To The End Of The Land Part 20

"Tell me more. About him."

"About Ofer."

"About Ofer, tell me about Ofer."

"So we helped him up"-her eyes flutter for a moment, having seen an ungraspable picture: he said "Ofer"; he touched Ofer-"and we stood him on his feet and held out our arms and called him to us, and he walked again, very slowly, wobbling-"

"To who?"

"What?"

"To which one of you?"

"Oh." She strains her memory, surprised by his new sharpness, the dim flash of determination in his face. Just like long ago, she thinks, when he was intent on understanding something new, an idea, a situation, a person, and he would circle around and around in a slow gallop, very lightly, with that predatory glint in his eye.

Then she remembers. "To Adam. Yes, of course. That's who he walked to."

How could she have forgotten? Tiny Ofer, very serious and focused, looking intently ahead with his mouth open and his arms straight in front of him. His body rocked back and forth and one hand dropped and grasped the wrist of the other, declaring himself a closed, independent, self-sufficient system. She can see it alive and sharp: she and Ilan and Adam stand across from him, some distance from one another, holding their hands out, calling, "Ofer, Ofer," laughing, tempting him, "Come to me."

As she recounts the story, she realizes something she missed at the time: the moment of Ofer's first choice between them, and his distress when they forced him to choose. She shuts her eyes and tries to guess his thoughts. He had no words, after all, just the inner push-and-pull, and she and Ilan and Adam cheered and danced around him, and Ofer was torn as only a baby can be torn. She rushes away from his distress, and her face is already lighting up with Adam's astonished glee when Ofer finally turned to him. His amazement and happiness and pride momentarily erased the grimace and turned it into an excited smile of disbelief at being chosen, at being wanted. A stream of pictures, sounds, and smells churns inside her, everything coming back now-how Adam had welcomed Ofer when she and Ilan brought him home from the hospital, just over a year before that day. She has to tell Avram about that, but maybe not now, not yet, she mustn't flood him, but she tells him anyway: "Adam jumped up and down and went wild, and his eyes burned with electric fear, and he hit his own cheeks with both hands, slapping himself hard and shouting wildly, 'I'm happy! I'm so happy!'"

Then Adam made the same high squeaks that used to erupt from the depths of his body every time he went near Ofer's crib for the first few months, a series of small uncontrollable shrieks, an almost animalistic mixture of affection and jealousy and uncontainable excitement. That was exactly how he chirped that day, when Ofer wobbled over to him at the first moment of choice. Or perhaps they were different chirps. "What do I know? Maybe he was guiding and encouraging Ofer in a language only the two of them knew."

Ofer took another step, then another. He walked without falling, and perhaps thanks to his brother's chirps, to which he had tied his willpower, he managed to maintain some stability. Like a tiny airplane in a storm, homing in on a beam of light from a control tower, he walked over and collapsed into his brother's arms, and the two of them rolled on the rug, embraced and squirmed and shrieked with laughter. She suddenly feels like writing down this little memory so it won't slip away for another twenty years. She just wants to describe the seriousness of Ofer as he walked, and Adam's screeching excitement, and his huge relief, and above all, their puppy-like embrace of each other. That was the moment they truly became brothers, the moment Ofer chose Adam, the moment Adam, perhaps for the first time in his life, truly believed he had been chosen. Ora smiles, bewitched by the heap of her children on the rug, and thinks how clever Ofer was, because he knew how to give himself to Adam, and because he carefully avoided getting trapped in the thicket of secrets and silences that lurked between her and Ilan's open arms.

"So that was how he walked for the first time," she sums up hastily, exhausted, and gives Avram a strained smile.

"The second time."

"What do you mean?"

"You said so."

"What?"

"That you didn't see the first time, the real first steps."

She shrugs. "Oh, yes, that's true. But really what does it-"

"No, nothing."

