David Grossman - To the End of the Land

There’s a hole, she thinks now, and feels cold and chilled. It’s been there for a long time. How could I not have seen it? Ever since Ada there’s an Ora-shaped hole where I used to be.

She coughed and sprang back to life. She must have fallen asleep in the middle of fighting with Avram. What were they fighting about? What was it about him that got to her? Or maybe they’d already made up? In the darkness she guessed at Avram’s sprawled figure on the other end of the bed, leaning on the wall, snoring heavily. Was this his room or hers? And where was Ilan?

He had told her he was going to die. He knew it would happen, knew it had to happen. From the age of zero he’d known he wouldn’t live long, because he didn’t have enough life energy inside him. That’s what he said, and she tried to calm him, to erase his strange words, but he didn’t hear her, maybe didn’t even know she was there. He shamelessly cried over his life, which had been ruined since his parents divorced and his father took him to his army base to live with all the animals there. Everything had been screwed up since then, he wailed, and the illness was just a natural extension of all that shit. He was burning, and half of what he said she couldn’t understand. Fragments of mutterings and whispers. So she just stood very close to him, bathed in his warmth, and carefully stroked his shoulder. Every so often she stroked his back too, and sometimes, with a pounding heart, she quickly slid her hand over his thick hair, and as she did so she realized she didn’t even know what he looked like, and perhaps she even vaguely imagined that he looked a lot like Avram, simply because they had both come into her life together. She kept telling him the things Avram said to her when she was afraid or miserable. Thanks to Avram, that idiot, she knew what to say. Ilan suddenly grasped her hand, squeezed it hard, and glided over her arm from one end to the other. She was taken aback but did not pull her hand away, and he leaned his cheek against her, and his forehead, and held her arm to his chest, and suddenly he kissed her, showering dry, burning little kisses on her arm, her fingers, the palm of her hand, and his head burrowed into her body, and Ora stood speechless, looked into the dark over his head, and thought wondrously: He’s kissing me, he doesn’t even know he’s kissing me. Ilan laughed suddenly to himself, laughed and shivered, and said that sometimes, at night, he snuck out and wrote on the walls of the army base huts: “The Commander’s Son Is a Fag.” His father went crazy when he saw the graffiti and walked around with a bucket of whitewash, and lay in wait to ambush whoever was doing it — but I’m warning you, bro, don’t you ever tell anyone, Ilan giggled and shivered. I’m only telling you this. He talked in a hoarse voice about the fat soldier his father was screwing in his office, and how the whole base could hear her, but even that was better than when my parents were together, he said, at least that nightmare is over. I’ll never get married, he groaned, and his forehead burned against her chest until it hurt, and she pressed him to her and thought he sounded like someone who really hadn’t spoken to anyone for a whole year. He laughed and buried his face in the crook of Ora’s arm and inhaled her scent. I’m crazy about the smell in that music shop on Allenby, he said. It’s the sweet smell of glue — they use it to stick the plastic pads that plug the saxophone holes. He told her that a year ago he found a used Selmer Paris in good condition there. In Tel Aviv I had a band, he said. We used to sit around on Fridays listening to new records all night long, learning about John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, making Tel Aviv jazz.

His body heat trickled into her. She was overcome by a paralyzing awe of the burning boy leaning on her arm. She wouldn’t mind if this went on for a while, even until morning, even a whole day. I want to help him, she thought, I want to, I want to. Her body was prickling with desire, even her feet were burning. She hadn’t felt these kinds of currents for so long, and Ilan found her other hand and placed her palms on his closed eyes, and said he knew how to always be happy.

Happy? Ora choked and pulled her hand back for a second, as if burned. How?

I have a method, he said. I just break myself up into all kinds of areas, and if I feel bad in one part of my soul, I skip to another part. His breath licked at her wrists, and she felt his eyelashes tickle her palms.

I just spread out the risks that way, said Ilan, and he put his head back and gave a dry, tortured laugh. No one can hurt me, I skip, I—

In mid-sentence his head drooped and he was swallowed up, exhausted, in a deep slumber. His fingers loosened and slid down her arms until they dropped on his lap, and his head plunged forward.

Ora stood, struck a match, and lit up Ilan’s face for the first time. With his eyes closed, and within the circle of light, his face was a drop of beauty. She lit another match and he kept mumbling, fighting with someone in his dream, and he shook his head hard, and his face flinched with anger, perhaps because of the blinding light, perhaps because of what he saw in his mind’s eye. His dark, rich eyebrows coiled sternly toward each other, and Ora forgot herself as she stood there and lit up his clear forehead, the shape of his eyes, his gorgeous lips, warm and slightly cracked, which even now still burned on her own.

SHE SWORE HERSELFto silence. Anything she said would be a mistake anyway, it would give Avram further proof of her stupidity and superficiality. If only she had the strength to get herself up from his bed and go back to her room and forget him forever, and the other one .

I got on your nerves, she said.

It doesn’t matter.

But you … why did you run away? Why did you run away on me just when—

I don’t know, I don’t know. I just suddenly—

Avram?

What?

Let’s go back to my room. We’re better there.

Should we leave him here?

Yes, come on, come on …

Careful, otherwise we’ll both fall.

Walk slowly, my head is spinning.

Lean on me.

Can you hear her?

She can go on like that for hours.

I dreamed about her before. Something really frightening, I was terrified of her.

Such sobbing—

Listen, it’s like she’s singing to herself.

Mourning.

Tell me, she said later, when they were in her bed.

What?

Will you write one of your …

My limericks? My tall tales?

Ha-ha. Your stories . Do you think you’ll write about this hospital?

Maybe, I don’t know. I actually had one idea, but it’s already—

About what? Tell me …

Avram sat up with effort and leaned on the wall. He had given up trying to understand her and her reversals, but like a kitten with a ball of yarn, he could not resist a “tell me.”

It’s about a boy lying in a hospital, in the middle of a war, and he goes up onto the rooftop and he has a box of matches—

Like me—

Yes, not exactly. Because this boy, with the matches, in the middle of the blackout he starts signaling enemy planes.

What is he, crazy?

No. He wants them to come and bomb him, personally.

But why?

I don’t know that yet. That’s as far as I’ve thought.

Is he really that miserable?

Yes.

Ora thought Avram had gotten the idea from what Ilan had told him. She didn’t dare ask. Instead she said, It’s a little scary.

Really? Say more.

She thought about it and felt the rusty wheels start to turn in her brain. Avram seemed to sense them too, and waited silently.

She said, I’m thinking about him. He’s on the roof. He lights match after match, right?

Yes, he said, and stretched out.