Be My Knife

by David Grossman

  If we ever sleep together, we will make love slowly, as if we were doing it in our sleep—I can see it now—like two embryos searching for each other, in slow motion, our eyes closed …

  Miriam, I worked through the night. I felt as if I had to fight for myself a little bit (or at least honorably represent you in the battle over me). You can’t surrender to this without a battle. The voices around me were starting to drive me out of my mind. I taped all your letters on the walls. Hard labor. I never realized how much you wrote to me. I wonder what emotions would pass through you, if you were here.

  I’m exhausted and dizzy, I’m dying to get some sleep—but can’t wipe this idiotic grin off my face.

  (Dream about sleeping.) Of all things. I am suddenly sizzling, full of energy—feeling that the walls are murmuring your words.

  The room is confusing and full of motion right now. It makes me dizzy to look at. It was like composing a huge crossword puzzle (meant to define its composer). In the beginning I made sure to keep every family of pages together—I couldn’t—I despaired over the mess—everything was flying out of my hands and getting mixed up. In the last hour of doing it, I just taped up whatever came into my hands first. I created hybrids—blind dates—doesn’t matter. You have a natural sequence about you—somehow everything you wrote is coded with it, continues in an unending flow of conversation. Hey, now I can make up my own new game of chance. I walk on my bed with closed eyes, open them, and the first sentence that jumps out—“ … and until now, I could remember the physical feeling of terror that used to creep in and fill me, turn into stone in the place where I kept my joy of living; oh, the terror that anything good in me will not be given to anyone—and will go unwanted forever. Then why should I exist?”

  (I did another round, and drew the very same page!)

  “ … and I have begun to suspect that ‘that thing’ might not even be given from no person to no person, and that all the others have known this for a long time, and that maybe this is the big secret that makes it possible for them to live. I mean, ‘to live’ and to ‘find mates’ and to paint a house with a roof and a chimney together. To be the wise lovers from Natan Zakh’s poem:

  A visitor won’t come on such a night

  And if he comes—don’t open the door. It’s late,

  And only cold is blowing in the world.

  “But I never forget how lucky I was to have met a couple of unwise lovers, who, on such a night, opened the door for me.”

  Yair?

  Yair, wake up, it’s me…

  Yair, don’t fall asleep again …

  This is how I keep myself awake, saying my name with your mouth, in your tune—and each time my heart beats to my name in your mouth.

  I’m beginning to be afraid of sleep. I know that as soon as I succeed insinking into it, for a moment, forgetting where I am, I’ll hear a shout outside, or a moan, or bedsprings, and I can’t—It’s been like this for three nights.

  The end of your letter with your “theory,” after you told me I should try to write stories, you wrote:

  Yair—

  Yair Yair—

  Shine on

  But where am I? And where is the Yair who shines?

  It’s night again. Where did the days go?

  I am becoming more empty, and you are becoming real.

  Your pacing through the house, from the kitchen through the hallway to the balcony; the shade of the bougainvillea falling in embroidery on your arms; the scent of your hand lotion rising all around me from your pages—it wraps me up in the feeling of a home here.

  You are created in me again and again. We are not alive, remember? But everything you wrote is alive. Your life is alive to me. Your face—going over every line, painting it all in my head, dressing you, stripping you slowly, slowly, one piece of clothing after another—talking to myself in your precise speech, in your written voice, with the delicate sorrow around the edges.

  “It’s no longer a secret,” you say (precise, exact reference? Two fingers over to the right from the door), “that these surprising likenesses run between us. I can sometimes feel them flowing through these letters like lines of electricity, with the tension, the constant trembling, and the danger. But, of course, you know that this likeness extends to what you call ‘the murky twists and turns of the soul’ as well, among other things—but in these ‘twists and turns,’ more than in anything—exists a power like I have never known. So maybe you can understand why I so want to be close to the one who echoes back to me the least favorite parts of myself.”

  I don’t know. I don’t know much in general. It’s not easy for me to discover, as you are spread out all around me, that your questions are always far more profound than my answers. As for that question—you hadbetter answer it for yourself, first—here, what you wrote, when we were sister and brother for a moment, prisoners in a chain gang, shuffling in opposite directions, moving farther and farther apart: “ … I want to submerge myself in all the channels of your emotions and passions, your exposed and most secret, and the wave-crashes and the twisting, because the place from which they spring, all of them, even the one that led you to the prostitute, is for me a place of genesis, a living, precious spring, which I am searching for …”

  Night inside night inside night. This man no longer thinks about anything anymore, he doesn’t even think about the mumps or his poor balls—this man only wants to sleep, sleep until the nightmare ends, and then forget everything. This man sliced the telephone line in his room with a knife, the trouble being that he almost called you to ask you to come to me.

  You just missed a great moment: the landlord burst in without knocking on the door—or maybe he did knock and I didn’t hear it (I have wads of toilet paper rolled up in my ears to try and shut out some of the noise)—and he caught me standing on the bed reading from the wall. This is how I occupy most of my days here. He saw the pages plastered over every inch of the walls. He wanted to say something, but didn’t dare. He went mute—and I just went with the full brilliance of that moment and started reading aloud—“ … overcome, and aroused, as I am, by a mad passion in me to play your strange game, after all. To meet with you, yes, only in words, as you suggested. To become wild on the page—to be mixed up in your imagination, and see how far you can sweep me away.”

