Motti
Authors: Asaf Schurr
DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS'S
HEBREW LITERATURE SERIES
Dolly City
Orly Castel-Bloom
Heatwave and Crazy Birds
Gabriela Avigur-Rotem
Homesick
Eshkol Nevo
Life on Sandpaper
Yoram Kaniuk
a novel by
TRANSLATED AND WITH AN
AFTERWORD BY TODD HASAK-LOWY
Series Editor: Rachel S. Harris
DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS
CHAMPAIGN AND LONDON
Originally published in Hebrew as
Motti
by Babel, Tel Aviv, 2008
Copyright © 2008 by Asaf Schurr
English translation © by the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature
Published by arrangement with the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shur, Asaf.
[Moti. English]
Motti: a novel / by Asaf Schurr; translated and with an afterword by Todd Hasak-Lowy.--1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-56478-655-5
I. Hasak-Lowy, Todd, 1969-II. Title.
PJ5055.41.U733M6813 2011
892.4'37--dc22
2011002839
Partially funded by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency
The Hebrew Literature Series is published in collaboration with the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and sponsored by the Office of Cultural Affairs, Consulate General of Israel in New York
To good Cookie
As you embark on a new path
Structurally, this book is strict. Strict and very simple. A symmetrical pyramid with a summit of clouds and a base of Euclidian geometry. Nevertheless, it's a book, not a concert or some sort of performing art, I don't get the chance to sit in the theater and offer suggestions during rehearsals. And there's no division between the audience and the stage. You're the performers and the audience all at once, and everything is already out of my control. Therefore I can only request that you read attentively, or at least not with complete indifference. Even with joy, perhaps, those paragraphs worthy of it. From my perspective it's all the same now. At any rate, I do not know and will never know most of you, and if you die (even in the middle of a chapter) I'll never know a thing about it.
Yes, that's how it is. In our own eyes we're very important, but for almost everyone else our death won't even warrant a few lines in the local paper. Think of all the people you pass on the street every week. Some of them have already died, and you didn't even notice. And we will too, some day, and our absence won't be felt by those who remain, walking the streets in the evening, out with the dog, or on the way to the trash with a big bag of garbage.
And because of this the simplicity. Because of this. There are almost no games here, no deception, there is no deviousness at all in this book. No manipulation. Everything is simple as can be. Everything is on the table. The cards are on the table, the tablecloth is on the table, everything is on the table, open the refrigerator, there's nothing in it, everything is on the table, everything, look underneath, nothing there either, everything is on the table and in midair the table stands.
OUTSIDE
Sure, I hate to paint. First of all it's work, second it's smelly, third it's a mess, fourth it takes up space. Don't like to paint. I paint only when I have to.
âRafi Lavi in an interview with Dana Gillerman,
Haaretz
All propositions are results of truth-operations on the elementary propositions.
The truth-operation is the way in which a truth-function arises from elementary propositions.
According to the nature of truth-operations, in the same way as out of elementary propositions arise their truth-functions, from truth-functions arises a new one. Every truth-operation creates from truth-functions of elementary propositions another truth-function of elementary propositions, i.e. a proposition. The result of every truth-operation on the results of truth-operations on elementary propositions is also the result of one truth-operation on elementary propositions.
Every proposition is the result of truth-operations on elementary propositions.
âLudwig Wittgenstein,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Motti loved Menachem like a brother. That is, despite himself. Perhaps they met in the army. This is not uncommon among Israelis.
Perhaps they met before that, in school. Possibly even in college. Yet from the very beginning, the balance of power was clear. Menachem always had the upper hand, even when this hand was patting his friend's shoulder.
This is how it is: Like a smack across a dog's snout, the first meeting of two people can determine the structure, the shared soul, of their relationship. It carves a pattern in them, cuts a path like water through a stone (it scars, in other words). And once a balance of power is set, no lever, no matter how strong, will ever shift it. Even among wolf packs the hierarchy is more fluid than among humans, who, steeped in our habits and laws, never budge from a pattern, once established. And if Motti and Menachem really did meet in the army, it's obvious which one of them was the commanding officer. Obvious, because despite the many years that have passed since then, this rule was scorched into Motti and hasn't faded. Sure, part of him understands that the Menachem he knew back thenâalways screaming and always punishing and all powerful; it was safer to stick close to him at all times, since otherwise he could pop up suddenly and give an order, could punish you for anythingâthat this Menachem was wearing a mask, and that the real Menachem is the one he knows now, his good friend Menachem. Yet even though he knows this, Motti has still never truly convinced himself, over the course of all the years since (they've spent a hundred hours together as friends for each difficult hour they had back then), that then it was only a mask, while this is now Menachem's true face. At any moment, he fears, Menachem's face is liable to fall away from him like so many dirty clothes, revealing the old, remembered features below. At any moment he could start abusing Motti like he used to, and Motti would obey.
Motti's willingness to obey, along with his courtesy, provided him a wonderful buffer, the way electric fences leave an uncontaminated area all around. Breathing room. No one can enter here, he told himself, worried he needed this space, afraid that others would hurt him. Never admitting to himself the real reason for keeping this distance: that he ascribed so much importance to himself that he felt the slightest act on his part might cause someone else grievous injury.
What are you doing tonight? Menachem asked over the telephone. I was thinking about leaving Edna at home with the little ones and going out for a drink. Are you with me? Pick you up at your place at eight thirty?
Sure, Motti said to him. Eight thirty.
Ya'alla
, Menachem said. Eight thirty. I'm fucking crazy about you.
I love you, too, my brother, Motti said.
Hey, man, are you turning fag on me or what?
Nah, Motti said, I was just talking. I didn't mean it. I just wanted to see how it rolled off the tongue.
And that's the problem: even though all true expressions are a matter of rolling, not all true problems are a matter of expressionâand yet, many problems stem precisely from this, that is, from the desire to see how they roll. Because from the moment it becomes possible to say a thing, even something untrue, it becomes necessary to say it, to let it roll, and so it takes on motion and expands, and let's see you try to stop it then (impossible). And the moment it's spoken and comes into being, it's a beautiful and common mistake to think that maybe it's true. But we can say all sorts of things, wonderful things. It doesn't mean a thing. But the temptationâoh, the temptationâto say them (and the need to believe them)!