See Under David Grossman (free ebook reader TXT) 📖

sleep through all the noise,” I say finally. “He may have to sleep with tanks passing in the streets someday. Or on his feet, trudging through the snow. Or in a crowded cell block maybe, with ten more like him to a bunk. Or on a—” “Stop it,” says Ruth, and leaves the room.

I’m always testing him. He’s taller and sturdier than most children his age, and that’s good, but he’s afraid of them. He’s afraid of everything. I have to climb the slide because he refuses to move without me. I climb down again and leave him there crying that he’s afraid he might fall. Some kindly soul walks over to inform me that he’s afraid. I smile, coldly beatific, and tell her that out in the forests children his age were used as sentinels and made to sit guard for hours high in the treetops. She recoils in horror. Let’s see her kid when the time comes. The other mothers on the bench stop chattering to stare at me and the little idiot on the ladder. He screams and carries on. I light a cigarette and watch him. If someday we’re caught in a bunker with soldiers searching for us, how will I shut the kid up? There won’t be any choice, I think. I only hope I can teach him to do the same if I ever get in his way. Come here, you little coward, I say out loud, feigning nonchalance, stubbing my cigarette out on the heel of my shoe, and then I climb up to get him. But when his mouth sticks to my neck and trembles with a mournful sob, I feel the heavy pendulum of childish shame swing from his heart to mine with such force it almost knocks me off the ladder. Forgive me, my child, I say inwardly, forgive everything, be wiser and more patient than I am, because I don’t have the strength, they didn’t teach me how to love. Be strong enough to tolerate me, love me. And stop crying like a girl, I whisper out loud.

No more tender moments. Ruth knows how to play with him. I want to teach him. To prepare him. To make the most of these precious years when the brain is alert and open. Ruth loves to play with him. She draws him cars and tick-tocks and models for him in clay. When they play, their gentle voices blend together. I teach him to read numbers. She melts when he makes a mistake like “Mommy and Daddy good bye-bye.” I too am amused, but I correct him. There’s no timefor mistakes. He stands up on our bed to follow a fly on the window, and suddenly reaches out, and accidentally catches, and crushes it. Then he looks at his hand in amazement and asks why the fly isn’t flying anymore. Ruth, a little tensely, says the fly is sleeping, and looks at me. I tell him the truth. I also go into detail. “You killed it,” Yariv repeats after me, tasting the new word in his soft, fresh mouth. In my head I feel a kind of dullness spreading. I ought to be happy now, but there’s nothing to be happy about. There’s nothing to hope for.

“Make a little effort with him, will you?” she says later at night, her face and mine to the ceiling. “You may be causing long-term damage. That would be a shame.” Inwardly I scream: Stop me. Throw me out. Give me an ultimatum. Aloud I say that the story I’m currently working on, the story Grandfather Anshel told Neigel the German, must be having a big impact on me. That and all I’ve been reading and learning in connection with it. Ruthy knows me well enough not to suggest that I stop writing. She would never say anything like that outright. Ruthy believes that we all possess great powers, powers beyond our control, and we have to be careful not to harm others with our advice or attempts to influence them. She’s so mature. Why is it that everything she does feels like hard work to me? We lie in bed talking about the difference between writing a poem and writing a novel. A poem is like a love affair, she says, smiling in the dark, a novel is more like marriage: you stay with your characters long after the initial passion has worn off. It was strange that she said that. It’s not like her. I’m the one who says the naughty things around here. For some reason I was scared for a moment. A novel, I say quietly, is like a marriage: two people love each other and hurt each other, because who else is there to hurt? We’re both silent. I try to remember whether she locked the bottom lock on the front door. But if I ask her she’ll be annoyed. She probably locked it. I’ll just have to believe she locked it and stop letting it worry me. Sometimes, I tell her, I want to pack my bags and go live somewhere else. Start all over. Without the past. Just the two of us. “And Yariv,” she reminds me, and adds that there’s no running away anymore. This is the last haven. Well, I reply, that’s a dumb thing to say. There’s no such thing as a “last haven.” You can’t let yourself become so attached to any one place, or any one person. “You’ll never find peace, Momik,” she says. “It isn’t places you fear, it’s people.” Her voice is soothing, serene, what’s got into her all of a sudden? “You’re afraid of everybody.What do you see in us, Momik? What could be worse than what we already know?” And I say, “I don’t know. I don’t have the strength for any more of these questions.” There, I should have asked her if she locked the bottom lock, too. I missed my chance. She usually remembers to lock the bottom