David Grossman - To the End of the Land

“But he was there in the building, three floors up, and he ate and drank there and went up and down the stairs.” She slid onto the muddy shoulder and drove quickly, hoping somehow to outrun the police. She finally stopped when they closed in on her. “And he talked over the radio at least twenty times with Chen and with Tom, and he had twenty opportunities to ask if they’d let the old man out already, and what did he do?” Ilan did not answer. “Tell me, Ilan, what did he do, our child?” Ora roared hoarsely. She heard Ilan straining to hold his breath and not explode again. Three policemen got out of the two cars and approached. One of them was talking on his walkie-talkie. Ilan said, “You know he meant to go down there and see.” She scoffed — an alien, loathsome scoff. “Meant to, yeah, sure. For two whole days he kept meaning to go down, but just when he was most meaning to, they came to tell him there was a ride leaving for Jerusalem, right? And then we all went out to the restaurant, right? And he forgot, right?” She let out an amazed guffaw and held her head in both hands, as though she was only now, for the first time, finding out the true story. “And that whole evening in the restaurant, he didn’t remember! Oops, sorry, slipped my mind! Doesn’t that incense you?” Ora roared and the veins on her neck swelled. “Tell me, Ilan, doesn’t that make you crazy?” “Ora, you’re losing your mind,” Ilan said, retreating into his sobering tone, the one that observed her with amused wonder, the one he used when they fought, when he let her wallow alone in her bitterness, in the filth that burst out of her. “Just please be careful and keep your eye on the road,” he added with that same tone of lawyerly advice. Ora locked the Punto’s doors from inside and ignored the cops rapping on the windows, their faces pressed up against the glass. One of them ran a scolding finger over the half of the front windshield that was caked with drops of muddy rain, and Ora laid her head on the steering wheel and murmured, “But it’s Ofer, do you understand that, Ilan? It happened to us . It’s our Ofer. How could Ofer, how could he?”

AT FIVE-THIRTYin the morning, at the point where Mount Carmel begins to rise, Ora and Avram disentangle from each other. He folds the tents and the sleeping bags and packs up their two backpacks, and Ora goes to buy some food at a nearby grocery store.

“We haven’t been apart for a long time,” she says, coming back to wrap herself around him.

“Should I come with you?”

“No, stay here with the stuff. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

“I’ll wait.”

“And I’ll be back,” she adds, sounding uncertain. “I don’t know what I’m suddenly afraid of,” she murmurs into his embrace.

“Maybe that you’ll see what civilization is like and you’ll want to stay.”

She is uneasy. An obstinate embolus moves inside her body like the undigested remnants of a dream. She stretches her arms and holds Avram back to look at him, engraving him in her memory. “Now I can see that I didn’t give you a good haircut. I’ll snip that straggler off today.”

He fingers the stray lock.

“And maybe you’ll let me shave you, too?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know, it’s annoying to see you with a beard.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe just a trim. We’ll see. We’ll just take a little off.”

“Don’t you think I’m off enough as it is?”

They look at each other. The spark of a smile in their pupils.

“Buy some salt and pepper. And we’re almost out of oil.”

“And we need batteries for the flashlight, right?”

“And bring some chocolate, I could go for something sweet.”

“Anything else, my dear?”

A soft hand travels inside them on its fingertips. Avram shrugs. “I’ve gotten used to you.”

“Watch out, you’ll get addicted.”

“What’s going to happen, Ora?”

She puts a finger to his lips. “First let’s finish the trail, and then we’ll see what works for us.” She kisses him on each eye and turns to leave. The dog looks from Ora to Avram, unsure whether to join her or stay with him.

“Wait, Ora, hold up.”

She stops.

“It’s good for me to be with you,” he says quickly and lowers his gaze to his hands. “I want you to know that.”

“Then say it. I need to be told.”

“The way you let me be with you like this, and with Ofer, and with all of you.” His eyes redden. “You don’t know what you’re giving me, Ora.”

“Well, I’m just giving you back what belongs to you.”

They cling to each other again — since she’s taller than he, she has to hold her feet slightly apart; it’s always been that way — and for some reason she remembers how every time she was about to go and see him in Tel Aviv, during those years when he agreed to meet, Ofer always sensed it. He used to grow restless and gloomy and sometimes run a high fever, as though trying to sabotage their meeting. When she got back he would sniff her out like an animal, demanding to know exactly what she’d been doing. And he always asked, with transparent slyness, whether Ilan knew where she’d been.

Avram holds her to his body, cups her buttocks with both hands, and mumbles that there’s nothing like her gluteus maximus and her gluteus medius. “Take care of yourself there, in the store,” he says into her hair, and they both hear what he has not said: Don’t talk with anyone too much. If the radio is on, ask them to turn it off. Do not under any circumstances look at the papers. Avoid the headlines.

She walks away and pauses a few times to turn around and give him a movie star’s long, lingering wave and blow him a kiss. He smiles, his hands on his waist, the white sharwals flapping around his body, and the dog sits erect beside him. He looks good, Ora thinks. The new haircut and Ofer’s clothes are good for him, and there’s something refreshing in the open way he stands and in his smile. “He’s coming back to life,” she tells herself out loud. This walk is bringing him back to life. What does that say about me? What place will I have in his life when the journey is over, if I have any place at all?

Wait, she thinks, suddenly troubled — why isn’t the dog coming with me? But even before she can finish the thought, Avram leans down and pats the dog on her butt, urging her to run along.

An hour later Ora silently unloads her purchases from the Kfar Hasidim supermarket’s plastic bags — labeled “Strictly Glatt Kosher”—and divvies them up between the two backpacks: biscuits, crackers, canned goods, packets of bouillon. Her movements are quick and sharp.

“Did something happen, Ora’leh?”

“No, what happened?”

“I don’t know. You seem …”

“I’m fine.”

Avram licks his upper lip. “Okay, okay.” And after a moment, “Ora—”

“What is it?”

“Did you hear the radio down there? Did you see a newspaper?”

“There’s no radio there, and I didn’t look at the paper. Come on, let’s go. I’m sick of this place.”

They hoist up their backpacks, pass the playground at Kibbutz Yagur, and choose a path with red markers. They soon replace it with a blue one that leads to the Snake River, recently renamed Ma’apilim River, and start climbing up the mountain. The day is still swathed in morning mist, indulging itself and lazily putting off its brightening. The climb soon grows steep, and the two of them and the dog are all breathing heavily.

“Wait a minute,” he calls after her, “did someone tell you something there?”

“No one told me anything.”

She practically runs up the incline. Stones spark from her heels. Avram gives in and stops to wipe the sweat off. At the same moment, without looking at him, Ora also stops and stands like an angular exclamation point one rocky step above him. Through oak trees and the milky morning vapors, they can see the Zevulun Valley, the suburbs of Haifa, and the Yagur Junction as it comes to life. The pair of towers at the oil refinery in the bay emit plumes of white steam that slowly curl and mingle with the mist. Avram wants to give her something, to quell the sudden irritation bristling around her. If only he knew what to give. Glimmering cars fly by on the roads leading to the junction. A distant train sends out rhythmic sparks of metal and light. But here on the mountain the silence is broken only by the occasional truck horn or the stubborn wail of an ambulance.