Part 27 (1/2)

They come across a tiny lake, and after some hesitation they take a dip, Ora in her underwear-a compromise between several convoluted, conflicting wishes and fears-and Avram fully clothed, then after a few minutes, wearing only his pants. And there is his body, glisteningly pale, dotted with scars and wounds, fles.h.i.+er than she remembered, but also more solid than she imagined, and it is when he is nude that he emits a surprisingly brawny power. And he of course, as always, chooses to see only the ”fleshy” that pa.s.ses before her eyes, and apologetically pinches a fold of flesh, presenting it for her to study, and shrugs his shoulders with a this-is-all-I've-got sort of grief. But what she remembers is how he used to whisper when he saw her naked body, ”Oh G.o.d, Ora'leh, such resplendence.” Apart from Ada, no one she knew had ever used that word, which had existed only in poetry. Or he would swing his heavy head over her and neigh like a horse, or roar like a lion, or, like old Captain Cat in Under Milk Wood Under Milk Wood, bellow: ”Let me s.h.i.+pwreck in your thighs!” ”Let me s.h.i.+pwreck in your thighs!”

She goes under the shallow water and can dimly sees his froggish body faltering nearby, and an old pain resurfaces, the memory of the moments when that thick, creased, careless body would light up and stretch into a blazing thread, and she would hold his face with both hands and force him to look in her eyes, to stay as open as he could, and she would study his eyes and see a gaze with a distant edge that was entirely open, endless, and she would know that there was one place where she was entirely, unconditionally loved, where all of her was gratefully, happily accepted.

Ora was the center, the focal point, and this too was something new he gave her. Ora-not Avram, and not Ora-Avram-was the place where their lovemaking occurred. Her body, far more than his, was the intersection of their pa.s.sion, and her pleasure was always more desired by him than his own. This astonished her and sometimes troubled her-”Let me do it to you you now,” she would urge, ”I want you to enjoy it, too.” And he'd laugh: ”But when you enjoy it, that's when I enjoy it most, can't you feel that? Can't you see that?” And she did feel it, and she did see it, but could not truly understand it. ”What's with the altruism?” she would ask angrily. ”What altruism?” he'd say with a sly grin. ”It's pure egoism.” And she would smile, as if at an incomprehensible joke, and would once again respond to his caresses and licks and feel that she was picking up on something complicated and warped about him, something she might have to work harder to understand if she really wanted to know Avram. But the kisses were sweet, and the licking shook the earth, and she gave in every time, and the moment was never right, and eventually that thing remained unspoken. now,” she would urge, ”I want you to enjoy it, too.” And he'd laugh: ”But when you enjoy it, that's when I enjoy it most, can't you feel that? Can't you see that?” And she did feel it, and she did see it, but could not truly understand it. ”What's with the altruism?” she would ask angrily. ”What altruism?” he'd say with a sly grin. ”It's pure egoism.” And she would smile, as if at an incomprehensible joke, and would once again respond to his caresses and licks and feel that she was picking up on something complicated and warped about him, something she might have to work harder to understand if she really wanted to know Avram. But the kisses were sweet, and the licking shook the earth, and she gave in every time, and the moment was never right, and eventually that thing remained unspoken.

But if it had been the other way around, she knew-she hears Avram step out of the water with a splash, which is a pity, she wanted to play around with him a little (but he didn't seem interested), and now she'll have to walk out naked in front of him-if it had been the other way around he would not have given in, he would have investigated and wondered at every answer she gave, and remembered and treasured it and turned it over again and again. She hurries out of the water, hopping from one foot to the other and covering her cold b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which are even more shriveled now of course-where's the towel, d.a.m.n it, why didn't she lay it out before?