  You should have seen his face—a rare, complex expression, the combination of amazement and horror—perhaps he thought I was inventing, in this modest little room, some new perversion that even he hasn’t encountered as yet. I lifted one hand in the air and focused my eyes on the wall: “It has become quite clear to me that you play this game terribly well—with a little whispering feminine intuition that in matters of words and imagination, you are ‘the best.’ Certainly better than in anything you do in life. And why shouldn’t I meet you at your best?”

  He left, slowly closing the door behind him with the kind of respectyou have for the truly insane. I am, undoubtedly, beginning to acquire a status here.

  Still night. No rest, writing while lying down, twisted around myself, the unending murmurs of your words and your thoughts and memories covering me, from all sides, at all times, flowing through me, leaving and entering my body like water. Anna’s cheerful, crowded house—with her three brothers and her parents and their funny Dutch Hebrew—and her father’s free piano lessons—“And now, after ze Brahms, ve vill play Edelveiss Glide of Vanderbeck for ze plain joy of a coffeehouse.” Your mother was constantly envious, she tried to keep you from spending every free moment over there—with her twitching, pursed smile, which always seemed as if it were hurrying away to sweep any traces it might have left in the world. I don’t dare imagine what she said, and what black essence she spit out when it turned out there was something wrong with Yokhai.

  Yokhai. A lot of Yokhai.

  You know, ever since you told me about his fits, his rages, I look at anything beautiful twice. Once for me—and once for you. To make it up to you in my own limited way—for the be
auty you can’t surround yourself with in your own home, that beauty I know you need like air for breath. Whenever I do, I feel, again, how blind I am—indifferent and hasty—and am afraid, again, that I’ve lost the first natural passion for beauty for good.

  Your name. I haven’t told you. I say “Miriam” to myself more and more, replacing so many other words—Miriam is understand—come—accept me—I feel good—I feel bad—secret—to grow—silence—your breasts—your heart—to breathe—clemency.

  Still, didn’t you want another child? Were you scared? Are you trying at all, or do you want to give the whole of yourself only to Yokhai? You are so silent about these matters, still holding your clenched hands close to your sides.

  You were right in your decision not to write down the “formal” name of his disease—so that the name won’t gradually replace his. Until what age will you be able to keep him at home (and how? How have you been able to not put him into an institution until now?).

  He’ll start growing up soon, and the difficulties will grow with him—I’m not telling you anything new. He will also be a lot stronger, physically, than you are—and then what? How will you control him during his seizures? How will you prevent him from running into the street?

  “ … I already know that it will be especially hard on me when his voice changes.” And in another letter you almost casually mentioned that his voice is the most beautiful part of him.

  (I put these two sentences together only just now.)

  Just a small thought: a pint-sized dime-store philosophical thought.

  Perhaps, in that moment, in my fantasy of pupils rubbing together—the tears that burst out will be completely different from those familiar to regular users. I mean—maybe those tears will be sweeter than honey—they will drip drop drip and drip from some reservoir of hidden tear ducts that we never knew of—the sole bodily organ created in the knowledge that there will never be any use for it, throughout the entirety of life. God’s sad, private joke—because He knew ahead of time just whom He was dealing with. Because you may overcome gravity, but you can never overcome the repulsion, the rejection from a soul suddenly finding itself in front of another soul that’s gaping open—and immediately blinking—the blink, an instinctive border patrol.

  I need you so much right now, Miriam. Come to me, sit with me on the bed, ignore all the voices, the smells—focus only on me, concentrate on me, make me concentrate on you, stroke my face quietly, not sexually—say “Yair”—

  Open up a window, open it wide. If you open it, the scenery will be different—if you open it, the pool club below will disappear—the towels and used sheets on the laundry lines, the trash cans, the pipes, the rats running though the alleys will disappear. Even the Lysol will evaporate with the air you will bring from afar, from Beit Zayit. Perhaps you will even try to make me laugh a little—why not? I haven’t even smiled in the past few days. Say, “Oh, Yair, Yair, where do I start?” Scold me a little—but this time, do it gently, please. You’re talking about Yokhai, andasking me if I don’t want another child—and in the same breath, you’re asking me to make you laugh?I know, I know, but still, tell me something light right now—it doesn’t matter what …

  But you would be surprised—even Yokhai is funny sometimes.What are you talking about? Yes, truly he is, even though he doesn’t really have “a sense of humor” in the usual sense of the phrase. Sometimes I even comfort myself by pretending that his humor actually belongs to another world. But sometimes, like when he wants another piece of candy and knows we won’t give it to him. He’ll pretend to go to his room—and then turn and run to the kitchen with this squirrely, almost mischievous expression on his face … And then we can enjoy a kind illusion that his secret, other humor has met ours for one moment.

