by Meir Shalev
Interesting that they both have the same name, no?
Yes, Varda, it’s very interesting. And what’s even more interesting is that they’re also the same person. But never mind that now. You’ll understand later on. What’s important is that I kept my family name. Eitan was Eitan Druckman and I stayed Ruta Tavori. It wasn’t popular then like now, a woman keeping her family name. I raised many eyebrows, and not for the first time. I’m telling you, Varda, if raising eyebrows were an Olympic sport, I would bring great honor to the State of Israel. The contestants enter the stadium, each one does his thing, the number of raised eyebrows in the crowd is counted, and, as the whole moshava knew in advance: first place, Ruth—pause—Tavori, Israel! Come get the medal, national anthem, “Hatikvah,” drumroll please, the blue-and-white flag is hoisted, a sea of tears and glory. I will place one hand on my chest, like the American athletes do, and a single tear will trickle down the winning cheek. I’m good at tears, I have lots of practice and it shows.
Whatever. I kept my name. I didn’t want a new name, and I also can’t stand the custom of married women lugging an oversize load of two family names. If you’re an independent woman, do what I did: keep your family name and that’s it. Eitan, by the way, didn’t mind at all. The opposite. He said, I fell in love with Ruta Tavori, so I don’t want any Ruth Druckman instead. And he didn’t stop there. Soon enough he changed his last name to my family name. From Eitan Druckman to Eitan Tavori. At first he introduced himself as Tavori only as a joke, another one of his jokes: “Eitan Tavori, my pleasure.” Then adding: “You have no idea how much pleasure.” I see you’re smiling, yes, he was a very funny guy back then, and I was a very good audience for his wisecracks.
To make a long story short, one day he got up and went to the Ministry of the Interior and officially changed his last name to my last name. Dovik said to him, “What’s gotten into you, Eitan? Are you crazy?” But I actually liked it. I told him that I saw it as a unique sort of romance. And you know what he said? He said, “This time it’s not you I’m romancing, it’s Grandpa Ze’ev, he’s the top Tavori around here. Not you.” But to me this was downright romantic. He knew how to romance and loved to romance, but I sometimes felt that in his romantic theater I wasn’t always the character who was romanced, that sometimes I was the stage on which he could mount his productions.
Birthdays, for example. In general, birthdays are of more interest to women than to men, but my first husband remembered every one of my birthdays, made it special, made an effort, invented things, and on each of those birthdays he would tack a sign on the wall: HAPPY BIRTHDAY RUTA, THERE ARE SO-AND-SO MANY—and the number would change, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen—YEARS TILL YOUR FORTIETH BIRTHDAY. And on every birthday I would laugh, God, how I used to laugh with him then, in those days, and ask, “Why are you so hung up on forty?”
“That’s the age I love. The age I want you to be already.”
“Forty? I still have the skin of a teenager and you want wrinkles? Gray hair is what you want? Good thing I have small tits that will always hold up.”
And he insisted: “I always wanted a woman of forty, and I’m willing to wait.”
“So why didn’t you marry a woman of forty and be done with it?”
He laughed. “Because I wanted you. I saw in you how great you’d be when you finally got there. You were a long-term investment.”
“And in the meantime? Are you suffering?”
“Suffering a lot,” he said. “Suffering but looking forward with hope. Fortyward.”
You get it? I’m the one who reads books and teaches Bible, and he, who barely graduated high school, my wild uneducated ignoramus, trumped me with that “fortyward” of his.
“Forty is not a nice number,” I told him. “It spells only trouble: the forty days of the Flood, forty years wandering in the desert, ‘forty more days and Nineveh shall be destroyed.’ Besides, what will happen at age forty plus one day? Forty and a half? You won’t want me anymore?”
“Don’t talk nonsense. Just like it doesn’t happen in one day, it doesn’t disappear in one day. Just like there was something fortyish in you when I first laid eyes on you at sixteen and a half, there’ll be plenty left for years thereafter.”
