To the End of the Land (4 page)

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 isn’t—

Isn’t what?

Alive.

Ada?!

She heard him flinch as though he’d been hit. She folded her legs in and wrapped her arms around her knees and started rocking herself back and forth. Ada is dead, Ada’s been dead for two years, she said to herself quietly. It’s all right, it’s all right, everyone knows she’s dead. We’re used to it now, she’s dead. Life goes on. But she felt that she had just told Avram something secret and very intimate, something only she and Ada had really known.

And then, for some reason, she relaxed. She stopped rocking.
She began to breathe again, slowly, cautiously, as if there were thorns in her lungs, and she had the peculiar notion that this boy could carefully remove them, one by one.

But how did she die?

Traffic accident. And just so you know—

An accident?

You have the same sense of humor.

Who?

You and her, but exactly the same.

So is that why—

What?

Is that why you don’t laugh at my jokes?

Avram—

Yes.

Give me your hand.

What?

Give me your hand, quick.

But are we allowed?

Don’t be stupid, just give it to me.

No, I mean, because of the isolation.

We’re infected anyway.

But maybe—

Give me your hand already!

Look how we’re both sweating.

It’s a good thing.

Why?

Imagine if only one of us was sweating.

Or only one was shaking.

Or scratching.

Or only one had—

What?

You know.

You’re gross.

It’s true, isn’t it?

Then say it.

Okay: shit—

The color of whitewash—

And with blood, loads of it.

She whispered: I never knew I had so much blood in my body.

What’s yellow on the outside, shakes like crazy, and shits blood? There, now you’re laughing … I was getting worried …

Listen to this. Before I got ill I thought I didn’t have any—

Any what?

Blood in my body.

How could that be?

Never mind.

That’s what you thought?

Hold my hand, don’t leave.

APART FROM THE COLOR
of their hair, they were very different, almost opposites. One was tall and strong, the other short and chubby. One had the open, glowing face of a carefree filly, and the other’s was crowded and worried, with lots of freckles and a sharp nose and chin, and big glasses—like a young scholar from the shtetl, Ora’s father used to say. Their hair was completely different too: Ada’s was thick, frizzy, and wild, you could barely get a comb through it. I used to braid her hair, Ora said, in one thick braid, and then I’d tie it around her head like a Sabbath challah, that’s how she liked it. And she wouldn’t let anyone else do it.

Ada’s head was truly red, much redder than Ora’s, and it always stuck out in acclamation. Ora curled up on the bed now and saw it: Ada, like a match head, like a blotch of fire. Ora peeked at her, peeked and closed her eyes, unable to face the fullness of Ada. I haven’t seen her that way for a long time, she thought, in color.

She always walked on this side of me, Ora told Avram as she grasped his hand in both of hers, because Ada could hardly hear out of her right ear, from birth, and we always talked, about everything, we talked about everything. She fell silent suddenly
and pulled her hands away from his. I can’t, she thought. What am I doing telling him about her? He isn’t even asking anything, he’s just quiet, as if he’s waiting for me to say it on my own.

She took a deep breath and tried to find a way to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come. They pressed on her heart and could not come out. What could she tell him? What could he even understand? I want to, she thought to him. Her fingers moved and burrowed into her other palm. That was how she remembered them together, she remembered the togetherness, and she smiled: You know what I just remembered? It’s nothing, just that a week before she—before it happened—we were doing a literary analysis of “The Little Bunny.” You know, the nursery rhyme about the bunny who gets a cold.

Avram shook himself awake and smiled weakly. What, tell me. Ora laughed. We wrote—actually Ada wrote most of it, she was always the more talented one—a whole essay about how dreadful it was that the plague of the common cold had spread to the animal kingdom, even to the most innocent of its creatures …

Avram whispered to himself: “Even the most innocent of its creatures.” She could feel him taste the words in his mouth, run his tongue over them, and suddenly, for the first time in ages, her memory was surprisingly lucid: She and Ada. It’s all coming back, she thought excitedly. Endless discussions about boys who did or did not have an “artistic personality,” and heart-to-hearts about their parents—after all, almost from the start they were more loyal to each other than to their family secrets. Now she thinks that if not for Ada she would not even know that it was possible, that such closeness was allowed between two people. And there was the Esperanto they started learning together but never finished … On the annual school trip to Lake Kinneret, she told him, on the bus, Ada had a stomachache and announced to Ora that she was going to die, and Ora sat next to her weeping. But when she really did, you know, I didn’t cry, I couldn’t. Everything in me completely dried up. I haven’t cried even once since she died.

One small road and an alley separated their houses in the
Neveh Sha’anan neighborhood. They walked to school together, and together they walked home, always holding hands when they crossed the street; that was their habit since the age of six, and that is how they did it at the age of fourteen. Ora remembered the one time—they were nine, and they had fought about something that day, and she didn’t hold Ada’s hand when they crossed, and a municipal van came around the bend and hit Ada, tossing her high up—

She could see it again: her red coat opening up like a parachute. Ora was only two steps behind, and she turned back and ran to hide behind a row of bushes, where she kneeled on the ground with both hands over her ears, shut her eyes tightly, and hummed loudly to herself so she wouldn’t see or hear.

