Be My Knife by David Grossman
To tell you the truth, I thought we’d only have a short shower and then back to bed. But he had other plans, and the moment I finished giving him his shower, he decisively sat in the bathtub and made happy splashing motions in the air, and looked so sweet and flashed me such a sassy smile that I couldn’t refuse him.
So come, sit, join us. I don’t know how long we’ll stay here, because lingering in the bathtub is an adventure demanding absolute precision and courtesy to all of the tiniest details—where to sit, making the water fall exactly on the middle of his back—where to place the two soaps, and the comb, the boat, and a few other toys—but in the meantime, it seemseverything is well, because he is smiling his most melting smile, slowly running water through his fingers, his eyes almost closed. If you were here right now, you would see what solid pleasure is.
Nilly also comes in, with her tail straight up in the air, to watch. This cat is utterly human—and also utterly pregnant, as I am only now noticing. So is this the reason for your recent aggressiveness toward the dogs? And who’s the father this time, the tiger-striped or the yellow? Probably both of them. Will you refuse to nurse again, your little protest against nature’s enslavement of females? Oh, Nilly, Nilly, you free soul, tell me, can you be free without being cruel?
It’s eleven at night. Total silence. The room is filled with the peach scent of the bath foam, Yokhai is sending his hands to roam the hills, above the two rings his fat brown knees make sticking out of the water. Nilly has curled up on the little bathmat and fallen asleep. And outside, the wind is blowing, and the poplar behind the house bends and rustles. You thought of me just now.
Yair, I am not ignoring your last letter—your farewell words were clear and sharp. Nor does your long silence leave any room for doubt. But what can I do? I feel it, I feel every time you address me with a word or thought. Like right now, at this minute. You sometimes wake me in the middle of the night. That’s when I know you dreamed of me. I cannot explain it, it is only that my mind and my heart suddenly leap to the peak of the mountain; if I am to believe in these leaps, then you haven’t stopped speaking to me in the past few weeks, in the daytime and at night, in the city and the country, in the kitchen and in the bathtub—wait one minute.
That’s it, that’s done. There is always one moment when his head starts to droop and his eyes flutter and my heart stops in my chest—but he was only brought down by fatigue today, thank God.
Should I tell you everything? Should I? Would you go through each of my daily routines with me?
It’s strange, we never spoke of such things.
First of all, you have to take him out of the tub. Easy enough to say. But it’s as if his body has absorbed all the water and my tiredness as well. I lift him out and dry him off, and he keeps slumping over onto me, he’s already completely asleep, Yokhai with his peachy smell. I carry him to his room. He’s very heavy; he’s thin, but has a special heaviness to him,the density of his insides, I think. I diaper him, because I don’t have the energy to give him another bath tonight. Wait—
When I went outside to hang the basket of fresh laundry, the air was full of fog again; my garden transformed into a silent ghost’s ball, and I couldn’t leave, in spite of the cold. I drank in the air and danced around the cypress tree with a moist pillowcase and one manly pajama. Tell me (have you noticed what a wonderful couple we are? I always say “Tell me” and you always say “Listen”), how is this strange weather affecting you? This long drought—do you feel it, too, this cosmic, private restlessness? Every day I walk with this constricting, ever-present feeling of coming chaos—a gigantic mistake growing … and how long can this last before—?
But, as I read in the papers this morning, the rabbis have already charged us to fast for rain—so it might still be so good as to grace us with its presence (even though I just hung the laundry).
Can you hear that? It’s the neighbor’s new baby, I told you about her. She is still crying day and night. Huge eyes and lips like cherries—and what crying! She’s already a month and a half old, and the saga of her name continues. I sometimes think that’s why she cries so much. Every day or two they stop by to consult with me—as what, a baby expert or an expert on names?—bringing a new list. I listen, and give them my opinion, and they get excited—and then some grandmother or aunt is always unsatisfied. It is truly beginning to upset me. Not their requests for advice, but the fact that there is a little girl in the world living nameless for so long. It’s not right (perhaps this is why the rain hasn’t come yet?).
… All this chatter—it’s only fatigue. I’m already sitting with the last cup of tea of the day. I almost poured you a cup by mistake. I’m wrapping myself around the steaming cup. For some reason, over the past few days I can’t stand the taste of coffee. You are probably enough caffeine for me right now. I had so many little and big things to tell you today. Even now, my hand is drawn to my pad of paper and my envelopes, but I can’t write you a letter. I made a decision, Yair, I will not write you until you reply to my last letter. You are requested to help me maintain my pride in this respect.
Some decisive, impatient soul immediately asks me, Why should I not write these things to myself, between me and myself? Why does it seemso false to me? (And egocentric? And like some lady in a Victorian salon?) Why shouldn’t I start writing some kind of “diary” like this, kept between myself and me, so I can at least ease the burden of your silence, the burden of my own expectations? What, don’t I deserve that? Am I not, myself, an address?
