Ora saw the three of them straighten up and clear their throats, and the senior one raised his hand and hesitated for an instant. She watched his fist, transfixed, and it occurred to her that this was a moment that would last a lifetime, but then he knocked on the door, knocked firmly three times, and looked at the tips of his shoes, and as he waited for the door to open he silently rehearsed the notification: at such-and-such time in such-and-such place, your son Ofer, who was on an operational mission—
Across the street a series of windows slammed shut and drapes were drawn closed, with only their corners pulled aside for someone to peek out. But her door would remain shut. Ora finally managed to move her feet and tried to pull herself into a seated position in the sleeping bag. She was bathed in cold sweat. Her eyes were closed and her hands felt rigid, unmovable. The senior officer knocked three times again and was so averse to doing it that he knocked too hard, and for a moment he seemed to want to break down the door and burst in with the news. But the door was closed and no one was opening it to receive his notification, and he looked awkwardly at the document in his hand, which stated explicitly that at such-and-such time in such-and-such place, your son Ofer, who was on an operational mission. The female officer walked backward on the stoop to check the house number, and it was the right house, and the doctor tried to peer through the window to see if there was a light on inside, but no light was on. Two more weaker knocks, and the door remained shut, and the senior officer leaned on it with his whole weight as if seriously considering breaking the door down and hurling his notification inside at any cost. He looked at his colleagues with a confused expression, because it was becoming clear to them that something had gone wrong with the rules of this ritual, that their businesslike and professional desire, their essentially logical desire, to deliver the notification, to rid themselves of it, to vomit it out, and above all to embed it quickly into the person it belonged to by law and by destiny, namely, that at such-and-such time in such-and-such place, your son Ofer, who was on an operational mission — this desire of theirs was now encountering a wholly unexpected yet equally powerful force, which was Ora’s absolute unwillingness to receive the notification or accommodate it in any way, or even to acknowledge that it belonged to her at all.
Now the two other members of the team joined in the effort to push down the door, and with rhythmic grunts, wordlessly spurring each other on, they stormed the door again and again, ramming it with their bodies, and Ora still lay somewhere on the outskirts of her dream. Her head jerked from side to side and she wanted to shout but no sound came out. She knew they would never dare to do something so extraordinary unless they sensed the resistance projected onto the door from the inside, and this is what was enraging them, and the unfortunate door heaved and groaned between the willingness and the unwillingness, between their mature military logic and her childish obstinacy, and Ora fluttered and grew entangled in the folds of her sleeping bag until suddenly she froze, opened her eyes, and stared at the little window in her tent. She could see through the edges that it was getting light outside, and she ran her hand through her hair — so wet, as if she’d washed her hair in sweat — and lay down and reassured herself that her heart would stop racing soon, but she had to get out.
Much as she wanted to, she could not sit up. The sleeping bag was twisted and wrapped around her like a huge, tight, damp bandage, and her body was so weak that it did not have the power to resist this shroud, so full of life as it tightened around her. Perhaps she would just lie here a little longer, calm herself and gather strength, close her eyes and try to think about something more cheerful. But she soon felt a hushed grumble erupting from the team of notifiers, because they knew that they had to deliver their notice, if not now then in an hour or two, or in a day or two, and they would have to come all the way out here again and prepare themselves again for the difficult moment. People never think about the notifiers and the emotional burden they must bear; they pity only those receiving the news. But perhaps the notifiers are the ones who are angry, because as sad and sympathetic as they may be, they have, after all, begun to feel a certain tension — not to say excitement — and even a festive air, in anticipation of the moment of notification, which, even after they’ve experienced it dozens of times, is not and cannot be routine, just as there can be no routine execution.
With a stifled yell, Ora tore herself away from the damn sleeping bag and ran, fleeing from the tent. She stood outside with a horrified look in her wild eyes. Only after a few moments did she notice Avram sitting on the ground not far away, leaning against a tree, watching her.
They made coffee and drank silently, he wrapped in his sleeping bag, she in a thin coat. “You were shouting,” he said.
“I had a nightmare.”
He did not ask what it was about.
“What was I shouting?”
He got up and began to tell her about the stars. “This one’s Venus, those are the Big and Little Dipper, and see how the Big Dipper points to the North Star?”
She listened, slightly hurt, slightly amazed at his new enthusiasm and unshackled voice.
“See?” He pointed. “There’s Saturn. Sometimes, in summer, I can see it from my bed, with the rings. And that one’s Sirius, the brightest—”
As he talked and talked, Ora remembered a line she and Ada had loved, from S. Yizhar’s “Midnight Convoy”: “You cannot point out a star to someone without putting your other hand on his shoulder.” But as it turned out, you could.
They folded up their little encampment and set off. She was happy to put some distance between her and the place where the nightmare had come, and the hint of sunrise in the sky — the light ascended as if from a slowly unclasping pair of hands — revived her a little. We’ve been on the road for a whole day and night, she thought, and we’re still together. But her feet soon began to feel very heavy, and a dull pain coursed through her body.
She thought it was the exhaustion. She had barely slept for two days. Or perhaps it was sunstroke — she hadn’t worn a hat the day before or had enough to drink. She hoped it wasn’t an ill-timed bout of spring flu. But it didn’t feel like flu or sunstroke. It was a different, unfamiliar sort of ache, stubborn and persistent and consuming, and at times she even thought it was a flesh-eating bacteria.
They sat down to rest near a ruin. Part of the structure was still standing; the rest had crumbled into a heap of chiseled stones. Ora closed her eyes and tried to calm herself by breathing deeply and massaging her temples, chest, and stomach. The pain and distress grew worse, her heartbeat pounded through her body, and then it occurred to her that her pain was Ofer.
She felt him in her stomach, beneath her heart, a dark and restless spot of emotion. He moved and shifted and turned inside her, and she moaned in surprise, frightened by his violence and desperation. She thought back to the attack of claustrophobia he’d suffered when he was about seven, when the two of them got stuck between floors in the elevator in Ilan’s office building. When Ofer realized they were trapped, he started yelling at the top of his lungs for someone to help them, shouting that he had to get out, he didn’t want to die. She tried to calm him and gather him in her arms, but he slipped away and thrashed against the walls and door, hitting and screaming until his voice cracked, and eventually he attacked her too, beating and kicking. Ora always remembered how his face had changed in those moments, and she remembered the twinge of disappointment when she realized, not for the first time, how thin and fragile his cheerful, vivacious surface was, this child who was the brighter and clearer of her two — that was how she had always thought of him: the brighter and clearer of her two — and she remembered that Ilan said at the time, half joking, that at least they knew Ofer wouldn’t join the Armored Corps when he enlisted; he would never let himself be closed up inside a tank. But that prophecy was disproven, like so many others, and Ofer did join the Armored Corps, and he was closed up inside a tank, and there was never any problem with that — at least not for him. Ora was the one who felt suffocated almost to the point of passing out when she got inside a tank, at Ofer’s request, after the military display that his battalion put on for the parents at Nebi Musa. And now she felt him, she felt Ofer, just as she had felt him that day in the elevator, terrified and wild with fear, sensing that something was closing in on him, trapping him, and that he had no way out and no air to breathe. Ora jumped up and stood over Avram. “Come on, let’s go.” Avram couldn’t understand — they’d only just sat down — but he didn’t ask anything, and it’s a good thing he didn’t, because what could she have told him?