To The End Of The Land Part 11

Mist rises from the fragrant earth as it warms, and from the large, juicy rolls of excrement left by the cows that preceded them. Elongated puddles from the recent rains reply to the dawn sky, emitting modest signals, and frogs leap into the stream as they walk by, and there is not a human being in sight.

A moment later they come up against a barbed-wire fence blocking the path, and Avram waits for her. "I guess that's it, then?"

Ora can hear how relieved he is that the hike is over relatively quickly and painlessly. Her spirits fall-what is a fence doing in the middle of the path? Who would put a fence in a place like this? Her Moirae gather to determine her fate, to circle her in a dance of mockery and rebuke-for her ungainliness ungainliness, her appliance dyslexia appliance dyslexia, and her user-manual illiteracy user-manual illiteracy-but as she wallows in their juices, she notices some thin metal cylinders on the ground. She takes her gla.s.ses out and puts them on, ignoring Avram's look of amazement, and realizes that part of the fence is in fact a narrow gate. She looks for the tether that secures it and finds a twisted, rusty wire.

Avram stands next to her without lifting a finger, either because he hopes she will not be able to open it or because he is once again too weak to understand what is going on. But when she asks for his help he pitches in immediately, and after she explains what needs to be done-namely, to pick up two large stones and pound the wire on either side until it gradually gives way and breaks-he studies the tether for a long time, hoists the loop over the fence post in one swift motion, the barbed wire falls to the ground at their feet, and they walk through.

"We have to shut it behind us," she says, and Avram nods. "Will you do it?" He locks the gate, and she notes to herself that he needs to be constantly activated and have his engine started; he seems to have given up his volition and handed the keys to her. Nu Nu, she thinks in her mother's voice, it's the blind leading the blind. After they go a little farther, something else occurs to her, and she asks if he knows why there was even a fence there. He shakes his head, and she explains about the cows and their pasture areas. Since she knows very little, she talks a lot, and is unable to determine how much of it he is taking in, or why he is listening with such stern concentration-whether he hears what she was saying or is simply lapping up the sounds of her voice.

She notices that he is becoming irritable again, throwing nervous glances behind him and jumping every time a crow caws. After losing focus on him for a moment, she turns to find that he has stopped walking and is standing a ways back, staring at the earth. She walks over and finds the rotting corpse of a little songbird at his feet. She cannot identify it, but it has black feathers, a white stomach, and brown gla.s.sy eyes. Ants, white maggots, and flies are swarming all over it. She calls Avram's name twice before he snaps awake and follows her. How much farther am I going to be able to drag him, she wonders, before he erupts or falls apart? What am I doing to him? What did I do to Sami? What's happening to me? All I do is cause trouble.

The path curves sharply and plunges into the stream. Ora stands close to the water and spots the path emerging on the opposite bank in a charming, innocent-looking zigzag. When she was planning the trip with Ofer, she had read something about how, in spring, "you'll need to wet your feet in the streams once in a while." But this is a torrent, and there is no other visible path. She cannot turn back-this is another new rule, a trick against her persecutors: she must not reverse her tracks she must not reverse her tracks. Avram stands next to her and stares at the glistening green water as though it were a huge mystery bustling with clues. His thick arms hang by his sides. His helplessness suddenly angers her, and she is angry at herself too, for not looking into what to do in such a situation before the hike. But before the hike she'd had Ofer. Ofer was supposed to navigate and lead, he would build bridges over the water for her, and now she is here alone with Avram. Alone.

She edges closer to the stream, careful not to slip. A large leafless tree is growing out of the water, and she leans in as far as she can and tries to break off a branch. Avram does not move. He stares hypnotically at the current, horrified when the dry branch snaps and Ora almost falls into the water. She angrily sticks the branch into the streambed, then pulls it out and measures it against her body. The ring of water reaches up to her waist. "Sit down and take off your shoes and socks," she says. She sits down on the path and takes off her own shoes, sticks her socks in a side pocket on the backpack, ties the shoelaces together after threading them through a loop on top of the pack, and rolls her pants up to her knees. When she looks up, Avram is standing over her, looking at her feet the way he stared at the stream.

