To the End of the Land - By David Grossman Page 0,251

soldier, with a bandaged arm hanging in a filthy fabric sling, said, “We know how it goes now, all the stages.” A short, dark-skinned sergeant piped up: “You hear everything here. You hear it right up to the last minute, right up to when they shit themselves. Live broadcast.” A squat reservist added, “We’ve gone through it with a few strongholds by now.” They all talked at Ilan together, interrupting each other. Their voices had no colors. Ilan sensed they were taking advantage of his presence to talk to one another through him.

He turned away and staggered over to a corner and sat down on the floor. He looked around and did not move. His brain was empty. Every so often someone came up to him and tried to engage him, asked what he knew about the war and about the situation in Israel. The medic forced him to drink some water and ordered him to lie down on a stretcher. He lay down obediently and must have fallen asleep for a while. He soon awoke when an earthquake shook the ground and a cloud of dust thickened the air. A faint alarm rang out somewhere in the distance, and then came hurried footsteps from all directions, and panicked shouts. Someone tossed him a helmet. He stood up and walked around the bunker, confused, from wall to wall, amid the commotion of a disturbed ants’ nest. He felt as if he were walking very slowly through a fast-forwarded movie and that if he reached out to the soldiers dashing around him, his hand would go right through their bodies.

“Ora.”

“What?”

“When did he tell you all this?”

“The morning Ofer was born.”

“What, in the delivery room?”

“No. We were still at home. Before we left for the hospital. Very early in the morning.”

“He just woke you up and started telling you?”

She blinks, trying to understand why the details are so important to him, amazed at how, just like in the old days, his soothsaying instincts have awakened. “Look, it was the first and last time I heard the story.”

“Then how do you remember everything?”

“I can’t forget that morning. Every single word.” She looks away, but he spies, he scans, sharp and keen, and she knows: he can feel something. He just doesn’t understand what.

• • •

The bombardment stopped. People calmed down, took off their steel helmets and flak jackets. Someone made Turkish coffee and handed Ilan a cup. He stood up, walked mechanically to the commander, and asked if he could go back to his base at Um Hashiba now. People poked their heads up over maps and transceivers and looked at him as if he were crazy. They repeated his question to one another. “You’re a real space cadet,” they scoffed. “The only way you leave this place is with broken dog tags in your mouth.”

“And that’s when he finally grasped what he’d gotten himself into,” Ora said.

“I didn’t know,” Avram whispers, pained.

Ora thinks: Wait till you hear how much you didn’t know.

“They stuck an Uzi in his hand and asked if he knew how to shoot it. He said he’d done target practice six months ago. They smiled disdainfully and sat him down by some device. I think it was something for night vision—”

“SLS,” Avram murmured. “Starlight scope, we had one at Magma, too.”

“—and they told him to snap out of it because the Egyptians were coming and it would be rude to greet them in that state. ’Cause at that point they were still joking around.”

He couldn’t see anything through the telescope and probably didn’t know how to use it, but all night he heard shouting in Arabic, very close, and large objects splashing in the water, and he realized the Egyptians were still crossing. Shells fell constantly and shook the stronghold. Every so often he told himself: Avram is dead. My friend Avram is dead, his body is close by. But even though he kept repeating the words, he still couldn’t feel their meaning. He couldn’t feel simple pain or even bewilderment at not feeling pain.

They sit quietly, both their hearts suddenly speeding up, beating down the questions that will not be asked. What did you think, Ora? What did you think when we called you and told you to take a hat and two pieces of paper? Did you really have no clue what you were drawing? And what did you secretly hope? Which name did you want to pick out of the hat? And had you known then