Israeli David Grossman tells Helen Brown how writing helps him cope with grief.
When David Grossman was a boy of about 7, he used to pass a series of trees on his way to school in Jerusalem. He believed that the souls of dead people were trapped inside them. "So I made it a habit to touch these trees," he says, "softly and secretly. I touched them all on the way to and from school every day."
Like millions of children the world over, he also avoided cracks in the pavement. The boy felt he had made a deal with the world - by keeping to the rules of tree-touching and crack-hopping, he was protecting himself from harm. And this kind of magical thinking followed him into adulthood.
Cradling a latte in London, the 56-year-old novelist says: "There are times when we all try to bargain with life. To take some control, when we know we have none. In Israel, where we live in this climate of eternal war and fear, you need to create for yourself some beliefs."
At the peak of the terrorist attacks in Jerusalem in the 90s, "every place was explodable", he adds. "But each one of us decided on a certain cafe we imagined was safe. There was no logic in it. One of my preferred places was blown up. I wasn't there but people were killed. And it shook me, as if some agreement with the world had been violated."
There is a pause. Then Grossman tells me of a woman who covered the number on her house so that, in the event of her soldier son being killed, the army representatives would not be able to find her house. By hiding herself from the news of his death, she believed she could prevent it.
The novelist exhales. News of the death of his own son knocked on his door at 2.40am one Sunday in August 2006. Tank commander Uri Grossman was 20. In a eulogy published around the world, Grossman wrote: "The person said through the intercom that he was from the army, and I went down to open the door, and I thought to myself - that's it, life's over." But he has found that, with the love and support of his wife and two surviving children, writing "allows me to create against the gravity of despair".
His latest novel, To the End of the Land (Random House, $42.99), tells the story of a woman whose son is undertaking one final, dangerous mission with the Israeli army before finishing his military service.
Like the real mother who covered her house number, the fictional Ora convinces herself that if she ensures bad news cannot find her, her son will be safe. And so she embarks on a hiking trip in Galilee with an old friend and ex-lover. As they walk, she talks about her boy, keeping him alive by the force of her love and memory and the forward motion of her body.
American author Paul Auster has compared Ora with some of the greatest female characters ever written by men: Flaubert's Emma, Tolstoy's Anna. Grossman winces a little at the comparison, but tells me that because his novel is about a family, he felt a mother should be at its heart.
"There is something motherly about writing. The way the writer attends to the character - picking up on all the needs, the nuances. And writing for me is very physical. When I write I walk all the time. I stand up. I walk for hours. Five to six hours a day. I can only sit to type. When I start to imagine a character, I have to start from her physicality, totally. I need to feel her from within: how she walks, talks, eats, makes love."
To read the novel is to ache for Ora's absent son, her love of him is so physical. "She touches," Grossman nods, "she smells. She even wants to lick him as a mother animal would lick its young. She devours him with her senses." Her preparations for grief are equally physical. At one point she buries her face in the earth. At another, she tries to mould her missing boy from a pile of his clothes. She continually haggles with fate: she will accept a missing limb, a kidney, a coma.
Much of the story's narrative tension lies in the brilliantly observed relationship between Ora, who is Jewish, and her Arab taxi driver, Sami. They are what Israelis call "The Situation" embodied.
"You will see," Grossman says, "how two people who are generous and gentle and moral are dressed in the clothes of The Situation in a way that frightens them ... They become representatives of their people and representatives tend to over-advocate, they advocate things that they don't believe in, things that they hate."
Grossman tells me he finds it as easy to write from an Arab perspective as from a woman's: "We are similar people. We are both very practical, ambitious peoples, but at the same time extremely emotional people. In our proverbs, even in our sense of humour - bitter, ironic. I think it's a source of hope. Emotions are 99 per cent of this conflict. Therefore the way to start solving it should be emotional. And this is the power of literature, to re-engage emotion and empathy."
Even though Grossman is a man who feels grief moving through him "like electricity", he can still "wake up in the morning so excited because I know there are hours ahead for me, writing".