And I didn’t know it was only a dress rehearsal, she said.

I’m no good at saving people, she added later, perhaps to herself, perhaps to warn him.

And then it was Chanukah break, she said as her voice grew smaller. My parents and my brother and I were on vacation in Nahariya, we went there every year, to a guesthouse, for the whole holiday. The morning after vacation I went to school and waited for her by the kiosk where we used to meet every morning, and she didn’t come, and it was getting late so I walked on my own, and she wasn’t in the classroom, and I looked in the playground by our tree, in all our places, and she wasn’t there, and the bell rang and she hadn’t come, and I thought maybe she was sick, or maybe she was late and she’d be there soon. And then our homeroom teacher came in and we could see that he was confused, and he stood with his body kind of leaning sideways and said, Our Ada … And he burst into tears, and we didn’t understand what was going on, and a few kids even laughed, because he let out this kind of sob, from his nose …

She spoke in rapid whispers. Avram pressed her hand hard between his palms, hurting her, and she didn’t pull back.

And then he said she’d been killed in an accident, last night in Ramat Gan. She had a cousin there, she was walking down the street and a bus came, and that was that.

Fast and hot were her breaths on the back of his hand.

And what did you do?

Nothing.

Nothing?

I sat there. I don’t remember.

Avram breathed heavily.

There were two books of hers in my backpack. Two
Youth Encyclopedia
volumes I brought to return to her after the vacation, and I kept thinking, What am I going to do with them now?

And that’s how you first heard about it? In class?

Yes.

That can’t be.

It can.

And what happened afterward?

Don’t remember.

And her parents?

What?

What about them?

I don’t know what about them.

I’m just thinking, if something like that happened to me, an accident, my mom would probably go crazy, it would kill her.

Ora sat up straight, pulled her hand away and leaned back against the wall.

I don’t know … they didn’t say anything.

But how?

I didn’t …

I can’t hear, come closer.

I didn’t talk to them.

At all?

Ever since.

Wait, you mean they were killed, too?

Them? Of course not … They live in the same house to this day.

But you said … you said you and her, like sisters—

I didn’t go there …

Her body started to harden. No, no—she let out a cold, foreign
shard of laughter. My mother said it would be better not to go, not to make them even sadder. Her eyes began to glaze over. And it’s okay that way, believe me, it’s for the best, you don’t have to talk about everything.

Avram sat quietly. He sniffed.

But we wrote an essay about her in class, every kid wrote something, I did too, and the composition teacher collected them and made a booklet and said she’d send it to her parents. Ora suddenly pressed her fist against her mouth. Why am I even telling you this?

Did she at least have any brothers or sisters? he asked.

No.

Just her?

Yes.

Just her and you.

You don’t understand, it’s not true what you’re … They were right!

Who? Who are you talking about?

My parents. Not my dad, my mom, she knows better than anyone about these things. She’s from the Holocaust. And I’m sure Ada’s parents didn’t want me to come either, that’s why they never asked me to come. They could have asked me to come, couldn’t they?

But you can go to them now.

No, no. And I haven’t talked about her with anyone since, and she—Her head was rocking and her whole body shook. No one in class talks about her anymore, ever, two years … She started banging her head back against the wall: bang-syllable-bang-syllable. As-if-she-ne-ver-e-ven-was.

Stop, said Avram, and she immediately stopped. She stared straight ahead in the dark. Now they both heard it: somewhere out there, in one of the distant rooms, the nurse was crying. A quiet, prolonged wail.

After a while he asked, What did they do with her chair in class?

Her chair?

Yes.

What do you mean? It stayed there.

Empty?

Yes, of course empty, who would sit in it?

She sat quietly, cautious. She had already begun to suspect earlier that she’d been wrong about him and his cute teddy bear look, which was slightly ridiculous. This wasn’t the first time he’d suddenly asked her a seemingly innocent question, which cut into her in a way she only felt later.

Did you keep sitting next to her chair?

Yes … No … They moved me back. They moved me, I can’t remember, three rows behind her seat, but on the side.

Where?

Where what?

Show me, he demanded eagerly, impatiently. Where exactly?

A new, unfamiliar exhaustion began to spread through her, the weakness of total submission. Let’s say our desk was here, she mumbled and quickly drew on his hand with her finger, Then around here.

So basically you could see it right in front of you the whole time.

Yes.

But why didn’t they put you somewhere else? Maybe closer to the front, so you wouldn’t have to keep—

Stop, that’s enough, shut up! Can’t you ever shut up?!

Ora—

What now, what do you want?

I was thinking, maybe one day, I don’t know …