The Book of Intimate Grammar Read online

  Papa set the palette down and rushed over to the boys. “You rat, you dirty creep!” shrieked Aron, choking back the tears as Papa locked him in his burly arms. “Just wait, I’ll make mincemeat out of you!” He waved his little fists at Zacky, kicking furiously. “Let me at him, let me at him!” Zacky, alarmed by what he’d done, thrashed back halfheartedly, cursing Aron, calling him a lousy cheater. “Trying to mess with me, Kleinfeld? Huh? Huh? Trying to mess with me?” he screamed, aiming higher because he couldn’t think of anything better to say. Papa hoisted Zacky up with his free hand and roared with laughter as he held the two boys face to face, and let them swing at each other: wiry little Aron wriggled in the air, heaping abuse on Zacky and his bike, and Zacky screamed back: “You trying to mess with me? Huh? Huh?,” his snub-nosed face burning with indignation. A sudden squeeze reduced them both to silence. Roaring with laughter Papa let them down, and they reeled on the ground with all the fight knocked out of them. Zacky got his wind back and started to whine that Aron was playing dirty, trying to be a wise guy. But those are the rules, burbled Aron, you ride up, you lunge, and then you ride away as fast as you can; was it his fault Zacky was such a klutz, such a golem and a turtle and a snail?Papa frowned at the torrent of words. “All right!” he shouted. “Sha! We heard you the first time, big mouth!” Instantly he regretted his sharpness of tone, and tousled Aron’s soft yellow hair; then, noticing the miserable expression in Zacky’s eyes, gave him a big hug and scratched his bristly head. The two boys took comfort in the warmth of Papa’s hands, and Zacky sidled up to feel the prickly hair on his leg.

  “Off, you two, go play, and if I hear you brawling again, you gonna be sorry.” Aron was the first to break away, and Papa patted Zacky on the shoulder. “A-shockel, Zachary, get on your bike and ride. I’ll keep an eye on you from the tree.”

  Papa climbed up the fig tree and seated himself comfortably on a branch. Aron gripped the bike wheel between his knees and tried to straighten it. Papa parted the leaves and asked Zacky to fetch him the palette he’d left on the fence. Aron pressed down on the fender so hard it nearly cut his skin.

  Papa leaned back. The leaves reached out to caress his face, to nuzzle him like friendly colts. He breathed in the muskiness of the fig tree and ran his hands around its ample trunk. Then he kicked off his plastic scuffs, startling Zacky, who was on his way back to the tree, and making him jump like a frightened kitten.

  Solemnly, deliberately, like a craftsman spreading his tools out, Papa cracked his knuckles one by one. Then he shook himself and inspected the tree. There were sores on the branches: lesions infested with little white worms. The sores ran all the way up the tree, and Papa followed them with his eyes to the fourth-floor window. He thought he noticed Edna’s curtain flutter and crossed his arms over his barrel chest. This would not be an easy job.

  He took a roll of flannel out of his pocket, deftly tore a piece off, and poked the sore. A sticky gold fluid soaked through the cloth. He sniffed, nodded wonderingly, shrugged his shoulders, and tossed the rag down. Zacky glanced anxiously up at Papa’s feet. He studied the flannel, took a whiff, made a face, and buried his nose in it, inhaling with rapture.

  Papa wound a fresh piece of flannel around his finger and softly whistled a half-forgotten tune, which in his rendition sounded somber and vague: suddenly Mama poked her head out the window and searched for him between the leaves. She knew where Papa’s mind was whenever he whistled that way. He began to swab the little hole. Abloated worm wriggled blindly in his palm, and Papa examined it, whistling out of the corner of his mouth. Long ago in Poland, a wily Communist named Zioma had talked Papa into fleeing with him over the border to join the Red Army. Oi, Zioma, Zioma, you momzer you. Mama slammed the window shut. This fig tree business was all she needed now. She tried to concentrate on polishing the fleishik knives. Papa had told her once about his childhood in Poland, about the escape to Russia and his three years in the army, about the detention camp at Komi, and his lurid flight from the taiga and the peasant’s wife, but she had covered his mouth with her strong little hand and said, Enough already, Moshe, I don’t want to hear any more, after I’m gone you can tell the world, you can shout it from the rooftops for all I care, but not here, not in my home, in my home I refuse to hear such things; and when the children were born, she made him swear never to speak of those terrible times. There’s no reason they should know their father was an animal, so he promised her, with his patient nod and ever-ready smile; the only trouble was, she understood his whistling too. She opened the window and snapped her dust cloth on the sill. A small gray cloud flew up. The whistling ceased. Mama vanished into the house. Papa blew on the palm of his hand. The worm dropped off. He squashed it against the tree trunk with his heel, and quietly started to warble again.

