David Grossman - To the End of the Land

As she wrote the letters, she gradually found that dim and burdensome things became clear when she laid them out on paper. She was somewhat surprised to discover that she could write with such clarity and precision — she had always thought she was best as a reader of the really good writers — and then she started to feel that she wanted, needed , to write, and that, no less than that, she wanted Avram to read what she had to say and to tell her more and more of what he saw in her.

And warm regards to Ilan.

Once he wrote: “You are my first love.”

She was dumbstruck for two weeks. Then she wrote that she was not ready to talk about love yet. That she felt they were both too young and immature and that she wanted to wait a few years before discussing matters of love. He said that now, after having written it explicitly, and after having told Ilan, he was completely certain of his love for her, and that she held his fate in her hands. He enclosed a stamped envelope for her reply. She asked him vehemently to stop talking about his love for her, because it introduced anxiety and unhealthy feelings to their beautiful, pure relationship. He replied: “A: In my opinion love is the healthiest, loveliest, purest feeling there is. And B: I can no longer stop talking about my love for you, my love for you, my love for you …” He filled the whole page.

“It was not love at first sight,” he wrote in a telegram he sent a few hours after the letter — but which reached her one week sooner—“because I loved you long before that stop before I met you stop I love you backwards too stop even before I existed stop because I only became me when I met you stop.” She sent a short letter saying it was difficult for her to keep corresponding with him now, she had a lot of exams and competitions coming up and she was very busy. As evidence, she enclosed an article from Maariv Youth that described a high-jump meet at the Wingate Institute in which she had participated. He sent back the letter with the article’s ashes and did not write for three weeks. She almost lost her mind with anticipation, and then he started writing again as if nothing had happened:

“Last night I was at a jazz show with Ilan, RIP (who, amazingly, sends his regards this time and keeps trying to peek over my arm at what I’m writing, even though he continues to insist that he’s not interested in you!). Anyway, last night we were at Foos-Foos. It was extremely wonderful, and I had full-on experiences with all sorts of lovely women who exchanged looks with me, but unfortunately not phone numbers. With the music in the background, I was able to pull together some of the opinions I’ve been gathering about girls lately, and I came up with some well-founded and interesting theories about them, and mainly about you. I believe that, ultimately, you will not tie your fate with mine but with some other dude, Ilan or someone of his ilk, the point is, a guy who will definitely not tickle your navel with giggles like I do, and won’t drive your mind wild with sharp observations like I do, and make every organ of your body tremble with pleasure like I do. But the thing is, he’ll be hunkier, much hunkier, and calmer and more solid, and mainly more understandable to you than I am (and your mother will love him at first sight, I’m positive!). Yes, yes, treacherous Ora, such are the thoughts that came to me as I sat in that damp little grotto that was aromatic of hashish (!!!), surrounded by the angels climbing up and down the harmonic scales of Mel Keller, and I lost my train of thought …

“Yes: that in the end you’ll mate for life with some gorgeous, grave-looking, silver-haired alpha male, a guy who may not know to ask if your viscera pullulate at the sight of a beautiful sunset, or upon reading a lipless poem by David Avidan, but your future by his side will be secure and solid forever and ever. For I suspect, my duplicitous Ora, that deep in the depths of your light-filled and beautiful soul (which, I do not need to tell you, I love very much) lies a minuscule recess (like the ones in some corner stores, where they keep the old preserves?) that is, forgive me, slightly narrow-minded in matters of love. Of true love, I mean. And that is why you will probably make the choice you will make and doom me to misery for the rest of my life, and of this (the misery) I have no doubt, and I treat it now, in a purely philosophical mode, as a permanent state, like a chronic illness from which I will suffer for the rest of my life, and therefore you can stop reacting so hysterically every time I talk about it!

“On the way back from the jazz club I discussed it with Ilan-long-legs (and they’re not the only thing that’s long …), and I expounded upon my theory about him and you, and of course I lamented my bitter fate at being destined to be indentured to a woman who scorns the gifts of my love, and having to suffice with cheap substitutes for the rest of my life. Ilan, as usual, said maybe you’d change your mind and grow up and offered other foolish consolations, and I explained to him again why I thought he was much more suitable for you than I am, being an alpha male etc., and that it is only for his sake that I am willing to vacate the space in your heart to which I still cling tooth and nail in the most pathetic manner, and he reiterated that you’re not his type at all, and that he doesn’t really know you anyway, and then he repeated that on that night when the three of us talked in the hospital he was completely blurry, but that didn’t reassure me, because I do feel that something powerful happened between the two of you that night, precisely because of his blurriness, and yours, something happened there, and it kills me that you won’t confirm or deny that for me, and it’s like the two of you were together in some place I couldn’t get into (and probably never will), and I can only eat my heart out over the fact that it didn’t happen to you with me, that revelation of love (because love is a revelation!!), because I was so close (fuckit, hissed the defeated Avram as he poured out his wrath), and that’s also something I feel quite a lot in my life, the almost-happened, and I only hope it won’t be the guiding principle of my life, the main tenet of all the guiding principles of my life.

“Yours, Dispirited by Torments.”

She was then finally able to overcome her cowardice and the paralyzing confusion that had seized her and told him with simple words that grew increasingly complicated that she really thought she was in love, but unfortunately not with him, and she hoped he could forgive her, it wasn’t something she could control, and she liked and loved him like a brother, and would always like and love him, but in her opinion he didn’t really need her — and here her hand shook wildly, to her amazement; the pen jumped around on the page like a horse trying to throw off its rider — because he was, after all, such a brimming person, a thousand times wiser and more profound than she was, and she was positive that once he got used to this idea he would have many other beloveds, she was really convinced, and they would be much more suitable for him than she was, whereas she believed that the boy she loved needed her “like air to breathe, and I’m sorry, but in this case it’s not a cliché at all. That’s really the way I feel.” She added that it was a love that had troubled her and crazed her for months, almost a year, in fact, because it was very clear to her that it was senseless and hopeless, and she wished she understood why this had happened to her, and so on and so forth. Avram sent a rushed telegram: “Do I know him question mark is it Ilan question mark just say his name and I will murder him exclamation point.”

When she confirmed, after weeks of interrogations and pleading, that she was in love with Ilan, he almost went mad. For a week he was unable to eat a thing. He did not change his clothes, and he walked the streets for nights on end, crying. He told everyone he met about Ora and explained in a measured, considered way why what had happened was inevitable, even essential and desirable, in terms of evolution, aesthetics, and in many other regards. Of course he told Ilan the secret immediately, and Ilan repeated that he had no interest in Ora, and made fun of her crazy notion that he needed her “like air to breathe.”