David Grossman - To the End of the Land

That’s how it was when she was sixteen, and nineteen, and twenty-two, but now she pulls her gaze sharply away from him, fearing he might hurt her there, punish her for something, take his revenge on her there. Or perhaps he will discover that there’s nothing inside her anymore, that his old Ora has dried up and died along with what dried up and died inside him.

They sit quietly, digesting. Ora hugs her knees, rationalizing that she isn’t all that accessible and permeable even to herself anymore, and that even she herself doesn’t go near that place inside her. It must be that she’s growing old, she decides — for some time now she’s had a strange eagerness to pronounce her aging, impatient for the relief that comes with a declaration of total bankruptcy. That’s how it goes. You say goodbye to yourself even before other people start to, softening the blow of what will inevitably come.

Later, much later, Avram gets up, stretches, gathers some firewood in a pile, and surrounds it with a circle of stones. Ora senses new purpose in his movement, but she knows herself and remains cautious: she might simply be convincing herself that she’s seeing things — seeing Avram in Avram’s shadow.

She takes out an old towel and spreads it on the ground. She lays out plastic plates and cutlery and hands Avram two overripe tomatoes and a cucumber to chop. She has crackers too, and canned corn and tuna fish and a small bottle of olive oil that Ofer loves, from the Dir Rafat monastery, which she was planning to surprise him with. She had other little surprises that were supposed to make him happy on their trip. Where is Ofer now? She isn’t sure whether she should think about him or let him be. What does he need from her now? Her eyes are drawn to the open notebook. Maybe the answer is there. She wants to close it, but cannot. It’s all exposed there, yet to close it would be to stifle it, even to stamp it out. She gets down on one knee, straightens the corner of the towel, and weighs it down with a stone. As she does so she pulls the notebook to her and reads what she has written. She is surprised to find that in just a few lines she skipped from past to present: Ofer walked funny … It’s a bit like watching a drunk … Ilan and I agree that…

Ilan would have something to say about that.

Avram lights a piece of newspaper and coaxes the fire to the twigs. Ora stares at the paper, wondering what day it’s from, and looks away from the headlines. Who knows how far things have gone there? She quickly shuts the notebook and waits for the paper to be consumed. Avram sits down opposite her and they eat silently. Actually, Avram eats. He boils water for a Cup-a-Soup and gobbles down two of them, one after the other, claiming he’s addicted to MSG. She asks casually about his nutritional habits. Does he cook? Does someone cook for him?

“Sometimes. Depends,” he says.

She watches his appetite in astonishment. She herself can’t put a bite in her mouth. In fact, she realizes that her stomach has locked up since she left home. Even at the feast in the house of the laughing woman, the baby’s mother, she could hardly swallow the food. Maybe one good thing has come of this trip after all. Then, as quick as she can, like someone pickpocketing herself, she reaches out to the notebook and opens it.

I’m afraid to forget him. His childhood, I mean. I often get confused between the two boys. Before they were born I thought a mother remembers every child separately. Well that’s not exactly how it is. Or maybe with me it’s especially not that way. And stupidly, I didn’t keep a notebook for each boy, with their development and all the clever things they did since they were born. When Adam was born I didn’t have the mind for that with everything that was going on, when Ilan left us. And when Ofer was born I didn’t either (again because of all the complications back then — apparently every time I give birth there’s something going on). And I thought that maybe now, on this hike, I would write down a few things I still remember. Just so they’ll finally be written down somewhere .

The stream runs in the distance. Evening gnats hum, and crickets chirp madly. A branch cracks in the fire, flicking charred specks over the notebook. Avram gets up and moves the backpacks away from the fire. She is surprised: his movements really are more confident, lighter.

“Coffee, Ofra?”

“What did you call me?”

He laughs, very embarrassed.

She laughs too, her heart pounding.

“So, coffee?”

“Can you wait? I’ll just be a minute.”

He shrugs his shoulders, finishes eating, and arranges Ofer’s sleeping bag like a pillow. He sprawls out, crosses his arms behind his neck, and looks up at the sheltering branches and hints of dark sky. He thinks about the woman with the crimson thread walking all the way down the country. He sees the procession of exiles. Long lines of people with bowed heads come out from every populated area, from the cities and the kibbutzim, to join the main line, the long one, which moves slowly down the spine of the land. When he was in solitary confinement in Abbasiya Prison and thought Israel no longer existed, he saw the picture in detail — the babies on shoulders, the heavy suitcases, the empty, extinguished eyes. But the woman walking with the crimson thread gives some comfort. You could imagine, for example, he thinks, sucking on a piece of straw, that in every town and village and kibbutz there was someone stealthily tying his own thread to hers. And that way, secretly, a tapestry was being woven all over the country.

Ora bites the tip of her pen and clicks it against her teeth. His slip of the tongue a moment ago confused her, and she has to make an effort to get back to where she was.

Ofer was born in a routine delivery, nothing difficult, and very quick. Maybe twenty minutes from when Ilan got me to the hospital. It was Hadassah Mount Scopus. We got there at around seven a.m., after my water had broken at six or so, in my sleep .

Not exactly sleep , she writes, and gives Avram a sideways glance, but he’s still pondering the sky, lost in a thought that jerks the length of straw in his mouth this way and that. There was something going on and my water broke in bed. And when I realized that’s what it was, I mean, that nothing else made sense under the circumstances, we got organized quickly. Ilan had already prepared bags for me and for him, it was all arranged, written instructions, phone numbers, phone tokens, etc., Ilan being Ilan. We phoned Ariela to come and stay with Adam and take him to day care later. He slept all night and never knew a thing .

Ofer was born at seven twenty-five a.m. It was a very easy, quick delivery. I got there and gave birth. They hardly had time to prepare me. Gave me an enema and sent me to the bathroom. I felt strong pressure in my stomach, and as soon as I sat down on the toilet, I could feel him coming out! I yelled for Ilan, and he came in and just picked me up the way I was, and put me down on a bed in the corridor, and shouted for a nurse. Together they pushed me, running, to the large delivery room, which by the way was where I had Adam (in the same room!), and three more pushes, he was out!

Her face glows, and she smiles generously at Avram. He responds with a questioning smile.

Ofer weighed three kilos six hundred. Pretty large, based on my limited sample. Adam was barely two kilos (minus three grams!). They’ve come along nicely since then, the two of them .

That’s it. That is exactly what she wanted to write down. She takes a deep breath. Just for that it was worth lugging the notebook all this way. Now she’s ready to eat. A sudden hunger gnaws at her. But she sucks on the pen for a moment longer, wondering if there’s anything else to add about the birth. She shakes out her strained wrist. A high school kind of pain, she thinks: How often do I find myself writing by hand?