She wonders whether this is some strange insistence on historical accuracy, or perhaps a hint of haggling with her and with Ilan, a sort of "I didn't and you didn't, either."

"Yes," she says, "you're absolutely right."

They look at each other for a moment, and she knows: it's haggling. And perhaps even more than that, it's the settling of accounts. The discovery is frightening, but also exciting, like the first sign of an uprising, the rousing of someone who has been depressed and silenced and dormant for too long. Then it occurs to her that when Ofer rolled over onto his back for the first time, no one was there, either. Is that true? She checks quickly with herself. True. I swear: Ilan went over to his crib one afternoon and found him lying quietly on his back, looking at his blue elephant mobile-she even remembers the mobile, in its every detail, with utter clarity now. It's as though someone has come along and removed a cataract that had covered her eye for years. And when he sat up for the first time he was alone too, she thinks with increasing bewilderment. And when he stood up for the first time.

For one moment, no longer, she hesitates, and then she gives Avram a simple reportage of facts, the facts that now belong to him too, because he has finally come to demand them. His eyes narrow: she can almost see the wheels in his mind straining.

"Somehow the first time he did all these things-turning over, sitting up, standing, walking-he really was alone."

"So," Avram murmurs, staring at his fingertips, "is that something, you know, unusual?"

"Honestly, I've never thought about it before. I never made a list of all the first things he did. But for instance, when Adam sat up for the first time, or stood up or walked, I was with him. Well, I told you that for the first three years of his life we were never apart. And I remember how he glowed every time he accomplished something like that, and Ofer, yes, Ofer is-"

"Alone," Avram quietly finishes, his features suddenly softening.

Ora gets up and hurries to her backpack, digs through it urgently, and pulls out a thick notebook with dark blue binding. From a side pocket she takes out a pen. Without introductions, still standing with her head slightly tilted, she writes on the first page: Ofer walked funny. I mean, his walk, at first, was strange. Almost from the moment he started walking he used to veer around all sorts of obstacles that no one else could see, and it was really funny to watch. He would avoid something nonexistent, or draw back from some monster that must have been lurking for him in the middle of the room, and you could absolutely not convince him to step on that tile! It's a bit like watching a drunk walk (but a drunk with a method!). Ilan and I agree that he has a private map in his head, and he always follows it Ofer walked funny. I mean, his walk, at first, was strange. Almost from the moment he started walking he used to veer around all sorts of obstacles that no one else could see, and it was really funny to watch. He would avoid something nonexistent, or draw back from some monster that must have been lurking for him in the middle of the room, and you could absolutely not convince him to step on that tile! It's a bit like watching a drunk walk (but a drunk with a method!). Ilan and I agree that he has a private map in his head, and he always follows it.

She cautiously walks back to her spot, puts the open notebook on the ground, and sits down next to it, very straight, then looks at Avram.

"I wrote about him."

"About who?"

"Him."

"What for?"

"I don't know. I just-"

"But the notebook-"

"What about it?"

"Why did you bring it?"

She stares at the lines she wrote. The words seem to scurry about on the page, wagging their fingers at her, calling her to go on, not to stop now. "What did you ask?"

"What did you drag a notebook along for?"

She stretches, tired suddenly, as though she'd written whole pages. "I don't know, I was just thinking I'd write down all sorts of things we saw on the way, Ofer and I. A kind of travel diary. When we used to go on vacations abroad with the boys, we always wrote our experiences together."

