David Grossman - To the End of the Land

He and the nurse turned Avram over and exposed his back. Ora stole a look and saw a lump of raw flesh bubbling in red, yellow, and purple. She felt her stomach turn. The stench from his body was unbearable. The doctor held his breath and his glasses fogged over. He bared Avram’s buttocks and took a deep breath: “Animals,” he murmured. Ora looked out the window and wept silently and tearlessly. The doctor covered Avram’s behind and cut open his pants. His legs were broken in three places. Around the ankles were bloody bracelets of puffy, raw flesh that looked as though it was seething with live creatures. The doctor mimed a noose to the nurse, and Ora saw Avram in some dark cell, hanging by his feet with his head rocking, and she suddenly grasped that the entire time he had been a POW, she had hardly dared to imagine what they were really doing to him. He was in the Intelligence Corps and knew so much. She had pushed away every scene or thought — at the moments right before she fell asleep they would lunge at her, but the sleeping pills were effective against nightmares — and now she wondered how it was possible that she and Ilan had not discussed the torture and what happens to people who are tortured, even once.

She thought of how little they had spoken of Avram at all, despite the fact that all those days and weeks they had had little else of interest to talk about. Almost every day they drove to the Contact Center for Families of POWs and MIAs, to hear what little news and whatever rumors they could. Over and over again they examined blurry photographs of hostages published in Israel and abroad and talked to the commanders and clerks who were willing to listen. When they didn’t go to the center, they would call to find out if there was any word. They were already starting to feel that they were being avoided, shunted around, but they did not give up — how could they? They were both distraught, and when they ate anything they thought, he’s not eating this, and when a song he liked came on the radio they thought, he’s not hearing this, and when they saw something beautiful they thought, he’s not seeing this. And that way — Ora now realized — they wouldn’t have to think about what was really happening to him; they’d turned Avram into everything he wasn’t.

The doctor said, “Don’t worry, you’ll get him back as good as new.” Ora stared at him. She knew that if the ambulance stopped for a second, she would open the door and flee. It was almost beyond her control. The doctor started writing things on a thick notepad. Then he paused and said: “Your boyfriend?”

She nodded.

He scanned her closely. “It’ll be all right,” he said finally. “They’ve done a real number on him, those shits, but we’re better than them. I’m telling you, a year from now you won’t recognize him.”

“And what about his …” She stammered and her hand dropped. The very question was a sort of betrayal.

“His mind? That’s not really my department,” the doctor mumbled. He sealed up his face and went back to his notepad. Ora looked pleadingly at the nurse, but she also avoided her. Ora forced herself to look at Avram. With the fervor of a vow, she decided that she could not leave him even for a moment without a loving gaze and that from now on she would always look at him lovingly and would always be with him to look at him lovingly, because perhaps only a lifetime of love could mend what they had done to him there. But she could not overcome the nausea and her aversion to his nearly eyebrowless face, and she could not put any love in her gaze, and a metallic voice hissed inside her, just as it had after Ada: Life goes on, doesn’t it?

The ambulance careened down the road, kicking up a commotion. Avram’s face suddenly tensed; he slammed his head from side to side as if trying to evade a slap and whimpered in a young boy’s voice. She watched him, hypnotized, never having seen these expressions on him. She’d thought her Avram wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. He simply did not know fear. She’d always felt he was protected from evil, and that it was utterly inconceivable that anyone would want to hurt this man who roamed the world with open arms, and feet turned out, with his curious-interrogative head tilt, with his donkey’s bray laughter and sharp gaze. Avram.

Perhaps that was precisely why they had done this to him, she thought. Crushed him this way, shattered him. Not just because he’s in Intelligence.

Avram gaped. He gurgled and choked. She could not guess what was being done to him in his imagination at that moment. She thought he was trying to raise his hands and protect his face, but only a few fingers moved slightly. The thought flew through her that she would never have a child. That she would not bring a child into a world where such things happened. Just then Avram’s eyes opened, and they were red and dirty. She leaned down to him, struck by the stench that came from his raw flesh. He saw her and his gaze focused. Even the blue of his eyes looked bloodshot.

“Avram, it’s me, Ora.” Her fingers hovered over his shoulder; she was afraid to hurt him, afraid to touch him.

“Pity,” he whispered.

“What’s a pity? What is? What’s a pity?”

He gargled as the words seeped into the fluids filling his lungs. “Pity they didn’t kill me.”

Then the ambulance doors swung open and there was a sea of faces, tugging hands, and shouts that hit her ears. Ilan was there, somehow having managed to arrive before the ambulance. Fast Ilan, she thought with a touch of resentment, as if his speed were an advantage gained illegally over Avram. They both ran behind the stretcher into a hut that had been converted into an ER. Dozens of doctors and nurses gathered around the wounded soldiers, drew blood, collected urine, took mucus samples, and grew cultures from the wounds. A Medical Corps major noticed Ora and Ilan and shouted them out of the building. They staggered to a bench outside and wrapped themselves around each other. Ilan made sounds she did not recognize, like dry, hoarse barks. With tight fists she clutched his hair until he groaned in pain. “Ilan, Ilan, what’s going to happen?” she whispered loudly.

“I’m staying with him here until he comes back,” he said. “Until he’s back to being what he was, I don’t care how long it takes, even years, I’m not moving.”

She let go of his hair and looked at him. He looked older and heavier in his sorrow and terror. “You’ll stay with him,” she repeated, dumbstruck.

“What did you think, that I’d leave him here alone like that?”

Yes, she thought to herself. The truth is, that is what I thought. I thought I’d be alone with him in this.

Then she came back to her senses. “No, no, of course you’re staying, I don’t know what I was … Listen, I can’t go through this alone.”

He looked angry and hurt. “But why alone?”

And she thought, Because there’s always a little bit of you that’s not there, even when you’re there. “Come on, let’s go back to him. We’ll wait by the door until they let us in.”

They walked side by side among the bustling huts. For some time, since the war, they had not been able to touch each other. But now, to her surprise, she was filled with desire for him, and her longing was a primary, naked hunger to bite into his flesh, into his healthy, whole body. She stopped and grabbed his arm and pressed it to her, and he responded immediately, turned her to him, and held her tight against his body, and suddenly he leaned down and kissed her lustfully. His mouth filled her mouth, and she felt all of him, his entire body, penetrating her, turning her inside out, and she even forgot to be amazed at how he, normally so shy, was kissing her like that in front of everyone. She felt that he was stronger now, bonier and more steadfast. There was something in his grasp, in his kiss — he literally picked her up off the ground and held her against his mouth, and then she grew blurry and felt that he was suspending her in midair with just the force of his mouth, and it vaguely occurred to her that whoever was watching them might think Ilan was the one who had come back to his girl from a POW prison. She pulled away from him, almost shoved herself backward, and they stood facing each other breathlessly.