A Horse Walks into a Bar

by David Grossman

  Big laughs. Men and women around me exchange lingering spousal looks. Suddenly ravenous, I order a focaccia and grilled eggplant with tahini.

  “Where was I?” he says joyfully, following my exchange with the waitress out of the corner of his eye; he seems happy that I ordered. “The schmaltz, the Jew, the wife…We really are a special people, aren’t we, my friends? You just can’t compare any other nation to us Jews. We’re the chosen people! God had other options but he picked us!” The crowd applauds. “Which reminds me, and this is kind of a huge thing—that’s what she said—I’m really fed up with the new anti-Semitism, you know? Seriously, I was finally getting used to the old kind, you could even say I was becoming ever so slightly fond of it, you know, with those charming fairy tales about the Elders of Zion, those bearded old hook-nosed trolls sitting around together, munching on tapas of leprosy with cilantro and plague, exchanging recipes for quinoa braised in well poison, slaughtering the occasional Christian child for Passover—Hey, guys, have you noticed the kids are tasting a little astringent this year? Anyway, we’ve learned how to live with all that, we got used to it, it’s like part of our heritage. But then these guys turn up with their new anti-Semitism and…I don’t know…it doesn’t sit well with me. I gotta say I even feel a little aversion toward it.” He presses his fingers together and shrugs his shoulders with genuine awkwardness. “I don’t know how to say this without offending the new anti-Semites, God forbid, but for fuck’s sake, people, don’t you think your attitude is just a little bit grating? ’Cause sometimes I get the impression that if, let’s say, an Israeli scientist came up with a cure for cancer, right? A medicine that would finish off that cancer once and for all? Well, then I guarantee you the next day people all over the world would start speaking out and there’d be protests and demonstrations and UN votes and editorials in all the European papers, and they’d all be saying, ‘Now wait a minute, why must we harm cancer? And if we must, do we really need to completely annihilate it right off the bat? Can’t we try and reach a compromise first? Why go in with force straightaway? Why not put ourselves in its shoes and try to understand how cancer itself experiences the disease from its own perspective? And let’s not forget that cancer does have some positives. Fact is, a lot of patients will tell you that coping with cancer made them better people. And you have to remember that cancer research led to the development of medications for other diseases—are we just going to put an end to all that, in such a destructive manner? Has history taught us nothing? Have we forgotten the darker eras? And besides’ ”—he adopts a contemplative expression—“ ‘is there really anything about man that makes him superior to cancer and therefore entitled to destroy it?’ ”

  The audience applauds sparsely. He charges ahead.

  “And gooood eeeeevening to all the men! It’s okay that you came, too. If you sit quietly we’ll let you stay on as observers, but if you don’t behave yourselves we’ll send you next door for chemical castration—sound good? So ladies, allow me to finally introduce myself properly, enough with the wild guesses, I know you’re dying to learn the identity of this mysterious man of romance. Dovaleh G is the name, it’s the handle, it’s the most successful brand in the entire enlightened world south of the Nile, and it’s easy to remember: Dovaleh, long for ‘Dov,’ which is just like ‘dove’ except less peaceful, and G, like the spot, the apple of my dick. And, ladies, I am all yours! I am prey for your wildest fantasies from now until midnight. ‘Why only midnight?’ I hear you asking sadly. Because at midnight I go home and only one of you beauties will be lucky enough to accompany me and become one with my velvety body for a night of intimacy both vertical and horizontal, but mostly viral, and of course subject to whatever is made possible by the little blue pill of happiness, which gives me a few hours, or borrows back what the prostate cancer stole. Open parentheses: Such an idiot, that cancer, if you ask me. Seriously, think about it, I have such gorgeous body parts. People come all the way from Ashkelon to look at this work of art. Like my perfectly round heel, for example”—he turns his back to the audience and waves his boot charmingly—“or my sculpted thighs, or my silky chest, or my flowing hair. But that degenerate cancer would rather wallow in my prostate! Gets a kick out of playing with my pee-pee, I guess. I was really disappointed in him. Close parentheses. But until midnight, my sisters, we will raise the roof with jokes and impersonations, with a medley of my shows from the past twenty years, as unannounced in the advertisements, ’cause it’s not like anyone was going to spend a shekel to promote this gig except with an ad the size of a postage stamp in the Netanya free weekly. Fuckers didn’t even stick a bill on a tree trunk. Saving your pennies, eh, Yoav? God bless you, you’re a good man. Picasso the lost Rottweiler got more screen time than I did on the utility poles around here. I checked, I went past every single pole in the industrial zone. Respect, Picasso, you kicked ass, and I wouldn’t be in any hurry to come home if I were you. Take it from me, the best way to be appreciated somewhere is to not be there, you get me? Wasn’t that the idea behind God’s whole Holocaust initiative? Isn’t that really what’s behind the whole concept of death?”

