David Grossman - To the End of the Land

When Ofer surfaces in her, she gently moves him away, tells him it’s okay, not to worry, she’s doing what needs to be done. He shouldn’t think about her right now. He should look after himself there, and she’ll look after him here.

A few months after she and Ilan separated, she had gone back for one last time to the empty house. She opened the blinds and the windows in all the rooms, turned on all the faucets, watered the neglected garden, rolled up the rugs, dusted, swept the floor, and washed it thoroughly. She spent almost a whole morning there, without sitting down or drinking a glass of water. When she was finished cleaning, she drew the blinds and closed the windows and turned off the power and walked out.

It should at least be clean, she thought. It’s not the house’s fault we broke up.

Avram’s voice came through: “Ora, are they similar?”

She has almost fallen asleep, and his question shocks her awake. “Who?”

“The boys. Today. Are they similar?”

“To who?”

“No, I mean … to each other. Their personalities.”

She sits up and rubs her eyes. He is sitting up bundled in his sleeping bag.

“Sorry, I woke you up,” he mumbles.

“It’s okay, I was barely asleep. But what’s the sudden …” Her tongue steals a circle of delight around his “boys.” As though he has finally accepted her own vision of them, even her tone of voice when she thinks about them. She watches him affectionately. For a moment it seems possible: Uncle Avram. “Maybe we should make some tea?”

“Do you want some?” He jumps up and runs to gather branches in the dark. She hears him walk into a bush, curse, slip on the wet stones, grow farther away and then closer. She holds in her laughter.

“Yes and no,” she says afterward, with a cup of tea warming her hands and face. “They’re completely different in the way they look, I told you. On the other hand, you couldn’t have any doubt about them being brothers. Although Adam is more—”

“More what?”

She stops. Afraid that now, in her state, in the state of her relationship with Adam, she may get carried away into all sorts of unnecessary and unfair comparisons between Adam and Ofer. How could she—

She sighs deeply, and the dog looks up and comes to sit next to her.

“What?” Avram asks tenderly. “What did you remember?”

“Wait.”

She , whose mother always had compared her to others, even in front of total strangers, and almost always to her detriment. She , who had sworn at a very young age that when she had her own children she would never, ever …

“Ora?” Avram asks carefully. “Listen, we don’t have to …”

“No, it’s okay. Just give me a minute.”

Of course she and Ilan had often compared the boys to each other. How could they not?

“At first, what was difficult in the first few years with Ilan, what I found really intolerable, was the way he looked at the boys. You know how he is, with his exact, objective definitions.”

“Oh yeah, I know that. I know all about Ilan and his onslaughts of rationalism.”

“Yes, that’s exactly it.” She laughs and scratches the dog’s head.

Ilan’s definitions, in which he summarized Adam’s and Ofer’s personalities, their virtues and their shortcomings, seemed to determine their fate for all eternity without any possibility of appeal or even the change and development that come with age. Only years later — she finds that she can talk about this now with Avram; she thinks he understands — only years later had she learned that she could contradict those definitions of his with statements that were no less thoughtful and lucid, with a sober and different perspective that always illuminated the boys in a brighter, more generous light. When she did so, she found how relieved and even happy Ilan was to agree and adopt her position. It sometimes even appeared as though she had redeemed him from something in himself.

“Why is he like that, can you tell me?” she asks Avram. “You knew him so well”—she almost says, You knew him better than I did—“so you tell me, why does he always fight himself? His softness, his gentleness. Why must he always be such a clenched fist?”

Avram shrugs his shoulders. “With me, he wasn’t like that.”

“I know. He really wasn’t.”

They sit quietly as the cicadas around them go berserk. Ora wonders if she is doomed to keep trying to understand Ilan and his illusions for the rest of her life, or whether the day will come when she can simply be herself, with none of his echoes inside her. But the idea offers no relief or gladness, and her yearnings descend in full force.

She thinks back to the way she and Ilan used to talk about the boys. The talking was such an enjoyable part of the labor of family, and they did so much of it. And she often thought it might be thanks to Avram that she and Ilan had been able to talk like that. Had they not met him, had he not tutored them when they were still teenagers, they might have remained far quieter and more shy. So thank you, she tells him silently. Thank you for that, too.

More than anything, they liked to talk about the boys on their evening walks, after the bedtime ritual. Without asking Avram whether he wants her to, she takes him straight there, to the boys’ messy bedroom, roiling with the tumultuous preparations for the difficult, complicated sail into the night, with its shadows and foreignness, and the exile it imposes upon every child in his little, separate bed. After giving them one last hug, another cup of water, pee-pee again, and one more nightlight, and another kiss for the teddy bear or the monkey, and after Adam and Ofer had finished chattering and finally fallen asleep …

At first, when they still lived in Tzur Hadassah, they would walk the path to Ein Yoel. They passed by the plum and peach orchards of Mevo Beitar, and the remnants of quince, walnut, lemon, almond, and olive groves in the Arab villages that had ceased to exist — every so often Ora told herself she had to at least find out their names — and sometimes they walked to the Ma’ayanot River, down in a wadi full of gushing water and little gardens where the villagers of Hussan and Battir planted eggplants, peppers, beans, and zucchini. When the first intifada started and they were afraid to walk in that part, they chose a wooded area near a fork in the road—“in autumn, there are crisscrossing meadows of crocuses and cyclamens; maybe I’ll take you there one day; remind me”—and when they moved to Ein Karem, even before locating the nearest grocery store, they sought out a walking path that was not too capricious but not boring either, not remote but not too popular, a path where a couple could walk and talk calmly and sometimes hold hands or kiss. Over the years they found other paths, less open ones, in wadis and among olive groves, near sheikhs’ tombs and the ruins of houses and ancient watchmen’s huts. They walked these paths whenever they had time, which was sometimes early in the morning, but that was only when the kids were older and more independent, and Ofer could make fancy omelets and sandwiches for school, for both himself and Adam. Even during Ilan’s busiest times, he never gave up their daily walk: “Our walk.”

Avram listens and sees Ora and Ilan. A couple. Ilan’s sideburns might be gray by now, and Ora is almost entirely silver-haired, wearing glasses. Perhaps Ilan has glasses, too. They walk along their hidden path, at the same pace, very close to each other. Every so often her head turns to him. Sometimes their hands find each other and link. They talk in soft voices. Ora laughs. Ilan smiles his three-wrinkled smile. Suddenly Avram misses Ilan. Suddenly he is horrified to realize that he has not seen Ilan for twenty-one years.