My heart shrinks even considering it; the pain of giving up my old hopes, the promise I made you of wanting to give what you have awakened within me to you and only you. This is how it tastes. Here, finally, Amos’s car.
On certain days, even swimming is not enough to cleanse me. I had to stop and get out after five laps, I felt as if someone had tied weights to my ankles and wrists. I walked home from the pool, through the strange season occurring here, between big wheels of dry tumbleweed and trees that seem more and more hollow, desperate. The smell, as usual, affects me more than anything, a dry bitterness rising from the ground. The big snails should already be out at this time of day. Where are they now? My heart is aching for the narcissus that has only just bloomed and is dimming and fading away. The daisies are at the peak of their bloom this week, in places that were completely naked at this time last year; their carpets of blooms are now almost wild, almost embarrassing, promiscuous … I actually have to stop for a moment to decide whether I will walk around them or splash about through them.
I had to stop and sit in the middle of the road, it so depressed me, the thought that perhaps I didn’t dare want you with all the strength of my being.
No (No, NO)! I wanted it very, very much. Very few times in my life have I dared to want this way.
It’s already November. Another special milestone I have marked in my calendar has passed. Where are you? What are you doing with this heartache? I know you don’t suffer any less than I do, perhaps even more; because now we are both allied against you. So, of course, my first impulse is to come and help you, write you a letter of comfort, be a mother and a sister to you …
But I have already played this part too many times in my life, and I dared to want something different with you, you know.
Do you know? Did you even understand? My heart sinks—did youunderstand my will, my hunger? The passion of my yearning for someone, a man above all, who would not only dare to strip me of my clothes, but would look at what is there within me, so we could see, together, what I am made of.
There, I am not just naked. I am completely bare in my nakedness.
Strange. The hardest thing for me to give up now is this will. It screams out of every mouth of my body.
… They changed the area codes in Jerusalem, too, and alongside the usual mess is my own private sorrow that the “bureaucracy” tipped some aesthetic balance in my previous number.
I am comforted by the fact that they added a round six to
Half past three in the morning. What happened? Why did you wake me up? What is the reason behind this sudden emotion?
It’s lasting until now, a clear internal signal that doesn’t stop even as I write; on the contrary—it is like an alarm in my body, ticking and alert.
But … how can I even have any “feelings” for you, feelings like I used to have? I was so wrong about you.
I’m still trying not to completely surrender my anger at you, my anger as well at the insult that grows from hour to hour, even now. I have been trying to understand why, but it is very difficult for me to believe such a reason for your violent disappearance: was it really just because you felt as if you were “polluting” me during my trip to Tel Aviv? My search for you?
And what makes you think I was “polluted” on my journey? I had more than a few good, even purifying, moments. I met people I would never have met in any other way. And I told you about the sunset and how the depths of the sun sparkled with green. About the fisherman with his little kerosene stove. Even my conversation with the two prostitutes. What are you talking about? Your disappearance from my life is polluting me so much more!
The hour I sat on the seawall—the water was so beautiful, so clear, I could see into the horizon; and a kingfisher gliding around me—perhaps he is a distant relative of the one in my garden? Who knows, maybe I am being guarded by a secret network of kingfishers. I wish I had broughtmy camera (I packed so hastily)—I wanted to take pictures and send you a few, so you could see where you were.
Only a few weeks have passed since then, and it seems like a year to me. I wandered around the streets by the sea for two days, walking, waiting for one special look, waiting to suddenly hear my name from one of the thousands of people passing by me, and smiling. I was smiling the entire time. I thought of what you wrote so long ago about my public smile, and I rejoiced in my new smile.
You paid no attention to where you arrived, as if by coincidence—straight into the kingdom of my childhood, my Nekhemya Street, with memories of everything mixed together.
Do you remember the letter I wrote you from a little vegetarian deli stuck between a steakhouse and a pizzeria?
Only the day before yesterday, it occurred to me—I had an epiphany: it is right in the same location as the old Café Ginati Yam.
(Well, these days even I can hardly recognize my kingdom under all the marble and hotels and Ackerstein bricks.) It truly sent thrills of pleasure through me—that was the café my father used to love to sit in, in between his taxi shifts. And once a week, in the afternoon, I would join him.
All the fine ladies, the chatterers and slatherers of makeup, would come here dressed to the nines. A little stage stood in the middle of the café, and a band played Viennese music (and Romanian, too, I think) on a cello and a violin.
My father would buy me ice cream in the summertime, they would serve huge scoops of ice cream in metal bowls. One man would pass by with a big glass box, the kind that opens from both ends (like old sewing kits, do you remember?), and from that box he sold cones of newspaper filled with nuts and seeds. My father would flag him down with a kingly wave of his hand, very unlike him, and we would spend a long time trying to decide what we wanted, and always picked the same thing: walnuts. And we cracked them together.
