David Grossman - To the End of the Land

“Listen,” she begins — again that tight-lipped, teacher’s listen —and his tension reaches her like an electrical current, and she has to concentrate very hard to choose her words; she cannot make a mistake. “Yes, Ofer was supposed to be done today”—she speaks slowly, cautiously, but she can hear the panic in his soul, can almost see him shielding his head with his hands like a beaten child—“but you must know there’s an emergency situation, I’m sure you heard it on the news, and there’s that campaign, so they took Ofer. In fact they just showed him on TV.” As she talks she remembers that he has no television, and she finally grasps the enormity of the shock she is giving him, the reversal from what he expected to what he is now finding out. “Avram, I’ll explain everything and you’ll see that it’s not that bad, not the end of the world.”

She tells him again that they took Ofer for the military campaign, and he listens to her, or doesn’t, and when she finishes he says lifelessly, “But that’s not good.”

She sighs. “You’re right, it’s not good.”

“No, I really mean it. It’s not good. It’s not a good time.”

The phone is damp in Ora’s hand and her whole arm aches from the effort of holding it, as if the man’s entire weight has been poured into the receiver. “What’s going on with you?” she whispers. “We haven’t talked for ages.”

“But you said he was getting out today. You said so!”

“You’re right, today is his discharge date.”

“Then why aren’t they letting him out?!” He is yelling at her now. “You said today was his date! That’s what you said!”

A breath of fire seems to come at her from the receiver. She holds the phone away from her face. She wants to scream with him: He was supposed to get out today!

They both fall silent. For a moment he seems to have calmed a little, and she whispers, “But how are you, tell me? You disappeared for three years.”

He doesn’t hear her, just repeats to himself, “This is not good. Keeping him on longer at the last minute is the worst.”

Ora, who has rationed all her oaths and talismans to last exactly three years, to the second, and has now exhausted them and herself, feels that beyond Avram’s words is a knowledge even keener than her own.

“How long will he be there?” he asks.

She explains that there’s no way of knowing. “He was already on his discharge leave, and they suddenly phoned from the army”—she elides—“and asked him to come.”

“But for how long?”

“It’s an emergency call-up. It could be a few weeks.”

“Weeks?”

“It’s something like twenty-eight days,” Ora says quickly, “but chances are it’ll all be over long before that.”

They are both exhausted. She collapses from the armchair onto the rug, her long legs folded beneath her, head bowed, her hair falling on her cheek, her body unknowingly reconstructing her adolescent pose. This is how she used to sit when they talked on the phone at seventeen, nineteen, twenty-two, long hours of pouring their souls out to each other. That was back when he still had a soul, Ilan comments from afar.

A quiet rustle passes through the line, interferences of time and memory. Her finger traces the curved pattern in the rug. Someone should research that one day, she thinks sourly: Why does running your finger over a woolly rug bring back memories and longings? She still cannot remove her wedding ring and may never be able to. The metal clings to her flesh and refuses to leave. And if it came off easily, would you? Her lips sag. Where is he now — Ecuador? Peru? He might be hiking with Adam among the turtles on the Galápagos, unaware that there’s practically a war here. That she had to take Ofer on her own today.

“Ora,” Avram says strenuously, as if hoisting himself out of a well, “I can’t be alone now.”

She stands up quickly. “Do you want me to … Wait, what do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

Her head is spinning and she leans against the wall. “Is there someone who can come and be with you?”

Long seconds go by. “No. Not now.”

“Don’t you have a friend, some guy from work?” Or some woman, she thinks. That girl he had once, the young one, what about her?

“I haven’t been working for two months.”

“What happened?”

“They’re renovating the restaurant. Gave us all a vacation.”

“Restaurant? You work at a restaurant? What about the pub?”

“What pub?”

“Where you worked …”

“Oh, that. I haven’t been there for two years. They fired me.”

I didn’t tell him anything either, she thinks. About my dismissals, from work and from the family.