  The audience is swept along with him.

  “Really, you tell me, Netanya—don’t you think it’s insane what goes through people’s minds when they put up notices about their lost pets? LOST: GOLDEN HAMSTER WITH A LIMP IN ONE LEG, SUFFERS FROM CATARACTS, GLUTEN SENSITIVITY, AND ALMOND-MILK ALLERGY. Helloooo! What is your problem? I’ll tell you right now where he is without even looking: your hamster’s at the nursing home!”

  The crowd laughs heartily and relaxes a little, sensing that somewhere out there a dangerous wrong turn has been righted.

  —

  “I want you to come to my show,” he said on the phone, after finally breaking into my stubborn memory. We dredged up a few surprisingly pleasant recollections from our twice-weekly walks from Bayit va-Gan to the bus that took me home to Talpiot. He talked about those walks with great enthusiasm: “It was a real friendship we started there,” he said a couple of times and giggled with bemused happiness. “We’d walk and talk for ages. Walkie-talkie friendship,” he continued, reminiscing in minute detail, as though that brief attachment were the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  I listened patiently and waited to find out exactly what he wanted me to do, so that I could refuse without offending him too much and get him back out of my life.

  “What kind of show is it you want me to see?” I cut in when he paused for a breath.

  “Well, basically…,” he spluttered, “I do stand-up.”

  “Oh, that’s not for me,” I said, relieved.

  “So you know stand-up?” He laughed. “I guess I didn’t think you’d ever…Have you ever seen a show?”

  “Every so often, on TV. Don’t take it personally, but it’s really not something I relate to.” All at once I broke free of the paralysis that had beset me the moment I answered the phone. If there was any mystery in his overture, any vague promise—to renew an old friendship, for example—it now dissipated: stand-up comedy. “Listen,” I said, “I’m not your demographic. All that kidding around, the jokes, the performing, it’s not for me, not at my age. I’m sorry.”

  He spoke slowly. “Okay, you’ve certainly made yourself clear. No one could accuse you of being ambiguous.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” I said, and the dog pricked up her ears and gave me a worried look. “I’m sure there are lots of people who enjoy that type of entertainment, I’m not judging anyone, to each his own…”

  I must have said a few more things of that ilk. I don’t remember it all, fortunately. I have nothing to say in my defense, except that from the very beginning I’d had the feeling—perhaps a dim memory—that this man resembled a skeleton key (that childhood phrase suddenly came back to me), and that I had to be very careful.

  But of course even that could not justify my attack. Because all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I came down on him as though he represen
ted the flippancy of the entire human race in all its guises. “And the fact that for guys like you,” I seethed, “everything is just fodder for jokes, every single thing and every single person, anything goes, why not, as long as you have a modicum of improvisational talent and you’re a quick thinker, then you can make a joke or a parody or a caricature out of anything—illness, death, war, it’s all fair game, hey?”

  There was a long silence. The blood slowly drained from my head, leaving a cold feeling in my brain. And astonishment at myself, at what I had turned into.

  I heard him breathe. I felt Tamara shrinking inside me. You’re full of anger, she said. I’m full of yearning, I thought. Can’t you see? I have a toxic case of yearning.