Avram throws her a towel, almost without looking, and her teeth chatter a thanks. She turns her back to him and dries herself and remembers what he told her when she was nineteen: that they were perfect because they fit right in his palms. He insisted on referring to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in the feminine, even though the Hebrew word was puzzlingly masculine. ”How could it be any other way?” he claimed, and she gladly adopted his view. And how he marveled at them, and never had his fill of them. ”Your resplendencies,” resplendencies,” he called them, and ”Your he called them, and ”Your res-plenties,” res-plenties,” which confirmed to her again that he honestly did not see her as she was, that he was blind to her shortcomings, that he apparently loved her. And she loved him so much for giving her b.r.e.a.s.t.s a place in the world, even before anyone had noticed them, and for believing so pa.s.sionately that she was a woman, when she herself still doubted it. In the years that followed, when she breast-fed the boys, she often wished Avram could enjoy her too, wished he could know her when she was large and milky and abundant. ”Your cup runneth over,” he used to delight in telling her when they were together. which confirmed to her again that he honestly did not see her as she was, that he was blind to her shortcomings, that he apparently loved her. And she loved him so much for giving her b.r.e.a.s.t.s a place in the world, even before anyone had noticed them, and for believing so pa.s.sionately that she was a woman, when she herself still doubted it. In the years that followed, when she breast-fed the boys, she often wished Avram could enjoy her too, wished he could know her when she was large and milky and abundant. ”Your cup runneth over,” he used to delight in telling her when they were together.

She dries herself vigorously, as she always does, scrubbing her skin until it turns pink and steamy, amusing herself with her thoughts, and she stares at Avram with a strange, eager look. He gives her a sideways glance and says, ”What?” She pulls herself together and straightens up and flutters her eyelids as if to clean up quickly after the unruly, damp gaze that had slipped out.

When Avram stands up to put his s.h.i.+rt on, Ora announces that enough is enough. ”This s.h.i.+rt has to be washed right here, and we'll dry it on the backpack while you walk. And please, open up your backpack right now and find something clean to wear.”

They walk past a string of natural springs: Ein Garger, Ein Pu'ah, and Ein Khalav. Pale orange lichen upholsters the branches of almond trees alongside the path. Tadpoles dart away when the shadow of Avram's head falls on the springs. Ora talks. At times she glances at Avram and sees his lips moving, as though he is trying to engrave her words inside him. She talks about long nights sitting with Ofer in the rocking chair when he was burning with fever, sweaty, occasionally shaking and whimpering. She used to fall in and out of sleep with him, talk to him softly, and wipe the sweat off his tortured face. ”I never knew you could feel someone else's pain like that,” she says, and throws Avram a quick glance, because who more than he had once had the capacity to overflow with another person's pain?

She talks about breast-feeding. How for months Ofer consumed nothing but her milk, and how he held entire conversations with her just by gurgling and looking. ”A whole language, so rich that no words can describe it.”

She wants him to see her there too, not just Ofer. With her stained nursing bra and her wild hair. With her potbelly that refused for months to deflate, and her desperate helplessness when faced with Ofer's mysterious pains, as he cried and screamed. With her mother's stinging advice, and the far more experienced neighbors', and the nurses' at the lactation clinic. With the joy of knowing that she herself, with her own body, was sustaining a living creature.

And the moments-the chasms-between Ofer's cries of hunger and the second her nipple disappeared into his lips. When he screamed, his body seemed to utterly collapse, like a body that knows it will die. The fear of death flowed into him quickly, and she filled the s.p.a.ces that were void of food. He screamed and wailed until the rhythmic stream of her life stuff slowly filled him up, and a glow of relief illuminated his little face: he was saved, she had saved him, she had the power to.

She, who every single time she s.h.i.+fted from fourth to third gear had a morbid fear that she was s.h.i.+fting into reverse-she was giving life to a person!

Sometimes, when he was in her arms, she would run her hand quickly over his face and body, and when she did so, she always thought of the transparent threads, a web that tied Ofer to Avram, wherever he was. She knew it made no sense, but she could not stop her hand from making that motion.

Nighttime. The two of them alone in the world, darkness all around, and warm milk gurgles secretly from her innards to his. His tiny hand on her breast, the pinky finger extended like an antenna, the others moving rhythmically with his sucking, and his other hand crus.h.i.+ng the fabric of her robe, or a tuft of his hair, or his ear. He opens his eyes and looks at her, and she dives in, imprinted in his gaze. That is how she feels: her face is now being imprinted on his tender, still foggy brain. She experiences a thrilling moment of eternity. In his eyes she sees her own image, and she is more beautiful than she has ever been. She vows to make him a good person, at least better than she is. She will repair everything her own mother ruined in her. Her zeal gushes into a milky spurt that spills on Ofer's mouth and nose: surprised, he chokes and bursts into tears.

