Be My Knife (54 page)

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Authors: David Grossman

BOOK: Be My Knife
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You called me, I yelled, and immediately regretted it
 
 
I’m really sorry about this, you’re right, forget it, I didn’t call at all, it was the weakness of a moment, I don’t want to get you involved in this, forgive me, all right?
I didn’t mean for us to talk to each other at all, anyway.
Forgive me as well, I thought, but did not say, for the lies I am telling you at this moment
 
 
But you can’t take it back, you already got me involved, I’m a part of it now, Yair, you can’t disappear now!
Each time I raised my voice, I thought, It has been years since a yell has rung out in our home, and each shout dizzied me, and I thought, Perhaps everything will end right here, right now, maybe it will happen while I’m talking to him
 
 
And stop using my name all the time
 
 
Perhaps I want you to remember who you are
 
 
I don’t forget that for one minute—I am completely in control of the situation right now, and will manage it exactly as the situation demands
 
 
He kept babbling to me in this mix of arrogance and panic, I couldn’t escape the feeling that I am also a guilty party in some way; he was,
with all his strength, rolling himself into a great void, so that he could cry out for my help from the bottom of the pit, force me to save him
 
 
I’m sick of her whining, I never imagined she would be so fragile, and while talking to her, I cut myself a thick slice of bread and wiped butter onto it.
I added some tomato and sprinkled some salt and zatar on top, and settled myself down for a snack, because why should I get hungry because of him, and I patiently explained to her that it’s nothing personal, I even admire his powers of endurance, because, to be frank, it was almost daunting to see the toughness in him, being, after all, only a five-and-a-half-year-old kid
 
 
And you are thirty-three, I muttered, with not much hope that it would sink in, and could already feel how he is fencing with me, alongside this war with his child, and the more I plead for the child, the more I am doing him harm, urging Yair on, more and more
 
 
But then, without intending to, I peeped out at him, and wasn’t hungry anymore, I threw the slice of bread into the trash and shouted at him in my heart to just give up, give up, damn him, he should simply walk the three steps to the door and knock on the fucking door, why is he playing these games of honor with me
 
 
I thought I heard the sound of rolling thunder from afar, the air got colder, and I shivered; and I whispered to him, like an initiation, But you love your child, you love him
 
 
He fell, for the first time, at this moment.
One of his legs simply collapsed under him, but he immediately stood up straight and dragged himself to a little wicker chair, a rocking chair we have in the yard
 
 
God, I thought, dear God, before you take care of anything else, make it so that over there, things will end well between them
 
 
He lay down across the chair, his head falling over one side and his legs draped over the other, his eyes were open, gazing at a little shrunken lemon left over from the summer
 
 
Perhaps it was because I fell silent for a moment.
Without saying a word, he hung up on me again, completely matter-of-factly, as if he had completely forgotten I was there; I sank back into the armchair, and counted the days on my fingers again, and thought that I had to get things in order, and if there could just be one moment of quiet, but there was no quiet
 
 
Someone is holding a private, exclusive screening of this whole picture inside my head—Ido is outside, and I am peeping out at him, and the way everything repeats itself hopelessly, a slightly balding man bowing over the cracks of the blinds to watch his own pornography
 
 
I immediately dialed him again, before I lost my nerve and started hesitating.
This is crazy, I thought, for eight months I didn’t dare call him, and now, for the third time this morning
 
 
My hands started to become blue, and I knew that I had to hurry now, because I didn’t have much time, I know the symptoms, all right?
So I went around, opening all the windows in the house; the cold, cutting wind blew through it, and I stood up tall and allowed it to slice me as well, and after that, I ran to the windows and saw that he had gotten up and was walking, a few steps forward, and then backward, stopping then, confused
 
 
In spite of the intensity of the circumstances, I also felt a little special joy within my absurd internal confusion, as if Yair and I already had this routine of little chats in the morning
 
 
He took his little peanut in his hand, and pressed down on it, looking around to all sides, with a desperation that tore me apart
 
 
The air stretched out, became clear and alert, and the wind stopped, all of a sudden, not a leaf moved, and I thought, Here it comes
 