  Papa worked painstakingly, pausing only to explain to passing neighbors what he was doing up in the tree or to answer Hinda’s calls. Two hours later, at six-thirty on the dot, when the signature tune of the evening newscast blared forth over every radio on the block, Papa rested from his labors and listened eagerly, but there was still no news of a devaluation. Aron rode up and down the street, ignoring Papa, Zacky, and the tree, veering around every so often to call his make-believe dog, Gummy, who chased his bike invisibly. Zacky stood dutifully at his post, collecting the filthy rags as they landed. How could a father leave a son like that and go off to make money in Africa, thought Papa. Then he brooded over Malka Smitanka, sending her child out so she could screw around. What does a woman like her see in that deadbeat, that slouch of an accountant, or lawyer, or whatever he was? True, he owns a car, sighed Papa, deploring the waste. Go ask Hinda for the enema bag, he shouted down to Zacky, and began to muse about the beauty mark on Malka’s bosom and the sassy hair curling under her arms.“Got it!” cried Zacky, holding up the bag and startling Papa, who only sent him off again, gloomy-eyed, to tell Hinda he would soon be home.

  Papa sat back, lit a cigarette, and puffed with pleasure. From his perch in the treetop he couldn’t see the building project or the street. He might have been anywhere; and if he leaned to the right he could just make out the curtains fluttering in a certain window. But he didn’t move. It was June, and gallnuts hardened on the branches. A sweet fragrance enveloped him. He breathed it in.

  Zacky shinned up the tree with the enema bag, and Papa winked to console him for the scolding, playfully scratching his bristly head again. “You sit here and watch,” he ordered.

  First he used the enema pump to dry out a sore, then he dipped a special brush into the ointment and carefully painted around the hole. Zacky stared open-mouthed at his gently moving hand. In the street below them, Aron was riding around calling “Gummy! Gummy!,” his arms outstretched to make Gummy chase the bike. Papa finished painting the sore. “There,” he said, looking at Zacky and passing him the enema bag. “Now you go ‘phoo!’ while I shmear on the ointment.” Zacky pumped air into another sore, biting his tongue with the effort. They worked in silence side by side until Aron’s fair head popped up between them. “How come he gets to do everything?” Aron whined. “It’s my turn now.”

  Papa and Zacky recoiled from each other and Papa embarked on a loud explanation of how the healing process works. Zacky started cracking his knuckles, and Aron shuddered. Suddenly he had an idea. He slid down the tree and got his bicycle pump. It was a terrific idea, a brilliant idea, in fact. How quickly and efficiently the pump dried the sores. It’s much faster this way, isn’t it, he panted, all aglow. Yeah, growled Zacky. Noisier too.

  The three of them worked together, swabbing sores, while Aron chattered to fill in the silence and make them laugh with his hilarious imitations of famous people; he did a fabulous one of the Prime Minister, even though his voice hadn’t changed yet; well, what do you expect, he was only eleven and a half. Once he got started there was no stopping him, though little by little he too fell under the quiet spell of healing.

  And suddenly Mama was on the balcony, calling Aron. Pa
pa signaled the boys to keep still and they hid their heads behind the branches.Again she called him, certain he was there. I’m warning you, Aron, you’re in for it. Papa cupped his hands over his mouth and gave a cuckoo cry, and the boys nearly burst with stifled laughter. In vain Mama searched for them, bobbing up and down, and then she turned on her heel and disappeared into the house. Now now, boys, laughed Papa, is that any way to behave? He gazed serenely at the sky and wound his thighs around the big warm tree.

