Two She-Bears (23 page)
Authors: Meir Shalev
“I don't see him,” said the inspector.
“Maybe he went into the cave,” I told him. “There's a cave there we call the Cave of the Prehistoric Man.”
The inspector briskly walked down to the wadi, entered the cave, looked around. “He's not here,” he announced. “But some goat fell in here. Lying dead on the rocks inside.”
Dovik went over too. “Poor thing,” he said. “Probably wanted to drink from the cistern. There are herds in the area. Good thing it happened recently, or it would really stink.”
Eitan suddenly surfaced from another point in the wadi. His heavy steps had grown lighter, as if his legs remembered an old forgotten dance. I could tell that something was happening at that very moment. In general, when you go for a hike with people, you quickly see who is accustomed to walking and who isn't. Those who aren't are always looking at the ground, checking where they plant their foot and walking too closely to others. And there are those like my first husband, who live in harmony with the trail and the rock and the earth and can walk at night as if they had eyes in their toes.
He approached the inspector and asked, “You'll also be sending a tracker?”
“So you do talk? Very nice.”
“You'll also be sending a tracker?” Eitan asked again.
“Why a tracker?”
“Because you also need someone who knows how to read the ground.”
“You're teaching us how to do our job?”
“Perish the thought,” said Eitan, and he turned to me and said, “I'm going back to the road.”
I was stunned, and Dovik told the police inspector that at this stage we had no more questions, and if he didn't either, we would like to leave because we had to arrange the funeral and the shiva.
The inspector ordered the constable to wait by the body for the ambulance crew, and I hurried after Eitan because I started to worry: where was he rushing and what would stop him and where, because his body was still the thick sturdy body of my second husband, but his walking had become that of my first husband. Twelve years from the time Neta died, twelve years that he didn't leave the nursery, and only walked along its paved paths with fifty kilos on his back, and now he was walking like then, on our hikes, with Neta on him.
The inspector went with the forensics people, who spoke with him in hushed tones, and then he joined us and expressed sorrow about the accident and even apologized for a few things he had said before.
“You realize,” he said, “that until the professionals say it's an accident and not murder, everyone is a suspect, including, and sometimes especially, family members. But here it's clear as day what happened.”
I told him that was okay and he explained how and when we would receive the body after the autopsy for burial.
When we got to the main road we found Eitan waiting by the car. We said goodbye to the inspector and headed home. After we drove off, Dovik asked Eitan what he was looking for and if he found something, and to our great surprise Eitan gave him an answer. Though all he said was “nothing,” any answer in his case was quite an accomplishment.
Dizzy with our success, I asked him again what he was looking for, and this was apparently a special day, because Eitan the chatterbox answered my question too, in the very same way.
I gasped. I felt that my name, Ruta, was poised to be spoken at the end of the answer: Nothing, Ruta. But he did not speak my name.
We understood not to expect further benevolence from him and moved on to other, more urgent topics. We phoned various relatives and people at the regional council, and when we got home there was already a voicemail message: the daughter-in-law of the deceased, in other words Dovik's and my mother, said not to wait on her for the funeral, she would try to get to the shiva.
“She won't come,” said Dovik.
“Has she no shame?” Dalia said. “Then again, since when is anyone in your family ever ashamed?”
Dovik remarked, “It's okay. We haven't yet reached the level of your mother at our wedding, so we have something to strive for,” and all distraught he went to his office at the nursery, to make more phone calls.
Dalia and I began talking about the refreshments we would serve the guests at the shiva, which she formally referred to as “collation for the consolers,” because collation is more respectable than mere refreshments, and the similarity of “collation” and “consolation” well suited her sense of symbolism.
I said that in my opinion some crackers and pretzels and cut-up vegetables and cookies and soft drinks would do just fine, and we'd also have hot water and paper cups for coffee and tea. But she said that a shiva was indeed a shiva and not, God forbid, a party, but many people were expected and this was also a family and social occasion. That's how she put it, “a family and social occasion,” and also, listen to this, Varda, here's a perfect Dalia-ism you can feel free to use: “Paper cups are fitting for a shiva, so we should remember that life is also a onetime thing.” And she also said it wouldn't hurt for Eitan to cook up something in his
poikehs.
“Where is he, anyway? Where did he disappear to again?” she wondered.
“Twelve years have passed,” I said. “Not only Eitan, but his
poikehs
too have probably forgotten how to cook.”
But Dalia didn't think that was funny. “Where is he, anyway?” she asked again.