She was the one who used to write. Every evening in the hotel, or on rest stops, or during long drives. They refused to cooperate-Ora hesitates, and decides not to tell Avram this-and the three of them affectionately mocked her endeavor, which they thought was unnecessary and childish. She insisted: "If we don't write things down, we'll forget them." They said, "But what is there to remember? That the old man in the boat threw up on Dad's foot? That they brought Adam eel, instead of the schnitzel he ordered?" She wouldn't answer, thinking, You'll see how one day you'll want to remember how we had fun, how we laughed-how we were a family, she thinks now. She always tried to be as detailed as possible in those diaries. Whenever she didn't feel like writing, when her hand was lazy, or her eyelids drooped with exhaustion, she would imagine the years to come when she might sit with Ilan, preferably on long winter evenings, with a mug of mulled wine, the two of them wrapped in plaid blankets, reading each other pa.s.sages from the sc.r.a.pbooks, which were decorated with postcards and menus and tickets from tourist sites, plays, trains, and museums. Ilan guessed it all, of course, including the plaid. She was always so transparent to him. "Just promise you'll shoot me before that happens to me," he told her. But he said that about so many things ...

How did it happen, she wonders, that while I only softened with the years, the three of them grew tougher? Maybe Ilan's right, maybe it's because of me that they hardened. They hardened against me. A good cry would do me some good now, she notes to herself.

When she opens her eyes, Avram is sitting across from her, leaning with his backpack against a rock, delving into her.

Once, when he used to look at her like that, she would immediately open herself to him, allowing him to see into her inner depths unhindered. She did not let anyone else see inside her like that. Not even Ilan. But she was easy with Avram-such a horrible word, "easy"; she was always easy with Avram, letting him see all of her, almost from the first moment she met him, because she had a feeling, a conviction that there was something inside her, or someone, perhaps an Ora more loyal to her own essence, more precise and less vague, and Avram seemed to have a way to reach her. He was the only one who could truly know her and could pollinate her with his look, with his very existence, and without him she simply did not exist, she had no life, and so she was his, she was his prerogative.

That's how it was when she was sixteen, and nineteen, and twenty-two, but now she pulls her gaze sharply away from him, fearing he might hurt her there, punish her for something, take his revenge on her there. Or perhaps he will discover that there's nothing inside her anymore, that his old Ora has dried up and died along with what dried up and died inside him.

They sit quietly, digesting. Ora hugs her knees, rationalizing that she isn't all that accessible and permeable even to herself anymore, and that even she herself doesn't go near that place inside her. It must be that she's growing old, she decides-for some time now she's had a strange eagerness to p.r.o.nounce her aging, impatient for the relief that comes with a declaration of total bankruptcy. That's how it goes. You say goodbye to yourself even before other people start to, softening the blow of what will inevitably come.

Later, much later, Avram gets up, stretches, gathers some firewood in a pile, and surrounds it with a circle of stones. Ora senses new purpose in his movement, but she knows herself and remains cautious: she might simply be convincing herself that she's seeing things-seeing Avram in Avram's shadow.

She takes out an old towel and spreads it on the ground. She lays out plastic plates and cutlery and hands Avram two overripe tomatoes and a cuc.u.mber to chop. She has crackers too, and canned corn and tuna fish and a small bottle of olive oil that Ofer loves, from the Dir Rafat monastery, which she was planning to surprise him with. She had other little surprises that were supposed to make him happy on their trip. Where is Ofer now? She isn't sure whether she should think about him or let him be. What does he need from her now? Her eyes are drawn to the open notebook. Maybe the answer is there. She wants to close it, but cannot. It's all exposed there, yet to close it would be to stifle it, even to stamp it out. She gets down on one knee, straightens the corner of the towel, and weighs it down with a stone. As she does so she pulls the notebook to her and reads what she has written. She is surprised to find that in just a few lines she skipped from past to present: Ofer walked funny...It's a bit like watching a drunk...Ilan and I agree that... Ofer walked funny...It's a bit like watching a drunk...Ilan and I agree that...

Ilan would have something to say about that.

Avram lights a piece of newspaper and coaxes the fire to the twigs. Ora stares at the paper, wondering what day it's from, and looks away from the headlines. Who knows how far things have gone there? She quickly shuts the notebook and waits for the paper to be consumed. Avram sits down opposite her and they eat silently. Actually, Avram eats. He boils water for a Cup-a-Soup and gobbles down two of them, one after the other, claiming he's addicted to MSG. She asks casually about his nutritional habits. Does he cook? Does someone cook for him?

