Motti by Asaf Schurr Read Free Book Online Page B

now at last has revealed its true plan, to pump out all his blood, to push it out of his gaping wound so he’ll cease, be done, so little Motti will die like this on the road, and from a distance the sound of sirens is heard, but he only barely hears it, and every second is already so precious, every second is like a rare piece of jewelry that Ariella will wear for the rest of her life, the few years that remain to her, and she’ll grope those forlorn beads of memory when she rolls over in her bed at night. (Alone, he hopes. For at least a few years it will still only be her, and even afterward some wound will remain, a sliver of longing, a gaping biographical hole, some sorrow.)

21
    Look at this, so many possibilities one can fabricate without committing to any actual story.
    The body of the plot is full of holes like a fisherman’s net or an old stocking, and as with the net, it gathers up, without discretion, miscellaneous thoughts and meaningless fantasies and so forth. But that’s how we speak through the pages of a book, so why hide it? On the contrary. Apart from whatever glance God—if there is such a thing—might throw us from time to time, there isn’t a lot of meaning to the things we do when we’re all alone. The only acts that have any salient existence are those done in company. That being the case, I would even suggest we meet up for coffee or something, but ordinarily I’m not a particularly good conversationalist. Quite the opposite. Unremittingly quiet or else babbling on—not to mention that since quitting smoking I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with your hands when talking.

22
    But a day later, when Motti returned from work, Ariella was waiting there on the stairs, drumming on her backpack and chewing gum.
    My mom still isn’t home, she said to him. Can I wait at your place?
    I, I, Motti said, his heart pounding. I myself am not going inside, actually. I just dropped by…dropped by to…I have, I really have to go, I just dropped by.
    He fled down the stairs as if wolves were nipping at his heels, and hid among the bushes in the backyard for perhaps an hour and a half, until her mom returned. Only then did he go up cautiously, quickly drink a glass of water, peek through the peephole to see that no one was standing in the stairwell, put Laika on her leash, and out together to walk the streets.
    And so, has your opinion of him changed, now that it’s been made perfectly clear that she’s just a kid? It’s important to remember that he still hasn’t done a thing. Won’t, either. Why, she’s just a child, why, that’s disgusting, the very thought of touching her like that disgusts him, no matter how much he wants to touch her when she grows up, when they’re in love.
    As proof, even if he was asked for whatever reason to describe her to someone, he wouldn’t have any problem describing her quite well (indeed, he’s observed her for hours, a minute here, a minute there, from the window or through the peephole in his front door), but he doesn’t know how she smells, what smell she has, he’s never gotten sufficiently close to her. Likewise, and this maybe even more important still, he would without any doubt skip over in his description the secondary sexual characteristics that are even now beginning to be hinted at by her body. He’d skip her ass, which will grow rounder in future, and he wouldn’t even think about the first signs of her breasts, already showing. Also not about what there is between her legs, even though in his fantasies this keeps him very busy, because how can this be, how can a person have an opening that another person can enter?
    And not only will he skip these descriptions. Also the thoughts.
    And this even though he watches her for hours and wonders what she’ll be like when she grows up.
    Will she grow to be tall and skinny like a shoot? Skinny, skinny,