  Or his problem with shoes—what was his problem with shoes? Don’t you remember?I don’t. But I told you about it!But you never told me about it in Tel Aviv, and never when I was on this bed with bubble gum stuck to it—tell me. Well, he always, always goes barefoot in the house, in the summer and winter, because the moment you put shoes on his feet, he immediately leaps up, decisively, to go outside. If Amos or I get confused and put his shoes on before he is completely dressed, then he shoots himself outside, sometimes half naked, like a programmed missile. And that, you know, is why I always call him the boy with the thousand-league boots—

  But you need a different kind of laughter right now, don’t you? Perhaps I’ll amuse you with a little nonsense—why not? You write such nonsense sometimes that it gives me goose bumps … But come, let us laugh together—about me. Did you know that I have all sorts of complicated tests for the world? For instance: if the first person in this place at this time who approaches me is a man, your next letter will disappoint me a little. If it is a woman …

  Look at me, playing make-believe. But I still feel it healing me a little, I don’t understand how—just channeling your voice numbs the pain, reassures me—like medicine flowing through my body, percolating you through my blood—don’t stop, don’t ever stop.

  I have also developed a sensitivity (a bit heightened, I think) to all kinds of events and people crossing my path—even words, the simplest words that come to me in the everyday stream, grab my attention, make me alert, ready … entirely innocent words … “light,” “sprinklers,” “there’s a hole in the fence,”“intimate,” “camels,” “night”… Or the sudden hug I gave Yokhai yesterday, a bir frightened.

  I am writing to you from that place in my brain I described—I am aiming all my energy, with all my strength, to that spot—where you spring from—for those words kept only for one particular woman, not for any other.

  Or I turn on the transistor radio, trying to hear the message that’s been sent to only me: sometimes a line in a song that sounds to me as if it belongs to us—sometimes a meaningless sentence appears and I tell myself then, Here, everything between us is an empty illusion.

  Listen, I am going to buy cigarettes. I finished my carton, and this is going to be a long day. Don’t move—you’re just right—just like that-

  (But I have to quote you from the wall as a farewell kiss): “ … I feel more and more that the stories you tell me are your way, the most natural and possible way for you, to somehow enter into the world, enter the earth, hit roots.”

  A terrible thing happened. I saw Maya.

  Just now. On the boardwalk. She probably couldn’t stand my silence—or felt, perhaps, that something was wrong and came to look for me. She didn’t see me—and I didn’t go to her, imagine that (so what do you think about me now?).

  I should probably not write about that. She traveled along my entire daily trek twice, from the square to the Dolphinarium, entered the same exact restaurants and pizzerias I went to when I was still eating—she guessed my moves with such precision—I told you she has a sixth sense, a sense for me, and you didn’t believe me. I felt your doubt the entire time. Don’t mistake her, Miriam, don’t mistake us: we have a bond, she and I; I don’t even have the words to describe it. It is a wordless bond, it is all body, all touch, it lives in the senses, under the skin. (And what the hell do you know about us anyway?) Listen, I walked behind her, only afew steps behind her the entire time, what torture—as if something was choking me, wouldn’t let me talk to her. What have I done?

  I saw her, I saw everything. What she is when she is like any other woman on the street. How men look at her. The way she has matured in this last year. That she is suddenly terribly lovely. It is as if, without me paying any attention, her face, all her features, found the right places; still, I could also see that only I, of all the men on the street, truly knew how to discern her beauty, yes, and she keeps herself only for me. She doesn’t have that damned thing—do you understand? That— hunger—is not in her. That thing in me and you is not in her. She is clean, she is pure. What will happen now? I walked after her, watched how she became heavy, despaired of me, was defeated. And then—she went to Mrs. Meiers’s hotel. I once s
howed it to her in its glamorous heyday. She walked in and asked Thief-Eyes something—I don’t know what he told her. She walked out immediately, didn’t touch the door handle.

  Then she took one last walk along the boardwalk. She didn’t look for me anymore. She walked like a madwoman, half-running, stamping with rage on every step. People were looking. I have never seen her this way, letting herself understand it so completely—and then she sat down, fell into one of those plastic beach chairs, and closed her eyes. I stood maybe ten steps behind her, completely exposed—if she had turned around, she would have seen me in my nakedness—up to my neck in the most putrid swamp of my ignominies. We stayed still for almost a quarter of an hour—we didn’t move, not a hair. I was so exhausted, I screamed to her soundlessly, and with all my strength. If she had turned around for a moment, if she had only seen me and said my name, I would have gone home with her.

  How could such a thing have happened between us? I felt myself in the throes of some seizure after she disappeared—all my muscles, even my jaw, contracted. But what could I have told her? How do you start to explain in my state?—I haven’t spoken to another human being in four or five days.

  Only with you. I’ve spoken only with you. Enough. Let me sleep.

  Middle of the night. Three sanitation workers from the health department knock on the door. They seize Maya quickly, pull her away, and throw a net over my side of the bed. Maya’s hand hovers over her lips asis customary in these cases: “Please, don’t take him away!” “We’re not taking him away,” laughs one of them. “We’re shooting him on the spot.”