To the End of the Land

by David Grossman

  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.

  “Tell me,” she heard him say suddenly and was horrified: that voice of his, the shattered breaths. “Ora …” He looked at the ceiling. “I have to know.”

  “What, ask me.”

  “Something … I can’t remember.”

  “Ask me.”

  He was silent. He kept trying to move his suspended leg and scratch an itch under the cast.

  “Things aren’t right in my head.”

  “What things?”

  “You and me.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s like I have a hole in the middle of—”

  “Ask.”

  “What … What are we?”

  She was not expecting that. “Do you mean …?” She must have leaned toward him too sharply. His head pulled back and his face shrank in terror. Perhaps in the dark he thought something—a hand or an implement—was about to hit him. She murmured, “What are we now?”

  “Don’t be angry, I’m not quite …”

  “We’re good friends, and we’ll always be good friends.” She suddenly felt compelled to add with a grating sort of cheer: “And you’ll see, we’ll make a new life for you!”

  Afterward, for months, she tormented herself over that stupid line. And then there were times when she thought perhaps it had been prescient. We’ll make a new life. But at that moment she could almost hear his bitter ridicule. His heavy head moved slowly on the pillow as he tried to examine her face. She was glad the room was dark.

  “Ora.”

  “What?”

  “Isn’t there anyone else in this room?”

  “Just us.”

  “The cast is driving me crazy,” he said thickly. Everything he did was so slow. She realized how much the old Avram was, for her, perhaps more than anything else, his rhythm, the sharpness of the way he moved through the world. “I’m cold.”

  She covered him with a third blanket. He dripped with sweat and shivered with cold.

  “Scratch it for me.”

  She reached out and scratched his leg where the cast met the skin. She felt as if her finger was dipping in an open wound. He moaned and grunted with a mixture of pain and pleasure.

  “Stop. It hurts.”

  She sat back. “What, what d
o you want to know?”

  “What were we?”

  “What were we? We were all sorts of things. We were lots of things to each other, and we still will be, you’ll see, we still will be!”

  With one hand, in an infinite motion, he pulled the blankets up over his chest, as if to protect himself from the deceit in her voice. He lay silently for a few minutes. Then she heard his dry lips part, and she knew what was coming.

  “And Ilan?”

  “Ilan … I don’t know where to start, I don’t know what you remember and what you don’t. Ask me.”

  “I can’t remember. There are parts. In the middle it’s all erased.”

  “Do you remember that you were on the base in Sinai with Ilan?”

  “In Bavel, yes.”

  “You were at the end of your army stint. I was already in Jerusalem, studying.” As she spoke, she thought: Stick to the facts. Only answer what he asks. Let him decide what he can hear.

  There was silence again. The space heater sparked.

  And wait for him, she warned herself. Go at his pace. Maybe he doesn’t even want to talk about it, maybe it’s too soon for him.

  Avram lay still. His eyes were open. He had only one eyebrow, half of which was missing.

  “You used to come home every other week in rotation from Sinai. You and Ilan.”

  He gave her a questioning look.

  “One week you, the next week him. One of you always had to stay on the base.”

  He thought it over. “And the other?”

  “The other would go on leave, to Jerusalem.”

  “And you were in Jerusalem?”

  “Yes”—stick to the facts—“do you remember where I lived?”

  “There was a geranium,” Avram said after some thought.

  “That’s right! You see, you do remember! I had a little room in Nachlaot.”

  “You did?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “It comes and goes.”

  “With an outhouse? And a tiny kitchen in the courtyard? We used to cook late at night. Once you made me chicken soup on a cooker.”

  “And where was my mom?”

  “Your mom?”

  “Yes.”

  “You … You don’t remember?”

  “Isn’t she—”

  “When you were in basic training, she—”

  “Yes, you walked with me at the funeral, that’s right. Ilan was there, too. He walked next to me, on the other side. Yes.”

  She stood up, unable to tolerate any more. “Are you hungry? Should I get you something?”

  “Ora.”

  She sat down obediently, as if ordered by a stern teacher.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Ask me.”

  “My mouth.”

  She soaked a washcloth in water and dabbed his lips.

  “But in the war—”

  “Yes.”

  “Why was I—”

  He stopped himself, and Ora thought: Now he’s going to ask about the lots.

  “I went down to the Canal, and Ilan didn’t.”

  He remembered, she knew. He was remembering and did not have the courage to ask. She looked miserably at the window, searching for a hint of dawn, a sliver of light.

  “You and me, what did we have?”

  “I told you, we were friends. We were—listen, we were lovers,” she said finally, simply, and the words tore her heart.

  “And I came back in an airplane?”

  “What?” She was confused. “Yes, in an airplane. With the others.”

  “There were others?”

  “Many.”

  “For a long time?”

  “You were there for about—”

  “No, me and you.”

  “A year.”