“I don’t have the strength, I’m telling you. My strength lasted just until today.”

“Listen,” she says quietly, calculatedly, “I was planning to go up north tomorrow, so I could stop by your place for a few minutes …”

His breath turns rapid again, wheezing, but he doesn’t rebuff her immediately. She stands at the window with her forehead touching the glass. The street looks ordinary. No unfamiliar vehicles. The neighbors’ dogs aren’t barking.

“Ora, I didn’t understand what you said.”

“Never mind, it was a silly idea.” She pulls herself away from the window.

“Do you want to come?”

“Yes?” she answers in confusion.

“That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“But when?”

“Whenever you say. Tomorrow. Now. Preferably now. To tell you the truth, I’m a little afraid to be here on my own.”

“So you were thinking of coming?”

“Just for a few minutes. I’m on my way anyway—”

“But don’t expect anything. It’s a dump.”

She swallows, and her heart starts racing. “I’m not scared.”

“I live in a dump.”

“I don’t care.”

“Or maybe we could go out and walk around a little. What do you think?”

“Whatever you say.”

“I’ll wait for you downstairs, and we’ll walk around a bit, okay?”

“On the street?”

“There’s this pub down the road.”

“I’ll come and then we’ll decide.”

“Do you know my address?”

“Yes.”

“But I have nothing to give you. The place is empty.”

“I don’t need anything.”

“I’ve been on my own for almost a month.”

“You have?”

“And I think the store’s closed.”

“I don’t need food.” As she talks she darts around the apartment, punted from one wall to the next. She has to organize, finish packing, leave notes. She’ll go. She’ll flee. And she’ll take him with her.

“We can … there’s a kiosk around here—”

“Avram, I couldn’t eat a crumb. I just want to see you.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“And then you’ll go back home?”

“Yes. No. Maybe I’ll go on to the Galilee.”

“The Galilee?”

“Never mind that now.”

“How long will it take you?”

“To get there or to get out of there?”

No response. Perhaps he didn’t get her little joke.

“It’ll take me about an hour to close up everything here and get to Tel Aviv.” A cab! she remembers and her heart sinks. I need a cab again. And how exactly was I planning to get to the Galilee? She shuts her eyes hard. A distant headache is signaling, probing. Ilan was right. With her, five-year plans last at most five seconds.

“It’s a dump here, I’m telling you.”

“I’m coming.”

She hangs up before he can change his mind and proceeds to charge around in a frenzy. She writes a note for Ofer, sitting down at first, but soon finds herself standing up, hunched over. She explains to him again what she herself has trouble understanding and asks him to forgive her, and promises again that they’ll go hiking together when he finishes and asks him to please not go looking for her, she’ll be back in a month, mother’s word. She puts the note in a sealed envelope on the table and leaves a sheet of instructions for Bronya, the maid, written in simple Hebrew with large letters. She says she is going on an unexpected vacation, asks her to bring in the mail and take care of Ofer if he comes home on leave — laundry, ironing, cooking — and leaves her a check with a larger payment than usual for the month. Then she sends a few quick e-mails and makes some phone calls, mainly to girlfriends, to whom she explains the situation without exactly lying but without telling the whole truth — above all, without mentioning that Ofer went back today, of his own free will, to the army — and almost rudely intercepts puzzled questions. They all know about the planned trip with Ofer, and have been looking forward to it excitedly with her. They realize something has gone wrong and that a different idea, no less exciting and bold, a temptation that is hard to resist, has come up at the last minute. They think she sounds strange, dizzy, as if she has taken something. She keeps apologizing for being mysterious: “It’s still a secret,” she says with a smile and leaves a trail of worried friends behind her, who immediately call one another to analyze the situation and try to figure out what is going on with Ora. There are some colorful guesses and a few conjectures of passionate pleasure, probably abroad, and perhaps the occasional lick of jealousy at this newfound bird-of-freedom who is their friend.