To the End of the Land (55 page)

The nurse handed her a fabric face mask to protect her from the smell. The doctor and nurse started to undress Avram. His chest, stomach, and shoulders were covered with open, infected ulcers, deep gashes, bruises, and strange, thin-lipped cuts. The right nipple was misplaced. The doctor touched a gloved finger to each wound and dictated to the nurse in a toneless voice: “Open fracture, dry blow, cut, edema, whipping, electrical, compression, burn, rope, infection. Check for malaria, check for schistosomiasis. Look at this—the plastic surgeons will have a field day.”

He and the nurse turned Avram over and exposed his back. Ora stole a look and saw a lump of raw flesh bubbling in red, yellow, and purple. She felt her stomach turn. The stench from his body was unbearable. The doctor held his breath and his glasses fogged over. He bared Avram’s buttocks and took a deep breath: “Animals,” he murmured. Ora looked out the window and wept silently and tearlessly. The doctor covered Avram’s behind and cut open his pants. His legs were broken in three places. Around the ankles were bloody bracelets of puffy, raw flesh that looked as though it was seething with live creatures. The doctor mimed a noose to the nurse, and Ora saw Avram in some dark cell, hanging by his feet with his head rocking, and she suddenly grasped that the entire time he had been a POW, she had hardly dared to imagine what they were really doing to him. He was in the Intelligence Corps and knew so much. She had pushed away every scene or thought—at the moments right before she fell asleep they would lunge at her, but the sleeping pills were effective against nightmares—and now she wondered how it was possible that she and Ilan had not discussed the torture and what happens to people who are tortured, even once.

She thought of how little they had spoken of Avram at all, despite the fact that all those days and weeks they had had little
else of interest to talk about. Almost every day they drove to the Contact Center for Families of POWs and MIAs, to hear what little news and whatever rumors they could. Over and over again they examined blurry photographs of hostages published in Israel and abroad and talked to the commanders and clerks who were willing to listen. When they didn’t go to the center, they would call to find out if there was any word. They were already starting to feel that they were being avoided, shunted around, but they did not give up—how could they? They were both distraught, and when they ate anything they thought, he’s not eating this, and when a song he liked came on the radio they thought, he’s not hearing this, and when they saw something beautiful they thought, he’s not seeing this. And that way—Ora now realized—they wouldn’t have to think about what was really happening to him; they’d turned Avram into everything he wasn’t.

The doctor said, “Don’t worry, you’ll get him back as good as new.” Ora stared at him. She knew that if the ambulance stopped for a second, she would open the door and flee. It was almost beyond her control. The doctor started writing things on a thick notepad. Then he paused and said: “Your boyfriend?”

She nodded.

He scanned her closely. “It’ll be all right,” he said finally. “They’ve done a real number on him, those shits, but we’re better than them. I’m telling you, a year from now you won’t recognize him.”

“And what about his …” She stammered and her hand dropped. The very question was a sort of betrayal.

“His mind? That’s not really my department,” the doctor mumbled. He sealed up his face and went back to his notepad. Ora looked pleadingly at the nurse, but she also avoided her. Ora forced herself to look at Avram. With the fervor of a vow, she decided that she could not leave him even for a moment without a loving gaze and that from now on she would always look at him lovingly and would always be with him to look at him lovingly, because perhaps only a lifetime of love could mend what they had done to him there. But she could not
overcome the nausea and her aversion to his nearly eyebrowless face, and she could not put any love in her gaze, and a metallic voice hissed inside her, just as it had after Ada: Life goes on, doesn’t it?

The ambulance careened down the road, kicking up a commotion. Avram’s face suddenly tensed; he slammed his head from side to side as if trying to evade a slap and whimpered in a young boy’s voice. She watched him, hypnotized, never having seen these expressions on him. She’d thought her Avram wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. He simply did not know fear. She’d always felt he was protected from evil, and that it was utterly inconceivable that anyone would want to hurt this man who roamed the world with open arms, and feet turned out, with his curious-interrogative head tilt, with his donkey’s bray laughter and sharp gaze. Avram.