"Hey," she says softly, a little surprised, and wiggles her pink toes at him. "Yoo-hoo!"

He sits down quickly to take off his shoes and socks. He rolls his pants up to the knees, exposing thick, pale legs that are slightly bent but look surprisingly powerful. She remembers those legs well-the legs of a horseman, and also, as he himself once said, the legs of a stretched-out dwarf. "Hey," he growls. "Yoo-hoo."

Ora looks away and laughs, excited by the flicker of old Avram from within his flatness, and perhaps also by his suddenly bared flesh.

They sit and watch the water. A translucent purple dragonfly flits by like an optical illusion. There was a time, Ora thinks, when I was at home in his body. And then there were years when I was in charge of it: I washed and cleaned and dried and clipped and shaved and bandaged and fed and drained and whatever else.

She shows him how to tie his shoes to the backpack, next to Ofer's pair, and suggests that he empty out his pockets so his money and other stuff won't get wet.

He shrugs.

"Not even an ID?"

Avram mumbles: "What do I need it for?"

She walks down to the water first, holding the branch, and lets out a yelp when she touches the cold torrent. She wonders what she will do if Avram gets swept away and thinks perhaps he shouldn't even walk into a current like this in his condition. But she decides, of her own accord, by unanimous proclamation, that it will be all right, because there is simply no choice. She puts one foot in front of the other, fighting the flow of water that reaches up to her stomach now and is so powerful that she is afraid to lift her feet off the bottom. But Avram will be fine, she determines again, frightened. He will walk into this water and nothing will happen. Are you sure? Yes. Why? Because. Because for the last hour, really the last day and night, she's had a continuous resolve, desperate yet determined, and she has used it countless times to force people and events to proceed exactly as she wished, because she needs them to, because she has no leeway for bargains or compromises, because she demands blind obedience to the new rules that her mind is constantly legislating-the regulations of this emergency state that has befallen her. And one of the rules, quite possibly the most important one, is that she has to keep moving, has to be constantly in motion. Besides, she must keep moving because the water is freezing her entire lower half.

Her feet grope pebbles and silt, and slippery weeds float around her ankles. Every so often her toes grasp a little stone or rock. They examine it, hypothesize, draw conclusions, and a primeval fishlike sensation flutters in her spine. A long thin branch floats by near the surface and suddenly whips into a twist and slithers away. Droplets of water spray her gla.s.ses, and she gives up wiping them off. Every so often she dips her swollen left arm into the water and delights in the cold relief. Avram wades in behind her, and she hears his gasp of pained surprise when the water envelops him with its coolness. She keeps going, already halfway across. Torrents of water flow and part around her body and lap against her thighs and waist. The sun warms her face, and a field of blue and green rays dances in her eyes and in the drops on her gla.s.ses, and it feels good to stand in this transparent bubble of the moment.

She climbs up the opposite bank through deep, doughy mud that enfolds her feet and sucks at them with its quivering lips, and clouds of gnats rise from the indentations left by her soles. Another few steps and she is on dry land, where she collapses against a rock with her backpack. She feels a new lightness; in the water, in the current that surged through her, she'd felt as though a stone had been rolled from the mouth of a well she thought was dry. And then she remembers: Avram. Stuck in the middle of the stream with half-closed eyes and a face distorted with fear.

She quickly walks back through the dark, rich mud, stepping in the dimples of her own footprints, and holds the branch out to him. He presses his head down between his shoulders and refuses to move. Over the rush of the water she shouts that he can't keep standing there-who knows what might be swimming in that water-and he instantly obeys her commanding tone, inches forward, and reaches for the branch. He moves slowly, and she takes tiny steps backward, then sits down on one rock and plants her feet against another, and pulls him out with all her strength. "Come on, sit down and dry off," she says, laughing. But he stands frozen in the mud, lost, his body reenacting his Tel Hashomer Hospital days, with the catatonic stares and the fossilized rigidity. With a panicked realization that he might fall back in, she rushes over to him. She fears that what she is doing to him might destabilize him. But he seems to be finding things easier now: after all, he did follow her for half an hour without collapsing. Perhaps over the years he has managed to acquire a certain strength, even a modic.u.m of existential solidity (that was one of his idioms, the old Avram's), and she no longer needs to bend each joint to activate it-ankles, knees, and thighs-the way she did back in those days, like a sculptor of one body. She used to go to his physiotherapy sessions, in exercise rooms or in the pool, and sit watching and memorizing, jotting down notes on what she observed. She forced him to work with her, secretly, in between the professional sessions, during sleepless nights. Nine months pa.s.sed before his body learned to mimic the positions she molded it into. He once introduced her to a doctor on the ward as his ch.o.r.eographer, a disclosure that let her know that there was still just a little bit of Avram inside the sh.e.l.l.

