by Meir Shalev
FOUR
Varda: Forgive me for interrupting, but I ask you to return to the topic if you can, and if possible to conduct the conversation in a more focused manner.
Ruta: Focused? It seems you’ve really come to the wrong person. You can focus your questions all you like, but I will answer the way I want to answer. That’s how it is. The history of settling the Land of Israel, with all due respect, is not only committees and disputes and values and the status of women and the attitude toward Arabs and Ben-Gurion. First and foremost, it’s about stories—the loves and hates and the births and deaths and the acts of revenge—and about families, father and mother and brother and sister and bridegroom and bride and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and not in a golden chain but in a wagon made of wood, with a rifle and a cow and a tree and a woman; that’s what made history everywhere and that’s what made it here.
Varda: You seem to leave me no choice.
Ruta: You came to me, not I to you.
Varda: If I remember right, you said I could record you.
Ruta: Free, on the house. Record away, and I’m sorry about my tone of voice, and I promise to try and stick more to the topic. You know what? I’ll even start with personal details, to get into a practical mood. ID card, please. Here. First name, family name, identification number, you see? I introduced myself as Ruta, but my name on my ID card says “Ruth.” Like my grandmother. Ruta is the name that everyone, including myself, calls me. It’s a good name, user-friendly, and rhymes easily: Ruta-smartuta, Ruta-mabsuta, Ruta-shtuta, and once at recess in school I even heard two twelfth graders referring to me as “Ruta-tuta.” They thought I didn’t hear them, but I stopped, at the top of the stairs near the main office, and I said to them, “I gather, children, that I am the topic of conversation, so please explain to me what ‘Ruta-tuta’ means.” Did you take note of my tone, Varda? That was an imitation of myself as a teacher.
So, they looked at each other, stone-cold silence in the air, red-hot cheeks on these two clowns, and they didn’t know what to answer.
“Nu, children, I’m waiting, because I really don’t understand what ‘Ruta-tuta’ means, and I don’t recall any such expression in the Bible.”
Luckily for them, the bell rang, and they ran off to class, and in the afternoon, at home, I asked Dovik—my older brother Dovik, in case you forgot…
Varda: I didn’t forget. I’m writing down all the names.
Ruta: So Dovik explained to me what tuta means, and as you may or may not know, it’s a highly vulgar word, and he also said there was no reason to get upset, because from these boys it’s a kind of compliment.
“What do you want, sister,” he said, “they’re high school kids exploding with hormones and they have a teacher like you, a total hottie, and at this age everything reminds them of one thing only.”
That was an imitation of Dovik. It’s easy to imitate Dovik because he deepens his voice on purpose and puts the emphases and pauses in the wrong places in the sentences.
“So at this age,” he went on, “everything triggers only one thought for them, like in the joke about the psychiatrist who shows pictures to his patient and asks what they remind him of.”
He was right. That’s what they’re preoccupied with, and “Ruta” and “tuta” are actually a nice rhyme, and they’re basically nice boys, and I’m their teacher, and in truth I am not bad looking. Guilty as charged. Not a hottie, but as I once heard them saying, “She’s a babe.” It’s funny. Their voices are still changing, but sometimes they look at me with the eyes of grown men in the street. Not quite the look the livestock trader gives a cow but still that up-and-down look, lingering where men linger: eyes, lips, then right and left from breast to breast, then downward, a penetrating X-ray of the loins, width of the pelvis, counting the eggs, measuring the legs, and returning to the eyes, but that’s just to be polite, because, between you and me, eyes say nothing. Neither plus nor minus. The credit they get as windows or mirrors of the soul—that’s total nonsense. Anyway, they’re all the same. It makes no difference if it’s someone in the street, a student, a student’s father, a doctor at the clinic, or a supervisor from the Ministry of Education.