 
Now, he will surrender now, because of his pee-pee, he won’t have any choice, ha, at least we will be done with it, finally finished, and he stepped to the front door with tight legs, stood in front of it, and did not knock.
I counted to fifty to myself, opened my eyes, and he was still standing in front of the door, his head bowed down, but still not knocking, not knocking
 
 
The rain, the first
 
 
What came to my mind then?
How, years ago, Maya had asked me to teach her the proper way to fold our little boy’s penis into his diaper, upward or downward?
Say you’re sorry, I yelled, and bit into my fist with all my strength
 
 
At first, a few, hesitating drops on the leaves of the lemon tree … now on the honeysuckle, and the jasmine, and here, the bougainvillea is getting wet, dust is being washed off, leaf by leaf, heavy drops on the windowpane and
 
 
The marks of my teeth on my fist scared me, the blood that started dripping
 
 
It became stronger at once, became full, roared as if everything that had been stored in the skies since the beginning of autumn, the immense, held-back
 
 
I saw Ido, lifting his head, looking around, surprised, reaching his hand up to the sky, I didn’t understand his motions, it was as if he was dancing a little dance; he suddenly looked happy and I thought perhaps he was going crazy
 
 
I opened the big window, and all the smells of rain hovered inside: the smell of the earth and the rain, of the grass and the rain, rainy trees; the smells of this rain, and past rains, the smell of Annaleh in the rain, smelling like breath, when we were children, through the yarn hats we wore
 
 
It’s rain—just one minute—it started raining!
How can I leave him in the rain
 
 
Good smells rise up from the distant chicken coops and my neighbor’s stable, everything suddenly smelled of a fresh foaling, even Jerusalem Forest slowly became green in front of my eyes, washed inside the milky fog
 
 
He is standing in the running water, not making any attempts to hide, maybe he is even enjoying it, maybe now he can understand that I will have to give up
 
 
This is the moment I have been scared of for months, this is the bounty that he resists
 
 
It only penetrated my head then, that it wasn’t just any rain, it is the rain; who imagined that this was what would become of it?
Why, I planned to run in it, bathe in it, scream out her name and say goodbye to her for good, in the rain, in my tears, and instead I’m hiding from my child behind blinds
 
 
The house trembled under the strong showers; it was an unusually hard first rain, with thunder and lightning and a sudden darkness that went down on the valley and two or three sharp light beams that spread and reached across the valley like open fingers, and I thought, Everything will be all right, the rain came
 
 
His pants were already completely wet from the rain, perhaps from urine, too, and he didn’t stop jumping and dancing and spreading his hands out to the sky, as if he couldn’t feel how cold and wet he was, and how terrible it was to be outside in that weather; his hair was soaked with water, plastered against his face, and he was dancing
 
 
I was relieved, for no coherent reason; only my childish belief in the rain, and maybe it will end with a rainbow, a special gift for me, for how I will be by the end of this winter
 
 
I ran through the house like a madman and banged my head against the wall, hard, a few times, and the phone rang, and I knew it was her, so I didn’t pick it up, what can I tell her
 
 
I was again flooded by my marvelous intuition, which had absorbed itself into my body by now, all the heaviness and grace, and I still couldn’t contain it, not alongside what was happening to Yair and the child
 
 
I took off my pants, too, so I really wouldn’t have any advantage over him, and ran in front of the open windows only in my underwear, and thought I must be losing my mind
 
 
I let the phone ring for maybe five minutes.
He didn’t answer.
Perhaps he had already picked his son up and taken him to kindergarten, but I knew he hadn’t, I felt him continuing to call me with tingles on my flesh, the profundity of his madness prickling me across the distance
 
 
The little son of a bitch broke me.
I’ve lost myself completely.
All the gears of fatherhood have fallen apart on me, the only thing I thought I knew how to do well
 
 
The rain became terribly heavy, the few fingers of light folding together and clenching behind the clouds.
The darkness of evening spread over the middle of the day, and my soul was suddenly lost in a panic.
I saw the child outside, thrown down, frozen and naked.
I called the taxi service in Giv’at Sha’ul, and they said it could take an hour because of the rain

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