David Grossman - To the End of the Land

“We have this way of talking, where I almost always know what he’s going to tell me. From the way he breathes before he starts a sentence, I know the direction he’ll take and which words he’ll use. And I’m so happy it’s that way, that we can guess what the other is thinking.”

But apparently Ilan found it annoying, she tells Avram. “It bored him that he could guess my mind by the way I breathed before I spoke or laughed or before I told a joke. Or maybe he just needed a break from me. That’s what he said. I guess I’m hard work.” She shrugs her shoulders. “But I started telling you something else — what was it? I’m so scattered. It’s wrong, and it’s not true either, it’s really not the whole truth, he doesn’t deserve it.”

She and Ilan on the path, in the evening, breaking the day into pieces and then tasting them together, holding them in their mouths, comparing impressions, adding more and more details to the big picture of their life, laughing at this and that, embracing, separating, arguing, consulting each other about work. Ilan didn’t understand much about her business, she tells Avram, and she didn’t expect him to. After all, how exciting can it be to hear about rubbing a sprained ankle or resetting a dislocated shoulder? But she was disappointed that he didn’t get as excited as she did over the little dramas she heard while releasing a bad back or a face whose musculature had gone wrong. She, on the other hand, had become his confidential advisor over the years, his secret jury, his final adjudicator. In his office it was an open joke: “Ora hasn’t confirmed it yet”; “Ilan is waiting for the supreme court decision.” She blushes — it’s a good thing it’s dark — and notes that he really did have complete confidence in her, utterly amazing confidence in her instincts, her intuitions, her wise heart (“Ilan said that,” she adds apologetically), even though she wasn’t really interested in the convoluted legal aspects of intellectual property, confidentiality agreements, non-compete contracts, trademarks for an irrigation system or a generic drug, or the question of when exactly an idea contained that slippery, mysterious thing that Ilan liked to call, with glimmering eyes, the inventional spark . And truth be told, she had never been attracted to the complex process of patent registration in Israel, or in the United States or Europe, nor in all of Ilan’s persuasive tricks that were meant to cause wealthy people to invest in a young doctor from Karmiel who had developed a medical camera that disintegrated in the bloodstream after use, or in a biochemist from Kiryat Gat who had discovered a cheap way to produce diesel from oil. “And Ilan, being Ilan …” She laughs. “That man, I’m telling you, he should have been a chess champion, or a politician, or a Mafia consigliere. You never knew that side of him, it only started developing after you.”

On their path, in the evening, Ora and Ilan easily and generously divvied up the next day’s chores. “We never fought over who would do what, you know? We were such a good team.” They quickly settled household affairs, bills, repairs, shuttling the kids, finances, and a few burning foreign and domestic topics, like finding an old-age home for her mother, or what to do about their lazy, lying, manipulative cleaning lady, whom neither of them had the courage to fire for years — even Ilan was afraid. Only their separation had put an end to her regime.

And more than anything else, they would circle above and around their children, constantly amazed at the two joyous young people sprouting up between them day by day. They quoted to each other things Adam had said and replayed things Ofer had done, and watched in astonishment, and compared them to who they had been years ago, or even weeks ago, amazed at how much they could change in such a short time—“Oh God, they’re growing up so fast!” They delighted in fragments of memories and inconsequential moments that grew between him and her, to be mighty and shining, because only to the two of them were they so precious, the riches of their lives.

“Ofer, too?” Avram asks softly. “Was Ofer also … I mean, for Ilan — Ofer, too?”

She smiles at him, her eyes full of light. Avram can see it even in the dark, and he takes a big sip of his boiling tea, burning his tongue and the roof of his mouth, and he holds the burn in his mouth with strange pleasure.

When she and Ilan walked and talked, they could feel the flowing force of life itself, the glory of life that lifted up their two little boys and carried them to their futures. Time after time they marveled at the strong bond between the boys—“they have some kind of secret; to this day there’s a secret between them”—and without ever saying it out loud, they both sensed that this connection between Adam and Ofer might be the central axis of their home and was probably the strongest and most solid and alive of all the currents — hidden and visible — that held the four of them together.

Avram listens and recites: remember, remember it all. Sometimes Ilan and Ora tilt their heads toward each other as they walk. They lean on each other and dare to guess — cautiously, keenly aware of how fragile things are — what the future will bring for the boys and where their lives will lead them. They wonder if Adam and Ofer will continue to sustain their precious enigmatic couplehood.

She sits alone one evening in Ilan’s study, staring at the legal books on the shelves, unable to do a thing. Adam has had two therapy sessions in the past week with a very experienced elderly female therapist who seems pleasant and tranquil. He said nothing to her either, and he hid the “phenomena” from her, too. But she was not worried. She told Ora and Ilan that these sorts of symptoms were not unusual at Adam’s age, just before physical maturation began, and added that something in Adam’s eyes told her he was a fundamentally strong young man. Just in case, and to reassure them, she referred him to a prominent specialist for neurological tests. He cannot see them for another three weeks, and while Ilan has tried to pull strings and get an earlier appointment, Ora feels that she is losing her mind.

Adam and Ofer are in the kitchen, engaged in a deep conversation about rhinos. She sends her usual maternal sonar waves out to them every few seconds and processes the returns almost unconsciously. Only after several minutes does she vaguely realize that she hasn’t heard this sort of talk between them for a long time. Adam’s tone of voice sounds lighter this evening. He is even helping Ofer with a project for his summer “creativity day camp.” He invents a water rhinoceros with two big fins and a curly rhino and then a pearly rhino—“he’s an unendangered animal,” he dictates to Ofer, “who sits looking at himself in the water for hours. And there’s also a girly rhino.” They both roll around laughing. “But the girly one is invisible,” Adam warns. “Then I’ll just draw his footprint!” Ofer says. He cheers. “Give it to me, I’ll draw it for you.” Their chatter flows on, and Adam heartily goes through all his rituals. Ora can hear the rhythmic breaths, the lip-sucking, the faucet turned on for quick rinses. She sinks back into herself, but perks up when she hears Ofer’s thin voice asking very calmly, “Why do you do that?”

She doesn’t know what Ofer is referring to, but a subterranean wave rolls through the kitchen and all the way to her chair, wraps itself around her, and squeezes.

“What?” Adam asks suspiciously.

“Wash your hands and all that.”

“No reason. I just feel like it.”

“Are you dirty?”

“Yes. No. Stop it, you’re bugging me.”

“But what from?” Ofer asks in that same calm, lucid voice, the balanced and matter-of-fact tone she wishes she could have, especially in these moments.