Two She-Bears by Meir Shalev Read Free Book Online

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 wanted 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