David Grossman - To the End of the Land

LATER, who knows how much later, Avram came back with his and Ilan’s blankets. He came into her room without a word, covered Ilan, swaddled him on all sides, and tucked the blankets under him. Then he sat down and covered himself and waited for Ora to say it.

She said: I don’t ever want to talk to you again. You’re messed up. Get out of my life.

He said nothing.

She was furious. I swear, you’re such a loser!

What did I do?

“What did I do?” Where did you disappear to?

I just popped over to my room.

“Popped over to my room”! Speedy Gonzales! Leaving me here alone and disappearing for hours—

What are you talking about, hours? Maybe half an hour, tops, and anyway you’re not alone.

Shut up. You’d better just shut up!

He shut up. She touched her lips. She thought they were on fire.

Just tell me one thing.

What?

What did you say his name was?

Ilan. Why? Was there … did something happen here while I was gone?

What could happen? You left and came right back, what—

I left and came right back? Now it’s “You left and came right back”?

Stop it, get off my case.

Wait, did he talk? Did he say something in his sleep?

Look, what are you, the Shabak?

Did you turn the light on?

None of your business.

I knew it, I just knew it!

So you knew, you’re a genius. So if you knew, why did you leave just when I—

And you saw him.

Okay, I saw him, I saw him! So what?

So nothing.

Avram?

What—

Is he really very sick?

Yes.

I think he’s sicker than both of us.

Yes.

Do you think he’s … I don’t know, in danger?

What do I know?

Ahh, Ora sighed from the depths of her heart, I wish I could fall asleep now for a month, a year, ach!

Ora?

What?

He’s good-looking, isn’t he?

I don’t know, I didn’t look.

Admit that he’s good-looking.

Not exactly my taste.

He’s like an angel.

Yeah, all right, I get the point.

The girls at school are crazy about him.

Tell it to someone who cares.

Did you talk to him?

He was asleep, like I said! He can’t hear a thing.

I meant — did you talk to him? Did you tell him anything?

Leave me alone, won’t you just leave me alone!

Ora?

What?

Did he open his eyes? Did he see you?

I can’t hear you, I’m not hearing anything, la-la-la-la—

But did he say anything? Did he talk to you?

“ … On a wagon bound for market, there’s a calf with a mournful eye …”

Just tell me if he spoke.

“ … High above him there’s a swallow, winging swiftly through the sky …”

Wait, isn’t that the song?

What?

That’s the song, I swear. From when you woke me up.

Are you sure?

Except then you were screaming it so loudly I couldn’t even make out—

That’s the song …

A calf with a mournful eye, yes, “Dona Dona.” But you were shouting it, like you were fighting with someone, arguing.

Ora could feel herself lift up out of her own body and float to a distant place that was not a place, where she and Ada walked together and sang Ada’s favorite song, and it was Ada’s mother’s favorite song too, and sometimes, when she washed the dishes, she would sing it to herself in Yiddish. The song about a calf being led to the slaughter, and a swallow that flies up in the sky and mocks him, then flutters away with lighthearted joy.

Avram, Ora said suddenly in horror, leave now, leave!

What did I do now?

Go! And take him with you! I have to sleep now, quick. I want to—

What?

I have to dream her …

Later, just before dawn, she suddenly appeared in the doorway of Room Three and called to him in a whisper. He jumped awake: What are you doing here? She said sadly, I’ve never met anyone like you, and then corrected herself: Any boy like you. He was hunched over, extinguished, and he murmured, So, did you dream about her? Ora mumbled, No, I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to so badly that I couldn’t. And he asked, But why did you want to? What was so …? She said, I have to tell her something important.

Ora, said Avram tiredly and without any pleasure, Do you want to see him again? She said, Do you have a screw loose or something? I’m talking about you, and all you keep doing is showing me him . Why are you, like, purposely — Honestly, I don’t know, he said. I’m always like that, it just comes out. And she said desperately, I don’t understand anything anymore, I don’t understand anything.

They sat hunched in the dark, suddenly very ill. From one moment to the next the burden of bad tidings swelled inside him. What a mistake he had made, what a terrible, destructive complication he had caused by leaving her alone with Ilan.

There’s something else I wanted to tell you, he said hopelessly, but you’re probably not interested, are you? She asked carefully, something like what? But even before he spoke she knew what he would say, and her body locked up against him. No one knows that I write, he said. I write all the time.

But what, what do you write? Her voice sounded oddly piercing to her own ears. Essays? Limericks? Tall tales? What?

I write all kinds of things, Avram said with slight arrogance. Once, when I was little, I used to make up stories, all the time. Now I write totally different things … I don’t understand, she hissed, you just sit there and write, for yourself? A desolate revulsion enveloped him. He wanted her to leave. To come back. To be who she was before. The thing that had been woven between them the last few nights, the wonder, the delicate secret cooled and faded away at once. And perhaps it had never existed at all, perhaps it had only been in his head, along with everything else.

Just explain to me, she urged him, suddenly eager for battle, what you mean by “I write totally different things”? But Avram sank into himself, amazed at the sting of betrayal. Ora mumbled stubbornly, And limericks are fun! Let me tell you, they are the ultimate entertainment! She recalled the way he had said earlier that in these years he was interested in voices—“in these years”! From which she was apparently supposed to conclude that in previous years he had been interested in other things, that snob, as if he already knew that in “the next years”—ha! — he would have yet other interests. Smart aleck. But she, she, where had she been “in these years”? What had she wasted herself on? All she’d done was cheat everyone and sleep with her eyes open. That was her big accomplishment. A cheating pro, sleepwalking champion of the world. She slept when she ran and did high jumps and played volleyball, and most of all when she swam, because it was a lot less painful in water than on land. She slept when she went with the team to the stadium in Ein Iron on Saturdays, and sometimes they went to the Maccabi courts in Tel Aviv, and in the back of the truck she roared cheers at the passersby along with everyone else.

She slept while she sang her heart out on hikes, and on the night trek to the beach at Atlit, and at the Machanot Olim all-nighter, and when they all took turns jumping onto a canvas held by the team, and when she did the zip line, and helped build a rope bridge and set up the fire displays. She didn’t think about anything when that was going on. Her hands moved, her legs moved, her mouth babbled constantly, she was all noise and bells, but her brain was empty and desolate, her body a desert wilderness.

And together with Miri S. and Orna and Shiffi, her new friends after Ada, she was once again brimming with funny songs and operettas for parties and trips, everything just like it was before. Life really did go on. It was almost ungraspable how it did. Her body kept making the usual moves — she ate and drank and walked, she stood and sat and slept and crapped and even laughed — it was just that for the whole first year she couldn’t feel her toes, sometimes for hours on end, and sometimes she couldn’t feel the skin on the back of her left hand, either. There were places on her thigh and her back too, and when she touched them, even scratched them softly, she couldn’t feel a thing. Once she held a burning match to the dead spot on her thigh and watched the fair skin singe and smelled the burning, but she did not feel any pain. She didn’t tell anyone about that. Who could she talk to about things like that?