David Grossman - To the End of the Land

“Come on, let’s go.”

After no more than a hundred steps, beyond a small hill, the path led them into the stream once again.

Avram stood defeated. This turn was too much for him. For me too, Ora thought and sat down angrily. She took off her shoes and socks, tied them and fastened them, rolled up her pants, and walked firmly into the freezing, snow-fed water, unable to stifle a tiny shriek. Avram was still stuck on the bank behind her, confused by the forces that both pulled and pushed him. Desperate as he was, he knew that the bank Ora was moving toward now was the side on which they had begun their trek, and there, it seemed, was some stability, perhaps because that was the side of home. He sat down and went through the motions, tied his shoes to the backpack almost without seeing Ofer’s pair, and waded into the cold water with his lips pursed. This time he took resolute strides, kicking up a big commotion, and then came to sit down beside Ora on the bank. He slapped his feet dry and put his socks and shoes back on. Ora felt that he was at ease, not only because he was back on the familiar side but because he had seen that it was possible to cross over and back. And that is exactly what they did, three or four more times — they lost count — on that first morning of their Upper Galilee journey, which she was still calling a hike, if she was even calling it anything, if they even spoke more than a few words the whole day: “Come on,” “Give me your hand,” “Watch out here,” “Damn cows.” The path and the stream weaved and converged, and by the third crossing they no longer removed their shoes but simply walked through the mud and the water and climbed back up, sloshing around in their shoes until the water seeped out. Finally the path broke away from the Hatzbani River and became easier and earthier, an ordinary trail through the fields, dotted with big puddles of mud, pale cyclamens hovering on either side. Avram stopped glancing behind him every few minutes and did not ask whether Ora would know how to find the way back. He seemed to have realized that she had no intention of going back anywhere and that he was her hostage. He grew introverted, resigned to reducing his vitality to that of a plant, a lichen, or a spore. It must hurt less that way, Ora imagined. Why am I torturing him? she wondered as she watched him walk, frail and downtrodden, serving out a sentence he did not understand at all. He’s no longer part of me or of my life and really hasn’t been for years. She did not feel pained by this thought, merely baffled: How could it be that the person I thought was my own flesh and blood, the root of my soul, would not tug at my heartstrings when he is severed from me in this way? What am I doing with him now? Why did this fixation grab hold of me now, when I need all my strength to rescue one child — why burden myself with another?

“Ofer,” she murmured, “I’m forgetting to think about him.”

Avram turned around suddenly and walked back down the path, aiming himself at her with his faltering steps. “Tell me what you want, I don’t have the strength for these games.”

“I told you.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’m running away.”

“From what?”

She looked into his eyes and said nothing.

He swallowed. “Where’s Ilan?”

“Ilan and I separated a year ago. A bit less. Nine months.”

He swayed a little, as though she had hit him.

“That’s that,” she said.

“What do you mean separated? From who?”

“From who? From us. From each other. That’s it.”

“Why?”

“People separate. It happens. Come on, let’s go.”

He raised a heavy hand and kept standing there like a dim-witted student. Under his stubble she saw his tortured expression. There were years when she and Ilan used to joke that if they ever split up, they’d have to keep pretending they were a couple, for his sake.

“What reason do you have to separate?” he growled. “I want to know what came over you all of a sudden. All these years you keep going and then you just get sick of it?”

He’s scolding me, Ora realized with some surprise. He’s complaining.

“Who wanted this?” Avram straightened up, suddenly full of power. “It was him, wasn’t it? Did he have another woman?”

Ora almost choked. “Calm down. The two of us decided together. And maybe it’s better this way.” But then she seethed: “Anyway, why are you poking your nose into our lives? What do you even know about us? Where were you for three years? Where were you for thirty years?”

“I’m sorry.” He huddled over, alarmed. “I … Where was I?” He furrowed his brow as though he truly did not know.

“Anyway, that’s the situation.” Ora spoke smoothly now, to compensate for her outburst.

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“You’re alone?”

“I … I’m without him, yes. But I’m not alone.” She looked straight into his eyes. “I really don’t feel alone.” Her attempt at a smile did not work.

Avram wrung his hands nervously. She could feel his body rallying to take in the news. Ora and Ilan are separated. Ilan alone. Ora alone. Ora without Ilan.

“But why? Why?!” He was riled up again, shouting into her face, all but stomping his feet.

“You’re shouting. Don’t shout at me.”

“But how … you were always …” He let his backpack drop and looked up at her like a miserable puppy. “No, explain this to me from the beginning. What happened?”

“What happened?” She put down her backpack, too. “Lots of things happened since Ofer enlisted. Since you decided that you had to, I don’t know, disappear on me.”

His hands crushed each other. His eyes darted around.

“Our lives changed,” Ora said softly, “and I changed. And Ilan, too. And the family. I don’t know where to start telling you.”

“Where is he now?”

“On a trip in South America. Took a vacation from the office and everything. I don’t know how long he’ll be gone. We haven’t really had any contact recently.” She hesitated. She did not tell him that Adam had gone along, too. That in fact she was separated from her older son as well. That from him, from Adam, she might even be divorced. “Give me some time, Avram. My life is a mess right now, it’s not easy for me to talk about this.”

“Okay, okay, we don’t have to talk.”

He stood up looking frightened and stricken, like an ant nest kicked by a crude foot. Once, Ora thought, these sorts of plot twists, new permutations, frenetic changes, used to excite him, stimulate his mind and body, fermentize him — his word. Oh, she sighed silently, all the endlessly possible. Remember? Remember? You invented that, you made those rules for us. Playing blindman’s buff in lower Manhattan and opening our eyes in Harlem. And the way you said the lion should lie down with the lamb — let’s see what happens, you said. Maybe for once in the history of the universe there’ll be a surprise. Maybe this one particular lion and this one particular lamb will make a go of it together, this one time, and maybe they’ll reach — she could not remember the word he’d used—“elevation”? “Salvation”? His words, an entire lexicon, a dictionary and a phrasebook and a glossary, at the age of sixteen and nineteen and twenty-two, but since then: silence, lights out.

They started walking again. Slowly, side by side, bowed under their weights. She could practically feel the news sinking into him, like a solution trickling into a substance and changing its composition. He was slowly grasping that for the first time in thirty-five years he was really with her alone, without Ilan, without even the shadow of Ilan.

Whether or not that was true, she had trouble deciding. For months now she hadn’t been able to make up her mind. One minute she thought this way, and the next she thought the other.