Be My Knife

by David Grossman

Everything is fine. Everything is fine. Now. It’s all over. I am writing mainly to keep myself from shaking. I was sitting on the balcony, writing, and Yokhai was playing in the garden. I usually lift my head every few seconds to watch him, but I guess I forgot for a moment. When I next lifted my head, he was gone and the gate was open. I ran as if my life depended on it, and the thoughts were racing through my head—that maybe I should pierce the tires of parked cars, so they wouldn’t be able to go, etc., and where could he have gone, and who will find him. I asked neighbors, people in the street. No one had seen him. I ran to the center of the village like a madwoman, bursting into the grocery store, to the candy shelves, because sometimes … but he wasn’t there. Everyone stared at me, with that look of … I return home (this all happened about half an hour ago), and he is not at home.

  The fear. Until now, I—and all the internal judges, of course, pronouncing the verdict: they left him in my care and I didn’t keep him safe. Again, I get up, run down the road into the valley, and there—finally—I see him walking along the lower path. No. First I hear a strange, heavy, ringing noise; only then do I see him, walking, bent over. My first thought—they did something to him. I run to him and see that someone has hung a huge cowbell around his neck.

  At least he isn’t hurt (I have ten hands in such moments as these). I immediately check him all over his body, and he is fine. Just that bell. Who’s done this? What is—and as he moves, the bell rings and the thick, rough rope scratches his delicate neck. I try to tear it off with my hands, with my teeth, and I can’t. I see two giggling teenagers behind. a rock; I don’t know them. Perhaps they are from the nearby school. My mind is blank. I sit Yokhai down on a rock and walk up to them, without the faintest idea as to why. They back off. I hear someone explaining, out loud, in my voice, I’d better stay away from them—I start running after them, and they escape. Fifteen-year-olds, teenagers, slim like bamboo sticks, but I caught up to them by the split rock. I’m breathless, so I ask them with my eyes, with my hands, with my teeth, Why? They laugh at me—one of them has huge pimples on his forehead, the other is trying to grow a little beard. They are older than I thought, maybe seventeen, and they start playing with me, turning me around, making obscene gestures as they dance in front of me, poking me from behind, on my back, the back of my neck. All of it is silent, and I don’t know why I don’t yell for help. I just know I have to get away. But then they begin to imitate Yokhai, his walk, his blinking. I choose the larger of the two—he is a head taller than I am, and I wait for him to come close to me. And then, with the whole of my palm, I slap him. I slap him so hard I fall—but apparently he falls as well. I get up first, being at least more practiced in these situations, and the other guy backs off a little. So I pick up a thick piece of wood that had been left there and swing it in his face. The one on the ground is actually screaming in pain, holding his face and screaming. Soon the other one will scream, too. I will kill them and throw their bodies in a well. The other bends to pick up a stone, and I slam him behind his knees with all the strength I don’t have. He falls for what seems like a long time and howls in pain. My mind finally starts to clear as he is lying at my feet, begging me not to hurt him. I still need to do something to the bastard—but Yokhai is alone, I left him alone again! I run to him, leaving them behind. They curse and stones fall close to me—but not a single one hits me. That’s it. That’s the whole story.

  What’s odd is that I was sure such an incident would knock Yokhai off balance for months, we would have to change medications, his whole daily schedule—but he was actually laughing. He came up to me and laughed quietly, the way he sometimes does when he sees himself in the mirror. I don’t know what made him laugh now, but at least he wasn’t scared: I truly would never have guessed that reaction. I hugged him to calm him down; more to calm myself down; I refused to understand that those were my legs shaking so badly down there. Fear always concentrates itself in my legs. But by then I had fully recovered my senses, and I started worrying about having left this notebook on the balcony table. (Now, as I write, I finally remember again the kingfisher’s dance, how lovely it was, truly, an otherworldly beauty that was of this world, still. I have to figure out sometime why it always is that a “hard time” can last for months, yet a moment of grace is always just a moment.) What else did I want to write here? That I eventually managed to untie the rope by myself; with all my shaking, I stood there and untied it. The teenagers came closer, keeping a safe distance all the while. I don’t know why, perhaps as a final slap in their face, I tied the bell to my own neck—it was heavy, and the rope cut the back of my neck. Yokhai looked up at me, too, without comprehending why, and I didn’t quite understand it either, but it felt right. I took Yokhai by the hand and walked away with a broken body and a broken soul, and he was jumping with joy, and the bell was ringing.

