To the End of the Land - By David Grossman Page 0,243

so you.”

“Maybe so, I don’t know, I’m sure it’s both of us. I guess it’s the combination of us.” He felt for her hand and his fingers grasped hers. “Because I always feel that whatever I give them, they would have somehow gotten it anyway, from life, from other people. But what you give them”—the fingers of his other hand made an uncharacteristic movement, like the kneading of dough.

Avram looks at her fingers as they replay Ilan’s kneading motion, and he is grateful to her for allowing him to be with them there, and to touch the soft, maternal dough of their day to day.

Ora wrapped Ilan in her arms and thrust her knee between his legs to make him feel good, and they lay entwined for several minutes. Then Ilan smiled over her head. “Still, I would have stopped his acting up a lot sooner.”

Ora laughed into his neck. “I’m sure you would have, my love.”

HE SIGHED DEEPLY, and she reached her foot out and touched his, to encourage and comfort him. They’d been lying in bed, awake and silent, almost the whole night. Every so often one of them would sigh, and the other’s gut would tighten. This time he repaid her with a touch, his toes in the concave of her foot. She moaned softly, he sniffled, she voiced a thin syllable, he softly cleared his throat, and she began the clumsy operation of turning herself over and moving her giant hump of a stomach to the other side. Then she pushed herself closer to him, edging forward like a sea lion on the sand, until she placed her head in the round of his shoulder and asked, “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“I can’t,” Ilan replied.

“You’re anxious.”

“Yes, a little. Aren’t you?”

She did not move from her nest in his body, but she was no longer there. “Just tell me, you’re not by any chance planning another little escape, are you?”

“No, of course not!”

“I just want you to know that if you leave this time, you won’t have anywhere to come back to. It won’t be like last time.”

Adam mumbled in his sleep from the next room, and Ilan thought about how her voice always used to be cheerful with him; no one rejoiced at his arrival like that anymore, with the happiness and innocence and trust of a child. When he used to bask in her welcoming expression, he had felt that he was almost the person he wanted to be, and moreover, he’d believed that he could be that person, simply because Ora believed he already was. He murmured, “I’m staying, Ora, I’m not going anywhere. Why would you even think that?”

As if she hadn’t heard him, she went on in the same knotted voice. “Because you can pull that same trick on me again, I can take it, but Adam will fall apart. It will finish him, and I won’t let you.”

Ilan repeated that he was staying, but he stopped caressing her shoulder, and Ora lay still and measured the distance between her skin and his hand, which hung limply above her. Ilan thought: Caress her, touch her. Ora waited some more, then heavily gathered her body and turned over.

Later, in the next wave of fear, they found themselves embracing again, his stomach against her back, his head buried in the back of her neck.

“I’m afraid of him,” he murmured into her hair. “Do you understand? I’m afraid of an unborn baby.”

“What, tell me, talk to me.”

“I don’t know, I feel like he already has a fully formed personality. A mature one.”

“Yes.” Ora smiled inside. “I feel that way, too.”

“And that he knows everything.”

“About what?”

“About me. About us. About what happened.”

Her fingers tightened on his forearm. “You haven’t done anything bad to him. All you ever did for Avram was good.”

“I’m afraid of him,” he whispered and hugged her more tightly. “I’m afraid of what I’ll feel when I see him for the first time, and I’m afraid he’ll look like him.” Or worse—that he’d somehow look like both of them. A mixture of her and him. And that every time he’d look at him, he’d see how alike they actually are.

She thought about little Adam, who didn’t resemble her or Ilan. Oddly, there was something of Avram in his face and expressions sometimes.

“Ora,” he whispered into her neck, “don’t you think we should tell him a bit about his dad? So he’ll know where he came from?”

“I tell him all the time.”

“How?”

“When I can’t fall