I didn't answer. I sat down with Ecclesiastes to write something for the funeral, and the next day at dusk we buried Grandpa Ze'ev beside Grandma Ruth, woman of valor, wife, and mother, as the headstone said. Many people came. But later on a small group remained, closer friends and various distant cousins, old-timers from the Galilee, who spoke about Grandpa and told stories about the moshava, and Dovik, who was a little drunk, suddenly said, “Watch out for Ruta, she's been writing stories lately and she might be writing about you or steal your ideas.” And Eitan smiled suddenly and said, “Why don't you read us something, Ruta?” And I was astounded: He also speaks like he once did, with a style and tone reminiscent of my first husband.
I brought my notebook and read them the story I wrote for Neta about the prehistoric man, and they got all enthusiastic and said, “You have to publish this!” And then I also read them, with small changes, a story about some young man from the moshava whose father took him to a whorehouse, and Eitan spoke again, as if relishing an ability that had been restored to him, and said, “Ruta, you have to keep writing.”
THE PROOF
Ze'ev Tavori did not stalk his wife. He did not investigate or probe. And when the truth was revealed to him, it was revealed without his intention. He just happened by chance upon his wife and her lover, but chance need not affect the quality of proof. He went into the woods to inspect a dead oak tree and determine its suitability for firewood. After he completed his examination he heard a loud screeching of jaybirds, the screeching with which the jays alert one another to a gathering or celebration or riot. His curiosity aroused, he went deeper into the woods, and after walking two hundred meters or so, he heard human voices, a man and a woman.
He crept up silently and saw a couple making love on a blanket they had spread on the grass. The man lay on his back and the womanâfrom where he stood, he saw her from the backâon top, her thighs straddling his grinding hips, her loins fastened to his, her nape concealing his face. But Ze'ev recognized the blanket at once, for this was the embroidered blanket his mother had sent him in the wagon, and also the man's boots nearby, the boots from Istanbul, unique in the moshava. They stood beside the blanket waiting patiently like a pair of servants who see nothing but know everything.
Ze'ev was surprised not only by what he saw but by his reactionânamely, the lack thereof. Precisely because he was so bold and violent and strong, so quick to wave a fist and wield a club, he couldn't understand how he of all people was flooded by a frightening weakness. He stepped back a bit, stood for a moment behind a tree, and then began to tiptoe stealthily in a wide circle, to see if this was indeed his wife. The moment he saw the profile of her face and could no longer protect himself with uncertainty or doubt, Ruth leaned forward, buried her face in Nahum's neck, and embraced him, and when she sat up to take a breath he extended a gentle hand and fondled her breast with love, a love that had grown over time and created its own language and world.
The scene shook Ze'ev to the depths of his soul, but it was also beautiful and fascinating, because the two looked like a woman and child playing in a field, she, his tall wife, with her broad hips and shoulders, and her belly that was already a bit swollen, and he, Nahum Natan, his neighbor and friend, with his thin arms, smooth skin, a body without blemish. A body that had not endured a life of manual labor, had not grown rough or scarred, had neither dealt blows nor absorbed them.
At that moment something even more terrible happened. Ruth turned toward him, toward Ze'ev, and seemed to be staring at him. A few seconds went by until he realized that she had not noticed him and was only looking in his direction, but before those seconds had elapsed he was certain she saw him and knew that he saw her, and his body froze with dread. He of all people, who had performed hard work since childhood and had given and gotten beatings and knew how to kick a wild dog and seize the neck of a burglar and slap the cheek of someone who dared insult his pride, did not know what to do now. His bones and muscles, pleading for a command, could not comprehend the weakness of his spirit, whose strength was depleted like water from a cracked barrel. He closed his eyes, shuttered the awful sight inside them, hoping it would not migrate into his memory, from which it could never be uprooted.
He stood still for a moment, and then Ruth turned back to Nahum, and Ze'ev managed to get away from the scene. His legs carried him a fair distance, but before the trees concealed the pair he turned his head back and gave them another look. He was shocked to realize that the image unexpectedly gave rise to feelings of love and longing for his wife, whom he had never seen in this way, and Nahum's body, strangely enough, also aroused a tender stirring he had never felt before, and this angered him so much that he realized he had been mistaken: that he had suspected the two of them for a while, that his peaceful nights had been sleepless, that his dreams were not dreams, that for months he had been agonizing in his bed and seeing exactly these images, not in his heart or his mind or his churning gut or clenching fingers, but inside his eyeballs, whose frazzled nerves had plastered pictures on his retina that came not from without but from within. Pictures that returned again and again until they were projected outward and became real.
