieked, “how long do you intend to stay up there wiping snot?” A hush fell over the building. The tinkling of the piano died away.

Papa tucked his neck between his shoulders, then pushed it out again, thick and red, with a throbbing blue vein. Aron cringed. He had never seen Papa like this before, but Papa controlled himself, clenched his powerful jaws, and gravely, deliberately, began to smear the ointment on the sores. Mama waited, and then suddenly pounded on the railing: “A-ron!”—the sound waves encircled him like iron rings around a pole—“come home this instant to try on your boots!”

“What? But it’s summer!” he whispered to Papa.

Papa nodded. His eyes still intimated danger, but his chin dredgedup an old excuse: “That’s Mama for you, she likes to have things ready in advance,” he whispered. “Suppose we have to buy you a new pair of boots this year?”

But of course they would have to, the old pair was two years old, all worn out, with cracks in the soles. He definitely needed a new pair of boots: he and Gideon and Zacky were planning to open a tadpole farm, they were going to sell frogs to Bonaparte’s, the first French restaurant in Jerusalem.

“What is it,” whispered Papa. “Why the long face?”

Aron turned away so Papa wouldn’t see him. “Why does she have to talk to me like that,” he grumbled.

“Don’t take it to heart, Aronchik, your mama loves you. She worries, that’s why she talks like that.”

“I’m as tall as Gideon, I’m as tall as most of the kids in my class.”

“She wants you to be the best in everything, that’s all. A mother is a mother.”

“She hurt my feelings.”

Papa stroked his head. Aron melted at the touch. Again the piano tinkled upstairs, tentative, wary, like the first green sprouts after a forest fire. Papa sat still. Only his hand moved, stroking Aron. There was still enough light to see the veins on the leaves. The music fluttered through them, plucking delicate strings. Aron peeked up at the sky, the deep blue sky of twilight. And then Papa stared into his eyes until he made him smile.

“Anyway,” said Papa, “what’s-his-name, Napoleon, he was a shorty, and so was Zioma Schwatznicker, now that’s a fact!”