He lets out a long exhalation and begins to defrost his limbs. He stretches his arms, back, shoulders, elbows, wrists. Everything is working, Ora thinks as she watches surrept.i.tiously: broad, diagonal movements, the large muscle groups. He looks at the stream without believing he really crossed it, and when he smiles awkwardly at Ora, a fraction of the old charm flashes through. She feels a pang as she looks at him: Oh, my old, suspended lover. She returns a measured smile, very careful not to flood him. This is another piece of wisdom she's learned in her long life among the tribe of men: the wisdom of not flooding them.

She shows him where to sit and how to put his feet on the rock so they'll dry faster, and from a side pocket in the backpack she takes some crackers, processed cheese, and two apples. She holds them out to him and he munches heavily and methodically, glancing around with his suspicious, studious look. He gets stuck again on her long, narrow feet, which have turned very pink from the cold water, and he quickly looks away. Then he slowly straightens his neck and spreads his arms out from his body, with cautious movements, like a huge dinosaur chick erupting from its egg. As he looks contemplatively at the opposite bank, Ora realizes that now, having crossed the stream, he is beginning to grasp that he has left behind what used to be, and that from here on there will be a new reality.

She starts talking, to distract him before he can get scared. She shows him how to peel off the large cakes of mud drying on his legs and slaps her own legs lightly to get the blood flowing. Then she puts her socks and shoes back on, ties her shoelaces the way Ofer taught her-she likes to feel that even from afar he is zipping and fastening her up with his embrace-and wonders whether she should try to tell Avram that Ofer, when he showed her the double knot, had said he was positive that no future invention could ever replace man's ingenuity when it came to the simple act of tying shoelaces. "No matter what they invent," he'd said, "we'll always have that, and that's how we'll remember every morning that we're human." Her heart had filled with pride, perhaps because he'd said "human" so naturally, with such humanness. She had quoted Nahum Gutman, who wrote in his Path of the Orange Peels Path of the Orange Peels that every morning when he put on his shoes, he whistled excitedly, "because I am glad of the new day breaking." And of course they both brought up Grandpa Moshe, her father, who had worn the same pair of shoes for seventeen years, explaining that he simply "walked lightly." Ora had not been able to resist telling Ofer-she thought he'd probably heard the story before, but she risked it anyway-that when he was about eighteen months old and she'd put his first pair of shoes on, she'd accidentally put the left shoe on the right foot and vice versa. "And to think that for half a day you walked around with your shoes on the wrong feet, just because I decided that was the right way. It's terrible how parents can determine their-Wait, have I already told you this story?" "Let's see," Ofer had said, laughing, and punched in a calculation on his phone. They had endless such conversations, full of laughter and mutual potshots. An awkward warmth flowed between them, with soul-penetrating glances. In recent years this was diminis.h.i.+ng, much as everything between them was diminis.h.i.+ng. It seemed that ever since the two of them started to mature, he and Adam, they'd moved more into Ilan's domain, and sometimes she thought they'd been transferred into a different magnetic field, with its own laws and sensibilities, and mainly its own impermeabilities, where she flailed in a tapestry of wires that tripped her up and made her falter ridiculously with each step. But it was still there, she convinced herself repeatedly. What existed between them must still exist somewhere, it's just that it was slightly subterranean now, especially while he was serving in the army, and it would come back after he finished, and it might even be richer and fuller. She sighs loudly and wonders how it happened that her expertise in recent years was to look for signs of life in people. that every morning when he put on his shoes, he whistled excitedly, "because I am glad of the new day breaking." And of course they both brought up Grandpa Moshe, her father, who had worn the same pair of shoes for seventeen years, explaining that he simply "walked lightly." Ora had not been able to resist telling Ofer-she thought he'd probably heard the story before, but she risked it anyway-that when he was about eighteen months old and she'd put his first pair of shoes on, she'd accidentally put the left shoe on the right foot and vice versa. "And to think that for half a day you walked around with your shoes on the wrong feet, just because I decided that was the right way. It's terrible how parents can determine their-Wait, have I already told you this story?" "Let's see," Ofer had said, laughing, and punched in a calculation on his phone. They had endless such conversations, full of laughter and mutual potshots. An awkward warmth flowed between them, with soul-penetrating glances. In recent years this was diminis.h.i.+ng, much as everything between them was diminis.h.i.+ng. It seemed that ever since the two of them started to mature, he and Adam, they'd moved more into Ilan's domain, and sometimes she thought they'd been transferred into a different magnetic field, with its own laws and sensibilities, and mainly its own impermeabilities, where she flailed in a tapestry of wires that tripped her up and made her falter ridiculously with each step. But it was still there, she convinced herself repeatedly. What existed between them must still exist somewhere, it's just that it was slightly subterranean now, especially while he was serving in the army, and it would come back after he finished, and it might even be richer and fuller. She sighs loudly and wonders how it happened that her expertise in recent years was to look for signs of life in people.