Perhaps that was precisely why they had done this to him, she thought. Crushed him this way, shattered him. Not just because he’s in Intelligence.

Avram gaped. He gurgled and choked. She could not guess what was being done to him in his imagination at that moment. She thought he was trying to raise his hands and protect his face, but only a few fingers moved slightly. The thought flew through her that she would never have a child. That she would not bring a child into a world where such things happened. Just then Avram’s eyes opened, and they were red and dirty. She leaned down to him, struck by the stench that came from his raw flesh. He saw her and his gaze focused. Even the blue of his eyes looked bloodshot.

“Avram, it’s me, Ora.” Her fingers hovered over his shoulder; she was afraid to hurt him, afraid to touch him.

“Pity,” he whispered.

“What’s a pity? What is? What’s a pity?”

He gargled as the words seeped into the fluids filling his lungs. “Pity they didn’t kill me.”

Then the ambulance doors swung open and there was a sea of faces, tugging hands, and shouts that hit her ears. Ilan was there, somehow having managed to arrive before the ambulance.
Fast Ilan, she thought with a touch of resentment, as if his speed were an advantage gained illegally over Avram. They both ran behind the stretcher into a hut that had been converted into an ER. Dozens of doctors and nurses gathered around the wounded soldiers, drew blood, collected urine, took mucus samples, and grew cultures from the wounds. A Medical Corps major noticed Ora and Ilan and shouted them out of the building. They staggered to a bench outside and wrapped themselves around each other. Ilan made sounds she did not recognize, like dry, hoarse barks. With tight fists she clutched his hair until he groaned in pain. “Ilan, Ilan, what’s going to happen?” she whispered loudly.

“I’m staying with him here until he comes back,” he said. “Until he’s back to being what he was, I don’t care how long it takes, even years, I’m not moving.”

She let go of his hair and looked at him. He looked older and heavier in his sorrow and terror. “You’ll stay with him,” she repeated, dumbstruck.

“What did you think, that I’d leave him here alone like that?”

Yes, she thought to herself. The truth is, that is what I thought. I thought I’d be alone with him in this.

Then she came back to her senses. “No, no, of course you’re staying, I don’t know what I was … Listen, I can’t go through this alone.”

He looked angry and hurt. “But why alone?”

And she thought, Because there’s always a little bit of you that’s not there, even when you’re there. “Come on, let’s go back to him. We’ll wait by the door until they let us in.”

They walked side by side among the bustling huts. For some time, since the war, they had not been able to touch each other. But now, to her surprise, she was filled with desire for him, and her longing was a primary, naked hunger to bite into his flesh, into his healthy, whole body. She stopped and grabbed his arm and pressed it to her, and he responded immediately, turned her to him, and held her tight against his body, and suddenly he leaned down and kissed her lustfully. His mouth filled her mouth, and she felt all of him, his entire body, penetrating her,
turning her inside out, and she even forgot to be amazed at how he, normally so shy, was kissing her like that in front of everyone. She felt that he was stronger now, bonier and more steadfast. There was something in his grasp, in his kiss—he literally picked her up off the ground and held her against his mouth, and then she grew blurry and felt that he was suspending her in midair with just the force of his mouth, and it vaguely occurred to her that whoever was watching them might think Ilan was the one who had come back to his girl from a POW prison. She pulled away from him, almost shoved herself backward, and they stood facing each other breathlessly.

“Tell me,” she heard him say suddenly and was horrified: that voice of his, the shattered breaths. “Ora …” He looked at the ceiling. “I have to know.”

“What, ask me.”

“Something … I can’t remember.”

“Ask me.”

He was silent. He kept trying to move his suspended leg and scratch an itch under the cast.

“Things aren’t right in my head.”

“What things?”

“You and me.”

“Yes?”

“It’s like I have a hole in the middle of—”

“Ask.”

“What … What are we?”

She was not expecting that. “Do you mean …?” She must have leaned toward him too sharply. His head pulled back and his face shrank in terror. Perhaps in the dark he thought something—a hand or an implement—was about to hit him. She murmured, “What are we now?”

