Two She-Bears (25 page)

“Funny you should mention drowning and saving, like on that class trip you took to the Sea of Galilee.”

My body tensed at once. I felt myself getting angry. “What are you saying, Haim, where are you going with this?”

“Not going anywhere. You think I'm going somewhere? I'm only asking. This is my son, I'm not allowed to ask?”

“What are you saying, I shouldn't have saved him then?”

“No, no,” he said, backing off, “we already thanked you for that, but parents talked, and other teachers too, the whole thing was strange from the beginning, the underwater swimming contest you organized, and the bet.”

“Yes,” I said, “very strange. That contest, and that bet, and Teacher Ruta in general, if you ask me, a strange woman, very strange. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have exams to correct, including your son's. Please convey my thanks for the pictures and tell him that the camera I promised him will remain his. And if he has any further questions about old pictures he finds, my grandfather will be glad to help him. I spoke with him.”

But Ofer's father gave no sign of leaving. He even leaned back and got comfortable in his chair.

“How do you hold up?” he asked. “In such a situation?”

“What situation?” I stiffened.

“The situation that Eitan piles up sacks and rocks all day at the nursery, and at night walks around on guard duty, so you have no husband, in effect. A beautiful girl like you, we're the same age and you look so good, and all these years without a man, or so it seems.”

“I think, Haim, you're getting into topics outside your field,” I said.

“Look,” he said, “this is a small place, and people see things and say things and hear rumors.”

“You can talk with whomever you like. This conversation with me is over.”

“If you feel lonely, that's no disgrace. Just give me a sign. I'm very near, over the fence, you know.”

“Listen,” I told him, “you know what happened in the past with my grandfather and your grandfather.”

“Of course,” he said, “who in the old families doesn't know?”

“My grandfather,” I said, “was once a violent man, cruel, primitive. He became a human being only after he brought me and Dovik here. We were his tikkun, his correction, atonement, metamorphosis, if your limited mind can understand what I'm talking about. But your grandfather was a louse and remained one till his dying day. A worthless coward. You and I both know the truth, how the boots of Nahum Natan ended up on the feet of your son, and that your wonderful dairy began with the cow that Yitzhak Maslina got from Ze'ev Tavori in return for his false testimony.”

“Why do you talk like that?” he said. “And why are you putting the blame on the men? Everyone knows what your grandmother did, and she deserved what she got. My grandfather told me that. Ruth Tavori earned what she got.”

“Your grandfather was and remains a worm,” I said, “and I now see that his traits are hereditary.”

Silence. Sometimes I can be scary.

“And watch out,” I added, “because traits are also handed down in our family from generation to generation, and my grandfather's Mauser is still in the house, and he's still here too, and I can call him. One shout and he'll come.”

He was dumbfounded. “You're threatening me?”

“I'm saying that just as you resemble your grandfather, I can resemble mine. And apropos genetics,” I went on, “I don't understand how a good-for-nothing like you could produce such a successful boy as Ofer. And I say this not merely as your neighbor but as his teacher. How do you explain it, Haim? Maybe in your family too women get pregnant by some neighbor? You know how it is here. It's a small place, and people see things and say things and hear rumors.”

He stood up, his brow darkly furrowed, his lower lip protruding. He looked at me and said, “You'll be hearing from me,” and left.

For a moment it seemed that his grandfather had come back to life. Hunched and gaunt, walking like a mongoose. You ever drive on a back road and suddenly see a mongoose? Slinking, bent over, like it has no legs, like a snake, crossing the road and disappearing into the bushes? That's the way he walked.

Ofer, Ofer, Ofer, Ofer. The time has come to talk about Ofer. I've already disbursed a few tidbits of information, dropped a few hints, come close, gotten cold feet and retreated, but that's it, there's no choice.

Ofer. The student I waited for, till he would grow up and be my lover after my first husband died and the second one didn't want me. He wasn't as good-looking or funny as Eitan or as masculine, but he did resemble him a bit, in some ways a lot, and worst of all, he resembled Neta too. Could it be? Anything can be. Ofer was only a few years older than Neta, but Eitan also used to visit here before he and I fell in love and got married. Do I know what he did and with whom during those years? Does anyone ever know everything about their partner? About their own children? About their father and mother? Miri Maslina was already here in those years, right on the other side of the fence, and who knows, Varda, maybe she also had her eye on Eitan at Dovik and Dalia's wedding?

You can stop here, Ruta. It's not connected to my research, and I'm not interested in knowing everything about you.

Don't worry. I won't make you an accomplice to a crime, because it wasn't a crime. I was a teacher and he was a student and I'm not stupid. I coveted him, I admit it. The tenth commandment is a law that no one can obey, including me, but my covetous musings were merely in principle, not in practice. And enough already, Varda, enough with that critical, judgmental look of yours. I was and remained a law-abiding teacher. I coveted, I restrained myself, and I waited. For time to pass, for him to finish high school and no longer be my student. And in the meantime I developed and printed pictures in my head: how one day I would see him in the dappled light of our street, which is the prettiest street in the moshava, with the most character, with the biggest trees and memories, and I would come out of the gate and take him like I already told you, like a she-bear coming out of the woods and snatching a boy. I would've preferred to take him the way Alice took Eitan from her daughter's wedding, but the she-bear fit me better.

