The Book of Intimate Grammar

6

Summer went by and winter went by, and then came spring. Nearly a year had passed. One afternoon in the middle of a soccer match against the other seventh-graders, Mama called. From the balcony to the playing field in the valley her voice assailed him. Aron was mortified, but he noticed something different, an unfamiliar tone in her voice that made him hurry home, hot and sweaty from the game. “Shvitz shvitz,” said Mama, sticking her fingers down his collar. “Bren bren, look at you, hoo-haa, chasing a ball like a meshuggeneh, you wouldn’t catch Zacky and Gideon running around like that, no, they have some sense, they let the donkey do the work for them while they sit back and laugh at you,” she grumbled as she picked at the knot around a brown paper package. And then with a Tfu! choleria! she tried to pry it open with her teeth. Why are you staring at me like that? she rasped. I wasn’t staring. If you have to stare at someone, go stare at yourself. But I wasn’t staring at you, who’s the package from, anyway? His bar mitzvah’s less than six months away and he can still walk under a table. Who’s the package from, Mama? Sit up straight, you’re short enough as it is. She bit the knot off and unwrapped a familiar-looking shirt and a pair of shorts. For a moment Aron feared that the clothes had come from someone who died. Mama handed him a striped brown shirt and said, Go try it on.

What do you mean, try it on? I’m not trying on any secondhand clothes. He stood there shrugging a defiant shoulder, his face burningwith impatience to get back to the soccer field, because with him gone for even a minute, the other team would charge up the pitch, and suddenly he felt a gnawing in his heart, and Mama said, These aren’t secondhand clothes, Aunt Gucha sent them from Tel Aviv, from Giora, all right? From Giora? But why? Because he only wore them one season; nu, try the shirt on already so we can see.

Aron stared at her in bewilderment. Giora was the cousin he went to stay with in Tel Aviv every summer, and after only a few weeks there, Aron fit in like a native; the year he was nine he taught the kids how to see angels: you press your eyeballs and wait till these sparks appear, some of which fade, some of which don’t, depending on how hard you press. And he told them about his secret ambition, to become the first Israeli bullfighter. And the following year he taught them Jerusalem stickball, Alambulik, and they taught him Red Rover at the swimming pool, and he taught them Chodorov’s save from the game against Wales, where the goalkeeper dives parallel to the ground and blocks a “howitzer” shot from right field, and for the entire month that Aron was there, whoever played goalie had to dive that way, even when the ball went into the corner, no one cared as long as it looked authentic. And last year he told them about the great Houdini, master of escape, who lived in America, and demonstrated how he could free his wrists and ankles from thickly knotted ropes; and when they didn’t believe him, he asked them to shut him inside the stinky cooling chest they found on the beach, and tie a rope around it and cover it with empty sugar sacks and stand back fifty paces, and when they were sure he’d suffocated in there, and started blaming each other for letting him do it, out jumped Aron, laughing and panting. The ideas your little Aronchik thinks up, Aunt Gucha wrote Mama, kineahora, you could grow fat just listening to him laugh.

And the Tel Aviv crowd introduced him to the sea. Of course he’d been to the beach at Ashkelon with his parents and their card friends lots of times, but it was always crowded there and full of tar, and they’d sit around telling dirty jokes and burping, and Aron didn’t like seeing people he knew half-naked in their bathing suits, and they had a policy called “Never turn your back on a wounded kebab”; in other words, never go home with leftovers in the cooler, and they forced Aron to eat himself sick. Papa was a terrific swimmer, you could always tell he was in the water by his powerful kicking and splashing and the pranks heplayed, like diving down and attacking their card friends, trying to pull their trunks down, or to drown their wives, who would float up shouting and squealing; and Aron was very careful never to go in the water while Papa was there, he had secretly decided that only one of them should be in the water at a time; besides, he suspected Papa liked to piss in the sea, and even when Aron came out and sat on the sand, he felt as if Papa’s piss had followed him; and once, in the middle of a tranquil swim, far away from the crowd, just him and the open sky, he had a sudden apprehension that something was chasing him, he knew it couldn’t be, that he was imagining things, but still he felt it slithering beneath the waves; at first he thought Papa was down there, trying to scare him, which made him panic and kick and splash and swallow water, but then something tough and rubbery circled his waist like a sinewy arm, or the trunk of a giant elephant, trying to pull him down, and when he crawled up on the shore, he knew he hadn’t imagined it, that something very strange had happened in the sea, and Mama and Papa’s card friends ran over to ask what happened, did you forget how to swim, and they wrapped a towel around him and rubbed his shoulders, and he searched for Papa but couldn’t see him, he was reading the paper under a beach umbrella, and he didn’t even look up when Aron shuffled over wrapped in a towel and sat shivering beside him and said, It was just a cramp, and when Papa didn’t answer, Aron sobbed and said, It could have happened to anyone, but still Papa wouldn’t look at him, he merely rolled over with his face in the paper.

