David Grossman - To the End of the Land

She holds up a finger. “Wait. What did I just think of? Umm …” Her fingers play in the air, trying to birth a vague spark from it. “It was something of yours that I remembered. What was it? Oh, of course!” She laughs. “You once had this idea, you wanted to write a story, in the army, just before you started the one about the end of the world, remember?”

“About my body.” He smiles, then snickers, quickly belittling, dismissive.

But Ora won’t let him off the hook. “You thought of writing a sort of autobiography, where every chapter is about a different part of your body—”

“Yes, an autobodyography . It was silly …”

“And you let me read the chapter about your tongue, remember?”

He waves both hands in protest. “Leave it, really, such nonsense.”

“It was horrible. It was slander, not autobiography. Honestly, Avram, if you ever need a character witness, don’t invite yourself.”

He laughs an unpleasant, dishonest laugh, as if wanting to appease her without really acquiescing. Something jackal-like flashes in the depths of his eyes, reminding her of how twisted and cruel he could be with himself when the evil spirits tormented him. And she suddenly yearns for him, an unbearable yearning, a sharp, blazing longing for him, for all of him.

He says: “Look at us, we’re two old people now.”

“Just as long as we don’t grow old before we grow up.”

He looks at her for a long time, reading her thoughts. His gaze is steady and strange, with no ill intentions. On the contrary. It seems to her that he has only kind, tender thoughts for her now. “Ora.”

“What?”

“Can I join you for a bit?”

“Where?”

“No, never mind.”

“Wait! You mean …?”

“No, only if you—”

“But are you … Wait, now?”

“No?”

Her body starts to agitate and flutter in the sleeping bag. “You mean …”

He nods with his eyes.

“My place or yours?”

Avram wriggles out of his sleeping bag and stands up, and she opens her zipper and spreads her arms out to him: “Come, come, don’t say anything, just come here already. I thought you never would.” He collapses into her sleeping bag, heavy and dense, and their bodies are stiff and stammering, wrapped in too many layers of clothes and awkwardness. Their hands stutter and bump and pull back, and it’s not working, that much is already clear, it’s not right, it’s a mistake, they shouldn’t even go back to that place, and she’s afraid of what will happen if she forgets Ofer for a moment, if he is suddenly abandoned without protection, and she knows exactly what is going through Avram’s mind: the criminal returning to the scene of the crime — that’s what is in his twisted brain right now. “Don’t think,” she moans into his ear, “don’t think anything.” She presses her fingers on his temples, and Avram is on top of her, his heavy bones, his flesh, and he rams his body against hers with immense force, as if fighting to break through himself even before he can break into her, but she isn’t ready yet, either. “Wait, wait.” She moves her mouth away from his wandering lips. “Wait, you’re crushing me.”

For several moments they are like two people who have struck up a conversation and are trying to remember — not who the other person is, but who they themselves are. But then, here and there, behind an opened button, an unhooked clasp, their scents rise, tongues taste, fingers slip between a shirt and pants, and suddenly skin, warm and alive, skin against skin, skin in skin, and here is a mouth, an eager and sucking and sucked-on mouth, and Avram moans: her mouth, her beloved mouth, and only then does he remember, and his tongue touches her lips lightly, probing, testing, wondering. Ora freezes: It’s nothing, she reminds him silently, just two millimeters. But something does feel more wilted. He licks and sucks lightly, carefully, gently. Something has fallen asleep there, that’s all, but it’s warm, and it’s hers, it’s the pain imprinted on her, and his healing powers rise up. It’s her, with everything she now is.

The dog scampers around them and yelps, trying to shove her face in between them, sniffing longingly. Then, shoved away, she sprawls nearby with her back to them, and a shivering furrow of insult plows through her fur. Avram’s hand, spread wide, supports Ora’s back and tightens and gathers her into him. “Wait, slowly now, give me your hand, give me.” A hand on a breast, softer and larger than it was. Yes, they both feel it, she knows through his hand. “Your sweet breasts,” he whispers into her ear, and she interlaces her fingers with his and wanders around her body with him. “Feel it, feel this,” and everything is broader and fuller, a woman, “touch, feel how soft,” yes. “You’re velvet, Ora’leh.” “Suckle on me.” A long silence. But it is then that they are both transported, and Neta flies through Avram’s head: Where are you, Nettush, we have to talk, listen, we have things to talk about; and Ora for an instant is with Ilan, the touch of his hands, the bones of his wrist, their tanned skin, the power contained in them. She used to run her finger over his wrists and feel as though she were touching a heavy iron key, the secret of his masculinity. But then the Character, Eran, also pops up in her mind, with his lips that turn pale with passion for her, with his feverish, crazed pleas: Now wear this, now put this on — how dare he show up here? And then, to her surprise, two long thumbs smooth over her body, full lips flutter, dark, plum-like, and where did they even come from, and she tightens her whole body toward Avram, “Come, you, you,” and Avram responds immediately, back from his wanderings, she remembers him by the signs, the tight grip, his head burrowing in the round of her neck, his hand softly cupping her head as though she were a baby — Ora whose head must be protected — and his other hand strokes her stomach, clinging to it with excited fingers, and she smiles, his hunger for the belly of a woman, soft, large, full (she always felt it in his fingertips, and could almost guess by the way his fingers touched her stomach, could almost draw the figure of the fantasy woman he truly desired), and now she can finally give him something of that, not just the taut, boyish drum skin she had back then. He is grateful, she senses it immediately, his entire flesh exalts her funny little stomach, which has found a use after all, and his mouth is hungry for hers, and his fervor, it’s all familiar and beloved, a huge wave of longing breaks between them. We , she wails in her head, a she-wolf of many udders and nipples, and Avram sucks on them all. Here we are! she rejoices, squirming beneath him. This is how we are, and always have been, and this is how we put thigh to thigh, and our feet interlace, and our hands, and all the corners of our bodies, even the most remote, elbows, ankles, behind the knees, carnivalesque excitement, and Ora whispers something in his ear, and then reaches the tip of her tongue to the tip of his tongue, a sting of moisture from within her, and they both ignite, and his blacksmith’s arms carry her, and her head drops back as though decapitated, and together they thrash the earth beneath her, and he is at her neck, his teeth on the artery, grunting and groaning, and she, “Don’t stop, don’t stop,” let him gallop and bellow and drum her with his loins to the earth, and he is one and he is with her, there is no other woman with them, only he and she now, a man and a woman going about their business — that’s what he used to tell her: “Now we’re a man and a woman going about our business,” and he would tempt her with the madness of his strange, formal language, and the way he turned his back on the whole world, and with one thrust he would release her from the torture of thinking about Ilan, just a man and a woman going about their business. Now too, there is no world outside their body, no breath outside their breath, no Ilan, no Neta, no Ofer, no Ofer, no Ofer, yes, yes there is an Ofer, if Avram and Ora are like this then there is an Ofer, there is, there will be, there will be an Ofer, leave Ofer now, release him for one minute …