David Grossman - To the End of the Land

Between two rocks, she remembers. I put it down for a minute, this morning, while I rolled up my sleeping bag, and I left it there. How could I leave it there?

“With any luck,” she says out loud, perhaps too loud, “no one will find it before we get there.”

It happened very early that morning. She and Avram were hiking up the riverbed when they saw a figure walking down the hillside in their direction. Perhaps that was why he had at first seemed taller and thinner than he was. And the strange light coming through the terebinth branches — a dusty, yellowish dawn light — made him look dark and blurry. Ora stood watching the figure for a moment, pondering the way sometimes, in the morning, when someone comes at you from the opposite direction and the sunlight is behind them, in your eyes, all you can see is the outline of a spindly Giacometti body that disintegrates and re-forms itself with every step, and it’s hard to know if the figure is a man or a woman, and whether it’s coming toward you or moving farther away. And then she heard stones skidding behind her, and Avram jumped ahead in a flash to stand between her and the stranger, who gave them a slightly bewildered smile.

Avram’s move also confused her, and she did not respond. Having planted himself in front of her, Avram stood breathing deeply, his chest puffed out, and stared intently not at the man in front of him but at the pebbles on the ground. He looked like a guard dog: loyal, stubborn, dense, protecting his lady.

The men faced each other as Avram blocked the path. The stranger cleared his throat, said a cautious good morning, and Ora answered feebly, “Good morning.” “You’re coming from down there?” asked the man redundantly, and Ora nodded. She didn’t look at him, either. She felt that she did not have the strength to make even the slightest trivial connection. She only wanted to keep walking with Avram and talking with Avram about Ofer, and anything else was a distraction and a waste of energy. “So long,” she said, and waited for Avram to keep going. But he did not move, and the man cleared his throat again and said, “When you get to the top, you’ll see some lovely flowers. Carpets of spiny broom, and the redbuds are in bloom, too.” Ora glanced at him wearily: What was he talking about? All this nonsense about blossoms. She noticed that he was around her age, a little older, fifty-something, bronzed and solid and relaxed. In his eyes she saw herself and Avram. They gave off a forlorn whiff of the persecuted, and disaster hovered over them. The man grasped the straps on his backpack with two remarkably long, arched thumbs, and seemed to be considering taking the bag off.

“So you’re hiking the trail?”

“What?” she murmured. “What trail?”

“The Israel Trail.” He pointed to an orange-blue-and-white marker on one of the rocks.

“What’s that,” she said. She did not have the strength to round her voice into a question mark.

“Oh,” the man said, smiling, “I thought you were—”

“Where does the trail go?” Ora asked urgently. Too many things were suddenly demanding her comprehension at once. The smile that cleaved his long, serious face into two. And the warm olive tone of his skin. And the way Avram was still standing between them, a lump, a human wall. And maybe also the Yedioth newspaper rolled up in the pocket of the stranger’s backpack, and a pair of large feminine glasses, like hers, but blue — hers were red — that hung on a string around his neck and looked completely wrong for him, and somehow also indescribably annoying. And on top of all that, now he was saying that this modest, intimate path that she and Avram had been walking for a week, had a name. Someone had given it a name. All at once, she had been robbed of something.

“It goes all the way to Eilat. All the way to Taba. Goes down the entire country.”

“From where?”

“From the north. Around Tel-Dan. I’ve been hiking it for a week. I hike a bit, then I go back a bit. Around in circles. It’s hard for me to leave this area, with the blossoms and everything, but you have to keep going, right?” He smiled at her again. She had the feeling that his face was gradually revealing itself to her, being painted in front of her eyes to adapt to her pace of perception, which was suddenly very slow.

“Did you sleep down there?”

He wouldn’t give up. Why wouldn’t he leave her alone? Just let her keep walking. She smiled helplessly, unsure whether to lose her temper at him — those affected glasses, like some private, irritating joke that he waved around for all to see — or to respond to a certain natural, comfortable softness that she felt in him.

“Yes, down there, but we’re only … How far does it go, you said?”

“Eilat.” Thick eyebrows and short, solid, silver hair were now added to his face.

“What about Jerusalem?”

“That’s more or less on the way, but you still have a long way to go.” He smiled again, as he did after every sentence. Bright white teeth, she saw, and full, dark lips, with a deep crack in the middle of the lower one. She sensed a hushed anger from Avram’s body. The man threw him a cautious glance. “Do you need anything?” he asked, and Ora realized he was worried about her, that he suspected she was in some sort of trouble, maybe even taken captive by Avram.

“No.” She straightened up and smiled as charmingly as she could. “We’re fine. The truth is, we’re still waking up.”

And she started smoothing down her wild hair with both hands — she hadn’t even combed it that morning before leaving; there was a tinge of remorse at her principled decision this past year not to dye her hair. She quickly wiped the corners of her eyes and made sure there were no crumbs on the edge of her lip.

“Listen, I’m making some coffee. Will you join me?”

Avram grunted no. Ora did not say anything. She could have used some coffee. She had a feeling he made good coffee.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

“What?”

“What is this place?”

“Here? It’s the Kedesh River.” He smiled again. “Don’t you know where you are?”

“The Kedesh River,” she murmured, as though there were magic encoded in the words.

“It’s good to be in nature,” he said encouragingly.

“Yes, it is.” She gave up on her hair. What difference did it make anyway? She’d never see him again.

“And it’s good to get away from the news a bit,” he added, “especially after yesterday.”

Avram let out something that sounded like a warning bark. The man took a step back and his eyes darkened.

Ora put a hand on Avram’s back, calming him with her touch.

“No news,” Avram pronounced.

“Okay,” said the man carefully, “you’re right. There’s no need for news here.”

“We have to get going,” Ora said without looking at him.

“Are you sure you don’t need anything?” His eyes moved across her face. Ora could feel how one of his fingers, the one still holding the backpack strap, was drawn to glide over her lip.

“We’re absolutely fine,” she repeated. It was all she could do to resist asking what was on the news yesterday. And if they’d released the names yet.

“Anyway,” the man said.

Avram uprooted himself and walked past the man. Ora passed him too, with her head bowed.

“I’m a doctor,” the man said quietly, for her ears only. “If you need anything.”

“A doctor?” She lingered. She thought he was trying to give her a secret message. Maybe he was hinting that Ofer needed a medic?

“A pediatrician,” he said. He had a soft, pleasant baritone voice. His eyes were focused and dark when he looked at her. She felt that he was concerned for her, and her skin responded. She had to tear herself away from this tenderness immediately.