  3

  For seven days Papa ministered to the fig tree: poking the sores, wiping them clean, daubing them with ointment. Again and again Mama stepped out on the balcony and shouted at him, what did she care who heard her, he was an idiot not to charge good money for all this work, let the Residents Association pay, they were responsible for the gardening, weren’t they? But Papa knew how to sweet-talk Mama, and he stayed at his station in the tree. One day Zacky, arriving late, found Aron’s little bicycle propped against the trunk and went pedaling off in circles like a jilted lover. Slowly, painstakingly, Papa and Aron worked their way up the branches. They put their heads together and examined the sores. Whenever Papa’s undershirt hiked up Aron glimpsed the pale scar under his hairy red potbelly, like a silky gap in Papa’s brawn that never ceased to fascinate him. You didn’t get that at the camp in Komi, did you? he asked, knowing better, in an attempt to pump Papa for a trickle of forbidden memories, and Papa laughed: Not likely, not at Komi, there they left you to die like a dog. No, this is from the appendix operation in Poland, when I was about your age or a little older maybe; and then, forgetting his promise to Mama, he spoke about the terrible winter in the taiga when the earth froze so hard they couldn’t bury the dead, and anyone fool enough to try to escape was found next day half-gnawed by the wolves, and some of the prisoners went crazy from hunger and fear, they went out of their minds like you go out of a room, and the worst were the inallectuals Stalinsent there, they went crazy not because they suffered more, a body is a body, same for everyone, but because … because … He shrugged his shoulders. I don’t know … maybe they couldn’t believe it was happening, they thought the world was inallectual like them, not like Stalin … Papa laughed and Aron laughed with him, intently watching his face.

  Sometimes Edna Bloom came out for a walk and approached the tree with her dainty parasol. Papa would watch her and part the leaves, startling her every time, though she knew by now that he was a kindly giant. Oh, Mr. Kleinfeld, you gave me a fright, she gasped wide-eyed, hand on her heart, and in the silence that followed, the empty lull, she seemed suddenly transported, awaiting her own return, but then, smiling meekly, gulping solicitously, she inquired about the welfare of her fig tree. Aron thought her very beautiful, in spite of her peculiar pink coloring, which made her look almost transparent, like a newborn chick with a throbbing heart. If not for this fig tree, she confided one evening, I would have moved out of the neighborhood long ago. Uh-oh, thought Aron, she made a mistake, though what it was, he didn’t know. And the next day she said she felt close to the tree, those were her words, she said that sometimes she almost felt like pouring her heart out to it, which made Aron wince again, how could she say things like that to strangers. But Edna wasn’t accustomed to talking to her neighbors, even after thirteen years among them, she kept her distance. I’ll show her, said Mama, I’ll grab her by the roots and teach her to be civil, or at least to say hello to me. Now Aron hung his head and Papa muttered something, and he blushed even more. Edna seemed to sense she’d made a mistake, but she was in great high spirits so she quickly forgave herself, waving a jolly goodbye, and promising to return next day, same time, same place. Aron smiled at Papa. He tried to catch his eye as she walked away, but Papa avoided looking at him and said, Quick, start blowing on the sores.

  Edna hurried upstairs and ran breathlessly to the curtain. A breeze was blowing, rustling the leaves, making shadows flicker on Papa’s back. She could see the thick of his neck, the fleshly nape. She could put him together like a jigsaw puzzle, here a biceps, there a shin; and when he twisted his arm around she glimpsed the scar on it winding through the leaves like a tropical snake. His hefty legs swung down beside the scrawny boy’s, and she wondered how the son would ever grow up tobe a man. Suddenly her eyes twinkled with a rare gleam of mischief, and she dashed to the kitchen to make a pitcher of lemonade. With a giggle and a blush and an Edna-what’s-come-over-you, she poured the lemon concentrate and sugar in the water and gave it a vigorous stir. But as she approached the window her hands went limp. What, would she lean out the window, call him by name, and hand him the drinks … maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. Still carrying the pitcher, she paced through the rooms, vexed and disappointed with herself.

  A curious silence descended over the block. In steamy kitchens, red-faced housewives looked up from their tasks. Husbands dozing under the newspaper on their balcony lounge chairs sat up and listened. The distant strains of a Chopin mazurka trickled through the dreary building project, over the rusty banisters, the spatterdash entrance walls and crooked mailboxes, and out to the sickly yellow lawn. For years she hadn’t touched the piano, now she was playing again.