The Tel Aviv kids took him out to a secluded beach with nothing but moon rocks everywhere, and they taught him how to swim for real, not doggy-paddle Jerusalem-style, and how to dive underwater with his eyes open, and in the sea he felt his soul grow boundless. At night in his sleep on the narrow porch at Gucha and Efraim’s, he could hear the swishing water beyond the mosquito nets, and he floundered and kicked in deep oblivion, drifting in and out of sleep with the rockabye flow of the tides. And he also dreamed awake: about building an underwater train, or organizing a marine corrida, with sharks in the ring instead of bulls; and he conducted experiments with burning sand, trying to turn it into glass like the ancient Phoenicians, and he sent letters over the waves to survivors on desert islands in sealed bottles of Tempo soda, and he tried to lure the mermaids out of the sea. Every summer the kids fell in love with the sea again, thanks to him. And hisskin grew tan, his hair golden. Giora was a few months younger than he was, shy in public and moody at home, and Aunt Gucha hinted in her weekly letters to Jerusalem that maybe Giora was eppes a little bit jealous of Aronchik, who had won over all his friends. Well, never mind, she wrote her sister Hinda, he’ll simply have to learn to live with it, this only child of ours who’s used to being treated like a king.

Last year, as the summer vacation was drawing to a close, Aron and the kids built a raft. For three whole weeks they worked on it from morning to night, making models according to Aron’s specifications, trying out different pieces of wood for the masts, stealing sheets from laundry lines for sails. The day before the official launching they finished early and went for a swim. All of a sudden a boat raced past them, slicing the waves like a sharp gray knife and barely missing them. The children huddled together in amazement: no boat had ever come this way before. There were two people aboard: a pretty woman and a much older man with a bony face and sallow skin. The man pointed at them and said something to the woman in a gravelly voice with a foreign accent. The woman held the hem of her green dress out to keep it from getting wet and smiled at the sunburned children gathered in the water like a school of fish, though maybe she was smiling at something else, maybe she didn’t really see them, maybe she was the old man’s prisoner, Aron worried, and he was holding her there against her will. Suddenly the man took a coin out of his wallet and tossed it over the side of the boat. The children stared in bewilderment. One of them quietly cursed the man. The man laughed hoarsely and bared his rotten teeth, and the woman laughed with him, disappointing Aron, who realized now that she was a willing accomplice. Then the man took out another coin and said, “Dis aprecious! Worth amuch!” and slyly flicked it into the water. It twirled in the air as it fell and they all dived after it under the shadow of the boat. Aron found it spinning slowly to the bottom. He caught it between his lips and pressed it under his tongue. By the time he rose to the surface the boat was gone. “Whenever you find something, hide it in your pocket and keep your mouth shut,” Mama always said, and once he’d found a tennis ball in the valley with Gideon and he disobeyed and told Gideon the ball belonged to both of them, and felt triumphant. But now for some reason he kept quiet and slipped the coin down his swimsuit at the first opportunity, where it sent an eerie shiver to his private parts.