Avram gravely observes Ora's hands as she ties her laces, but he gets mixed up when he tries to follow, and she sits down next to him to show him. She notices that the water has washed the sharp smell of urine off him, and that she can now stand next to him without gagging. And then Avram himself suddenly says, "I wet myself yesterday, huh?"

"Don't ask."

"Where did it happen?"

"Never mind."

"I can't remember anything."

"It's better that way."

He examines her face and decides to let it go, and she wonders if she'll ever tell him about that night with Sami.

Only when she'd walked with Avram on her back right up to the taxi door had he deigned to get out of the cab, irate and begrudging, and the two of them together had managed to shove the sleeping Avram into the backseat. That was when it occurred to Ora that Sami hadn't even known up until this moment that they were picking up a man. For a few months now he'd lurked in his subtle, polite way, hoping to find out whether she had anyone new. This isn't really someone new, she'd thought. In fact he's someone very old. It's secondhand Avram, maybe even third. She stood by the taxi catching her breath, her s.h.i.+rt wrinkled and damp with sweat, her legs still shaking.

"Drive," she said when she sat down next to Sami.

"Where to?"

She thought for a moment. Without looking at him, she said, "To where the country ends."

"For me it ended a long time ago," he hissed.

Every so often, as they drove, she felt him throw her a questioning, hostile, and somewhat frightened look. She did not turn to face him, did not know what he saw, and felt that something about her was already different. They pa.s.sed Ramat HaSharon, Herzliya, Netania, and Hadera, turned toward Wadi Ara, drove by the kibbutzim of Gan Shmuel and Ein Shemer, and the Arab villages of Kfar Kara, Ar'ara, and the city of Umm al'Fahm, crossed Megiddo Junction and HaSargel Junction, and took a wrong turn and got lost in Afula, which had presumptuously installed the new traffic patterns of a big city. They bounced from one traffic circle to the next, but finally they escaped Afula and drove past Kfar Tavor and s.h.i.+bli, north on Route 65 all the way to Golani Junction, and farther north past Bu'eine and Eilabun to Kadarim Junction, which was also called Amud River Junction, and Ora thought to herself, It's been years since I hiked the Amud River. If I was with Ofer I would convince him to do it, but what am I doing here with Avram? They turned onto Route 85 and drove to Ami'ad Junction, and Ora, whose anger at Sami had imperceptibly faded away, just as it always did-she was quick to heat up and quick to cool down, and sometimes simply forgot she was angry-pointed out that there was a nice little cafe around here. "On a good day you could see the Kinneret, and on any day you can see the beautiful woman who owns the place." Ora smiled appeasingly, but Sami did not respond and refused the apple and squares of chocolate she offered. She stretched out and rubbed the body parts that ached and remembered that she hadn't even finished the story she'd started telling him-that afternoon? Was it only that afternoon?-about her father's glaucoma and the surgery he finally had to save his one seeing eye. It bothered her that the story had been truncated, although she knew that from their current positions there was probably no way back to the tone of voice that would allow the story to end. But it was good that she'd remembered it, she thought as she sat back comfortably and closed her eyes, because through it she could be with Ofer, who had insisted on staying with her father in the hospital the night after the operation and had taken him home with Ora, driving with a tenderness that had filled her with joy. She remembered how he walked the old man carefully from the car to the house, supporting him down the path through the apartment complex's garden, and her father had pointed wondrously at the lawn and the plants. After fifteen years