To the End of the Land Read online

  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?

  There’s a hole, she thinks now, and feels cold and chilled. It’s been there for a long time. How could I not have seen it? Ever since Ada there’s an Ora-shaped hole where I used to be.

  She coughed and sprang back to life. She must have fallen asleep in the middle of fighting with Avram. What were they fighting about? What was it about him that got to her? Or maybe they’d already made up? In the darkness she guessed at Avram’s sprawled figure on the other end of the bed, leaning on the wall, snoring heavily. Was this his room or hers? And where was Ilan?

  He had told her he was going to die. He knew it would happen, knew it had to happen. From the age of zero he’d known he wouldn’t live long, because he didn’t have enough life energy inside him. That’s what he said, and she tried to calm him, to erase his strange words, but he didn’t hear her, maybe didn’t even know she was there. He shamelessly cried over his life, which had been ruined since his parents divorced and his father took him to his army base to live with all the animals there. Everything had been screwed up since then, he wailed, and the illness was just a natural extension of all that shit. He was burning, and half of what he said she couldn’t understand. Fragments of mutterings and whispers. So she just stood very close to him, bathed in his warmth, and carefully stroked his shoulder. Every so often she stroked his back too, and sometimes, with a pounding heart, she quickly slid her hand over his thick hair, and as she did so she realized she didn’t even know what he looked like, and perhaps she even vaguely imagined that he looked a lot like Avram, simply because they had both come into her life together. She kept telling him the things Avram said to her when she was afraid or miserable. Thanks to Avram, that idiot, she knew what to say. Ilan suddenly grasped her hand, squeezed it hard, and glided over her arm from one end to the other. She was taken aback but did not pull her hand away, and he leaned his cheek against her, and his forehead, and held her arm to his chest, and suddenly he kissed her, showering dry, burning little kisses on her arm, her fingers, the palm of her hand, and his head burrowed into her body, and Ora stood speechless, looked into the dark over his head, and thought wondrously: He’s kissing me, he doesn’t even know he’s kissing me. Ilan laughed suddenly to himself, laughed and shivered, and said that sometimes, at night, he snuck out and wrote on the walls of the army base huts: “The Commander’s Son Is a Fag.” His father went crazy when he saw the graffiti and walked around with a bucket of whitewash, and lay in wait to ambush whoever was doing it—but I’m warning you, bro, don’t you ever tell anyone, Ilan giggled and shivered. I’m only telling you this. He talked in a hoarse voice about the fat soldier his father was screwing in his office, and how the whole base could hear her, but even that was better than when my parents were together, he said, at least that nightmare is over. I’ll never get married, he groaned, and his forehead burned against her chest until it hurt, and she pressed him to her and thought he sounded like someone who really hadn’t spoken to anyone for a whole year. He laughed and buried his face in the crook of Ora’s arm and inhaled her scent. I’m crazy about the smell in that music shop on Allenby, he said. It’s the sweet smell of glue—they use it to stick the plastic pads that plug the saxophone holes. He told her that a year ago he found a used Selmer Paris in good condition there. In Tel Aviv I had a band, he said. We used to sit around on Fridays listening to new records all night long, learning about John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, making Tel Aviv jazz.

  His body heat trickled into her. She was overcome by a paralyzing awe of the burning boy leaning on her arm. She wouldn’t mind if this went on for a while, even until morning, even a whole day. I want to help him, she thought, I want to, I want to. Her body was prickling with desire, even her feet were burning. She hadn’t felt these kinds of currents for so long, and Ilan found her other hand and placed her palms on his closed eyes, and said he knew how to always be happy.

  Happy? Ora choked and pulled her hand back for a second, as if burned. How?

  I have a method, he said. I just break myself up into all kinds of areas, and if I feel bad in one part of my soul, I skip to another part. His breath licked at her wrists, and she felt his eyelashes tickle her palms.

  I just spread out the risks that way, said Ilan, and he put his head back and gave a dry, tortured laugh. No one can hurt me, I skip, I—

  In mid-sentence his head drooped and he was swallowed up, exhausted, in a deep slumber. His fingers loosened and slid down her arms until they dropped on his lap, and his head plunged forward.

  Ora stood, struck a match, and lit up Ilan’s face for the first time. With his eyes closed, and within the circle of light, his face was a drop of beauty. She lit another match and he kept mumbling, fighting with someone in his dream, and he shook his head hard, and his face flinched with anger, perhaps because of the blinding light, perhaps because of what he saw in his mind’s eye. His dark, rich eyebrows coiled sternly toward each other, and Ora forgot herself as she stood there and lit up his clear forehead, the shape of his eyes, his gorgeous lips, warm and slightly cracked, which even now still burned on her own.

  SHE SWORE HERSELF to silence. Anything she said would be a mistake anyway, it would give Avram further proof of her stupidity and superficiality. If only she had the strength to get herself up from his bed and go back to her room and forget him forever, and the other one.

  I got on your nerves, she said.

  It doesn’t matter.

  But you … why did you run away? Why did you run away on me just when—

  I don’t know, I don’t know. I just suddenly—

  Avram?

