Two She-Bears (15 page)
Authors: Meir Shalev
He showed us that the plants that scatter their children to the winds equip the seeds with all sorts of tufts and wings to help them fly with the wind, and with thorns and hooks to stick to the fur of animals that would carry them away, and produce fruit that would be eaten to spread the seeds someplace else. But those who want the children at home, close to them, plant them nearby. Actually plant them, he explained and demonstrated: the cyclamen, for example, bends its stalk to the ground and drops its seeds right beside it. The lupine has a kind of spring mechanism in its pod, so when it dries it bursts open and casts the seeds a meter or two away. And the poppy holds its little seeds inside a fruit that resembles a saltshaker, with holes in it, and when the wind blows they drop to the ground like salt into a salad. But the ragwort lets its seeds fly off without knowing where, far, far away.
The cyclamen says to herselfâthat's what he said, “says to herself”âIf I've succeeded in sprouting here, growing, producing a bulb, leaves, flowers, and seeds, it's a sign that this is a good place, and my children should grow up here. But the ragworts have their logic: It's fine here, kids, totally fine, but there, over the hill, maybe there's a much better place. And they send their children there: Enough clinging to Daddy and Mommy. Go, try your fortune. Know new places and new people, struggle, adapt, and, besides, how many offspring and generations can one plot of land support, even if it's very good land?
A jaybird screeched from the tree. Grandpa Ze'ev got up and threw a stone into the foliage, and the jay flew off and disappeared. He couldn't stand jaybirds. I believe I told you that he used to shoot them with his old Mauser. At first I didn't understand what he had against them. Maybe their screeching during siesta time between two and four, maybe their irresponsibility and recklessness, the stealing and mimicry and mischief, or maybe what annoyed him was the arrogant little crest they have on their heads. The crest, and that blue patch in the middle of the wingâwhat's that all about?
That idiot Haim Maslina, the neighbors' son who was then a classmate of mine, told me something he heard from his grandfather, the equally idiotic Yitzhak Maslina: “When they were young, your grandpa shot all the jaybirds in the moshava and killed them. This was known to all their friends and relatives in the hills and other villages, and this is why until today there are no jaybirds in our moshava.” And he added, “Maybe they'll come back to us after your grandpa is dead.”
The truth is that Grandpa Ze'ev was a pretty good shot. When Eitan came to us he invited him to a shooting contest and was fairly surprised when Eitan shot better than he did. Not only with the M16 he had brought from the armyâthat he could acceptâbut also with his old Mauser, which had a recoil that knocked the shooter backward and is made in Germany and weighs what a rifle should weigh, “not like your plastic toy from America.”
But Eitan said that Grandpa was also a real sharpshooter. His firing speed needed a little work, he pointed out, but every bullet hit the bull's-eye, because in his day you would be given two bullets for practice and seven for battle and ten to establish the State, and you didn't pull the trigger without being a hundred percent sure of hitting the target.
When Eitan came to us Grandpa Ze'ev already had colorful eye patches with flowers I embroidered for him, and he liked them very much. But before that he had only two black, frightening patches: one on his eye and the other in a bathroom drawer.
“Watch out,” Dovik told all the kids who sized him up when he entered a new grade at school. “Watch out! My grandfather is a pirate!”
Grandpa Ze'ev's black eye patches filled Dovik with pride. Once he even wore one of them and went outside, but Yitzhak Maslina saw him and yelled at him, “For shame! This is not a game! I'll tell your grandfather and he'll let you have it!”
Dovik ran home, where Grandpa surprised him three times overâhe was in the house and saw him, he didn't let him have it, and he also burst out laughing. “I'll give it to you for Purim, you'll put it on, and everyone will know that you dressed up as your grandpa.”
“What's under it?” asked Dovik.
“Nothing,” said Grandpa.
“Just a hole?”
“No. No hole. There's an eye, but it's dead. I can show you.”
Dovik was frightened. No, he didn't want to see it. But after a few days of restlessness he asked, “Show us, but not just me, also Ruta.”
I was four at the time, and the blob that had been Grandpa Ze'ev's eye became one of the first images engraved in my memory. He slid the patch to his forehead, and we saw sort of a tiny shriveled egg, chilling, grayish white, lacking the expression that an iris and a pupil give a seeing eye. I didn't phrase it like this at the time, but I felt it: here was the first touch of death in a body that was still alive and warm.
“What is that, Grandpa?” I asked fearfully.
“I already told you, this was once my eye.”
“Why is it like that?”
“It got hit and it died.”
“How?”
“By what?”
“By the branch of a tree. I was galloping on a horse in the woods, and a branch hit me in the eye.”
“Were you chasing robbers?”
