David Grossman - To the End of the Land

With both hands he held the earphones to his head and heard it, word for word: “Where is everyone? You scurvy-ridden eunuchs, may my spirit haunt you at night!” He tore the headphones off and ran to the war-room bunker, burst into a debriefing, and yelled, “There’s a soldier in Magma! I heard him, I got him on the radio, he’s alive!”

The commander gave him one look and hurried after him, without even asking who gave Ilan permission to deploy secret interception equipment. Trembling, Ilan put the headphones over the commander’s ears: “Listen, he’s alive, he’s alive.” The commander leaned on the desk with two fists, listened, and his forehead wrinkled as his face changed expressions. Ilan thought quickly: Maybe I should explain that this is how Avram always talks; he even considered adding that they had to rescue him despite his talk.

Years later — Ilan told Ora that dawn, the day Ofer was born — he still tormented himself for being so embarrassed about Avram in front of the commander. When he told her, Ora suddenly realized that Avram, in the way he spoke, the way he acted, and his entire being, was always exposing a vaguely embarrassing, private secret that everyone kept. She remembered how he used to joke, “I always say out loud what everyone isn’t thinking.” The commander let out a pent-up breath, straightened up, and said, “Okay, it’s that kid, we know about him, but we thought he was gone.” He took the headphones off and asked, “Who gave you permission to open up a position?”

Ilan seemed not to have heard and asked in a choked-up voice: “You know about him? Why didn’t you tell me?”

The commander furrowed his brow. “Who are you, anyway? What makes you think I have to report anything to you?”

Ilan turned very pale and seemed unable to breathe, and the commander sensed his distress and changed his tone. “Listen, calm down, sit down, we can’t do anything for him for now.” Ilan sat down obediently. His limbs were weak, and sweat poured down his face. “On the first and second days he drove the whole network crazy,” said the commander as he glanced at his watch.

“What did he do?” Ilan whispered.

“Oh, he just wouldn’t stop blathering and shouting for us to come and get him out. And he’s wounded, too. Lost a hand or a foot or something, I can’t remember. Truth is, he kept giving so many vivid descriptions, we just stopped hearing it, and then he disappeared off the airwaves just like everyone else over there, and we thought that was it. So it’s commendable that he’s lasted this long, but forget about reaching him. Get that out of your head.”

“Get what?” Ilan whispered.

“Him,” the commander said, raising his eyebrows in the direction of the scanner, which once again emitted Avram’s voice, now sounding strangely joyous as he trumpeted Duke Ellington’s “Take the ‘A’ Train” through his lips.

The commander started to head back to the bunker, but Ilan grabbed his arm. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, we can’t? He’s a soldier in the IDF, isn’t he? So what do you mean ‘we can’t’?”

The commander gave Ilan a cautionary look and slowly released his arm from his grip. They faced each other as Avram’s voice wafted between them, announcing, in English, a competition between Russian and American big bands, and asking his listeners to send in postcards and vote for their favorite.

The commander was a short and doleful-looking man. His face was covered with floury dust. “Forget it,” he said gently. “I’m telling you, forget it. We can’t do anything for him right now. He’s surrounded by the entire Egyptian army, and we have zero forces out there. Besides, listen to him,” he added in a whisper, as though he feared Avram could hear him. “He’s beyond caring where he is, believe me.” As if to confirm this, Avram burst into a long, screeching yodel that sounded horrifyingly alien, and the commander quickly flipped the dial and replaced Avram’s screech with the sounds of orders and gunshot and Artillery Corps tracking points that briefly sounded, even to Ilan, logical in their own way, legal tender under these circumstances.

“Wait!” Ilan ran after the commander as he left the room. “Has anyone been able to talk to him?”

The commander shook his head and kept walking. “At first, yes. On the first day he had one good transmitter, but it stopped working, and he doesn’t seem to know how to put the PRC in receiving mode.”

“He doesn’t know?” Ilan asked in horror. “How could he not know? All he has to do is listen, doesn’t he?”

The commander shrugged his shoulders as he walked. “I guess the instrument’s screwed up. Or else the guy’s screwed up.” Then he stopped abruptly, turned to Ilan, studied him closely, and asked, “What’s your deal with this guy? You know him?”

“He’s from Bavel. Intelligence.”

The commander turned grave. “That I didn’t know. Not good. We’ll have to send word on.”

Ilan brightened at this spark of interest. “Listen, we can’t let him get caught, he knows lots of stuff, he knows everything, he has a phenomenal memory, we have to get to him before they do—”

He fell silent at once. He wanted to bite his tongue. Something foreign and tortuous flashed in the commander’s eyes, and Ilan realized that he himself might have handed down a death sentence for Avram at that very moment. He stood there, stunned by what he had done. In his mind’s eye he saw an Israeli Phantom diving down over the stronghold to destroy the security risk hidden among the ruins of Magma. He ran after the major and danced around him, behind him, in front of him. “Try to save him!” he begged. “Do something!”

The commander lunged at him and lost his temper for the first time. “If he’s from Intelligence, why doesn’t he shut up?” He grabbed Ilan’s shoulders and shook him, shouting: “Is he an idiot? Doesn’t he know they’re listening in on all the networks? Doesn’t he know they’re pinpointing every fart they pick up in the whole sector?”

“But you heard him,” Ilan whispered in despair. “I guess he isn’t really—”

“Leave him there, I told you!” the commander shouted, and the veins on his neck bulged. “Get off the frequency, pack up the scanner in the APC, and get the hell out of my face!”

The commander walked away, waving his arms angrily, but Ilan no longer knew what he was doing. He run after him again, blocked his way, and stood forehead to forehead. “Just let me listen in on him. At least let me hear what he says.”

“Negative,” the commander hissed, amazed at Ilan’s impudence. “You have three seconds to get the hell out of my—”

“But we have to!” Ilan groaned. “At least so we’ll know if he’s giving them anything about Leech—”

“What’s that?”

Ilan held his face very close to the man and whispered something.

There was a silence. The major blinked, put his hands on his waist, and studied a flaw in the walls of the trench. ‘Leech’ was always beyond any argument or objection. “I can’t spare the men,” he finally snarled.

“I’m not one of your men,” Ilan reminded him. They took a step back from each other.

“You and your Intelligence can choke on it,” the major whispered. “You’ve really fucked us. You’ve murdered everyone here. Go on, get out of here, do whatever you like, I’m washing my hands of it.”

“Hello, hello? Anyone left?” The voice returned when Ilan put the headphones on. They were still warm from the commander’s touch. “Why doesn’t anyone answer … What is this, are you playing with me? Over, over, over,” Avram mumbled hopelessly. “God damn this fucking machine. Does it work? No? How am I supposed to … Hello? Man, this blows. Fuck!”