David Grossman - To the End of the Land

This is so the boy can be born, she sensed at the time, through her fog of self-sedation. And so that Ilan can be his father, and so that Ilan and I can once again be man and woman to each other.

“Hello, hello, this is the Voice of Free Magma. It’s the third night. Or fourth? I’ve lost my sense of time. I got out of the alcove before. There was total silence here for a few minutes, so I crawled out. First time since this started. I could barely move. I thought maybe the battle was over and they’d gone back to the other side of the Canal. I guess that’s not exactly the case. I think it’s still going on, at least in my area, ’cause I peeked out and saw them still crossing the Canal, masses of them, hard to believe, and I didn’t see a single one of our forces.”

He sounded completely lucid again.

“I searched the stronghold, and apart from the radio operator I saw three other bodies, all our men, in Bunker 2, totally scorched. At first I thought they were tree trunks, I swear, but then I got it — why would there be trees here? It’s the reservists from the Jerusalem brigade. When I got here on the eve of Yom Kippur, I went right down to the edge of the Canal with my notebook. It was completely quiet, and I thought everything they’d scared us with at Bavel was bullshit. I found a barrel to lean on, and I sat with my back to the water and wrote a bit, just to acclimate myself faster. And these three guys were on the lookout post above me, and they made a whole production over my writing, and I fought with them, we almost came to blows. Now I feel bad. The way they looked, I think they were executed together. Maybe they tied them to each other and then shot. What was I going to—

“Everything’s falling apart here. Iron rods, rocks, nets, bent and melted Uzis. I think I saw an Egyptian flag above the stronghold. I found three cans of meat loaf, one hummus, and one sweet corn. And most important, two bottles of water. I can’t eat the meat. I’m done with meat for the rest of my life.

“I also filled two helmets with dirt, to cover my latrine. Now that I have food, I’ll probably go back to running my bowels on full speed, ha-ha.

“Bottom line, I’m back in my cage. I crawled in here, lay down again in the dervish-sucking-himself position. If I only knew how to operate this lousy machine, damn it! Anyone there? Hello …

“I just hope it doesn’t hurt. I wish I could lose consciousness. Before, after I saw the guys in there, I tried to strangle myself with my own hands, but I started coughing and I was afraid someone would hear.

“I just hope they don’t torture me first. A guy like me is their bread and butter. I keep seeing pictures flash by. And it’s a shitty movie.

“Good thing they don’t have a lot of time to waste on me.

“But how much? A minute? Three? How long could it take?

“Just do it quickly. A bullet to the head.

“No, not the head.

“Then where?

“Okay, come on already. Come on, you sons of bitches! Fucking Egyptians — sideways-walkers!”

He yelled as loudly as he could. Then Ilan heard two ringing blows and figured Avram had slapped himself.

“Ilan,” Avram said suddenly in a voice so close and tender that it sounded like a casual phone call, “you’ll probably marry Ora in the end. Way to go, you stud. Just promise me you’ll name your son Avram, d’you hear me? But with the ‘h’—Avra ha m! Father of many nations! And tell him about me. I’m warning you, Ilan, if you don’t, my ghost will haunt you at night in your bed and bruise your reed.”

Then he laughed. “Listen to this! Once, before the army, I went to Ora’s house in Haifa, and her mom made me take my shoes off, you know her, but my socks were so stinky, I hadn’t changed them for maybe a week, you know me, and she sat me down in the living room, on the fauteuil, to find out who I was and what I was plotting to do with her daughter, and I was so nervous about my socks that I started telling her that when I was seventeen I’d decided to be a Stoic, and then I was an Epicurean for a while, and now I’d been a Skeptic for a few months. I gave her a whole speech so she wouldn’t notice the stench. Just a silly story. But tell it to Ora, and to the boy, to Avraham, and you can all laugh about it, why not.

“Enough,” he pleaded. “Come on, come on, whoever you are.”

“Seven notebooks, Ora — d’you get that? It was a fantastic idea. Listen, I was thinking of a series, not just one play. Three at least. One hour each. And no compromises. For once, I was going to do something huge, something like our old friend Orson’s War of the Worlds . The end of the world, I was thinking. That’s the idea, see? But not because of an alien invasion or an atom bomb. I was thinking about a meteor strike, and everyone knows exactly when it’s going to happen. ’Cause the whole idea is that the end date is known, see? Every person in the world knows exactly when—

“It kills me that I can’t tell you this. How am I going to write something without getting your confirmation, without your enthusiasm? Listen, listen, listen to me,” he talked on, but his breath was heavy.

Whenever he described a new idea to Ora or Ilan, Avram was a bundle of excitement. The heat radiated from him. Ilan tried to imagine him in his underground hovel, moving his hands and legs excitedly.

“And all of humanity knows that exactly on such and such date they will be destroyed. Not a single living thing will survive, not even animals or plants. No one gets off the hook, no exception committees, no board decisions. All of life will evaporate.

“Seven notebooks those fuckers burned!” he shouted again with sincere astonishment. “How could they screw me like that?

“Listen, the clocks will only show the time left until the evaporation. And when someone asks what time it is, it’ll only have one meaning: How long left until—

“Get it? Wait, there’s more.”

Ilan ran his tongue over his lips. Avram’s excitement had begun to infect him. He could see Avram’s inner light, which made him almost beautiful.

“For example, the museums will take their pictures and statues out of the galleries and warehouses. All the works of art. Everything will be out on the streets. Just think, Venus de Milo and Guernica leaning on a fence outside a plain old house in Tel Aviv, or Ashkelon, or Tokyo. All the streets will be full of art and everything people have ever painted or sculpted or created. The great masters, alongside grannies from the art class at the Givatayim community center. Nahum Gutman and Renoir and Zaritsky and Gauguin, next to drawings by kindergarten kids. There’ll be pictures and sculptures everywhere, clay, iron, plasticine, stone. Millions of art works of every kind, from every age, from ancient Egypt and the Incas and India and the Renaissance, all out on the streets. Try to see it, try to see it for me. In the squares, in the tiniest alleys, on the beach, in the zoos, everywhere you look there’ll be some work of art, doesn’t matter what, a kind of massive democracy of beauty—

“And maybe — what do you think? — regular people can take home the Mona Lisa for one night. Or The Kiss . D’you think that’s too much? Wait, wait, o ye of little faith, I’ll convince you …” Avram smiled, and Ilan ached, feeling the burn of a private joke between Avram and Ora.

Ilan could see the look on Avram’s face when he was testing out a new idea. All his force would narrow into a spark of light in the depths of his eyes, one hovering glow, and at the same time his face would take on a remarkably corporeal expression, making him look almost suspicious, as though he were guessing the weight of some dubious goods he’d been handed, and then the eruption: the glow would ignite, a smile would spread, his hands and arms would open wide. “Come on, world!” Avram would bray. “Fuck me hard!”