  Would you look at me? Standing in the kitchen, smeared with flour and dough and food coloring, surrounded by hundreds of colorful candies scattered out of their bags onto the floor. And I escaped my soul, finding shelter within my notebook and your beloved Schubert.

  I’m trying to prepare a lion cake for Yokhai’s birthday, wavy mane and all—it has to look exactly like the painting in the book … He has been sitting with Josie Mendelsohn’s book day after day, for a year now, dreaming about this cake (or at least I like to think he is). Now everything falls on me, and I can’t cut straight, and the mane looks like a wig, and I’m thinking of your tiny precise hands. I need you here, now, to hold my two left hands.

  If you were here right now, you would know exactly what I shoulddo. I would call you now, or at four in the morning. You would understand everything just by my “Hello” and be here in fifteen minutes with a bouquet of chrysanthemums picked from one of the neighbors’ gardens.

  I would stand in front of you, and tell you that I have apparently stranded myself again. You would comfort me, reminding me of all the good things in my life, one by one, and all the dear moments I had this summer. You would tell me that I wasn’t only stranded, I was embraced as well, there were so many moments when I was taken in. We would laugh together over the fact that I am probably the oldest orphan ever to be adopted.

  By the time my tears were dried, the mane would roar, and you would ask me to tell you about one good thing, good “at this very moment.” I would think a lot … and finally guess that my situation isn’t completely to be despaired over, if I can still enjoy the smell of a fresh cucumber. If I only had you this summer, oh, how many times have I prayed to have you this summer. You would have understood so much sooner than I did what I should do. Oy, Anutchka. You embraced this slippery life so fully, much more so than I do. I discover that in all sorts of little ways, in the tiniest, most intimate roadmarks you left behind in the world, without a prick of envy. How can you envy someone who knew how to love in this way, and who in this way encouraged others to love her with complete freedom and with such purity?

  But again, those thoughts rise up, the same ones that tormented my life after you left, that I promised you I would never think again. And again, I am defenseless against them, the maybes and ifs, the thoughts that nibble that it isn’t fair, and even terribly illogical in so many ways, that I was left alive and not you.

  It is an even more painful stab to my heart, because of Yair knowing about you. It made the burden of sorrow a bit lighter, even the burden of missing you; not that I miss you any less, but I somehow didn’t die of it ten times a day. And now I don’t know how I will find the strength to endure it all over again, by myself. Tomorrow, as you know, won’t be an easy day. Stay by my side, hold on, and I will, too.

  We went to her grave in the morning, with Omma and Oppa and her brothers; and in the afternoon we celebrated his birthday. Friends came(ours. I invited our new neighbors’ kids, but it was clear, eventually, that they weren’t coming). Yokhai was on cloud nine; Tammy baked him his favorite fruitcake, so he had some compensation for the lion with the sparse mane that I managed to
produce. He was feeling safe and secure, surrounded by goodness, and everyone brought him lots of cheese burekas … There was such a good feeling in the air, people stayed and stayed, didn’t want to leave. I looked out at the garden, and at the house that was suddenly so full of light, so happy, full of people, I mean, we haven’t hosted this many people in maybe three years. Amos drank a bit too much, and almost fell off the roof later when he went up there to lasso the moon for Yokhai.

  When the guests started leaving at nine, Yokhai panicked; he ran to them, holding on and screaming, he hit his head against the table. I understand how he felt, as if something in him was leaking, running out as they left.

  He had a fit just after ten while he was taking a bath, inside a full bathtub. We barely managed to hold his head above the water as we pulled him out. The fit has been in the air for a few days now, with all the nervousness and other signals that come beforehand (I’m comforted by the fact that at least he stayed well through the party).