“No.”
“Then who were you chasing?”
“Nobody. I was just galloping. That's all.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Not so much. The branch only scratched my eye, and I didn't go to the doctor right away. Grandma Ruth put a bandage on it, and the neighbor put on some cow sulfa. By the time I got to a real doctor, the eye couldn't see a thing.”
And he smiled. “Now you two put patches on one eye and try pouring water from a kettle into a glass.”
We did as he said and couldn't do it. The water spilled on the table.
“You see?” he said. “I had to learn to do many things with one eye. To make tea, lace my shoes, but shooting a rifle was no problem.”
A number of years later, approaching my bat mitzvah, I sewed and embroidered him a presentâa new patch, light blue, with tiny yellow flowers. “I want you to wear it at my party,” I said, “and not this old black one.”
“Sure,” he said, and because he was a man of his word he came wearing it, arousing new amazement among some guests and old fear among others. From then on he wore it on ordinary days, and I embroidered more patches for him, with a flower he loved on each of them: blue thistle, pink flax, chrysanthemum, poppy, cyclamen. When he died, by the way, we put them all in his coffin. I don't believe in the afterlife, but Dovik said, “He's starting a new life there now, so he should go there showing his good side. Not the murderer with the black eye patch but the grandpa who loved flowers and whose grandchildren loved him.”
A WOMAN AND A RIFLE AND A TREE AND A COW
(Draft)
At first Ze'ev saw only the treetop poking above the distant mound of earth. The tip of a small tree, which had not been there yesterday and should not be there now.
He clutched his stick and waited, and the tree, to his amazement, moved. It moved, drew closer, emerged from the hillside, and revealed itself. It was sitting in a wagon, the wagon was drawn by an ox, and a cow walked behind, tied to the wagon by a rope.
On the driver's seat was the figure of a man, and in the wagon, in the shade of the tree, sat another figure. Ze'ev knew who these two were even though they were far away and their faces not yet visible. Under the driver's seat, he knew, a rifle awaited him too, cold and silent and ready to strike.
He smiled to himself. A month ago he had informed his parents that he'd found a new place and purchased a plot of land in a new moshava, and now they were sending him everything a man needed to get started.
The wagon drew closer. The figures grew sharper and now had names: the wagon driver became his big brother Dov, and the tree became the young mulberry from his parents' yard, and the woman became Ruth Blum, the neighbor's daughter he had desired from the time he was a youth and she just a girl; he wanted her and had written his parents to ask her and ask her parents.
The wagon came nearer and arrived. His brother halted the magnificent ox with a shout. Ruth jumped out and came and stood before him and said:
“Do you remember me, Ze'ev?”
That is actually what she said: “Do you remember me, Ze'ev?” Which meant, in the language of those days: I have not forgotten you, Ze'ev, I have never stopped thinking about you from the day you left.
He said, “Yes, Ruth, I remember you. The youngest daughter of the Blum family.” Which meant: I love you.
And she said, “If so, I am happy.” Because that's how one would say: And I you.
And he said, “You grew up.” As if to say: Before you filled only my memory and my dreams and now you also fill my eyes and my heart.
And she asked, “And you're happy I grew up, Ze'ev?” That's what she actually said: “And you're happy I grew up, Ze'ev?” Which meant: All this is yours.
He answered her: “Yes, I am very happy you grew up.” And she heard and understood every word: I lust for you, big and beautiful girl that you are. I want to touch you, touch you and everything that grew and became beautiful in you.
“And you're happy that I agreed and came, Ze'ev?”
And he was slightly abashed and his fingers tightened around his stick, and his mouth uttered, “Yes, I am happy that you agreed and came.”
And Ruth translated to herself: Don't go, stay with me, please.
His big brother Dov, who all the while had kept a respectful distance, checking the axles and reins and pouring water into a pail, first for the ox and then the cow, stood up straight and looked at them and understood what they were saying by the tilt of their necks and their hand motions and angles of their bodies, and finally shouted, “Enough, Ze'ev, let her be for now. Look, I also brought you the mulberry tree from home, and the cow, and most important”âand from under the driver's seat he pulled out and lifted up something elongated, wrapped in a flowered blanket and tied at both endsâ“also the rifle you were promised! Everything a man needs to get started!”
He approached them, the bundled rifle in his hand, and continued, “And Father also put seeds and a harness in the wagon for you, and a
taburetka
stool to sit on while milking, and a pickax and two hoes, and an extra blade for the plow, and the blanket on the rifle is from Mother, a blanket with flowers she embroidered. I told them that they were giving you too much, more than what's left for me and Arieh, but that's what he decided. Come and look, it's all in the wagon.”