He picked up his pace. His heart was hard and pounding and his body so limp that he almost floated over the stones and almost plunged into the potholes. He remembered what his father had told him throughout his childhood and youth and told him on his wedding night, when he went out and saw him sitting in the yard, smoking his pipe and drinking schnapps: A man who lets others trespass on his territory, a man on whose mare other men ride without asking permission, and whose weapons they play with and touch, a man whose family members start to eat before he does, about whom people speak behind his back, whom strangers treat as if they were his friendsâa man like that must fight back and lay down rules and facts. All the more so a man whose wife sleeps with another man. He must take revenge, teach a lesson, inflict pain, punish. But not now, he said to himself. Not at this moment. First his strength would return and grow.
In the fall of 1930, the year when two farmers here committed suicide, Ze'ev went to the cabin that housed our first synagogue, to celebrate the holiday of Simhat Torah. He saw Nahum Natan dancing vigorously and entertaining everyone with traditional Sephardic melodies, stamping his feet in his Turkish boots, and could not contain his mood.
He escaped from the synagogue and when he got home headed directly to the toolshed in the yard, took out a large saw, and went into the house. Ruth left the women's section as she saw him exit. She rushed home from the synagogue, arriving a few seconds before him, and began fussing with something in the kitchen. She saw him enter and head for the bedroom and she was afraid. His demeanor and step, and the saw in his hand, prompted her to hurry after him.
Ze'ev pulled off the two mattresses that lay upon their bed, the double bed in which were joined the two beds, hers and his, from their parents' homes. He leaned his left knee on it, inserted the sharp blade of the saw into the crack between the halves, and with gritted teeth and several precise and powerful strokes, he severed the first connective plank. He quickly slid the saw along the crack to the next plank and sawed that one too.
“What are you doing? What are you doing, Ze'ev?”
“What should have been done already on that night.”
With a few more strokes he sawed the third board and separated the beds one from the other. He pushed one half against the wall and threw one mattress on it; the other half and other mattress he picked up in his arms and carried outside, shoving and overturning chairs, tripping and knocking things down from shelves and tables, tearing a picture from a wall and a curtain from its window.
He went into the yard, straight to the shed, set down the bed and its mattress, returned to the house, put his face close to hers, and whispered: “From now on I will sleep in the shed! Not with you.”
“Why, Ze'ev, why?”
“You know why, and so do I.”
And so it was. Every evening he went into the shed after dark and returned to the house before sunrise, so no one would know. But he knew, and Ruth knew, and also Nahum Natan, who sneaked and eavesdropped and peekedâhe knew. He knew and understood that he too had to act, before something terrible happened.
Ten days later, on the night of the first rain of that year, he peeked from the window of his house, waited till the oil lamp in Ze'ev's shed went out, crept into their yard, stepped between the puddles and the rivulets that the rain had already carved in the ground, and knocked on the shutter of Ruth's window. She opened the door and he took one step inside, stood in the entrance, and tried to persuade her to leave her husband and marry him and give birth to their child.
Ruth replied that she could not do that. “He'll murder us both,” she said.
“We won't stay here,” suggested Nahum, “we'll run away.”
“He will pursue and catch us and kill me and you,” said Ruth. “You don't know him and his family. They are not the kind of people we have here, certainly not people like you.”
“The seaport is not far,” said Nahum, “and there we'll get on a ship. We'll go to my father. Istanbul is a beautiful city.”
But Ruth again refused.
“Then what shall we do?” he asked. “In a few months the baby will be born.”
“I don't know. He will probably kill me, and you might have to run away with the baby girl.”
“Girl?” asked Nahum. His heart filled with tenderness and love. “How do you know it's a girl?”
“It's a girl,” said Ruth. “A girl who is better than her mother.”
He again tried to convince her, but his wish was unfulfilled. Finally he despaired and left. He stood a few minutes in the rain, trying to decide whether to knock again on her window and implore her till she understood and gave in, but then the light in the house went out, the rain grew stronger, and a storm drew near from the sea, with thunder and lightning.
He decided to return to his house, wondering what his father would say if he suddenly appeared in Istanbul with the pregnant Ruth. A son who slept with a married woman? Pregnant with a bastard child? Could he ask him for help?
As he passed the fence a large figure appeared before him. It emerged from the blackness and rain with a rifle in its hand.
“What were you doing in my house?” asked Ze'ev.
“I spoke with Ruth,” said Nahum, quivering.
“About what?”
