See Under David Grossman (free ebook reader TXT) 📖

Memory”; “The Mildness of Sarah-Beila”; “The Secret Diplomacy of Abraham Pesach [the Lublianer], Who Tried to Restore Peace and Was Found to Be a Troublemaker”; “Laizer’s Hopes of Becoming the Partner of His One Friend, Meyerson, in the Textile Business, and the Illness of Sarah-Bcila, Which Ate Up His Savings.”) “Ah, we are all so very lonely,” continued Malkiel Zeidman, addressing Paula, whose eyes were big and round, and who smiled at him as if he were a page flying out of her dream.”And I realized that there is no great difference between the pains I took to get under the skin of Alexander the Great or the skin of the Warsawian … because the important thing is to steal across the frontier, and not just that of another but across my own frontier as well, if only to escape myself by slipping away into another! These onion biscuits are delicious, if you don’t mind my tasting another … hmmm! Simply delicious! Would that I could bestow such a pleasure on … As I was saying! There are millions of people everywhere, I said to myself, and we cannot go on knowing no one but ourselves anymore! We have to know others! From the inside! To feel their pulse deep inside ourselves for one swift secret moment. Nu, yes, sometimes we imagine that we know someone or other, my wife I always imagined I knew and understood, but later there were things I discovered … ah, you see? I talk, and your eyes are closing, because when the mood is on me, I talk. Nu, of course you understand, I have practiced silence for three years since my Laizer took his own life and left me empty-handed; midway through the song of his wretched life he killed himself, his strength gave out, with me, of course, in his footsteps! Nu, yes, it happened three years ago, when the world was stricken with terror … Ah, I forgot to tell you, in those days I had honed my skills to such perfection I could scarcely tell whether I ruled over it or it ruled over me and my desire was unto it … You understand, great and subtle powers of sharing fate, of communing with another I had developed in myself during the years I spent following my Laizer every day and every hour. And he, goodly soul that he was, never once protested, never threw me down the stairs! On the contrary, he saw how much I needed him … you understand? At around this time I began to slip, yes, I was dismissed from my office at the university as an undesirable scion as early as ‘35, and my wiferan away with a rogue, may his name be blotted out, and my children, flesh of my flesh, began to be ashamed of me because my toilette was less than fastidious! That’s what they said! My own children, whom I thought I knew! Uhm, where was I? And he, Laizer, was intelligent, certainly more so than I am, and while I was endeavoring to know him, he peered into my soul and saw what was there, and for that reason, I suppose, he let me follow him for so long eager to tell me all that befell him, even family matters he confided to my ears, yes, if not for his goodness of heart and the goodness of his poor Sarah-Beila, my work would not have prospered so … And people used to chaff him and say he had a shadow, Mupim and Chupim, they called us, Chillik and Billik … but Laizer understood, and allowed me to continue, because what did I want?” the little man suddenly bellowed, dramatically waving his fine smooth hands in the air.”Did I want to hurt anyone?! Did I want to make anyone angry?! Ah, everything I did, I did for love. Out of the desire to know the man who dwells ‘outside,’ who walks beyond my skin. To know, oy, to know! To tear this tenuous envelope of flesh which separates us from one another, and is stronger than steel! Stronger than steel! This has been a torture to me all my life; or it used to be, that is, because now I have vanquished it! I have utterly defeated it! And do not ask me how! Do not ask. Because I do not know myself: something burst in me, something went snap like a shirt button, ‘snap’ and no more! And I was suddenly able to do as I chose. Do you know when it happened?” (Fried and Paula respond in the negative, gaping at him.)”I will tell you, then, that you, too, may rejoice! It happened one night when Laizer told me about the bookcase in his father’s house. Yes, so it was. A polished cabinet with two glass doors where they kept the silver and the cherished books of his father of blessed memory. ‘Saronatka’ we call these cabinets, madame, which may be decorated with wallpaper or a sweet ribbon with tiny brass tacks, you know? And in this cabinet we stored our silver, and on the bottom shelf there were all sorts of special clothes, like the scarves Mother made for Father when she was a bride, you know, a scarf of woven stuff with a dark-green silk thread braided with leaves and rosebuds, you would have thought it was real!” (Fried looks at Zeidman in wonder, barely listening to what he is saying, as he tries to decide who Zeidman has been reminding him of for the past few moments, whose rounded, charming gestures and soft, forgiving smile.)”Yes, what? What did I say? Pardon! For amoment I forgot myself. So, Laizer told me about the cabinet, and I suddenly felt that I myself was Laizer; a complete Laizer from A to Z, with the knowledge of his every secret and the sorrows of his heart, and that any moment he would raise his hand and press it to