Whatever. You go around this moshava interviewing people, so you realize that people tell plenty of stories about me and my family, and rightly so. But one thing I ask of you, Varda, that regardless of what they tell you, you should know that from the first day I was with Eitan, I was only his. I was the woman of one man, and had it not been for the disaster I would have stayed only his. But this Eitan went away, disappeared, and my second husband appeared, who didn't speak to me or sleep with me or make love with me. He sentenced me to the asceticism he had imposed on himself. He wasn't the man I dreamed of; he wasn't the one I married. I didn't owe him anything.

In short, Varda, after a few years in that situation I decided I deserved to love and be loved a little. Not the “be mine” I once had, but a little skin against skin and lips on lips and eyes locking and smiles exchanged, and becoming one flesh. And also, how to put this politely, I really needed it. I've heard there are women who can live a long time without it, but I'm a bit of a man, as you already know, and I felt it in my whole body, especially the point where pain and pleasure coincide. I have no doubt that my grandmother, whose blood flows in my veins and for whom I am named, felt exactly the same thing. She too was with another man only after her husband didn't sleep with her. But with her it was different. With her it was that way from the beginning, and she waited much less time than I waited, and she was a young and inexperienced girl who wasn't careful, in every sense of the word, and you have no idea what a mess it turned into. A classic episode of gender, nowhere in the settlements of the Baron was there such a gendered episode. I've written about it, but I won't tell you about it. Certainly not at this stage. At this stage you'll hear what I want to tell, and maybe later on I'll tell you what you want to hear.

So that was that. One day I decided it would happen, that I was permitted. Because whom was I betraying, really? If it was Eitan my first husband, he was no longer with us. And if it was my second husband Eitan, then the fact that he had sentenced himself to life imprisonment at hard labor and put his penis into retirement, excuse me, didn't mean I also had to take his vows of celibacy.

Whatever. Even after Ofer graduated I didn't initiate anything. I waited patiently. One day he would appear, maybe after he got out of the army or maybe while still in uniform, and walk in the shady light of our street until we were facing each other. I would charmingly ask, Ofer, where've you been? And he would answer with a smile, Hi, Teacher Ruta, here I am, I've come. And that's how it happened in the end, except for one detail, important though not really, that he did national service instead of the army.

I actually liked that, but in the moshava people were unanimously critical. I already told you that our moshava is proud of being known for providing industrial quantities of boys for all sorts of elite combat units, the air force pilots' course and various commandos, and every year the head of the regional council issues an announcement, and a photo of him with the new recruits appears in the newspaper, with some of their faces blurred for security reasons. It's like we already have boys in the tenth grade that nobody can recognize because their faces are full of pixels instead of acne.

Whatever. It was obvious to me that Ofer wouldn't become one of those fighters. I thought he might be a photographer in the air force or in the army spokesman's office, but he didn't do that either. Ofer decided he wanted to do national service instead of the army, the option usually offered to religious women. So get this: One of those army officers who go around to the schools to scout new blood for their units gave a lecture one day in my classroom. He talked on and on, in that army Hebrew that mangles proper pronunciation, and Ofer suddenly raised his hand and declared that working in a home for children in distress was much more important than serving in his commando unit.

Pandemonium. Several students started yelling at him, and the officer calmed them down, and then said to Ofer, “You're wrong.” And Ofer replied, “It's not enough to say ‘You're wrong.' Explain to me why, in your humble opinion, I'm wrong.”

Not only the officer but also most of the students didn't catch the sarcasm, but I cracked up over that hysterical “in your humble opinion” line, and like with Eitan's “fortyward” thing I even chided myself: How come I hadn't thought of it first? In short, it became an issue, and one day, when his friends who were competing for acceptance to combat units sneered at him that army was army and national service was draft dodging—that's what they said: “For us you're like a draft dodger”—he just smiled at them and said, “It's not nice to talk that way to a religious girl.”

I heard that and realized that his head was even more different than what I'd thought till then. I like heads that are different. I too have a different head; the first Eitan had a different head; my grandfather, for good and bad, especially bad, had a different head. Dovik and Dalia, by contrast, do not have a different head. Most people don't have a different head. They all have the same head, and they also lend it to one another when necessary.

And what finally happened?

What happened was that it happened. I'm smiling, right? That's because of that scene, which every time I think of it makes the corners of my mouth rise. I had just come back from visiting Neta in the cemetery, and I walked home and got to our street, and on the other side of the nursery fence I saw my second husband carrying his sacks and rocks from here to there and from there to here and I felt I'd had enough. I simply couldn't watch him that way anymore, couldn't go in there and tell him again about visiting the grave of our son and ask him when he would pardon himself already and when he would come too, and couldn't hear him be silent the way he was silent on previous occasions.

