David Grossman - To the End of the Land

“And if there’s a funeral?” Ofer inquires agreeably, changing tactics and unconsciously imitating Ilan, who uses death and its derivatives as punctuation in his sentences. She’s never been immune to these remarks, least of all now, and his joke, if it can be called that, seems to shock them both, because she can hear him swallow.

The stray thought from this afternoon comes back to her: Why do I collaborate with all this instead of being loyal to—

His voice resurfaces. “Mom, I’m not joking. Maybe you should take a phone, so you can be contacted.”

“No, no.” From one moment to the next she feels a greater comprehension of her plan. “Just not that.”

“Why not? You can leave it turned off, just use it for messages, for SMS.”

In fact she has become a skilled text-messager, an expertise acquired recently thanks to her new friend, her maybe lover, the Character with a capital C, because that’s her only way to communicate with him. She considers for a moment and shakes her head: “No, not even that.” Then she gets carried away on a stray thought: “Ofer, d’you have any idea what SMS stands for?”

He stares at her through the phone. “What? What’d you ask?”

“Could it be ‘Save my Soul’?”

Ofer sighs. “Honestly, Mom, I have no clue.”

She quickly returns from her contemplations. “I’m not taking my cell. I don’t want to be found.”

“Not even by me?” he asks in a suddenly thin, stripped voice.

“Not even you. No one,” Ora replies sadly. The vague notion gains clarity inside her. The whole time he’s there, she cannot be found. That’s the thing. That’s the law. All or nothing, like a kid’s oath, a crazy gamble on life itself.

“But what if something really does happen to me?” he yells, protesting this incomprehensible, shocking disruption of order.

“No, no, nothing will happen to you, I’m telling you, I know it. I just have to disappear for a while, please understand. Actually, you know what? I don’t expect you to understand. Just pretend I took a trip abroad”— like Dad did , she manages not to say.

“Now? Now you’re going abroad? At a time like this? At war?”

He is almost begging, and she moans, and her body and soul are transfixed on one point, on his mouth finding its way to her nipple.

She wrenches her gaze away from that mouth. It’s for his own good. She’s leaving him for his own good. But he won’t understand. “I have to go.” She repeats the words again and again like an oath, with a furrowed brow. She is denying him, she is doing this for him, she doesn’t fully understand it either, but she’s feels it strongly—

And how is it that I’m loyal to them , to the ones sending him there — she finally extricates something from the fog in her brain — more than to my motherhood?

“Listen, Ofer, listen to me, don’t shout at me. Listen!” She cuts him off, and something in her voice must frighten him, introducing an unfamiliar coolness of authority. “Don’t fight with me now. I have to leave for a while. I’ll explain it, but not now. I’m doing this for you.”

“For me? How is it for me?”

She almost says, When you’re older you’ll understand , but in fact she knows it’s the opposite: When you’re younger you’ll understand, when you’re a little boy again, making ridiculous bargains with frightening shadows and nightmares, then maybe you’ll understand.

And now it’s decided. She has to obey this thing that instructs her to get up and leave home, immediately, without waiting even one minute. She cannot stay here. And in some strange and confusing way, this thing seems to be her maternal instinct, which she thought had dulled, and upon which so many doubts had lately been cast.

“Promise me you’ll take care of yourself,” she says softly, trying to hide the rigid decisiveness emerging behind her eyes. “And don’t do anything stupid, d’you hear me? Be careful, Ofer, don’t hurt anyone there, and don’t get hurt, and know that I’m doing this for you.”

“Doing what for me?” He’s exhausted by her capriciousness. He’s never seen anything like this in her. Since when does she have whims? But then he has a small revelation: “What is this, some kind of vow you’re making?”

Ora is happy that he has understood, has come very close. Who, if not he, could understand her? “Yes, you could say it’s a vow, yes. And remember that we’ll meet when your thing is over, your emergency call-up.”

He sighs. “Whatever you say.”

She feels him take one step back from the place where they just met — there are still moments, here and there, so rare, when his insides are exposed and revealed to her. And perhaps, she thinks, they are the reason that he prefers the kasbahs and the mukataas to a week in the Galilee with her. She guesses that what scares him is not her vow but the fact that she— she —is suddenly starting to flip out with all kinds of magical thinking.

Ofer is already pulling his voice together and taking another little step away from her. “Okay, Mom,” he sums up, and now he is the grown-up shrugging at her girlish whims. “If that’s what you need right now, then cool, go for it. I’m with you. Okay, gotta go now.”

“See you soon, Oferiko. I love you.”

“Just don’t do anything stupid up there, Mom, promise me.”

“You know I won’t.”

“No, promise me.” He smiles, and the warmth seeps back into his voice, melting her away.

“I promise, don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

“Me, too.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“I love you.”

“Awesome.”

“Take care of yourself there.”

“You too, and don’t worry, it’ll be fine. Bye.”

“Bye, Ofer, my sweet—”

She stands with the phone in her hand, spent and sweaty, and thinks with perfect lucidity: That might have been the last time I hear his voice. She is afraid she may forget it. And another thought: Who knows how many more times I will replay that trivial conversation of meaningless phrases? I told him to take care of himself, and he said don’t worry it’ll be fine. Perhaps in two or three days the campaign will end and that conversation will join with hundreds of others and settle down and be forgotten. But never before has she had such a clear feeling. All day, freezing cold shards have been digging into her lower abdomen, making every movement painful. Now she sucks the remainder of his voice out of the phone and remembers how, when he was a boy, they built up their goodbye kisses into a long and complicated ritual — but wait, was that with him or with Adam? — a ritual that began with hugs and loud, fervent kisses, growing subtler and gentler, until they finished with a butterfly kiss on his cheek, then on hers, on his forehead and hers, on his lips and hers, the tip of his nose and hers, until only the lightest echo of a touch remained, a fluttering breeze of flesh that was almost unreal.

The phone rings again. A gravelly, hesitant male voice asks if it’s Ora. She sits down, short-winded, and listens to his heavy breathing. “It’s me,” he says, and she replies, “I know it’s you.” His breath keeps coming through in thin whistles and she thinks she can hear his heart beating. He must have seen Ofer on TV, she thinks, and something jolts her: Now he knows what Ofer looks like.

“Ora, it’s over, isn’t it?”

“What’s over?” She is confused, and horrified by the shadow of the word.

“His army service,” he whispers. “When we spoke before he enlisted, you said it would be over today, right?”

She realizes that in the general chaos of the day she has neglected to think about this, about him. She has managed to erase his part in the complication, this man who needs protection today even more than she does.