of almost total blindness, his mind had confused the colors, and shadows looked like real things. Ofer realized immediately what was happening and translated the sights for him, and the different shades, reminding him gently: blue, yellow, green, purple. Her father had pointed at various things and recited the colors with Ofer. Ora had followed them and listened to Ofer and thought to herself, What a wonderful father he will make. He led her father up the stairs to the apartment with an arm around his shoulders, efficiently removing any obstacles in his way, and inside the apartment her mother had fled into the pantry. Ofer saw and understood and kept walking her father, holding his hand, to see the photograph of his grandchildren on the sideboard for the first time. Then he walked him through the rooms and showed him the various pieces of furniture purchased during his years of blindness. Still her mother did not show herself, and then Ofer had an idea. He took her father into the kitchen and they stood peering into the refrigerator together, and her father was amazed: "The fruits and vegetables are so colorful! In my day it wasn't like this!" He told Ofer with astonishment about every new thing he noticed, as if he wished to give him the gift of this primordial sight. And all that time her mother fussed around in the other rooms, and her father did not ask about her, and Ofer did not say anything, until finally, through the little window shared by the pantry and the bathroom, she presented her face to his eyes. Ofer gently smoothed his hand over his grandfather's back and signaled to his grandmother to smile.

Sami turned the radio on. Galei Tzahal, the military station, had a special news edition, and the prime minister was speaking. "The government of Israel is determined to shatter its enemies' cult of death, and in moments such as these we must remember that in the struggle against an enemy that has no moral reservations or considerations, we too are ent.i.tled, in order to protect our children-"

Sami quickly switched to an Arabic station and listened to a newscaster read an impa.s.sioned manifesto against a background of military music. Ora swallowed. She would not say anything. It was his right to listen to whatever he wanted. She should at least allow him that privilege. Avram was sprawled heavily in the back, snoring with his mouth open. Ora shut her eyes and imposed moderation and tolerance upon herself, trying to flood her sight with soft circles of color, which soon erupted into rows of dark, armed men, marching toward her with sparks flying from their eyes, humming a bloodthirsty tune that beat through all the s.p.a.ces of her body. How can he not understand what I'm going through? she thought. How can he be incapable of thinking about what I'm going through now, with Ofer there? She sat motionless and riled herself up as she listened to the provocative music. Rapidly scanning the day's events, she could not grasp how she had gotten herself mixed up with this annoying and infuriating man, who had hung from her neck like a weight all afternoon and then, with unbelievable nerve, had mired her in his own private complications with Yazdi and his IR, creating in her a sense of unease and guilt, when all she wanted was to implement her extremely modest plans, to employ his services in the most decent and unsoiled way, and in the end he had taken control of her agenda and messed it all up!

"Please turn off the radio," she said with quiet restraint.

He did not respond. She could not believe this was happening. He was ignoring her explicit request. The men were thundering with their rhythmic calls and throaty breaths, and a vein in her neck started to throb painfully.

"I asked you to turn it off."

He drove on, his face impervious, his thick hands stretched across the wheel. Only a tiny muscle in the corner of his mouth quivered. She restrained herself with great effort. She tried to calm herself, to plan her next move ...

