David Grossman - To the End of the Land

Ora and Avram flash each other a look of alarm: Only ten days? What then? What after that?

“Ora, wait, you’re running.”

“This is how I walk.”

It’s been this way for a few hours. She’s been walking wildly, gritting her teeth. Avram and the dog trail behind, not daring to come close. She stops only when she can no longer walk, when she is literally falling off her feet.

They had passed the Alon Valley, Mount Shokef, chives, cyclamens, poppies. Then suddenly they saw the sea. Ora had been waiting for this moment since the beginning of the trip, but now she didn’t stop, didn’t even point to the sea, her love. She kept on walking, lips pursed, grunting with the effort, and Avram straggled behind her. The walk up the Carmel was harder than the Galilee mountains. The paths were rockier, strewn with felled trees and invaded by thorny bushes. Titmice and jays hovered above them, calling to one another excitedly. They accompanied the walkers for a long way, passing them off to each other. When evening fell, they both stopped for a moment in front of a giant pine tree that lay in the middle of the path with a gaping crack. It was flooded with rays of dying sunlight, and a peculiar purple radiance glowed from between its thin leaves.

They stood looking at it. A glowing ember.

They started walking again. Avram began to feel that he too was seized with disquiet whenever they lingered even for a moment. The fear had started to nag at him. A new fear. When we get to the road, he thought, maybe we’ll take a bus. Or even a taxi.

The Rakit ruins, the Yeshach caves, and a cliff looming brazenly above. They walked down among huge rocks, grasping on to tree roots, grottoes. Over and over again, Avram had to climb back up and carry the dog, who whimpered at the rocky channels. They kept walking when it got dark, as long as they could see the path and the markers. Then they slept, briefly and nervously, and woke in the middle of the night, just as on the first nights of the trip, because the earth was humming and rustling constantly under their bodies. They sat by the fire that Avram lit and drank the tea he made. So terrible was the silence and what filled it. Ora closed her eyes and saw the little street leading to her home in Beit Zayit. She saw the gate to the yard, the steps up to the front door. Again she heard Ilan saying that Adam said hi. In Ilan’s voice she could hear Adam’s concern. His compassion. Why was he worried about her all of a sudden? Why did he feel sorry for her? She leaped to her feet and started packing the dishes, shoving them haphazardly into her backpack.

They kept walking in the dark, with only the light of the moon, and then the sky began to brighten. For a few hours they had not said a word. Avram felt that they were running to reach Ofer in time, the way you dash to rescue someone from the ruins of a building: every second counts. It’s not good that she’s quiet, he thought. She isn’t talking about Ofer. Now is when we have to talk about him, when she has to talk about him. We have to talk about him.

And then he started talking to himself, silently. He repeated stories about Ofer, things Ora had told him, trivia, little moments, word for word.

“Just tell me he’s okay,” he growls into the blinding sun. With a sudden lurch, he overtakes her and blocks her path. “Tell me nothing happened to him, that you’re not hiding something from me. Look at me!” he yells. They both breathe heavily.

“I only know up to the night before last. As of then he was fine.” The sharpness is gone from her face. He senses that something has happened to her in the last hour, somewhere between the tea and sunrise. She looks tattered and stooped, as though finally defeated after a prolonged battle.

“Then what’s wrong? Why have you been like this since yesterday? What did I do?”

“Your girlfriend,” Ora says heavily.

“Neta?” The blood rushes out of his face. “What happened to her?”

Ora gives him a long, miserable look.

“Is she all right? What happened to her?”

“She’s fine. Your girlfriend is fine.”

“Then what?”

“She sounds nice, actually. Funny.”

“You talked to her?”

“No.”

“Then how?”

Ora trudges off the trail and into a tangled thicket. Dragging past thistles and shrubs, she trips as she walks, and Avram follows her. She climbs up a little crag of tall, gray rocks, and he follows. And suddenly they’re inside a small crater, where the light is dull and shadowy; the sun seems to have gathered up its rays from this place.

Ora plunges onto a rock ledge and buries her face in her hands. “Listen, I did something … It was wrong, I know that, but I called your apartment. I picked up your messages.”

He straightens up. “My apartment? Wait, you can do that, too?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“There’s a code, a general one, the manufacturer’s default option before you set it yourself. It’s really not that complicated.”

“But why?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“I don’t understand. Wait—”

“Avram, I did it, and that’s that. I had no control over it. I dialed home first, and then my fingers just jumped to the numbers.”

The dog comes over and nestles between them, offering Ora her warm, padded body, and Ora puts her arms on the dog. “I don’t know what came over me. Listen, I’m really … I’m so ashamed.”

“But what happened? What did she do? Did she do something to herself?”

“I just wanted to hear her, to hear who she is. I didn’t even think—”

“Ora!” he practically bellows. “What did she say?”

“You had a few messages. Ten, and nine are from her. There’s one from your boss at the restaurant. They’re finishing the renovations next week, and he wants you to go back to work. He really likes you, Avram, you can feel it in his voice. And there’ll be a housewarming party that they—”

“But Neta, what about Neta?”

“Sit down, I can’t do this while you’re standing over me like that.”

Avram doesn’t appear to hear her. He stares at the gray rocks protruding all around him. Something in this place is closing in on him.

Ora rests her cheek on the dog’s body. “Listen, she called about a week and a half ago, maybe more, and asked you to call her back immediately. Then she called a few more times and asked … No, she just said your name. ‘Avram?’ ‘Avram, are you there?’ ‘Avram, answer me.’ That kind of thing.”

Avram kneels down in front of her. His head is suddenly too heavy to bear. The dog, with Ora hunched over her, turns to him with her dark, soft eyes.

“Then there was one message where she said”—Ora swallows, and her face takes on a childish, startled expression—“that she had something important to tell you, and then … Let’s see, yes, the last message is from the evening before last.” She laughs nervously. “That’s exactly the same time Ofer left his last message for me.”

Avram is hunched, rounded into himself, ready for the blow — he won’t be taken by surprise.

“ ‘Avram, it’s Neta,’ ” Ora says in a hollow voice, her eyes fixed on a spot beyond him. “ ‘I’m in Nuweiba and you haven’t been home for ages and you won’t call back your loving ones—’ ”

Avram nods, recognizing Neta through Ora’s voice.

Ora continues lifelessly, as though her entire being is operated by a ventriloquist. “ ‘A little while ago I thought I might be slightly pregnant, and I didn’t have the courage to tell you, and I came down here to think about what to do, and organize my thoughts, and of course in the end I’m not, as usual, it was a false alarm, so you have nothing to worry about, my love.’ And then there was a beep.”