As she walks now, she hugs her body while a storm washes over it in waves. Forgotten sensations: fullness and hardness, dribbles that leaked through her s.h.i.+rt in the middle of the street, at work, or in a cafe, at the mere thought of Ofer-”Just thinking of him made me drip,” she laughs, and Avram, his face bathed in her light, wonders if she let Ilan taste her milk.

A shadow falls on them at midday. They are walking through the Tsivon streambed, a deep, strange channel that silences them. The path meanders among large, broken rocks, and they must climb and take calculated steps. The oak trees around them are forced to grow tall, stretch higher and higher to reach the sunlight. Pale ivy and long ferns cascade down from the treetops. They walk over a bed of crumbling dry leaves among bloodless cyclamens and albino fungi. It's almost dark here. Touch, she says, and puts his hand on a rock covered with green moss. It feels soft and furry. They are surrounded by silence. Not a single bird chirps. ”Like a fairy-tale forest,” Ora whispers. Avram looks around him. His shoulders are slightly hunched. His fingers dart, counting each other constantly. ”Don't worry,” she says, ”I'll find the way out.” Avram points: ”Look over there.” A single ray of light has penetrated the foliage and s.h.i.+nes on a rock.

When we get back, he thinks, I'm going to read a book about the Galilee, or even just look at a map. I want to see where I've been. What would it be like for her to be hiking here with Ofer instead of me? he wonders. What would she talk about with him? What is it like to be completely alone with your child in a place like this? Must be terribly awkward. Then again, Ora wouldn't let him keep quiet. He smiles. They wouldn't stop talking and laughing at the people they met on the way. Maybe they'd laugh at me if they happened to run into me.

They climb up a narrow path where thick tree roots crawl all over the earth. The backpacks weigh them down. She thinks: What would it be like if Avram and Ofer were walking here in the forest, alone? A journey of men.

Suddenly, as if a hand has pa.s.sed in front of their faces, they walk out of the shade into the sunlight. Another few moments and a meadow is revealed, and a hillside, and orchards blossoming in white. ”So beautiful,” she whispers so as not to shock the silence.

The path flows softly. A broad, well-trodden walking path, with an avenue of weeds down the center. Like a horse's mane, Avram thinks.

She tells him about Ofer's journeys of discovery through the house, his insistent examinations of every single book on the bottom shelves, the plant leaves, the pots and lids in the lower kitchen drawers. She gives him every memory chip of his babyhood that pops into her mind. When he fell off a chair and had to get seven st.i.tches in his chin at Magen David; when a cat scratched his face at the playground-”there's no scar,” she says rea.s.suringly, and Avram s.n.a.t.c.hes a fluttering touch of some of his own scars, on his arms, shoulder, chest, and back, and a surprising ripple of joy runs through him because Ofer is whole; his body is whole.

Avram seems to be growing more and more awake: he wants to know when Ofer started talking and what his first word was. ”Abba,” ”Abba,” Ora says. Daddy. But Avram mishears and responds incredulously: Ora says. Daddy. But Avram mishears and responds incredulously: ”Avram?” ”Avram?” Then he realizes his error, and they both laugh. And of course he asks immediately what Adam's first word was. Then he realizes his error, and they both laugh. And of course he asks immediately what Adam's first word was. (”Or,” (”Or,” she replies. Light. She feels him swallow back the obvious question: Not she replies. Light. She feels him swallow back the obvious question: Not ima ima? But instead Avram says, ”Or is almost 'Ora,'” and she hadn't even thought of that; she remembers that Ofer always claimed his first words were: ”Take me to your leader.”) She reminds Avram of his mother's heavy bureau, which became a changing table for the boys, and the black bookshelf, which held all their childhood books. She manages to remember quite a lot from the books she used to read to them and recites by heart: ”Pluto was a dog from Kibbutz Megiddo ...” Then she explains to the ignorant Avram about the charms of every child's favorite rabbit, Mitz Petel, and his animal friends. She smiles to herself: the two of us are a bit like the giraffe and the lion in the book.

She tries to imagine little Ofer, bathed and clean and ready for bed, resting his head on Avram's shoulder while he tells a story. Ofer is wearing his green pajamas with the half-moons, but she can't see what Avram is wearing. She can't even see Avram himself, but she feels his broad physical presence and the way Ofer leans on it. She thinks Avram would have probably made up a new story for Ofer every night and put on plays and shows for him. She has no doubt he would have been bored reading the same story every evening for weeks, as Ofer used to insist. She can hear the special, mysterious, soft, stomach-trembling voice that Ilan used when he read bedtime stories to the boys. She does not tell Avram, but remembers for herself and for Ofer how much Ilan loved bedtime. Even when the office was terribly busy, he would come home to help put the boys to bed, and she loved to cuddle with them in bed, and listen to him read.

