David Grossman - To the End of the Land

Avram studies the pages and his face wrinkles. “Are you sure? Because it looks like—”

She holds the page close to her face. It looks like her handwriting, or a masculine version of it: straight, neat characters, all at the same angle. “It really does look like mine,” she mumbles awkwardly, feeling naked. “Even I was confused.”

She turns the pages back, looking for the place where the writers switched. Twice, then three times, she flips past the right point before recognizing her final lines: Aren’t we like a little underground cell in the heart of the ‘situation’? And that really is what we were. For twenty years. Twenty good years. Until we got trapped . Immediately after those words — even without turning the page: such chutzpah! Even without a separating line! — she reads: Next to Dishon River I meet Gilead, 34, an electrician and djembe drummer, who used to be from a moshav in the north. Now lives in Haifa. What does he miss: “Dad was a farmer (pecans), and in slow years he did all kinds of jobs. There was a time when he gathered construction planks from dumps and sold them to an Arab in the village nearby.”

“What is this?” She thrusts the notebook at Avram’s chest. “What is this supposed to be?” She pulls it back and reads with a choked-up voice:

“Wood, you see — you have to know how to treat it. You can’t just throw it in the basement. You have to carefully stack big ones on big ones, and small ones on small ones, and put bricks on top of it all, otherwise it warps. But first of all you have to take out the nails. So I would stand with Dad at night in the sheltered area where he kept the wood—

“What on earth is this? What is all this stuff?” She raises her eyebrows at Avram, but his eyes are closed, and he signals: Keep reading.

“Dad had a blue undershirt, with holes here. And we had a crowbar that we connected to an extension handle, and we would take an iron chisel and separate, say, two planks nailed together. Dad on this end, me on that end, bracing, and after we separated them, we’d work together on the plank, pulling out nails with the other end of the hammer. It went on for hours, with a little bulb hanging above from a string, and that’s something I still miss to this day, the way I worked with him like that, together .

“There’s more. Listen, that’s not all. There’s more.

“Now about the regret. Well, that’s a harder one. I regret lots of things (laughs). I mean, do people just come out and tell you? Look, at some point I had a ticket to Australia, to work on a cotton farm. I had a visa and everything, and then I met a girl here and I canceled my trip. But she was worth it, so it’s just a partial regret.”

Ora frantically turns the page and her eyes run over the lines. She reads silently: Tamar, my darling, someone lost a notebook with her life story. I’m almost positive I met her earlier, when I walked down to the river. She looked like she was in a bad state. In danger even (she wasn’t alone). Ever since I saw her, I’ve been asking you what to do but you haven’t answered. I’m not used to not getting answers from you, Tammi. It’s all a little confusing. But I am asking the questions you posed at the end: What do we miss most? What do we regret?

Ora slaps the notebook shut. “What is he? Who is this?”

Avram’s face is gloomy and distant.

“Maybe a journalist, interviewing people along his way? But he doesn’t look like one at all.” A doctor, she remembers. He said he was a pediatrician.

She glances at the pages again: Near Moshav Alma I meet Edna, 39, divorced, a kindergarten teacher, Haifa: “What I miss most is my childhood days in Zichron Yaakov. Originally I’m a Zamarin, that was my maiden name, and I miss the days of innocence, the simplicity we had then. Everything was less complicated. Less, kind of, ‘psychological.’ You wouldn’t believe it to look at me, but I have three grown sons (laughs). It doesn’t show, does it? I married early and divorced even earlier…”

Ora is sucked in. She turns the pages rapidly and sees, on every page, longings and regrets. “I don’t understand,” she murmurs, feeling deceived. “He looked like such a”—she searches for the right word—“solid man? Simple? Private? Not a man who … who would just walk around asking people these kinds of questions.”

Avram says nothing. He digs the tip of his shoe into the gravel.

“And why in my notebook?” Ora asks loudly. “Aren’t there any other notebooks?”

She spins around and starts to walk away, head held high, pressing the notebook close to her. Avram shrugs his shoulders, looks back for a moment — there’s no one there, the guy must still be asleep — and follows her. He does not see the thin smile of surprise on her lips.

“Ora—”

“What?”

“Didn’t Ofer want to go on a big trip somewhere, after the army?”

“Let him finish the army first,” she says curtly.

“Actually, he did talk about that,” she picks up later. “Maybe to India.”

“India?” Avram bites back a smile and buries an unruly thought: He should come see me at the restaurant. I can tell him all about India.

“He hasn’t decided yet. They were thinking of traveling together, he and Adam.”

“The two of them? Are they really that—”

“Close. Those two are each other’s best friend.” A seedling of pride grows inside her: At least in that realm she’d been successful. Her two sons were soul mates.

“And is that — is that normal?”

“What?”

“For two brothers, at that age …”

“They were always like that. Almost from the beginning.”

“But didn’t you say that … Weren’t you telling me that Ilan and Ofer—”

“That changed, too. Things kept changing in that period. I just don’t know how I’m going to have time to tell you everything.”

It’s a bit like describing how a river flows, she realizes. Like painting a whirlwind, or flames. It’s an occurrence , she thinks, happily recalling one of his old words: A family is a perpetual occurrence.

And she shows him: Adam at six and a bit, Ofer almost three. Adam lies on the lawn at the house in Tzur Hadassah. His arms are spread-eagled and his eyes are closed. He is dead. Ofer goes in and out of the screen door, and the slamming wakes Ora from a rare afternoon nap. She looks out the window and sees Ofer bringing presents to Adam, sacrificial offerings to bring him back to life. He takes out his stuffed animals, toy cars, a kaleidoscope, board games, and marbles. He piles his favorite books and a few choice videotapes around Adam. He is serious and worried, almost frightened. Again and again he toddles up the four concrete steps into the house and back to Adam to place precious objects around him. Adam does not move. Only when Ofer is inside the house does he raise his head a little and open one eye to examine the latest offering. She hears heavy panting. Ofer pulls out his favorite blanket and places it tenderly on Adam’s legs. Then he looks at Adam pleadingly and says something she cannot hear. Adam lies motionless. Ofer makes fists, looks around, and runs back into the house again. Adam wriggles his toes under Ofer’s blanket. How cruel he can be, she thinks. Yet his cruelty is so hypnotic that she cannot put an end to Ofer’s torture. Outside her closed door she hears sounds of effort and struggle. Something heavy is being dragged. Chairs are pushed aside, and Ofer breathes rhythmically, grunting a little. A moment later his mattress appears at the top of the stairs, towering over his head. Ofer feels for the top step with his foot. Ora freezes, careful not to laugh so as not to frighten him and make him fall. Adam opens a slit in one eye and an admixture of amazement and awe emerges on his face as he watches his little brother carrying almost his own body’s weight on his head. Ofer walks down the steps, rocking back and forth under the clumsy mattress. He groans, pants, and propels himself forward with trembling legs. He reaches Adam and collapses beside him on the mattress. Adam props himself up on his elbows and looks at Ofer with deep, grateful, open eyes.