by Meir Shalev
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.
Alice didn’t come to all family events and get-togethers, but when she did deign to come, I always enjoyed seeing and talking
to her. She aged well and continued to look good after her English captain died, ever elegant and thin but with good meat on her, not one of those skinny emaciated old ladies or the fat flabby type, but a sort of gladiola. But then, at Eitan’s and my wedding, when she congratulated me and said “Good choice” and air-kissed my cheeks, I unthinkingly put my hand on her hip, like Eitan would put his hand on my “hippy” and say, “How good to touch you, my love.”
So, absentmindedly, I put my hand on Alice’s hip, and maybe absentmindedly on purpose, because I wanted to feel the flesh that my husband liked so much and see if it still had some of that magic. I touched her, and apparently without thinking I also massaged her gently, and before I realized what I was doing and feeling, she smiled: “I know that touch. It’s good that a woman resembles her man.” And joked: “Watch out, Ruta, don’t you be the guy I take home from this wedding.” And I joked too: “I’m not sure I would object,” and I felt so polished and mature and so much like her, no longer the unwanted youth but the woman who waited inside and now, at last, emerges from the cocoon. You know, with many people, not all but many, there’s someone like that inside, but not everyone gets to come out and spread her wings.
And then I saw Dalia staring at us. I’m sure she didn’t hear anything, but she hated what she saw. She weighed twenty kilos more than Alice and never stopped getting angry and blaming her for everything. I’ve never in my life seen a woman so jealous of her mother, of how she takes care of herself, of her self-confidence, of her not giving a fig what anyone else thinks. One day she even said, “She couldn’t give me a few of her genes? That bitch that I call Mommy?”
“She did offer them to you,” said Dovik, “but you didn’t want them. You panicked.”
“My mother looks really good,” she went on, “well preserved, but it’s her evil egotism that preserves her.” And she took another careful sip of limoncello and added: “She’s pickled in hemlock.”
Nice expression, “pickled in hemlock,” bully for Dalia. It annoyed me that she came up with it and not me. Bad enough that Eitan instead of me said “fortyward” and Ofer “in your humble opinion,” but Dalia? How does she even know the word “hemlock”? Annoying. Whatever. A few years ago Alice died and we went, Dalia and Dovik and I, to her funeral. Not that I’m crazy about funerals, as you can understand, but I wanted to see if there’d be any other Ethans there whom she collected at other weddings. Maybe I’ll take one as an inheritance. There weren’t, and her Ethan and mine wasn’t there either. He didn’t come, nor had he shown any interest the previous day when I told him she had died.
I remember every detail: I went down to the nursery, stood before him. He stopped, a fifty-kilo sack of gravel resting in his arms like a fat tired child.
I said, “You remember Alice, Dalia’s mother?”
He didn’t reply. Hugged the sack in silence.
“She died.”
He didn’t respond. Moved aside, walked right past me.
I followed him. “Alice, who took you home from Dalia and Dovik’s wedding.”
He said nothing. So much strength built up in those embracing arms, carrying such a load with such ease.
“So she’s dead, you hear me?”
He didn’t answer.
I said, “Ethan, we’re going to her funeral. Why don’t you wash up and get dressed and come with us? I think she’s entitled to that.”
He laid down the sack next to the sacks he had already moved and went back to get another. I looked at him and didn’t see the slightest hint of change in his expression. He wore the same look he’d worn since the disaster. Not angry, not worried, definitely not happy, but not sad. A face like a curtain. Not opaque, not transparent. So that was that, he kept serving out his sentence, his hard labor, and I represented him at her funeral. She was entitled. She really was good to him and taught him things that were good for me later on: to cook for me, to serve me, to keep me interested, to make me laugh, to touch me, where and when and how. There are those who will tell you that every woman is different, it takes all kinds, this one with butterfly kisses and the other with vigorous squeezes, that one with “don’t stop” and the other with “wait a second” every half minute, and everyone with her own “here” and “there.” But overall we’re also pretty similar, Varda; let me put it this way: nobody ever had an orgasm from someone stroking her knee.
