David Grossman - To the End of the Land

Sometimes, when no one was looking, she would touch a wall as she walked by, in the rooms or in the hallway, slowly sliding her fingers over it. Sometimes she would sit and read, as he had, at the top of the steps to the yard, or on the windowsill facing the wadi. There were the window handles, which she would linger on every time she opened them, as if in a secret handshake. There were the bath and the toilet, the cracked ceilings, the cabinets with their dense smell. There were the sunken tiles and the ones that stuck out. There were the rays of sun that came from the east in the morning, and she would stand and bathe in them for long moments, sometimes with little Ofer in her arms, quietly watching her. There was the evening breeze, which came from the wadi, which she would sway in, letting it float over her skin and breathing it deep inside.

“Surprisingly, Ofer had a girlfriend before Adam did.” Ora hopes this information will make Avram happy. But he darkens a little and asks what she means by “surprisingly.” She explains: “After all, he’s younger. But I guess Adam needed Ofer to pave the way in that realm, too. Even when they were grown up, they were both at home with us all the time until Adam’s military service, until the army separated them, and then everything changed. Suddenly Adam had friends, lots of friends, and so did Ofer, and then Ofer found Talia. All at once they both opened up and went out into the world — so the army did them some good after all. But until Adam turned eighteen, until his enlistment, most of the time it was just him and Ofer. I mean, him and Ofer and us, the four of us together”—she mimes stuffing something tightly into a suitcase or backpack. “Even though they always had lots of things going on, school, and Adam’s band, we still felt, Ilan and I, that they were mostly directed inward, to the house, and even more, to their own relationship. I told you, they had this secret.” Her hands grip the backpack straps and her head tilts slightly. She hardly sees what is in front of her: cliffs, raspberry hedges, blinding sunlight. It suddenly occurs to her that within the longer, cumbersome secret, Ofer and Adam had made their own little secret, a kind of igloo in the ice.

“It was fun, that togetherness. They were always with us, they went everywhere with us—‘like bodyguards,’ Ilan used to joke, or maybe complain — and we went on trips together, and sometimes to movies, and they even came with us to our friends’ sometimes, which is really hard to believe.” She gives a meager laugh. “They would come with us and sit on the side and talk as if they hadn’t seen each other in a year. It was wonderful, I’m telling you, it was such a rare thing. But still, Ilan and I always have — always had —the feeling that it was a bit, how can I put it—”

For an instant, in the wandering beam of her gaze, Avram sees the four of them moving through the rooms of the familiar house. Four bright, elongated human spots, with a dim light around their edges, like figures seen through night goggles, foggy shadows surrounded by a greenish, downy halo, stuck to one another, moving clumsily together. And when they briefly come apart, they each leave in the other strands of sticky, glowing fibers. To his surprise, he senses a constant effort emanating from them. There is tension and caution. He is even more astounded to discover that there is no ease or pleasure in the four of them. They do not evince the joy of living together, which he had always pictured when he thought of them, when he had given in to thoughts of them, when he had drizzled into his veins, drop by drop, the poison of thinking about them.

“And when Ofer had a girlfriend,” he asks hesitantly, “wasn’t Adam jealous?”

“At first it wasn’t easy. Yes, Adam had a hard time with Ofer finding a new soul mate, and with the fact that he had no part in this very close connection they shared. Just think — it was the first time that had happened since Ofer was born. But they were a nice couple, Ofer and Talia. There was a tenderness between them.” She finds it hard to talk. “Later, later.”

She picks up after a while. “When Talia left Ofer, he crawled into his bed and barely left for a week. He stopped eating, completely lost his appetite. He just drank, mostly beer, and friends came to see him. All of a sudden we saw how many friends he had, and even though it wasn’t planned, they basically began to sit shiva in our house.”

“Shiva?!”

“Because they sat around his bed and consoled him, and when they left others came, and the door was open all week long, morning, noon, and night, and he kept asking his friends to tell him about Talia, to tell him everything they remembered about her, in great detail. And by the way, he wouldn’t let them say anything bad about her, only good things. He’s such a kind soul.” She giggles. “I haven’t even told you anything about him, you haven’t begun to know him …” Suddenly she is flooded with nostalgia. Simple, hungry, incautious longing. She hasn’t seen him for a long time, or talked to him. This may be the longest she has gone without speaking to him since he was born. “And the guys played him songs Talia liked, and watched one of her favorite movies, My Dinner with André , in an endless loop. And they gobbled down bags and bags of Bamba and Tuv Taam, which she was addicted to. And this went on for a whole week. And of course I had to feed and water the whole tribe. You wouldn’t believe the quantities of beer those guys could down in one evening. Well, you probably could, because of the pub.”

Maybe, she thinks, Ofer or Adam, or even both of them together, on one of their pub crawls in Tel Aviv one evening, when they were on leave from the army, had turned up at his pub. Could he have somehow recognized them? Known without knowing?

“Ora?”

“Yes.” She smiles to herself. “Look, I guess it turned into this thing around town”—like everything Ofer touched, she intimates—“and people started turning up who didn’t really know Ofer but had heard that something was going on, this kind of love shiva. They came and sat there telling stories about their own soured loves, and about affairs that had ended, and all sorts of heartbreaks they’d experienced.”

An afternoon ray of sun smooths her forehead, and Ora distractedly turns her cheek to pamper herself in the warmth. Her face is young and lovely now, as though nothing bad has ever happened to her. She can get up now and go out into life, whole and innocent and pure.

“And by the way, that’s how Adam met Libby, who became his girlfriend. She’s like an overgrown puppy, a homeless puppy, a bear cub, although she’s a head taller than he is. During the first days of the shiva she just sat in a corner and cried nonstop, and then she pulled herself together and started to help me with the food and the drinks and the dishes, emptying ashtrays and taking out empty bottles. But she was so exhausted from something that she would fall asleep in any available bed around the house. Just collapse into a slumber. And somehow, without us noticing, in our sleep, she came into our lives, and now they’re together, she and Adam. I think they’re happy, because even though Libby is a puppy, she’s also very maternal toward him.” A tinge of sorrow trails behind Ora’s voice. “I think he’s really happy with her. At least I hope so.”

She surrenders to a deep, pent-up sigh, a sigh of total bankruptcy. “Look, I wasn’t exaggerating when I told you a few days ago that I know nothing about his life now.”

The dog stops and comes up to Ora when she hears her sigh. Ora leans down to the damp, sharp snout nuzzling between her thighs. She speaks to Avram over the dog’s head. “Sometimes, when I say a certain word, or if I say something in a slightly different tune—”