David Grossman - To the End of the Land

Avram laughs softly and Ora turns red: her joke worked.

“He talked to Ofer while he dressed him and while he put him to bed and while he fed him. I heard him all the time. There was a constant hubbub of speech at home, and Adam and I weren’t used to that kind of noise, and it wasn’t easy for me. I’m sure it wasn’t for Adam, either.

“There was no more pointing and saying ‘that.’ Now there was ‘doorframe,’ ‘lock,’ ‘shelves,’ ‘saltshaker.’ I heard it in the background the whole time, like a broken record. ‘Say “shelf.” ’ ‘Shelf.’ ‘Say “grasshopper.” ’ ‘Grasshopper.’ And he was right, I’m not saying he wasn’t. I felt he was doing the right thing, and I could really see Adam’s world growing richer and fuller because he suddenly had names for things. I’m just not … I don’t … You see, I don’t really know how to say it exactly.” She laughs and points sharply to the spot between her eyes: “This.”

Her heart pounded when she saw the immense thirst coming from Adam, which she previously hadn’t detected at all. Because after the initial shock, he seemed to get what Ilan was offering him, and she suddenly had a prattling child.

Ilan — she explains to Avram — talked to Adam like you talk to a grown-up, both in vocabulary and in tone. It stung her to hear the businesslike, egalitarian way Ilan addressed the boy, using a voice that did not contain a hint of the childish, slightly playful tone that she herself used. There was almost no word he considered too sophisticated for a conversation with Adam. “Say ‘association.’ ” “Association.” “Say ‘philosophy,’ ‘Kilimanjaro,’ ‘crème brûlée.’ ”

Ilan explained to him about synonyms, drawing pictures of words as identical twins. At three, Adam learned that the moon was also a crescent, or Luna. That at night it could be dark, dim, or even dusky. That a person could jump, but also leap and hop. (As Avram listens, a strange smile curls inside him, slightly proud, slightly embarrassed.) Ilan used nursery rhymes to teach him grammar and spent hours practicing “my child,” “his rabbit,” “her fingers.”

Every so often Ora would find the courage to protest. “You’re training him to do tricks, you’re turning him into your toy.”

“For him it’s just like LEGO, but with words,” Ilan replied.

She wanted to object — You’re just marking him as your territory — but all she said was, “He’s too young for that, a boy of his age doesn’t have to know all about possessive pronouns.”

“But look how much he enjoys it!”

“Of course. He can tell you’re enjoying it and he wants you to like him. He’ll do anything to make you like him.”

“And listen to this”—she tells Avram parenthetically—“about six months after Ilan came home, Adam asked where the man in the hut had gone.”

“What did you say?”

“I just couldn’t talk, and all Ilan said was, ‘He left, he’s never coming back.’ I only just remembered that. What were we talking about?”

She was weak. Her second pregnancy, which had begun with ease and a sense of health, grew burdensome and sickly toward the end. Most of the time she felt elephantine and drained and ugly. “In the last trimester, Ofer was pressing on a nerve that gave me horrible pain every time I stood up.” For the last two months she had to spend most of the time lying in one position, in bed or in the big armchair in the living room, and her breathing was labored, cautious — it hurt to breathe sometimes. She would stare at Ilan and Adam as they buzzed around her with intellectual fervor while she grew weaker and weaker, squeezing into the old familiar niche she had carved out years ago with a dull sort of self-deprecation.

She had no way to prevent Ilan and Adam from constantly amusing themselves with synonyms, rhymes, and association games, and of course she was flattered when the day-care teacher talked about Adam’s huge leap, and how within such a short time he seemed to have matured by at least two years. His status at day care greatly improved, although his wetting problem grew worse for some reason. But at least he was able to report the little accidents, so it was hard to get angry. “ ‘My pee-pee escaped,’ ” Ora quotes with a crooked smile. “What are you smiling about?” she asks irritably.

“I was thinking,” Avram says without looking at her, “that I would have definitely done that, too.”

“With your child? What Ilan did?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t say the thought never crossed my mind,” she notes, and vows not to expand on this point, ever.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Come on, what?”

“That that was really what he was looking for. A partner like you. So that he’d have someone to be witty and clever with.”

Avram silently twirls a strand of his beard.

“Because I wasn’t a good enough substitute,” she continues drily. “At least not in that regard. I couldn’t do it and I didn’t try, either.”

“But why did you even have to?”

“Ilan needed it. Oh, how he needed you and what you had together. And how withered he felt without you.”

Avram’s face burns, and Ora has the sudden gnawing thought that she may not have understood what Ilan was going through at all, and that perhaps he had not been looking for a substitute for Avram, but trying to be Avram. Excited, she hastens her steps: Maybe he was trying as hard as he could to be a father the way he imagined Avram would be.

They are so lost in their thoughts that the sudden appearance of a road startles them. What’s more, the path markings have disappeared. Ora walks back to look but returns disappointed. We were happy with our path, she thinks, and now what? How will we get to Jerusalem?

The road is not especially wide, but vehicles zoom past frequently, and they both feel slow and dull in comparison. They would happily retreat to the quiet, light-filled meadow, or even back to the shadowy forest. But they can’t go back. Ora cannot, and Avram seems to have been infected by her onward-and-forward purposefulness. They stand there confused, looking left and right, pulling their heads back with every passing car.

“We’re like those Japanese soldiers who emerged from the forests thirty years after the war was over,” she says.

“I really am like that,” he reminds her.

She can see that the road and the violence that emanates from it are scaring Avram. His face and body have locked up. She looks for the bitch. She was walking behind them just a few moments ago, keeping her distance, but now she’s gone. What to do? Should she go back and look for her? And how will she get her across the road? How will she get the dog and Avram across?

“Come on,” she says, swinging into action, knowing that if she doesn’t do something now, his enervation will seep into her and paralyze them. “Come on, we’re crossing.”

She holds his hand, feeling how defeated and stalked he is by the road.

“When I give the word, run.”

He nods feebly. His eyes are on the tips of his shoes.

“You can run, right?”

His face suddenly changes. “Tell me something, wait a minute—”

“Later, later.”

“No, wait. What you said before—”

“Pay attention, after the truck. Now!”

She takes some steps into the road but is pulled back — his mass, his weight. She quickly looks to both sides. A bright purple jeep roars around the bend at them, flashing its headlights. They are stuck almost in the middle of the lane — can’t swallow and can’t throw up — and Avram is frozen. She calls to him and tugs at his hands. She thinks he’s talking to her, his lips are moving. The jeep whips past them with an angry honk and Ora prays no one comes from the other side. “Tell me,” he mumbles again and again, “tell me.”