David Grossman - To the End of the Land

Every day brought new symptoms. He quickly pulled his arms away from his shoulders and to the sides before talking. He pulsed his fists open and closed before he said “me.” The washing and rinsing became more and more frequent. In the course of a single meal he was capable of getting up to wash his hands and mouth five or ten times.

After a Shabbat spent at home, during which Ilan saw Adam for a whole day, including three meals, he told Ora, “Let’s call someone.”

As predicted, Adam refused even to hear about it. He hurled himself on the floor and screamed that he wasn’t crazy and they should leave him alone. When they tried to persuade him, he locked himself in his room and pounded on the door for a long time.

“We’ll wait a bit,” said Ilan, as they both tossed and turned in bed. “Let him get used to the idea.”

“How long? How long can you wait with this?”

“Let’s say, a week?”

“No, that’s too long. A day. Maybe two, but no more.”

There was something paralyzing about watching Adam in the days that followed. Her child was turning into a process. During the hours she spent at home with him — when she could not find an excuse to go out for some fresh air, to absorb the smooth, harmonious movements of other people like an elixir, and to suck up some bitter jealousy at the sight of Adam’s peers having fun on their summer vacations — in those hours with him she witnessed his entire existence being chopped up into separate parts, whose connection was growing more and more tenuous. At times it seemed that the gestures — the “phenomena,” as she and Ilan called them — were themselves the tendons and nerves that now sustained the affinity between the parts of the child he used to be.

“It all happened so close,” she says, whether to Avram or to herself. “It happened inside our home. You could reach out and touch it, but there was nothing to hold on to. Your hand closed in on emptiness.”

“Aha,” says Avram faintly.

“Tell me if you don’t feel like hearing this.”

He gives her another look that says, Stop talking nonsense.

She shrugs as if to say, How am I supposed to know? I’ve spent so many years getting used to being silent with you.

They set up their little camp at the spring of Ein Yakim in the Amud River wadi, next to a Mandate-era pumping station. Ora spreads the cloth on the ground and lays out food and dinnerware. Avram gathers wood, makes a circle of stones, and builds a fire. The dog crosses the skinny river back and forth, shaking her wet fur off in thousands of sprays, and looks at them playfully. Before sitting down to eat, they wash socks, underwear, and shirts in the spring water and lay them on bushes to dry when the sun rises. Avram digs through his backpack and finds a large, white Indian shirt and fresh sharwal pants. He changes his clothes behind a shrub.

The next day, when she was alone at home with Adam, he told her about something in his favorite computer game, and he seemed happy and full of excitement. She tried to focus on what he was saying and share his happiness, but it was hard: now he marked the ends of his sentences with exhalations, too. And after certain letters — she thought it was the sibilant consonants, but this rule may have had exceptions that demanded their own penalties — he sucked in his cheeks. Sentences that ended with question marks incurred a new tic: he folded back his upper lip toward his nose.

She stood in the kitchen with him and fought a malicious urge to stick her lips out at him in a crude imitation. So at least he’d know how he looked. So he’d understand what people saw when they looked at him, and how hard it was to tolerate. She managed to stop herself only when she realized that was exactly what her mother had done to her after Ada. She’d had her own little physical quirks, though far less severe than these.

But when she saw Adam’s piercing, knowing look, she had a sudden impulse to wrap her arms around him. It had been weeks since she’d hugged him. He wouldn’t let anyone touch him, and she’d stopped trying, averse to touching his alien body. Perhaps she had the vague feeling that her touch would not find warm skin but a hardened shell. Now she kissed his cheek and forehead. She’d been so foolish to avoid it, to collaborate with his aversion, when perhaps all he needed was a simple, strong hug. And indeed, in one large wave, he suddenly emerged from captivity, leaned his whole body into her, and put his little head on her chest. She responded fervently and felt her own power again, her vivacity. How could she have agreed to give up on all that? How had she even considered letting her child be treated by a stranger before she herself had given him this simple, natural thing? She swore that from this moment on she would give him everything she had, empty her healing powers into him, her vast experience of treating bodies and giving calming massages. How had she withheld all this from him?

She shut her eyes and gritted her teeth above his head so as not to falter on the trip wire of tears gathering inside her and remembered what Ilan had once explained: he always hugged the boys a little less than he wanted to, because that was always a little more than they needed. Oh well, Ilan and his calculations. She kissed Adam’s forehead again, and he looked up at her with a sweet can-I-have-a-special face, which made her incredibly happy. The “special” was an old childhood tradition between her and the boys. It had been years since either of them had agreed to it, but now Adam puckered his lips, and she laughed with embarrassed delight — after all, he was almost thirteen, with the dark shadow of a moustache. But he seemed to need it so much that nothing embarrassed him, and he kissed her warmly, first on her right cheek, then on her left, and on the tip of her nose, and on her forehead, and Ora rejoiced: she would show him the way home with kisses. He smiled and lowered his gaze, indicated that he wanted another round, and kissed her on her right cheek again, then her left, then the tip of her nose and her forehead. Ora said, “Now my turn,” and Adam grunted, “Just one more time.” He tightened his hands around her face and the back of her neck stiffened. He showered sharp pecks on her right cheek and left cheek, the tip of her nose and her forehead. She struggled to pull her face away and he grasped her with sharp fingers until she shouted: “Stop it, what’s the matter with you?” He grimaced, at first with a lack of comprehension, then with deep insult, and they faced each other for a moment, standing between the kitchen table and the sink, and Adam quickly touched the corners of his mouth and the spot between his eyes, then blew on his hands, first right then left, and his eyes kept filling with murky, thick liquid, and then he walked backward away from her, monitoring her suspiciously, as if fearing she would pounce on him, and she remembered: this was exactly the look Ofer had given her when he found out that she ate meat. That same flash of recognition — the possibility of rapaciousness — which had passed between them then, which had flickered across his cerebral cortex like an ancient drawing. How could she explain this to Avram? This moment between a mother and her child. Yet she does explain it, right down to the last detail, so he’ll know, so he’ll hurt, so he’ll live, so he’ll remember. Adam’s eyes widened and almost filled his entire face, and he kept backing away from her, still watching, and before leaving the kitchen he gave her one last sober, awful look, and she thought he was wordlessly saying, You had the chance to save me, and now I’m leaving.

Finally, after pressure and threats — taking away his computer privileges was the most effective method — they overcame Adam’s resistance and took him to see a psychologist.