See Under David Grossman (free ebook reader TXT) 📖

shoes on the pile of clothes so you’ll have something to wear when you get back; just a minute, not so fast, let’s talk this over rationally. (The writer can see what Bruno himself cannot: that from the far end of the dock people are running toward the pier: two stevedores and a third man, an officer.)

He kicks the pile of clothes and they drop into the water, float for a moment, swell briefly, and sink down. The sea smiles. It slides a wave Bruno’s way, an experienced croupier dealing out a lucky card to a regular customer. The writer clenches his teeth in horror. How well I understand him! He spits with disgust at the moldering culture of humanity, his insane and unexpected former abode and writing hand. And he is the frightened, pampered, rational one, who lays two delicate fingers on Bruno’s nose and melts away as Bruno sinks into the cold water and floats up to the surface again, happiness inflating him like a sail. Then there was a long, muffled sound: perhaps a ship blaring in the distance, or the sea itself blaring as this new bastard landed on its bosom.

Bruno swam with long strokes, drawing curtain after curtain before him. He detected a first crack in the distant horizon, where the muted slates of sea and sky collide. Through this crack he tried to escape, but his strength was fading too quickly, and when his feet hit a reef, he stopped to rest a while.

He looked back. He saw the gray docks, the rotting shingles and wind-worn harbor buildings. He saw the ships rocking and creaking sadly, round ships, pregnant with the faraway, and the figure of a gorgon on one of the dinghies, and people crowding and calling to him from the pier. Or cheering him? In any case, they could no longer join hands around him in a ring. He laughed and shivered with waves of heat and cold. He noticed that his wristwatch was still on, but his fingers were trembling so, he couldn’t remove it.

Someone out by the pier was working on the motor of a small boatbut the motor would not respond. Bruno leaned back to look at the sky and take a deep breath. For the first time in years he did not feel hunted. Even if he were captured now, he would never be recognized as the man they were pursuing. They would catch an empty vessel. No police interrogator would be able to make sense of what Bruno was saying now. No writer would ever be able to record it accurately. At best they might try to reconstruct it with the aid of superficial evidence. How sad the fate of those Bruno abandoned on the shore. The whole world must have felt a pang as Bruno lowered himself into the water. Indians along the Orinoco stopped chopping rubber trees for a moment to listen. The shepherds of the Australian Fire Tribe stood suddenly still, and cocked their heads when they heard that distant sound. I did, too, and I wasn’t even born yet.

And not far from Bruno the waters parted. Something flickered and fluttered there. A greenish glare or a frozen eye, and furrows plowed in a flurry, foaming with the soft pit-a-pat of many fins. Tiny mouths surrounded him, stung him on the belly and the knees, nibbled at his buttocks and chest. Bruno froze in astonishment as he read the code tattooed upon his body. The credentials of a one-man delegation setting off on a journey. The fish wondered at his tough, skimpy flesh, investigated the veins protruding on his white feet. Silently they followed the flashing object that dropped into the depths to tell the time that was already past. The ranks broke before him, and the fish let Laprik through to regard Bruno with his piercing eyes. He was a big salmon, more developed than the rest, with a body as big as Bruno’s. For a moment he swam around him circumspectly, his tail lightly aquiver, or perhaps the ripples came from the motorboat approaching with two stevedores and a Port Authority official, all yelling at him angrily, but Laprik quickly returned to his place, the shoal folded slowly like an enormous, limp accordion, and Bruno sailed away.

[ 2 ]

THREE YEARS HAVE GONE BY since we broke up. I am healing. Just as you predicted. Sometimes, when the tension is unbearable, I take the bus to Tel Aviv. To you. I walk along the beach, stepping over shells and seaweed and dead fish, and if there aren’t too many peoplearound, I actually speak to you out loud. I tell you that the book is coming along, that for three years the torag has been on, a relentless war between me and Bruno the fish. Meanwhile, I’ve made some headway. Here’s the list. I love lists: I did it! I finished writing Grandfather Anshel’s story, the one he told Neigel, the German; and I also finished the story of baby Kazik, that mistake Ayala was pleased to call my “crime against humanity,” bless her little heart.

But the important thing is Bruno’s story, and it’s on his account that I return to you almost every week: to shout the latest installment into your cockleshell ears, and also, of course, to pump you for the moist information in your bottomless depths, to charm you into making disclosures, into letting me sniff you till I catch the scent of Bruno, because for me the two of you are indissoluble, which is why I put you in my story in the first place, and why I’m telling you about it now, though I know it makes you furious. Oh sure, you never admit you notice me when I show up at the beach—but I know you: I hear you snarling the moment my foot touches the breakwater. I see you arch your back to snatch me away.

But I am careful. You said so yourself.

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