To the End of the Land - By David Grossman Page 0,96

trembled and bumped as two skinned beasts struggled and mated over it.

“Let’s sit down, I’m a little dizzy.” She leans her head back on the rock face and takes quick sips of water, then passes him the canteen. She has to find something light and amusing, quickly, something that will make him laugh and fill him with affection and warmth for Ofer. And here it is, she’s found it: Ofer, at age three, used to insist on going to day care in his cowboy costume, which included twenty-one items of clothing and weaponry (they counted them once), and for one entire year they were not allowed to forgo even a single accessory. Her eyes brighten and the commotion in her head quiets down a little. This is exactly the sort of thing she should tell him: sweet slices of life, trivial Ofer episodes, nothing complicated or heavy, just calmly describe the mornings of that year, when Ilan and she darted around Ofer with guns and ammunition belts, and Ilan crawled under the bed to look for a sheriff’s star or a red bandana. The meticulous daily construction of a brave fighter, erected on the fragile scaffolding of little Ofer.

But that won’t really interest him, she retorts, all the minutiae, the thousands of moments and acts from which you raise a child, gather him into a person. He won’t have the patience for it, and ultimately these details are fairly boring and dreary, especially for men, but really for anyone who doesn’t know the child in question, although there are of course some stories that are, one might say, unusual, that might draw Avram to Ofer—

But why, for God’s sake, do I need to draw him in at all? she wonders angrily, and the headache that had subsided lunges back boldly and digs its claws into the familiar spot behind her left ear. Am I supposed to be marketing Ofer to him now? Tempting him with Ofer? She sighs, stands up at once, and starts walking briskly, almost running. How do you tell an entire life? A whole decade would not be enough. Where do you start? Especially she, who is incapable of telling one story from beginning to end without scattering in every direction and ruining the punch line—how will she be able to tell his story the right way? And what if she discovers that she doesn’t have that much to tell?

There are an infinite number of things she can say about him, yet she suddenly panics at the thought that if she talks about him for two or three hours straight, or five hours or ten, she might cover most of the important things she has to say about him, about his life. She might sum him up—exhaust him. And perhaps this is the fear that is pressuring her brain, the discomfort that has been eating away at her for some time: she doesn’t really know him. She doesn’t really know her son, Ofer.

The pulse in her neck beats to the point of pain. How quickly her tiny joy has faded. And what, really, will she say about him? How can you even describe and revive a whole person, flesh and blood, with only words—oh God, with only words?

She roots around inside herself, as though if she continues to be silent for even one more minute Avram may think she really has nothing to tell. But everything she feverishly digs up seems banal and marginal—agreeable anecdotes, like the time when Ofer rehabilitated a small well that had dried up near Har Adar. He opened the aqueduct and renewed the spring and planted an orchard nearby. Or perhaps she will tell him about the amazing bed that Ofer built with his own hands for her and Ilan. All right, so she’ll tell him that, so what? A well, a bed, stories that ultimately fit a thousand boys just like him, no less clever and sweet and lovely. It occurs to her that although there are lots of things about Ofer that are good and special, there may not be one truly extraordinary thing, something unique that puts him head and shoulders above everyone else. And with all her might Ora resists this loathsome thought that clings to her, this thought that is so foreign to her—how did she even arrive at such an idea? But wait, what about the movie he made for his cinema class in the tenth grade? There was definitely something there, Avram would like the