Then the wind blew up and swelled the waves. The sea looked murky. Aron jumped to his feet and suggested that they launch the raft right away. The children hesitated, afraid the current would carry them out too far. Aron knew they were right but coaxed them anyway, to snap them out of their present gloom. He cajoled them with descriptions of the maiden voyage, how the raft would carry them across the waves, till even the skeptics were reduced to silence, and when dark clouds gathered on the horizon and he saw it was dangerous to venture out, the important thing was still to lift their spirits, to banish the dread they felt in their hearts. But they were not swayed by his eloquence. They kicked the sand and shifted their weight and rubbed their necks and looked away. He had suddenly become a stranger again, the long speech had misfired, he was too articulate for them, and their coldness cut around him like a pair of scissors and tore him out of the sunny picture. And then he gulped and asked them to wait and ran up the hill to the kiosk. With his own money, not the coin, he bought a bottle of real cognac and returned to them proudly, carrying the trophy. Let’s go, let’s launch her, he exulted, with an anxious undertone in his voice, but his radiant smile convinced them just the same.

The Captain Hookwas launched with a small bottle of cognac at exactly four-thirty that afternoon. And went down in a whirlpool five minutes later. The children bailed out and scrambled ashore, looking stunned and devastated. There was one scary moment, when Aron and Giora were sucked into an eddy together, and Aron was almost sure Giora had pushed him down to save himself. The wind blew cold, and the children shivered. No one actually blamed him outright, but Aron felt as though a big hand had just snuffed out the candle in his darkened cell.

No, Mama, it’ll be too small on me, he whined, staring helplessly at the shirt she thrust at his chest, at his face. Why’s she so grumpy, he wondered, hoping to be back in time for the last few minutes of the game, you could always rely on him to score, and just then Papa walked in, and then Yochi, she wanted to ask Mama where the depilatory wax was, and suddenly Aron remembered that time last summer when he was trying on the boot. Perspiration trickled down his collar. Quickly, he thought, before my fingers start shaking, and he pulled off his sweaty shirt and changed into the other one, and suddenly, with his arms caughtin the striped sleeves as he desperately searched for the neckhole, he started gasping and wheezing as though someone were pressing down on his chest, trying to strangle him, and a strangely familiar-looking boy appeared out of a haze, looking pale and pure, and a fine cool ripple filled his soul, and the little white boy, so white he was almost blue, sailed out into a craggy moonscape.

Frantically Aron tried to push through the neck hole, stop flapping around or Mama and Papa will see how smooth and skinny your arms are, and the fetus from science lab floated in formaldehyde, slowly decomposing and blinking its tadpole eyes, and suddenly it opened its mouth and grinned at him. And Aron groaned and finally poked his head through the hole. Papa and Yochi disappeared. Giora’s shirttails hung all the way down his shorts, where his legs stuck out like matchsticks.

Aunt Gucha had enclosed a note saying that her Giora, kineahora, was outgrowing his clothes faster than dough rises; why, next to him, even Efraim is beginning to look like a raisin. These, I’m sure you’ll find, Hindaleh, are just like new, he hardly wore them, and it’s a shame to throw them out, he is the youngest cousin, may all five live to be strong and healthy, so why not take the clothes to Rabbi Carasso’s wife, to give to the poor, even today my heart bleeds for them, wrote Gucha, who grew up in dire poverty with Mama, the family nearly starved to death in the days of the siege and the food rations in Jerusalem, and she closed with regards to everyone, hoping to have Aronchik back with them next summer.

Mama stood before him, looking grim. All of a sudden he needed a hug. Right this minute. Desperately. He needed her to hug him the way she used to. But she recoiled from him and knocked something over. Maybe the shirt had a curse on it. He racked his brains. What broke, was it the vase with the yellow apples Rivche and Dov brought to the housewarming, but no, he had seen the vase later on, right where it belonged. Was it the blue bowl with the stag and the doe chasing each other’s tails that Shimmik and Itka brought from the trip to Holland? No, that too was in place, with no signs of gluing. For an instant he saw the image of his yearning face in her pupils, while her puffy cheeks stretched back to reveal the cusps of her molars. So now can I go out to play? he asked, retreating gingerly, careful not to look at the broken pieces, like a mountain climber afraid of looking down. So now can Igo out again to play? he repeated weakly. Mama stood rigid, her lips turning pale. He could hear them singing in the valley, his team; they’d finished the game without him and struck up a song with the rival team. Whoever heard of singing after a game, with the rival team yet, I don’t get it, they sound like a choir, what, did they rehearse or something, and he gazed imploringly at Mama, who split down the middle before his eyes till he could see the kernel of white hatred inside her. You know, she said, I’m beginning to think you’re doing this to us deliberately.