The path is easy and fluid. Avram spreads his arms out, surprised at how comfortable the sharwals sharwals feel on his body-Ora had folded the cuffs up three times until they fit his ”peanut stature,” as he'd joked. She tells him about Ofer's day care and his first friend, Yoel, who moved to the States with his parents and broke Ofer's heart. ”Such little stories,” she apologizes, but from one story to the next, from one word to the next, baby Ofer becomes clearer in her own mind, slowly sculpted into a boy: the tiny baby draws out into the toddler, his clothes change, his toys, his haircut, his eyes. She shows him Ofer playing alone, concentrating, absorbed in a game. She tells him about Ofer's affection for minuscule toys with lots of detailed accessories. She was amazed at his ability to collect them with infinite patience, match them up, put them together, and take them apart again. feel on his body-Ora had folded the cuffs up three times until they fit his ”peanut stature,” as he'd joked. She tells him about Ofer's day care and his first friend, Yoel, who moved to the States with his parents and broke Ofer's heart. ”Such little stories,” she apologizes, but from one story to the next, from one word to the next, baby Ofer becomes clearer in her own mind, slowly sculpted into a boy: the tiny baby draws out into the toddler, his clothes change, his toys, his haircut, his eyes. She shows him Ofer playing alone, concentrating, absorbed in a game. She tells him about Ofer's affection for minuscule toys with lots of detailed accessories. She was amazed at his ability to collect them with infinite patience, match them up, put them together, and take them apart again.

”That's not something he got from me me.” Avram laughs, and Ora is moved: In what he negates, she hears what he is affirming.

When he was eighteen months old, they went on vacation to Dor Beach. Early in the morning he woke up while Ora, Ilan, and Adam were still asleep, climbed down from his bed, and walked out of the cabin alone. Barefoot, wearing a T-s.h.i.+rt and a diaper, he padded onto the big lawn adjacent to the beach and saw, probably for the first time in his life, a huge sprinkler spraying water. He stood watching in amazement, giggling and murmuring to himself, and then he started playing with the sprinkler. He crept up to the giant spurts of water and ran away before they could lick his feet. Ora, now awake and watching from behind the cabin wall, could see his happiness right before her eyes: she could see happiness itself, sunny and golden, refracted in the sprays of water.

Then the sprinkler caught Ofer and doused his body and head. Shocked, he stood paralyzed in the stream, trembling all over, his face scrunched up and turned to the sky, shaking his tight fists. She shows him to Avram, standing with her eyes closed and her lips in a trembling pout. A tiny, lonely human among the lashes of water that spun all around him, accepting a sentence he did not understand. She hurried over to rescue him, but something stopped her and sent her back to her hiding place. Perhaps, she tells Avram, it was a desire to see Ofer all alone like that just once. To see him as a person out in the world.

Ofer finally uprooted his feet and went to stand at a safe distance from the sprinkler, which he now watched with wounded pride, soundlessly whimpering and trembling through all his limbs. But he quickly forgot his insult when he spotted a wonderful new creature: a limping old horse with a straw hat on its head and its ears sticking through holes torn out of the hat. The horse was drawing a cart on which sat a man, also elderly, also wearing a straw hat. The old man came every day at dawn to pick up the garbage from the beach, and now he was taking it to the dump. Ofer stood in a state of excitement, still dripping with water, and a circular sense of wonder lit up his eyes. As the horse and cart drove by, the man noticed the baby, gave him a toothless smile, and charmingly removed his fraying straw hat with a flourish that stretched from his old age to Ofer's childhood.

Ora was afraid Ofer would be scared of the man, but he only patted his little stomach, laughed a rolling laugh, and slapped his head a few times with both hands, perhaps mimicking the doff of the hat.

Then he followed the horse.

He walked without looking back, and Ora followed him. ”He was full of power and without a hint of fear. Just a little thing of eighteen months.”

