Two She-Bears by Meir Shalev Page B

moved and so bright-eyed it was almost scary, and another thing, a little hard to describe, but there’s a word for it: “symmetry.” Not just of right and left, also of inside and outside. No, I don’t mean symmetry. I don’t like symmetry. This is something else. Whatever. I feel I’m getting irritable and angry. I have a recurrent thought, it’s terrible to think this way, I know, but if somebody had to die, in other words, if the Angel of Death had a quota to fill on that day, then why that particular child? There are so many other children to pick as a victim instead. And I say that not only as a proud mother but as a veteran teacher, who knows—after generations of spoiled, arrogant, stupid, noisy children who sat in my classroom year after year—I know how to identify a special child.
    So that’s that. Life was over. The fire went out. In two private hearts and the one shared heart. Every couple has this eternal flame, sometimes small, sometimes big, which flares up and fades down, which is sometimes too strong and sometimes needs more air and always needs to be tended and fed. And with us the disaster extinguished it with a single blow. We had been married almost seven years and knew each other a few years before that, and one already knows one’s partner, his on-off switches and dials, and what he likes and what he doesn’t, what makes him laugh and what makes him feel good, and also what annoys him, which can be good too because it’s the flip side of boredom and routine. And suddenly—a stranger. A new husband. There are women who will tell you this is what happens in the end with every husband, but usually it happens gradually, and with me it happened overnight, all at once.
    Varda: You didn’t tell me how Neta died.
    Ruta: It’s so strange for me to hear his name spoken by another person, especially an outsider.
    Varda: Do you want to tell me?
    Ruta: “Do you want to tell me?”…Quite the therapeutic tone, all of a sudden. Not a bad imitation of you, right? No, Varda. I don’t want to tell you, but I will, because I’m polite and it’s only right. Neta died from a snakebite. It’s weird, but I’m sometimes embarrassed to say so. As if dying in the army is honorable, and to be killed in an auto accident is part of the life people made for themselves. I mean, no society prohibits the use of cars because of the sanctity of life. Sanctity of life is bullshit. And illness is reasonable, and of course old age, but snakebite is something that must be hidden. It’s a shameful, frightening death. Because who ever heard of such a thing? That here, in the twenty-first century, an animal could kill a person? Where are we, dammit? India? Africa? But every year two or three cases like these are published, and people read about them in the newspaper or see them on television and say, “Look at that, Shula, unbelievable. Somebody died from a snakebite.” Who’s that knocking at the door? It’s me, the Angel of Death, dressed up as a snake.
    You don’t need to write the name Shula; it’s just the generic name of a woman who reads a book while her husband is watching sports or the news and—you know what?—the editors of the papers and the husbands of the Shulas are right. It really is in the unbelievable category. To die from a snakebite? “He shall strike at your heel”? “You shall strike at his head”? What’s come over you, God? We’re not in the Bible anymore. Enough already with those plagues of Egypt, the vipers and snakes and all the blight and mildew and boils and leprosy of yours. We’ve made progress. Today you can get run over in a crosswalk, get blown up by a terrorist, overdose on drugs, be killed by friendly fire, or unfriendly fire, or in a plane crash. Why did you come down on my poor kid with your most ancient shtick? And what else are you going to take out of your arsenal for me? A lion will arise from the Jordan Valley? Two she-bears will come out of the woods and mangle