People would say to me: “How he keeps courting you all the time, such a charming husband you have.” And also—I’m imitating them—“He’s so charming, it’s obvious how much he loves you.” I can’t stand that word, “charming.” You can’t read a book or newspaper these days without that cliché in all its permutations. Eitan wasn’t that at all; he was more like alluring, luring everyone into his net without even casting it, or maybe captivating, with all the hearts he captured that didn’t want to be set free. Don’t misunderstand—most of those captive hearts were men, men of all shapes and sizes, rich and poor, young and old, friends and customers, one and all in his thrall.
Whatever. Eitan also wanted, on the festive occasion of his official change from Druckman to Tavori, for me to come with him and officially change my name from Ruth to Ruta, but I didn’t go. I hate bureaucracy and filling out forms, and I don’t care what’s written on my identity card. “You call me Ruta, and that’s enough,” I said, “and I also come when you call me, no?”
And what did you call him?
Did I hear correctly? Can it be that you’re also not focused on the history of the Yishuv?
Tell me anyhow.
You mean a nickname? There wasn’t any. I called him Eitan and introduced him as “my man.” Today “man” is the politically correct alternative to “husband,” but in the Bible that I teach, the most chauvinist book imaginable, the book that fit my grandfather to a tee, if he had bothered to read it—“my man” appears many times instead of “my husband.” Funny. There are people here in the moshava who heard me saying “my man” and asked if I had become a feminist.
Me? Are you crazy? I just like the word for “my man,” ishi. It’s personal and sounds the same as ishi, meaning my esh, my fire, which fit Eitan well, with his bonfires that died out and cooking coals that stopped sizzling, with the glowing skin of his that grew white and pale as a result of the disaster. Can I pour you some water too? My head’s a mess, my heart is destroyed, but I somehow remember to preserve my throat.
Whatever. We were in the middle of Eitan, so let’s continue. Even before he formally changed his name to Tavori, we felt he was more of a Tavori than many real Tavoris. Dovik, my big brother, who discovered him and brought him to us, said, “He’s just like us. It would seem that not only Grandma Ruth but also Grandpa Ze’ev got laid on the side and Eitan is his illegitimate grandson.” I hope you understand, that’s not my style. I don’t speak like that, but I’m imitating Dovik.
So it’s true that Eitan was a Tavori, one of us, but he was also very different. Like a family member who came back after many years. I remember how we had just started dating and I felt he was like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle fitting into place. At first in spirit, later also with his body. He wasn’t my first. I had a little fling in the army. A little thing in every way, if you get my drift, and, after that, with a lecturer at the university, whom I got back at by calling Quickie Dick—I see you’re smiling again, that’s good, you also ran into him? Which of us girls hasn’t had pointless affairs like that? We all have. Even in the moshavot of the Baron. But then, our first time, mine and Eitan’s, when I was filled with him, I knew this was exactly what my body had waited for and wanted to stay with.
Should I continue? Because this isn’t really the sort of gender issue you are researching, and maybe inappropriate for the second conversation of two women who only just met. Yes? Thank you. I suddenly realize how complex that simple biblical phrase is, “and they shall become one flesh,” and what a genius the writer was, because “one flesh” is a wonderful idiom, perhaps even better than what it describes. And if you asked me as a teacher, I would say that “one flesh” is a much better combination than “one God.” It’s not just a matter of
style, but it’s the idea: two equal one. Maybe this is why I’m a Bible teacher and not a math teacher. Because in math one plus one equals one is an error, and in the Bible it’s true. That’s how it should be. One flesh. Everything in its place. Organized as it should be.
It’s funny. From our childhood, Dovik’s and mine, Grandpa always told us how important it was to be organized, to put everything in its place: work tools and kitchen utensils, writing implements and schoolbooks, short pants and long ones, shirts and underwear, winter and summer, each in its drawer. He had a line that used to make us laugh: “Moshe, Shlomo, every man bimkomo,” in his place. It’s not only right and useful; it’s also nice. And that was my feeling from the first time with Eitan—that this is what we were for each other, the place where each of us should be. The perfect fit, the fullness, joined together without a gap or barrier. In short, one flesh.