“About us,” said Nahum. “About the two of us. I asked her to leave you and marry me.”
“No one leaves me,” said Ze'ev.
“It would be better for you too,” said Nahum. “You'll get another wife. A woman who will love you, and you won't have to sleep alone in the shed.”
“You're telling me who to sleep with?” snarled Ze'ev with suppressed rage. “You're telling me what's good for me?”
He pointed the rifle barrel at him. Nahum shouted “No!” and again shouted “No!” and then noticed the light of an oil lamp coming toward them from the adjacent yard and cried, “Help, he's going to kill me!”
Ze'ev punched him with his fist. He sank to the ground unconscious and Ze'ev leaned over and fired one bullet into his mouth. Ruth, inside the house, did not hear a thing. The thunder and lightning that shattered the darkness, the sheets of rain and tearful wailing and the gunshot, blended into a single noise. Although the murder took place beside her houseâand the victim was her lover and his killer her husbandâshe was the last to know about it.
Even at dawn, as the rumor traveled from house to house, and the terrified residents arose and congregated where the body had lain, and cows left in midmilking began to loudly mooâshe was asleep in her bed. She was always a good sleeper and her plight deepened her sleep. The running around and shouting of people who had been summoned to the scene did not wake her. She got up on her own, and when she woke she saw the gray wintry light outside, and because a hard rain was drumming on the roof she decided to do some cooking and wait till later to do the yard work.
Only after a few minutes did she sense the bustle near her house, the unusual traffic of people, the agitated whispers that broke into syllables and recombined into words, and when she went out, she also saw the British policeman arriving in his black automobile, and before she understood what she saw, a wave of nausea rose from her belly and gagged her. Before she could rush back inside she vomited on the ground and realized this was not just the nausea of a pregnant woman.
She rinsed her face and mouth and walked hesitantly to the crowd. She was surprised by the slowness of her steps, by the fear apparent in them. What am I afraid of? she wondered. What makes me so weak?
Her ears heard the people talking among themselves, the words “unfortunate” and “broken” and “betrayal” and “revenge.” They stared at her, and she heard the words “because of her,” and more whispering whose content was inaudible but whose overtones were obvious, and then everything became clear at once. She made up her mind to get away from there, to find someplace where she could scream with her hand clamped on her mouth. But then her husband appeared.
“Our neighbor has committed suicide,” he whispered, his eyes hard and inquisitive, his body near to hers.
She was silent.
“You don't want to know which neighbor?”
“I know,” she said.
“Very true,” said Ze'ev. “He shot himself. One bullet in the mouth.”
Ruth was silent.
“With my rifle,” added Ze'ev. “He stole it from me. Yitzhak Maslina saw what happened.”
Ruth began to retreat and Ze'ev advanced, his steps driving her backward.
“With my rifle,” he repeated quietly. “How could a man dare to touch the rifle of another man?”
His eyes continued to study her face, cold and alert as the eyes of a snake assessing the best time to strike. He continued: “How could a man dare to take what belongs to another man?” And whispered: “Cowardly dog. Perhaps you know why he did such a terrible thing?”
Her legs, stepping backward, failed her. She sensed the weight in her belly and the sour taste of vomit in her throat and knew that more disasters would befall her, even greater than the one that had just occurred.
“Get in the house,” said Ze'ev. “People are watching. Now they're still talking in whispers, but soon they'll be talking out loud.”
She withdrew into the house. Ze'ev escorted her with his gaze and then returned to the crowd. Some of them theorized new theories and some talked more talk and some were gathered in worried silence, recognizing that this was not over.
With the remains of her strength Ruth walked up the three front stairs, and at the moment she entered the house she began to wail, trying and failing to choke her screams, flinging herself on the bed, burying her face in the pillow, dearly wishing to fall asleep as deeply as she had last night, at the very moment her husband shot her lover.
Too many things became clear in such a short time: she got pregnant, the man who got her pregnant died, he did not kill himself but was murdered, and the murderer was her husband. She stood up, began walking aimlessly in the house, wondering, asking and answering, and predicting the worst. What would be her fate? And the fate of the fetus growing in her belly?
In the afternoon the British policeman got into his car and drove away. A few hours later Nahum Natan was buried at a ceremony attended by very few people, and several days later the head of the committee was summoned to the police station, where he was informed that the investigation had confirmed the fact of suicide. Ruth, confused and crazed with fear, realized she had to flee, to save her life and that of her unborn daughter. Several days later she packed a small bag, hid it, and waited for a window of opportunity, the hour of escape.