David Grossman - To the End of the Land

The pulse in her neck beats to the point of pain. How quickly her tiny joy has faded. And what, really, will she say about him? How can you even describe and revive a whole person, flesh and blood, with only words — oh God, with only words?

She roots around inside herself, as though if she continues to be silent for even one more minute Avram may think she really has nothing to tell. But everything she feverishly digs up seems banal and marginal — agreeable anecdotes, like the time when Ofer rehabilitated a small well that had dried up near Har Adar. He opened the aqueduct and renewed the spring and planted an orchard nearby. Or perhaps she will tell him about the amazing bed that Ofer built with his own hands for her and Ilan. All right, so she’ll tell him that, so what? A well, a bed, stories that ultimately fit a thousand boys just like him, no less clever and sweet and lovely. It occurs to her that although there are lots of things about Ofer that are good and special, there may not be one truly extraordinary thing, something unique that puts him head and shoulders above everyone else. And with all her might Ora resists this loathsome thought that clings to her, this thought that is so foreign to her — how did she even arrive at such an idea? But wait, what about the movie he made for his cinema class in the tenth grade? There was definitely something there, Avram would like the idea. She glances at his head thrust deep between his slouching shoulders and thinks: Maybe not.

There was something troubling about that film, and to this day, five years later, it nags at her. Eleven minutes shot on their home video camera, documenting an ordinary day in the life of an ordinary young boy: family, school, friends, girlfriend, basketball, parties. But the film did not show a single flesh-and-blood figure, only the shadows of the characters — shadows walking, alone or in pairs, even in groups, shadows sitting in class, shadows eating lunch, kissing, making out, drumming, drinking beer. When she asked Ofer what the idea behind the film was, or what his intention was when he made it (just as she had asked him about the empty plaster molds he cast in his own image, which he displayed at the school’s year-end exhibition, or the menacing series of photographs of his own face with a vulture’s beak sketched in charcoal over each photo), he shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know, I just thought it would be nice to do.” Or, “I just wanted to photograph someone, and I was the only person in the room.” And if she insisted—“You overwhelmed him again,” Ilan told her afterward — he would impatiently shrug her off: “Does there have to be an explanation? Can’t something just happen? Does every little thing have to be analyzed to the bone?”

Ora accompanied the film shoots for three weeks as driver, caterer, and water girl, and not infrequently as the furious sheepdog who ran around after the unruly actors, Ofer’s peers, who constantly ditched rehearsals and shoots. And when they finally deigned to appear, they would argue with Ofer with an arrogance and rudeness that drove her mad. She would leave as soon as an argument broke out. He was still smaller and shorter than most of his classmates and slightly excluded and hesitant, and Ora could not stand the sight of his bowed head and his downcast look and the tremble in his lower lip. Still, he stood his ground: making his presence known, his shoulders stretched almost to his ears, his face an uncontrollable assemblage of pain and insult, but not giving an inch.

She also acted in the film, cast in the role of an annoying and nosy teacher. Ilan passed by in the background, too, on a motorcycle, waving hello and disappearing. There was a nice credit at the end: “And thanks to Mom and Dad, who contributed their shadows.” Now she wonders if Avram might think the film had a uniqueness, or a spark, or a “one-off”-ness — all his words — and she heard the old tune of those words, as when she and he and Ilan used to come out of a movie or a play that had moved him, and he would caress the word that electrified him most of all, “greatness,” with a hoarse, excited whisper full of awe: Greatnesssss! accompanied by a broad, kingly sweep of the arm. He was around twenty then. Or twenty-one? The same age Ofer is today, which is hard to believe. And it’s even harder to believe how arrogant and pretentious he was, how she could even stand him, with the silly goatee he cultivated …

She walks on, trapped in a poisonous dialogue with herself, because she finally recognizes how important it is to her that Avram should love Ofer — yes, love him, fall in love with him right then and there without any reservations or criticism, fall in love with him despite himself, just the way he once fell in love with her , in whom there was not even a single drop of greatness, and when he fell in love with her she was nothing but a broken vessel — ill and bedraggled, drugged up and bleeding all day and night, and Avram was in that state, too. It was the optimal state for falling in love with me, she thinks, and weakly slows her pace. And perhaps it is true, as he himself joked years later, that it was the only way a yiddeneh ’s id could meet a yid ’s id. Her strength is sapped, and she stands panting in pain, pressing her fingers between her eyes. All these thoughts — where have all these thoughts come from? And who needs them now?

Avram sees her swaying and quickly skips over to catch her a moment before she falls. How strong he is, she thinks again, surprised, as her knees buckle. He gently lays her on the ground, quickly takes off her backpack and places it under her head. He removes a sharp stone from under her back, takes off her glasses, pours some water into his palm, and softly caresses her face. She lies with her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling heavily, her skin covered with cold sweat. “See how the mind works,” she murmurs. “Don’t speak now,” he says, and she does as she is told. She finds his concern pleasing, and his hand on her face, and the quiet command in his voice.

“I remembered,” she says later, her hand holding his wrist limply, “that you once told me about a radio play, or a story. It was about a woman whose lover leaves her, and you hear her talking with him on the phone but you can’t hear him.”

“Cocteau. La Voix Humaine.”

“Yes, Cocteau,” she whispers, “how do you remember …” She feels the water slowly drying on her face. She can see a mountainside covered with bushes and a very blue sheet of sky. A sharp scent of sage enters her nostrils. His hand is as soft as it was then — how can the gentleness and softness still be there? She closes her eyes and wonders if it is possible to reconstruct him from so little. “You were in your French period back then, and your radio play — writing period. Remember? You had a whole theory about the human voice. You were convinced that radio would beat out television. You built a little recording studio at home.”

Avram smiles. “Not at home. In the shed outside. It was a real studio. Days and nights I sat there recording, cutting, splicing, mixing.”

“And I thought,” Ora whispers, “after Ilan left me, the first time, after Adam was born, I used to talk with him on the phone sometimes, and I must have sounded like her, like the woman from your Cocteau play, pathetic like her, and so forgiving and understanding about his difficulties, his difficulties with me , the son of a bitch …”

Avram’s hand moves away from her forehead. She opens her eyes and sees his face withdrawn, closed off.

“He left me right after Adam was born, didn’t you know?”

“You didn’t say.”

Ora sighs. “You really don’t know anything. You’re an ignoramus when it comes to my life.”