David Grossman - To the End of the Land

• • •

“You can’t sleep with me,” she said ponderously.

“I can’t sleep with you,” he echoed in a hollow voice.

“You’re incapable,” she said and put down the knife and stood motionless at the sink.

“I’m incapable,” said he, curiously probing for the meaning of the strange tone in her voice.

She reached out sideways without looking at him, found his hand, and pulled it to her.

“Ora.” His voice was hesitant, cautionary.

She took the knife out of his hand. He did not resist. She lingered for a moment, her head bowed, as though seeking advice from someone invisible. Maybe even from the old Avram. Then she led him to the bedroom. He walked with her as though he had no volition. As though all his vitality had leaked out. She lay him on his back and placed a pillow under his head. Her face was close to his. She kissed him lightly on his lips for the first time since he had come back and sat next to him on the edge of the bed and waited to understand.

“You can’t sleep with me,” she said after a moment in a slightly firmer voice.

“I can’t sleep with you,” he repeated, astonished at her intention, and very hesitant.

“You simply cannot sleep with me now,” she said decisively, and started to take her blouse off.

“I simply cannot,” he repeated suspiciously.

“Even if I take my shirt off, it won’t make any difference to you.”

“Even then.” He looked at her blouse without any expression as it fell to the floor.

“Or even if I take off, let’s say … this,” she added with total matter-of-factness and hoped Avram could not sense her embarrassment as she took off her bra — he had once suggested calling bras “booby-traps”—“it wouldn’t interest you at all.” Without looking at him, she felt for his hand and placed it on her right breast, the smaller and more sensitive one, which the old Avram had always turned to first. She softly caressed herself with his hand.

“Nothing at all,” he murmured and watched his hand stroke the pure, delightful breast, and those words, “pure, delightful breast,” pierced him from a great distance, through a thick coat of dullness.

“And not even when I …” She stood up and slowly took off her pants, her hips moving softly, still asking herself what she was really doing, knowing that only when she did it would she understand.

“Nothing,” he said carefully, and looked at her long, pale legs.

“Or even this,” she murmured, and took off her underwear and stood facing him naked, tall, thin, and downy. “Take off your clothes,” she whispered. “No, let me undress you, you have no idea how long I haven’t been waiting for this moment.” She took off his shirt and pants. He lay in his underwear looking forlorn. “You can’t sleep with me,” she said as though to herself and ran her hand down his body, from his chest to his toes, and lingered on his many scars, stitches, scabs. He said nothing. “Say it,” she said, “say, I can’t sleep with you, say it after me, say it with me.”

“I can’t sleep with you.” His chest rose and expanded slightly.

“You’re simply incapable.”

“I’m incapable.”

“And even if you really want to, you won’t be able to fuck me.”

“Even if I …” He swallowed.

“Even if you’re dying to feel my legs around you, hugging you and tightening against you.” She knelt on the floor by his side and rolled down his underwear, and her hand hovered over his penis, and he let out a soft moan. “And even if my tongue rolls and glides on it,” she said with complete nonchalance, almost indifference, and felt that she had finally found the right voice, and that only thanks to the old Avram did she know how to do what she was doing. She dotted him with quick spots of wetness and rounded her lips around him. “Even if your tongue—” Avram murmured and choked up, and his hand lifted up of its own accord and came to rest on his forehead. “And even if, say,” she whispered in between licking and lightly sucking. “Even if,” he sighed and propped himself up on his elbows to see her body crouched on all fours next to his, and he stared at the way her beautiful long white back arched, and at the curve of her ass, and at the impertinent little breast hidden under her arm. “And even if maybe it roused a little, completely against its will, of course,” Ora added and ran her damp fingers over his glans, and tightened her grip, and sucked and bit lightly. “Even if it—” Avram murmured and licked his dry lips and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “And even if I kiss and lick at it and feel it warm and throbbing in my hand.” “Even if you feel it warm,” Avram groaned, and a thread of passion suddenly glowed red inside him. “And even if, for example, I take it all deep inside my mouth,” she said with a calmness that surprised her, and did not take him into her mouth, and Avram moaned and moved his hips up toward her, longing to be gathered in. “And even if it stays asleep and keeps on dreaming inside my mouth,” she said, and enveloped him with her mouth. “Even if it—” Avram’s head fell back and his eyes rolled up, and he deeply inhaled the fullness that whispered in his thighs.

Ora dozes. Lying on her back, her head turned to one side, her face is tranquil and beautiful. Next to her ear, alongside a stem of onion weed, three fire bugs crawl in single file, gleaming like tiny red shields. In the shadow of her feet, hidden beneath some fringed rue, swallowtail caterpillars swell in black and yellow, batting their feelers against enemies, real and imagined. Avram looks at her. His eyes scan and caress her face.

“I was thinking,” his voice suddenly pipes up.

“What?” Ora awakes immediately.

“I woke you …”

“Never mind. What were you saying?”

“When you told me about his shoes, the big ones, I wondered if you remember all kinds of things.”

“Like what?”

He laughs awkwardly. “You know. Like, how he started to walk, or how—”

“How he started to walk?”

“Yes, the beginning …”

“Ofer? As a baby?”

“Because we talked about how he walked, and I was thinking—”

She laughs too, but there is something unpleasant in her giggle, exposing how completely she has accepted the fact that he never thought about Ofer as flesh and blood, as a human being who once, at some moment in time, had stood up on a pair of tiny legs and started to walk.

“It was when we still lived in Tzur Hadassah,” she says quickly, before he can take it back. “He was thirteen months old, and I remember it really well.” She pulls herself up into a seated position, rubs her eyes, and yawns. “Sorry,” she says with a strained jaw and clumsily covers her mouth. She has a pleasant sensation in her limbs. She’s had a good nap, but she hopes it won’t keep her awake at night. “Should I tell you?”

He nods.

“Ilan and Adam and I were in the kitchen. I remember how crowded it always was in there, before we did the renovations.” She gives him a sideways glance. “Do you really want me to?”

“Yes, yes, why are you—”

She folds her legs beneath her. Every sentence she utters seems to contain firecrackers of memory and new information that could hurt him. For example, the slightly dark kitchen, and its smallness, and its crowded aromas, and the damp stains on the ceiling, and how she’d made love with him there once when they were young, standing up with her back against the pantry door. She felt bad telling him that they’d renovated the kitchen, as though by doing so they had removed all traces of him.

“The three of us were in the kitchen, us and Adam, and Ofer was playing on the rug in the living room. We were talking, chattering, it was in the evening. I was probably cooking something, maybe frying an omelet, and Ilan was probably making spaghetti. I’m just guessing now. And Adam … I think he was already sitting on a proper chair by then. Yes, of course, he was four and a half or so, right? So we’d already switched the high chair to Ofer.” She speaks slowly. Her hands move, furnishing the picture in her mind, positioning the actors and props in their places. “And I suddenly noticed that it was very quiet in the living room. And you know, when you have a baby—” Avram blinks to indicate, to warn her, that he doesn’t know, and Ora, without thinking, blinks twice: Now you do know —“when you have a baby, you always have one ear tuned to him, especially when he’s not right next to you. And somehow you’re always picking up little signals, every few seconds. A cough or a sniffle or a mumble, and then you — I—can relax for a few seconds.” She examines his face. “Should I go on?”