"Sometimes. Depends," he says.

She watches his appet.i.te in astonishment. She herself can't put a bite in her mouth. In fact, she realizes that her stomach has locked up since she left home. Even at the feast in the house of the laughing woman, the baby's mother, she could hardly swallow the food. Maybe one good thing has come of this trip after all. Then, as quick as she can, like someone pickpocketing herself, she reaches out to the notebook and opens it.

I'm afraid to forget him. His childhood, I mean. I often get confused between the two boys. Before they were born I thought a mother remembers every child separately. Well that's not exactly how it is. Or maybe with me it's especially not that way. And stupidly, I didn't keep a notebook for each boy, with their development and all the clever things they did since they were born. When Adam was born I didn't have the mind for that with everything that was going on, when Ilan left us. And when Ofer was born I didn't either (again because of all the complications back then-apparently every time I give birth there's something going on). And I thought that maybe now, on this hike, I would write down a few things I still remember. Just so they'll finally be written down somewhere.

The stream runs in the distance. Evening gnats hum, and crickets chirp madly. A branch cracks in the fire, flicking charred specks over the notebook. Avram gets up and moves the backpacks away from the fire. She is surprised: his movements really are more confident, lighter.

"Coffee, Ofra?"

"What did you call me?"

He laughs, very embarra.s.sed.

She laughs too, her heart pounding.

"So, coffee?"

"Can you wait? I'll just be a minute."

He shrugs his shoulders, finishes eating, and arranges Ofer's sleeping bag like a pillow. He sprawls out, crosses his arms behind his neck, and looks up at the sheltering branches and hints of dark sky. He thinks about the woman with the crimson thread walking all the way down the country. He sees the procession of exiles. Long lines of people with bowed heads come out from every populated area, from the cities and the kibbutzim, to join the main line, the long one, which moves slowly down the spine of the land. When he was in solitary confinement in Abbasiya Prison and thought Israel no longer existed, he saw the picture in detail-the babies on shoulders, the heavy suitcases, the empty, extinguished eyes. But the woman walking with the crimson thread gives some comfort. You could imagine, for example, he thinks, sucking on a piece of straw, that in every town and village and kibbutz there was someone stealthily tying his own thread to hers. And that way, secretly, a tapestry was being woven all over the country.

Ora bites the tip of her pen and clicks it against her teeth. His slip of the tongue a moment ago confused her, and she has to make an effort to get back to where she was.

Ofer was born in a routine delivery, nothing difficult, and very quick. Maybe twenty minutes from when Ilan got me to the hospital. It was Hada.s.sah Mount Scopus. We got there at around seven a.m., after my water had broken at six or so, in my sleep.

Not exactly sleep, she writes, and gives Avram a sideways glance, but he's still pondering the sky, lost in a thought that jerks the length of straw in his mouth this way and that. There was something going on and my water broke in bed. And when I realized that's what it was, I mean, that nothing else made sense under the circ.u.mstances, we got organized quickly. Ilan had already prepared bags for me and for him, it was all arranged, written instructions, phone numbers, phone tokens, etc., Ilan being Ilan. We phoned Ariela to come and stay with Adam and take him to day care later. He slept all night and never knew a thing There was something going on and my water broke in bed. And when I realized that's what it was, I mean, that nothing else made sense under the circ.u.mstances, we got organized quickly. Ilan had already prepared bags for me and for him, it was all arranged, written instructions, phone numbers, phone tokens, etc., Ilan being Ilan. We phoned Ariela to come and stay with Adam and take him to day care later. He slept all night and never knew a thing.