And she knew, somewhere in the margins of her brain, she remembered, that if she only spoke to him candidly, if she only reminded him with a word, with a smile, of themselves, of the private little culture they had built up over the years, within the roaring and the drumming- "Turn it off already!" she screamed as loudly as she could and pounded her lap with both hands.

He flinched, swallowed, and did not turn off the radio. She could see his fingers trembling, and she almost gave up. His weakness shocked her, and touched her, and awakened again a dim sense of guilt. She also had the feeling that his innate Eastern gentleness would not withstand this tension and would eventually melt away in face of the determination, the recklessness, even-both so Western-that was suddenly roused in her. And there were always, too, his fear of Ilan and his dependence on Ilan. She licked her burning lips. Her throat pounded and burned with dryness, and the thought that she would eventually win, that she would bend him to her will, was just as painful as the desire to subdue him. She wished she could stop here, right now, and erase it all, everything that had happened today. You're just going out of your mind, she thought. What has he done to make you torment him like this? What has he done to you, tell me, other than merely exist?

This was all true, Ora retorted to herself, but it made her crazy to see that he could not give in to her even an inch, not even out of basic human courtesy! It's just not in their culture, she thought. Them and their lousy honor, and their never-ending insults, and their revenge, and their settling of scores over every little word anyone ever said to them since Creation, and all the world always owes them something, and everyone's always guilty in their eyes!

The music grew louder and louder, waves that bubbled and surfaced and climbed up her throat, and the men with their thundering voices pounded deep inside her, and something in Ora cracked, a distillation of many forms of sorrow and anguish, and perhaps also the affront of their friends.h.i.+p, which had let them down, which had been let down, which had blown up in their faces. Her skin turned red, a blazing shawl wrapped itself around her neck, and she felt that she could murder him. Her hand flew out, hit the radio b.u.t.ton, and turned it off.

They glanced sideways at each other, trembling.

"Sami," Ora sighed, "look what's become of us."

They kept on driving in silence, startled by themselves. To the left was Rosh Pina, deep in slumber, and then they pa.s.sed Hatzor HaGlilit and Ayelet HaShachar and the Hula Reserve and Yesud HaMa'ala and Kiryat Shmonah, which blinked with orange lights, and then they turned onto Route 99 through HaGoshrim and Dafna and She'ar Yashuv. Every so often, when they reached an intersection, he slowed down and turned a cheek to her with a silent question: How much farther? And she jutted her chin out in response: Farther, keep going, until the country ends.

After Kibbutz Dan they heard a groan from the back. Avram woke up and wheezed. Ora turned to him. Lying on the seat, he opened a pair of waifish eyes and looked at her with a kind, dreamy smile. "I have to pee," he said in a deep, slow voice.

"Oh, we'll stop soon," Ora said.

"I need to go now."

"Stop!" she told Sami in a panic. "Stop as soon as you can."

He slowed down and drove off the road. Ora sat and stared straight ahead. Sami looked at her. She did not move. "Ora?" asked Avram imploringly, and she was terrified at the thought that in a moment he would be standing outside the car, leaning on her, and judging by his look she would probably have to unzip his pants and hold it for him.

She gave Sami a pleading, begging, almost ingratiating look, and when she encountered his eyes she was trapped in them for a long, bitter moment that quickly branched out into an endless maze, from Joseph Trumpeldor and the riots of 1929 and 1936 all the way to Avram's d.i.c.k. She got out of the car and walked to the back door. Avram sat up with great effort. "It's that pill," he apologized.

"Give me your hand." She dug her heels into the ground and readied her back for the blow to come. Her hand hovered unmet. He nodded with his eyes closed. He wrinkled his face a little and smiled with relief, and she watched as a big, dark stain spread slowly over his pants and onto the new leopard-skin upholstery.

A few moments later the two of them were outside with their backpacks tossed nearby, and Sami was charging away madly. As he zigzagged across the white line, he shouted and bellowed bitterly into the night mist, cursing both the Jews and the Arabs, and mainly himself and his own fate. He beat his head and his chest and the wheel of the Mercedes.

