To the End of the Land - By David Grossman Page 0,284

like. He made us swear we would never, God forbid, throw out any broken appliance, or even the old parts, until he could examine them. When he started the army he even asked us to keep minor repairs for him to do when he was on leave—electrical work, plumbing, stopped-up drains, broken blinds, and yard work, of course.” But it seems to Ora that he’s a little tired of that now. The mundane defects of the house no longer concern him.

The table is set and the food is ready, and Ilan says something that manages to bring the first spark of a smile to Ofer’s face, which they both treat as though it were an ember they have to breathe life into. Ofer tells them they have a cat with two kittens in the pillbox, and he’s decided to adopt the mother. He blushes slightly: “I was thinking, you know, just so I’d have something maternal there.” He gives an embarrassed laugh, and Ora hovers over the frying pan odors, and here is Adam, finally home. “Everything’s cold,” she complains, but everything’s still steaming hot, and the boys hug, and the sounds of their voices mingle, and they laugh together, a sound unlike any other. “Sometimes, here, on this journey,” she tells Avram, “I dream about that sound, and I can really hear the two of them laughing.”

Ofer’s face lights up when he sees Adam, his eyes follow him wherever he goes, and only now does he seem to understand that he’s home, and he begins to awaken from his three-week slumber. And when Ofer awakes, they do, too. The four of them come to life, and the kitchen itself, like a reliable old machine, joins them in tracking Ofer’s movements, loyally running in the background, humming with the quiet commotion and the jingle of its unseen pistons and wheels. Listen to the soundtrack, she thinks. Believe in the soundtrack. This is the right tune: a pot bubbles, the fridge hums, a spoon clangs on a plate, the faucet flows, a stupid commercial on the radio, your voice and Ilan’s voice, your children’s chatter, their laughter—I never want this to end. From the pantry comes the rhythmic whirr of the washing machine, now augmented by the sound of metal clicking; probably a belt buckle, or a screw left in a pocket, but not, Ora hopes, another misplaced bullet, which will suddenly explode and fly at us all in the third act.

One day about a year ago she asked the secretary at her clinic to cancel her next patient. She’d had a rough day, hardly slept all night—“the stuff at home had already started,” she says, and Avram listens tensely: there is something in her voice—and she thought she might pop over to one of the boutiques on Emek Refaim to buy a scarf or a pair of sunglasses or something to cheer her up. She walked down Jaffa Street toward the parking lot where she left her car every day. The street was uncharacteristically still and the eerie silence disquieted her. She wanted to turn around and go back to the clinic, but she kept walking, and noticed that people on the street were walking quickly, without looking one another in the eye. A moment later she herself began to act the same way, lowering her eyes and avoiding people, except to steal secret glances, to scan and sort. Mostly, she looked to see if they were carrying anything, a package or a large bag, or if they looked nervous. But almost everyone looked somehow suspect, and she thought perhaps they saw her that way, too. Perhaps she should let them know that she posed no danger? That they could be calm around her and save themselves a few heartbeats? On the other hand, maybe she should not disclose that sort of information so casually here. She pulled back her shoulders and forced herself to straighten up and look right at people’s faces. When she did, she saw in almost every person a note that hinted at some latent possibility—the possibility of being a murderer or a victim, or both.

When had she learned these movements and these looks? The nervous glances over her shoulder, the footsteps that seemed to sniff out their path and make their own choices. She discovered new things about herself, like symptoms of an emerging disease. It seemed as though the others, walking around her, everyone, even the children, were fitfully moving to the sounds of