David Grossman - To the End of the Land

Ilan and Ora glanced at each other. It made no sense, but still, that kind of ring, at that time on a Saturday morning, could only mean one thing. Ora put her knife down and looked at Ilan, and his eyes grew wide. A lightning flash of insane, almost inhuman terror clotted between them. Everything slowed down until it finally froze. Even the definite knowledge that Adam and Ofer were at home iced over — because in fact, maybe they weren’t. “We hadn’t seen them for a whole night, and one night is a long time in Israel. Maybe something had happened, maybe they’d been called back to the army urgently. We hadn’t even heard the news, how could we not have turned on the news?”

Ora’s eyes sought out the car keys that Adam had taken the night before. She thought she could see them hanging on the hook, but maybe it was a different bunch. Another impatient ring. “They’re at home, they’re both at home now,” Ora insisted adamantly, “they’re asleep, there’s no way this has anything to do with them.” Maybe they’d left the lights on in the car and a neighbor had come to let them know. Maybe someone had broken into the car — she could accept that, she would welcome it. Another sharp knock, and neither of them moved, as though hoping to hide their existence here.

Everything suddenly had the strange quality of a dress rehearsal, as though they were practicing for something that had always been lurking, but they still could not play their parts. Ilan leaned one hand on the countertop. She saw how old he’d grown in recent years, since the boys’ army service. His face was drawn, almost defeated, and she could read his thoughts: the sweet illusion in which they’d existed had been shattered. Their private underground cell had been breached. For twenty years they’d walked on air above an abyss, always knowing it was there below, and now they were falling, and they would fall forever, and life was over. Their previous lives were over.

She wanted to go to him so he could hold her, gather her in, as he always did, but she couldn’t move. Another jarring ring came, and for a moment Ora experienced a peculiar sensation, the merging of two utterly different dimensions of reality: in the one, Adam and Ofer were sleeping soundly in their beds, and in the other the army had come to notify her about one of them. The two dimensions were concrete yet somehow did not contradict each other. She heard Ilan murmur, “Open the door, why aren’t you opening the door?” Ora said in a foreign voice, “But they’re both home, right?” He shrugged his shoulders with submissive misery, as if to say, And even if they’re at home now, how long will we be able to protect them? And then Ora thought: But which one of them? Her fog was pierced with the memory of the lots. Take a hat, take two pieces of paper…

Ora opened the door and found, to her horror, a pair of awkward-looking men in uniform. They were two very young MPs, and her gaze skipped beyond them to look for the doctor who always comes with the notification team, but it was just the two of them. One had very long eyelashes, crowded like a soft brush. The fact that she noticed such trivial details was completely un-survivor-like; in this country you need sharper instincts. The other, whose face was still pocked with acne, held a printed document signed with a large stamp. He asked if Ofer was home.

In the notebook they swiped back from the man at the Kedesh River, there are still some blank pages and lines, and Ora covers one of them with tiny handwriting:

Thousands of moments and hours and days, millions of deeds, countless actions and attempts and mistakes and words and thoughts, all to make one person in the world .

She reads it to Avram.

“He’ll be fine, you’ll see. We’re making it so he’ll be fine.”

“You really think so?” she asks.

“I think you know exactly what to do, always.” After a pause, he says, “Show it to me for a minute.” She hands him the notebook. He holds it carefully and reads to himself in a whisper: “Thousands of moments and hours … countless actions … mistakes … all to make one person in the world.” He puts the notebook in his lap and looks at Ora, and a cloud of slight fear darkens in his eyes.

“Add another sentence,” she says without looking at him, and hands him the pen. “ One person, who is so easy to destroy . Write that.”

He writes.

She remembers:

“Let’s work on nested parentheses. Do you know how to do that?”

“You start with the square brackets and then do regular parentheses?”

“Let’s do it like the example. They give you an example here.”

“But it’s tons of numbers … Can’t you just do it for me?”

“How will you learn if I do it for you?”

“Have you no mercy on a poor child?”

“Enough, stop being a wiseass. And sit up straight, Ofer, you’re practically on the floor.”

“I don’t even know how to read this!”

“Stop whining.”

“I stopped.”

“Believe me, I have plenty of things to do other than teach you about nested parentheses.”

“Is the artichoke ready?”

“Wait, it takes time.”

“The smell is driving me crazy.”

“At least clean the table if you’re going to do your homework in the kitchen. You’ll stain your notebook. What page are you on?”

“A hundred and fifty. It’s a huge test. I’ll never pass.”

“Calm down. Let’s do these equations first. Read this one. Go on, stop staring.”

“Maaaan…”

“I’m not a man. Now read it already!”

“ ‘What — separates — the—2x — and — the—3?’ ”

“Well, what separates them? Leave the cake alone!”

“How should I know? I don’t understand what this says. Is it even in Hebrew?”

“Come on, start with the internals.”

“But what do I do with this lousy 2x?”

“You multiply that by 3. Every term gets multiplied by 3! Try it.”

“Merde , I got 2x again.”

“Let’s try it again, but without getting annoyed, okay? And stop eating the cake! You’ve already polished off half of it!”

“What can I do? I need energy.”

“Now solve your 3 minus 2x.”

“Mine? It’s mine now?”

“Yours, yours, I’m done with school.”

“I just want you to know that my brain is rotting, and it’s your fault.”

“Ofer, listen to me. There’s no reason why you can’t do this exercise.”

“Yes there is.”

“Well?”

“I’m stupid.”

“No you’re not.”

“I just don’t have the part of the brain that solves equations.”

“Come on now, shut up, honestly, talking with you is like talking with a lawyer! It’s only a few exercises in—”

“A few ? All the way to page one sixty-one …”

“You’ve done far more complicated ones before. Remember what we had last week?”

“But in the end I did it!”

“Of course you did. When you want to, you can do anything. Now come on, let’s finish this up nicely, and then we’ll do the problems.”

“Oh, we’ll do the problems, great!”

They laugh together. His head rubs against her shoulder and he purrs like a cat, and she responds.

“By the way, has anyone fed Nicotine and rinsed out his bowl today?”

“Yes, I did. Scratch!”

She scratches his head again. “Now do the exercise.”

“That’s my thanks?”

“Pay attention. You’re going too fast again, you’re not checking it.”

“Stop, Mom, I can’t do it anymore! Where’s the phone?”

“What do you need the phone for now?”

“I’m calling Child Protective Services—”

“Very funny. Now concentrate: once you get the principle of coefficients and simplifying terms — what are you laughing at?”