David Grossman - To the End of the Land

“And inside”—Avram’s voice hovers somewhere out there in his little India—“the whole big room is covered with rugs, and there are lots of low tables, and you sit on big cushions. As soon as you walk in, at the far end opposite you, you see gas ranges with huge, charred pots. Mighty pots.”

They leave the fortress and Ora lets her breath out. She looks at Avram gratefully, and he shrugs his shoulders.

The words, she thinks dimly, they’re coming back to him.

“You’ll laugh, but I’m the oldest one there,” he says.

“No kidding,” she mumbles, stealing a look back at the fortress. “Come on, let’s cross the road here.”

“I swear,” he chuckles, shrugging one shoulder as if apologizing for some trick played on him long ago, in the years when she was absent from his life. “The owner is all of twenty-nine, and the cook is maybe twenty-five. All the others, too. Sweet kids.”

Ora feels somehow robbed — why is he so excited about a few kids he barely knows?

“They’re all graduates of India. I’m the only one who hasn’t been. But I already know everything as if I’ve been there. And they don’t fire anyone at this place. There’s no such thing as firing.”

They walk among hedgerows of fleshy prickly pears, past a large tomb with domes on its roof and trees growing out of its walls. Blankets and mats are scattered around the large chambers that look out onto the Hula Valley, and there are a few empty dishes, left from offerings brought by the faithful to Nebi Yusha — Yehoshua Ben Nun.

“Some of the people who work there couldn’t get a job anywhere else.”

People like him, she thinks. She tries to picture him there. The oldest one, he’d said with real surprise, as if that were utterly improbable. As though they were still twenty-two years old, and everything else was a mistake. She sees him among those sweet young people, with his heaviness and his bulky slowness, with his big head and long, thinning hair hanging down on either side. Like some exiled, downfallen professor, forlorn and ridiculous at the same time. But the fact that they never fire anyone reassures her.

“And they don’t give you a check at the end of your meal.”

“So how do you know how much to pay?”

“You go up to the register and tell them what you ate.”

“And they believe you?”

“Yes.”

“What if I cheated?”

“Then you probably had no choice.”

“Are you serious?” A little light goes on inside her. “Is there really such a place?”

“I’m telling you.”

“Take me there, now!”

He laughs. She laughs.

“The walls are covered with big photos that someone took in India or Nepal. They change them every so often. And on the side, near the bathroom, there are three washing machines running constantly. Free, for whoever needs them. While people eat, some guys and girls go around offering treatments, Reiki and acupressure and shiatsu and reflexology. And soon, when the renovations are done, I’ll start working in the sweets.”

“Working in the sweets …” she echoes.

The picture suddenly picks up speed. She sees him darting around, clearing tables, taking out the trash, vacuuming, lighting candles and incense sticks. She is fascinated by his movements, his swiftness, his lightness. “Avram FSF,” as he used to introduce himself to new girls, with a flourish and a bow: fat, speedy, and flexible.

“And whoever wants to can smoke. Anything, no problem.”

“You, too?” She laughs nervously — she can’t see the fortress anymore, but she suddenly feels as if they’re running, as if the path is pulling them too quickly to Jerusalem, to home, to the notice that might be waiting there for her with the calm patience of an assassin. I’ll go back — it flickers in her — and there’ll be death notices up on the street. On the utility poles. Next to the grocery store. I’ll know from a distance.

“Go on, tell me.” She turns to Avram in a panic. “I want to hear!”

“Well, nothing heavy, mostly joints.” His hand habitually pats the non-pocket on his chest. “Sometimes a hash blunt, some E, acid, if there’s any going around, nothing serious.” He looks at her and smiles. “Do you still uphold the Scouts’ commands?”

“I was in the Machanot Olim, not the Scouts,” she reminds him drily. “Forget it, I’m afraid of those things.”

“Ora, you’re running again.”

“Me? It’s you.”

He laughs. “You suddenly get these … You start running ahead as if God knows what is chasing you.”

To their left, the Hula Valley grows steamier as the heat increases. Their faces are red, burning with effort and warmth, they drip with sweat, and even speech is tiring. On the side of the road, at the foot of an old olive tree, lies a huge, fancy chandelier. Avram counts twenty-one crystals, all intact, connected with stylish thin glass pipes. “Who threw this here?” he wonders. “Who throws out something like that? It’s too bad we can’t take it.” He crouches down and examines the chandelier. “Good stuff.” He tilts his head and laughs softly, and Ora questions him with her eyebrows. Avram says: “Look at it. What does it remind you of?” She stares and doesn’t see anything. “Doesn’t it look like some sort of ballerina? Like an insulted prima donna?” Ora smiles. “It does.” Avram stands up. “It’s shimmering with insult, hey? Look at it from here, wallowing in its tutu, I swear.” Ora laughs deeply. A forgotten pleasure gurgles into the corners of her eyes.

“And Ofer?” he asks later. “Does he take anything?”

“I don’t know. How can you know anything about them at this age? Adam, I think so. Here and there.”

Or most of the time, or all of it, she thinks. How could he not? With those guys he hangs out with, with his eyes, always bloodshot, and that bashed-up, bashing-up music. Oh God, what do I sound like? When did old age creep up on me like this?

“It’s too bad you didn’t take some weed from my place when you kidnapped me. You’d have seen what good stuff is.”

“So you keep it around at home?” She struggles to maintain a measured, enlightened voice and feels like a social worker interviewing a homeless guy.

“For personal use, what do you think? I grow it in a flower box. With the petunias.”

“Do you miss it now?”

“Let’s just say, it would have set me right, especially in the first few days.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m okay.” He sounds astonished. “Don’t need anything.”

“Really?” Her face lights up, her glasses glisten with happiness.

“But if there were any”—he quickly cools her excitement and puts her in her place; for a moment she looked as though she’d pulled off a rapid intervention plan straight out of a kids’ comic book—“if there were any, I wouldn’t say no.”

How far apart we’ve grown, she thinks. A whole life separates us. She imagines him in his restaurant again, circling among the low tables, clearing leftovers, joking with the customers, taking their banter with good spirits. She hopes they don’t mock him. She hopes he doesn’t seem pathetic to those young people. She tries to picture herself there.

“You take your shoes off before you go in,” he notes, as though guiding her.

She sits down on a cushion. She’s uncomfortable. Too upright, doesn’t know what to do with her hands. She smiles in all directions. Her fakery rustles all around her. She wonders if she could have lived with Avram, in his apartment, in the meager neglect of his life. For some reason her thoughts adopt the guttural Mizrahi speech of the man they met in the riverbed. She thinks about his red checkered shirt. He looked like someone had dressed him up nicely this morning and sent him off on a hike. She sees the colorful woman’s glasses that dangled on his chest. Maybe they were not tasteless foppishness or a defiant pose, as she had thought, but a small private gesture? A gesture to a woman? She sighs softly and wonders if Avram had picked up on anything back there.