To the End of the Land - By David Grossman Page 0,5

they never stand next to them or anything.

That’s just like how I—I look for the runts first.

Why?

That’s the way it is.

Are you … Wait, are you short?

I’m willing to bet I don’t reach your ankles.

Hah!

Seriously, you have no idea what kind of offers I get from circuses.

Tell me something.

What?

But be honest.

Go on.

Why did you come to me yesterday and today?

Don’t know. I just did.

Even so.

He cleared his throat and said, “I wanted to wake you before you started singing in your sleep, Avram lied.”

What did you say?

“I wanted to wake you before you started singing in your sleep again, lied the ever-scheming Avram.”

Oh, you’re—

Yes.

You’re adding in what you—

Exactly.

Silence. A secretive smile. Wheels spinning rapidly, on both ends.

And your name is Avram?

What can I do? That was the cheapest name my parents could afford.

And that would be like my saying, for example, “He’s talking to me as if he were a theater actor or something, thought Ora to herself”?

“You’ve got it, Avram praised Ora, and said to himself, Dear soul, I believe we’ve found—”

“So now be quiet for a minute, said Ora the genius, and delved into thoughts deeper than the ocean itself.”

“I wonder what she’s thinking thoughts deeper than the ocean itself about, Avram speculated nervously.”

“She’s thinking to herself that she really wants to see him, just for a minute—and then Ora, sly as a fox, revealed to him that apart from a chair, she had also today prepared this.”

A scratch, and another scratch, a flare, and a spot of light shines in the room. A long, fair, slender arm reaches out, holding a matchstick torch. The light sways on the walls like liquid. A large room with many empty, naked beds, and trembling shadows, and a wall and a doorframe, and in the heart of the circle of light is Avram, shrinking back a little from the glare of the match.

She lights another and holds it lower, as if not wanting to embarrass him. The flame reveals a young man’s thick, sturdy legs in blue pajamas. Surprisingly small hands grasp each other nervously on the lap, and the light climbs up to a short, solid body and cuts a large round face out of the darkness. Despite the illness, the face contains an almost embarrassing lust for life, curious and intense, with a bulbous nose and swollen lids, and above them a wild bush of black hair.

What astounds her more than anything is the way he presents his face for her perusal and verdict, closing his eyes tightly, strenuously wrinkling all his features. For a moment he looks like someone who has just tossed a very fragile object into the air and is now waiting fearfully for it to shatter.

Ora gasps with pain and licks her burned fingertip. After a moment’s hesitation, she lights another match and holds it with severe candor in front of her own forehead. She shuts her eyes and quickly runs the light up and down in front of her face. Her eyelashes flutter, her lips protrude slightly. Shadows break on her long, high cheekbones and around the defiant, swollen ball of her mouth and chin. Something dark and imbued with sleep hovers over this lovely face, something lost and unweaned, but perhaps it’s just the illness that makes it look that way. Her short hair glistens like burnished brass, and its brilliance glows in Avram’s eyes even after the match goes out and the darkness once again envelops her.

HEY—

What, what?!

Avram?

What?

Did you fall asleep?

Me? I thought you did.

Do you really think we’ll get better?

Of course.

But there must have been a hundred people in isolation when I got here. Maybe we have something they don’t know how to cure?

You mean—both of us?

Whoever is left here.

That’s just the two of us, and the other guy, from my class.

But why us?

Because we have the complications of hepatitis.

That’s just it. Why us?

Don’t know.

I’m falling asleep again—

I’m staying.

Why do I keep falling asleep?

Weak body.

Don’t sleep, watch over me.

Then talk to me. Tell me.

About what?

About you.

They were like sisters, she told him. People called them “the Siamese twins,” even though they looked nothing alike. For eight years, ages six to fourteen, first grade to the end of the first trimester in the eighth grade, they sat at the same desk. They didn’t part after school either, always together, at one or the other’s house, and in the Machanot Olim youth movement, and on hikes—Are you even listening?

What …? Yes, I’m listening … There’s something I don’t get—why aren’t you friends anymore?

Why?

Yes.

She