Apropos of your field of research—women also give the eye, even if they’re a Ph.D. at a university. I saw you do it too when you walked in, with that gendered look I know so well, woman to woman, checking out who’s stronger. There’s a Hebrew expression, “A woman carries her weapons upon her”—it comes from the Talmud—in other words, she is always armed: tits at the ready, hips on autopilot, gun belt, ammo, helmet, trigger cocked. That’s us: wedded to our weapons twenty-four hours a day, like punishment in basic training that will never end. Eyes, voice, looks, body. Is that gendered enough for you, what I’m saying here?
Absolutely gendered.
Absolutely gendered but not enough history of the Yishuv? I see that you’re laughing. Again I went off track and lost the focus?
A little.
Soon, Varda. Not to worry, everything will work out. You won’t leave the Tavori family empty-handed.
FIVE
Is “Ruta” an affectionate nickname? Not really and, in any case, affection is not a top commodity in this moshava. I told you my official name is Ruth, after my grandmother, and the truth is that when I was born she was still alive, and it was she who asked that I be named for her. No one objected. Everyone knew how much she had wanted a daughter and, later, a granddaughter, and those who argued that a baby should not be named after a living person also knew that she wouldn’t live to a ripe old age, and she apparently knew that too.
To make a long story short, for a few years there were a grandmother and granddaughter in the Tavori family with the same name. She was called Ruth Tavori in proper Hebrew: “Rut Tavori,” with a dignified pause in between, like at a state ceremony. But if you say the name without a proper pause, it comes out sounding “Ruta Vori.” Try it, Varda, say it out loud. You see? Just like Ruth the Moabite. You pronounce it formally, she’s the great-grandmother of King David—but “Rutamoaviah” is the one who spent the night with Boaz on the threshing floor.
Whatever. Today, everyone—the students, the other teachers, women friends—calls me Ruta. I have, incidentally, no real friends, not a one, but I have no better word to describe what I do have. And every time I go to our cemetery in the moshava, which is once or twice a week, I also visit the grave of my grandmother and see my official name carved on the stone: HERE LIES RUTH TAVORI. And under that is written A WOMAN OF VALOR, A MOTHER TO HER SONS, A WIFE TO HER HUSBAND. It’s like the comments written in a school report card along with the grades, no? As a wife to her husband, my grandmother got a D, but in everything else B or B plus.
Do you remember her well?
Of course I remember her well. She was the kind of woman who manufactures memories easily, including things that didn’t happen, if you ask me. Back then, Dovik and I didn’t yet know the whole truth about her and Grandpa, but we heard things here and there, and we knew that people both took pity on her and avoided her company—a deadly combination, in my opinion—and even as children we understood that she was a person who suffered a blow many years earlier and never got over it.
What did you mean when you said “the whole truth about her and Grandpa”?
Patience, Varda, I’m in the middle of something. We knew she was what you’d call a bit strange. More than once I heard people talking about her, saying she would cry for no reason. That, by the way, is an expression I find unacceptable. There is no such thing as crying for no reason. All crying has a reason, but people don’t always know or understand, and even if they do understand, they don’t always say so. Whatever. Sometimes she really did cry, so what? Who doesn’t cry sometimes? And who really understands the reason? But what really drew attention to her was that she always seemed to be searching for something. Even when she opened the door of a kitchen cupboard, it looked like she was hoping to discover something more than a pot or a jar of ri
ce.
It mostly happened when there was digging in the ground. I was a little girl, but I remember it very well. Every time they dug a foundation for a house or a trench for a water or sewage pipe or a new cesspool, she would come, just show up, and stand beside the diggers and watch. Always at the proper distance to say: I’m not interfering, but I also have no intention of leaving. Clearly she was looking for something, and the something was buried in the ground. This would also happen when they plowed the fields in late summer. She would walk behind the tractor, off to the side on the ground that hadn’t yet been plowed, with the storks and crows all around her, always in one of her billowing flowered dresses and work shoes and her big straw sun hat, walking with broad, sturdy steps, not the same as her usual walk. In the sky above were two snake eagles, hungry for the goodies exposed by the plow, and on the earth below was Grandma Ruth, surrounded by strutting storks, tall and thin and ugly, and she was tall and thin and lovely, and the plow carved deep furrows and uncovered snakes and mice and lizards that the birds quickly snatched, but what she sought she did not find.
