David Grossman - To the End of the Land

Ofer laughed. “And then we’d have had to occupy Tanzania.”

“And Kenya and Zambia!”

“Of course, just to protect ourselves from their hatred.”

“And teach them to love Israel and give them a little Yiddishkeit with chicken soup!” Adam rolled around laughing.

“Not to mention gefilte fish,” Ilan snickered, and the boys jumped up and cheered: “Bingo!”

The main courses arrived. Ora remembers every dish. Adam had steak tenderloin, Ilan ordered the goose leg, and Ofer got steak tartare. She remembers her gaze being drawn to Ofer’s raw meat; she missed the vegetarian Ofer. In the weeks and months that followed, during the sleepless nights and nightmarish days when she replayed the events of that evening, minute by minute, she often wondered what really went through Ofer’s mind when he ate the steak, or during that game of bingo, and whether he honestly did not remember anything — after all, they had talked about occupation and hatred and had even mentioned locking up people and releasing them, and there was even something about silencing. How could it be that not a single alarm bell had sounded in him? How had he not picked up even the vaguest association between all of that and, say, an old man with his mouth gagged, trapped in a meat locker in the cellar of a house in Hebron?

“He was just really tired,” she states apropos of nothing. “His eyes were half closed and he could barely hold his head up. He hadn’t slept for two whole days, and he’d had three beers, too. But somehow the game and the joking around kept him up.”

There was a moment, she thinks, when it seemed as if he remembered. He suddenly asked for Adam’s phone and wanted to call the army. She can see it: he held the phone in his hand. His eyebrows moved. His forehead was strained. He was trying to gather something in through the tiredness. But then he saw the screen and got excited about some new function he’d never seen before, and Adam demonstrated it for him.

“Ofer, you didn’t finish toasting Adam,” Ora said.

“You’re off the hook,” said Adam and started to devour his steak.

“No fair!” Ora pleaded. “He hasn’t said anything yet!”

“Only if he wants to,” Adam said. “And no violins!”

Ofer turned serious again. His face softened and hardened intermittently. His chiseled, generous lips, Avram’s lips, moved unconsciously. He put down his fork. Ora noticed the exchange of amused glances between Adam and Ilan: Watch out, their eyes said, get your handkerchiefs ready.

Then Ofer spoke. “The truth is, I don’t even know how I would get along in life without your help, and without the way you took care of me in all kinds of bad situations that Mom and Dad don’t even know about.”

That was surprising. Ora perked up, and so did Ilan. “Because we only knew the opposite situation, where Ofer took care of Adam. And he suddenly opened up a whole world we’d never known, but which I’d always somehow hoped did exist, you know? Do you understand?”

Avram nods vigorously. His lower lip surrounds his whole mouth.

“And I saw Adam lower his gaze, and he got this kind of flush on his neck, and I knew that it was true.”

“And I think,” Ofer continued, “that there’s no one else in the world who knows me like you do, knows all my most private stuff, and who always, from the minute I was born, did only good things for me.”

Adam did not comment or crack a joke. Ora felt that he really wanted her and Ilan to hear these things.

“And there’s no one in the world I trust like you, and value and love like you. No one.”

Ora and Ilan bowed their heads so the boys wouldn’t see their eyes.

“Even though I always used to get mad at you, especially when you got preachy, or made fun of my taste in music.”

“Guns N’ Roses is not music,” Adam put in, “and Axl Rose is not a singer.”

“But I didn’t know that back then, and I was so mad at you for ruining my enjoyment of them, and in the end I realized you were right. See, you improved me in every way. And you protected me from all kinds of crap, and even though you weren’t exactly a bruiser, and I couldn’t threaten the kids who hit me and tell them my brother would come and beat the crap out of them, I still felt that you always had my back, and you wouldn’t let anyone do anything to me.” Then he blushed, as though only now comprehending the candor he’d permitted himself.

There was a long silence. Everyone’s heads were bowed. They had touched on the root of the matter. Ora held her breath and prayed that Ilan wouldn’t try to make them laugh. That none of them would give in to their stand-up-comic reflex.

“Lechayim,” Ilan said softly. “Here’s to our family.” There were tears in his eyes, and he looked at her gratefully and held his glass up to her.

“Lechayim,” Adam and Ofer repeated, and to her surprise they also looked straight at her and raised their glasses. “To our family,” Ofer added quietly, and his eyes met hers on a new frequency, and for one brief moment she thought — he knows.

“After that he seemed a bit stiff, stunned by his own speech, and then he leaned his head on his hands again, like this, and Adam turned to him and hugged him. He really hugged him, with both arms”—Avram sees, he sees them—“and small as Adam is compared to him, he still enveloped him, and Ofer’s head leaned in, like this.”

She remembers his handsome, shapely head. Back then he wasn’t shaving it yet, and it was very fair after his haircut. For a minute it looked like Adam was smelling Ofer’s hair, the way he used to do when Ofer was a baby and he’d just had it washed.

Her head unconsciously reconstructs the gesture and nestles into her own shoulder.

“Ilan and I watched them, and I had a feeling, maybe Ilan did too, I never asked him—”

“What feeling?”

“When they hugged, I suddenly knew, body and soul, that even when Ilan and I were gone they would stay together, they wouldn’t grow apart, they wouldn’t be cut off, they wouldn’t be alienated, and they’d help each other out if there was a need. They would be family , you see?”

Avram’s mouth stretches out in a tortured grimace.

“What’s going to happen, Avram?” She looks up at him with tear-filled eyes. “What will happen if he—”

Avram almost shouts: “Tell me, tell me about him!”

On the drive home from the restaurant, everyone was full and soft and pliable. The boys sang a silly Monty Python song about a sexed-up lumberjack who likes to wear women’s clothing, and Ora noted the heartwarming deviation from their usual puritanism, as though they were confirming that they now viewed their parents as grown-ups. In the backseat they slapped their knees, stomachs, and chests while they sang — Ofer’s broad chest produced a dense, drum-like echo that excited her — and then they discussed which pub to go to. Ora and Ilan were amazed that they still had the energy to go out drinking so late, when Ofer had barely been able to keep his eyes open. Ilan asked only that they not go together into the same place and reminded them that a month ago a terrorist strapped with explosives had been caught trying to enter a Jerusalem bar. The boys put their hands to their hearts and promised gravely that they would split up: Ofer would go to the “Shahid Hope” pub, and Adam to the “Hezbollah Martyrs” nightclub. “Then we’ll meet up in “Seventy Virgins” square and hang around downtown for a while, mostly in crowded places, and we’ll get right up close to people with Middle Eastern features and piercing looks.”

The next day, at eight a.m., Adam and Ofer were still asleep — they’d probably come home around dawn — and she and Ilan sat in the kitchen, still basking in the ambience of the night before, getting ready for their morning walk. Before leaving, they made a big salad for the boys, and jachnun and hard-boiled eggs and crushed tomatoes, to be ready when they got up. They peeled and chopped and spoke in quiet voices about the dinner, the things Ofer had said to Adam, and the rare hug. Suddenly there was a cautious knock on the door, and then a firm, foreign-sounding ring.