“Don’t be angry, I’m not quite …”

“We’re good friends, and we’ll always be good friends.” She suddenly felt compelled to add with a grating sort of cheer: “And you’ll see, we’ll make a new life for you!”

Afterward, for months, she tormented herself over that stupid line. And then there were times when she thought perhaps it had been prescient.
We’ll make a new life
. But at that moment she could almost hear his bitter ridicule. His heavy head moved slowly on the pillow as he tried to examine her face. She was glad the room was dark.

“Ora.”

“What?”

“Isn’t there anyone else in this room?”

“Just us.”

“The cast is driving me crazy,” he said thickly. Everything he did was so slow. She realized how much the old Avram was, for her, perhaps more than anything else, his rhythm, the sharpness of the way he moved through the world. “I’m cold.”

She covered him with a third blanket. He dripped with sweat and shivered with cold.

“Scratch it for me.”

She reached out and scratched his leg where the cast met the skin. She felt as if her finger was dipping in an open wound. He moaned and grunted with a mixture of pain and pleasure.

“Stop. It hurts.”

She sat back. “What, what do you want to know?”

“What were we?”

“What were we? We were all sorts of things. We were lots of things to each other, and we still will be, you’ll see, we still will be!”

With one hand, in an infinite motion, he pulled the blankets up over his chest, as if to protect himself from the deceit in her voice. He lay silently for a few minutes. Then she heard his dry lips part, and she knew what was coming.

“And Ilan?”

“Ilan … I don’t know where to start, I don’t know what you remember and what you don’t. Ask me.”

“I can’t remember. There are parts. In the middle it’s all erased.”

“Do you remember that you were on the base in Sinai with Ilan?”

“In Bavel, yes.”

“You were at the end of your army stint. I was already in Jerusalem, studying.” As she spoke, she thought: Stick to the facts. Only answer what he asks. Let him decide what he can hear.

There was silence again. The space heater sparked.

And wait for him, she warned herself. Go at his pace. Maybe he doesn’t even want to talk about it, maybe it’s too soon for him.

Avram lay still. His eyes were open. He had only one eyebrow, half of which was missing.

“You used to come home every other week in rotation from Sinai. You and Ilan.”

He gave her a questioning look.

“One week you, the next week him. One of you always had to stay on the base.”

He thought it over. “And the other?”

“The other would go on leave, to Jerusalem.”

“And you were in Jerusalem?”

“Yes”—stick to the facts—“do you remember where I lived?”

“There was a geranium,” Avram said after some thought.

“That’s right! You see, you do remember! I had a little room in Nachlaot.”

“You did?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“It comes and goes.”

“With an outhouse? And a tiny kitchen in the courtyard? We used to cook late at night. Once you made me chicken soup on a cooker.”

“And where was my mom?”

“Your mom?”

“Yes.”

“You …

You don’t remember?”

“Isn’t she—”

“When you were in basic training, she—”

“Yes, you walked with me at the funeral, that’s right. Ilan was there, too. He walked next to me, on the other side. Yes.”

She stood up, unable to tolerate any more. “Are you hungry? Should I get you something?”

“Ora.”

She sat down obediently, as if ordered by a stern teacher.

“I don’t understand.”

“Ask me.”

“My mouth.”

She soaked a washcloth in water and dabbed his lips.

“But in the war—”

“Yes.”

“Why was I—”

He stopped himself, and Ora thought: Now he’s going to ask about the lots.

“I went down to the Canal, and Ilan didn’t.”

He remembered, she knew. He was remembering and did not have the courage to ask. She looked miserably at the window, searching for a hint of dawn, a sliver of light.

“You and me, what did we have?”

“I told you, we were friends. We were—listen, we were lovers,” she said finally, simply, and the words tore her heart.

“And I came back in an airplane?”

“What?” She was confused. “Yes, in an airplane. With the others.”

“There were others?”

“Many.”

“For a long time?”

“You were there for about—”

“No, me and you.”

“A year.”

She heard him repeat the words to himself. She resisted asking whether he thought it had been longer, so as not to hear him say shorter. Then he fell asleep again and snored. He seemed capable of digesting only one crumb of his previous life at a time.