What was it? What was she looking for?
Ask the old people you interview here. Maybe they know what and why. The children thought she was just plain crazy; they would walk behind her and there’d be this strange little parade, the tractor out in front, then storks, a woman, children pointing fingers and laughing. The truth is that if this hadn’t been our grandmother maybe we too would have laughed, because we as children also thought there was something not okay about her, but we didn’t make a big deal about it. In those days there were not-okay people in nearly every family in the moshava, each with his own madness. Now, by the way, there aren’t, and to tell you the truth, it’s pretty boring. No more crazies and craziness in this moshava, and no people who follow their hearts—for love or hate or revenge.
And what’s the truth?
What truth?
Was she crazy, or was she really looking for something?
The truth is someplace in between. Exactly in the middle, the place where truths love to be. When truth is unambiguous, in other words, at one extreme or another, it’s boring, not only to others but to itself. But when it’s between the poles, it’s another thing entirely. But this you probably know even without my explanations; after all, you’re a historian. But what difference does it make, really, the truth? It’s possible to go looking in the dirt because you’re crazy, and it’s possible to look because the thing you’re looking for is actually there. These things don’t contradict each other—on the contrary. As for the names, I think that when it’s my turn, I’ll tell them to engrave “Ruta-tuta” on my tombstone and not “Ruth” from my ID card. Ruta is a good name for a gravestone. There’s something alive in it, mischievous, it’ll be a refreshing contribution to the not-so-hot milieu of the cemetery. Besides, Ruth is the name of someone who is really okay, with that long u that purses the lips and t that seals the syllable decisively, or else the name of someone like my grandmother, who was not at all okay but maintained her pose of okayness with a series of unforgettable impersonations of everything that would be written on her gravestone: woman of valor, mother to her sons, good wife to her husband. Maybe I inherited her gift for impersonation, what’s your opinion?
I have no opinion or knowledge regarding that.
One might think…who wasn’t a woman of valor in the history of the Yishuv? You hear that, Grandma Ruth? You were a woman of valor even if you cried for no reason. And you were a good wife to your husband, even if he didn’t deserve it. And you were a mother to your sons, even if they ran away from your home at the first opportunity. Excuse me, I have to drink a little water. To protect my throat. I am a teacher. My throat is a tool of my trade. I need it to teach, to talk, to fight back, to cry and laugh, to tell you tales.
It’s good, water. And I say this as someone who likes alcohol. I drink water and I hear myself sigh with great pleasure and relief. So, Varda, have I started to deliver the goods? I’ve told you a little about women and the history of early settlement. As you may or may not know, history in the Bible is inseparable from genealogy, all those long lists of people who begat and begat and begat, this one begat that one who begat that one who begat that one, because that is what’s really important and not all the Zionist slogans about coming to the Land of Israel and founding a village and forming committees and plowing the first furrow—what’s really important are names, births, deaths.
Whatever. Let’s drop that for now. What a couple they were, Grandpa Ze’ev and Grandma Ruth. How she slept with another man, how he took revenge on her—and her early death, which is how she took revenge in return. She had the nerve to die before he did, without asking permission or telling him in advance, and this is not something that a woman is allowed to do to a man, surely not to this man in this family.
Twice in her life she dealt him a fait accompli. The first time when she cheated on him and the second time when she died on him. She had clearly learned a lesson, because she didn’t give him a second chance to punish her as he had done before. What punishment can be given someone whose death is the crime? What can you do to them? At most you can forget them, but nobody could do that to her, least of all he. Anyway, my throat is really starting to hurt. We’ll stop here. You see, this is another good reason to write instead of speak.
