The History of Love Read Free Page A

in the floor above me he moved in. We often sit together at my kitchen table. The whole afternoon might go by without our saying a word . If we do talk, we never speak in Yiddish. The words of our childhood became strangers to us—we couldn’t use them in the same way and so we chose not to use them at all. Life demanded a new language.
    Bruno, my old faithful. I haven’t sufficiently described him. Is it enough to say he is indescribable? No. Better to try and fail than not to try at all. The soft down of your white hair lightly playing about your scalp like a half-blown dandelion. Many times, Bruno, I have been tempted to blow on your head and make a wish. Only a last scrap of decorum keeps me from it. Or perhaps I should begin with your height, which is very short. On a good day you barely reach my chest. Or shall I start with the eyeglasses you fished out of a box and claimed as your own, enormous round things that magnify your eyes so that your permanent response appears to be a 4.5 on the Richter? They’re women’s glasses, Bruno! I’ve never had the heart to tell you. Many times I’ve tried. And something else. When we were boys you were the greater writer. I had too much pride to tell you then. But. I knew. Believe me when I say, I knew it then as I know it now. It pains me to think how I never told you, and also to think of all you could have been. Forgive me, Bruno. My oldest friend. My best. I haven’t done you justice. You have given me such company at the end of my life. You, especially you, who might have found the words for it all.
    Once, it was a long time ago, I found Bruno lying in the middle of the living room floor next to an empty bottle of pills. He’d had enough. All he wanted was to sleep forever. Taped to his chest was a note with three words: GOODBYE, MY LOVES. I shouted out. NO, BRUNO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! I slapped his face. At last his eyes fluttered open. His gaze was blank and dull. WAKE UP, YOU DUMKOP! I shouted. LISTEN TO ME NOW: YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP! His eyes drifted closed again. I dialed 911. I filled a bowl with cold water and threw it on him. I put my ear to his heart. Far off, a vague rustle. The ambulance came. At the hospital they pumped his stomach. Why did you take all those pills? the doctor asked. Bruno, sick, exhausted, coolly raised his eyes. WHY DO YOU THINK I TOOK ALL THOSE PILLS? he shrieked. The recovery room turned silent; everyone stared. Bruno groaned and turned toward the wall. That night I put him to bed. Bruno, I said. So sorry, he said. So selfish. I sighed and turned to go. Stay with me! he cried.
    We never spoke of it after that. Just as we never spoke of our childhoods, of the dreams we shared and lost, of everything that happened and didn’t happen. Once we were sitting silently together. Suddenly one of us began to laugh. It was contagious. There was no reason for our laughter, but we began to giggle and the next thing we were rocking in our seats and howling, howling with laughter, tears streaming down our cheeks. A wet spot bloomed in my crotch and that made us laugh harder, I was banging the table and fighting for air, I thought: Maybe this is how I’ll go, in a fit of laughter, what could be better, laughing and crying, laughing and singing, laughing so as to forget that I am alone, that it is the end of my life, that death is waiting outside the door for me.
    When I was a boy I liked to write. It was the only thing I wanted to do with my life. I invented imaginary people and filled notebooks with their stories. I wrote about a boy who grew up and got so hairy people hunted him for his fur. He had to hide in the trees, and he fell in love with a bird who thought she was a three-hundred-pound gorilla. I wrote about Siamese twins, one of which was in love with me. I thought the sex scenes were purely original. And yet. When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world,