A tiny leaf ripples inside Avram's soul and floats on ahead of him. Behind his tightly shut eyelids, a small boy walks on an empty beach, his body leaning forward, wearing nothing but a diaper and a T-s.h.i.+rt, all of him moving toward and onward and ahead.

The cart bore piles of garbage, cardboard boxes, torn fis.h.i.+ng nets, and large trash bags. Flies hovered above it, and a trail of stench lingered behind it. Every so often the old man wearily yelled at the horse and waved a long whip. Ofer walked behind them, along the water's edge, and Ora behind him, seeing through his eyes the wonder of the large, emaciated beast, and perhaps-she is guessing now, as she recounts the story for Avram-perhaps he even thought that everything moving up there in front of him was one single wonderfully complex creature, with two heads and four legs, large wheels, leather harnesses and straw hats, and a buzzing cloud above. As she talks, she distractedly quickens her pace, pulled along by the living memory-Ofer on the beach, a bold puppy bristling with the future, she behind him, hiding at times, although there was no need because he never turned to look back. She wondered how far he would go, and he answered her with his steps: forever. She saw-and this she does not have to say, even Avram understands-how the day would come when he would leave her, just get up and go, as they always do, and she guessed a little of what she would feel on that day, a little of what now, without any warning, digs its predatory teeth into her.

When he could no longer keep up with the horse and the old man, Ofer stopped, waved at them for a moment longer, his fist opening and closing, then turned around with a sweet, mischievous smile, and spread his arms out to her happily, as if he'd known all along that she was there, as if anything else were not possible. He ran to her arms shouting: ”Nommy, Nommy, bunny!”

”You see, in his books, in the pictures, a creature with a long head and long ears was a bunny.”

”That's a horse,” she told him and hugged him tightly to her chest. ”Say 'horse.'”

”That was one of Ilan's things,” she tells him on their next coffee break, in a purple field of clover dotted with the occasional unruly stalk of yellow asphodel humming with honeybees. ”Every time he taught Ofer or Adam a new word, he would ask them to repeat it out loud. To tell you the truth, it got on my nerves sometimes, because I thought, Why does he have to do it that way-he's not their trainer. But now I think he was right, and I even envy him, retroactively, because that way he was always the first one to hear every new word they said.”

”That is is from me,” Avram says with awkward hesitation. ”You know that, right? That's me.” from me,” Avram says with awkward hesitation. ”You know that, right? That's me.”

”What is?”

He stammers, blus.h.i.+ng. ”I was the one who told Ilan in the army that if I ever had a kid, I would hand him every new word, present it to him, and it would be like, you know, like a covenant between us.”

”So it's from you?”

”He...he didn't tell you?”

”Not that I remember.”

”He probably forgot.”

”Yeah, maybe. Or maybe he didn't want to tell me, not to pour salt on your wound with me. I don't know. We both had all sorts of rituals about you, and moments to be with you, but it was mainly the words, and the way they spoke, the boys.” She sighs, and her droopy upper lip seems to droop a little more. ”Well, you know, I mean he had that whole thing with you-”

”With me?” Avram sounds alarmed.

”Come on, it's obvious. The two of you were so verbal verbal, such chatterboxes, I swear, and with Ilan...Hey, what's that sound?”

Something disturbs the thistles nearby. They hear short, rapid thras.h.i.+ngs coming from several directions, and then the rustle of a living creature, something that runs and stops, with panting breaths. Avram jumps up and pokes around, and then comes the barking, in different voices, and Avram shouts at her to get up, and she spills her coffee and tries to stand up and trips on something and falls, and Avram stands over her, frozen, his eyes and mouth gaping in a transparent shout, and dogs-dogs come from all around them.

When Ora finally manages to get up, she counts three, four, five. He jerks his head to the left, and there are at least four more there, of different breeds, large and small, dirty and wild, standing there barking furiously at them. Avram pulls Ora to him, grabs her wrist, but she still doesn't get it. How painfully slowly her brain processes the joints and connectors of every new situation, always. And on top of that, instead of kicking into self-defense mode, she has a foolish tendency-a completely un-survivor-like tendency, as Ilan once pointed out-to linger on the minor details (beads of sweat are spreading quickly under Avram's armpits; one of the dog's legs is broken and folded beneath its body; Ilan's eyelid had jerked wildly when he told her, nine months ago, that he was leaving her; the man they met at the Kedesh River had been wearing, on top of everything else, two identical wedding rings on two fingers).