  “On the other hand,” he murmured in a wizened, gloomy voice that I found crushing, “the truth is I’m not as excited about stand-up as I used to be. I was once, yes, it used to be like tightrope walking for me. At any minute you could crash and burn in front of the whole audience. You miss the point by a hairsbreadth, you put a word in at the wrong part of a line, your voice gets a little higher instead of lower—the crowd goes cold on you right then and there. But a second later you touch them the right way and they spread their legs.”

  The dog drank some water. Her long ears touched the floor on either side of the dish. She has big bald patches all over her body and she’s almost blind. The vet wants me to put her down. He’s thirty-one. I imagine that in his view I’m also a candidate for euthanasia. I put my feet up on a chair and tried to calm down. Three years ago, because of these outbursts, I lost my job. And it occurs to me: Who knows what I’ve lost now?

  “On the other other hand,” he went on, and only then did I realize how long the silence had lasted, each of us lost in his own thoughts, “when you do stand-up you sometimes make people laugh, and that’s no small thing.”

  He said the last few words softly, as if to himself, and I thought: He’s right, that is no small thing. It’s a big thing. Take me, for example: I can barely remember the sound of my own laughter. I almost asked him if we could start the whole conversation over from scratch, like two human beings this time, so that I could at least explain how I was able to forget him, how an aversion to remembering one enormous painful memory can slowly dull and blot out huge parts of the past.

  “What do I want from you?” He took a deep breath. “Well, to tell you the truth, I’m not even sure it’s relevant anymore.”

  “I understand you want me to come to your show.”

  “Yes.”

  “But what for? Why do you need me there?”

  “Look, that’s the tricky part…I don’t even know how to say…It sounds weird to ask this of someone.” He chuckled. “Bottom line, I’ve thought about this a lot, I’ve been chewing it over for a long time, and I couldn’t decide, I wasn’t sure, but I finally realized you’re the only person I can ask.”

  There was something new in his voice. He sounded almost pleading. The desperation of a final request. I took my feet off the chair.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “I want you to look at me,” he spurted. “I want you to see me, really see me, and then afterward tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What you saw.”

  —

  “Listen up, Netanya baby! We’re gonna throw down the mother of all shows tonight! Yours truly facing hundreds of bra-tossing fans! Yeah, open up that hook, table ten, set ’em free…there you go! I think we heard a two-cannon salute there, right?!”

  The crowd laughs, but it’s a short, flat laugh. The young people laugh slightly longer, and the man onstage is displeased. His hand circles in front of his face as if seeking out the spot that will hurt most. People watch the hand, fascinated, as the fingers spread apart and ripple back together. This makes no sense, I think. This doesn’t happen, people don’t just hit themselves like that.

  “Putz,” he says hoarsely, and it seems as though the hand is the one whispering. “Putz! They didn’t laugh properly again! How are you going to get through this night?” He flashes a frozen smile from behind the bars of his fingers. “These aren’t the laughs you used to get,” he says with contemplative sadness, chatting to himself as we listen in. “Maybe you’re in the wrong line of work, Dovaleh, maybe it’s time to step down.” He drones on with a matter-of-fact calmness that is ghastly. “Yep, get out of the business, hang up your boots, and—while you’re at it—yourself. But what do you say, should we try the parrot? One last chance?” He moves his hand away from his face but leaves it hovering in the air. “So this guy had a parrot that wouldn’t stop cursing. From the minute he opened his eyes till he went to sleep he cursed the most vulgar, disgusting cusses you can think of. And the guy was this terribly cultured, educated, polite gentleman…”

  The audience follows the split screen of joke and joker, drawn to them both.

  “In the end he had no choice, he started threatening the parrot: ‘If you don’t stop, I’ll lock you up in the closet!’ The parrot just got even more whacked out and starting cussing in Yiddish, too—” He stops and laughs out loud, slapping his thigh softly: “Seriously, Netanya, you’re gonna love this, there’s no way you don’t love this.”

  The crowd stares at him. A few pairs of eyes squint, preparing for the quick flight of hand to face.