  She heard him repeat the words to himself. She resisted asking whether he thought it had been longer, so as not to hear him say shorter. Then he fell asleep again and snored. He seemed capable of digesting only one crumb of his previous life at a time.

  “But we really did love,” she said, even though he was asleep. “You and me, we were really …” It’s horrible, she thought, the way I’m already talking about it in the past tense.

  He moved, entangled in the covers, and swore at the cast that pressed on his leg. She heard the large plate screw in his arm clicking against the bedrail.

  “Ora—”

  “What?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Not what?”

  “You need to know.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t …” He moaned, searching for the words. “I don’t love anything. Nothing.”

  She sat silently.

  “Ora?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Yes.”

  “And no one.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t have it … Love.”

  “Yes.”

  “For anything.” He groaned. A remnant of his old compassionate, chivalrous self made him wish to protect her, she could sense it, but he did not have the strength. “I wanted to tell you earlier.”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything died in me.”

  She bowed her head. How could there be an Avram without love? What was Avram without love? And who, she thought, am I without his love?

  But since the war, since he was taken hostage, she’d had no love for anyone, either. Just like after Ada—her blood had dried up in her again. It was comfortable. She lived precisely within her means. But why did it seem so much more terrible in Avram?

  “Tell me.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long were we?”

  “Almost a year.”

  “And you and Ilan?”

  “Five years. From age seventeen or so. She laughed joylessly. “You hooked us up, remember?” We were in a hospital then too, she thought. There was a war then, too.

  “That, I remember,” he murmured. “And I remember that you were a couple. I didn’t remember us.”

  She swallowed the insult heavily.

  Then he mumbled in surprise, “Of course we were, how could I forget.”

  “You’ll remember everything, there’s no rush.”

  “I think they did things to me there.”

  “It will come back to you,” she said, and her stomach felt desiccated. “It’ll take a while, but you’ll—”

  A tall, strong nurse opened the door, switched the light on, and peered inside: “Are we all right?”

  “We’re all right,” Ora said and jumped up with a panic that turned into a sort of feverish, habitual happiness: “I’m glad you came, I was about to call you.”

  To her astonishment, Avram was snoring loudly, and this time she had trouble believing he was asleep, but she stopped herself and did not tell the nurse he had regained consciousness. The nurse changed his infusion and urine bags and spread some cream on his fingertips and above his eyes, where the brows had been pulled out. Then she turned him over and cleaned the pus oozing from the wound in his back, bandaged him up again, and gave him a massive injection of antibiotics.

  “Sweetie, you need some sleep,” she told Ora while she worked.

  Ora smiled with great effort. “I’ll go home in the morning.”

  “So tell me, what are you to him? You and the tall guy. Family?”

  “Sort of. Well, yes, we’re his family.”

  It occurred to Ora that Ilan had been changing from day to day since Avram’s return. It was as though a new energy had filled him and was somehow enlarging his volume, the space he occupied. His gait was more vibrant, stronger. There was something confusing and a little bothersome about it. Sometimes she looked at him in surprise: it was like someone had traced over his pencil-drawn features with black ink.

  The nurse laughed. “It’s just that I keep seeing just the two of you here. Doesn’t he have anyone else?”

  “No, just the two of us.”

  “But how are you rela
ted to him? You don’t look anything like him.” Having finished her business, she stood in the doorway, refusing to leave them. “You actually look more like each other, you and that other guy. Like brother and sister. So how are you related to him?”

  “It’s a long story,” Ora murmured.

  “Door,” Avram whispered when the nurse left. Ora got up and shut the door.

  “And you were Ilan’s,” he said, probing for solid ground to put his foot down on.

  “Yes, you could say. That, too. But you really shouldn’t make such an effort now.”

  “And Ilan … You loved him, right?”

  Ora nodded. She pondered how it was possible to use the very same word to describe such different feelings.

  “So how … I mean, how did you also …”

  Either he’s testing me—a strange idea flashed in her mind—or else he’s playing one of his games with me. “How what?”

  “How were we also.”

  She thought she could finally see a very thin strip of pale light in the window. Why are you torturing him with your stammerings? she thought. What are you afraid of? Just tell him. Give him back his past. That may be all he has left. “Listen, Avram, there was one year, up until not long ago, until the war, when I was with you and with him.”

  He let out a heavy, hoarse breath of surprise. “Remember, I have to remember,” he mumbled to himself. “Why is all the time erased? She was with me and with him? Together? How did he let me …”

  He sank back into himself again and melted away for several minutes. Ora thought: He cannot understand what was once the spirit of his life.

  “I don’t understand anymore, Ora, help me.”

  His body twitched and jerked as if a battle was raging within him. She squirmed too, suffocating in her own skin. What is this strange interrogation? He must remember. How could you forget a year like that, and everything we went through?

  “But with both of us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Together? At the same time?”

  She held her head up straight and said, “Yes.”

  “And did we know?”

  Ora could not do this anymore. These questions, this diminution of him, as though something was becoming irredeemably polluted in her own mind, too.