You seem shocked, Varda. Is it because I’m talking this way or because it hasn’t yet happened to you? I hope it will happen; you’re still young. And then you’ll remember me and say, “That crazy teacher from the moshava, the one who didn’t shut up and didn’t contribute one useful fact to my research, I can’t remember her name, but she was right.” And the guy you’ll be with then will say, “Who’re you talking to, Vardush?” And you’ll tell him, “To myself, honey”—you’ll surely call him honey; girls whose guys call them Vardush call their guys honey—“to myself, honey, I’m talking to myself, I’m reporting to myself that something important is happening here.” And you’ll also say, “If a girl who’s with a guy talks to herself out loud, it’s a sign that she’s relaxed and satisfied and in a good mood.”
Okay, enough with that. I see I have no one to get down and dirty with. Let’s go back to Eitan and how we were all happily at his mercy. He came to us the way David came to the house of King Saul. I know, because I know them both. I never stop teaching David and I never stop studying Eitan. Eitan too could be violent, even dangerous, beneath his alluring exterior, but he wasn’t wickedly manipulative like David. To fling a stone into Goliath’s forehead and cut off his head? No problem. Eitan would also be happy and able to do that. But to place Uriah the Hittite on the front lines of battle and leave him there to be killed—that’s only David. And Eitan would not kill two hundred Philistines to collect their foreskins. Because everyone who met him, myself included, would have given him their foreskin voluntarily.
Okay, I see that you’re not only grossed out, you also have no idea what I’m talking about, so let’s drop it. What’s important about Eitan is that we all fell in love with him, and he wasn’t surprised and didn’t object. He saw how goodly were Grandpa and Dovik and how pleasing was Ruta, and began the adoption process. And an interesting thing happened: it was indeed Dovik who found him and brought him to us, and it was I who married him, but the one bound to him with the thickest rope was Grandpa Ze’ev, and that happened very quickly. Dovik was jealous; I was surprised: on one hand the toughest man in the family, our black basalt rock, and on the other hand Eitan—a dancing sunbeam, a darting hornet, a butterfly in the breeze. But there was also something elemental in both of them, real, primitive, Neanderthal in the good sense of the word.
I remember: When Grandpa Ze’ev took Dovik and me to the big carob in his wadi and told us about the caveman who lived next door and the cavewoman, that’s what he called her, and the fire they lit, he said that he was a simple man with a simple life, who competed with other cavemen for territory and a woman and a cave, for water and food, not for honor or God. Everything was with rocks, he declared. And really—what’s simpler than a rock? They cut with a rock, peeled with a rock, cracked bones open with a rock—when necessary, picked up a rock and smashed a rival in the head. There’s even a word for it, “to bash,” which is more than just to break. It’s to destroy. As Grandma Ruth used to say, once in a while, “I’m bashed and broken.”
I’m certain, by the way, that Grandpa Ze’ev would have gotten along wonderfully with those cavemen. There are things that only men like him could fully grasp, men of his generation, who were the proverbial bereaved bear and also the lone bird upon a roof, the unmuzzled ox treading out the grain, and the deer longing for streams of water. I remember once, in one of those communal singing sessions I was roped into, a woman started singing the old song about girls with ponytails and pinafores, and another woman made a joke about boys with ponytails and mustaches, and everybody laughed, because it was true. You’re also allowed to laugh, Varda. Don’t hold back, that was funny.
So that’s it. It took me a while to understand it. It took me a while to see how much alike they were, my grandfather and my man, and the layers they uncovered in each other. But when I understood, I understood it all: that Eitan got down to the soft layers of Grandpa Ze’ev, under his armor and flinty exterior, and Grandpa Ze’ev got down to the hard granite layers of Eitan, under his weightless, radiant wings, and maybe they also discovered a common darkness in each other. Whatever. Even though they were two generations apart, they had a friendship that all men want and few men have. That friendship is what saved Eitan after Neta died.