NOW THEY ATE PRUNES and Ora buried the pits in the sludge and hoped two trees might grow there one day, trunks intertwined. Then they said goodbye to the lovely spot, loaded up their backpacks, his blue and hers orange, and everything Avram did took forever, and it seemed that each movement he made pa.s.sed through every joint in his body. But when he finally stood up straight and glanced at the river, a slight vernal brightness ran over his forehead, as though a gleaming coin had shone its golden l.u.s.ter on him from afar, and she entertained a fleeting idea: What if Ofer were here with us? The notion was utterly unfounded. She had only been able to sneak Avram tiny crumbs of information about Ofer, as she'd been forbidden to talk about him or even mention his name all these years. But now, for a brief moment, she saw the two of them here, Ofer and Avram, helping each other cross the water, and her eyes s.h.i.+ned at him. and Ora buried the pits in the sludge and hoped two trees might grow there one day, trunks intertwined. Then they said goodbye to the lovely spot, loaded up their backpacks, his blue and hers orange, and everything Avram did took forever, and it seemed that each movement he made pa.s.sed through every joint in his body. But when he finally stood up straight and glanced at the river, a slight vernal brightness ran over his forehead, as though a gleaming coin had shone its golden l.u.s.ter on him from afar, and she entertained a fleeting idea: What if Ofer were here with us? The notion was utterly unfounded. She had only been able to sneak Avram tiny crumbs of information about Ofer, as she'd been forbidden to talk about him or even mention his name all these years. But now, for a brief moment, she saw the two of them here, Ofer and Avram, helping each other cross the water, and her eyes s.h.i.+ned at him.

"Come on, let's go."

After no more than a hundred steps, beyond a small hill, the path led them into the stream once again.

Avram stood defeated. This turn was too much for him. For me too, Ora thought and sat down angrily. She took off her shoes and socks, tied them and fastened them, rolled up her pants, and walked firmly into the freezing, snow-fed water, unable to stifle a tiny shriek. Avram was still stuck on the bank behind her, confused by the forces that both pulled and pushed him. Desperate as he was, he knew that the bank Ora was moving toward now was the side on which they had begun their trek, and there, it seemed, was some stability, perhaps because that was the side of home. He sat down and went through the motions, tied his shoes to the backpack almost without seeing Ofer's pair, and waded into the cold water with his lips pursed. This time he took resolute strides, kicking up a big commotion, and then came to sit down beside Ora on the bank. He slapped his feet dry and put his socks and shoes back on. Ora felt that he was at ease, not only because he was back on the familiar side but because he had seen that it was possible to cross over and back. And that is exactly what they did, three or four more times-they lost count-on that first morning of their Upper Galilee journey, which she was still calling a hike, if she was even calling it anything, if they even spoke more than a few words the whole day: "Come on," "Give me your hand," "Watch out here," "d.a.m.n cows." The path and the stream weaved and converged, and by the third crossing they no longer removed their shoes but simply walked through the mud and the water and climbed back up, slos.h.i.+ng around in their shoes until the water seeped out. Finally the path broke away from the Hatzbani River and became easier and earthier, an ordinary trail through the fields, dotted with big puddles of mud, pale cyclamens hovering on either side. Avram stopped glancing behind him every few minutes and did not ask whether Ora would know how to find the way back. He seemed to have realized that she had no intention of going back anywhere and that he was her hostage. He grew introverted, resigned to reducing his vitality to that of a plant, a lichen, or a spore. It must hurt less that way, Ora imagined. Why am I torturing him? she wondered as she watched him walk, frail and downtrodden, serving out a sentence he did not understand at all. He's no longer part of me or of my life and really hasn't been for years. She did not feel pained by this thought, merely baffled: How could it be that the person I thought was my own flesh and blood, the root of my soul, would not tug at my heartstrings when he is severed from me in this way? What am I doing with him now? Why did this fixation grab hold of me now, when I need all my strength to rescue one child-why burden myself with another?

"Ofer," she murmured, "I'm forgetting to think about him."

Avram turned around suddenly and walked back down the path, aiming himself at her with his faltering steps. "Tell me what you want, I don't have the strength for these games."

"I told you."

"I don't get it."

"I'm running away."

