See Under David Grossman (free ebook reader TXT) 📖

lock on the way to bed after she turns off the gas. Wait a minute: did she turn off the gas? And suddenly I’m talking about the Holocaust again. I don’t even know how I got back to it. I can get there from anywhere. I’m a regular Holocaust homing pigeon. And for the thousandth time, in a voice that doesn’t carry much conviction, I ask, “How can life go on after we’ve seen what a human being is capable of?” “Some people are able to love,” she says (at last a bit impatiently). “Some people reach the opposite conclusion. There are two possible conclusions after the Holocaust, aren’t there? And there are people who love and feel compassion and do good without any connection to the Holocaust. Without thinking about it day and night. Because maybe it was a mistake? Why not look at it like that, Shlomik?” “You don’t believe that yourself anymore.” “Sure. I’ve been living with you for a few years, and your point of view has rubbed off on me. It’s easier to become like you than it is to stay like me. I don’t like myself when I start to think like you. I have to fight you.” “You know I’m right. Even if you say there are people who think differently and get along fine, you won’t console me. I’m one of those unfortunates who see the backstage. And the skull beneath the skin.” “And what do you see there? Damn it, what do you see there that’s so different from what the rest of us see?! What tidings do you bring?” (She’s getting angrier by the minute, and I so seldom succeed in ruffling her.) “I don’t bring any tidings. It’s the same old thing: people killing each other, only the process is projected decorously in slow motion which is why it isn’t so shocking. Everybody killing everybody. The death machine has gone through a few more rounds and slipped into the underground, but I can hear the motor running all the time. I’m getting ready, Ruthy. As you well know.” “A little birdy told me.” She smiles. “Go on, laugh. Someday we’ll all be in the convoys again. Only unlike the rest of you, I will not be shocked or humiliated. And I won’t suffer the pains of separation. There’s nothing I’ll be sorry to leave behind.” “It so happens I know something about that, too. It was my husband the poet who wrote The Object Cycle everyone raved about. Have you read it?” “I leafed through it.” “Yes, my husband never allows me to buy himbirthday presents, and he can’t stand ceremonies that hint at anything permanent—oh yes, I know the man.” “I want to be free of attachments.” “And people, Momik?” “Ditto.” “Even me and Yariv?” Shut up, dummy. Lie, tell her you want to be free of others, but not her. Because without her, without her faith and innocence, your life has no meaning. “Yes, even you and Yariv. Look, maybe I won’t be able to stop missing you, but I’d like to think I’ll be strong enough. I’d be disappointed with myself if I couldn’t stand the pain.” Ruth is silent. And then she says brightly, “If I believed any of this, I would get right up and leave you. But I’ve been hearing this stuff for almost ten years now, ever since we met, in fact. Sometimes you pull yourself out of it and see things a little differently, but in my opinion, you speak this way out of fear, my darling.” “Cut the ‘my darling,’ okay? We’re not starring in some Turkish melodrama, you know.” Her white-toothed smile spreads through the darkness. You have to turn the key four times in the bottom lock. I’m pretty sure I only heard two clicks. I feel her smile float through the room. Her mouth is the loveliest feature in her potato-ish face. Her complexion is raw, permanently inflamed around the nostrils and under the eyes. When we were sixteen and first started going together, people used to laugh at us behind our backs. We weren’t the best-looking couple in the class, to put it mildly. So I had to get my own nasty digs in. Ruth, however, quietly and wisely, steered us to where only the two of us mattered, not what people said about us. But I still hear an echo of their mockery sometimes. And Ruth says, “I do know you pretty well after all this time. We’ve been together through thick and thin. I’ve read your poems, including the ones you didn’t publish because you were afraid they would spoil your image as an angry young poet. I’ve known you since you started shaving. I see you when you’re sleeping and laughing and angry and quiet and sad and coming inside me. We’ve slept together side by side for a million nights like teaspoons. Or knives sometimes. And when you’re thirsty at night I bring you water in my mouth. I know the way you like to kiss, and how you hate it when I try to hug you in public. I know a lot about you. Not everything, but a lot. The things I know about you are very important to me. Just as the characters you write about are important to you. Our life, yours and mine—and now with Yariv—is the simple creation I work at every hour of every day. Nothing very big or daring. Or very original either. Millions of women have done itbefore me, probably a lot better, too. But this is mine, and I live it with all my might and main. No, let me talk now. I saw how happy you were when your affair with Ayala began. I suffered terribly. But in spite of the humiliation and hatred I felt toward you, I sometimes thought (when I managed to collect my thoughts) that someone with your talent for love, even if he tried to bury it,