David Grossman - To the End of the Land

Ilan kept walking. It started to get light. Every so often he had to hide in some bushes, or in the shady folds of sand dunes. His eyes and nose filled with sand. His teeth were gritty with sand. A soldier with a cushy job in Intelligence, armed with an SKS, no bullets, no gear, one water canteen.

He lay down to rest in a ditch and must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes there was a guy in glasses sitting next to him, gesturing for him to be quiet. He was a tankist from Brigade 401 and his tank had been hit, killing his entire crew. He’d pretended to be dead when the Egyptians had looted the tank. So these two, with one water canteen and a torn map, navigated for several hours — in total silence because they were afraid of Egyptian commando units — until they reached the coast and saw an Israeli flag, shredded and bedraggled but still flying from the broken, sunken roof of the Hamama stronghold.

The whole time she talks, Avram frantically runs his thumbs over his fingertips, as though he has to count them over and over again. I’m not, he murmurs to himself, it can’t be. What is she babbling about?

“It’s a fact. It happened.”

“Ora, listen, don’t play with me about this.”

“Have I ever played with you?” she answers angrily.

“Hamama was one kilometer from my stronghold.”

“One and a half.”

“And how come he never told me anything?”

“Didn’t you ever tell him anything?” she’d asked Ilan back then.

“If I’d reached him, he’d know. I didn’t, so I didn’t tell him.”

Even without touching Avram, she can feel what is occurring inside him. She pulls up her sleeping bag over her nakedness.

“I don’t understand!” he almost yells. “Explain to me again, slowly, how did it happen?”

“Think about it. On Yom Kippur he was in Bavel. They already knew that the strongholds were falling and there were loads of casualties. There were horrible rumors. And also, he listened in on the Egyptian networks and heard—”

“What do you mean ‘listened in’?” Avram jumped up, furious. “He wasn’t a radio operator, he was a translator! Who gave him permission to intercept networks?”

“I don’t know if anyone ‘gave him permission.’ He probably found an unmanned scanner, and in between translation shifts he sat and played with the frequencies. You can imagine what kind of chaos it was there in the first few days.”

“This is just impossible.” Avram shakes his heavy head. “I don’t know why you would tell me something like this.”

He suddenly remembers Ilan the teenager, scanning the old radio in Avram’s house for Willis Conover’s jazz program on the Voice of America. His green eyes narrow, his long fingers gently turn the dial. Avram gets up and starts to pull on his clothes. He cannot hear this news with nothing on.

“Why are you getting up?”

“I have to know, Ora. Did he hear something on the network?”

“Wait, I’m getting there, let me—”

“Did he hear me?” His eyes gape.

“I can’t do it like this.” She gets up and also dresses quickly. “With — you — pressuring — me — like — this!”

“But what could he have done there?” Avram yells, one leg hanging out of his pants. They fumble around, each hopping on one foot, battling rebellious pants and shouting, and the dog barks fearfully. “What was he looking for?!”

“You! He was looking for you!”

“Is he an idiot? What is he, Rambo?”

They sit down breathlessly, facing each other.

“I need some coffee.” Avram gets up and gathers wood and twigs in the dark. They light a fire. The night is cold and seething. Birds screech as in a dream, toads croak with thick voices, mongooses churr. Dogs bark in the distance, and the bitch scurries around, restlessly watching the dark valley. Ora wonders if she can hear her pack barking. Perhaps she regrets leaving them.

“Listen, they wanted to court-martial him after the war,” she says quietly. “But in the end they let it go. The circumstances. The chaos. They dropped it.”

“But he barely knew how to shoot! What was he thinking? Didn’t you ask him?”

“I did.”

“And what did he say?”

“Well, what could he say? He said he was mostly looking for someone to shoot him.”

“What?”

“ ‘Someone to do him a favor,’ ” she quotes. “What are you looking at? That’s what he said.”

At ten a.m., Ilan and the tankist reached the Hamama stronghold on the banks of the Suez Canal, opposite the city of Ismailia. For the first time, they saw the Egyptians crossing the Canal en masse, not far away, streaming into the Sinai Peninsula. They stood staring. It was hard to believe the scene. Ilan told her, “Somehow it wasn’t frightening. We felt like we were watching a movie.”

They called out to the soldier watching them from the tower near the gate, waved a white undershirt, and asked him to let them in. A short burst of fire came from the stronghold, and they ran and fell to the ground, spread their arms out in front of them and kept shouting. The gate opened a crack and a frightened-looking officer with an Uzi aimed at them peered out. “Who are you?” he yelled. Ilan and the guy replied that they were Israelis. The officer screamed at them not to move. “Let us in!” they begged, but he wasn’t in any hurry. “Where are you from?” They gave him their unit numbers. “No, where in Israel?” “Jerusalem,” they both replied, and glanced at each other. The officer considered this, signaled for them not to move, and disappeared. The earth below their feet trembled. Behind their backs they could hear the hum of Egyptian tanks. “Where d’you go to school?” Ilan hissed without moving his lips. “Boyer,” the guy said, “a year below you.” “You mean you know me?” Ilan exclaimed. The soldier smiled. “Who didn’t? You were always with that other one, the fat guy with long hair who jumped off the tree.” The gate swung open and the officer motioned for them to approach slowly, on their knees, with their hands up.

Ghosts with bloodshot eyes gathered around them. Filthy ghosts covered with white dust. From all ends of the stronghold they closed in around the two new guys. They silently listened to their report on what they’d seen on the way. The stronghold commander, a tired, worn-out man twice Ilan’s age, asked what he was doing in this area. Ilan looked him in the eye and said he’d been sent from Bavel to remove classified information and secret equipment from Magma, and asked when he could go there. The soldiers gave one another sideway looks. The commander just grimaced and left, taking the tankist with him. A fat reservist with a blunt look turned to Ilan and said in a drawl, “Forget about Magma. Those guys are done for. And even if by some miracle anyone’s still alive there, the Egyptians are throttling them from all directions.” Ilan was astonished. “Then why doesn’t someone go help them? Why doesn’t the Air Force take out the Egyptians?” The soldiers snickered. “The Air Force? Forget it,” said the fat reservist. “Forget everything you know about the IDF.” The others mumbled in concurrence. “You should have heard the guys from Hizayon crying over the radio,” said a blond soldier with a soot-blackened face. “Depressed the hell out of us.” Ilan whispered: “Crying? They really cried?” The fat guy said, “They cried, and they cursed us for not coming to help. Don’t worry, we’ll be crying soon, too.” Another soldier, with a bandaged arm hanging in a filthy fabric sling, said, “We know how it goes now, all the stages.” A short, dark-skinned sergeant piped up: “You hear everything here. You hear it right up to the last minute, right up to when they shit themselves. Live broadcast.” A squat reservist added, “We’ve gone through it with a few strongholds by now.” They all talked at Ilan together, interrupting each other. Their voices had no colors. Ilan sensed they were taking advantage of his presence to talk to one another through him.