Ofer was born at seven twenty-five a.m. It was a very easy, quick delivery. I got there and gave birth. They hardly had time to prepare me. Gave me an enema and sent me to the bathroom. I felt strong pressure in my stomach, and as soon as I sat down on the toilet, I could feel him coming out! I yelled for Ilan, and he came in and just picked me up the way I was, and put me down on a bed in the corridor, and shouted for a nurse. Together they pushed me, running, to the large delivery room, which by the way was where I had Adam (in the same room!), and three more pushes, he was out! enema and sent me to the bathroom. I felt strong pressure in my stomach, and as soon as I sat down on the toilet, I could feel him coming out! I yelled for Ilan, and he came in and just picked me up the way I was, and put me down on a bed in the corridor, and shouted for a nurse. Together they pushed me, running, to the large delivery room, which by the way was where I had Adam (in the same room!), and three more pushes, he was out!

Her face glows, and she smiles generously at Avram. He responds with a questioning smile.

Ofer weighed three kilos six hundred. Pretty large, based on my limited sample. Adam was barely two kilos (minus three grams!). They've come along nicely since then, the two of them.

That's it. That is exactly what she wanted to write down. She takes a deep breath. Just for that it was worth lugging the notebook all this way. Now she's ready to eat. A sudden hunger gnaws at her. But she sucks on the pen for a moment longer, wondering if there's anything else to add about the birth. She shakes out her strained wrist. A high school kind of pain, she thinks: How often do I find myself writing by hand?

The midwife was called Fadwa, I think, or Nadwa? From Kfar Raami anyway. I met her another few times during the two days I spent there, and we chatted a little. I was interested to know who this girl was, whose hands were the first to touch Ofer when he came into the world. A single woman. Strong, a feminist, really sharp, and very funny, she always made me laugh.

Ofer's feet were slightly blue. When he was born he hardly cried, just made one short sound and that was it. He had huge eyes. Exactly Avram's eyes.

She turns on a flashlight and reads what she's written. Maybe she should be more detailed? She reads it again and finds she likes the style. She knows what Ilan would say about it, and how he would erase her exclamation marks, but Ilan will probably never read it.

But maybe there is room for a little more detail? Facts, not embellishments. What else happened there? For some reason she goes back to Adam's birth again, a long and difficult delivery, and to how she kept trying to make the midwife and the nurses like her, wanting them so badly to admire her endurance and to praise her when they talked in the nurses' room and compare her to the other mothers, who screamed and wailed and sometimes cursed. How much effort she put into ingratiating herself at the most important moments in her life, Ora thinks sadly. Her legs are starting to lose their feeling. She tries sitting on a different rock, then another, and eventually goes back to the ground. These are no conditions for writing an autobiography, she thinks.

And after a few minutes they laid Ofer on me. It bothered me that he was wrapped in a hospital blanket. I wanted to be naked with him. Everyone else in that room except the two of us was completely unnecessary for me. And Avram wasn't there.

She gives him a cautious glance. Maybe she should erase the last few words. Maybe she'll want Ofer to read this one day? Maybe she and Ilan will- In her gut she begins to feel disquiet. Who is she writing this for? And why? There are almost two pages now. How has she produced two pages? Avram lies on his back on the other side of the fire, which by now is only a heap of glowing embers. He faces the sky. His beard looks disheveled. Someone should tidy up his beard. She studies his face: at twenty he started going bald, from the forehead back, the first in his age group, but by that time he'd grown an impressive head of strong, wild hair, and he had thick sideburns down to the middle of his cheek, which made him look even older than he already did, and gave him-as he once wrote to her in a letter-the face of a moist-lipped, avaricious, d.i.c.kensian landlord. As usual, his description was right, and there was no point arguing with him. He always had picturesque depictions, so cruel and captivating-particularly the way he described his own appearance and personality. It was thanks to these descriptions-she only now realizes-that he was able to seduce everyone else into seeing him through his own eyes, and perhaps that was how he protected himself from any overly autonomous gazes that might have caused real pain. Ora smiles at him furtively, with amused appreciation, as though discovering after the fact that someone had played a clever and incredibly successful trick on her.