SIX
MURDER AND SUICIDE
1
In the year 1930 three farmers committed suicide here at the moshava. That is what was written in the records of the committee and also what was concluded by the British police sergeant who came here after each suicide. He examined and investigated, and apart from their natural suspicion of any visit from the authorities, those who watched him were puzzled, for his hair was black, but his arms and face were densely dotted with freckles.
That, then, was how it was written down and how it was determined in the investigation, but contrary to the chronicles of our committee and the conclusions of the British policeman, the people of the moshava knew that only two of the suicides had actually taken their own lives, whereas the third suicide had been murdered. The whole moshava knew—people say so even today—they knew but covered it up and kept quiet. The committee fully supported this—Let the British investigate to their heart’s content, we will not hand anyone over to the foreign regime. And the British policeman, lazily and indifferently, let the natives commit suicide to their hearts’ content; it was all the same to him and the Empire that sent him here.
And the killer also made his contribution to the suicide version. Although he did what he did in a tempest of jealousy and rage, he acted with forethought and planning: he shot his victim as suicides shoot themselves, in the mouth. He carefully arranged the proper angle and made sure to remove the dead man’s right boot and sock—only a few seconds after the shot he could feel the foot getting cold—so that it would be clear to all that the trigger was pulled by his big toe and not by the finger of somebody else.
The whole community knew, they knew and kept silent. Knew that the suicide was murdered, knew who killed him and why, but our dirty laundry we wash at home, not outside, and even today we do not tell outsiders the story.
Many years have gone by. The killer died. His wife—“It was all her fault,” people still say, here in the moshava—died before he did. Their two sons left the moshava, and one of them is already dead, and today only the killer’s grandson and granddaughter and their families live here on the family’s land. And because it’s inconvenient to tell a story whose characters are named “the killer” and “the killed” and “the killer’s wife,” whose fault it all was—the time has come to speak their names: the killed was called Nahum Natan, the killer was Ze’ev Tavori, and his wife was Ruth.
Ze’ev Tavori was a large man, quick to anger, strong as an ox, and equally stubborn. He grew up in one of the moshavot in the Lower Galilee with two brothers—Dov, the elder, and Arieh, the younger—and a taciturn and hardworking mother and a father who w
anted to make all his sons into men worthy of his name. At age five they could gallop on a horse, at nine they herded oxen and milked cows, by age twelve their father had taught them to shoot a rifle and wield a wooden club. At fourteen, each of them could topple a tree with an ax and shoe a horse.
The man who was killed, Nahum Natan, was born in Istanbul, the only son of the eminent rabbi Eliyahu Natan. He was a mild-mannered young man, gentle and refined, very different from his murderer. Nor did he in any way resemble the two farmers who took their own lives here that same year. He was a bachelor and lived alone, whereas they were older men with families. One killed himself because he was drowning in debt and the other because of an incurable illness. Whereas Nahum, in the embellished version of his death, did it because he could not endure, given his personality and background, the workload and atmosphere of the moshava. There were even those who tacked the epithet “pampered” on him after his death.
The Natan family had produced many rabbis and scholars, and Nahum’s father, Rabbi Eliyahu Natan, was the greatest of them all. An exalted Torah scholar was he, and his official title of Hacham truly befitted a man so wise.
Had Natan followed in his path, he would have remained in Istanbul and become a rabbi as well. But the halutzim, the pioneers who came through Istanbul on their way from Eastern Europe to the Land of Israel, filled him with longing and wonder. And the pioneer girls, with their uncovered braids, thickly layered on their heads, often golden braids, a rare sight in his city, and their eyes—some of those blue eyes gazed at him, and amazed and aroused him.
Word quickly spread that at his home a hungry halutz could get a bowl of soup with rice, beans, leeks, onions, and meat bones. The pots of soup were filled and emptied, the blue-eyed gazes deepened, conversation ensued, golden braids were braided, bright ideas flashed like lightning, ripped the darkness, electrified and freshened the air, which had been stagnant for many years. Nahum Natan was seduced by Zionism, and aspired, so he informed his father, to make aliyah to Eretz Yisrael and work its land.