  What?

  Let’s go back to my room. We’re better there.

  Should we leave him here?

  Yes, come on, come on …

  Careful, otherwise we’ll both fall.

  Walk slowly, my head is spinning.

  Lean on me.

  Can you hear her?

  She can go on like that for hours.

  I dreamed about her before. Something really frightening, I was terrified of her.

  Such sobbing—

  Listen, it’s like she’s singing to herself.

  Mourning.

  Tell me, she said later, when they were in her bed.

  What?

  Will you write one of your …

  My limericks? My tall tales?

  Ha-ha. Your stories. Do you think you’ll write about this hospital?

  Maybe, I don’t know. I actually had one idea, but it’s already—

  About what? Tell me …

  Avram sat up with effort and leaned on the wall. He had given up trying to understand her and her reversals, but like a kitten with a ball of yarn, he could not resist
a “tell me.”

  It’s about a boy lying in a hospital, in the middle of a war, and he goes up onto the rooftop and he has a box of matches—

  Like me—

  Yes, not exactly. Because this boy, with the matches, in the middle of the blackout he starts signaling enemy planes.

  What is he, crazy?

  No. He wants them to come and bomb him, personally.

  But why?

  I don’t know that yet. That’s as far as I’ve thought.

  Is he really that miserable?

  Yes.

  Ora thought Avram had gotten the idea from what Ilan had told him. She didn’t dare ask. Instead she said, It’s a little scary.

  Really? Say more.

  She thought about it and felt the rusty wheels start to turn in her brain. Avram seemed to sense them too, and waited silently.

  She said, I’m thinking about him. He’s on the roof. He lights match after match, right?

  Yes, he said, and stretched out.

  And he looks at the sky, in all directions, waiting for them to come, the airplanes. He doesn’t know where they’ll come from. Right?

  Right, right.

  Maybe these are the last moments of his life. He’s terribly frightened, but he has to keep waiting for them. That’s how he is, stubborn and brave, right?

  Yeah?

  Yes, and to me he looks like the loneliest person in the world at that moment.

  I didn’t think about that, Avram said with an awkward giggle. I didn’t think about his loneliness at all.

  If he had even one friend, he wouldn’t do it, would he?

  Yeah, he wouldn’t—

  Maybe you could make someone for him?

  Why?

  So he’ll have … I don’t know, a friend, someone who can be with him.

  They sat quietly. She could hear him thinking. A rustling, rapid trickle. She liked the sound.

  And Avram?

  What?

  Do you think you’ll ever write about me?

  I don’t know.

  I’m afraid to talk, so you don’t go writing down all my nonsense.

  Like what?

  Just remember that if I talk nonsense here it’s because of the fever, okay?

  But I don’t write things exactly the way they happen.

  Of course, you make things up too, that’s the whole fun, right? What will you make up about me?

  Wait a minute, do you write, too?

  Me? No way! I don’t, no. But tell me straight—

  What?

  Weren’t you planning to call me Ada in the story?

  How did you know?

  I knew, she said, and hugged herself. And I agree. Call me Ada.

  No.

  What do you mean no?

  I’ll call you Ora.

  Really?

  Ora, said Avram, tasting the name, and the sweetness poured through his mouth and his whole body. O-ra.

  Something was flowing inside her, some ancient, measured knowledge: He is an artist. That’s it, he was an artist. And she knew what it was like with artists. She had experience with them. She hadn’t used it for a long time, but now it was filling her up again. And she’d get better, she’d beat the illness, she suddenly knew for sure, she had female intuition.

  She closed her eyes and a slight shock of pleasure hit her as she wondered how, in a moment’s urge, she had been emboldened to lean over a strange boy and kiss him on his lips for a long time. She had kissed and kissed and kissed. And now, when she finally dared to remember without holding back, she felt the kiss itself, her first kiss, seeping into her, awakening her, trickling into each of her cells, churning her blood. What will happen now? she wondered. Which of the two will I … But her heart was surprisingly light and cheerful.

  The truth is, I also write a little, she confessed to her complete surprise.

  You do?

  Not seriously, nothing like you, never mind, I just said that. She tried to shut up but could not. They’re not really songs, never mind, honestly, just hiking songs, for trips and camps, nonsense, you know, of the limerick family.

  Oh, that. He smiled with odd sadness, retreating into a sort of politeness that pinched at her. You should sing me something.

  She shook her head vigorously. No way, are you mad? Never.

  Because even though she knew him so little, she could already tell exactly how she would feel when her rhymes echoed inside his head, with all his twisted, snobbish ideas. But it was that thought that made her want to sing—what did she have to be embarrassed about?

  So you want to penetrate the profound hidden meaning of the lyrics? She flashed him a deliberate smile. This is something I wrote ages ago, she said. We wrote it together, Ada and I, for the last day of camp at Machanayim. We had a treasure hunt, everyone got lost, don’t ask.

  I won’t, he smiled.

  Then do.

  What did you tell Ilan?

  You’ll never know.

  Did you kiss him?

  What? What did you say? She was horrified.

  You heard me.

