David Grossman - To the End of the Land

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “it’s just not the right time.”

They kept going up the riverbed, Avram at the head and she behind, feeling the man’s gaze plowing through her back. She kept trying to guess what was on the news and how bad it was. At least it was clear now that things weren’t over there yet, that it was probably going to be a long affair this time, which only confirmed what she’d sensed all along, that things were getting worse and worse, things were deteriorating. In the same breath she thought how annoying it was that he’d been looking at her all this time from behind — not exactly her strong side, the behind, and no one could convince her otherwise. She was even more annoyed that she was capable of being annoyed by such stupid things while the situation over there was probably intensifying. She marched angrily up the riverbed, replaying the short meeting in her mind, and she felt as though something of Avram’s obtuse lumpiness was sticking to her, in her movements and her appearance, and it was encumbering her natural talent for coquettish small talk with friendly strangers. Before the next bend in the path she could not resist turning around, with a hint of reproach, with pride in her remote self. She saw him standing just where they had left him, looking attentive and grave. He seemed so worried that her stern face broke into a soft, surprised smile, and she thought she could see him nod at her once.

After leaving the shaded riverbed, they found themselves suddenly on a path flooded with strong morning light and walked along it silently. Ora is constantly amazed to think of Avram’s lightning jump in front of the man, as though he had sworn to protect her at any cost from the outside world and its representatives, from any sliver of information about what was happening there . She considers that he might also be protecting himself, but cannot entirely understand that. She thinks again of his vegetarianism, the dates he crossed off on the wall above his bed, and the hope in his voice when he called her on Ofer’s scheduled release date: “Is it over?” he asked. “Is his army over?” At that moment she hadn’t had the capacity to comprehend how much he must have been waiting for the release and how he had anxiously anticipated it for the three years preceding the date, day after day, crossing out line after line.

She quickens her steps. The path narrows, and bushes of spiny broom — she remembers the name; that’s what that guy was talking about — as tall as she is blossom in yellow on either side, giving off a delicate perfume. And there are those little flowers, yellow and white chamomile blossoms that look like they were drawn by children, and cistus shrubs, and hyacinths, and pale blue stork’s bill, and the beloved Judean viper’s bugloss, which she had barely noticed all these days — but what had she noticed? “And look,” she says, pointing happily, expanding her lungs and her eyes: “That pink over there is gorgeous — a flowering redbud tree.”

The mountain is padded with round yellow cushions of flowering spurge and pink blankets of Egyptian honesty. Ora snaps off a branch of spiny broom, crushes the flowers, and holds it out for Avram to smell. With his face almost in the palm of her hand — his large, lost face — she remembers him yelling at Ilan that he didn’t want anything to do with it, anything to do with life. It occurs to her that perhaps it was during these past years, with Ofer in the army, and even more so now, with Ofer being there , that Avram suddenly realizes that if, God forbid, this one thread of connection he has with them is torn, he will find himself suddenly tied to life with the thickest of ropes, with a bond of affliction that can be ended only by ending life. Avram, in a confirmation of sorts, sneezes loudly on her.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and wipes slivers of saliva and flower stamen off her forehead and the tip of her nose.

She grasps his wrist and says into his face, “You’re practiced at this, aren’t you?”

“At what?” he grumbles and scans her face suspiciously.

“At running away from bad news. You’re a thousand times more practiced at it than I am, right? You’ve spent your whole life running from bad news.” She looks straight into his eyes and knows without a doubt that she is right. She clutches his hand and rhythmically folds in finger after finger: “Running away from the bad news that is life itself, one. Running from the bad news that is Ofer, two. Running from the bad news that is me, three.”

He sucks awkwardly on his lip. “This is bull, Ora. What’s with the roadside psychology?”

But she has a newfound strength now. “Just remember that sometimes bad news is actually good news that you didn’t understand. Remember that what might have been bad news can turn into good news over time, perhaps the best news you need.” She gives him back his hand and folds it over the branch of sunny yellow buds. “Come on, Avram, let’s go.”

To the right of the path is a tall antenna, and a long chain-link fence in front of an ugly fortress. It looks like a police stronghold from the British Mandate, with gloomy concrete structures, guard towers, and narrow viewing slits. “Yesha Fortress,” Ora reads from a small sign. “Let’s get out of here, I’m not in the mood for fortresses.”

Avram hesitates. “But the path … Look, the path goes through here.”

“Isn’t there another one?”

They look this way and that, and there isn’t another. Except for one marked with red, but the man at the river said if they followed the orange-blue-and-white markers, they’d get to Jerusalem, home. Momentarily confused, she checks in with herself: You wanted to run away from home, didn’t you? So why are you now—

She turns to Avram and puts a finger on his chest and decrees, “We’ll go through, but quickly, no stopping, and tell me something on the way.”

“What?”

“Doesn’t matter, talk to me, tell me, I don’t know, tell me about your restaurant.”

And so, as they walk quickly, she learns that for the past two years, since being fired from the pub, he’s been working in an Indian restaurant in South Tel Aviv. They were looking for a dishwasher. He wouldn’t wash dishes because that left too much time to think, but he was willing to wash the floors and do general cleaning work. He and dirt have been like this for years — he presses two fingers together and smiles, trying unsuccessfully to distract her from the sparse grove of cypress trees — twenty-eight of them, each with a wooden name plaque, a cypress for each of the men killed here in April and May of 1948 while trying to capture the fortress from the Arab fighters.

“Vacuuming is also okay for me,” Avram prattles on, “and small hauling jobs, why not? I’m an odd-job man, and it’s good there.”

“Good?” She glances at him from the side. She hasn’t heard that word from him for a long time.

“Young people. Shanti.”

“Go on, go on,” she murmurs, heroically passing a plaque with a poem by Moshe Tabenkin, where a moustached tour guide stands reading it out loud to a group of tourists. They must all be deaf, Ora thinks angrily and speeds up; he’s practically yelling. The mountains echo back to her: Our boy was — like a pine in the woodlands .

Was — a fig tree putting forth its figs .

Our boy was — a myrtle of dense roots .

Was the most fiery of poppies—

“Well, go on,” she gripes. “Why did you stop?”

Avram, rapidly: “The whole restaurant is really one big room, like a very wide hall, with no interior walls, just support pillars. It’s a pretty run-down building.” He describes the place with a furrowed brow, like someone delivering extremely important testimony that has to be exhaustive and precise. She is grateful for the meticulous details, which take her away from here — from the marble square. The twenty-eight names are carved in stone, she remembers, and there’s a mass grave, too. She was on a school trip here once, when she was thirteen. The teacher stood facing them, wearing shorts, and read with a booming voice from a page: “Nebi Yusha was but a fortress on the road, and now it is a symbol for all times!” Ora had surreptitiously peeled a clementine on the marble square, and a teacher had yelled at her: “Show some respect for the fallen soldiers!” If only she could be that stupid and ignorant of sorrow today, to stand eating a clementine on the marble square. It’s good to get away from the news a bit, that man had said. Especially after yesterday. A scream kicks around inside her body, searching for a way out, and Avram, continuing his mission, takes her to a district of auto-repair shops, trucking companies, and massage parlors in South Tel Aviv. He walks her up a crooked, dirty staircase. Starting on the second floor, there are rugs on the stairs and pictures on the walls, and the smell of incense. “And you walk in,” he says, and she suddenly remembers: Dudu was killed here. Dudu from the song: In the Palmach, none could outdo / Our hero, our lost soldier, Dudu . She racks her brain for a word that rhymes with Ofer.