Two She-Bears by Meir Shalev Page A

whatever their mothers had made for them, and soon enough we had a day-care center here. Day care for kids of forty and fifty and kids of five and six. You know what? Maybe on second thought you should write the word
poikeh
in your notebook, because if there were more
poikehs
like this in your history of the Yishuv, all that Zionism would look a lot better.

TEN
    Ruta: Were we on for today?
    Varda: No. I was at your neighbor’s house, and I decided to come over and say hello.
    Ruta: That’s nice. It’s like the joke about the bear in Alaska who says to the hunter: “You don’t really keep coming here for the hunting, do you?” Maybe when you’re a bit older and we become better friends, I’ll tell it to you. We haven’t yet gotten to the stage where I can tell you disgusting jokes. You want something to drink? Maybe instead of tea with lemon you would like some of Dovik’s
limoncello
? I just now poured myself some. You caught me red-handed. Here. You like
limoncello
?
    Varda: It’s delicious, but I’m not much of a drinker. Certainly not at this hour.
    Ruta: I’m so restless. Neta’s birthday is coming up and I’m like a caged lion. Neta. Neta. My child. The child that you never ask exactly what happened to him.
    Varda: I don’t ask because a person should talk about things like that on her own. Not wait to be asked.
    Ruta: I told you. I said his name and I said “disaster” and I said “grave” and “cemetery” and I also said “dead.” I said it. All you have to do is connect the dots. I said “after Neta died.” And I said I had a child who died. A boy of six. Almost six and a half to be exact. And you didn’t react. Only your research is important.
    Varda: I’m sorry. I didn’t see it that way.
    Ruta: Once I used to put it this way—“Life is over.” There was the disaster, and life was over. Funny, Neta died and I said “over” about my life, his mother. But the truth is, no, it’s not over, and in a certain sense it’s even worse than that. Neta died, and his father, in a slightly different way, also died. He wasn’t himself anymore. I lost the two of them, my man and my son, “him and his son on the same day,” as it is written. Have you noticed how disasters improve the Hebrew language? They make it more beautiful and ceremonious, with those special phrases that carry heavy burdens: “too holy to touch,” “too mysterious to understand,” “too ancient to bear.”
    Dead. He did not speak and did not laugh and did not touch me even once and primarily punished himself. And you know what? He should have. He had it coming. I didn’t hit him in the face with it, but he knew very well what I thought: that if there was someone to blame, it was him. And I too was to blame, for letting him take Neta on that hike. “A hike for guys,” girls not invited. That’s how it is with parents. Even when they’re the parents of a soldier who was killed, and there’s a whole list of commanders and politicians who can be blamed—even then, they blame themselves. Surely we are to blame. Always. Even if we were at work and a drunk driver went up on the sidewalk and ran over the child on the way home from school, we are to blame. And if a doctor sent him home with the wrong diagnosis, we are to blame. And even if lightning were to strike him from the sky, why did the lightning strike him and not us? After all, that’s what we’re there for. All the more so a father who takes his little boy on a hike and brings him back to his mother dead. There are no others to blame.
    What a good boy he was, good and smart and beloved and full of love for others, but many six-year-olds are like that, and what can someone say about someone who died at that age? So many things could change. A talented boy, but not extraordinary. Maybe that was actually what was special about him, that everything with him was in moderation, properly balanced in body and soul. Already at the age of two he was steady as he