  “Anyway, the guy grabs the parrot, throws him in the closet, and locks the door. The parrot, from inside, lets out such a load of filth that the guy wants to die, he’s so embarrassed. Finally he can’t take it anymore, he opens the closet and grabs the parrot with both hands. The parrot screams, he curses, he bites, he slanders, he even libels, and the guy takes him to the kitchen, opens the freezer, throws him in, and slams the door.”

  The room is silent. A few wary smiles here and there. People seem focused on the man’s hands, which circle around each other in a slow loop like a snake uncoiling.

  “The guy puts his ear to the freezer and hears curses from inside, scratching, wings flapping. After a while it goes quiet. A minute, another minute, nothing. Silence. Not a peep. He starts getting worried, his conscience acts up, maybe the parrot’s frozen to death in there, hypothermia or some shit. He opens the freezer door, prepared for the worst, and the parrot steps out with his feet trembling, climbs up onto the guy’s shoulder, and says: ‘Sir, words cannot express the depth of my apologies. From here on out my master shall not hear even one uncultured utterance depart my lips.’ The guy looks at the parrot and can’t believe his ears. Then the parrot says: ‘By the way, sir, what exactly did the chicken do?’ ”

  The crowd laughs. A big held-in breath that bursts out in laughter. They laugh in part, I think, to save the man onstage from his own hands. What sort of peculiar contract is emerging here, and what is my role in it? The pale young couple leans over on their table. Their lips protrude tensely, almost passionately. Perhaps they’re hoping he’ll hit himself again? Dovaleh listens to the laughter, head tilted and forehead wrinkled. “Oh well.” He sighs, after gauging the volume and duration. “I guess that’s all I’m gonna get out of them. Apparently you’re dealing with a demanding, sophisticated crowd here, Dovi. Some of them might even be lefties, which requires a more opinionated attitude, with touches of self-righteousness.” Then he riles himself up with a yell: “Where were we?! We covered birthdays, which as you know are a day of reckoning, of soul-searching, at least for those who have a soul, and I’ll tell you that personally, in my state, I just don’t have the resources to maintain one. Seriously, souls demand nonstop upkeep, don’t they? It never ends! Every single day, all day long, you gotta haul it in for servicing. Am I right or am I right?”

  Beer glasses are raised in confirmation. I seem to be the only one still under the influence of the hand that hovered over his face; I, and perhaps a very small woman sitting not far from me, who’s been staring at him in wonder since the moment he walked onstage, struggling to believe that such a creature could exist in the world. “Am I right or am I right?”
he yells again, and a few grunts and lows of agreement emerge. “Am I right or am I right?” he thunders as loud as he can, and they scream: “You’re right! You’re right!” It seems the louder they get, the happier he is. He enjoys fanning the flames, stimulating some kind of vulgar, corrupt gland, and I suddenly know in the clearest and simplest way that I do not want or need to be here.

  “Because the fucking soul flip-flops on us the whole time, have you noticed? Have you noticed that, Netanya?” They roar back: they have noticed! “First it wants this, then it wants the other. One second it lights you up with euphoria and fireworks, the next it whacks you upside the head with a club. One minute it’s horny, the next it’s freaking out and geeking out and let me out! How can anyone live with it, I’m asking you, and who needs it anyway?” He fumes, and I look around, and again it seems that apart from me and that woman, who is exceptionally tiny, almost a midget, everyone looks perfectly satisfied. What the hell am I doing here? And what sort of obligation do I have toward someone who I went to private tutoring sessions with forty-something years ago? I’m giving him five more minutes, on the dot, and after that, if there isn’t any kind of plot twist, I’m leaving.

  Somehow, on the phone, there was something attractive about his offer, and I can’t deny that he does have his moments onstage, too. When he hit himself, there was something there, I’m not sure what, some sort of alluring abyss that opened up. And the guy is no idiot. He never was, and I’m sure I’m missing something in him tonight, too, some signal I have trouble putting my finger on, something inside him that’s calling out to me.