"From what?"

She looked into his eyes and said nothing.

He swallowed. "Where's Ilan?"

"Ilan and I separated a year ago. A bit less. Nine months."

He swayed a little, as though she had hit him.

"That's that," she said.

"What do you mean separated? From who?"

"From who? From us. From each other. That's it."

"Why?"

"People separate. It happens. Come on, let's go."

He raised a heavy hand and kept standing there like a dim-witted student. Under his stubble she saw his tortured expression. There were years when she and Ilan used to joke that if they ever split up, they'd have to keep pretending they were a couple, for his sake.

"What reason do you have to separate?" he growled. "I want to know what came over you all of a sudden. All these years you keep going and then you just get sick of it?"

He's scolding me, Ora realized with some surprise. He's complaining.

"Who wanted this?" Avram straightened up, suddenly full of power. "It was him, wasn't it? Did he have another woman?"

Ora almost choked. "Calm down. The two of us decided together. And maybe it's better this way." But then she seethed: "Anyway, why are you poking your nose into our lives? What do you even know about us? Where were you for three years? Where were you for thirty years?"

"I'm sorry." He huddled over, alarmed. "I...Where was I?" He furrowed his brow as though he truly did not know.

"Anyway, that's the situation." Ora spoke smoothly now, to compensate for her outburst.

"And you?"

"What about me?"

"You're alone?"

"I...I'm without him, yes. But I'm not alone." She looked straight into his eyes. "I really don't feel alone." Her attempt at a smile did not work.

Avram wrung his hands nervously. She could feel his body rallying to take in the news. Ora and Ilan are separated. Ilan alone. Ora alone. Ora without Ilan.

"But why? Why?!" He was riled up again, shouting into her face, all but stomping his feet.

"You're shouting. Don't shout at me."

"But how...you were always ..." He let his backpack drop and looked up at her like a miserable puppy. "No, explain this to me from the beginning. What happened?"

"What happened?" She put down her backpack, too. "Lots of things happened since Ofer enlisted. Since you decided that you had to, I don't know, disappear on me."

His hands crushed each other. His eyes darted around.

"Our lives changed," Ora said softly, "and I changed. And Ilan, too. And the family. I don't know where to start telling you."

"Where is he now?"

"On a trip in South America. Took a vacation from the office and everything. I don't know how long he'll be gone. We haven't really had any contact recently." She hesitated. She did not tell him that Adam had gone along, too. That in fact she was separated from her older son as well. That from him, from Adam, she might even be divorced. "Give me some time, Avram. My life is a mess right now, it's not easy for me to talk about this."

"Okay, okay, we don't have to talk."

He stood up looking frightened and stricken, like an ant nest kicked by a crude foot. Once, Ora thought, these sorts of plot twists, new permutations, frenetic changes, used to excite him, stimulate his mind and body, fermentize fermentize him-his word. Oh, she sighed silently, all the endlessly possible. Remember? Remember? You invented that, you made those rules for us. Playing blindman's buff in lower Manhattan and opening our eyes in Harlem. And the way you said the lion him-his word. Oh, she sighed silently, all the endlessly possible. Remember? Remember? You invented that, you made those rules for us. Playing blindman's buff in lower Manhattan and opening our eyes in Harlem. And the way you said the lion should should lie down with the lamb-let's see what happens, you said. Maybe for once in the history of the universe there'll be a surprise. Maybe this one particular lion and this one particular lamb will make a go of it together, this one time, and maybe they'll reach-she could not remember the word he'd used-"elevation"? "Salvation"? His words, an entire lexicon, a dictionary and a phrasebook and a glossary, at the age of sixteen and nineteen and twenty-two, but since then: silence, lights out. lie down with the lamb-let's see what happens, you said. Maybe for once in the history of the universe there'll be a surprise. Maybe this one particular lion and this one particular lamb will make a go of it together, this one time, and maybe they'll reach-she could not remember the word he'd used-"elevation"? "Salvation"? His words, an entire lexicon, a dictionary and a phrasebook and a glossary, at the age of sixteen and nineteen and twenty-two, but since then: silence, lights out.