Ze'ev drew close. The ox extended his mighty neck toward him and stuck out his tongue to lick him. Ze'ev stroked his nose affectionately and rubbed his forehead with his knuckles and looked in the wagon and saw the tools and sacks and also a black basalt stone, about forty centimeters long. From the basalt of the Lower Galilee, lichen stains on its upper side, bits of earth and spiderweb on the other, smoother side.
He held it and lifted it and hugged it. Its weightâit was heavyâfelt good in his strong arms. Its heatâthe heat of the lava that spawned it and the heat of the sun it had absorbed in its lifeâflooded his chest and his eyes.
“Father said you should put this stone into the wall of the house that Ruth and you will build,” said Dov. “Place it about a meter and a half high, and do not cover it with plaster. One black side of it should face the street and another black side face into the house. That way you will remember who you are and where you came from, and the neighbors will know: here lives someone who comes from the Galilee, and no one messes with him.”
He untied the blanket, his mother's embroidered flowers fluttered, and the rifle was revealed.
“This is your rifle, Dov,” said Ze'ev with great surprise.
“I know it's my rifle, but Father decided to give it to you.”
Dov had taken his German Mauser from a retreating Turkish soldier at the end of the First World War. He was just a youth, and his father had ordered him to plow a portion of the field. He rose early in the morning, took provisions, hitched the wagon to a mule and loaded the plow on it, and went. When he neared the field he saw a figure lying in the shade of a big jujube tree. He carefully came closer and saw a Turkish soldier sleeping with a gun in his hands.
He was scared for a moment but not surprised. The British had already advanced northward, and retreating Turkish soldiers, alone or in small groups, were to be seen here and there, hungry, worn out, frightened, thirsty, some of them sick and wounded.
The soldier awoke and sat up. Dov saw the trembling hands, the cracked lips, the weary, imploring eyes, but his own eyes were fixed, with desire and trepidation, upon the rifle. He stopped the mule at a safe distance, smiled at the soldier, made a calming gesture with his hand, and then took from his pouch a quarter of a loaf of bread and waved it in his direction.
The sight of the bread had an immediate, wondrous effect on the man: he dropped the rifle and began crawling toward Dov on all fours, like a tired but determined animal. Dov, atop the wagon, tore off a piece of bread and tossed it to him. The soldier seized it and chewed and swallowed in haste, with muffled grunts of joy, and Dov jumped from the wagon and ran to the tree and took the rifle and pointed it at him.
The soldier did not panic. He extended a pleading hand, and Dov hoisted the rifle on his shoulder and returned to the wagon and tore off and threw another piece of bread and also took from his pouch a tin of olives, came close and began tossing him one olive after another.
The soldier could not summon the strength to catch them in flight. He crawled on all fours, gathered the olives from the ground, and put them in his mouth with the dirt and stubble of the field that stuck to them. His eyes sparkled with happiness and gratitude. Dov approached him cautiously, put his water jug on the ground and took a few steps back, gesturing to the soldier to take it.
When the soldier had drunk all the water, he ordered him to strip off his ammunition belt and throw it on the ground and then shouted at him in Arabic to go away, and to drive the point home made a slaughtering gesture across his neck with a finger and pointed in the direction he should go.
The soldier, somewhat revived and encouraged, stood up straight. Dov was frightened. Never had he seen so tall or broad a man. Again he pointed the rifle at him, but the giant clasped his hands to his heart in a gesture of thanks intelligible to any human being and common to all languages and bowed down. His damaged lips smiled. His staggering legs carried him, step by step, away from Dov and the tree. He did not even try to take back his weapon. He seemed glad to be rid of itâof what it could do, of the temptation loaded within it, of its weight.
Dov waited until the soldier became a dot in the distance, then hung the rifle and ammunition belt on branches of the tree, so that someone possibly watching from afar could not see them. All day he plowed, and at nightfall he hid the rifle in the wagon, returned home, and told his father what had happened.
“You did well,” his father praised him, adding that he did not want the village council to know about the rifle lest they take away the rifle that had been given to him for guard duty.
They removed a few boards from the floor of the shed in the yard, dug a pit in the earth, wrapped the rifle in rags soaked in engine oil, buried it, and replaced the floor above its grave. At the first opportunity the father obtained a tin box, and they put the rifle in that and again buried it in the ground, and when Ze'ev went to live in a different place, Dov brought him the rifle in the wagon.
“This rifle is part of our history,” Ze'ev told his sons and later his grandson and granddaughter.
The eyes of the children, generation by generation, sparkled, and Ruth, first a mother and then a grandmother, said nothing. Only once did she remark: “It is not part of our history; it determines and writes it. You are in its hands, not it in yours.”