And perhaps also from gazes that are too loving, she adds in the notebook without thinking, and looks at the words with some surprise. She quickly crosses them out with one sharp line.

Later, when all the doctors and midwives and nurses and the guy who st.i.tched me up had left, I unwrapped Ofer and held him to my bosom.

That last word sends a warm tremor through her body. What does that tremor remind her of? What is it bringing back to her now? To my bosom To my bosom, she whispers inside, and her body replies sweetly: Avram. He used to lick the tiny hairs on her cheeks, beneath her temples, and murmur, "the segment of thy temples," or "feathery down." As he held her and dreamily whispered, "the curvature of your hips," or "the silk behind your knees," she would smile to herself and think: Look at him working up his heart with words. She quickly learned that when she overcame her shyness and repeated into his ear, "feathery down," "you against my bosom," and other such phrases, he hardened inside her.

The way Ofer touched me, right from the first moments, from the minute he was born, was the most comforting, simple, smooth touch anyone had ever given me. Ilan once said that Ofer seemed, from the beginning, like a person who was at peace with his position. A person perfectly adapted to his life. And it was so true, at least when he was a child, not so much later. We went through all sorts of periods with him. Difficult things, too. In fact recently, in the army, we had a complicated situation with him. For me, mainly. Because they, the three of them, got over it very nicely.

Maybe I shouldn't write this, but because of that tranquillity Ofer had at first, I always had the illusion, or some sort of faith, that with him I could guess the future with some certainty (and by the way, Ilan admitted it too, so it's not just my notorious naivete). I mean, I thought that with him we could guess, more or less, what kind of person he would grow up to be, and how he would act in all sorts of situations and that we could know there would be no surprises along the way. (Talking about surprises, I forgot to mention that I'm in the Galilee now, in some valley, and his father Avram (!) is lying not far from me (!!), dozing, or watching the stars.) She takes a deep breath, only now truly grasping that she is here, far away from her life. Her heart surges with grat.i.tude for the darkness full of whistling and chirping crickets, for the night itself, which for the first time since she left is taking her in with a tender generosity, agreeing to hide her away from everything at the bottom of this remote ravine, and even giving her the trees and the bushes, whose scents waft sweetly but sharply toward the nocturnal b.u.t.terflies.

I'm going back a little, to just after the birth: Ilan stood next to us and watched. He had a strange look on his face. There were tears in his eyes. I remember that, because when Adam was born Ilan was completely cool and functional (and I didn't realize that those were actually the signs of what was starting to bubble up inside him). But with Ofer he cried. And I thought that was a good sign, because throughout the pregnancy I was afraid he was going to leave me again after the birth, and those tears rea.s.sured me a little.

Her lips are slightly open and her nostrils widen. She stays with the momentum: With Ilan, it's when he laughs that he looks sad, even a little cruel sometimes (because his eyes somehow stay distant), and when he cries he always looks as if he's laughing With Ilan, it's when he laughs that he looks sad, even a little cruel sometimes (because his eyes somehow stay distant), and when he cries he always looks as if he's laughing.

And I suddenly realized that Ilan and I were completely alone with the baby. I remember that it got very quiet suddenly, and I was afraid he would try to crack a joke. Because Ilan, when he's tense, he has to force a joke out, and that was so wrong for me. I didn't want anything to grate on our first moments together I remember that it got very quiet suddenly, and I was afraid he would try to crack a joke. Because Ilan, when he's tense, he has to force a joke out, and that was so wrong for me. I didn't want anything to grate on our first moments together.

But Ilan was clever this time, and he didn't say anything.

He sat down next to us and didn't know what to do with his hands, and I saw that he wasn't touching Ofer. Then he said, "He has an observant look." I was glad that those were the first words he said about him-or that anyone in the world said about him. I never forget those words.