(And what was written here will probably never be told from my heart, by my mouth.)
Sitting in the kitchen, in darkness, in silence, and thinking thoughts of no substance, only a certain rhythm. Waves of something vague becoming stronger in me. I don’t understand why I am still writing—what is this impulse that doesn’t let go of me? Because I find no release in it,every time I swear to myself that I will stop for a minute, to think about it and try and understand, before my hand reaches for the notebook and opens it—but my hand is always quicker. I am also trying not to think about you—but you, of course, are always quicker than me.
In these hours, when you are not writing me, and not coming to me, bringing me your body, when you can leave me alone, abandoning me to everything you already know I live with, I begin to consider the possibility that you perhaps have quite a few women with whom you correspond this way, simultaneously. That you tell each one a completely different story, and with each you determine the length of your connection according to a “private sign on the general calendar.” Until, let’s say, the first swallow of spring, or until—until what else? The sun’s eclipse? The next earthquake in China? I know that this is a stupid idea, false and repulsive and cynical; but as we both know, something in you has given rise to ideas that would never have occurred to me before.
If I had at least known what it was, the “private sign” you had intended for me, at least this—it is something the condemned woman should know, isn’t it?
I remember how, about seven and a half years ago, when Yokhai’s disease broke out, I used to sit nights, here in the kitchen, and write these kinds of lists. Not exactly these kinds—but there was something similar in the writing, the unsteadiness of it, and the strength with which it forced itself upon me, actually possessing me (oh well, what’s the point of picking at this).
What wouldn’t I give now, to read Milena’s lost letters to K.? To see, for instance, with what exact words she responded to his “love is that you are my knife with which I dig deeply into myself.”
I hope she immediately sent him a telegram in which she made it clear that a person must never, not ever, agree to be anyone else’s knife. You mustn’t even ask such a thing of someone.
On second thought, I actually don’t understand Milena at all. If I were Milena, I’d have behaved completely differently. I would have leftPrague and gone to him in Vienna, and entered his home and said, “I’m here. You can’t escape me any longer. I am no longer satisfied with imaginary travel. You cannot heal with words alone—you can sicken, yes, this is apparently not too hard. But comfort? Resurrect? For that you must, in some moment, see eyes in front of you, touch lips, hands—the entire body rebelling, screaming out at your infantile ideas about some ‘pure’ amorphousness—oh yeah? What’s so pure about it? What is pure in me now?!”
Listen to what a big heroine I am. I don’t dare even to call you at work.
I drew out what you said (in your kitchen) about how your life with Maya is so stable and defined that “it is impossible to add a new element that is too large (like myself, for instance).”
As I looked at this piece of paper in front of me, it became so clear, Yair, that your life is truly so stable, so defined, that you weren’t able to find any room in it for me, either.
There is no room for me in your life. I should have already accepted that. Even if you had wanted me very much, you probably wouldn’t have dared make room for me in your “reality.”
(Perhaps this is why you let me into the only place you were ever truly free, into your childhood, with such sweeping force.)
I don’t understand, I don’t understand you. You hide the world of your imagination from Maya and the physical world from me. How can you navigate between all these opening and closing doors? Where do you truly live a full life? I would like to hear from you once, so you can answer me this—if we have all already committed suicide once, why repeat the mistake over and over?
I used to sit and write the entire night then, trying to document every day that passed, so I could understand it and solve it; also, so that I might not lose my mind to my fear and helplessness. During the day, I would write down Yokhai’s every move—follow his tracks as he walked through the house, the repetitive, endless actions of the day, what words he had left—what he ate, how he ate. And at night I would sit here and try to crack the code, turn all of it into something legible, some method, some pattern.I had hundreds of pages, notebook upon notebook. I’ve kept them somewhere in our basement, and there is no rhyme or reason in them, or in keeping them. I don’t have the courage to throw them away; yet I have even less courage to open them and see myself as I once was. If he ate a tomato a
So what am I writing now? The documentation of my disease?
The new coat was not received with delight. We had intentionally set Saturday aside for this task, when we had time, were in no hurry—but by noon we were desperate. Even Amos gave up, so we wrapped it up again. I guess something in its texture is different from the other coat. Perhaps the edges of the sleeves or the collar. Maybe its smell. It was the closest coat I could find to his old one, and now we will have no other choice but to patch the old one up. And we better do it today, because how long will the rain wait for us as considerately as it has? The one accomplishment of the day: if we failed with the coat, we have at least succeeded with the long thermals, without even cutting off the sleeves.
I have just finished cleaning up the last traces of riot in his room, and Amos took him out to fly his kite. I am disconnecting the phone—you won’t call on a Saturday—and am sitting to rest for a moment. I have been waiting so long for this moment.