  Up in the fig tree, Papa and Aron peered shyly into each other’s eyes and quickly looked away. Papa was busy wiping a sore, patiently probing it with his fingers. Aron considered asking for a new guitar as a bar mitzvah present. He remembered the time he caught Mama watching him play the old one; that was a mistake, she had walked in and seen the look in his eyes. You’re giving me a hole in the head, she shouted. Go outside and play with your friends, we didn’t spend half Papa’s salary to buy you a bicycle so you’d stay in here hunched over your guitar all day, and really, the bike was great, he loved it, only he wanted something more. What it was, though, he couldn’t say. More, that’s all. But they had already decided what to give him for his bar mitzvah, a savings account, that’s what, so that twenty years from now he would be able to buy an apartment for his wife. His wife? Who cared about his wife. Maybe he could still talk them into buying him a guitar. Tenderly he strummed the tree, accompanying Edna, and then he rubbed the chicken-pox scar on his chin; and Papa had another bar mitzvah present to give him, a very special one: the army shaving kit with the razor and the shaving soap and the little tray he used in the Sinai campaign. But all Aron wanted was a guitar; and again he strummed the tree and rubbed his chin and strummed again, with the dreamy look of a medieval scribe dipping his quill into the inkpot.

  Even though the big event was still a year and a half away, Mama and Papa were up to their ears in arrangements. They were planning agrandiose affair, said Mama, they would rent the Empyrean Hall and hire an expensive photographer from Photo Gwirtz this time instead of using old Uncle Shimmik, whose hands trembled so badly at the last family affair that Mama came out looking hideous. Yochi’s bat mitzvah party had been celebrated modestly at home, and now she flew into a jealous rage. On me you scrimp, she exploded, and Mama replied, with a hint of malice, that a bar mitzvah is different, like it or not. Don’t worry, we’ll make it up to you with your wedding, only first let’s see the suitors, ha ha ha.

  At night when Aron got up for a drink, he would find his parents huddled together over the big bar mitzvah ledger on the kitchen table. Cast aside were the Sick Fund stampbooks—who had time for them nowadays—the reddish-yellow stamps were glued on any which way, while the ledger was carefully bound in green shelf paper with a label on the cover: ARON’S BAR MITZVAH. Here his parents entered the menu of every bar mitzvah they attended, reckoned the costs, counted courses, criticized and compared the cuisine. In a year and a half the mortgage would be paid up, and they would take out a little loan, which, together with what they’d managed to put by already, would be enough to throw him such a bar mitzvah party, Mama clasped him to her bosom, “Their eyes will pop!”

  Now she appeared on the balcony, searching high and low, her nostrils flaring. Papa yanked Aron back into the tree as stealthily as a guerrilla fighter, til
l both of them were safely hidden from her scrutiny. All Aron could see now through the leaves were her fingers turning white on the balcony railing.

  “Moshe!” she shrieked, “how long do you intend to stay up there wiping snot?” A hush fell over the building. The tinkling of the piano died away.

  Papa tucked his neck between his shoulders, then pushed it out again, thick and red, with a throbbing blue vein. Aron cringed. He had never seen Papa like this before, but Papa controlled himself, clenched his powerful jaws, and gravely, deliberately, began to smear the ointment on the sores. Mama waited, and then suddenly pounded on the railing: “A-ron!”—the sound waves encircled him like iron rings around a pole—“come home this instant to try on your boots!”

  “What? But it’s summer!” he whispered to Papa.

  Papa nodded. His eyes still intimated danger, but his chin dredgedup an old excuse: “That’s Mama for you, she likes to have things ready in advance,” he whispered. “Suppose we have to buy you a new pair of boots this year?”

  But of course they would have to, the old pair was two years old, all worn out, with cracks in the soles. He definitely needed a new pair of boots: he and Gideon and Zacky were planning to open a tadpole farm, they were going to sell frogs to Bonaparte’s, the first French restaurant in Jerusalem.

  “What is it,” whispered Papa. “Why the long face?”

  Aron turned away so Papa wouldn’t see him. “Why does she have to talk to me like that,” he grumbled.

  “Don’t take it to heart, Aronchik, your mama loves you. She worries, that’s why she talks like that.”

  “I’m as tall as Gideon, I’m as tall as most of the kids in my class.”

  “She wants you to be the best in everything, that’s all. A mother is a mother.”