David Grossman - To the End of the Land

“To his unwillingness to live,” Ilan hisses.

“That is a question only he can answer,” says the psychologist without looking at them.

Ilan keeps on living in the shed, and his presence, like his absence, gradually fades. Ora stops believing he’ll ever be able to cross the ocean between the shed and the house. He himself tells her on the phone one night that this seems to be the distance he can tolerate from her and Adam. She no longer asks what he means. Deep inside, she’s already given up on him. He asks again, as he does occasionally, if she wants him to leave. She just has to say the word and he’ll be gone tomorrow. Ora says, “Leave, stay, what difference does it make.”

For a short while she has a new boyfriend, a guy called Motti, a divorced accordion player who leads public sing-alongs, whom her friend Ariela set her up with. She usually meets him out of the house, more because of Adam than Ilan. When Adam goes to stay with her parents in Haifa for three days, she invites Motti to sleep over. She knows that Ilan in his shed can see, or at least hear. She doesn’t try to hide it. Motti sleeps with her ungracefully. He probes his way inside her and keeps asking insistently if he’s “already there.” Ora doesn’t want to be his there . She remembers the times when she was entirely here . Afterward, Motti sings “Where Are You, Beloved?” in the shower, in a ringing tenor voice, and Ora sees Ilan’s shadow in the shed, darting back and forth. She doesn’t invite Motti back again.

One evening, in Avram’s apartment in Tel Aviv, she and Avram are making a salad, and she watches out of the corner of her eye to make sure he’s using the knife properly and not throwing out half the cucumber with its peel. He tells her about a nurse from Tel Hashomer who’s asked him out twice, and he’s said no.

“Why did you say no?”

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“Because, you know.”

“No, I don’t, what am I supposed to know?” But she suddenly feels cold.

“Because after the movie she’ll invite me up to her place.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Don’t you get it?”

“No, I don’t get it,” she almost shouts.

He keeps chopping vegetables silently.

“Is she nice?” Ora asks casually, as she crushes a tomato.

“She’s fine.”

“Is she attractive?” she asks with trembling disinterest.

“She’s pretty good-looking, nice body, barely nineteen years old.”

“Oh. So what’s wrong with going up to her place?”

“I can’t,” he says emphatically, and Ora quickly switches to an onion, to have an excuse for the tears that will come.

“Ever since I got back I’m this way. Can’t do it.” He snickers: “A broken reed.”

She feels chilly and hollow in her stomach. As if only now, after several years of delay, has the final and terrible shock wave of his tragedy settled over him. “Have you even tried?” she whispers, and thinks, How did I not know about this? How did it not occur to me to find out about this? I took care of his whole body, and I forgot about that? About that , with him , I forgot?

“I tried four times. Four times is a representative sample, isn’t it?”

“With who?” she asks, amazed. “Who did you try with?”

He doesn’t seem embarrassed. “Once with the cousin of a soldier who was in the bed next to mine, and once with a Dutch volunteer who works there. Once with a soldier from rehab, once with someone I met on the beach a while ago.” He sees the expression on her face. “What are you looking at me like that for? I didn’t even initiate it! It’s them …” Then he adds helplessly, “Turns out the prisoner fantasy works with POWs too, otherwise I can’t explain it.”

“Has it occurred to you that they like you?” she bursts out, upset by the tinge of jealousy that jabs her. “Maybe your charm wasn’t damaged? Maybe even the Egyptians couldn’t hurt the …”

“I can’t get it up, Ora. The minute I go to bed with them, each one of them. I’m actually not bad at jerking off, but how long can I spend stuck with myself? And anyway, lately I’m having problems masturbating, too. When I’m on Largactyl, I can’t come.”

“But did you really want them?” she asks, and something in her voice seems to split into several directions. “Maybe you didn’t really want it?”

“I wanted it, I wanted it,” he grunts angrily. “I wanted to fuck, what’s the big deal? I’m not talking about immortal love here, I wanted a fuck, Ora, why are you so—”

“But maybe they weren’t right for you,” she whispers and thinks painfully that a woman who is going to be with Avram has to be just right for him, for his subtleties.

“They were fine, don’t look for excuses, they were just right for what …”

“And with me?” she asks with a glazed look. “Could you sleep with me?”

There is a long pause.

“With you?”

She swallows. “Yes, with me.”

“I don’t know,” he mumbles. “Wait, are you serious?”

“It’s not something to joke about.” Her voice trembles.

“But how—”

“We were so good together.”

“I don’t know, I don’t think I’ll ever, with you—”

“Why not?” She jumps into her pain immediately. “Because of the lots we cast? Because I drew you?”

“No, no.”

“Then because of Ilan?”

“No.”

She grabs another tomato and dices it in tiny pieces. “Then why not?”

“No. I can’t do it with you anymore.”

“You’re so sure.”

They stand by the sink without touching, looking at the wall. Their temples throb.

“And Adam?” Avram asks now.

“What about him?”

Avram hesitates. He isn’t sure what he meant to ask.

“Adam? You want to know about Adam now?” she says.

“Yes, is there something wrong with that, too?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” she says, laughing. “Ask anything you want. That’s what we’re here for.”

“Well, just if he was also a kid who … You know what? Tell me whatever you want.”

Here we go, she thinks and stretches her limbs.

They are walking through a thicket of prickly burnet and sage. The oaks are as low as bushes here. Lizards dart under their feet in a panic. Side by side they walk, looking for the path, which has been swallowed up in the abundant growth, and Ora steals a glance at their elastic shadows that hover on the shrubbery. When Avram waves his arms as he walks, it briefly looks as though he is placing his hand on her shoulder, and when she plays with her body in the sun a little, she can make the shadow of his arm hug the shadow of her waist.

“Adam was also a thin boy, just like Ofer, but he stayed thin. A beanpole.”

“Oh.” Avram looks around as if randomly, indifferently, but Ora, as it turns out, still knows all the cards in his deck.

“As a child, he was always taller than Ofer — well, don’t forget he’s three years older. But when Ofer started getting older and growing, it changed and the order was reversed.”

“So now—”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Ofer is taller. Much.”

Avram is amazed. “Really? Much taller?”

“I told you, he had a growth spurt and just overtook him all at once, almost by a whole head.”

“You don’t say …”

“Yes.”

“So in fact,” Avram says, speeding up and thoughtfully sucking on his cheek, “he’s taller than Ilan, too?”

“Yes, he’s taller than Ilan.”

Silence. It almost embarrasses her to witness this.

“But how tall is Ilan? One meter eighty?”

“Even taller.”

“You don’t say …” The flash of a well-played ploy glimmers in his eye. He mumbles wonderingly, “I never thought he’d be like that one day.”