  We held him together this time; we could hardly look each other in the eye. He gasped and stiffened between us and shook. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Amos passing his finger over his temple, right by his ear again and again, to calm him down, and I heard him whisper, “Sweetheart, honey.” I thought about how at one time, years ago, I would still call God out for a harsh conversation about justice after every fit.

  The fit lasted longer and was more severe than usual—time refused to pass. His body was hard as a stone between our hands, his hands clenched, frozen, against his open mouth, from which no scream emerged. I saw Amos’s face twisting in front of him, as if trying to absorb the pain into himself.

  Amos once said that when a man cries out, “I’m hurt,” he doesn’t necessarily believe that his pain can be relieved; more often than not, he just needs someone to chase away the loneliness inside his pain.

  I started to breathe again only after the color had returned to his feet. We carried him to bed. He immediately tried to stand up and walk, he had no idea at all what had happened; but his legs folded under him and he lay down, exhausted. After a moment, he threw up all the burekas hehad eaten. Amos kept stroking him with his good hands, and I had to go, go out to the balcony and write a little bit.

  Now he’s bawling, a good sign that everything has passed—but it is always my hardest moment. He probably isn’t suffering anymore, not the way he did before … His mind is completely foggy, he is beginning to fall asleep … and that’s when his bawling begins, bellowing up from the depths in some kind of sorrow that his body can’t contain, as if his body is singing a song of mourning about itself.

  I will go back in. In a minute. If only I could sit here all night and write and write. Writing like this is good for me, I can see that. Even when I write things that are hard and depressing, something in me quiets and focuses.

  I want to sit here and write about the simplest things. Describe the leaf that just now fell, or the stack of chairs on the balcony … or the moth attracted to our lamps … to tell the history of one complete night, until the darkness changes with the sunrise, until the colors change. I don’t mind sitting like this for days and nights, describing every blade of grass, every flower, stones in the fence, pinecones; and after that, when I feel ready, to cautiously shift to writing about myself, about my body, for instance. To start with what you can touch with it; and also to start from afar, from the distance of my toes, and slowly come closer, and write about each organ in my body and remember its senses, once and now. Memories of an ankle, perhaps, or a cheek, or my neck. Why not? Trace its history through caresses and kisses and scars, sustaining my existence through writing. It will take a long time, but there’s time, and life is long, and I want to tell myself about myself, tell myself what probably no one else can tell me, tell my story without adding anything to myself, but also without taking anything away from myself. To write without wanting anything from anyone. To write solely in my own voice.

  I hear Amos inside, starting to clean up. I will go, too. There will be a lot of laundry to do tonight, and we must clean the rug in Yokhai’s room. This too. Everything.

  December 1

  Yair, hello.

  It is evening. And I am at home. It is a cloudy, vague night outside, dull weather. The sky smells of a consistent, moderate cold. Not pleasant.I make my report to you as if you were in another country. You are in another country. A month and a half has passed since the last letter I wrote you, a letter that now seems a distant dream. I have no idea if you have any interest in reading my words. Despite this, I continued writing to you, quite a lot actually, between me and myself.

  Without my intending it, this notebook became sort of a diary. I discovered it sometimes helps me to alleviate my sorrow. And sometimes it sharpens my sorrow very much. I still see my desire (my need, even) to write it as a beautiful, unexpected gift I give to myself.

  And you? Do you still speak to me? Do you still remember? Will you feel relieved when the rain finally comes down?

  I hope I will also understand what I am feeling more by then, but I am afraid that won’t be the case. I would have liked to be able to write that I wished everything would end between us and wash away completely with the first rain. But that is still the opposite of how I feel, and that is the one thing I have no doubts about, whether you reply or not. Even now.