My eyes filled with tears. I feel it's happening to me now too. Look—a second ago I felt I was smiling and now I feel my eyes are damp. It's nice, the way the body reports to its owner on its condition: I'm cold, I'm hot, I'm hungry, I'm excited, I'm bored, I'm filled with passion, I'm sad, I'm tired. But I ordered myself to continue. Like a director in a play. I said to myself: Ruta passes the gate and keeps walking a bit farther. And like an obedient actress I kept going a bit farther, and then, by Haim and Miri's house, I saw Ofer coming toward me, walking on the sun-dappled sidewalk, his long hair in a ponytail, carrying a plump Labrador puppy that augured good things.

We began to smile at each other even at a distance. And when I smiled I felt one of the tears flow from my left eye and trickle to the side, into a wrinkle produced by the smile. In retrospect I think that's how I realized I was smiling, by the direction of the tears. Whatever. There's something wonderful in people's smiles, and two of those smiles are especially wonderful. One is a baby's first smile at a few weeks old, such a small investment—a tiny twist of the lips—which ropes its parents into permanent servitude: I love my son, my daughter, I will never be free. And the second is the smile of a man and woman walking toward each other as they had seen in her hope and his dream, in a street they know so well, where their steps are the only thing that's new. That's nice—“had seen in her hope and his dream,” no?—I don't remember if that's a line I read somewhere or if I just made it up. Whatever. That's how the smiling ones walk. Toward each other, and at first each smiler feels only his own smile and then the smile of the other one too, and then they stop.

“Ofer, you disappeared on me. What's going on with you? What's with the puppy?”

“Hello, Teacher Ruta. Great to see you.”

I liked that he called me Teacher Ruta; I told him so and he said, “Because that's who you are,” and we chatted a bit. He told me about the children he took care of at a facility in Haifa and said, “You should know, Teacher Ruta, even though they are difficult children with problems and you teach nerds like me, a lot of what I do with them I learned from you.”

I asked what exactly he did with them. He told me a little. Mainly how he used animals. They had an old donkey there who had fallen on hard times and the kids took care of him, and they had a partly trained crow and a few hedgehogs and turtles, and “Now I'll bring them this puppy,” he said, and added: “A Labrador puppy brings out the best in people.”

It was nice talking with him. He was more serious and interesting than all the combat soldiers who came out of my class and arrived at school during recess on Fridays to make an impression with their uniforms and insignias and weapons and berets. We talked, and after a few minutes I suggested he come into my house instead of continuing to talk on the street. We sat here in the kitchen where you and I are sitting. I squeezed some lemons and made us fresh lemonade with ice, and I don't remember anymore who touched whom first, but five minutes after we went inside we were kissing; it's always interesting, how a first kiss happens, what led up to it, and immediately after that I was lying on my bed in a dress hiked up to my chest and that was it. Eitan moved his sacks and rocks in the nursery, Dovik did his business in the office, Dalia did her work at the regional council, Neta lay in his grave at the cemetery, Grandpa Ze'ev, the only man I was afraid of, was gathering seeds in his wadi in the Carmel range, I was under Ofer, and Ofer was inside me with his hand on my mouth so no one could hear me crying. But the little puppy wailed freely and, as it turned out, also left a puddle.

That's how it started. I didn't take him to a love nest in Tel Aviv, because I don't have such an apartment, and I didn't pick out and buy him clothes, because I prefer that everyone chooses what they like. And I didn't play him any music or make and serve him pastries and sweets, and I didn't prevent him from leaving or lock him in my home or in my flesh and also didn't throw him out after a month and a half, because I didn't have a ship's captain who was returning. It was he who parted from me in the end. And only when that happened was I thinking that I'd never said to him “I love you,” nor he to me. It's like someone once told me, the parents of premature babies don't give them names until they're sure they are out of danger, that they'll live, so you also don't call love by its name until it breathes of its own accord.

What's that look you're giving me, Varda? You're disappointed we split up? You're judgmental that I started up with him? I'm sorry. But this isn't Tel Aviv, that glorious anonymous Gomorrah, full of people who don't know and don't want to know one another. This is an old moshava and an established family and well-known mouths and eyes and names and pointing fingers. And besides, I don't have Alice's class. What can you do. Class like hers is something you drink with mother's milk, and in my family, we drink blood and poison, wormwood and hemlock. She had what it took, which is why I was glad every time she came to visit here. On each of those visits I enjoyed looking at her: always in beautiful, subdued clothes, without makeup, one small piece of jewelry at most, no splashy colors or extraneous accessories. At first she would come once a month to visit Dalia and Dovik, then once a week to visit Dafna and Dorit, who were identical twins until their grandma showed up, and then you could see that one of them looked like her and the other not at all.

She always smiled at me affectionately and struck up a conversation, and was of course invited to Eitan's and my wedding. Dalia said, “I hope that from this wedding she won't take him home.” But Alice behaved perfectly and also brought us a wonderful gift: a large mosquito netting attached to a carved hardwood frame from India, which her old friend had brought her from some Far Eastern port. He was also at our wedding, by the way, with his white hair and red nose but without the bell from his oil tanker. He didn't know anybody here but smiled at everyone and walked around and wobbled from an excess of alcohol and the waves that had accumulated in his body.