EIGHT
THE MAGNIFICENT OX, THE WAGON, AND THE MULBERRY
A Story for Neta Tavori by His Mother
1
Once upon a time, in a little house in a faraway moshava, at the foot of a big mountain—lived a little boy named Grandpa Ze’ev. When he reached the age of four, Grandpa Ze’ev got a very special gift from his parents.
“Happy birthday, Grandpa Ze’ev,” they said. “We brought you a small sapling of a mulberry tree. You will water it and fertilize it, and one day when it will be a big tree, you will sit in its shade and eat its fruit.”
2
Grandpa Ze’ev loved his little mulberry tree very much. He didn’t understand much about its shade and fruit, but he was the son of farmers and he already knew how to water and spread fertilizer.
Two years passed. Grandpa Ze’ev and his mulberry tree grew, and one day his parents sewed him a canvas bag, bought him a notebook and a pencil, and said, “The time has come to go to school, to learn arithmetic and the alphabet.”
3
The next day Grandpa Ze’ev got up early, took the bag, and went to school.
On the road were many other children.
This is a new student,
And this is an older student.
This one has books tied with rope,
And that one with books in a bag.
This one rode on a donkey and that one on a bicycle.
This one went on foot and that one was carried on someone’s shoulders.
Some walked slowly, some walked fast.
Some went in a group, others by themselves.
And Grandpa Ze’ev went with his mother,
And thought about his mulberry tree.
4
“Hello, first graders,” said the teacher. “I am your teacher, and I will teach you addition and subtraction and reading and writing.”
All the students sat and learned: letters and vowels, numbers, plus signs and minus signs, and Grandpa Ze’ev just sat and thought how much he missed his mulberry tree.
“Maybe it misses me too? Because when it’s not with me, then I’m not with it.”
“Maybe it’s thirsty and needs to be watered?”
“Maybe it’ll think that I went away, and it’ll give someone else its shade and fruit?”
And “What luck that it’s a tree and can’t move from its place.”
5
The next morning Grandpa Ze’ev said to his parents, “I don’t want to go to school.”
“Why, Grandpa Ze’ev?” they asked.
“Because I’m not learning. I’m just sitting in the classroom all day and missing my mulberry tree.”
Mother and Dad said, “This is really not okay, Grandpa Ze’ev. It’s really important to learn!”
They sat and sat and thought and thought, and finally they said, “We know what to do!”
> They took a big old wagon and built four walls on it.
“What are you doing?” asked Grandpa Ze’ev.
“Soon you’ll understand,” they said.
And they spread a layer of good soil on the wagon floor and added some cow manure to it.
“What are you doing?” asked Grandpa Ze’ev.
“Soon you’ll understand,” they said.
And they took a hoe and a pitchfork and a pickax and dug a very deep hole around the mulberry tree.
“What are you doing?” asked Grandpa Ze’ev.
“Soon you’ll understand,” they said.
They set up a scaffold of long thick wooden beams over the mulberry tree, attached an iron pulley to it, and ran a very strong rope over the pulley.
“And now,” they said, “go bring our big ox, who plows the field.”
6
Grandpa Ze’ev’s mother and dad held on to the rope, tying one end to the horns of the big ox and the other end to the trunk of the mulberry tree.
“Giddyap, big ox,” they said, “slowly and carefully.”
“What’s he doing?” asked Grandpa Ze’ev.
“Soon you’ll understand,” said Mother and Dad and the ox and the mulberry tree.
The big ox tugged hard, the heavy rope stretched tight, the iron pulley groaned, and the mulberry tree went up in the air with a huge hunk of earth stuck to its roots.
Grandpa Ze’ev was frightened. “Go slow! Be careful! So it won’t get hurt!”
“Not slow! Faster, faster!” the mulberry tree cried out. “You think this is fun for me? Hanging in the air with my roots showing?”