I took Ilan's hand and placed it on Ofer's. I could tell it was hard for him, and I felt Ofer respond immediately. His whole body tensed up. I interlaced my fingers with Ilan's, and together I stroked Ofer with him, back and forth along his body. I had already decided to call him Ofer. I'd considered other names while I was pregnant, but as soon as I saw him, I knew they weren't right. Not Gil or Amir or Aviv. They had too many I's, and he looked more like an O, calm and even a little grave (but with a drop of thoughtful distance, sort of observing, like an E). I said to Ilan: "Ofer." And he agreed. I realized I could have named him Melchizedek or Chedorlaomer and Ilan would agree, and I didn't like that, because I know Ilan, and obedience is not his strong suit, and besides, I was suspicious.

So I said, "Call him." Ilan murmured a slightly faded "Ofer." I said to Ofer: "That's your dad." I felt Ilan's fingers freeze in my hand. I thought it was all coming back. Now he'll get up and leave, it's some sort of reflex with him, to leave me when I give birth. Ofer fluttered his eyelids a few times, as though he was goading Ilan to talk already! And Ilan had no choice at that point, so he smiled crookedly and said, "Listen, pal, I'm your dad and that's that, no arguments."

She looks up at Avram and smiles distractedly, though with a glimmer of distant happiness, and sighs.

"What?" asks Avram.

"It's good."

Avram props himself up slightly. "What's good?"

"To write."

"So I hear," he says dismissively and turns away.

He, who wrote all his life, right up to the last minute, until the Egyptians came and more or less took the pen out of his hand. From six in the morning until ten at night, every day. And he wrote more than ever after he met Ilan and their bond was forged. She knows that that was when his engine was really started, because there was finally someone who truly understood him and competed with him and stimulated him. She thinks about everything that poured out of Avram in the six years after he met Ilan in the hospital-well, Ilan and her. Plays, poems, stories, comedy sketches, and mostly radio plays, which he and Ilan wrote and recorded on the clunky Akai reel-to-reel in the shed in Tzur Hada.s.sah. She remembers one series-it had at least twenty episodes; Avram liked horribly long epics-about a world in which all human beings are children in the morning, adults at noon, elderly in the evening, and back again. And there was a serial play that described a world where humans only communicate honestly and openly in their sleep, through dreams, and know nothing about it when they awake. One of their more successful series, in her opinion, was about a jazz fan who is swept into the ocean and reaches an island inhabited by a tribe that has no music at all, not even whistling or humming, and he gradually teaches them about what they lack. Avram and Ilan created a world in almost everything they did. Avram usually came up with the ideas, and Ilan would try to anchor him to reality as much as he could. Ilan collaborated on the writing and added "musical embellishments" on his saxophone, or with the help of his many alb.u.ms. A Sambatyon River of ideas and inventions burst out of Avram-"My Golden Age," he called it once, after he had dried up.