Did I see right? You smiled? You’re even laughing. Very good. Now I have recorded proof that I can still make someone laugh. I myself have no trouble laughing, but only if I’m surprised. For a moment I forget that I’m sad, and then, a second after I laugh, it hurts. Like the joke about the guy in the forest, everyone around him lying there dead, and he’s the only one alive but with a knife stuck in his belly. Okay, let’s drop it before I start crying from too much laughter.
THIRTY-FIVE
NETA AND THE ANGEL OF DEATH
A Story for Neta Tavori from His Mother After His Death
1
Once there was a boy and his name was Neta.
When Neta was four he started to ask me questions:
“Why is there darkness only at night, and where does it go in the daytime?”
And “What’s the difference between ‘not a thing’ and ‘nothing’?”
And “When will I have a little sister already?”
And “Who will look more like her: me or you or Abba?”
And “Why doesn’t Grandpa Ze’ev have a wife like Abba has you and Uncle Dovik has Dalia?”
2
I answered all his questions with the greatest of ease.
But I thought a little more about the last question, and I thought a little more, and some more.
And finally I answered: “Grandpa Ze’ev once had a wife. She was called Grandma Ruth.”
3
Neta went to Grandpa Ze’ev: “Grandpa?”
“Yes, Neta?”
“Where’s your wife called Grandma Ruth?”
“Angelofdeath took her,” said Grandpa Ze’ev.
Neta asked, “So now she’s his wife?”
“Enough, Neta,” said Grandpa Ze’ev. “There are things we shouldn’t talk about and you ask too many questions.”
4
The next day, on the way to school, Neta asked his father who Angelofdeath was.
“Angelo who?” asked Abba.
“Angelofdeath,” said Neta.
“I have no idea,” said Abba. “And I don’t know that name.”
“Grandpa Ze’ev said that Angelofdeath took Grandma Ruth,” said Neta.
“Ah…,” said Abba, “he meant the Angel of Death. That’s the angel who takes people when it’s the time for them to die.”
Neta was pleased. “An angel? With big white wings? He takes them to fly with him?”
“No,” said Abba. “The Angel of Death has no wings, for sure not white ones. He has a great big scythe and a black robe and a big black cowl that hides his face.”
“If he has no wings, then how does he fly?”
“He doesn’t fly,” said Abba. “He appears. Suddenly he appears, and no one sees and no one knows, only the one that he takes.”
“I wish he would appear here too,” said Neta. “I really want to see his robe and cowl and scythe.”
5
“Enough of that talk!” I got angry. “There are things we don’t talk about and you ask too many questions.”
“So what should we talk about?” asked Neta.
“Soon it will be your birthday,” I said. “Maybe tell us what presents you would like?”
“Will you give me what I ask for?” asked Neta.
“If you ask for an elephant, no,” said Abba.
“Good,” said Neta. “I want a great big scythe, a long black robe, and a big black cowl.”
I was not happy with his request, but Abba said, “I promised, and a man has to keep his promises.”
He bought black cloth and sewed him a cowl and robe.
And Grandpa Ze’ev t
ook the old rusty scythe from the shed and cleaned it up. And on Saturday we had a birthday party for Neta and gave him the present.
6
Neta put on the robe,
Covered his head with the cowl,
Looked in the mirror and said to himself:
“Wow, the Angel of Death!”
He took the scythe in his hand,
And went out into the street,
And when he saw people
He began to run and chase them.
They were all afraid
They all ran away
They all shouted:
“Mommy…” and “Angelofdeath…”
“He’s going to take us…”
And “We’re all going to die!”
7
Neta laid the scythe on the ground, took off the cowl and the robe:
“Sorry, folks,
It was only a joke.
Please relax, dear madam,
And sir, you may breathe free,
I’m not the Angel of Death, I’m only me.”
And he went out like that the next day and the day after that.
And the day after that and the next day too.
And on the fifth day the people no longer ran away.
And by the sixth day they were smiling, and on the seventh—
Because the Angel of Death also works on Shabbat—
They all laughed:
“He’s not the Angel of Death at all, he’s only he.”
8
But on Sunday when Neta went out,
Hooded and scythed and totally robed,
Whom did he meet in a robe and a hood?
Absolutely right—
The actual Angel of Death!
“Come here, little boy,” he said to Neta, in a whisper.