  Why am I writing to you? I’m not even sure if I know. Maybe because the clouds are thickening more than usual—or because, for the first time since your disappearance, I feel able, again, to address you, speak to you. I am slowly coming to think that perhaps I am approaching the place at which I will be able to separate myself from you, or at least from the painful constant expectation of your arrival at my door. And I will be able to do so without giving up a single emotion or sense that you aroused in me. Not one.

  You know, I’ve been thinking lately about how little we spoke about things that were outside the closed circle we were in together. I remember how, more than once, before sitting down to write to you, I would decide to tell you about at least one thing that happened to me in the “external” world since the last letter. To bring some piece of “reality” into our bubble, give it some space. I think now that I almost never succeeded, whatever I had to tell you about us was always more important, more urgent … But for how long, do you think, could such an exchange continue without nourishment from the outside, from everyday reality? How much time would have passed until that density would have become suffocation? Do you think people exist who could have lived complete lives like this?

  (Yet now, at this moment, I feel once more that it is in just this kind of density that I could truly start breathing.)

  Here, listen to this real something that you didn’t know before: Every night before he goes to sleep, Yokhai comes to me and snuggles up against my heart, and I quietly sing Polish songs to him, without understanding a single word in them. They are songs my father used to sing to me. It calms him down. His body is sometimes attacked by such strong storms that he shakes, especially when he’s tired, and talk doesn’t help him then. Even the pills don’t always help. But songs in Polish do. This language, alien to both of us.

  And tomorrow is our weekly day of fun. As you know. We will go, as usual, to the junkyard by Abu-Gosh. I will drink tea with Nadji, and watch as Yokhai goes crazy with a sledgehammer on the old rusty cars. It’s not easy for me to see the extent of the destructive forces and violence that are in my child. But it seems to clean him out for a whole week.

  You also know that exactly one month from today he is supposed to go through surgery, to repair the little defect his heart has struggled with since birth. Truly, God was not lazy when He made him, was He? The number of surgeries this child has already undergone—well, never mind. We will slowly, slowly repair whatever didn’t work naturally. I only hope that I can recover a little bit before January, so that I can endure whatever follows (I think that tomorrow I will bring one more sledgehammer to Abu-Gosh). Enough. I’m cha
ttering on to keep from hearing what I’m feeling, to keep from hearing whether drops of rain have already started to fall. Why did you choose the rain over anything else?—you’re such a bastard.

  I see this letter is taking me to a place I didn’t mean to go. I didn’t want to fight with you, I didn’t want to bargain. It’s too painful. I was hoping that I had already found a way to be more balanced inside myself, in front of you. But when I address you again, and you aren’t there, that insulting voice returns, with the feeling of just having missed a—I’ll stop here. I am not willing to hear myself this way. (And still, to my sorrow, incapable of erasing something that comes from me to you.)

  You gave me so much pleasure, and hurt me so very badly. Never in my life have I known such pleasure and pain, and so mixed in with eachother. I promise not to write to you anymore, and will not try to make any attempts to contact you. I will never bother you again. With a heavy heart, I will close the gate I so gladly opened for you.

  But if you decide to come to me anyway, I want you to know where I am right now. If you come, I need for you to be there completely, with your most sensitive understanding; I need for you to flow into me completely, unstintingly. I need it terribly, as one needs air to breathe.

  There’s no point to any of this if you can’t give me all of yourself. Really. So you shouldn’t come, because then I was wrong about you, clearly.

  (But if you are the man who called out to me, and roared and brayed and howled, then you will understand.)

  Yours,

  Miriam

  Yair, you have to hear what happened. I wrote my name, and then I heard you calling for me. I simply heard you calling out my name.

  At first I was certain it was coming from outside the house, but the street was empty. So I automatically sat down and dialed your work number. Forgive me, I had no control over the decision—it simply wasn’t given to my will. I spoke to your secretary, and heard a few voices in the background and music from the radio. I tried to pick out your voice, and the secretary was asking me to talk, already. I asked for a messenger to come and pick up a book from me. I stressed that it must be delivered directly into your hands. My voice was shaking. She said, He’ll be at your home in ten minutes, ma’am. Even when she was urging me to speak, there was no mockery in her voice.