  Maybe he kissed me? She raised her eyebrows and wiggled them mischievously, a shameless Ursula Andress. Now be quiet and listen. It’s to the tune of “Tadarissa Boom,” d’you know it?

  Of course I do, said Avram, suspicious and enchanted, squirming with unforeseen delight.

  Ora sang, drumming the beat on her thigh:

  We set off on a treasure hunt, Tadarissa Boom,

  Our counselor was a real hunk, Tadarissa Boom,

  He said he’d help us find the way, Tadarissa Boom,

  And not get lost or go astray—

  Tadarissa Boom, Avram hummed quietly, and Ora gave him a look, and a new smile, soft and budding, lit her up inside and her face glowed in the dark, and he thought she was a pure and innocent person, incapable of pretending, unlike him. “The most innocent of its creatures,” he recalled. I am happy, he thought with wonder. I want her, I want her to be mine, always, forever. His thoughts skipped, as usual, to the brink of possibilities, a lovesick dreamer: She’ll be my wife, the love of my life—

  Second verse, she announced:

  We solved the clues and found the prize—

  Tadarissa Boom, Avram sang in a thick voice and drummed on his own thigh, and sometimes, distractedly, on hers.

  But no one cared except the guys—

  Tadarissa Boom.

  ’Cause when the counselor looked at us—

  Tadarissa Boom!

  He made us swoon and blinded us!

  Wait. Avram put his hand on her arm. Quiet, someone’s coming.

  I can’t hear it. It’s him.

  Coming here? Is he coming here from the room?

  I can’t understand it. He’s barely alive.

  What should we do, Avram?

  He’s crawling! Listen, he’s dragging himself along with his arms.

  Take him away from here, take him back!

  What’s the big deal, Ora, let him sit with us for a while.

  No, I don’t want to, not now.

  Wait a minute. Hey, Ilan? Ilan, come on, it’s here, a little farther.

  I’m telling you, I’ll leave.

  Ilan, it’s Avram, from class. I’m here with Ora. Go on, tell him—

  Tell him what?

  Tell him something—

  Ilan …? It’s me, Ora.

  Ora?

  Yes.

  You mean, you’re real?

  Of course, Ilan, it’s me. Come on in here with us, we’ll be together for a while.

  The Walk, 2000

  THE CONVOY twists along, a stammering band of civilian cars, jeeps, military ambulances, tanks, and huge bulldozers on the backs of transporters. Her taxi driver is quiet and gloomy. His hand rests on the Mercedes’s gear shift and his thick neck does not move. For several long minutes he has looked neither at her nor at Ofer.

  As soon as Ofer sat down in the cab, he let out an angry breath and flashed a look that said: Not the smartes
t idea, Mom, asking this particular driver to come along on a trip like this. Only then did she realize what she’d done. At seven that morning she had called Sami and asked him to come pick her up for a long drive to the Gilboa region. Now she remembers that for some reason she hadn’t given him any details or explained the purpose of the trip, the way she usually did. Sami had asked when she wanted him, and she’d hesitated and then said, “Come at three.” “Ora,” he’d said, “maybe we should leave earlier, ’cause traffic will be a mess.” That was his only acknowledgment of the day’s madness, but even then she didn’t get it and just said there was no way she could leave before three. She wanted to spend these hours with Ofer, and although Ofer agreed, she could tell how much effort his concession took. Seven or eight hours were all that was left of the weeklong trip she’d planned for the two of them, and now she realizes she hadn’t even told Sami on the phone that Ofer was part of the ride. Had she told him, he might have asked her to let him off today, just this one time, or he might have sent one of the Jewish drivers who worked for him—“my Jewish sector,” he called them. But when she’d called him she’d been in a state of complete frenzy, and it simply had not occurred to her—the unease slowly rises in her chest—that for this sort of drive, on a day like this, it was better not to call an Arab driver.

  Even if he is an Arab from here, one of ours, Ilan prods at her brain as she tries to justify her own behavior. Even if it’s Sami, who’s almost one of the family, who’s been driving everyone—the people who work for Ilan, her estranged husband, and the whole family—for more than twenty years. They are his main livelihood, his regular monthly income, and he, in return, is obliged to be at their service around the clock, whenever they need him. They have been to his home in Abu Ghosh for family celebrations, they know his wife, Inaam, and they helped out with connections and money when his two older sons wanted to emigrate to Argentina. They’ve racked up hundreds of driving hours together, and she cannot recall his ever being this silent. With him, every drive is a stand-up show. He’s witty and sly, a political dodger who shoots in all directions with decoys and double-edged swords, and besides, she cannot imagine calling another driver. Driving herself is out of the question for the next year: she’s had three accidents and six moving violations in the past twelve months, an excessive crop even by her standards, and the loathsome judge who revoked her license had hissed that he was doing her a favor and that she really owed him her life. It would have all been so easy if she herself were driving Ofer. At least she’d have had another ninety minutes alone with him, and maybe she’d even have tempted him to stop on the way—there are some good restaurants in Wadi Ara. After all, one hour more, one hour less, what’s the rush? Why are you in such a hurry? Tell me, what is it that’s waiting for you there?