For his twentieth birthday, she bought him his first idea book. She was sick of watching him turn the house upside down and his pockets-and hers-inside out as he desperately searched for his sc.r.a.ps of paper. A constant foliage of notes whirled around his head wherever he went. She scribbled a limerick on the first page of the notebook: "There was a young man who could write / Like a spring he gushed out, day and night. / All day long he would wander / Imagine and ponder / This notebook will be his delight." Within two months he'd filled up the entire thing and asked her to buy him a second one. "You inspire me," he said, and she laughed, as usual: "Moi? "Moi? A bear of little brain like me?" She honestly could not understand how she could inspire anyone, and he looked at her warmly and said that now he knew what Sarah's laugh had sounded like, when she was told at the age of ninety that she would give birth to Isaac. He added that she didn't understand anything, about him or about inspiration. After that, Ora always bought his idea books. They had to be small enough to fit in the back pocket of his jeans, and he took them everywhere. He slept with them too, and kept at least one pen in every bed he slept in, so he could jot down nocturnal ideas. He wanted the notebooks to be very simple, no bells and whistles, although he did like the fact that she varied the colors and styles. The most important thing to him was that they came from her. They had to come from her, he stressed, and looked at her with such grat.i.tude that it churned her insides. She felt ceremonious whenever she went to buy a new notebook. She browsed in different stationery shops, first in Haifa and then, after her army service, in Jerusalem, her new city, looking for a notebook that would be just right for the particular period, for the specific idea he was writing about, for his mood. She moans distractedly, tightens her legs together, and her stomach excites at the open pleasure with which he used to hold her notebooks: she liked to see him weigh the new notebook in his hand, feel it, smell it, flip through the pages quickly and greedily, like a card player, to see how many pages it had-how much pleasure was in store for him. A t.i.tillating, exposed, shameless pleasure. Once he told her-she never forgot it-that every time he wrote a new character he had to understand its body, that's where he started. He had to wallow in the character's flesh and saliva and s.e.m.e.n and milk, feel the makeup of its muscles and tendons, whether its legs were long or short, how many steps it took to cross this or that room, how it ran for a bus, how tight its a.s.s was when it stood facing a mirror, and how it walked, and ate, and how exactly it looked when it took a s.h.i.+t or danced, and if it climaxed with a shout or with modest, prudish moans. Everything he wrote had to be tangible and physical-"Like this!" he yelled, and held up one cupped hand, fingers spread, in a gesture that from anyone else would look rude and cheap, but from him, at least at that moment, was an overflowing basin of fervor and pa.s.sion, as though he were palming a large, heavy breast. A bear of little brain like me?" She honestly could not understand how she could inspire anyone, and he looked at her warmly and said that now he knew what Sarah's laugh had sounded like, when she was told at the age of ninety that she would give birth to Isaac. He added that she didn't understand anything, about him or about inspiration. After that, Ora always bought his idea books. They had to be small enough to fit in the back pocket of his jeans, and he took them everywhere. He slept with them too, and kept at least one pen in every bed he slept in, so he could jot down nocturnal ideas. He wanted the notebooks to be very simple, no bells and whistles, although he did like the fact that she varied the colors and styles. The most important thing to him was that they came from her. They had to come from her, he stressed, and looked at her with such grat.i.tude that it churned her insides. She felt ceremonious whenever she went to buy a new notebook. She browsed in different stationery shops, first in Haifa and then, after her army service, in Jerusalem, her new city, looking for a notebook that would be just right for the particular period, for the specific idea he was writing about, for his mood. She moans distractedly, tightens her legs together, and her stomach excites at the open pleasure with which he used to hold her notebooks: she liked to see him weigh the new notebook in his hand, feel it, smell it, flip through the pages quickly and greedily, like a card player, to see how many pages it had-how much pleasure was in store for him. A t.i.tillating, exposed, shameless pleasure. Once he told her-she never forgot it-that every time he wrote a new character he had to understand its body, that's where he started. He had to wallow in the character's flesh and saliva and s.e.m.e.n and milk, feel the makeup of its muscles and tendons, whether its legs were long or short, how many steps it took to cross this or that room, how it ran for a bus, how tight its a.s.s was when it stood facing a mirror, and how it walked, and ate, and how exactly it looked when it took a s.h.i.+t or danced, and if it climaxed with a shout or with modest, prudish moans. Everything he wrote had to be tangible and physical-"Like this!" he yelled, and held up one cupped hand, fingers spread, in a gesture that from anyone else would look rude and cheap, but from him, at least at that moment, was an overflowing basin of fervor and pa.s.sion, as though he were palming a large, heavy breast.

Regretting the pain she has caused him, she quickly explains that she was just writing down a few lines about how Ofer was born. Just straight facts. "For posterity," she snorts.

Avram, in a more appeased voice, says, "Oh, well, that's good."

"Do you really think so?"

He straightens up on one elbow and prods the embers with a branch. "It's good to have it written down somewhere."